The Wager

by Donna Jo Napoli

  But when the weather was bad, poverty was hideous.

  He should have left Randazzo in late September. He could have gone to the south shore, rocked in the winds from Africa. Or, if he didn’t want to wander again, he should have at least prepared for this winter. He could have searched out a cave in the countryside. Lots of people lived in caves year-round. He could have stashed away food for winter. Even dumb animals did that.

  Don Giovanni hadn’t thought ahead.

  Just as he hadn’t thought ahead when he’d squandered his fortune in Messina.

  What would it be like to be dirty for three years, three months, three days?

  He was lucky in a way. He’d gone down to the freezing river just the day before and scrubbed himself from head to foot, even though it made his teeth ache right up through his eardrums. It had taken a good hour of stamping in place to make his blood hot enough to ease the shivers. He’d put on his second set of trousers, his second smock. He’d even washed his cape. He was clean. There was no better way to begin this particular proposal.

  And right now, in this very moment, hunger tightened its bones around him. Hard bones. Hard enough to break anyone’s spirit.

  The philosopher-thief’s words came back. This was a wager. A gamble. A game for the hopeful.

  And the devil had cleverly posed it in Randazzo, the home of the hopeful. Everyone here had hope. Just living under the shadow of Etna’s unpredictable convulsions, they proved that. They looked out on the black, scorched earth after Etna’s lava flows and they counted on those little yellow flowers coming again. Maybe not even in their lifetime, but eventually. Hope was a long-term affair.

  The flowers’ name danced on his tongue: aconite.

  On Etna yellow was the color of hope. Yellow butterflies. Yellow orchids.

  Was Don Giovanni still capable of hope?

  Bong. The church bell. Bong.

  For the moment existence was only listening to the bells. When they ended, there was nothing. The air died.

  Don Giovanni watched his hand move, steadily, as though it were someone else’s, controlled by something beyond him. He picked up the purse.

  It didn’t burst into flames. His hand didn’t wither. The purse was flat, empty. A snatch of limp white linen.

  Like Saint Agata’s veil.

  The devil was gone. He didn’t leave; he disappeared. A trick of the eye?

  “Dear one,” whispered Don Giovanni in a tremolo he couldn’t control. “Oh, dear one, give me money.” How much? How much did things cost? Since he’d left Messina, Don Giovanni had bartered—sweat for food. And before that, his manservant, Lino, and housekeeper, Betta, had taken care of paying for things. “Enough for a room at the inn,” he murmured. “Enough for a dinner. An overflowing dish.”

  The purse swelled. Heavy.

  Was he losing his mind? Could this really be?

  He pressed the purse to his cheek.

  If he left the stable, someone might see him go. They’d secure the doors behind him. And he’d get yelled at. Maybe have things thrown at him. Rocks. Garbage. Yesterday he’d made noise purposely, pretending to try to get into a stable he knew was well locked, just to have that garbage hurled out the window at him. Gnawing at a bone soothed his empty gut.

  A dinner at the inn would soothe better.

  Who was he kidding? That wasn’t the devil. Yes, he spoke as though he understood Don Giovanni’s thoughts. Don Giovanni hadn’t failed to notice that. But the real devil, not this phony version his demented mind had conjured up, would never bother with someone who looked like him. Like a pathetic beggar.

  But then, if the Lord’s eye was on every creature, no matter how small, how insignificant, why couldn’t the devil’s be?

  It was possible. Logical. Inevitable.

  His fingers fought with the knot on the purse. He opened it. Metal disks. He couldn’t see them in the dark, which had become pitch black. But he felt indentations. Arab inscriptions? The Norman royalty in Palermo put Arab inscriptions on their coins.

  He closed the purse, tucked it inside his smock, and wrapped his cape tight. He opened the stable door the minimum necessary and edged his way out.

  “Thief!”

  Thief? No! He clutched the purse through his smock and ran.

  Footsteps gained on him from behind. Something grabbed his cape. It ripped.

  Don Giovanni sprawled headlong in the alley.

  “What were you doing in that stable?”

