Betty looks at Carmine.
Carmine is embarrassed.
She looks at her father, sighs, and says, “No, tonight is out of the question. Let’s talk tomorrow. And now I’m compelled to say goodbye.”
Betty taps the off button and tosses the cordless on the sofa.
Pirrotta struggles to his feet, stares at the vodka, downs it in a gulp, straightens his dressing gown, and walks off without saying a word.
Compelled?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
An Immense Ham Hock Lies on Cagnotto’s Plate
An immense ham hock lies on Cagnotto’s plate. (Apparently his stomach is in order again.) Their two hands, joined at the table, are lit up in the flickering candlelight. Bobo has ordered a salad of fennel and arugula.
“I have nothing to give you but myself, Bobo.”
Bobo withdraws his hand and scratches his neck.
“Myself. The heart of me, know what I mean?”
Bobo doesn’t understand.
“Precisely!” says Cagnotto as if Bobo had replied. “I want to tell you the truth, Bobo. I don’t have a penny. I was there trying to work up an idea for a new theater season and you came along. And I realized that I was prostituting myself.”
Cagnotto smiles proudly. “I was once again prostituting myself and my art, and for what? For the hypocritical acclaim of the public whose adoration lasts only as long as the next round of applause.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“I will,” says Cagnotto with determination, seeking Bobo’s hand with his own.
“No, don’t.”
“Yes, I will! You made me understand. You … I’m, uh … grateful.”
Bobo puts his hands in his lap.
“Don’t be shy.”
“No, it’s just that …” Bobo looks around.
They’re in the restaurant attached to the Stage Space, a performance complex tucked into an old brick factory that has been rehabbed thanks to European Union funds for cooperatives. Exposed volcanic stone, plain cement floors. The air-conditioning is turned down to minus zero and the room is freezing. That’s why nobody goes to the restaurant attached to the Stage Space. But Cagnotto had wanted a quiet place to talk and in the summer the outdoor restaurants are wild. And they say we’re in the middle of an economic crisis?
The woman manager of the Stage Space restaurant is German, the ham hocks are a German specialty, and she says that if she doesn’t keep the air-conditioning up to the max her clients won’t want to eat ham hocks in the summer.
“I’m going to give back to Shakespeare that which is Shakespeare’s, Bobo.”
“How’s that?”
“You know Pasolini, De Sica, neorealism?”
Bobo is silent.
“They used street actors, like Shakespeare. Simplicity is their essence; the lack of professionalism renders the artist’s message cleanly. Without actorial mediation, which is motivated, let’s be frank, by the vanity of the protagonists.”
“Huh?”
Cagnotto smiles, spearing his ham hock. “But Pasolini and De Sica were film artists, get it, Bobo? Films. In the movies, if a nonprofessional actor flubs his lines, gets an expression wrong, or is unable to convey an emotion, what do you do?”
Bobo doesn’t know.
“Reshoot the take!” Cagnotto chews with gusto. “You follow me?”
Bobo looks at Cagnotto. He looks at his salad. He nods with his head bowed.
“But me, what do I do? I don’t do films.” Cagnotto pronounces the word films with a certain distaste. “So I said to myself, who are the street actors of the theater?”
Bobo looks at Cagnotto.
“Who are they?”
Bobo looks at Cagnotto as he slices off another piece of ham hock. “Don’t know. Jugglers?”
“Huh?”
“Those guys on crutches?”
Cagnotto looks up, interested. Jugglers? Crutches?
“I don’t know. The real tall ones.”
“Ah, stilts!”
“You want to do something with stilts?”
Cagnotto smiles. “No, no, the street actors of the theater are dialect theater actors. They are the ones who can speak to the public’s heart without any”—Cagnotto takes an abundant gulp of wine—“superstructure.”
Bobo looks at Cagnotto.
Cagnotto nods. “Bringing Shakespearean theater back to its origins.”
