Beautiful Antonio (32 page)

“You just wait and see,” continued her husband. “Wait and see how they've made a rope to hang themselves, these two who right now are acting all hoity-toity. They're threatening to bust up half the world, like a pair of lions with their hackles
up, but what sort of lions are they, eh? Stuffed lions, that's what they are! Ever seen a stuffed lion? Well that's what they are, no more and no less. So listen to what Alfio Magnano has to say this day, the twentieth of July 1939: those two barnyard bandits are upsetting everybody's peace and quiet, but you know how it's all going to end?”

His wife raised her eyes and looked at him over the rim of her spectacles.

“It'll all end with savages, black men and yellow men and cannibals, men with rings in their noses and feathers stuck in their hair!”

“Where, here?” murmured Signora Rosaria in some alarm.

“Here in Catania, right here in the main thoroughfare where now there's a host of cuckolds as quiet as lambs, not realizing they've been sold to the slaughterhouse, every one of them!”

“But Alfio, what are you talking about? You've gone off your head.”

“No I haven't, I'm telling the truth. I wish I were as sure of going to heaven as I am of what I'm saying now. Here, in Via Etnea,” and he strode to the window to indicate that stately thoroughfare chock-a-block with people overflowing from the pavements and in among the trams and carriages, “there'll be savages with rings in their noses, and they'll pillage the shops and strut around like lords and masters…”

“God forbid!” was his wife's muttered prayer.

“They'll parade along Via Etnea with feathers in their hair and rings in their noses. And as for you,” he bawled, wheeling on Avvocato Ardizzone who had emerged onto his balcony, “you with a face like an old boot, you'd better get the Bar Association to jettison that portrait of you with all that Fascist junk, because if
they
find it they'll make you pay for it with a good few kicks up the arse!”

“All will be ours! All will be ours!” was the Avvocato's jubilant comeback, spreading his arms in the air, along with the ample courtroom-type sleeves of his dressing-gown.

“Who's us? What's everything?”

“They'll give us everything, Corsica, Tunis, Malta, Nice, they'll give us everything we want without any war… All will be ours!”

“Who'll they give it to, tell me that now!” cried Signor Alfio in exasperation. “To you, d'you suppose, for having a face like a putrescent egg-plant? And why should they give us everything, answer me that! D'you think they're scared of you and your precious Senate, which isn't ashamed of getting to its feet and singing
Giovinezza
when it's told to, like children at kindergarten – and which in any case you'll never get into, never! Mark my words – not even to serve the speechifiers with a glass of water!”

“I make allowances for you because you have your troubles,” replied the lawyer with spiteful solemnity, “and you therefore do not know what you are saying.”

“Go to the devil!” hollered Signor Alfio. “You're a nitwit with knobs on!”

And he slammed the window shut.

“But Alfio,” observed Signora Rosaria meekly, “if you go on this way we'll turn everyone against us! If we're ever in need, we'll have no one to put in a word for us.”

“I don't give a damn for their words,” retorted Signor Alfio. “There'd be poison in 'em anyway.”

And he went on pacing the room from end to end, making a show of puking every time he drew near the window and observed, through the holes in the lace curtains, Avvocato Ardizzone as puffed up and red as a turkey-cock.

“And why all this?” he added, more in sorrow than in anger. “Why all this? Because the good Lord has it in for Alfio Magnano – Alfio Magnano who's just an ordinary poor sod who's never given cause for alarm to anybody, least of all God Almighty.”

“Alfio, that's blasphemy.”

“It's not blasphemy, I'm telling the truth. God Almighty has it in for me – for me, who've never killed or robbed a soul or sent anyone to prison, or stirred up trouble in families or
taken the bread out of people's mouths; in fact, when I've had a chance, and you can vouch for it, I've robbed myself of it to give to others.”

“That's true, Alfio, that's true.”

“And the good Lord rewards me with the worst, blackest, most venomous tragedy it's possible to saddle a man with. No enemy of mine could have thought up one more perfidious if he'd racked his brains for a thousand years. Why, a tragedy of this sort, the Almighty must have had it in mind since he created the world, such a nauseating, such a murderous tragedy – and who for? For Alfio Magnano.”

