Who is Lou Sciortino?

by Ottavio Cappellani

  “Hurry up,” Nancy says to the waiter.

  Nancy doesn’t own the bar, she’s just the cashier. But she likes telling the waiter to hurry up. Those who don’t know often mistake her for the owner’s wife.

  The waiter has the tray with the orzata in one hand, and the bucket and cloth in the other. Why don’t you hurry up and suck my dick, whore? he thinks. He places the orzata in front of Don Giorgino, picks up the remains of the broken glass from the ground, and starts to clean up.

  “I’m sorry, Don Giorgino, I’ve got to clean it up now, before the flies get to it,” he says.

  The hookers and the young guys in the convertibles are still laughing, looking at the table.

  The waiter wrings out the cloth inside the bucket. He notices Don Giorgino is bleeding from his nose. His mouth is half open, and the tip of his tongue is sticking out. He’s an old man, he shouldn’t come out in this heat. But it doesn’t seem right to speak to Don Giorgino with all that blood coming out of his nose. So he touches the picciotto on the shoulder, and the picciotto slowly drops his head until his forehead hits the table. The mother-of-pearl handle of a knife eight inches long is sticking out from under his armpit.

  * * *

  Pippino felt it when the knife touched the picciotto’s heart, just like he felt the soft bone on the bridge of the old man’s nose yield abruptly. A trained hand is just like a knife that can think and feel.

  Pippino goes down to the rocks below Piazza Europa. He takes off his shoes, his suit, and his polo shirt, and without a moment’s hesitation dives into the water.

  “CETTINA, YOU’RE A DISGRACE TO BOTH HOUSES!”

  “Cettina, you’re a disgrace to both houses!”

  The barbecue is at its height and he expects to be understood without further explanation. Cettina tries to understand him. She really concentrates. Because when Cettina doesn’t understand him, Tony loses his temper. And when Tony loses his temper, Cettina doesn’t understand a fucking thing.

  “What do you mean, both houses?” Cettina asks, while all around the barbecue is raging like a storm at sea.

  Tony raises his eyes to heaven. “This one and your mother’s, which you couldn’t wait to get away from, that’s why you married me … Where the fuck did you hide the amaretti?”

  Cettina looks around. “What do you mean, where did I hide them? I didn’t hide them!”

  Tony sways. He raises his hands and moves his head from side to side.

  Cettina gets frightened.

  “So you’re telling me you didn’t hide the amaretti? You’re informing me that all the amaretti in the house are already gone?”

  Now he really is losing his temper! And when Tony loses his temper he acts like a puppet: he says something, rushes off, has second thoughts, comes back, curses, and rushes off again. It’s like his strings are being pulled by an invisible demon.

  * * *

  Pippino is sitting on the rocks, smoking a cigarette, drying himself in the sun. The solarium on Piazza Europa has already been taken apart. There are two injured seagulls perched on the rocks, keeping him company.

  * * *

  Tony is sitting in his car, staring into space. When he got in, he slammed the door of the purple Fiat 127 hard, and the scented rubber flying saucer is still swaying on the rearview mirror. Tony had hurried across the ring road, looking right and left, raising his hands to stop the cars, even though there wasn’t any fucking traffic. But Tony knows you shouldn’t cross the ring road on foot, it’s dangerous, that’s why they built the elevated walkway.

  Leaning on the blue plush steering wheel, he keeps repeating, “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it, the amaretti all gone, the amaretti all gone…” Then he turns the key in the ignition and drives off, tires screeching.

  * * *

  Pippino stands up. He checks that his underpants are dry, looks at his watch, takes his pants off the rock, and puts them on, trying not to lose his balance.

  * * *

  At Scali’s Amaretti, Nuccio is walking backward, bent ninety degrees, with his pants slipping down. He’s dragging Uncle Sal by his feet around the second floor of the building, looking for a place to hide him. Uncle Sal seems deader than dead, because he’s got a crossbow arrow in his neck, close to the jugular, but above all because he’s letting himself be dragged without making any fuss.