  “Sleeping,” said Don Giovanni in his beggar’s voice, not moving from the ground. The purse formed a hard lump against his liver.

  “It’s the middle of the night. If you entered just to sleep, why did you leave now? Eh?” A boot kicked him in the rib. “Turn over.”

  Don Giovanni turned onto his back. Did the bulge of the purse show? This was his old bad-luck streak coming back in full force. To lose the purse before he’d even used it was a cockroach’s luck. A virgin martyr’s luck.

  The man who stood over him held a long wooden cudgel pointed at Don Giovanni’s chest. “I asked you a question.”

  “I woke.”

  “What woke you?”

  “Hunger.”

  The man moved the cudgel so it pointed at Don Giovanni’s throat. “We’re all hungry after a day’s fast.”

  “It’s been longer for me,” said Don Giovanni.

  “Did you take anything from my master’s stable?”

  “What would I take? There was nothing to eat in there. And I’ve got nowhere to hide a horse blanket.”

  “That’s true enough.” The man rested the cudgel on Don Giovanni’s Adam’s apple. It hurt. “You’re lucky it’s All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day. Mercy rules today. Get out of here. Don’t come back. Mercy doesn’t rule tomorrow.”

  Don Giovanni scootched away. The alley was getting him dirty. Dirty already. But as long as he had the purse, he could survive. He got up slowly, hunching over to hide his middle.

  “Get out of here!”

  Don Giovanni ran.

  He went straight to the inn. Closed, naturally. No sane traveler would arrive in the middle of the night.

  He filled his hand with pebbles, dirty from volcano soot, and threw them at the front shutters one flight up.

  The shutters opened. A lit candle appeared. A face.

  Don Giovanni waved to the man. “Hello . . .”

  The light went out instantly. The shutters closed.

  Don Giovanni scooped up another handful of pebbles. He threw them again.

  The shutters opened. “What do you want?”

  “A room.”

  “Have you got money?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not coming down in this chill for no reason, am I?”

  “It’s your business to run the inn,” said Don Giovanni. “That’s not ‘no reason,’ right?”

  “Where’d you get money?”

  “I want a meal, too,” said Don Giovanni.

  “You’ve got money for that, do you?”

  “Hurry,” said Don Giovanni. “Or I’ll go elsewhere.”

  “Sure you will.” The man closed the shutters.

  Don Giovanni stood in the frigid wind. This wasn’t working out. The devil had tricked him. Anyone could have heard his exchange with the innkeeper. Any lowlife out and about in the black of night. At this rate, Don Giovanni would get robbed of the magic purse before he got a chance to spend a single coin. If the purse really held coins, that is. He hugged himself. Where could he go now?

  But then the downstairs door opened.

  “Show me the money.”

  Don Giovanni didn’t dare open the purse on the road, where anyone could jump him. “Let me come in first.”

  “No tricks, you hear.”

  Tricks. On this man’s mind. From the devil. Don Giovanni knew about tricks—any starving body did. Just living was a trick. Just not screaming, not falling on the ground and rolling and kicking and thrashing, just holding himself steady like a san
e man was a trick.

  “No tricks,” said Don Giovanni.

  The man waved him inside. “Let’s see it.”

  Don Giovanni stood in the hall in the flickering shadows born of the candle’s little flame. He took out his purse and dumped it in the man’s hand.

  The man moved his candle to see better.

  They both stared.

  Coins. Real coins.

  Don Giovanni’s tongue went thick with awe.

  “This covers a room and a meal, a hearty meal.” The innkeeper didn’t conceal his surprise. “What did you say your name was?”

  “I am Don Giovanni of Messina.” The words came in his old speech, that educated speech he’d learned to hide.

