Authors: Ottavio Cappellani

Sicilian Tragedee (6 page)

BOOK: Sicilian Tragedee

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Each New Love Brings Great Tumult

Each new love brings great tumult and Cagnotto grows ever more desperate. How true it is that love hits you when you least expect it, and above all, when you’re least looking for it. Cagnotto, sprawled on the sofa before an immense plasma-screen TV, broods.

His collection of balls on the low table looks unstable. He blames the antidepressant for this impression. He’s bloated, with alcohol and anxiety, with poisons ingested and a dissolute existence, with ideas that won’t come, with discontents. No, this isn’t the moment to fall in love.

No.

The extra weight puts his elegance in question, strains his movements, his words, his assurance. His bank account has dried up and he doesn’t have even half an idea for a new theater season. The culture commissioners speak of nothing but
proposals
. “Give me a proposal. We need a proposal. Have you worked up a proposal?”

Proposal. What fucking proposal?

Maybe if he had a proposal his fat wouldn’t be such a problem.

Cagnotto thinks of Orson Welles: How did he manage to be so fascinating even as he was growing rotund? Cagnotto thinks he looks like Orson Welles, the young Orson Welles, when he was just a little bit overweight; can it be that Bobo doesn’t see how much he looks like Orson Welles? Cagnotto reflects that Orson Welles had many, many proposals, his problem was that he had
too many
proposals. Cagnotto’s problem, instead, is named Bobo.

Bobo is confused.

Yes, that’s it, confused.

He’s confused because of his youth, his impetuousness, his passion. Bobo is a young colt who’s frightened of nothing: such is the torment and the delight of Cagnotto, who spends hours seeking the right words to maintain a delicate balance between veiled reproach and patient tolerance.

Oh, the thin line between courtship and hypnosis! thinks Cagnotto.

Bobo is like a lost puppy rescued from the street, torn between the appeal of a new owner and the mistrust that drives him toward a dangerous freedom. Only male puppies behave this way, the females jump up and slobber all over you as soon as they see there’s a chance of finding a home, thinks Cagnotto, tormenting—and equally enjoying—himself.

Cagnotto feels the attraction and the rude ingenuousness of a creature hungry for art but still untutored in the ways of the avant-garde and its experiments.

He needs to be taken by the hand, Bobo, broken in, almost: seduced, co-opted, gently pushed into the meanders of experimentation. Oh, what a difference, Cagnotto observes to himself, between the unripe, green soul of Bobo, into which (Cagnotto even hears the imperceptible sound) the Wisdom that Cagnotto holds in his hand enters with difficulty, what a difference between that and his own soul, abused over the years by great big experimenters.

Bobo, all unaware, wounds him, flattens him. The mention of another director, of whom Bobo speaks with enthusiasm, wrings from Cagnotto a tight-lipped nod of approval, then many circumlocutions and verbal pirouettes to wrest Bobo’s mind away from those extraneous claws trying to snatch him.

Cagnotto carves that unripe mind with the precision of a sculptor carving a block of rare and precious marble. One false move and the whole may end up in splinters.

Oh, how well Cagnotto knows the cynical world of the theater.

How to explain to Bobo what true inspiration is, loyalty to his art, seriousness of purpose, artistic humility, without planting in that well-disposed soul the suspicion that all of this is really just the basest of jealousy?

In this great confusion of worries and invocations, Cagnotto remembers that he must pass by and pick up Bobo.

He has invited him for lunch at Capomulini.

Bobo had sighed at the other end of the line, and oh, God, had said yes, not sounding very sure.

What should he wear?

Behind the wheel of the BMW X5, stuck in traffic in Capomulini, he takes a covert look at Bobo.

Bobo’s too serious today.

Since he had gotten into the vehicle (Cagnotto had the imperceptible impression that Bobo had slammed the door), he hasn’t said a word. The sculpted cheekbones that are pointed out the window, the sulky lips in sync with the radio, the strong jaw resting on his knuckles.

His attitude is unmistakable: something’s wrong.

Cagnotto is sweating. He’s sweating although he has turned up the air conditioner to the max.

He’s sweating because in his weight-loss anxiety this morning he has taken a diuretic, has spent the whole morning pissing, and now he has low blood pressure.

When you have low blood pressure, cold sweats, and are stuck in traffic under the broiling sun, it’s normal, thinks Cagnotto, to have a panic attack.

Cagnotto’s having a panic attack.

He tries to distract himself by looking at the traffic.

Capomulini is a little town on the sea between Acitrezza and Acireale, made up entirely of one U-shaped street, one side of the U being the seafront, the other, the road out of town. On the seafront side is a row of a dozen piers looking out onto the water that serve as restaurants. The kitchens are across the street on the ground floor of the buildings opposite and the waiters cross over with platters of bass and bream, spicy sautéed mussels and raw sea urchins.

