“It was staged in 1892 at the Teatro dal Verme in Milan, with Arturo Toscanini conducting. Other works of the period that belong to the same school of verismo, inspired by Giovanni Verga, include Mala Pasqua! by Stanislao Gastaldon, an opera that follows the same plot as Cavalleria rusticana but which had little success.”
“The same as Mascagni’s?”
Lino nods.
“Poor bugger. With that name. Go on, go on.”
“Mala vita by Umberto Giordano …”
“Shit, Mala Pasqua, Mala vita, sounds like crime opera.” He sniggers.
Lino’s expression doesn’t change.
Turrisi stops laughing. He coughs. “No, no, you’re right,” he says.
“Vendetta sarda, un mafioso …”
Turrisi’s about to say something.
Lino interrupts him. “Never mind.”
Turrisi nods.
“Pagliacci was inspired by a true story, which Leoncavallo probably heard from his father, a Calabrian magistrate.”
“Magistrate?”
“Magistrate,” says Lino, looking bored.
“Calabrian?”
Lino nods yes again.
Turrisi makes a disgusted face.
“It seems to refer to a crime that took place at Montalto Uffugo.”
“What a dumb name. Go on, please.”
“A company of jugglers and acrobats had come to town and a servant of the Leoncavallo family, a man named Gaetano, began to pursue one of the actresses. Her jealous husband slit both their throats on the night of Ferragosto.”
“Impossible!” Turrisi gives an impossible! shake of his head.
“Impossible?”
“You think Leoncavallo would write an opera about an actress getting it on with a servant?”
Lino makes a funny face. He thinks. “But—”
“Never mind, go on, go on … with a name like Gaetano!” Turrisi flashes a superior smile.
“The poetics of Pagliacci are spelled out in the prologue, in the voice of Tonio …”
Turrisi drops his eyelids to half mast again. “Tonio,” he says, nodding. “Now, there’s a name that belongs in an opera, not like Gaetano.”
Lino picks up a book. He flips through it looking for the right page.
“Here it is:”
Io sono il Prologo
poiché in scena ancor
le antiche maschere mette l’autore,
in parte ei vuol riprendere
le vecchie usanze, e a voi
di nuovo inviami.
Ma non per dirvi come pria:
Le lacrime che noi versiam son false!
Degli spasimi e de’ nostri martir
non allarmatevi! No! No!
I am the Prologue
since on the stage today
the author uses ancient masks,
partly to revive
the old customs, and to
send me to you anew.
But not to say as once was done:
The tears we shed are false!
Of the pain and of our martyrdom
have no fear! No! No!
Lino looks at Turrisi.
“No! No!” says Turrisi, alarmed. “For God’s sake.”
Lino looks at his shoe. “The author’s intentions could not be more different from what we see in, for example, Shakespeare’s Tempest , when Prospero lays down his mantle, saying …” Lino looks for the book:
Lie there, my art. Wipe thou thine eyes; have comfort.
The direful spectacle of the wreck, which touch’d
The very virtue of compassion in thee,
I have with such provision in mine art
So safely ordered that there is no soul—
No, not so much perdition as an hair
Betid to any creature in the vessel
Which thou heard’st cry, which thou saw’st sink.
Turrisi’s mouth falls open. “But wait, we haven’t studied The Tempest yet.”
“Yes, we did. We studied all the works of Shakespeare.”
“Sure, we did Shakespeare, but we didn’t do The Tempest.”
“Um …”
Turrisi looks at the young man, then looks at his watch. “Okay, I’ve got another appointment now.”
Lino shrugs. He picks up his books while Turrisi says, “Excellent, very good. Nice, Pagliacci.”
Turrisi gets up from his chair in excellent spirits, singing, Ree-dee Pagliac-cio, under his breath. From time to time Lino has this habit of playing literary critic and starts laying on such quantities of bullshit that Turrisi can’t take it. The idea here is to get the bare bones, they can do criticism another day.
