Cagnotto shifts in his chair. He tugs at the hem of his jacket, which has gotten stuck under his rear end. “Commissioner, look, this proposal of mine is avant-garde, I’m interested in the realism of the street, the unadorned realism of the str—”
“Hey, I’m sorry, Cagnotto, but here I see the words dialect actors ,” says the commissioner, picking up a random page.
Cagnotto stares at the pages of his proposal and his CV, lying on the floor.
“I say to you Cagnotto: avant-garde. We must be experimental. This is Sicily. We have to show those cocksuckers up north what we’re capable of.”
Cagnotto is about to say something.
The commissioner stands and sticks out his hand. “Fine, Cagnotto. I’ve given you my advice. Now you write me a proposal with that stuff of yours, the weird stuff, and then … let me think”—the commissioner thinks—“in a few months, when the winter season is on, come back and we’ll see what we can do. Happy?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A Patron, a Piazza, an Amphitheater
“A patron, a piazza, an amphitheater.” Seated in the bar of the Yacht Club, Commissioner Paino is trying to explain to the Contessa what Cagnotto so desperately needs.
Paino hunkers down into the jacket of his blue linen suit worn over a white polo shirt, glancing around with a conspiratorial air.
The members of the Yacht Club are playing cards. Because you need a boat to be a member of the Yacht Club, everybody has one, although no one has ever seen any of them on the water. Most likely the boats are employed in betting, they probably use them like chips. The Contessa, for example, to join the Yacht Club, had bought a motorized rubber speedboat and baptized it DBMB for Divine Bianca Maria Beatrice, one of the Bourbons who had been queen of something, although many suspected the initials stood for Don’t Bust My Balls.
Cagnotto had called the Contessa asking to see her because he wanted to ask a favor, and when you’re asked a favor, says the Contessa, it’s a good idea to get a second opinion, because the one who’s asking you the favor isn’t likely to tell you the truth. So she’s asking Paino.
“Falsaperla closed the door in his face,” says Paino. “Cagnotto wants to do something in dialect, Shakespeare or De Sica, I couldn’t understand which, you know how Falsaperla is when he explains things. Falsaperla has sent out a memo in which he invites all commissioners to stick to tradition, to stay away from events that involve ‘contamination,’ and to promote the local color of the region.”
“Falsaperla talks like that?” The Contessa is in pale blue linen complete with hat.
“No, he’s got a press office. They write the memos for him.”
The Contessa makes the usual vague face she always puts on when somebody tells her about the workings of the democratic system. Once upon a time there was a king and everything was simple. Even if he was a cretin, there was only one of him and it was easier to manage.
“To tell the truth, I don’t understand the memo myself. So I called the culture commissioner for Pedara to ask what the hell Falsaperla meant by ‘contamination.’ I was worried that if I wanted to do the Slopes of Etna Wine Festival I would have to include in the application to the department yet another application for a quality control certificate from the food and wine inspectors, and I thought Falsaperla was losing his mind and as far as I’m concerned, as you know, I wouldn’t mind if Falsaperla lost his mind, so I keep an eye on him and his memos. The commissioner for Pedara told me that Falsaperla is still lucid, although I’m not sure how long the light of reason will last because he’s getting it on with Gnazia, and Gnazia is an expert at driving men crazy, you know who I mean, Gnazia?”
The Contessa nods, looking the other way. As if she couldn’t care less about such matters.
“The commissioner for Pedara told me that ‘contamination’ referred to Cagnotto. Cagnotto wants to break into the dialect business, that is to say he’s looking for culture funds, and as punishment, he’s not getting any work anywhere this summer.”
“So he doesn’t have any money for his show? And he wants money from me?”
Paino smiles. “At this point all he needs is a piazza. A sponsor. Otherwise he can’t put on his performance, even if he coughs up the money himself.”
“And why’s that?”
“What do you mean, why? Where’s he going to put on a show, in summertime? He can only do it in a piazza. And who owns the piazza? Me, I mean we, the commissioners.”
