He looks at Pirrotta’s Campari.
With the orange slice.
Pirrotta did this specially to show who’s boss. I have a glass of Campari and you have fuck-all.
Turrisi nods.
He nods because he’s caught his drift, because he’s a diplomatic whiz, because he knows that in these cases you have to nod, particularly when you’ve been responsible for a fuckup like that with Paino.
Paino! Turrisi had better not start thinking about him or he’s going to start chewing his fingers.
He settles himself in his chair.
When Turrisi is nervous, there’s this thing that he can never get comfortable in his chair, and he blames those English tailors.
Now it’s Pirrotta’s turn to nod.
Pirrotta picks up the glass, takes a slow and noisy suck letting the ice rattle against his dentures, puts the glass down, nods again, looks at Turrisi, and says, “So what did you have to say to me?”
Turrisi sighs.
Pirrotta had summoned him, he was sucking his Campari, and he’s even asking him what he had to say to him.
Betty in beach attire, with a sarong that opens to her armpit so as to offer a glimpse of her nipple, thong sandals with a sado-masochistic heel, walks through the living room in front of her mother, who’s flipping through a magazine.
“Is Papa here?”
Wanda, who doesn’t look up from her magazine, signals no with her head.
“Oh, all right, if you see him would you give him a message that he’s an asshole?”
Wanda, her eyes glued to the magazine, nods.
Betty goes off tick-tack-ticking nervously on her heels. “I’m going to the beach to do some blow jobs. That’ll teach all of you.”
Wanda raises her eyes from the magazine, shakes her head as if in admiration, and says, “So you’ve just come up with the vindictive slut? Shit, before you got there, nobody had ever thought of it!” and turns her gaze back to her reading.
“Go fuck yourself.”
“I …” says Turrisi, and finds himself wordless.
Pirrotta nods as if to invite him to continue.
“Can I speak frankly, Signor … Mister Pirrotta?”
Pirrotta jerks up his right hand, brings it toward his sunglasses, and—so it appears—studies the nail of his little finger to see if the manicurist has filed it correctly. “Be my guest.”
“I sent you a pizzino …”
Pirrotta turns stiff as a board.
“And you, with all due respect before the blessed Virgin, consented to let me go out with the highly esteemed Signorina Betty. No?”
Pirrotta abandons his fingernail.
Sure, he consented.
Shit, you propose to get Betty off my balls, you propose a remedial matrimony for the Ispica business, and what do I do, I don’t consent? “And who told you I didn’t consent?”
“What do you mean, who told me? Signorina Elisabetta.”
Luckily Pirrotta’s wearing sunglasses, otherwise his eyeballs would have popped out and fallen into the glass with the Campari. “Shit, just like her mother!” says Pirrotta, giving himself a slap on the knee.
Holy Mary, a slut in the great tradition of her mother!
Turi remembers it well, how he used to drive by in the cement-mixer and that super-slut Wanda didn’t even look up at him. Until the day, however, when certain rumors began to circulate about what Turi did, or did not, do with the cement-mixer.
Down in Civita, praise God, people never minded their own fucking business, and when someone disappeared (either because he got drunk, or went whoring in Messina, or because he really disappeared and they never found him again), you could bet that in Civita they would say, “Well, maybe that one ended up in Riddu’s cement-mixer.”
And that’s when Wanda began to look at him in a different way! Wanda, that slut, and her daughter too.
One morning at the bar, it was about seven, and Riddu had been working all night and was just downing a Fernet-Branca before turning in, well, along comes Wanda with a flowered miniskirt and her legs making an X, and she says, without Riddu having to ask her fuck-all, “You’re that guy that shows off outside my house? My name is Wanda and if you want to know why I’m called that you need to know I have the same name as Wanda Osiris.”
Then she walked off like she was offended, worse than if he’d given her a little pat on the ass. (In Civita, that’s how the females act when they’re in love: they go and get offended, I don’t know how they do with you.)
