The Brewer of Preston (17 page)

“Is Signora coming? Are you coming, Signora?”

Yet the signora had never deigned to reply.

That morning, however, overwrought as she was from conjugal abstinence, when the young man breathlessly repeated the question in tempo with his in-and-out motion, the unhappy woman answered:

“Yes . . . Yes . . . I'm coming! . . . co-o-ming . . . Oooohhh!”

At twelve noon on the dot, Cavaliere Colombo signed his last document, set down his pen, raised his arms, stretched, and let out a long sigh. His morning's work was finally over. He and Meli exchanged glances.

“Well, I'm going to go,” said the secretary. “Any orders, Cavaliere?”

“See you at three, my dear Meli,” said the commissioner, dismissing him.

And he watched the secretary walk away. Meli was slightly lame. Colombo had even been tempted to sack him less than a week after taking office, but then he had realized how very useful the man could be. Once, for example, after he had given him an order in Milanese, Meli had got it all backwards, and as a result did the exact opposite of what he'd been told. At the time, Colombo had flown into a rage, but then he realized that his secretary could become a perfect alibi for him: he could always blame him for not having understood what he had been told.

The commissioner stood up, walked through the empty secretariat and anteroom, and found himself face-to-face with Salamone, the guard.

“How goes it?”

“Fine, Excellency. And yourself?”

“Fine, fine.”

And it's a good thing
, thought Salamone,
that your horns don't yet reach the chandelier
.

At table, the commissioner noticed that his spouse's eyes were sparkling and her complexion rosy. She seemed to be in a good mood. So, to show her just who he was, he started telling her about Traquandi the Mazzinian. He had not had him immediately arrested, he explained, because he, as commissioner, might be able to profit from it. Indeed, if the opera the prefect was imposing on the people of Vigàta were to go badly, he could gain a two-point advantage over that other representative of the state by then arresting the dangerous agitator. If, instead, the opera went well, he could still even the score by making a big show of sending the subversive rat to prison. Traquandi, in short, was an ace up his sleeve, to be played at the most opportune moment.

“What do you think, Pina?”

The answer was violent and brutal.

“I don't think. I only know that when I look at you, I feel like throwing up. Go get stuffed!”

“H
ow much longer is this going to last? Let's have a look at the watch,” said Commendator Restuccia. Seeing the hour, he made a rough guess that the second act would be over soon. He turned to his wife, who had fallen into a deep sleep, and shook her arm. She gave a start and opened her eyes.

“What is it?” she asked, alarmed.

“Nothing, Assunta. As soon as they finish singing and Act Two is over, we're going to stand up, get our coats, and go home.”

At that very moment, from the gallery, came the angry voice of Lollò Sciacchitano.

“Nobody is going to make a monkey out of me, understand? Nobody in heaven or on earth! The man who makes a fool of me has yet to be born! Look at them! Four shits singing and thinking they can put one over on me!”

Lollò had it in for the people singing onstage, who looked out at him in turn, goggle-eyed.

In a flash Lieutenant Puglisi rose from the orchestra where he had been sitting, went out into the corridor, and climbed the steps to the gallery to find out for himself what the hell was going through Lollò's head. Instead he literally ran straight into one of Villaroel's militiamen, who promptly seized him and pinned him up against the wall.

“Let go of me at once or I'll break your skull,” said Pu glisi, trembling with rage. “I'm the superintendent of police.”

“Excuse me, sir, I didn't recognize you,” said the other, immediately taking his hands off him.

Puglisi meanwhile noticed that another ten or so armed soldiers were standing guard in the corridor that surrounded the orchestra.

“What are you doing here?”

“Prefect's orders, sir. Nobody is to leave the theatre.”

Jesus Christ, this fucking prefect is going to trigger another '48!
Puglisi said to himself, and began taking the stairs to the gallery two at a time. When he arrived, it, too, was surrounded by militiamen, just like the corridors behind the boxes. He dashed straight for Lollò Sciacchitano, who was still squirming and hollering as a number of friends were trying to calm him down.

“What's going on, Lollò?” asked Puglisi, who knew exactly how to handle the raving lunatic. “Has someone done you wrong?” Seeing the policeman, Lollò seemed to grow a little calmer. The two liked each other, even if they never talked about it.