  * * *

  Tony screeches to a halt at an angle on the sidewalk in front of the building on Corso Italia. He sits there for a couple of minutes, staring into space and shaking his head, then leans down to his right and looks for the key ring with the elephant and the obelisk. He finally gets out of the car, searching for the right key as he walks to the big brass and frosted glass door. On the glass there’s a double S, the two letters intertwined.

  Tony bends to put the key in the lock. He opens the door, goes in, walks quickly past Signorina Niscemi’s desk, stops, turns back, looks right and left, goes closer to the desk, picks up a powder compact, opens it, smells it, smiles, grabs a bottle of nail polish, holds it up to the light, puts it down, picks up a nail file, looks at it a long time, then thinks about Signorina Niscemi’s nails and throws it back on the desk.

  Upstairs, Nuccio hears the sharp sound of the file being thrown on the desk. He stops, looks right and left, and straightens his pants.

  Tony walks quickly toward the basement. He turns on the light and runs down the stairs. Boxes of amaretti in tall, tidy piles. He takes one, two, three … Then he takes a dozen boxes and, trying to hold them steady, turns and walks up the stairs. He switches off the light with his nose and, with short steps, heads for the door.

  * * *

  “Who are you?”

  Startled, Tony drops the boxes. He turns and sees Nuccio.

  “Nuccio…”

  “Oh, Signor Tony.”

  What the fuck is Nuccio doing at Scali’s Amaretti on a Sunday?

  “Is Uncle Sal upstairs?”

  “Who?” Nuccio comes slowly toward him.

  What do you mean, who? You’re here in my family’s shop and you’re asking who? Tony says nothing. He slowly retreats.

  Nuccio keeps walking toward him. “Oh … Don Scali? Oh, yes … he’ll be right back. He went to straighten something out and then he’ll be right back.”

  He’ll be right back. My uncle leaves you here all alone? You’re putting me on! Tony keeps retreating. “All right … Tell him I needed some amaretti for my barbecue … Tell him…”

  “When he gets here, I’ll tell him…”

  “I’ll be going, then.”

  “Aren’t you taking the amaretti?”

  Tony looks at the amaretti.

  Nuccio leaps on him all of a sudden and slams him down on Signorina Niscemi’s desk.

  * * *

  Pippino arrives at Scali’s Amaretti. He scans right and left along Corso Italia, then looks at the lock and sees the elephant key ring hanging from it. He takes out his knife and slips silently inside.

  The scene that presents itself would scare anyone, but not him, not Pippino, Don Lou Sciortino’s Oleander. On Signorina Niscemi’s desk, Tony is sitting on top of Nuccio, pulling his hair with one hand, and with the other stabbing him repeatedly and screaming bloody murder. “No … Don’t kill me … What did I do to you?… No … Please … I got a wife and kids … I got a wife and kids!”

  Tony sees Pippino and stops.

  Pippino goes closer.

  Tony gets off Nuccio. He looks at Pippino’s knife, then at the nail file he’s holding in his own hand. He falls to his knees, all spattered with blood, and starts crying. “What did I ever do to you? I got nothing to do with this. Please … I beg you!”

  Pippino leans over to look at Nuccio. He’s dead.

  He walks around Tony, without even deigning to look at him, and walks upstairs. He finds Uncle Sal lying motionless on the floor, his arms outstretched, an arrow stuck in his neck.

  Pippino crouches and looks at the arrow.

  What the fuck
is this?

  Then he stands up again, dusts down his pants, and goes downstairs.

  Tony is still on his knees, begging God for mercy.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Pippino asks.

  “No, please, no … I only came to get some amaretti, amaretti … I don’t got nothing to do with my uncle … I don’t got nothing to do with it.”

  “Get up.”

  “Huh?”

  “Get up. Let’s go!”

  “What?”

  “I said let’s go!”

  Tony gets up. He looks at Nuccio lying dead as a doornail on Signorina Niscemi’s desk and asks, “What is it? What happened?”

  “Why did you kill your uncle?”

  “What?”

  Pippino looks at Nuccio. “Never mind. Let’s go.”

  Tony doesn’t understand anything anymore.

  “The amaretti.”

  “What?”

