Give me a break, thinks Carmine.
What we have here is the pure archetype of a slut dressed up as ninety pounds of tits and sandals.
It can’t be true that Betty is conversant with such depth and sensitivity. Where does she get this stuff?
It must be that Betty has a plan. Carmine is sure of it.
“Carmine, dear, could you make a note of this book that Mister Turrisi is recommending?”
Carmine, ever patient, takes his BlackBerry out of his inside jacket pocket and turns toward Turrisi.
Turrisi is laughing up his sleeve.
Carmine sees Turrisi, immobile, his Brylcreem, his little mustache, his expressionless face, and yet he knows Turrisi is laughing up his sleeve, he knows it from the voice Turrisi uses as he says, “Gangs: The New Aristocracy.”
“Gangs: The New Aristocracy,” he repeats, barely concealing his disgust as he relays the title of the book into the handheld’s voice recorder.
Betty nods happily. A kind of luminescence lights up her face.
“As I was saying,” continues Turrisi, polishing his mustache with the corner of his napkin, “this British historian draws interesting parallels between the family as we know it in the Mafia sense, and the nobility. Contracts, rituals, formality, even the state marriages that bind together highborn European families. It’s a fascinating window on the upper classes through the centuries.”
“It certainly sounds worthy of consideration,” says Betty.
What kind of fucking language is this? And how would she know?
“Carmine, did you hear that?”
Wow, she’s even talking to me, politely now, making me part of the discussion. It sure wasn’t Wanda who taught her these table manners. And it sure wasn’t her father, either.
“Yes, I did. Very interesting.”
Turrisi nods, while, with no regard for Carmine’s reply, Betty’s attention is once again riveted on Turrisi as she asks, “Is there any truth to what I’ve heard that Soho can be dangerous?”
Is there any truth?
“Only after a certain hour of the night, and never if you’re with me.”
Betty smiles, lowering her eyes.
I can’t stand this, I’m getting up, I’m going to drown myself in the lobster tank, and don’t rescue me.
“Certainly, if it were possible, that would be nice … but I don’t think my father …”
Your father would walk up Via di San Giuliano on his knees if it meant getting you off his ass.
Betty gives him a kick under the table. “Oh, yes, her father is, um … an old-fashioned guy.”
There he goes again, laughing up his sleeve.
“But I know your respected father very well …”
Her respected father. Who? Turi Pirrotta, known in his youth as Riddu the Cement-Mixer because when he got off work at the building site he would drive down to the bar in his cement-mixer and could never find a place to park?
“ … and, I must say, I approve of his approach. I would of course never dream of asking you to come to London. I merely wanted to show how much pleasure the thought gives me. While manners and good form prevent us, as well they should, from behaving in inappropriate ways, there is nothing to stop the mind from pursuing beautiful thoughts, especially when they are based on good intentions.”
All right. Not bad.
“You would never dream of it?”
There it was, that little pinch of maliciousness calculated to operate subliminally on the male gender.
“Ah …” Turrisi conveniently changes the subject, having achieved what seemed to him at that moment the maximum victory that decency, queen of the occasion, could concede.
Don’t make me say something vulgar.
In the car, after lunch, Carmine, deflated, puzzled, outraged, and curious, asks, “So what are you up to?”
“Me? Nothing.”
“Okay, explain.”
“What?”
“The whole performance.”
“Performance?”
CHAPTER NINE
O Sometimes Insufferable Pomposity!
O sometimes insufferable pomposity! thinks Cagnotto, whose soul has opened up and taken flight. The whirlpools of a thousand wishes stir in him: conversations, disagreements, ripostes, attractions, and repulsions. Contests, concerts, deceptions, subterfuges, mirages. Dictates, contradictions, hypotheses, theses, and antitheses (syntheses are a bit scarce). Plots, subplots, surprises, illusions, dismay. Oh, how he had misjudged the sincere love of a young man just taking his first steps on life’s path.
Oh, how desire and will have been subverted by foul cynicism.
Wasn’t Bobo perhaps right?
From the depths of his instinct, Bobo had understood and articulated all that Cagnotto had concealed from himself.
Were his instincts pure? No, sir.
Were his passions sincere? Nope.
Cagnotto thinks of Richard Gere. In Pretty Woman, overwhelmed by the uncomplicated affection of that ex-prostitute who is going around with his credit card insulting shop clerks, and repenting of his onetime arrogance, he tells his coworker, as he piles one glass upon another, “Hey, when I was a kid I liked blocks.”
There you go, Cagnotto feels something like that.
Cagnotto curses Art even as he blesses Bobo’s authentic feelings. He thinks of how he was as an adolescent, when the simplicity of a line of verse could work its way into his heart, keeping time with his hopes.
And then?
The anxiety to say something new has alienated him from that state of grace.
Ambitions, jealousy, backstabbing: the theater thrives on the opposite.
The more lofty the ideals onstage, the baser the sentiments behind the scenes.