And who the fuck was this stupid Wanda Osiris? Riddu, who worked from morning to night, it’s not like he had time to watch variety shows. Osiris, he later learned, was a TV starlet and she must have been famous, if they had named Wanda after her.
And then they say you learn to be a whore.
Anyway, after that encounter, Riddu had really started showing off in front of Wanda’s house.
“But what does the respected Lady Mother have to do with any of this?” asks Turrisi.
Pirrotta looks at Turrisi.
Turrisi, to tell the truth, has too dumb a face for you to be able to explain to him the intimate female soul of a woman who’s in the grip of a hysteric pussy fit.
Fuck, you can really see that Turrisi, he’s never been married in his life!
What the fuck does the mother have to do with it, he asks.
And how the fuck could you explain to him that Betty is even more of a slut than her mother?
“My daughter is as pure as the driven snow. Just like her mother,” says Pirrotta, to be on the safe side.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Will You Please Tell Me What the Fuck Is Going On?
“Will you please tell me what the fuck is going on?”
In his villa deep in the lemon groves of the Trapani countryside (acquired for practically nothing from Barone Gibuado, who had some problems, he had, the baron), on the other side of the island from Catania, Melo Vaccalluzzo, wearing an ample California-style cotton shirt printed with palms and surfers, a pair of pants cut off at the calf and held to his legs with elastic, Nike basketball shoes, and a chain with the medal of the Palermo soccer team, is studying the healing process of his latest tattoo—a Chinese dragon on his left forearm that the tattoo artist had sold him as a symbol of the Samurai power of the Japanese Yakuza gangs.
Melo Vaccalluzzo is having some problems with the healing process because he’s seventy-three years old and if Viagra is shrinking the skin of his prick (his wife Saretta says that Viagra has damaged his gray matter), the skin on his forearm continues to be loose, thin and bony as he is.
“Pirrotta and Turrisi have started playing the dickheads,” says Paolino, who’s instead wearing the regulation blue suit the boys wear.
“What’s happening, those little jerks want to step on my dick?”
Melo Vaccalluzzo, son of the Camorra boss Gennaro Russo, had been adopted by Salvatore Vaccalluzzo when Gennaro, they found him on ice with the tuna fish in the port of Naples. Salvatore Vaccalluzzo, who at the time was just getting into the cocaine coming from America, decided to take the little boy and make him his son, he raised him as a Sicilian, he gave him his surname, and before he died he had regretted it all, although it was too late.
Melo, who has inherited the income, status, and privileges of his adoptive father, still breaks out in Neapolitan, even though he struggles without much success to speak Sicilian.
“It’s ’o petrolio,” says Paolino, who because he talks to Vaccalluzzo all the time has begun to take on Camorra inflections.
“’O petrolio? What the fuck are they doing with oil if we’re still discussing it in the regional assembly?”
“They’re moving ahead with the job.”
“What oil are we talking about? When we still don’t know whether this business is going ahead or whether we should keep on cultivating carob trees in Ispica. And what do they think, that Virtude is the same guy he once was? These jerks from Catania had better take it easy. In thi
s petrolio business we first have to hear what the Americans have to say, and secondly, even if these guys pick up all the land, we still get ninety percent. And they’re blowing people away for ten percent?”
“Don Melo, these guys from Catania are, they think they are … who knows what they think? And excuse me, but ten percent of ’o petrolio isn’t exactly the same as ten percent of fake Dolce & Gabbana T-shirts.”
“Right. So what’s the point?”
“They’ve opened an investigation.”
“Who?”
“Who, who, Don Melo, the magistrates.”
Vaccalluzzo spits out the seed of a grape he is eating. “What, they gone crazy?”
“They got two dead there.”
“Yeah, I know how many there are. Think I don’t know how to count?”
Paolino looks down.
This thing that it always has to be him to go and talk with Vaccalluzzo is getting really fucking annoying.
“I mean them. They gone nuts? They don’t know that we don’t do homicide anymore? They think we’re muggers?”
Paolino doesn’t know what the fuck to say, he merely raises his shoulders. This fuckhead Vaccalluzzo, who has to stay on the terrace because he wants to get a tan on his dick-face, and he’s wearing a dark suit and sweltering in the heat.
