Beautiful Antonio (20 page)

“You'll do nothing of the sort, reverend sir, you'll stay right here! So on we go: marriage is pot luck…”

“No, no, no! Marriage is not pot luck! Matrimony is a sacrament! And you know who are the officiants in this sacrament? The bride and groom! The priest merely consecrates, he does not officiate.”

“All very well and good. But so what? Where is it writ that the sacrament can be annulled simply because the husband, for reasons of his own, I repeat – not being of a mind to probe further – doesn't make the beast of the two backs with his wife?”

“I
must
beg you not to speak in such terms,” exclaimed the friar, losing a fraction of his composure. “What more can I say?… I am at a loss… Matrimony is composed of two elements, the one spiritual and the other material…”

“Very good! Very well and good! But if one party in this marriage decides to make it consist purely and simply in the spiritual side of things – I say this quite hypothetically, since we Magnanos always stay on the job until the cows come home – but be that as it may… if one partner, according to his own lights, wishes to make this a purely spiritual communion, what does the Church have to say about that? It ought to be as happy as a sandboy, seeing the way it bores us to death with its sermonizing against the evils of the flesh.”

“But in matrimony, Signor Alfio, the material act is as sacred as the spiritual!
Caro una, sanguis unus
…”

“Speak plain Christian, Father, and I might be able to follow you.”

“Caro una, sanguis unus
:one flesh and one blood.”

“Aha,
now
you come up with that one, now that you've got your eyes on the Duca Di Bronte and all his wealth! But when my son in Rome… and me too, here, until the day before yesterday, made ourselves one flesh and blood with a woman, why did you confessors in your wooden kennels squeak and squeal so loud that anyone'd have thought we were choking the life out of you!”

“But Signor Alfio, you are not even attempting to think straight. You were making
caro una sanguis unus
with women who were not
your
women!”

“Have it your own way, they weren't ‘ours', but they came along with us all the same, and were perfectly happy about it. When a man's wife falls ill, or let's say he's a bachelor, where d'you think he finds the flesh to cleave to, if not on the other side of the fence?”

“Dear Signor Alfio, do you know what a man ought to do in such a case? Practise chastity! Are you under the impression that chastity is harmful? On the contrary, it benefits both the health and the intellect! Chastity, sir, is the greatest of the virtues…”

“Bloody hell… You'd squeeze swearwords out of a dumbbell, you would! Now tell me, if chastity is the greatest of the virtues and a man practises it in his own house and home, why do you lay your curse upon him, anathematize him, and annul his marriage?”

“The Lord grant me patience! Matrimony, I repeat, consists of two elements, the one spiritual, or intentional, and the other material. If the consummation of the material act does not take place, it clearly follows that the intention also is invalidated. Increase and multiply and fill the earth, said Our Lord to those who wed…”

“Surely, monks and monsignors, windbags and crows of ill-omen the lot of you, aren't
you
enough to keep the birth-rate on the rise?”

“I would ask you again, Signor Alfio, to moderate your language.”

“I shall speak as I please!”

“In that case I shall leave you.”

And Father Rosario made a move to go.

“If you shift a peg,” bawled Signor Alfio, almost demented, “I'll run after you and show you up in the street!”

“Anything you can say to me, dear friend, is water off a duck's back!”

“What if I shout to all and sundry that the flesh of the Puglisi is sold to the highest bidder?”

At this the friar flew completely off the handle. “You're making the biggest mistake of your life, Signor Alfio!” he yelled, his eyes darting fire.

“No I am not!”

“Yes you are!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“No!”

“You're pissing away and missing the potty!”

“I'm not missing the potty!”

“Yes you are, you're missing the potty!”

“I'm not missing the potty!”

“Yes, by God, you're pissing away and missing the potty!”

“No, by God, I'm not missing the potty!”

The friar gave two resounding slaps to his cheeks, then two more, and then another couple, to vent and to restrain his wrath, to hit out at someone and to mortify himself. Then, his face buried in his hands, muttering inaudible words and quite possibly shedding tears, he hurried out of the courtyard, turning left.