“They certainly have! They want to take me for a fool!”

“Who wants to take you for a fool?”

“These theatre people. The program says there are two twin brothers, one named George and the other Daniel! It ain't true, Lieutenant, or I'm a blind man! It's always the same person changing his clothes and pretending to be first the one guy and then the other! But I got good eyes, I do!”

“Excuse me, Lollò, but what the hell do you care?”

“What do you mean, what do I care? I paid for a ticket to see two twins! An' what I got is one guy pretending he's two! You don't believe me? Just try calling both of them out onstage, and you'll see, only one o' them'll appear.”

Puglisi was struggling to think of a response that would be equal to Lollò's ironclad logic when, with a final
zoom zoom
from the orchestra, the second act drew to a close.

As the curtain was still falling, people were already getting up, some to return home, others to go smoke a cigar, the ladies to go chat, when onstage appeared Captain Villaroel, looking like a puppet, in full dress uniform with plumed cap, gloves, and parade sabre. He raised a hand to stop the movement of people.

“Your polite attention, please,” he began.

His sudden appearance paralyzed everyone, freezing them in whatever gesture they were making at that moment.

“By order of His Excellency the Prefect Bortuzzi, to avoid any public disorder, everyone still here is commanded to remain here. What I mean is, you can't even go out into the corridors. You are all ordered to remain in your seats.”

This time Puglisi got scared in earnest. A strange noise began to rise from the orchestra, the boxes, and the gallery. It was as if a great big pot, covered by an equally gigantic lid, had reached the boiling point. The policeman realized it was the menacing murmurs of the people in the audience.

Villaroel again raised his hand.

“His Excellency the Prefect invites all the citizens of Vigàta to listen to this . . .” The captain paused. To his horror he realized he couldn't think of the word.

“Bullshit?” a voice from the gallery suggested with fraternal solicitude.

“Caca?” another seconded him from the orchestra.

But then Villaroel's memory came back to him, and he was able to start over from the beginning in a firmer tone.

“His Excellency the Prefect invites all the citizens of Vigàta to listen to this opera attentively, without doing or saying anything that might offend this high authority of the state, who is here in person.”

And he turned his back and left. At that very moment, Puglisi hopped like a cricket over two rows of seats and dashed towards Mommo Friscia, who, as the policeman had noticed a second earlier, was filling his lungs with air as his face turned as round as a melon. He succeeded in putting his hand over the man's mouth before he was able to do what he intended to do.

Mommo Friscia's raspberries were legendary in town and beyond. They had the power, density, and brutality of a devastating earthquake or other natural disaster. The Honorable Nitto Sammartano, member of parliament, had seen a brilliant political career, one that would certainly have carried him to a ministerial post, go up in smoke because of an unexpected raspberry unleashed by Friscia in the middle of a crowded assembly. Not that Mommo was opposed to the politican, mind you; he had done it just to do it, in a moment of artistic inspiration. The loftier, more vibrant and stentorian the words, the more irresistible his urge to let fly. And Sammartano never recovered from that historic raspberry during the assembly. A sort of shock ran through his body every time he was about to open his mouth in public; his thoughts would cloud up and he would start stammering.

Now, at that moment, with all the commotion there was in the theatre, a raspberry from Friscia would have been like a trumpet sounding the call to revolution. Puglisi held his hand over Mommo's mouth until he saw him turning purple for lack of breath, then he let go, since the palm of his hand was burning as if it had snuffed out a bomb fuse. Meanwhile he started to hear a powerful chorus of voices, consisting not only of those of the singers but of the audience as well.

“Cold! Cold! Getting warmer! Hot!”

Bewildered, he looked towards the stage. Villaroel was having trouble finding the opening between the curtains that would lead him out.

He shuffled first to the right (“Cold! Cold!”) then to the left (“Cold! Cold!”), and only when he was right in the middle did the audience shout “Hot! Hot!” Yet when he tried to separate the heavy velvet fabric with his hands, he encountered only abundant folds, never any opening. At last a stagehand came to his aid and held the two ends of the curtain open for him. As Villaroel made his exit, the audience erupted in warm applause, the first and last of the evening, combined with shouts of “Bravo!” and “Well done!” The mayor of Vigàta, who felt more horrified by his fellow townsfolk's irony than he would have been by a shootout, stood up, pale as a corpse.