“Right. So we have to take a trip to Catania. Did they close San Berillo?”
“Yes, Don Melo. There’s nothing left but the transvestites.”
“And what am I supposed to do with drag queens?”
“No, sorry, what I meant to say is that there are the clubs.”
“The what?”
“The clubs.”
“Okay, so we go to the clubs. When we put on the funeral for those two little jerks, we want everyone to know that Carmelo Vaccalluzzo is in Catania. We’re in favor of law and order. Everyone needs to know that, both the families and the magistrates.”
Vaccalluzzo stands up and scratches his ass in such a satisfying way that the elastic on his pants rides up from his calf to his knee.
“That way the magistrates will go back to giving interviews on the nightly news and stop busting our balls,” says Paolino with the smirk of a man who thinks he’s clever.
Vaccalluzzo freezes, interrupting his ass-scratching in midair. He gives him a dirty look and says, “You, show some respect for the magistrates.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
No One Would Ever Dare to Question Signorina Betty’s Virtue and Good Name
“No one would ever dare to question Signorina Betty’s virtue and good name.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” says Pirrotta, who doesn’t know where to look.
His daughter, that great big slut!
“And anyone who dares to,” says Turrisi, swelling out his chest, “I can swear before the Queen, will have to deal with me first.”
“Who? Marina Doria?”
“No, sir! Before Queen Elizabeth in person, who has the same name as your daughter.”
“No, actually, she’s just called Bet—Yes, Turrisi! Well said! I thank you as her father. But as Pirrotta, no. What’s going on here? You want to even the odds? I take out Falsaperla and you take out Paino?
Turrisi looks around, freaked.
“Don’t worry, there aren’t any bugs.”
Turrisi looks at Pirrotta, then lowers his eyes. “And what was I supposed to do? Shut up and swallow it that you took out one of yours so the blame would fall on me?”
Pirrotta goes no with his head.
Even this sad bastard Turrisi has his own logic.
Then he thinks about it. “Right, absolutely!” he says, giving himself another slap on the knee.
“Huh?”
Pirrotta improvises. He can’t decide whether he should use the tu or the Lei with Turrisi. “See, I could have put your loyalty to the family to the test. It’s called a duty hit. Just like that.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, a duty hit! I show you disrespect and you drop your horns down and drag them in the dirt as an act of devotion to the family. You want to join the family, no?”
Turrisi joins his two hands together. “God willing!”
“Well, then why, you dumb fool, didn’t you just shut up?”
“But first Signorina Elisabetta told me that you, sir, didn’t consent to the engagement, and then you, sir, blew Falsaperla away to make me look bad not only with the prosecutors, bless them, but also with the people from Palermo, who, as you know, would like us to keep quiet. But why, sir, did you first consent and then say no? What did I do wrong?”
And now what the fuck was he supposed to tell him?
“Never! I never consented.” Pirrotta stares at Turrisi.
Then, so as to seem more credible, he gives himself another slap on the knee.
“But one of your boys came to Pietroburger and gave me an appointment with Betty at Trinacria in Bocca.”
“Turrisi. My wife and my daughter, they got together. And the boys, these days at my house, obey my wife more than they do me.”
“But your boy didn’t tell you that your wife had sent him out?”
Fuck, what a nitpicker this fuckhead Turrisi is.
What the fuck business does he have, meddling in Pirrotta’s home affairs?
Fuck, he starts behaving like this as a son-in-law and he’ll end up taking a ride in the cement-mixer.
“Of course he told me, but it was too late.”
Turrisi nods.
“And then of course Betty was crazy about you,” adds Pirrotta. “You saw, no, how she greeted you so affectionately at Palazzolo Acreide, and even sat down next to you, defying my fatherly paternal authority?”
Turrisi thinks about how Betty had stroked his leg and about how, if he hadn’t tried to save Paino, who knows what she might have got up to stroking.