Signor Alfio made no move to follow him.

M
AGNANO SENIOR
lacked the courage to report to his wife what had passed between him and the friar. He spent his days in the living-room watching Signora Rosaria at her mending, and each time she stopped to wipe her spectacles, blurred with unheralded tears, he threw up his hands and brought them down thwack on his knees.

“I'm going out of my mind!” he declared. “The more I think, the more unlikely it seems… How could it be true?… How did it happen?… What sense does it make?… What did he think he was doing?… And why? Why?… Has he said anything to you?” This last in a more gentle tone of voice.

Signora Rosaria shrugged without raising her eyes from her work.

“By rights it ought to be me to talk to him. After all I'm his father… But how's it to be done? I'd rather have a talk with the Lord of Hosts in person than with my own son! That's what I'm reduced to!”

But it so happened, at the very end of June, after an absence of twenty years, that who should turn up in Catania but Signora Rosaria's brother, Ermenegildo Fasanaro. Back from a long sojourn abroad, he looked worn out, emaciated, older than his years. His skin, with no meat beneath it, hung slack on him as if no longer attached to his person. His teeth, always on the long side, by nature protruded a little of their ivory even when his mouth was closed, though this had been if anything the defect of a good-hearted man whom nature had gifted with an irresistible smile forever hooked on his projecting incisors; now, however, these tartared, gum-shrunk
teeth were as evident as those of an old horse, and where once flashed so fetching a smile a mass of crevices predominated, in which, at the conclusion of every meal, lodged morsels of salad or fruit. What had become of the elegant belly, the vigour of the chest, the smooth clean cut of the features? Walking along Via Etnea, trying to keep up a good pace, as in the days when people used to cry “You're as good as a breeze, Don Gildo!”, he was compelled every now and then to halt in mid-pavement, as if a wall had suddenly barred his way, or some wild beast sprung up before him; then, clasping to his side the ebony stick with the silver knob which in 1918 he used to twirl nonchalantly in the fingers of his right hand, he appeared to hug it to himself as if it were the love of his life, such was the effort of bearing its weight.

In the cafés he used once to frequent, which he now entered surreptitiously because, poor thing, he was mad about cream puffs, he would at once attract the attention of the woman behind the bar.

One good woman stared at him blankly and repeatedly: then came a spark of recognition. Her jaw dropped almost onto her chest and she started to shake her head. At last she plucked up courage to say, “Pardon my asking, but aren't you Cavaliere Fasanaro?”

“Yes,” replied he, with a smile smothered in confectioner's custard and an air of a man wondering whether the impression he is giving is quite so bad after all, and in any case full of apology.

“You're sure you're Cavaliere Fasanaro?” queried the woman again.

“Ye-es,” faltered that gentleman.

“You! Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” She crossed herself three times. “Praise be to God, now isn't nature naughty!… Carmelo!” she cried, “Carmelo, come here quick and see what's become of Cavaliere Fasanaro! Quick, Carmelo, and tell me if the good Lord isn't sometimes 'orrible naughty.”

Cavaliere Fasanaro hastened to wipe his mouth and leave the
premises before the owner of the place had washed his hands and hurried in to scrutinize him.

His sister Rosaria and Signor Alfio were alone in noticing nothing of this deterioration, so engrossed were they in their own calamity.

“
You
try, Gildo,” said Signora Rosaria immediately after they had recounted their afflictions. “Try and see if he won't talk to you. Us lame ducks, we're too timid to ask him anything!”

“I'm beating my brains out, wondering what the devil really happened,” muttered Signor Alfio.

“Antonio's always got on well with you,” resumed Signora Rosaria, addressing her brother. “See if you can't bring us off this miracle, Gildo my love! All we want is to know what really happened and what he wants to do about it. Surely that's not asking too much? Then our worries will be at an end, and no more need be said about it.”

