Sicilian Tragedee (18 page)

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Authors: Ottavio Cappellani

BOOK: Sicilian Tragedee
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Bruno Pirronello, Photographer of
La Voce della Sicilia
Bruno Pirronello, photographer of
La Voce della Sicilia
, is bent over his camera bag fiddling with his lenses.
All around him Casa Cagnotto is bustling with preparations for the party.
 
 
Sitting in silence in the back seat of the Mercedes, Turi Pirrotta looks a lot like Riddu the Cement-Mixer tonight. Even Wanda, who never has anything to say to him except that he should go screw himself, is impressed. He looks younger.
The driver too is particularly silent.
Wanda is gnawing at her lip because she doesn’t understand what’s going on, and when Wanda doesn’t understand, her nerves flare up. She wants to have everything under control. But tonight she’s not going to risk overplaying the wife, because she remembers,
with rage and with affection, with hatred and with love, with relief and with nostalgia, the days in which, if she said something wrong, Riddu would give her a slap that … Wanda doesn’t like to confess even to herself the unthinkable thought.
Maybe her daughter Betty also needs a man who would give her a slap. Okay, times have changed, but when you got a nice slap out of nowhere that set your whole face on fire, you did feel like a wife. That is, of course, if you had married for love. And Wanda had married Riddu the Cement-Mixer for love. She used to watch him from the balcony on Via Vittorio Emanuele when he drove by in the cement-mixer and blasted that crazy horn he had picked up in Germany. Tadadadadadada, the theme song of
The Godfather
. Wanda felt her insides churn around like a cement-mixer.
But then time had moved on and Riddu turned into Turi, the cement-mixer turned into a Mercedes, the apartment turned into a villa, and Wanda’s hair rollers turned into a beauty salon. Not that Wanda is complaining, God forbid, but sometimes, when there’s a full moon in springtime and a warm breeze that brings you the scent of fried eggplant, Wanda thinks that she wouldn’t mind going back to Via Vittorio Emanuele to hear the sound of the cement-mixer as it butted aside the garbage bin to park, and Riddu stumbling in, half soused, demanding that she do her sacred duty as a wife. He had those pitch-black curls that Wanda stroked all over while he told her, “Now we’ll see if you calm down, you little slut, you slut …”
The orange lights illuminating the marvels of the Sicilian Baroque shine off Turi’s mute face.
“Turi?”
“Chi bboi?”
Mother of God, when he started talking real dialect!
“What’s wrong?”
Turi looked at her and his left eyebrow rose right up onto his forehead. Damn! Wanda was tempted to tell the driver, “Stop the car,
stop, we’re getting out here and going to get the cement-mixer. I said stop!”
 
 
Casa Cagnotto is all tarted up for a Shakespeare party that all of Catania will soon be talking about. Cagnotto is wearing his super-tight black jeans, a large white shirt, Hamlet-style, and on top, a skin-tight damask vest, Juliet-style. (“Looks like a bodice, no?”) All in all, he resembles a flute player in a Sicilian folk dance company. He looks at himself in the mirror and feels quite elated.
He turns to Bobo and pats his cheek. “Bassanio, then do but say to me what I should do that in your knowledge may by me be done, and I am prest unto it.”
“Huh?” says Bobo, looking uneasily at the lace on his shirt and the floppy suede boots.
“The Merchant of Venice.”
Bobo’s face is puzzled.
“You don’t know how much a reason you are, Bobo, for the occasion that tonight we’ve set about to stage. If Art is Art, as Art is, then artists are the slaves of beauty.”
“Shakespeare?”
Cagnotto goes
no
with his head. “No, just Cagnotto in love.” He raises his arm, hides his face in the crook of his elbow, and walks away from the mirror.
Bobo gives his own reflection another look.
 
 
Mister Turrisi’s Aston Martin arrives with tires squealing at the roundabout, the high-pitched sound wafting all the way down a deserted Corso Italia.
It happens all the time, Turrisi’s tires always squeal when he gets to the roundabout because his Aston Martin has the steering wheel
on the right and he’s unable to stick to the curves, never mind a roundabout.
That’s why Pietro, even if his hair is plastered against the window by the centripetal force of Turrisi’s driving, looks relatively relaxed.
Relaxed, however, is not what Turrisi is, he’s holding on tight to the steering wheel to keep from ending up in Pietro’s arms.
Pietro realizes that something is wrong only when Turrisi parks the car; he doesn’t brake and sidle up slowly to the sidewalk, as he usually does to avoid scratching the rims of the wheels. He parks at high speed, coming to rest with one tire on the sidewalk.
Turrisi gets out of the car like a demon and slams the door like this was an old Fiat 127.
Pietro gets out, looking at Turrisi curiously.
Turrisi’s hair is a mess, the long part that covers the top all stiff with Brylcreem has flopped over and fallen down on one side like a cocker spaniel’s ear (thanks to the roundabout).
Pietro wants to say something but Turrisi, who now seems calmer, adjusts his double-breasted pin-striped jacket and with a wave of his arm, puts the hair back in place.
“Mister Turrisi,” says Pietro, walking around the car, “pardon me if I take the liberty of saying so, but you need to calm down.”
“I’m extremely calm.”
“Just give me the signal, Mister Turrisi, just give me the signal, and Pirrotta, you can consider him disposed of. Rest assured, I’ve already given it a thought.”
“You haven’t given it one fuck of a thought,” says Turrisi, walking toward the door.
“No?” says Pietro, who has joined him at the door and is studying the names on the bell.
Turrisi fluffs up the carnation in his buttonhole, stretches his neck because the collar of his shirt is a tiny bit tight, and says,
“It’s not like I can blow away my father-in-law! Ring, lean on it!”
“Okay, but we don’t have to go around putting up posters. Who would know who did it? Where do I ring?”
“Cagnotto,” says Turrisi, who’s still trying to stretch out his neck imprisoned in the collar of a shirt with fine red stripes.
Pietro squints to try to read the names. He gives up, turns to Turrisi, and says, “I can’t see either.”
“No, I would never do something like that to Betty. And that’s not even the point. Move.”
Pietro moves. Turrisi gets close to the intercom.
“So what is the point?”
“There it is, Cagnotto.” Turrisi rings the bell. “It’s … um … I have some affairs in Ispica and so that business will have to wait.”
“Who is it?”
Turrisi steps back and signals to Pietro to announce their arrival.
Pietro puts his mouth up to the intercom. “Mister Turrisi.”
The door opens.
 