The Contessa puts on an I love this! face. “And so, in the summertime, it’s up to you commissioners to decide which performances are put on?”
Paino nods contentedly.
“I see.”
“Then if he wants to do the financial side, that’s his business, but he’s got to take care of the box office, the royalties, and all the rest. It’s up to him. I just put the amphitheater at his disposal.”
“And you’ve got an amphitheater at San Giovanni la Punta?” The Contessa, who in her youth had buzzed around in her Spider looking at archaeological remains (or so she said), had never heard of an amphitheater at San Giovanni la Punta.
“You didn’t know that?”
“Listen, I’ll do you this favor, though in my opinion Falsaperla is already crazy. I’d say he’s positively dangerous. Are you sure you want to make an enemy of him?”
Paino flashes a sardonic smile. “Who? Falsaperla?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Rosalba Quattrocchi’s Salumeria Is Unctuous
Rosalba Quattrocchi’s salumeria is unctuous. All salumerie are unctuous, and Sicilian salumerie, in the summer months, are especially unctuous. But Rosalba Quattrocchi’s salumeria beats them all. The fat is not due merely to the hams and cheeses, the mackerel fillets in oil and the wheels of Gruyère perched on little marble columns. The unctuousness of the Quattrocchi salumeria is a swish of status, an oozing exhibit of opulence.
Jano Caporeale and Cosimo Cosentino enter the salumeria, looking around a little bit bewildered. The Quattrocchi establishment makes them slightly nervous, especially since Caporeale had once refused the advances of “Signorina” Quattrocchi, fatally forgetting that the “young” lady let them both buy on credit.
“Shit,” Cosentino had confided to Caporeale, “I can’t bring myself to call her Signorina, have you looked at her?”
“But you’ve been calling her Rosalba for years and you even use the tu.”
“Exactly, that’s what I’m getting at, I’d prefer to address her as Lei.”
“Well, look who’s here. Our great actors on the dark way!” says Quattrocchi, who has seen them come in and gotten a little bit confused between Dante and his dark wood and the Great White Way.
Signorina Quattrocchi is sitting behind the counter reading a gossip magazine, turning the pages, and licking her index finger with great pomp and circumstance.
Caporeale tugs at his jacket in a most dignified way, looks at Cosentino, nods, and says, “Watch it, because you’re speaking with two Shakespearean actors.”
Quattrocchi, not taking her eye off the magazine, twists her mouth up in a little smirk of sarcastic admiration. “In other words, you’ve come to settle your account?” she says, squinting an eye at something, a photo or a caption.
Caporeale tries to get Cosentino’s eye.
Cosentino is staring at a basket of salami.
“Given that I appreciate the fact you didn’t call me at home to remind me, I’m here to say that the dark way is with us no more. We got a call from Cagnotto, who wants us for his new piece.”
“Who?”
“Cagnotto. The theater director, experimental theater. Don’t you read the papers?” Caporeale looks to Cosentino for approval. Cosentino is turning over a tin of tripe with great curiosity.
Quattrocchi, by way of reply, lifts the magazine so they can see.
Caporeale frowns with contempt. “Cagnotto is a director who’s famous all over Italy. If he keeps it up you’ll be coming to see us downtown at the City The
ater.”
Another smirk of sarcastic admiration. “I’ve got a season ticket at the City, including a seat for the opening night. And if they put you on down there, I’m canceling. And just for your information, I didn’t call you at home because I knew that sooner or later you’d be stopping in here.”
“Shit, and I’m telling you that I’m doing Shakespeare with Cagnotto.”
“Yeah, and what does that mean? That you’ll pay your bill?”
Caporeale is silent.
Quattrocchi smiles. “Okay, you can stuff your sandwich with the script. Any more cultural discourses to deliver, you and your cumpare ?”