“Friends, townsmen,” he began in a quavering voice. “I beg you, please, for God's sake—”

He wasn't able to finish. Before the eyes of everyone, the prefect grabbed him by the sleeve and forced him to sit back down.

“What the hell's got into you? You're begging whom? These people should be shot! Just sit tight and don't make any trouble!”

Behind the curtain, the stage crew was changing the décor at high speed. Despite the thickness of the velvet, the people in the audience could hear loud shouts, curses, racing footsteps, and hammering upon hammering. Then, after everything in the auditorium seemed to have calmed down, once again the very loud voice of Lollò Sciacchitano rang out.

“I need to pee! I need to go pee and those fucking bastard soldiers won't let me! I think I'm gonna pee down on the orchestra!”

Suddenly, as if on command, the entire audience, men as well as women, needed to relieve themselves. Two or three ladies started squirming in their seats, hands on their bellies.

Commendator Restuccia, seeing his wife in desperate straits, grabbed the walking stick he never parted with, and ordered his wife:

“Come with me!”

Once in the corridor, a militiaman blocked his way.

“Where are you going?”

“I am taking my wife to go pee. Got anything against that?”

“Yes. The prefect forbids it.”

“Let's talk about this,” the commendatore said calmly, pulling on the handle of his walking stick with his right hand; out came a blade nearly a foot and half long. What he had was not a walking stick, but a very sharp swordstick.

“Go right ahead,” said the soldier, stepping aside.

Meanwhile the mayor, at the prefect's suggestion, had stood up again and was gesticulating for the audience to listen.

“Fellow citizens!” he said. “Everyone who needs to go to the privy can tell the soldiers, who will escort them there.”

Half the audience rose and left the theatre, and quarrels began to break out in front of the rest rooms over who had priority.

At last the third act began. The stage featured the gallery of a castle, with the throne room in the background, glimpsed through a broad doorway. The singers all sang that they were awaiting the arrival of the king.

“What king?” asked Signora Restuccia, who, after relieving herself, felt more interested in matters of art and life.

“What the hell are you asking? What king? How should I know? Who understands anything about this opera anyway?” the commendatore exploded, and he added: “Go back to sleep; it's better that way.”

“Honor! Honor! Honor!

To the valiant victor!

By him are England's shores

Delivered from all wars.”

Singing onstage were the same people who had sung before as brewers, then as soldiers, now all dressed up in aristocratic finery, though their faces remained the same. Puglisi cast a worried glance up at the gallery where Lollò Sciacchitano was sitting, but Lollò was squabbling with someone seated near him and didn't notice what was happening onstage.

For no apparent reason, the entire audience had become calm and serene. Perhaps people had grown tired of talking and laughing and were patiently waiting for the whole thing finally to end. The prefect looked slightly less enraged. Villaroel was back at Bortuzzi's side, sitting with his upper body hunched forward, since his plume was so high that it touched the ceiling of the royal box. Don Memè, a smile cutting his face in two from ear to ear and making him look just like a pomegranate, was on the other side of the prefect. But between him and His Excellency sat Donna Giagia, the prefect's wife, who kept so still she looked like a statue. The last guest in the royal box, the mayor, was holding his head in his hands, lips moving silently. He was praying.

Puglisi left the orchestra—no longer stopped by the soldiers, who now recognized him—went halfway down the corridor, opened a door, and found himself on a landing with stairs leading up to the stage and down to the understage. He took the first staircase and ended up in the wings, just a step away from the people singing. He saw a man in coat and tails, nervous and sweaty, wiping his forehead with a once-white handkerchief.

“Good evening,” he said. “I'm Lieutenant Puglisi, police. Will this be over anytime soon?”

“Let's say half an hour. But I'm very worried.”

“Me, too,” said Puglisi.

“I'm worried for Maddalena, the soprano singing the part of Effy. She's very upset, you know. Because of what's happening in the audience. During the intermission she fainted on me, and I had to give her smelling salts. Afterwards she didn't want to go back out onstage. I don't know if she can hold up till the end.”