Sicilian Tragedee (3 page)

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Authors: Ottavio Cappellani

BOOK: Sicilian Tragedee
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Like the Ballroom Scene in
The Leopard
, but More
Now
“Like the ballroom scene in
The Leopard
, but more
now
.” The commissioner for culture of the Sicilian regional assembly, Murabito, had been categorical. The celebrations for Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli must be memorable. These continual accusations that the Sicilian region didn’t promote culture were intolerable. The region promoted culture, absolutely.
The ancestors on the walls are watching the guests arrive but there is none of that distance, that difference, that distinguished the Prince from plebeian Don Calogero Sedàra in
The Leopard
. Here the ancestors look like the guests, and vice versa.
“There you go, I knew they would come dressed like hacks,” hisses Murabito to his little tribe of assistants as he glares at Caporeale and Cosentino without acknowledging their presence. “I told you we should have specified ‘black tie,’ I told you.”
“But Commissioner, we couldn’t write ‘black tie’ on a brunch invitation,” says an assistant who is following him around.
“Well, we should have written ‘tie,’ then …”
“Um …”
“How do you do, Principessa?” Commissioner Murabito bends to kiss the hand of the Principessa Cerasuolo while he watches the door out of the corner of his eye.
“Do forgive me, please come in. Thank you for honoring us with your presence.” Murabito grabs his assistant by the arm, drags him into a corner under the portrait of the wife of a prince, a baron, or whatever, and shouts at him, “What the hell is ‘brunch’ supposed to imply? You invited them to come at dawn? You had people arriving here at sunrise when the palazzo was all shut up?”
“No, Commissioner, ‘brunch’ means lunch.”
The commissioner stares, irritated, at the portrait of the noblewoman, frowning with disgust. The prince or the baron or whoever he was had definitely married a certifiably ugly woman.
“Oh, really, and what the hell does ‘lunch’ mean, afternoon tea?”
“No, Commissioner, on the invitation we specified ‘buffet at twelve-thirty’ so it would be clear to everyone.”
The commissioner glares at his assistant. “Peasant,” he says. He glances at the portrait of the aristocrat who was married to the hag and discovers he was even more hideous than his wife.
The crowds that are filling the reception rooms take the edge off the commissioner’s anxiety, for there are ladies in long dresses, ladies who take care of themselves, you can see they’ve been to the hairdresser this morning. More than just “see,” Caporeale is studying, with great interest, the arrival of some big shots.
“What’s so fascinating?” Cosentino asks him.
“Look at that. One year hair is long, the next year it’s short. And this year it’s
big
.”
 
 
Big hair is what Tino Cagnotto has, whatever hair he has left is sticking straight up as he sits immobile in traffic at the wheel of his BMW
X5 SUV. It seems he has remembered everything except to comb his hair.
Moving just his eyes, he looks to the left, to the right, and down.
With his left hand he drums his fingers on the wheel, while with his right it’s unclear what he’s up to.
He moves his eyes again—right, left—and when it’s clear no one is looking he grabs a greasepaint stick and with lightning speed swipes it over his face, his neck, and his chest.
Under his good blue suit he’s wearing a bright-colored shirt unbuttoned partway down his chest.
Tilting the rearview mirror, he takes a quick look and sees he has forgotten about the hair.
The horror of it makes him jump back while the BMW X5 leaps forward and smashes into a Peugeot full of Afro-Sicilians.
At this very moment Rosanna Lambertini and her mandolin are making their triumphant approach to Palazzo Biscari, her gaze taking in the large entrance hall decorated, for no apparent reason, with a grand piano. The mandolin sways enthusiastically in appreciation of the eighteenth century murals depicting the Biscari estate with its several industries, including wine and silkworms. Yes, this is a stage worthy of an artist, an intellectual! From the entrance hall she moves into the picture gallery with its polychrome majolica tile floors laid in 1711 by craftsmen from Vietri, then into the Rose Room, with its portraits of the Biscari family, and on into the ballroom, a rococo delirium of plaster and painting on three levels, right up to the dome of the music gallery, with Vulcan presiding over the Council of the Gods, to which the musicians could ascend via a staircase shaped like a cloud.
Anyone who doesn’t know her might think that Lambertini is feeling dizzy, but actually this is her interpretation of a “poor but clever young woman who, after having spent her youth cooped up in a humble but spotless chamber, meets by chance a prince who marries her and takes her home to his castle.”
Caporeale and Cosentino, who on the other hand have known her since she took her first steps onstage, exchange a meaningful glance, and you can bet that they are thinking, veteran dialect actors that they are, that Lambertini is in high gear as “poor but clever young woman who, after having spent her youth cooped up in a humble but spotless chamber, meets by chance a prince who marries her and takes her home to his castle.”
Lambertini in turn takes from her bag a pair of tiny glasses, puts them on, looks at a picture with a superior air, takes off the glasses, puts them back in the bag, and sends Caporeale and Cosentino a look that says,
I appreciate.
“She
understands
,” says Caporeale.
“Yes, sir, she’s a connoisseur,” says Cosentino.
“It’s obvious that she’s seen a few.”
“A real collector.”
“The reputation of a polite but inflexible art expert which was to accompany her quite unwarrantably throughout her long life,” adds Caporeale, hitching up his trousers.
“Huh?”
“I quote from
The Leopard
.”
“Shit, you read that stuff?”
Caporeale makes his
sure, who the fuck did you think I was?
face.
The palazzo’s reception rooms resound with the clack of heels as two provincial culture commissioners, Giarre and Militello, hustle over toward Lambertini exchanging glances of competitive dislike.
“Here come the rats escorting the flaming rose.”
“
The Leopard
again?” asks Cosentino.
“Certainly. Angelica, she was another real bitch. But if we start counting the rats trailing Lambertini we’ll have to call Iancelo the exterminator.”
 
