The Wager (8 page)

“My soul . . . ?”

“Your soul.”

Don Giovanni had experienced poverty for nearly nine months. Like a gestation. From it something akin to desperation was born, shattering the air and any chance of peace with
its primal screams. How on earth could it be so damnably hard to climb up out of poverty? He worked and worked, and the next day all that faced him was more work. If he was lucky.

When the weather was good, poverty was, at heart, simply a pointless discomfort. Don Giovanni even enjoyed aspects of it. Waking to the clean spice of perfume from conifers and herbs, the interlacing songs of sparrows, the wavering colors of butter-flies and wildflowers. Eating berries as he picked them, fresher than anything had a right to be. Watching eagles float in winds over the mountain.

But when the weather was bad, poverty was hideous.

He should have left Randazzo in late September. He could have gone to the south shore, rocked in the winds from Africa. Or, if he didn't want to wander again, he should have at least prepared for this winter. He could have searched out a cave in the countryside. Lots of people lived in caves year-round. He could have stashed away food for winter. Even dumb animals did that.

Don Giovanni hadn't thought ahead.

Just as he hadn't thought ahead when he'd squandered his fortune in Messina.

What would it be like to be dirty for three years, three months, three days?

He was lucky in a way. He'd gone down to the freezing river just the day before and scrubbed himself from head to foot, even though it made his teeth ache right up through his eardrums. It had taken a good hour of stamping in place to
make his blood hot enough to ease the shivers. He'd put on his second set of trousers, his second smock. He'd even washed his cape. He was clean. There was no better way to begin this particular proposal.

And right now, in this very moment, hunger tightened its bones around him. Hard bones. Hard enough to break anyone's spirit.

The philosopher-thief's words came back. This was a wager. A gamble. A game for the hopeful.

And the devil had cleverly posed it in Randazzo, the home of the hopeful. Everyone here had hope. Just living under the shadow of Etna's unpredictable convulsions, they proved that. They looked out on the black, scorched earth after Etna's lava flows and they counted on those little yellow flowers coming again. Maybe not even in their lifetime, but eventually. Hope was a long-term affair.

The flowers' name danced on his tongue: aconite.

On Etna yellow was the color of hope. Yellow butterflies. Yellow orchids.

Was Don Giovanni still capable of hope?

Bong
. The church bell.
Bong.

For the moment existence was only listening to the bells. When they ended, there was nothing. The air died.

Don Giovanni watched his hand move, steadily, as though it were someone else's, controlled by something beyond him. He picked up the purse.

It didn't burst into flames. His hand didn't wither. The purse was flat, empty. A snatch of limp white linen.

Like Saint Agata's veil.

The devil was gone. He didn't leave; he disappeared. A trick of the eye?

“Dear one,” whispered Don Giovanni in a tremolo he couldn't control. “Oh, dear one, give me money.” How much? How much did things cost? Since he'd left Messina, Don Giovanni had bartered—sweat for food. And before that, his manservant, Lino, and housekeeper, Betta, had taken care of paying for things. “Enough for a room at the inn,” he murmured. “Enough for a dinner. An overflowing dish.”

The purse swelled. Heavy.

Was he losing his mind? Could this really be?

He pressed the purse to his cheek.

If he left the stable, someone might see him go. They'd secure the doors behind him. And he'd get yelled at. Maybe have things thrown at him. Rocks. Garbage. Yesterday he'd made noise purposely, pretending to try to get into a stable he knew was well locked, just to have that garbage hurled out the window at him. Gnawing at a bone soothed his empty gut.

A dinner at the inn would soothe better.

Who was he kidding? That wasn't the devil. Yes, he spoke as though he understood Don Giovanni's thoughts. Don Giovanni hadn't failed to notice that. But the real devil, not this phony version his demented mind had conjured up, would never
bother with someone who looked like him. Like a pathetic beggar.

But then, if the Lord's eye was on every creature, no matter how small, how insignificant, why couldn't the devil's be?

It was possible. Logical. Inevitable.

His fingers fought with the knot on the purse. He opened it. Metal disks. He couldn't see them in the dark, which had become pitch black. But he felt indentations. Arab inscriptions? The Norman royalty in Palermo put Arab inscriptions on their coins.

He closed the purse, tucked it inside his smock, and wrapped his cape tight. He opened the stable door the minimum necessary and edged his way out.

“Thief!”

Thief? No! He clutched the purse through his smock and ran.

Footsteps gained on him from behind. Something grabbed his cape. It ripped.

Don Giovanni sprawled headlong in the alley.

“What were you doing in that stable?”

“Sleeping,” said Don Giovanni in his beggar's voice, not moving from the ground. The purse formed a hard lump against his liver.

“It's the middle of the night. If you entered just to sleep, why did you leave now? Eh?” A boot kicked him in the rib. “Turn over.”

Don Giovanni turned onto his back. Did the bulge of the purse show? This was his old bad-luck streak coming back in full force. To lose the purse before he'd even used it was a cockroach's luck. A virgin martyr's luck.

The man who stood over him held a long wooden cudgel pointed at Don Giovanni's chest. “I asked you a question.”

“I woke.”

“What woke you?”

“Hunger.”

The man moved the cudgel so it pointed at Don Giovanni's throat. “We're all hungry after a day's fast.”

“It's been longer for me,” said Don Giovanni.

“Did you take anything from my master's stable?”

“What would I take? There was nothing to eat in there. And I've got nowhere to hide a horse blanket.”

“That's true enough.” The man rested the cudgel on Don Giovanni's Adam's apple. It hurt. “You're lucky it's All Saints' and All Souls' Day. Mercy rules today. Get out of here. Don't come back. Mercy doesn't rule tomorrow.”