To pan a work because it is by a rival, to praise someone else to win favors, to declare that congenital idiots are masters. To waste time on empty words. To bow once to the public, once to the critics, and once to the powers that be. Is this all that is left of the young Cagnotto?
Cagnotto swerves to avoid a pedestrian.
Deep in thought, he doesn’t notice the insults flying.
He remembers lines of verse, a poem, words scrawled by an innocent soul.
What crime was he about to commit?
My God.
Cagnotto is driving erratically, true to his thoughts.
All that avant-garde and experimental theater, just to cop fame and success, so he could spend his nights with malevolent strangers?
Is this where he wants to take Bobo?
Is this what he wants to teach him?
How to become alienated and lose the innate illumination of the truth?
Cagnotto slams on the brake. A kid on a scooter points with both hands at his prick, as if to say, Dickhead, you suck.
And in the name of what? A concept of the theater that even he, to be honest, has yet to understand.
No.
If there is a true path here, it is that of the master who bows to the apprentice, admiring the freshness of his thinking.
Yes.
It is to Bobo’s thinking that he should now attend. He will take it in hand, like a little bird, a tender young hostage to the beauty of nature. And he will nurture that thought so that it will bud, flower, express itself, and explode with all its delicate power.
Cagnotto wets his lips, shifting into top gear.
That’s what he will do.
Back to the days of innocence.
Cagnotto will uproot the weeds of modernity that are suffocating the garden (maybe it is still thriving!) of his inspiration.
He must get back to the classics.
Yes, the classics.
No doubt about that.
Absolutely.
Metaphorically (and not just metaphorically before he had signed a contract with the region to finance his productions) the underground Cagnotto had spit, pissed, and vomited on the classics.
“Oh, how I love anew these people who are called common”—who
was that quote from? Goethe? Cagnotto can’t remember.
Yes, the common people.
Oh, what damage had been done to the classics by the avant-garde, the ranting when they should have been speaking to the common people. Had theater been born to address the elite?
No, never.
Shakespeare. Who did Shakespeare write for? For whores, thieves, and delinquents.
And Greek theater? The people ate peanuts watching Greek theater. Well, maybe not peanuts because peanuts hadn’t been invented yet, but they were munching on something.
Certainly, the interpretations of the classics needed to be rethought, brought back to the original letter and spirit. It will be necessary to reinvent a language and gestures that are plain and genuine, that will bring the message of the theater to ordinary folk.
He parks the BMW X5 on the sidewalk without even braking. He waves at the bread man who’s smoking a cigarette in the doorway of the bakery.
He runs to his own building.
He rings the bell.
Then he realizes he is downstairs and grabs the keys in his pocket with a smile on his face.
He’s got to tell Bobo about his decision right away, keep him up to date on his spiritual evolution.
Okay, he thinks in the elevator, shall I call him right away or shall I wait fifteen minutes?
CHAPTER TEN
In Pajamas and Dressing Gown in the Sitting Room of Villa Wanda
In pajamas and dressing gown in the sitting room of Villa Wanda, Turi Pirrotta is staring curiously at a bell. For years now Pirrotta has been staring curiously at his house; since his wife Wanda learned that redecorating was an excellent way to launder money, she has done nothing but shift the furniture out from under him, switch this room with that, bang in nails, adjust walls, and hire consultants.
Here’s how it works: You get hold of a bell, let’s say the bell costs you five euros, you take it and you put it in a shop owned by your family under a fake name (usually under the name of the previous proprietor of the shop, who has fallen on hard times because of the protection money he had to pay you or because of the interest on the loans you advanced). You take the bell and on the bottom you put a sticker with a price on it: five hundred euros. Into the shop walks Wanda, she buys the bell, and you have just laundered four hundred ninety-five euros in one go.
And even if the tax police do come along, what can they say?
Pirrotta pictures the tax police, all serious, asking his wife, “And you say you paid five hundred euros for this bell?” You just have to look at Wanda to see she’s the type who would do something as dumb-assed as that. Shit, you just have to look at the woman when she comes back from the hairdresser’s.
Pirrotta raises his eyes to the heavens recalling the time his tax accountant’s wife explained these financial matters to Wanda. Couldn’t they just exchange gossip about their lovers like all other married women instead of busting their better halves’ balls?
Where the fuck is Betty? How much fucking time does she need to get home? How long is this frigging lunch going to last?
The thought brings a happy half-smile to Pirrotta’s lips. Shit, getting her married to Turrisi!
His daughter Betty not only out of his house but into Alfio Turrisi’s.
Mrs. Betty Turrisi. Mother of God, how nice that sounds to Turi Pirrotta. Mrs. Betty Turrisi.
The oil business at Ispica: check!
The Mafia-war business: check!
The ball-busting-daughter-who-needs-a-husband business: check!
What more could he want from life? Only that Wanda should go to the hairdresser’s a little more often.
Is Betty going to hurry up and bring him some news?
Pirrotta sighs and squirms in his chair.
The bell rings in his hand.
Pirrotta, deep in thought, jumps.