Everybody comes here at lunchtime to eat something and cop some sun.

Often, some shopkeeper of a driver, rushing to get back in time for afternoon business hours, smashes into a boned mackerel, a grouper, or a
fritto misto
, but since there’s always traffic and it moves at a snail’s pace, nobody ever gets hurt in the collisions, although it can happen that somebody gets hurt in the fistfights that follow.

Cagnotto likes Capomulini a lot, he likes to suck out those raw sea urchins with the sun in his face, the sea whipping under the chair, the smell of salt in the air.

The customers who have finished eating wouldn’t dream of getting up and vacating their tables; they laugh, they stretch, they close their eyes and catnap, their faces turned toward the sun to catch the midday rays.

Has he said something wrong?

Has he made an irremediable error in his courtship?

Has he acted too possessive?

Is he just too fat?

And if he is just too fat, what’s the use of all the talk about art?

Is Bobo using him?

Is he looking for a part as an actor in his next production?

What next production, if he doesn’t even have a proposal yet?

Cagnotto feels fat, in love, and penniless, he has no idea what his next show will be, and in order to take Bobo out to lunch he had asked Sailesh, the Indian who comes to clean his house, to go down to the Monte dei Pegni to pawn two Rolexes, five rings, and two chains. (Sailesh had been arrested coming out of the pawnbroker’s, the police alerted by an employee who had had a bad experience with an Indian, and Cagnotto, to his burning shame, had to go down to Via Sant’ Eupilio at ten in the morning to try to explain to the carabinieri that he had given those objects to the Indian himself. “Of my own free will.” “Of your what? Okay, so these watches are not yours?”)

No! Bobo can’t be. He can’t be just the latest salesclerk aspiring actor who fakes an interest in a famous director to get a part. No, impossible. Cagnotto has gotten to know Bobo in these days and … yes, it is all too possible.

Cagnotto grabs a quick look at Bobo out of the corner of his eye. Bobo is staring with loathing at Capomulini.

Oh, fuck. This is not the attitude of a man in love, thinks Cagnotto.

When you’re in love everything, even things that are old and worn, seems beautiful, fresh in the light of the new sentiment that transfigures the everyday, endowing it with poetry, or something like that.

Cagnotto swipes his middle fingertip across his forehead.

He looks at it.

Filthy and oozing with sweat.

He wishes he had a salt cube.

Salt cubes don’t exist, he thinks.

In the very moment that he begins to pass out he finds a parking place, and revives.

Cagnotto has ordered boiled cod.

Bobo has an octopus salad, a shrimp salad, and one of
masculini
, as Capomulini’s raw anchovies are called.

That’s what he’s doing to him, he’s eating him alive, as alive and raw as a piece of sushi. Cagnotto looks at the sad, solitary codfish. To cheer himself up he calls the waiter, and seeing that his love is now certainly destined to remain unrequited, orders spaghetti with sea urchins,
sparacanaci
, minuscule fried mullet, and fried shrimp and calamari.

Bobo has done nothing but stare at the sea without participating in the conversation. Looking distracted and rather rude. Even a bit sour.

This, thinks Cagnotto, is the moment when I should exhale, raise my eyebrows, look at him with disdain, and spit out at him how dishonest it is to play around with the feelings of a poor theater director, especially when he’s in obvious trouble.

But hey, you can’t see that I’m in trouble, can you? Because you can’t talk about work, can you? Because your secret aim is to make it in the theater world by grabbing on to my coattails, isn’t it?

See, I’ve unmasked your game, Bobo.

Cagnotto thinks he should grab his napkin, toss it with rage on the table, and walk off without paying the bill.

Wait, who’s crazy here?

The cold white wine, the fried calamari, and a gust of salt air, rotten wood, and wet rope stir his groin.

Look at the facts, thinks Cagnotto, calming down. I’m in Capomulini with a really nice piece, young and moody, and everybody’s seen me. And I should let
feelings
spoil the party?

At this point
first
I lay him and
then
I leave him.

Okay.

He asked for it.

He wants to play social climber.

Okay.

Climb!

“Hey, Bobo, I wanted to talk to you about my next production.”

“Okay,” replies Bobo, continuing to stare at the sea.

Cool, he’s not showing too much interest. “I was thinking about you for a couple of parts and I wanted to get your input, that is, I wanted
you
to decide, uh, which character struck you as the most congenial.”

See, I want you, kiddo!

Because I’m the only opportunity you’ve got in your ignorant fucking life. I want you. Let’s see if you keep staring at the water with that bored look … Cagnotto remembers that he has no clue about his next production, no plot, no characters, no nothing.

It doesn’t matter, I’ll invent something. I’m still Cagnotto and something will come to me.

You’re fooling yourself, I’m going to screw you and then dump you, you’ll see.

Bobo continues to stare at the sea. He grinds his teeth. You can see he’s grinding his teeth because his jaw muscles begin to move up and down.