Cagnotto looks Bobo in the eyes. “Bringing Shakespearean theater back to its origins, just as you have restored me to mine. We must resist being determined by our respective social statuses, Bobo. What you said to me at Capomulini struck me … struck me deeply. You, salesclerk, and me, director: Are we going to be limited by these definitions?”
Cagnotto smiles to himself, continues. “Are we once again going to allow social position to negate our desire? Again? Then what was the use of Shakespeare? Nothing. Bobo, I’m going to stage the play in which the Bard taught us to overcome social convention, in which he showed us that the power of love cannot be thwarted by society’s rules. Bobo, I’m going to do Romeo and Juliet. Me, Capulet, you, Montague; the theater is there to teach us. We must not fall into the trap of conformism.”
Bobo looks at his salad. He shivers.
Cagnotto nods at his ham hock.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Betty Is Counting the Toes on Her Feet
Betty is counting the toes on her feet.
Carmine is certain. At first, it looked like she was merely checking the condition of her toenail polish. But instead, Betty (Carmine is sure of it) is actually counting the toes on her feet. She’s keeping count with her index finger, her face absorbed in her task.
Betty sometimes goes off in her own world like this, doing apparently strange things. Carmine knows that in moments like this Betty is planning something. Getting deeply involved in apparently innocuous activities is her way of camouflaging herself.
The bright pink polish the same color as her dress.
“You want to talk?”
“Four, five, si … about what?”
Carmine sighs.
Betty shrugs her shoulders. She rests her chin on her knuckles and gazes into the void with excessive interest.
“Sweetheart, look, you don’t have to explain to me, but give me at least a clue. That’s all I need, just enough to satisfy my curiosity. What are you planning to do?”
“You’re curious?”
Carmine reflects. “Yes.”
“That’ll teach you not to help me when I need you.”
“I must have been distracted.”
“You weren’t one little tiny dick distracted.”
Carmine gets up. He checks his fly. “Okay, so, see you later.”
Betty stares at him.
Carmine smiles. “Don’t get them in trouble.”
“Who?”
“See you later.” Carmine struts out, both injured party and victorious.
Betty watches him, making a so what? face. “Asshole. What the fuck does he know? Faggot.”
She checks, stretching her neck, that Carmine has really gone, then gets up on tiptoes to see that nobody else is around.
Back on the sofa, she takes the cordless and stares at it dumbly.
“Oh, yes,” she says. She grabs her bag, takes out a slip of paper, and punches in a number.
“Alf … Mister Turrisi, no … ah … listen, you must forgive me for bothering you, yes, yes”—Betty makes a face, rolling her eyes as if to say, Shit, what a jerk this Turrisi—“the fact is”—Betty turns conspiratorial—“no, no, you mustn’t call me at home, no, of course I don’t mind, but my father, um, I beg you, don’t even call me on the cell phone, my father checks the incoming calls and what if I forget to delete them? I beg you, please don’t get me in trouble, no, no texting either. Oh, God, I’ve got to get off now. I’ll call you back.”
Betty hangs up. She tosses the cordless to the other end of the sofa and sits back down.
Wanda ma
kes her imperial entrance into the sitting room, followed by her assistant, who is weighed down with packages. She drops, exhausted, into a chair, takes off her shoes, massages her feet and her swollen ankles, flashes a smile at her daughter, glances with distaste at her assistant, and tells her, “Fine, we’re finished for the day, give the stuff to the maid.” She waits until the young woman is gone, then gets up and hurries over to her daughter’s side, hugs her happily, cheek to cheek, sits back down, smiles, and says, “Tell me. Everything.”
“You want me to get married?” says Betty, getting right to the point.
Wanda makes a serious face, tips her head to one side, pouts her lips so as to hollow out her well-upholstered cheeks, gazes at Betty very seriously, and nods firmly.
Betty raises her right arm, puts it over her head and down, grabs her left jaw with her right hand, and tries to wiggle the crick out of her neck. She repeats the operation with her left arm and her right jaw. The damn crick just won’t go away.
Wanda watches this operation with interest. “Aren’t you a little young for neck problems?”