  “The amaretti. Didn’t you come for the amaretti?”

  Tony looks at the boxes. “Yes…”

  “So take them.”

  * * *

  Signora Lo Jacono’s husband once came into Tony’s salon. Tony greeted him and showed him where he could sit and wait while his wife was being taken care of. In response, Signor Lo Jacono punched him in the face, leaving him unconscious for fifteen minutes.

  After that, he spent all afternoon sitting on the zebra-striped armchair, staring into space, while Agatino tried to shake him, screaming and swearing like somebody bitten by a tarantula.

  Tony feels pretty much the same way now.

  “In my opinion, you got nothing to do with this,” Pippino is saying.

  Bent over the wheel of the purple Fiat 127, Pippino drives slowly, taking care when he shifts gears because the car isn’t his.

  “In fact, in my opinion, nothing happened and you weren’t even there.”

  Tony looks at him through half-closed eyes, a dumb expression on his face.

  Pippino brakes so suddenly that the boxes of amaretti go flying. “Because otherwise, a year goes by, two years, ten years, I come looking for you, I find you and I kill you and that’s it. Do we understand each other? You don’t bother us, we won’t bother you. Because otherwise I got to kill your wife, your kids, your nephews, and your aunts!”

  Tony’s dumb expression turns scared.

  “What is this, some kind of stock car?” Pippino goes on. “Minchia, they don’t make machines like this anymore! You know, I also got a license to drive cement mixers.”

  Pippino carefully puts the car in first gear and drives very slowly.

  “Is this the way?” he asks, pulling up at an intersection.

  “There … the rotary…” Tony whispers.

  * * *

  Pippino parks very carefully in front of Tony’s garden. He gets out, straightens his jacket, and walks off the way he came. Tony watches him as he disappears along the ring road like Tony Baretta in the corridors of the New York subway.

  * * *

  “What happened? Who was that guy?”

  Tony turns abruptly and sees Cettina leaning in at the window.

  “Come on, did you get those fucking amaretti? Come on, hurry up, you got guests.”

  “Cettina,” Tony whispers. “Will you do something for me? Will you get me a pair of pants and a shirt?”

  “What, you going to change in the car?” Cettina says, looking right and left to see if anybody’s watching.

  “Cettina, please, let’s don’t get into an argument now, just get me a pair of pants and a shirt.”

  “All right, idiot. Just come inside with the amaretti, then go upstairs and change in the house.”

  “Cettina!” Tony screams.

  Cettina walks to the house, gesturing angrily with her hands. “All right, I’m going, I’m going. Minchia, it’s these fucking americani, they’re making him nervous!”

  * * *

  When she returns with the pants and the shirt, Tony has a solemn expression on his face. “Sit down.”

  “In the car?”

  “Sit down, I said.” Tony is staring straight ahead of him.

  “Okay, I’ll sit down.” Cettina walks around the car and sits down next to Tony. “Come on, now, what do you want?”

  “They killed Uncle Sal,” Tony says curtly.

  Cettina opens her eyes and mouth wide and says nothing.

  “Not long ago, at Scali’s Amaretti.”

  “While you were there?” Cettina is scared.

  Tony nods.

  “And what did you do?”

  “What did I do? I went in the stockroom, got the amaretti, came back upstairs, and there was Nuccio, trying to kill me!”

  “Nuccio tried to kill you? Why? Did he kill Uncle Sal?” Cettina wriggles around on her seat.

  “How the fuck do I know, Cettina, that’s just the way it was!”

  “And what did he do to you?”

  “I don’t know what he did. At some point this other guy came in, and after that, I don’t know, Nuccio was dead, too.”

  “Dead? And who was the other guy?”

  “The guy you saw just now. Cettina, if I tell you I don’t know a fucking thing, it means I don’t know a fucking thing. Look at me!” Tony shifts the boxes and shows Cettina his bloodstained shirt.

  “What, you got hurt?” Cettina raises a hand to her mouth.

  “No.”

  “Change right now!”

  Tony makes a face, like he’s saying, What the fuck do you think I’m doing?

  “And the guy who killed Nuccio brought you home?” Cettina looks along the street.