Caporeale and Cosentino are plowing down Via Ventimiglia with their heads bowed. They’re in the upper Civita quarter, between the Archi della Marina and Corso Sicilia. The whole block, not long ago, was the domain of prostitutes. The people of Catania like to say with pride that theirs is the only Italian city to have a red-light district. But then, right on Corso Sicilia a couple of years back, they had held the World Conference on the Exploitation of Women. The mayor really had to scramble to get everything cleaned up. Now the only professionals here are the transvestites, who because they own the apartments can’t be sent away. Poor things. They had put in a lifetime of hard labor, managed to save up and buy their apartments, either directly or as fronts for unnamed others, they had rented the apartments to Afro-Sicilians, the black hookers had displaced the white hookers, then the mayor had cleaned up the block under threat of force majeure (and luckily he had an excuse, otherwise who knows what would have happened), and the transvestites had had to get back into their fishnet stockings and earn a living. It wasn’t a very pretty picture. Transvestites grow old too.
The vacant apartments are used by the Afro-Sicilians as warehouses for their high-tech trade. They’re there at the street corners and zebra crossings, in their running suits and their sunglasses, controlling the territory. Who knows why these Afro-Sicilians like controlling the territory so much? They’re so intent on controlling that they even give the evil eye to Caporeale and Cosentino. Along the sidewalk, half-wrecked automobiles are parked, blankets thrown over the seats, with plasma-screen TVs and home entertainment units inside. Down at the end of Via Ventimiglia you can catch a glimpse of the sea.
“But are you sure?” Caporeale begins. “I mean, we know Cagnotto, could this just be more of his bullshit?”
Cosentino is lost in thought. “Huh?”
“The money. Are we sure he has the money? I already told those guys in the bar we’re doing Shakespeare. And if we don’t?”
“No, no, Cagnotto is in tight with the commissioners,” says Cosentino, still a bit dreamy. “I had a word with Pippo Rattalina the capocomico, the boss of the dialect stage.”
“Nice guy, he’s forgotten all about us old veterans.”
“Hey, we’re not that old.”
“So why don’t we get any work anymore?”
“What do we care about dialect theater? All they need is four punks and two cockteases, the ones who know the right people, and they can put on a show in the piazza. He says we shouldn’t work with Cagnotto.”
“And what the fuck difference does it make to Rattalina? And why the fuck did you call him?”
“I didn’t call him. I ran into him at the bar and I wanted to make him jealous.”
“Make who jealous, Rattalina?”
Cosentino nods.
Caporeale makes a fuck, what an idiot you are face. “And what did he say to you?”
“He said there are already too many impresarios around and that Cagnotto’s going to get into trouble.”
Caporeale makes a face like, That was something that had occurred to me too.
“But I reassured him. I told him we were not going to be doing dialect theater. I told him we were doing something from Shakespeare.”
“So you started out trying to make him jealous and you ended up trying to reassure him?”
Cosentino makes a face that suggests he hadn’t looked at things in that light. “I also told him we weren’t going to be performing in a piazza, we were going to be performing in a loft.”
“Where are we going to be performing?”
“In a loft. Everyone knows that Cagnotto works in lofts.”
“Not in the summer, because you fry.”
Cosentino hadn’t thought of that.
“And so?”
“And so what?”
“What did Rattalina say?”
Cosentino stares at Caporeale, then averts his eyes.
Caporeale grabs him by the arm and makes him stop walking. “What did he say?”
Cosentino makes a face like, Do I really have to tell you?
Yep, you really have to tell me, and fast.
“He said, ‘It’s up to you.’”
“What did he say?”
“It’s … up … to … you.”
Caporeale thrusts his hands into his hair. “So that means we’ll never work for Rattalina again. Shit, let’s hope that Cagnotto really has the money. Fuck, I even told my sister I was going to do Shakespeare. And already she’s on my case that at my age I should settle down and get married.”
“At sixty?”
“My sister, when she has something on the brain—”
“So why don’t you marry Quattrocchi?”
“You’re the one she likes, not me.”
“Who, me? No, sir. You saw how sour she was. The one she’s in love with is you. Nothing so furious as a woman scorned.”