Betty throws her head back, points the fingers of both hands under her chin, and pushes. No luck, the crick won’t budge. She loses interest in these operations and turns to look her mother in the eyes.
Wanda smiles. She begins to explain. “Your father, as you know, is a dickhead. And this Turrisi is another dickhead.” Wanda thinks. “Actually, I think Turrisi is more of a dickhead than your father. That Baronessa Faillaci, baroness my ass, was gobbling him up at that lunch at Palazzo Biscari. He’s got real estate in London, he’s got a collection of English cars, he’s grabbing all the land in the province of Siracusa where they say there’s oil, but above all, they say, he has intellectual pretensions. And take my word for it, Betty, there’s no dickhead more dickhead than one who has intellectual pretensions.”
Wanda looks at Betty. Betty doesn’t look convinced. “And I’ll bet he’s a pansy too,” she adds.
Betty looks at Wanda.
Wanda sighs. She makes a no with her head. “Betty, don’t make the same mistake your mother made. My mother said to me, ‘Riddu the Cement-Mixer has a hard-on all the time.’ I didn’t want to listen to her, back in the days when he used to come and pick me up in the Mercedes. ‘If he has a hard-on, I’ll make it disappear,’ I said. And my mother, who was smart, your grandmother, know what she told me?”
Betty goes no with her head.
“She said, ‘You think that’ll be easy?’ How right she was, your grandmother. You ought to get married to someone like this Turrisi. Don’t make my mistake and marry someone who likes to …” Wanda stops, not wishing to sound vulgar, and raises her right hand with a closed fist to make a fuck gesture.
Betty is staring at her elbow.
Wanda looks at Betty. “Betty?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“How come you aren’t saying anything?”
“Me?”
Wanda rests her elbow on the arm of the chair and begins to massage her brow, looking worried.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Have You Ever Been in Sicily when the Hot Wind of Love Blows over the Land?
Have you ever been in Sicily when the hot wind of love blows over the land? Cagnotto walks happily along Via Etnea, this morning like every morning an explosion of almond and lemon granita, smells of pasta reale melting in the heat and cannoli just out of the oven, whiffs of vanilla and almond from all sides mingling with the unmistakable smell of moisturizer and carotene (which deepens your tan.)
Cagnotto is drunk with happiness even though he can’t go to the beach. He can’t go because now he has a proposal and if he gets to work right away he can have his new production on the stage by September.
He’s got an appointment with Falsaperla, the culture commissioner for the province. The culture commissioner for the province of Catania deals with distribution. While the culture commissioner for the city of Catania takes care of culture in Catania, and the culture commissioners for towns in the province of Catania take care of culture in their hometowns, the culture commissioner for the province distributes. The culture commissioner for the province is very pleased with his duties: He sends an artist to Pedara and he sends an intellectual to Trecastagni. He keeps track of political favors and tries to accommodate everyone as best he can. He has an important job: by oiling the wheels of culture on the slopes of Mt. Etna, he keeps the machine purring.
“We’d rather you continue with experimental theater,” the commissioner is telling him as he flips through some papers: Cagnotto’s CV and his new proposal.
Cagnotto’s benevolent smile hardens on his face. He tilts his head to one side. He doesn’t know what to say.
The commissioner burrows in the piles on his desk to find the remote control for the air conditioner. He picks it up and fiddles with it, pointing it upward toward the machine.
Cagnotto looks upward.
“You know what I mean, no?” says the commissioner, shaking the remote.
“Um …”
The commissioner makes a no with his head, it’s not clear whether to the remote or to Cagnotto.
The commissioner is wearing a summer jacket in a check pattern, a shirt of red stripes, and a multicolored regimental tie.
Cagnotto is hypnotized by all the colors.
He’s also strangely fascinated by the extremely long hairs that sprout from the commissioner’s ears.