Lino goes out with his books under his arm.
Turrisi slams the door behind him, hurries over to the stereo, fiddles with the knobs, and sits down in his armchair. Forget about literary criticism, he knows better. Opera should be memorized. He once met a guy in Catania who knew every opera in existence by heart, and the guy sat there for hours in Cosimo’s bar listening to romantic arias about ill-fated lovers. Ill-fated lovers are very popular with young people.
Forget about literary criticism.
Turrisi closes his eyes and, following the melody with his mouth pursed up in a heart shape, purrs:
Stridano lassù, liberamente
lasciati a vol, a vol come frecce, gli augel …
Crying on high, flying
free, flying like arrows, the birds …
Turrisi’s face clouds for a moment.
Betty hasn’t called.
Art is the ideal cure for a heart sick with love, no doubt about it. But how perfect it would be to be able to resolve matters of the heart the same way you resolved business matters.
A little bomb, a nice explosion, and you never had to worry about it again.
He softens once more.
Lasciateli vagar per l’atmosfera
questi assetati di azzurro e di splendor
seguono anch ’essi un sogno una chimera
e vanno, e vanno, fra le nubi d’or.
Let them roam the air
hungry for blue skies and for splendor
they too chase a dream, a chimera
diving, diving, among the golden clouds.
Curtain.
ACT TWO
Celebrity as Will and Idea
CHAPTER ONE
Why, Then Is My Pump Well-flower’d
“Why, then is my pump well-flower’d.”
In the Civita quarter of Catania, a debate is under way about this line of Shakespearean verse and how to interpret it.
Everyone has something to say about it.
Melo, nephew of the proprietress of Zia Tana’s pasticceria in Piazza San Placido, has something to say about it, he has an architectonic interpretation.
The Zia Tana pasticceria stands in Piazza San Placido right in front of the “doors of shame,” the doors to the house of the pornodialect poet Micio Tempio, whose caryatids holding up the balcony (one male in the center and a female on either side), constructed according to the express design of the poet, are masturbating disrespectfully over the heads of the pedestrians.
“He’s touching his prick and so you can touch yours too,” says Melo every time Caporeale stops to eat a cassatella and relax from the rigors of rehearsals.
’Nzino, proprietor of the seltzer kiosk under the Archi della Marina, has something to say about it. He’s totally against it because he cares about hygiene and he can’t stand those guys who scratch their crotches ostentatiously and then come over, drink a seltzer with salt and lemon, and people see them, and the glass always seems dirty even if he disinfects it with lemon.
Ketty (short for Concetta) has something to say about it. She’s Saro’s daughter, runs the tourist shop selling postcards and puppets under Porta Uzeda, and is acquainted with the critical dispute because Rosa, wife of the auto-body mechanic Paolo, told her about it. Ketty, getting a touch overheated, tells Caporeale that Leonardo DiCaprio, in Romeo + Juliet
, grabs his prick and so therefore he not only should, he must, grab his too.
Zu Mimmo has something to say about it. Since he sold the emporium he owned up above, on Via Pacini (where they’ve now opened a megacosmetics store), he’s loaded with cash and spends his time hanging around and shooting the shit, and he says no, he never saw Peppino DiCapri touch his prick, just imagine if while he was singing Champagne, per brindare a un incontro, he had gotten up from the piano, grabbed his crotch, and given a big tug, as if he were a thing, a rock star or a whatyamacallit, an Ip-Op singer.
This matter of grabbing his prick, the more Caporeale wants to keep it silent, the more everyone is talking about it.
For the rehearsals, Cagnotto has rented the old Matador Theater, a little space where amateur companies used to perform, until they decided it was better to accept money from the government rather than try to rely on ticket sales, and where only the front three rows, in Formica-covered plywood, are still in place, because the rest were torn up by the proprietor, who wanted to use the place as a warehouse for his men’s/ladies’ underwear shop.
