The Wager (26 page)

They spent the day of 3 March burning the cushions from the throne in the Wave Room and putting in a matrimonial bed.

On 4 March, Don Giovanni went to wed the younger princess, Mimi, in Palermo's cathedral. The old cathedral, as it was now called, ever since Mimi's brother, King William II, had made known the plans for the new one that would be built at Monreale.

Mimi looked glorious in her long gown. Yellow. How on earth could she have known the color of all his hopes?

She fluttered down the aisle like a butterfly. When the veil was lifted and her lips appeared, her tongue ran along the bottom lip in a familiar way. Don Giovanni was amazed and then, on second thought, not amazed at all to find his bride was the artist who had drawn his hands as birds, who had seen the humanity in his eyes.

Tender and dear, indeed.

He raised an eyebrow.

“I played the boy artist outside my brother's castle,” she said clearly, though others might hear. “And the retiring princess inside.”

Of course. The former could persist only so long as the world of the latter was unaware. Art was not for a woman's hand, despite the occasional German nun, and they were considered daft, after all. But when her sister had asked for a drawing of Don Giovanni, Mimi stepped forth and offered to go in disguise—what they thought was a new disguise—as a boy artist. Don Giovanni could imagine the scene. It all fit.

“No need for disguise anymore,” murmured Don Giovanni.

“For either of us,” said Mimi.

Is a wager with the devil worth it? Who can ever know what might have been otherwise? But today was his wedding day. Don Giovanni set aside the unanswerable question in favor of what he did know, in favor of the only holiness he could count on—a yellow butterfly, a breath of hope, the love of his life.

 

 

 

“
DON GIOVANNI DE LA FORTUNA
”
IS AN OLD SICILIAN FAIRYTALE
. All versions of it that I've found are not set in any particular time period and are quite short—two or three pages. Some are available on the Internet, including these sites:

www.surlalunefairytales.com/bearskin/stories/dongiovanni.html

www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0361.html#sicily

 

I chose to start this story in the late twelfth century because that was a time of important transition, political and cultural, trickling down from the Sicilian nobility to the ordinary people. The foundation for later reforms can be traced to these years.

I chose the specific year of 1169 because I wanted a jump start for Don Giovanni's loss of wealth, and I found it in the massive
eruption of Mount Etna that year, with the ensuing earthquake that leveled Catania and the tsunami that washed over the walls of Messina. I wrote the first few chapters of the first draft of this story in December 2004. Then I took a couple of days off from writing to enjoy Christmas with my family. The day after Christmas, a major tsunami caused devastation and tragedy in the countries on the Indian Ocean. The coincidence stunned me. I couldn't work on this story for a long while afterward.

When I picked the story up again, I promised myself there would be no more natural disasters in it. (Working on fairy tales can induce a strange sense of connectedness between events that one's intellect knows are disparate.)

Because of the time frame I've imposed on this fairy tale, the princesses had to be the sisters of the king rather than the daughters as in the traditional tale. King William II at that time was just a young man himself.

I also chose to end the tale at the wedding, while the traditional tale goes on to tell of the anger of the queen and the older sister at the younger princess's good fortune in marrying such a handsome man after all. Both women met terrible ends, from going blind with envy and drowning in the sea to losing their souls to the devil. To me, this was Don Giovanni's tale, and, while I very much hold dear the frame of any fairy tale, it would have been a worse injustice to sully it with their demise.

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Robert and Barry Furrow, and Libby Crissey, Robbie Hart, Angela Repice, Bill Reynolds, Richard Tchen for comments on earlier versions. Thanks to Bryan Miltenberg for his meticulous checking and to my strong-stomached, kindhearted, and persevering editor, Reka Simonsen, for everything else.