  “Yeah.” Tony takes off his dirty pants.

  “Why?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Why didn’t he kill you, too?”

  “He said if he killed me, then he also had to kill you, and Rosy, and Alessia, and Mindy, and everybody. So he told me to keep my mouth shut, because if I don’t keep my mouth shut, he’ll come back and finish the job.”

  “But why did he bring you home?”

  Tony stops and looks at his wife. “Why don’t you go ask him, Cettina?”

  Cettina bites her hands, then nods. That’s the way Cettina is, she takes a while to be convinced.

  “Minchia, I knew it was going to end up like this!”

  “Cettina, I got to tell you something.” Tony buckles his belt.

  “Something else?”

  “You know, it was me who killed Nuccio.”

  Cettina opens her eyes wide. “How?”

  “How the fuck do I know?”

  “What the fuck do you mean, how the fuck do you know?”

  “Fuck, Cettina!”

  “Fuck, Totó!”

  Tony looks at his wife. It’s been ages since she last called him Totó.

  “He jumped me. What was I supposed to do?” Tony changes his shirt.

  “And the other guy?”

  “He came in later.”

  “And how did you kill him?”

  “How the fuck do I know, Cettina? I don’t even know if it was the other guy finished him off.”

  “I feel like I’m going to throw up, Tony!”

  “Wait, this isn’t the moment.” Tony finishes buttoning his shirt. He looks in the glove box and takes out a cigarette. He lights it and looks out the window. “What do we do now?”

  Cettina lifts her eyebrows. “What the fuck do you want to do? We always knew something like this would happen to Uncle Sal sooner or later…”

  Tony blows the smoke out the window.

  “Listen to me,” Cettina says, looking him in the eyes. “We’re good people, and they know that. The reason you’re alive is because it’s not in their interest to make things more complicated than they already are. And if it’s not in their interest, it’s not in ours, either. I was born poor, you know, and you’ve been cutting hair for ages. Is it our fault your uncle got mixed up with certain people?”

  Tony looks out the window again.

 
“What are you doing, crying?”

  “No,” Tony says, without turning around.

  “Right now our garden is full of americani, beautiful people from the movies who don’t know a fucking thing about any of this shit. You know? There’s even a photographer from La Sicilia here, they want to do an article.”

  Tony looks at Cettina out of the corner of his eye.

  “Mindy’s getting it together with that guy. Valentina’s walking Nick all around, showing him pictures of when she was little.”

  Tony gives a melancholy little smile.

  “And now you want to ruin the lives of all these people who don’t know anything? Why? Think about it, Tony! You’re the head of the family. You got a responsibility.” Cettina starts stroking his hair. “That guy who was here is gone. What do we know about these things? These guys grab each other, kill each other, make wars! We’re good people. One of these Sundays we should go to church. Eh, Tony, how about it?”

  Tony nods, still looking out the window. “The guy said I had nothing to do with it…”

  “Maybe it was him, Tony. Just think about it. Excuse me, but I saw him bringing you home. Whaddaya think, somebody who goes into Scali’s Amaretti on a Sunday is there to buy amaretti? Tony, the guy was right. You don’t got nothing to do with it. Now, are you going to do something?”

  “What?” Tony asks, rubbing his eyes.

  “Let’s get out of this car and go to our barbecue. The guests are waiting. Just imagine if they killed Uncle Sal ten years ago. Remember the time they tried to ambush him at the tollgate on the autostrada?”

  “He said … he said they had the wrong person,” Tony says, sniffling.

  “Tony…” Cettina says, still stroking his hair.

  Tony looks at his wife and nods.

  Cettina continues stroking his hair.

  “Tony…”

  “Cettina … I love you…”

  “Totó…” Cettina says, pulling him to her and half closing her eyes.

  “Fuck,” Tony says, “you’re right. Let’s go!”

  Tony hurries out of the purple Fiat 127 without even closing the door. Cettina stays for a moment with her hand in midair, then she smooths the skirt of her red dress, straightens the train, gets out of the car, looks at the garden, and slams the car door so hard the flying saucer on the rearview mirror finally takes flight.