It’s suffocatingly hot among the boxes of thongs, but then it’s not like they could rehearse out-of-doors, and there’s not even a crappy air-conditioning system at the Matador, so the actors frequently escape in order to walk around outside, among the rogue parking lot attendants, the people in bathing suits waiting for the bus at Piazza Alcalà that will take them to the beach, the tourists wearing Birkenstocks, and the students who stay in Catania with the excuse that they have to study for their exams because they don’t want to return to their hometowns and go insane.
And in this oversized brothel of traffic and sandals, street salesmen and fishmongers, limoncello and churches, and above all of people who never mind their own business, Caporeale refuses to touch his prick while delivering the line “Why, then is my pump wellflower’d.”
Cagnotto had appeared two days before, deeply tanned because he had spent a week at Sharm el-Sheikh with his boyfriend, with this thing that in order to respect the Bard’s spirit, his ardent passion for double entendres, his humble extraction, and also the … what was it that he had said? … the heterogeneous composition of the audience, the line “Why, then is my pump well-flower’d” should become, in his deliberately provocative translation (Sharm el-Sheikh, said Caporeale, had fried Cagnotto’s synapses): “My prick is getting as hard as the point of my shoe.”
And that wasn’t all.
He also wanted Caporeale, who also had to wear a pair of tights that even Nureyev would have been embarrassed to be seen in, to grab his prick ostentatiously, while looking at the audience. Fifty respected years on the stage, sixty on his birth certificate, and he had to grab his prick in front of the whole city.
“And maybe you could emphasize the gesture by letting your legs go weak,” said Cagnotto, pushing his pink eyeglasses up on his nose.
Caporeale froze when he heard that comment.
He kept his head bent over the script.
Already there was this line that he had to say that was in itself, well … All that was missing was to have to let his legs go weak. Right, weak.
That asshole Cosentino had started to titter silently (Cagnotto might not notice but Caporeale, who had known him for a lifetime, certainly did), and that slut Lambertini had nodded, looking professional (hey, for a slut like her what difference did it make, a touch of the prick here, a touch of the prick there), and then that homo Cagnotto had added, “Got it?”
Caporeale had slowly lifted his head, had looked first at Cagnotto, then at Cosentino, and then at Lambertini, and had pronounced the words slowly so his views would be clear. “Not even if you each give me a blow job one by one.” (Pause.) “And now that I think of it, not even if you give me a blow job all together.”
Then he walked off indignantly and bitching to himself while Cagnotto tossed the script up in the air, yelling at him to get fucked and screaming, “Ingrate!” after him.
After this came two days of get-fucked, insults, spite, quarrels (and many chuckles from Cosentino, who of course didn’t have to touch his prick at all).
Besides Rosalba Quattrocchi (I mean, with this business of having to touch his prick, every time he had to pass her shop he went all the way around the station so as not to be seen), Caporeale had told just about everyone that he was acting in a Shakespeare play. And already he couldn’t count the number of times he’d been ridiculed, and the jokes on the telephone, when you come home tired after a rehearsal, sit down to relax and watch the TV news, and the phone rings and some asshole says, “Caporeale, pay attention to those rehearsals, you know on opening night you could grab for it and miss?”
And Caporeale had replied, “Well, then, we’ll call your sister, who in living memory has never missed once.”
CHAPTER TWO
It’s the Story of an Actress Who’s Married and Who’s Being Courted by Tonio
“It’s the story of an actress who’s married and who’s being courted by Tonio, an actor in her company, not her husband, but she doesn’t yield to his courtship,” Mister Turrisi is telling Betty, who’s looking avid for culture.
Luckily the beach at San Giovanni li Cuti is crowded with gay beefcake, so at least Carmine has something to look at and be entertained by. Otherwise he’d have to go and bash his head against those rocks, see those rocks? Having to listen to Turrisi tell Betty about Pagliacci without the article.