“You know, the dialect theater companies won’t like it, they’re in trouble—”
“But—”
“Listen, Cagnotto!” snorts the commissioner tossing the remote on the desk, “what’s all this about dialect theater?” The commissioner grabs the phone and punches a button. “You made your name in avant-garde theater, read this, it’s your CV. And let me say, you wouldn’t have a CV like this if we hadn’t helped out.” The commissioner slams down the phone. He gets up. He looks at Cagnotto and walks resolutely toward the door. Cagnotto notices that the commissioner’s sleeves reach down almost to his fingernails. The commissioner opens the door wide. “Gnazia-a-a, how does this fucking air conditioner work?”
With the door wide open a gust of air comes in and lifts Cagnotto’s CV off the table, sending it sailing past his nose.
Cagnotto follows with his eyes.
Gnazia comes in sighing.
“Why didn’t you answer the intercom?” the commissioner asks her.
“Huh? I was on the phone.”
“And what were you doing on the phone?”
Gnazia stares at the commissioner with contempt.
The commissioner is silent.
Cagnotto decides there must be something going on between Gnazia and the commissioner. Only a guy who’s involved could be so silent.
“So what’s wrong now?”
“That thing”—the commissioner indicates the air conditioner—“doesn’t work.”
“What do you mean, it doesn’t work?” Gnazia strides to the commissioner’s desk, takes the remote in hand, stares at it, looks up at the air conditioner, looks at the window, sees the drapes that are swirling around, and throws Cagnotto an investigatory look as if to say, Did you open the windows?
Gnazia tugs at her skirt, walks firmly toward the windows, and closes them, being sure to make a lot of noise. “The air conditioner works fine but the windows have to be kept closed or the heat comes in from outside.”
“And who opened the windows?” the commissioner says.
Gnazia eyes the commissioner with loathing and goes out without saying another word.
The commissioner heads over to the windows and makes sure they are shut tight. He has to think of everything around here!
He goes back to his desk.
Cagnotto still has the courteous smile glued on his face.
The commissioner gazes at Cagnotto with a who the fuck is this? who let him in here? look. “So where were we? Okay. So what’s this about dialect theater? You need to keep doing that stuff, the av
ant-garde, and that other stuff, experimental theater, otherwise they’ll say the government isn’t responsive to young people.”
The commissioner nods to himself with conviction. Everyone knows that young people matter. “And anyway, I’d have a revolt on my hands from the dialect theaters all over the province. It’s not like you can just get up in the morning and bang! improvise dialect theater.”
The commissioner waves his hand as if to say, Are you going nuts here?
“But, Commissioner, it’s not my idea to have them perform in dialect, the proposal explains that we need dialect actors because they are the ‘street actors’ of theater. You know, Pasolini, De Sica, neorealism, well, they all used str—”
“I get it, Cagnotto, I get it,” says the commissioner, interrupting him. “Are you cooling off now?”
Cagnotto doesn’t understand.
The commissioner nods toward the air conditioner with his chin.
Cagnotto still doesn’t get it, and so the commissioner points toward the air conditioner once again, jerking his jaw up twice in rapid succession.
“Ah … yes, I see, yes, it’s working.”
The commissioner is all smiles. He turns his attention back to Cagnotto’s business. He looks around on his desk but can’t find the CV. Aiming a suspicious stare at Cagnotto with one eye, he grabs a random sheet of paper and shoves it in front of his nose, pretending it is Cagnotto’s CV.
“Just between us, Cagnotto, we’re cutting back funds for dialect theater because the future of the slopes of Etna lies in food festivals. Don’t you read the papers, Cagnotto? Forget neorealism. You come in here and pitch me neorealism. You think that’s how a guy becomes commissioner for culture?” The commissioner tosses Cagnotto’s fake CV on the desk and snaps his fingers. Then he joins his two hands together in his lap and looks serious.
“The future of the slopes of Etna is called oenogastronomy.”
“Of Etna?”
“Cagnotto. I’m amazed. You didn’t know that the future of culture is going to be in local color? Bronte pistachios, Militello sausage, fritto misto from Iacicastello? Take my word for it, money for dialect theater is going to be scarce. So do what you’re good at, that stuff, the avant-garde.”
Sicilian Tragedee Page 7