  “I apologize, sire. I can’t heat food at this hour. We have a guest over the kitchen. I mustn’t disturb him. You can have cold goat if you want. It’s young—capretto—or, well, nearly. Eight months old, the little creature—very mild in taste, I assure you. Boned and stuffed with pistachio and rosemary. Basted with wine from Marsala.” He held up his candle and peered hopefully through the dark at Don Giovanni’s face. “It’s a special recipe I learned years ago in Palermo. The king eats it at Easter. There’s a loaf of bread—from the day before last, of course; we don’t bake during fasting. So it’s hardened now. But the oven was fired with lemon branches, always adding that delicate and exquisite aroma. You can sprinkle fresh oil on it. If you don’t know our fresh oil, you’re in for a treat. Mount Etna’s oil is darker and more pungent than Messina’s. But this year, with an early winter, it’s got an edge unlike anything you’ve ever tasted. Superb. And you can add salt, fine-ground, naturally. Will that do?”

  From some small reserve of irony deep inside Don Giovanni’s caved-in chest came the question “No sweets?”

  “Figs. Not confections of sugar, no, but these are our sweetest. Roasted black figs with almonds stuck in them. And our almonds—ah, magnificent. The contrast of sweet fig and bitter almond, magnificent.”

  Don Giovanni didn’t trust himself to speak. In his breathlessness, he feared he might faint.

  He followed the innkeeper up the stairs.

  The Inn

  THAT FIRST NIGHT DON GIOVANNI ATE ALONE IN THE DOWNstairs kitchen. Though he tried to suppress the urge to wolf down the food, he didn’t succeed, so the taste was hardly noticeable. In that dim candlelight, it could have been garbage he was eating. It took away the pain in his gut, that’s all that mattered.

  The next day he ate morning and evening meals in his room, where he stayed sequestered all day. But he went down to the kitchen for the big midday meal.

  The inn had two other visitors. There was only one table in the kitchen, a long narrow thing, able to accommodate a dozen easily. So all three sat there, the other two at one end together, Don Giovanni alone. They exchanged initial greetings with him, but that’s all.

  He listened to their talk. Both were businessmen. One brought samples of silks made in Palermo. He was gathering orders from the seamstresses of the richest ladies in town. He came a few times a year.

  The other, also from Palermo, had a bag full of tiny tiles, enameled in brilliant colors. Mosaics. They glistened in the semidarkness of the kitchen, as enticingly as gems. He had come to convince Randazzo that the cathedral needed mosaics on the floor and walls. This was his first visit to the area. At first he told people his tiles rivaled the famous Roman mosaics at Segesta. But many had never visited Segesta, way over in the northwest. So he changed his song. He now said they rivaled the mosaics at Piazza Armerina, not far from the town of Enna. Even though a mudslide had covered that Roman villa a decade before, the nobles of Randazzo had seen them.

  Don Giovanni eavesdropped, partly for the comfort of hearing a higher class of talk. His ears themselves were hungry for that. And partly because the information interested him. He had once been firmly ensconced in the world that bought fine silks. He had been among those who would have been dunned for money for cathedral mosaics. Now, with the aid of his linen purse, he could join that world again. If he wanted.

  The fact that they didn’t address any of their talk to him didn’t matter. Don Giovanni hardly cared. He wasn’t here for sociability. Eavesdropping was an accidental benefit of the kitchen. And, anyway, he wasn’t yet comfortable in his newly regained status. He had to practice assuming the proper haughty tone with the innkeeper or he’d give himself away.

  No, he was here in this kitchen simply for food—thanks to the magic purse. His taste buds had come alive again, and the food was good.

  The entire following month went much the same. He stayed in his room, except to go to the privy and down to the kitchen for the midday meal. Sometimes he lay in bed and rested. Sometimes he opened the shutters, despite the cold, and sat on a chest pushed to the far side of the room and looked out over the roofs. Sometimes he paced, but always in bare feet. He didn’t want anyone to hear him. He’d learned during his months as a beggar that it was rarely good to draw attention to himself. And he didn’t want to wear out his skin shoes. They were the ones the woman had given him his first morning in Randazzo, so long ago. They had been in decent condition then. And he’d gone barefoot all summer and much of the autumn, so he had added little wear. Still, skin was skin; their days were numbered.

  The rule repeated in his head: You cannot wash yourself, change your clothes, shave your beard, comb your hair.

  He wasn’t entirely sure, but probably new shoes would be counted as changing his clothes. He had to make these ones last three years, three months, three days. Well, less than that now. Days were passing.