She’s hanging on every word that escapes his lips, that little mustache.
Turrisi is dressed up like Lawrence of Arabia, with a white linen shirt, white linen trousers, and a pair of loafers in leather so fine they look like condoms. Carmine is acquainted with them, the black condoms that taste of licorice. Who isn’t? They sell them in the machine at Pegaso, the gay discoteque on the beach, where in summer a bunch of boys crowd around the pool and in winter a bunch of boys gather in a circus tent. Thank heavens there’s no shortage of gay guys in Catania, thinks Carmine, letting his mind wander.
Carmine’s nerves are shot.
Betty had told him she had a date for lunch with Turrisi at San Giovanni li Cuti.
So Carmine had asked her once again what she had in mind.
“Mind?” Betty had said, making an I don’t understand face.
At the beach at San Giovanni li Cuti you don’t tan much because the sand is volcanic, i.e., black, and it sucks up all the sun. At the beach at San Giovanni li Cuti the black sand isn’t the only thing that sucks.
Do forgive Carmine’s lewd thoughts, but when Betty acts like this it drives him nuts.
So he’s concentrating on a guy, waxed all over, who arrived on a bike, no shirt, bandanna, glistening with self-tanning lotion, all oil and Vaseline, so that you can’t figure out how the bike didn’t shoot out from under his butt while he was parking. (And let me see that beautiful butt!)
The guy is wearing a super-tight bathing suit so you can see he’s not well hung: this is the latest fashion among gays in Catania, to promote competition with gay tourism in the Far East. Because everyone knows that Sicilian males are super-hetero, they love women and like to show off incontrovertible proof of their virility, so when you’re looking for a gay guy you have to travel all the way to the Far East because those big pricks are scary.
However, little pricks can also be found in Catania, there’s no need to travel all those miles.
Betty is smitten with the idea of the faithful wife.
She too, who knows why, is dressed up à la Lawrence of Arabia. White linen shirt and pants, a hairstyle parted on the side and drawn back so she looks like a little gay guy herself.
Turrisi, when he saw her, practically keeled over with love.
Because, in Carmine’s opinion, Turrisi is a little bit gay himself. But because he wants to play the Sicilian male he has to approach queerdom very cautiously, little by little. And at this moment Betty is the archetype of a gay guy with a prick so small it doesn’t exist at all.
How does s
he do it? How does she know? She’s like a slut version of Victor/Victoria.
“So she whips Tonio in the face and goes off to watch the birds.”
Whips? In the face?
Oh! Che volo d’augelli
e quante strida!
Che chiedon? Dove van? Chissà!
Oh! What a flight of birds
and what cries!
What do they want? Where do they go? Who knows!
says Turrisi, signaling to the waiter.
Carmine agrees about the flight of birds. He’s wearing a blue silk damask suit and is dissolving in the heat. He’s less in agreement with Betty, who sighs, her eyes turned heavenward, “Where do they go? Who knows!”
Betty not only knows perfectly well where the birds are going, she knows how to blow them out of the sky with a shotgun, bam bam.
“But then Silvio the peasant arrives.”
“Ah, Silvio,” says Betty, sighing again.
Turrisi smiles.
The guy with the bandanna is greeting other gym-toned males in a masculine way. They grab each others’ veiny forearms lasciviously.
Non abusar di me
del mio febbrile amor!
Non mi tentar! Non mi tentar!
Pietà di me! Non mi tentar, non mi tentar!
Non mi tentar!
Don’t take advantage of me
of my fevered love!
Don’t tempt me! Don’t tempt me!
Have pity on me! Don’t tempt me, don’t tempt me!
Don’t tempt me!
Shit, she says it five times, five. In case that cretin Silvio doesn’t get it.
To which Betty replies, “Hey, look, your outfit is just like mine.”
Carmine twitches.
“What?” says Turrisi.
“Nothing, I was thinking.”
Sicilian Tragedee Page 10