“
You
may say no more about it, but I will!” asserted Signor Alfio roundly. “I'll talk about it as long as there's breath in my body! I'll have their guts for garters! I'll give 'em the hiding of their lives, the low swindlers!
I'll
teach 'em what sort of a person Alfio Magnano is! Alfio Magnano, he'll haunt their dreams! Whenever they catch sight of Alfio Magnano they'll feel the urge to leg it. Every morning I'll take my stand outside their mouldy old palace, and if one of them tries to leave I'll put on a stentorian voice and yell, ‘Get back to bed you rotten infidel, you Judas you! That way you won't plague your neighbour! Get back to bed on your own two feet, or I'll kick you there with one of mine! Get back to bed, you Di Bronte lackeys, you who sold 'em your daughter!”

“This princely family of Di Bronte,” began Ermenegildo, pressing on his emaciated cheeks to assist a yawn, “I have known since childhood, my parents and I having lived in a wing of their palace. But you must remember it too, Rosaria…”

“No, I was born in the new house.”

“Ah, of course, so you were…” And Ermenegildo sank into reminiscence with the rapidity of one overwhelmed by a powerful narcotic. “Heavens alive, how the memories crowd in!” he exclaimed. “In the new house, eh?”

“Don't start blathering on!” broke in Signor Alfio. “Let's stick to the point.”

“Well, the point is this: they're rich, rolling in the stuff, don't now what to do with it all. And d'you know why?”

“Because they're sons of bitches, every one of 'em,” answered Signor Alfio, “and sons of bitches have God on their side.”

“For the last three hundred years,” pursued Ermenegildo, “they have never permitted their estate to be split up. Whenever there are several sons, only the eldest marries, and if he fails to produce issue, the relatives secretly gang up and get the wife to have a go with the second barrel. That's their name for it.”

“Their name for what?” enquired Signora Rosaria. “Second barrel? What's that mean?”

“What does a hunter do when he's missed with his first barrel? He fires his second, doesn't he? Just so the princess. If she has no children by her husband, she fires her second barrel with her brother-in-law.”

“Lord save us!” commented Signora Rosaria. “And then they have the impudence to open their mouths for the consecrated Host?”

“They have indeed,” continued Ermenegildo, “for they maintain that the flesh of a brother commits no cuckoldry… And who knows, they may be right. The second brother always used to be an abbot, but for quite some time now he's been simply a bachelor. When I was a nipper I used to spend hours and hours on the balcony with my face through the railings…” He broke off, then continued, “Heavens, how the memories crowd in! Did I really have such a tiny face that I could poke it out through the railings?”

“Stop waffling and get on with it,” grumbled Signor Alfio. “Hours on end waiting for what?”

“For the prince's brother to appear – the Little Duke.”

“With his mother?” enquired Signor Alfio sarcastically.

“Mother, be damned! He was fifty years old. They called him the Little Duke because he was the younger brother. He invariably dressed in black, with a stiff collar, cravat complete with diamond pin, and bamboo cane under his arm. In his breast pocket, instead of a handkerchief, he sometimes had a couple of eggs. I'd see them from up there above, for they stood out against his black suit like a brace of billiard-balls.”

“What was this infernal loony doing with two eggs in his pocket?” demanded Signor Alfio. “Who did he think he was? Did His Senility think that because he was the Duca Di Bronte he could carry eggs around in his pocket just to show off to everybody?”

“On the contrary, he had no wish to show them to a soul, and only kept them in his breast pocket to prevent them being crushed.”

“You don't say! Then briefly, what was he on about with these eggs?”

“He was, as I learnt later, on his way to visit his mistress, one Donna Concetta by name, the widow of a waggoner. He was as stingy as a Jew.”

“A Jew, forsooth! Worse! Far worse!” declared Signor Alfio, though he had not the remotest acquaintance with that duke.

“Well anyway, he was stingy. For a mistress he had selected a working-class woman, whom he rewarded with a couple of eggs each time she did for him what the princess no longer wished to do – having given birth to two sons, the present prince and the present duke.”

“And Mr Notary Puglisi,” bellowed Signor Alfio, “would go around picking up spare change with the cleft of his arse just to take his daughter away from Antonio and give her to
that
scum!”