  No plan had yet come to him of what to do next. But that was all right. He needed time to gain back flesh and grow strong again. He’d stay in this room, avoid getting dirty, and return to health. Soon enough, he’d think of the next step.

  He was slowly getting used to the advantages of money. He made requests for certain foods at the evening meal now. Asked for seconds when he wanted. Addressed a question or two to the other guests, who were growing in number. Yes, he was becoming his old self again.

  On a morning in early December, the innkeeper knocked on Don Giovanni’s door at the crack of dawn. As usual.

  Don Giovanni whispered to his purse before opening the door. As usual.

  The innkeeper gave a quick bow of the head to him. “Will you be leaving today, Your Excellency?”

  No one had addressed Don Giovanni as “Your Excellency” since the philosopher-thief. The words seemed foreboding, as though there was a joke in the air. A joke at someone’s expense. Whose? “Here’s payment for another day’s food and lodging.” Don Giovanni emptied the purse into the innkeeper’s hand.

  All the preceding days, when the same scene had taken place, the innkeeper had quickly closed a fist around the coins. But now he looked at them and hesitated. “Will you be staying in again all day?”

  “Yes.”

  The innkeeper tucked the coins away somewhere inside his shirt. He went to the window and pushed the shutters open. The bright sun of a cold morning slashed in, dividing the room into the lit and the dark.

  The very act felt like an invasion to Don Giovanni. This was his room—he’d paid for it. He controlled every aspect of it. He stiffened. “Close the shutters, please.”

  The innkeeper took the cloth looped through his belt and brushed ash off the windowsill. “Christmas is coming soon,” he said as if addressing the world outside.

  “I said close them. Please.”

  The innkeeper turned and gave Don Giovanni a mirthless smile. “I thought the light might cheer you up.”

  “I don’t need cheering. I’m taking a chill.”

  “Perhaps you need warmer clothing. I could fetch a tailor.”

  “No. No, thank you.” Don Giovanni walked to the window and reached past the innkeeper. He pulled the shutters closed.

  The room seemed darker than before. Shrouded.

  The innkeeper lit the oil lamp. “He’s a reliable man, this tailor. D
iscreet. He’ll take care of your needs.”

  “I don’t want new clothes. And I don’t need discretion.”

  “Something more appropriate. Clothes that suit your station in life.”

  “These are my clothes,” said Don Giovanni, smoothing both hands down the front of his smock. “These are what I wear.”

  The innkeeper smirked. “Well, if you insist, why don’t you strip down? I’ll have my maidservant mend and wash your clothes.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “It would do you a world of good. Then you could go outside.”

  “It’s not my clothes that stop me from going outside,” said Don Giovanni. “I don’t want to go outside.”

  “We can bring you a basin and fill it with nice warm water for a bath.” He spoke quickly, his lips moving like swarming insects. “Sheep tallow and large salt grains do a world of good in refreshing the body and soul. And a scrub brush made of boar hair.”

  “No. I said no. No, thank you.”

  The innkeeper pressed his hands together in front of his chest, fingertips pointing up, the backs of the fingers of one hand touching the backs of the fingers of the other hand. He shook them.

  Don Giovanni recognized the gesture as one of exasperation. “What’s it to you what I wear, whether I’m clean, how I pass my day? I pay for my lodging. I pay for my food.”

  “People come through town at this time of year. The inn fills up. It’s full already. People are sharing beds.”

  Don Giovanni crossed his arms at his chest. He knew what was coming now, it was all too clear. But if he stood like a statue, maybe he could bully this innkeeper. “And?” He lifted his chin so he could look down his nose at the man.

  “They like the place to feel festive. To match the spirit of the season. They dress well. They’re businessmen of a certain class.”

  “So am I.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency. And what is your business?”

  “I don’t have to explain myself to you. It’s rude of you even to ask.”

  “Rude? This is my inn. Your behavior here is my concern.” The man shook his hands in that gesture of exasperation. “Your Excellency, you are a fine gentleman. I know that. But you don’t dress like my other visitors expect. I get complaints.”