“Think about it. Betty, who always obeyed me, defied my fatherly paternal authority to go and sit next to you.” Pirrotta makes a disgusted face.
Turrisi nods, devastated, repentant, touched, his face a mask of regret.
“And just because she thought that Falsaperla, you had blown him away. To spite me,” says Pirrotta.
“Don’t twist the knife in the wound!”
“Certainly I’m going to twist it. Betty may be naive but she’s not stupid. You started to do that dance at Palazzolo Acreide and suddenly Betty understood everything. That I took down Falsaperla to put the blame on you, and that you took down Paino to put the blame on me.”
“But can’t we try to fix it, this problem? In the end, by evening the score, I challenged you with a public demonstration of my love for Betty.”
“Turrisi, can I tell you something?”
“Please, it would be an honor.”
“Okay, Turrisi, get this through your head. You, about females, understand fuck-all.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
You Understand?
“You understand? Those scumbags, those shitheads. I’m going to turn into a lesbian. First a whore, however, and then a lesbian.”
Betty is flipping out on the beach, leaning over the table at an Afro-bar on the sand, yelling directly into Carmine’s ear.
“You understand? I don’t count for anything! The only fucking thing they had on their minds was oil. Turrisi’s love …”
Betty takes a champagne flute and hurls it toward the sand. The flute hits the beach without breaking.
“That’s where all that love was going. That’s where it was. Oil! Oil! Oil! That’s what interests those two shithead faggot males, who can screw each other as much as they want, bastards who fool around with the feelings and the lives of others …”
Carmine is massaging his forehead, his head down because he’s embarrassed.
“And … and …” Betty has used up all her insults. She crosses her arms and sits back in her chair, spreading her legs.
Carmine lifts an eye to see whether, by venting, she has calmed down.
“Oh, yes …” Betty leans forward ag
ain. “But now I’m going to show them what I’m capable of, you think I’m going to let it pass like that, they thought I was going to ruin my life, at my age, for oil, money … You understand, Carmine, how disgusting? For money! But me, what a slut, I go and give it gratis, understand, Carmine, because if my father wanted me to sell my body to Turrisi, you understand, Carmine, my body”—Betty puts her hand on her shoulder and takes the fabric of her white linen caftan between thumb and index finger and gives it a little lift—“my body for money, well, then I”—a little lift to the caftan—“my body, I’ll give it away gratis, gratis, gratis.”
Betty freezes like that, immobile, her fingers pinching the linen.
Her body, my big fucking gay prick.
“Hey, Betty, you said yourself that you didn’t like Turrisi, you told Turrisi that your father didn’t want—”
Betty jumps up.
She looks at Carmine with loathing, contempt, disdain, and outraged dignity.
Betty’s extremely loud “Gofuckyourself!” makes almost a mile of beach turn toward the Afro-bar.
Beyond the mile, thank heavens, people hear something like the shriek of a seagull.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
And So the Prefect Wants to Resolve the Situation and He’s Asking Me the Favor
“And so the prefect wants to resolve the situation and he’s asking me the favor.” In front of a huge slice of watermelon Timpanaro is explaining the prefect’s plan. “He says he’ll even put in air-conditioning,” he goes on happily.
“Ah,” yells Cagnotto suddenly, frightening the whole table.
“What’s that? What happened?” says Caporeale.
Cagnotto looks around with wide eyes. “I don’t know. I thought I was falling.”
“Falling?” says Timpanaro, interested.
“Must be vertigo,” says Lambertini.
Cagnotto looks at them as if he’s never seen them before.
“Cagnotto, cheer up!” says Timpanaro. “They’re giving us air-conditioning! We’ll be performing indoors, to enhance police surveillance! They’ll have law and order in Noto! There will be journalists from outside Sicily, from outside Italy! It looks to me like the regional commissioner for sport, tourism, and entertainment is also getting involved. Cagnotto, maybe this means nothing to you, but here, a situation creates business opportunities. Think about it, Cagnotto. What do you want to do? You want to say no to such an opportunity?”
Sicilian Tragedee Page 24