 
In the elevator Pietro says to Turrisi, “With all due respect, sir, what the fuck does Ispica have to do with it?”
Turrisi looks at Pietro with one eye, then looks back at himself in the mirror. He sighs, adjusting the loose knot of his tie. “Pietro, Pietro, everyone knows I’m sitting on the countryside from Ispica to Ragusa, and everyone knows that Pirrotta would like to get his hands on that land too. If Pirrotta disappears, who do you think they’re going to come after?”
“Oh, I see, so now that Pirrotta’s interested in the Ispica countryside, we have to accept that he can’t disappear?” Pietro is indignant.
“No, he can’t disappear. I’ve told you this twelve thousand times, we cannot fuck around here. Otherwise they’ll send in the tanks again.”
Pietro bursts out laughing, thinking of the time Italy sent the
army to Catania to fight the Mafia. There were tanks and soldiers on street corners behind bulletproof glass shields, and there were kids on motorbikes who, to fool around, were throwing firecrackers at them.
“Anyway I’ll think of something,” says Turrisi, smiling to himself.
The elevator stops at Cagnotto’s floor.
The door opens.
“Mister Turrisi!” exclaims Cagnotto, dressed up as … dressed up as the driver of a Sicilian painted cart?
Pirronello’s flash goes off:
Mister Turrisi in front of the elevator door, Cagnotto smiling and approaching for a cheek-to-cheek at the center of the frame, behind them a guy with a late-model Elvis forelock and teardrop Ray
·
Bans shoves a hand in front of the camera.
 
 
Pirrotta’s driver slows to a halt in double file in front of Cagnotto’s building. He gets out of the car buttoning his jacket, opens the door for Turi Pirrotta first and then goes around to open for Wanda.
Turi Pirrotta looks disgustedly at Turrisi’s Aston Martin listing off the sidewalk.
Wanda stares at him, worried.
 
 
In the elevator, Pirrotta rests one hand on the wall, his head down.
“Turi, you’ve had something on your mind since this morning.”
Pirrotta lifts his eyes. “It’s for me to know, what’s on my mind.”
Wanda bites her lip and tries to pat his head.
Pirrotta jumps back. “Are you nuts?”
Wanda retracts her hand nervously.
“Don’t touch me or you’ll get burned,” yells Pirrotta.
The elevator arrives at Cagnotto’s floor.
Pirrotta leaps out.
Wanda yells after him, “Don’t do anything stu—”
Pirronello’s flash goes off:
Turi Pirrotta coming out of the elevator like a demon, his hands messing with his hair. Behind him his wife, Wanda, her face contracted in a worried frown, tries to contain him.
 
 
Falsaperla has told his wife he has a political meeting to discuss Paino, who wants his job, Cagnotto, who’s in cahoots, and Pirrotta, who might be able to intervene. “Oh, Lord, my nerves!”
“And is Gnazia going to be there?” his wife had asked him.
“Who? Have you got anything for a headache? Mother of God, what a headache. It must be the stress.”
This Cagnotto is turning out to be a genuine ball-buster. He even had the nerve to call him in the office to invite him to his Shakespeare dinner.
It was like he was doing it on purpose, twisting the knife in the wound.
Fuck, these faggots could be vindictive!
And then, a true Machiavelli, he had invited Gnazia, taking advantage of the fact that she answered the office phone. “Commissioner,” that big old faggot Cagnotto had said, “I’m holding a Shakespeare dinner. Tonight! You’ll come, no? I’ve also invited Gnazia! So nice, Gnazia! What a splendid person. Lord, what a nice person!”
Gnazia, nice? A piece maybe, but not
nice.
Tonight she hasn’t said a word to him, to the commissioner, who is feeling a bit of a fish out of water. All by himself, he circles the marzipan table watching Gnazia, who won’t even concede him a glance.
What a bitch! Gnazia wants all of Catania to see me chasing her from party to party. Hey, I’m the commissioner, you’re the secretary. You’re the one who’s supposed to hover over me, bringing me an
aperitivo.
Fat chance!
She’s there gabbing away with her distinguished friend the
salumiera
Quattrocchi.
Falsaperla runs his finger along the edge of the table.
“Commissioner!”
Falsaperla raises his eyes and sees a flowing blond mane tossed by the pounding wind of a desert sunset. “Signora Lambertini!”
Lambertini joins her hands under her chin, a mortified expression on her face. “You see what I’m reduced to, Commissioner, working with Paino at San Giovanni la Punta?”
Falsaperla takes a rapid glance at Gnazia, who’s already on alert, turns around and takes Lambertini by the arm. (There, you talk to Quattrocchi!)
Lambertini slams into Falsaperla with her cleavage at nose level.
Gnazia lifts her chin slightly, to make it clear she hasn’t noticed anything.
 
 
“Tonight I want you to stop busting my balls and enjoy yourself. There will be lots of gay guys like you.” Betty is looking at herself in a tiny mirror.
Carmine stares at her with disdain. “And what are these clothes you’re wearing?”
Betty doesn’t reply.

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