“Who, Quattrocchi?” says Caporeale, stunned.
Cosentino nods. “You look at her from the outside and you see Quattrocchi. But never forget, inside Quattrocchi, even if you can’t see it, is a woman.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Contessa Salieri Likes It When They Kill People
Contessa Salieri likes it when they kill people. She said so to Dr. Cosenza, her psychoanalyst. She told him she particularly likes it when they kill people she knows. She specified that she was telling him this not because she felt guilty about it, but because she knew you were supposed to tell your psychoanalyst everything.
Dr. Cosenza told this to his colleague Dr. Farina, and Dr. Farina said that probably Contessa Salieri had repressed something, like that she had done something nasty in the past and now she likes it when there’s evil in the world because it makes her feel better about herself, and he advised Dr. Cosenza to continue with the analysis until what she had repressed came out.
Dr. Farina, wanting to show off, told all this to his mistress Baronessa Ferla, and Baronessa Ferla told Farina that the only thing Contessa Salieri had repressed was the memory of the male organ, which she hadn’t laid eyes on since the days of the national referendum to abolish the monarchy.
She also told him that the Contessa was constantly spreading bullshit because she didn’t have anything else going on in her life, she was bored out of her mind, and she had decided to go to a psychoanalyst because she had read in Vanity Fair that wrinkles could be psychosomatic, and since there was no longer anything to stretch with all the face-lifts she’d had, otherwise she’d rip, she had decided to go to Dr. Cosenza.
She had gone to Cosenza and not to Farina because she knew that Farina was going to bed with Baronessa Ferla and she didn’t want her business to be known all over town. Baronessa Ferla tumbled out of bed thinking that in any case she now knew all about the Contessa’s business.
Cagnotto knows nothing about any of this, and has asked to see the Contessa to obtain a raccomandazione, to get her to put in a good word. Cagnotto feels rotten.
He has made a promise to the actors that the play will go on. And if you make a promise to actors, and maybe they decline another job, and then you don’t go ahead with the play, you can forget about those actors.
He had made a promise to Caporeale and Cosentino, those assholes, and they had gone and had a fight with Rattalina.
But above all, he had made a promise to Lambertini! Who, with all her connecti
ons to the commissioners, if you made her a promise and then the show didn’t go on, you could consider yourself a dead man.
There’s something perverse about events sponsored by the departments of culture. To present your proposal you need to have your proposal in hand. But how can you have the proposal if you don’t already have the funds? To put together a theater company you need funds, but to get funds you need the company. This is how things work in Sicily, in any case, and Cagnotto is beginning to feel faint.
Before talking to the Contessa, Cagnotto had tried asking Lambertini, with a distracted air, “But, um, among the important people you know, what do you think, might there be someone, obviously taking into account other obligations, someone who might want to buy my … our Shakespeare?”
And Lambertini had replied, “Are you trying to tell me you don’t have the sponsor or the money and that the play isn’t going to happen?”
That’s how Lambertini is, she prefers to keep her connections to herself and save them for her recitals.
Lambertini’s “recitals” are select pieces in which she presents herself onstage with the player of a musical instrument (usually a piano or a cello), and as the notes begin to swell, she plucks out her hair like chicken feathers, rips her clothes, yells out voices in her head, slaps herself all over until she drops to the floor, kicks her feet, whacks the stage, gives a couple of head-butts to the musical instrument, and, depending on the piece she’s performing, either swoons, dies, or kills herself. This description comes courtesy of Caporeale.
According to Caporeale the version she does best is the one in which she kills herself. And in fact, every time he sees one of Lambertini’s recitals in which at the end the actress swoons or dies a natural death, without fail Caporeale will comment, “But how come she didn’t kill herself?”
Without the backing of Falsaperla, Cagnotto would not only fail to get a piazza, he wouldn’t even have a dark corner in which to mount his Shakespeare. You had to have a permit, you had to have traffic cops to direct traffic, you had to have crowd control.
Sicilian Tragedee Page 8
