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 j
aw 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.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I’m a Salesclerk, Not an Object
“I’m a salesclerk, not an object,” says Bobo, turning once again to stare at the sea.
The sun sparkles tremulously off the crests of the waves. The rubber rafts, bobbing on the water, are melting under the sun. Some teenagers have parked their motorbikes on the concrete breakwater and now they’re competing to see who can make the biggest splashes with his cannonballs. One of them is doing cannonballs dressed and wearing a pair of trainers.
“Huh?” Cagnotto doesn’t get it.
“You heard me.” Bobo looks pleased with himself. He doesn’t even bother to look at Cagnotto. Yeah, he’s pleased with himself. He told him.
But wasn’t it supposed to be me who told him? thinks Cagnotto.
What’s going on?
What’s happening, kiddo, is that you’re really beginning to make me lose my cool.
How dare you talk to me like that?
This is what I get for treating you like an equal?
Hey, this is the way it goes with climbers; it’s always a mistake to let them get too friendly. They get a kick out of mistreating their superiors, just because you let them get friendly and because you act like a civilized person.
“I heard what?” says Cagnotto with mounting rage.
“That’s right,” says Bobo, as if Cagnotto has finally understood.
Cagnotto raises his eyes to the heavens.
Bobo turns to look him in the face, his hands placed firmly on either side of his plate, his gaze decisive and firm, implacable. “You think I haven’t understood that you just want to have sex, you pig; you think I don’t get it that all this cultural blah-blah”—the word cultural comes out with a sarcastic snarl—“that I hear from you is only aimed at scoring a fuck? You think I don’t understand because I’m only a salesclerk?”
“But …”
“You think I don’t know about you famous directors, the way you think you have the whole world at your feet? The fuck you do. But there you go. There you go, there you go … I was waiting for it, you think I wasn’t waiting for it, I was saying to myself, Hey, I wonder when he’s going to offer me a part in one of his plays? You think I wasn’t waiting for it … hey … because I’m just a salesclerk, no? A salesclerk aspiring actor, no? So you can treat me like shit, give me all this cultural blah-blah”—the sarcasm rises to the level of disgust—“because I’m, like”—he mimes the face of
an ingenue—“here to gobble up all the nice blah-blah you put out, because you’re a director and I’m a salesclerk and you don’t get it, you don’t get it, you don’t get—” Bobo’s voice cracks.
Bobo turns toward the sea, his chin pointed at the horizon.
But what’s going on? He’s crying?
Confirmation arrives with a delicate sniff.
Cagnotto is reduced to silence.
“Because of course you have forgotten”—Bobo is back with his hands at the sides of his plate, head down, staring at his octopus salad—“that once you were just a kid crazy about Art … sure, because success has destroyed you, it made you abandon your ideals, it made you into a monster without feelings who doesn’t understand … doesn’t understand … doesn’t understand …”—Bobo raises his head, then lowers his eyes—“doesn’t understand that even someone like me … someone like me … can have feelings … can … can …” Bobo stops.
He waits without lifting his gaze from the octopus.
He hears Cagnotto say, in a faint voice. “Can?”
“Be in love with you.”
Bobo, gasping, starts to cry.
Cagnotto sits there with his head tilted to one side, his tongue lolling limply on his lower lip, his eyes looking as if the antidepressant has in that precise instant delivered all its punch.
On the highway back from Capomulini to Catania, Cagnotto still has the same expression on his face, while Bobo looks puzzled, if relieved by the outburst, which has calmed his nerves.
On the windshield the wipers are going back and forth, even though the sun outside is hot enough to fry an egg.
CHAPTER EIGHT
No, He Can’t Stand Her When She’s Like That
No, he can’t stand her when she’s like that. He just can’t, Carmine thinks. Really, every molecule of indignation in him rebels.
Betty’s got a dreamy-hypnotic-nutty look on her face as if she has just, who knows? … discovered a treasure, found out that the human race is not as evil as it seems, as if she has only realized just now, with surprise and joy tempered by a note of diffidence (revealing a strong character loyal to her own ideals) that the man sitting before her is not only worthy of her attention, capable of penetrating her critical awareness, but also actually capable of charming her and of (really!) teaching her something, taking her with the strong and masculine arms of experience, imparting useful knowledge gained in the years that separate them (not many, not as many as you might think), years that only reinforce the conviction that no one who doesn’t have the experience, the history, and the intellect of Mister Turrisi could ever be an acceptable interlocutor with whom to share in that moment the friendship that Betty is always so reluctant to concede.
Sicilian Tragedee Page 5