 
Cagnotto is desperate.
He stares straight ahead without moving a muscle.
The Afro-Sicilians have gotten out of the car and are circling around the BMW X5, studying it with curiosity. They’re jiving to the beat of
“Vitti ’na crozza”
1
in a rap-dance-remix version that is swelling out onto the street from the subwoofers installed in the front doors of the Peugeot, flung open for the no-fault accident report.
One of the Afro-Sicilians sticks his face right up against the window of the driver’s side.
Cagnotto can’t pretend not to see him.
He whips around.
He sees those two black, burning eyes, and his soul paints an expression on his face.
The black, burning eyes see the expression that Cagnotto’s soul has painted on his face.
It frightens the Afro-Sicilian.
He says something to his friends and they jump back into the car.
Cagnotto gives the wheel a jerk. He looks at his watch, the watchband speckled with glittering colored stones.
He jerks the wheel again.
These Afro-Sicilians always blocking traffic. Cagnotto leans on the horn.
The Afro-Sicilian at the wheel sticks his Rasta head out the window.
Cagnotto gives him a chilling grin.
 
 
Turi Pirrotta’s liver is on fire—
his
liver, not the goose liver on offer at the buffet—if only he could handle that, he’d gladly eat Wanda’s
liver too, that goose he had married when he was a kid, and who thank God seemed to have found herself a boyfriend recently because she was busting his balls much less than usual.
At home, that is.
Because on official occasions, ball-buster that she is, she loves to show up with her dear husband at her side, revered, adored, respected, and admired.
Only that just now the mayor of Siracusa had pretended not to see him and the president of the fucking province of Siracusa had chatted with him for a millisecond and then headed off with some excuse, and the commissioner for public works of Pozzallo had given him the smart-ass treatment, and Bad Luck Wanda had that look on her face that said she was about to start torturing him right here in public.
Her eyes were burning with the acid question that her lips were posing:
Isn’t there something you should be telling me?
There’s absolutely fuck-all I should be telling you,
Turi Pirrotta’s fixed smile continued to reply.
But the fact is that word has been spreading, this is the kind of news you can’t keep secret. His business rival, Alfio Turrisi, privately known as Alfio Dickhead Turrisi, that moron who has people calling him “Mister” Turrisi, has been gobbling up all the real estate between Rosolini and Ispica, where it is pretty clear by now that drillers have struck oil.
An American company had gotten the natural gas rights but the documents spoke of “liquid extraction rights” and down at the regional assembly environmentalists, engineers, and commissioners, all of whom were intent on their own interests, were squabbling over whether those “liquids” included petroleum.
Meanwhile, however, it was to be expected that someone would grab the titles to those properties, and Turrisi, with his alluring liquidity, his favorable pound-euro exchange rate (for he was well introduced
among London banks), and his perfect dick of a face … well, everyone knows that the guy with the dick-face always manages to screw his neighbor.
London!
Hey, Turi Pirrotta himself could have gone into business in London if it hadn’t been for that disaster of a wife of his who in his younger days had kept him on a leash shorter than a pit bull’s. And if it hadn’t been for that double disaster of a daughter of his, Betty, who for all the paternal goodwill in the world had turned out to be a supreme ball-breaker, with a cherry so well chiseled that even the artisans who carved the putti in the houses designed by Vaccarini couldn’t compete.
Under these conditions, the last thing you want to do is be seen on some public occasion. You want to be seen staying home and plotting—what’s it called?—
strategy
, vendettas, war, and all that shit. You don’t go to the big lunch where the mayor of Siracusa comes up to you, stares at you with that cocksucker face of his that says it all, pauses a moment to see if you have anything to tell him, you who have nothing to tell him because all the land is being sold to Turrisi, and then moves on, with an excuse, to somebody else.
And then they complain when they get blown away.
What is Pirrotta supposed to do? Go out and gun down the brokers, the real estate agents, threaten the property owners, blow things up? He’s too old for that kind of stuff. And meanwhile Turrisi is young and energetic.
Turrisi is young, energetic, and, as we said, a dick-face.
And he doesn’t have his nerves shredded by someone like Wanda who if you didn’t take her to the big lunch with stars of stage and screen would have raised such a firestorm at home that Pirrotta would have had to forget about slipping out to see Rosina, a girl so fine—young, pretty, sweet-smelling, and not even that much of a bitch—that Pirrotta can’t figure out why the Good Lord has given her to him.
 
 
Mister Turrisi is fiddling with his hair with the mother-of-pearl comb he keeps in the glove compartment of the Aston Martin.
He has found a place for the car in Piazza Duca di Genova because he knows the guy who runs the illegal parking operation there, and now, climbing the double-ramp staircase of Mt. Etna basalt, he walks though the reception rooms, laid out for the party but deserted.
Turrisi’s Brylcreemed head pokes out onto the terrace, where he sees that the party is well under way. Good. Someone of Mister Turrisi’s status should arrive after things have gotten warmed up.
 
 
With the nice weather the guests have all migrated to the south terrace, where, admiring the black basalt walls with their flowers, putti, and muscular columns sculpted of Siracusa limestone, they are broiling under the sun because in houses like this it is cooler inside than out.

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