“Bobo?”

Up and down, up and down.

Cagnotto turns to look out to sea.

What can be so interesting?

Nothing.

“Bobo?”

Bobo snaps around, lowers his gaze, closes his eyelids to a slit, and bellows at him through clenched teeth, “Asshole!”

CHAPTER SIX

Mister Turrisi’s Brylcreem Reflects the Sun of Piazza Lupo

Mister Turrisi’s Brylcreem reflects the sun of Piazza Lupo. He’s wearing an impeccable double-breasted pin-striped blue linen suit with generous lapels and pale blue, very fine stripes.

Turrisi’s pinstripes get wider and more intense as the sun goes down: for breakfast he has a series of suits whose stripes can only be seen in a strong light; for evening, a set that resemble pedestrian crosswalks. He is also fond of stripes in all the colors of the rainbow.

Behind his Brylcreemed head the sign of the restaurant Trinacria in Bocca pokes out.

Female tourists go crazy for this restaurant because they like the double entendre: “a
mouthful
of Sicily.”

Turrisi likes it because it’s a place the British flock to.

The tables are set behind a bamboo fence, on the other side of which parked cars bake in the sun.

Turrisi looks at his watch.

He rocks on his heels.

He checks the time again.

He can’t remember whether in England young ladies are permitted to break the rules of punctuality. He knows that in Sicily, it is the female who must wait while the male tarries, he knows that in Italy the opposite holds, but he isn’t sure what the rule is in Great Britain.

A Mercedes car theater purrs silently down Via Ventimiglia, enters the piazza, and comes to a halt, double-parked.

Turrisi stares at the automobile, then at his watch.

The car theater sits immobile, the sun sparkling off the hood.

Turrisi stares at the rogue “parking attendant.” The man, sitting sideways on a beaten-up scooter, stares back, with some curiosity.

Turrisi glances away.

He fiddles with the knot of his tie.

Shit, it’s hot.

Betty Pirrotta is slumped on the floor in the space between the backseat and the front (on which is installed the TV monitor that’s showing a duel from a western, probably a Sergio Leone).

“Sweetie, the windows are tinted, he can’t see in,” Carmine is telling her.

Betty Pirrotta, her little snout turned up like a ferret snug in its den, says, “They’re not tinted. I can see that guy perfectly and I’m not getting out.”

Carmine, staring at the ring he wears on his thumb, says in a level voice, “No? Fine.”

Betty nods, swiftly and firmly, as if to say,
Of course it’s fine; what’s the alternative?

“And what will we tell your father?”

Betty stares at him with distaste, her eyes squeezed tight. “What do I care? You get me out of this. I’m not going anywhere with that guy. Don’t bust my balls.”

Carmine looks for the remote control, finds it under his rear end, and begins to zap through the channels.

“Well?” says Betty, curled up in a ball down there on the floor.

“I’m thinking.”

“Great, make it fast.”

The “parking attendant” gets up lazily from the scooter, scratches his ass, stretches, and moves toward Turrisi.

Turrisi pretends not to see him.

The man stops next to him, stares at him, then stares at the Mercedes. “Fucking nice car. What’s up, they need to park?”

Turrisi doesn’t move.

“Okay, if they want to park, you, sir, you let me know. I’m over there,” he says, pointing to the scooter.

Turrisi looks at his watch.

“So?” asks Betty.

“So, what? We can go and tell your father that Turrisi didn’t show up.”

“Fucking shit, he’s
here.
”

“I can see that, I can see that.”

“You could go and tell him I’m not feeling well and would rather stay in the car.”

Carmine looks at her as if she were a moron. Correction: not even “as if.”

“No? Why? I came, and if I didn’t feel well in the car it’s not my fault.”

“Your mother and father want you to be here.”

“Wow, that’s fucking brilliant. If they didn’t want me to be here, what the fuck was I doing here now?”

Carmine reflects on the grammatical construction of Betty’s sentences.

“He’s wearing Brylcreem.”

“Huh?” Carmine looks down at Betty and then takes a quick glance out the window. “Brylcreem’s coming back.”

“Yeah, in Giorgio Armani ads, on models. He’s got a tiny little mustache.”

“That’s coming back too.”

“Mustaches, not tiny little mustaches. On gay guys like you. He’s old.”

“In his forties.”

“Ninety, he’s at least ninety.”

“Look, in the meantime, you need to get out of the car, go have lunch, and then afterwards we’ll come up with something to keep your father happy.”

Carmine watches Betty get up, smooth her minidress, take a tiny mirror out of her bag, look herself over, get rapidly out of the car, and walk, smiling, over toward Turrisi.

“Oh my God,” says Carmine to himself in a whisper, and then he hurries out of the car, smiling and pleasant as he can be.

Mister Turrisi lights up.

BOOK: Sicilian Tragedee

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