He takes that bitch of a bell and puts it down carefully between a stylized pineapple in crystal and a cigarette box in the shape of the Altar of the Nation, that mammoth monument to national unity in Rome.
The Filipina maid appears. “Mister ring?”
“Who, me? No!” Pirotta says without thinking, somewhat freaked. The maid bows and withdraws.
Pirrotta looks at the bell again.
He understands.
He picks up the bell and rings it hard.
The maid does not appear.
Pirrotta rings harder.
Still nobody.
Pirrotta takes the bell in two hands and shakes it with his whole body, as if he were strangling someone.
The maid runs in.
“Mister ring?”
“No, I was just celebrating the election of the new mayor.”
The maid doesn’t get it.
“Yes, I rang. Didn’t you hear?”
“I hear. But I think you fooling.”
Pirrotta lowers his eyes to contain the rage that is rising in him.
“Bring me a wodka.” (Strangely, he pronounces it as if he were a true Russian.)
“Right away, sir.”
“A double, make it a double.”
“Double, sir, double.”
Pirrotta hears the door slam and the tick-tick-tick of Betty’s heels.
He gets up, doesn’t know what to do with himself, sits down, gets up; he doesn’t want Betty to see that he’s worried.
But hey, as if Betty hadn’t already figured it out.
Pirrotta gives up and sits down carefully in the chair, his nervous hands stuck between his legs, his face hopeful.
Betty comes into the room, followed by Carmine. She stares at her father distractedly.
Her father has a dumb smile stamped on his face; shit if her mother isn’t right, thinks Betty.
She tosses her bag on the sofa and just as casually throws herself down beside it.
She looks at Carmine.
Carmine raises his eyes.
Betty takes the bell.
Carmine sits down in a chair and crosses his legs.
Betty rings the bell.
Turi Pirrotta doesn’t move a muscle; he watches the performance with a dumb look. Oh, how sweet it is when the children come home. He flashes a dumb half-smile at Carmine too while he’s at it.
The maid comes in with the double vodka and asks, “Miss ring?”
“A cup of tea.”
A cup of tea?
“What do you want?”
“Okay, I’ll have a cup of tea also, darling, with a shot of brandy in it,” says Carmine, dusting off the collar of his orange jacket.
“Yes, miss,” says the maid, putting the double vodka down on the table in front of Pirrotta.
Pirrotta looks at the double vodka as if he has no idea what it is.
“Mama says you shouldn’t drink, it aggravates your diabetes.”
Oh, Mother of God, how beautiful it would be if she went to bust the balls of Turrisi every morning. Mother of God, how beautiful.
“Well, you won’t tell her.”
Betty smiles. “That depends.”
Pirrotta gives her a look like someone who’s in total agreement. “So?” he says.
“So what?” says Betty taking a cigarette from the Altar of the Nation and lighting it with a silver skyscraper.
“Your mother says you shouldn’t smo—”
Betty looks up.
Pirrotta smiles. “And so? What’s he like?”
“Mature,” says Betty, exhaling a little cloud of smoke.
“Oh, good, good. So he’s well behaved; that’s interesting, no?” Pirrotta looks to Carmine for help.
Carmine’s wearing an indecipherable expression.
Pirrotta hangs all his hopes on that indecipherable expression. “Okay, good. Um … so … will you be seeing each other again?”
Silence.
Carmine looks at Betty.
Betty is trying to figure out what is that thing in her hand shaped like a lit cigarette. She tosses it in an ashtray. She stretches like a cat, mewing, takes off her shoes,
tucks her feet under her thighs, and says nothing.
Pirrotta looks at Carmine.
Carmine doesn’t know what to say. “Uh … yeah, I guess so?” With a question mark.
Carmine and Pirrotta stare at Betty.
Betty is bobbing her head back and forth, trying to get the crick out of her neck.
Pirrotta and Carmine wait impatiently.
Betty interrupts the neck business. “What’s to look at?”
The maid comes in with a tray.
On the tray there’s no tea, only a cordless phone. “Mister Turrisi for the miss,” says the maid.
Pirrotta’s mouth falls open.
Carmine exhales.
“Give it to me,” says Betty with a bored gesture of her hand.
The maid steps up to Betty and with a bow hands her the cordless.
Betty takes the phone slowly, removes an earring from one ear, throws it into a seashell made of porcelain, looks at her father, and says, “Hello?”
Pirrotta sits very still.
Carmine discreetly studies Betty out of the corner of his eye. He’s the kind of guy who knows women well, but Betty never ceases to surprise him.
Betty picks up a glass slab with a piranha trapped inside. “No, I can’t come with you to the theater.”
Pirrotta, terrorized, stares at Carmine. He turns toward Betty and goes, Yes, yes, yes, with his head.
“No … no … no,” says Betty to the cordless.
Pirrotta smooths out his pajama bottoms. Then he comes to a decision. He falls to his knees, puts his hands together in supplication, and gazes at his daughter screaming, Yes, yes, yes, with his head.
Sicilian Tragedee Page 6