“That's blasphemy, Alfietto!”

“No it's not. I'm telling the truth. A tragedy, I tell you, that gouges the brains from your head just to think about. My own son, my only son, my pride and joy, my life! to see him reduced to less than a boot-rag, less than a boot-rag because at least with a boot-rag you can clean your boots. But a man in his condition, what use is he? What kind of good is he? What's he alive for?”

“Alfio, Alfio, you're breaking my heart!”

“And whose son is he, look you? He's the son of Alfio Magnano, Alfio Magnano who in his time… Well, well, we won't go into that… Alfio Magnano who had only to walk into a drawing-room for all the husbands to pull long faces and start nudging their wives and telling them it's time to go home.”

“And for this, in his own due time, the good Lord…” began his wife severely.

“Nothing of the sort! I'm only sorry I can't still do it, by heaven, and not to be, I won't say forty, but sixty, even sixty-five, and have what it takes to cock a snook at some fresh beardless bridegroom. And if you want to know, two years ago, when I was sixty-five, I did father a son!”

“You, a son! Who by?” demanded his wife, her hands all of a tremble.

“By a… whatsit… a typist at the lawcourts.”

“And where's the boy now?”

“Dead!”

The good lady shook her head, her face full of sadness and reproach: “Alfio, Alfio,” she murmured.

“Surely you don't imagine I've only fathered Antonio? Lots and lots of cuckolds have brought up the sons of Alfio Magnano at their own expense!”

“You ought never to have done such things, Alfio, and now you ought not to boast about them.”

“I'm not boasting, I'm telling the truth.”

“Personally, I sincerely hope you're lying!”

“Very well then, we'll name a few names. Bertolini,” he pronounced solemnly.

“What! Bertolini?”

“Bertolini the magistrate, surely you know him?”

“Of course I know him, God bless us. I'm sure he's the worthiest person on earth, but
so
disagreeable…”

“Well, his second son, the naval officer…”

“That funereal specimen?”

“Yes. Well. That funereal specimen is my son! Another son of mine is headmaster of the secondary school in a town near here called Regalbuto. Another one is a veritable half-wit, but the luckiest of the lot, because he owns a thousand hectares of land in the heart of Sicily, and on the death of that poor cuckold whom he imagines to be his father he'll be a baron into the bargain…”

“But Alfio, you tell all this to
me
? To me who…”

“You who what? Forget it! I had these brats before I married you.”

“It was very wrong of you just the same.”

“Is that so? In that case, please to note I also had others afterwards!”

“Alfio, I hope you're not serious.”

“Not serious? Why, one time in Florence a chip of a young bride on her honeymoon left the bridal chamber and came to my room… I left my mark on women, I did! And you know
it! Here in Catania a whatsit… what's the word? Well, in short, a tart, wanted to leave the brothel and become a plain, respectable housemaid, and come into service with us – not a penny to pay: all for love – just so as to see
me
all day long!”

“But Alfio!” wailed Signora Rosaria through her tears. “Why are you telling me all this?”

“I'm telling you so that you don't run away with the idea that your son has turned out as he has turned out through any fault of
mine
. Unluckily for him, and also for me, Antonio is not of my stamp – I'd have preferred him to squander every penny I had on running after women than… than…”

Signor Alfio, worn to a frazzle, threw himself down on a sofa.

“And if I'm not still up to it,” he said in a washed out voice, “it's because of this disaster, that's robbed the very breath from my body. All I need is to see a scrap of light, just a tiny little scrap of light, and I'll be at it again…” And after a full minute, between clenched teeth he added: “By God!”

Next day, as one hastening to his confessor to unburden himself of a mortal sin, he sped to Avvocato Bonaccorsi's.