Don Giovanni scootched away. The alley was getting him dirty. Dirty already. But as long as he had the purse, he could survive. He got up slowly, hunching over to hide his middle.

“Get out of here!”

Don Giovanni ran.

He went straight to the inn. Closed, naturally. No sane traveler would arrive in the middle of the night.

He filled his hand with pebbles, dirty from volcano soot, and threw them at the front shutters one flight up.

The shutters opened. A lit candle appeared. A face.

Don Giovanni waved to the man. “Hello . . .”

The light went out instantly. The shutters closed.

Don Giovanni scooped up another handful of pebbles. He threw them again.

The shutters opened. “What do you want?”

“A room.”

“Have you got money?”

“Yes.”

“I'm not coming down in this chill for no reason, am I?”

“It's your business to run the inn,” said Don Giovanni. “That's not ‘no reason,' right?”

“Where'd you get money?”

“I want a meal, too,” said Don Giovanni.

“You've got money for that, do you?”

“Hurry,” said Don Giovanni. “Or I'll go elsewhere.”

“Sure you will.” The man closed the shutters.

Don Giovanni stood in the frigid wind. This wasn't working out. The devil had tricked him. Anyone could have heard his exchange with the innkeeper. Any lowlife out and about in the black of night. At this rate, Don Giovanni would get robbed of the magic purse before he got a chance to spend a single coin. If the purse really held coins, that is. He hugged himself. Where could he go now?

But then the downstairs door opened.

“Show me the money.”

Don Giovanni didn't dare open the purse on the road, where anyone could jump him. “Let me come in first.”

“No tricks, you hear.”

Tricks. On this man's mind. From the devil. Don Giovanni knew about tricks—any starving body did. Just living was a trick. Just not screaming, not falling on the ground and rolling and kicking and thrashing, just holding himself steady like a sane man was a trick.

“No tricks,” said Don Giovanni.

The man waved him inside. “Let's see it.”

Don Giovanni stood in the hall in the flickering shadows born of the candle's little flame. He took out his purse and dumped it in the man's hand.

The man moved his candle to see better.

They both stared.

Coins. Real coins.

Don Giovanni's tongue went thick with awe.

“This covers a room and a meal, a hearty meal.” The innkeeper didn't conceal his surprise. “What did you say your name was?”

“I am Don Giovanni of Messina.” The words came in his old speech, that educated speech he'd learned to hide.

“I apologize, sire. I can't heat food at this hour. We have a guest over the kitchen. I mustn't disturb him. You can have cold
goat if you want. It's young—
capretto
—or, well, nearly. Eight months old, the little creature—very mild in taste, I assure you. Boned and stuffed with pistachio and rosemary. Basted with wine from Marsala.” He held up his candle and peered hopefully through the dark at Don Giovanni's face. “It's a special recipe I learned years ago in Palermo. The king eats it at Easter. There's a loaf of bread—from the day before last, of course; we don't bake during fasting. So it's hardened now. But the oven was fired with lemon branches, always adding that delicate and exquisite aroma. You can sprinkle fresh oil on it. If you don't know our fresh oil, you're in for a treat. Mount Etna's oil is darker and more pungent than Messina's. But this year, with an early winter, it's got an edge unlike anything you've ever tasted. Superb. And you can add salt, fine-ground, naturally. Will that do?”

From some small reserve of irony deep inside Don Giovanni's caved-in chest came the question “No sweets?”

“Figs. Not confections of sugar, no, but these are our sweetest. Roasted black figs with almonds stuck in them. And our almonds—ah, magnificent. The contrast of sweet fig and bitter almond, magnificent.”

Don Giovanni didn't trust himself to speak. In his breathlessness, he feared he might faint.

He followed the innkeeper up the stairs.

THAT FIRST NIGHT DON GIOVANNI ATE ALONE IN THE DOWN
stairs kitchen. Though he tried to suppress the urge to wolf down the food, he didn't succeed, so the taste was hardly noticeable. In that dim candlelight, it could have been garbage he was eating. It took away the pain in his gut, that's all that mattered.

The next day he ate morning and evening meals in his room, where he stayed sequestered all day. But he went down to the kitchen for the big midday meal.

The inn had two other visitors. There was only one table in the kitchen, a long narrow thing, able to accommodate a dozen easily. So all three sat there, the other two at one end together, Don Giovanni alone. They exchanged initial greetings with him, but that's all.

He listened to their talk. Both were businessmen. One brought samples of silks made in Palermo. He was gathering orders from the seamstresses of the richest ladies in town. He came a few times a year.

The other, also from Palermo, had a bag full of tiny tiles, enameled in brilliant colors. Mosaics. They glistened in the semidarkness of the kitchen, as enticingly as gems. He had come to convince Randazzo that the cathedral needed mosaics on the floor and walls. This was his first visit to the area. At first he told people his tiles rivaled the famous Roman mosaics at Segesta. But many had never visited Segesta, way over in the northwest. So he changed his song. He now said they rivaled the mosaics at Piazza Armerina, not far from the town of Enna. Even though a mudslide had covered that Roman villa a decade before, the nobles of Randazzo had seen them.

Don Giovanni eavesdropped, partly for the comfort of hearing a higher class of talk. His ears themselves were hungry for that. And partly because the information interested him. He had once been firmly ensconced in the world that bought fine silks. He had been among those who would have been dunned for money for cathedral mosaics. Now, with the aid of his linen purse, he could join that world again. If he wanted.

The fact that they didn't address any of their talk to him didn't matter. Don Giovanni hardly cared. He wasn't here for sociability. Eavesdropping was an accidental benefit of the
kitchen. And, anyway, he wasn't yet comfortable in his newly regained status. He had to practice assuming the proper haughty tone with the innkeeper or he'd give himself away.