“You've seen it all now,” he began tempestuously, right there in the middle of the study, “you've seen how they've insulted me? You've seen how they've all clubbed together to do me down? What's become of religion, what's become of justice, what's happened to the world? Ah, now listen to me, allow me this or you'll lose my regard, even you: the day this foolery finally gets its come-uppance I want to be Public Prosecutor in the People's Courts. I'll be no respecter of persons, I can tell you. Let my own brother be brought before me clutching our mother's portrait, and if my brother has worn that gilded hen on his hat I'll have him shot! Yes, dukes, notaries, Party Secretaries, archbishops, counts, ministers… I'll give 'em the chop!”

“Come now, there's more good in you than you give
yourself credit for,” murmured Avvocato Bonaccorsi. “You wouldn't hurt a fly.”

“You're wrong there, Raimondo,” retorted Signor Alfio. “When good men rise in wrath you have to watch your step. Place these men in my hands, and see me hang them up on hooks like so many scalded pigs!”

“You're a good man and don't know it,” insisted the lawyer.

“I'm
not
a good man, and I know it.”

“You're a good man, Alfio.”

“Raimondo,” growled old Magnano, planting himself squarely in front of his friend, “are you out to provoke me? I've been telling you I am
not a
good man!”

“Dammit!” burst out ex-bandit Compagnoni impatiently. “Why shouldn't we believe, for the time being, that Signor Alfio is not a good man? I've had long experience of human nature, and I know that when good honest people see red they spit more fire than the devil himself. The only time I was really scared, in the days when I was wicked, was in a café once when I began taunting a seminarist as weedy as a reed and yellow as a lemon. First thing I said he kept mum. The second, mum. The third, mum. The fourth, mum… But the fifth time, Lord alive! A rabid cat! A hyaena! He bounded about till he looked like busting the ceiling with his head: he came at me from all sides; he bit me in the wrist – just look, the scar's still there. No sir! Never again will I pick a bone with the virtuous, because when a virtuous man sees red he's worse than the devil! And you know me – I play rough.”

“Wise words,” commented Signor Alfio. “Better the devil himself than a good man when they drive him too far. And they've driven me too far, Raimondo. They've trampled my heart underfoot.”

“You're right, you're right,” muttered Compagnoni. “And as far as I'm concerned, the day this foolery finally gets its come-uppance I won't think twice about appointing you Public Prosecutor in the People's Courts.”

“Who will gainsay you?” agreed Avvocato Bonaccorsi.
“You will be both judge and jury. Who has ever denied Alfio's right to act as Public Prosecutor in a People's Court? It's just that…”

“None of your 'just thats'!” broke in Signor Alfio.

Compagnoni winked one of his outsize eyes at the Avvocato to advise against his persevering, and Bonaccorsi silently spread his arms wide as priests at the altar do over the Mass-book.

“None of your ‘just thats'! If even you deny me justice, I'll pack you all off to buggery yourselves!”

“Come now, come now…”

“Hell, I want to be Public Prosecutor! Is that any skin off anybody's nose? I want to expose all their life and works in public, I want to take their cuckoldry and rubber-stamp it for them!”

“And you will have ample satisfaction, Don Alfio.”

“Yes by Christ!”

“All the satisfaction you could wish for.”

“I should think so too!”

“It'll be entirely up to you to say, ‘Stop now, I've had enough'.”

“Too true, by God!”

And the old man, chest heaving, threw himself back into an easy chair.

However, it so happened that two days later, as he passed along Via Etnea, he heard the following, muttered in an undertone: “It's only fair for them to get their ends away at the expense of those emasculated anti-Fascists… They've certainly played fast and loose among the wives of that bunch of geldings…”

Signor Alfio wheeled round in fury. He raised his stick. But he encountered nothing but faces engrossed in private conversation, or in reading the placards, or in daydreams worthy of the angels.

“There's someone in this town who's tired of life,” he said,
simmering with rage and causing the two or three people who caught what he said to turn his way in astonishment.

“I'm not mad,” he pursued. “I'm not talking to myself, I'm not drivelling. I'm talking to that fucking cuckold who spoke just now and hasn't got the guts to repeat what he said.”

The bystanders pulled faces as if to say “You're off your rocker,” or “D'you think I'd deign to tangle with a poor old sod like you?”