The Wager

by Donna Jo Napoli

  But Cani was spooked by the shadows of night. His eyes weren’t good in the dark. He barked his worries and people shouted at them and threw things from windows.

  Finally, Don Giovanni had to admit that Cani wasn’t ever going to adjust. The dog was willing, Heaven knew that. He’d try anything Don Giovanni suggested. But dogs aren’t nocturnal. So they had to go back to walking all day, and sleeping under the staircase at night.

  It turned out all right, though, because Cani put on flesh quickly. His black coat glistened. He was sleek and robust, and his appearance alone commanded respect, just as Don Giovanni had hoped. No one bothered them as they slept. Only a fool would risk angering that dog.

  And Cani wasn’t a bad blanket, not bad at all. They made it through Christmas and January and February. The coldest time of the year. It was working.

  “Another pact,” said Don Giovanni when he’d scratch the dog behind his ears. “A holy one, this time. We take care of each other.”

  But all good things come to an end, as Don Giovanni looked at it these days. So on the mid-March afternoon when the German tavernkeeper pushed Don Giovanni’s coin back at him and gestured for him to get out, he wasn’t surprised.

  Over the past month, there’d been a gradual transition. At first Don Giovanni ate alone at one end of a table, with Cani underneath and other eaters at the far end. Then people got up and moved to other tables when he sat down, even if it meant crowding. Then the table nearest to his would empty, too.

  Without being asked, he’d taken to sitting in the corner spot, to displace the fewest customers possible. It was only a matter of time until the tavernkeeper barred him.

  He looked a fright, after all. He could see it in the eyes of children, in the way their mothers pulled them closer and sped up as they passed him. And he stank. He reeked. He was a putrid sack of filth. There was no other way to put it. He hated his own stench. He’d taken to breathing through his mouth, to diminish the nausea he caused himself.

  It was one more irony. As Cani had grown more handsome, Don Giovanni’s appearance had deteriorated. The dog kept himself clean everywhere with his tongue, but the man allowed that tongue to explore only his face.

  The odor from his bottom was the first to become overwhelming, thanks to that beating from the bullies. Then the odor from under his arms ripened and turned rancid. And then his feet developed the most peculiar condition. They grew scaly on the soles, and raw between the toes. They itched constantly and radiated a foul odor.

  His back itched, too. And his chest, where little, red, angry-looking pustules had formed. And his ears. He wondered if maybe insects from Cani had migrated into them. In fact, he itched all over. Even his scalp. Especially his scalp.

  So he couldn’t blame the tavernkeeper. Don Giovanni was bad for business. And he’d learned from experience that it only made things worse if he offered to pay extra.

  He waited outside until the midday meal was over. Then he went in again.

  “Out,” said the tavernkeeper, pointing with his whole arm at the door Don Giovanni had just walked through.

  “I could eat around back, by the kitchen door,” said Don Giovanni. “No one would see me. I’d pay the same.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” The tavernkeeper spoke Sicilian as he shook his head in disgust. It surprised Don Giovanni, who hadn’t realized the man knew the language. “Clean yourself up, man.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You’re a disgrace. I don’t want your money the way you are now. Clean yourself. Act like a God-fearing man again, and you can come back. But not till then. Don’t hang around here. Go.”

  Man and dog walked through the streets. They went to the staircase that sheltered them at night. In the corner under it, behind a small pile of rubble, was the bowl the milk boy had given Don Giovanni. He filled it with coins. Maybe when the boy came looking for them in the morning, he’d find it.

  Then they stopped by the doors of all the kitchens that had sold them morning bread or evening soup. It wasn’t obvious what would make a good hiding place—one the maidservant or cook was likely to look in but that others wouldn’t—so Don Giovanni simply left handfuls of coins hidden under rocks or rubbish, whatever he figured the maidservant or cook might be asked to sweep away.

  As a final good-bye, he handed a coin to every beggar they passed. Just one. There was no point in inviting trouble.

  They went down the main street of town and out the gates to the road again.

  “It’s all right,” Don Giovanni said to Cani. “The meat meals in that tavern were over anyway. It would have been fish stew all through Lent till Easter. And you’re not much of a fish eater.” He scratched behind Cani’s ears. Then he scratched behind his own. Then he laughed. What was the point in not laughing? It was spring. “It was time for a change anyway, my friend.”

  The Heart of Sicily

  IN SPRING THE INTERIOR OF SICILY FROM ETNA TO PALERMO rivaled the Garden of Eden. Sweet sage perfumed the world. Heavenly.

  So long as people were avoided, that is.

  People had their charms, it was true. They had so many different customs, just from one village to the next. Don Giovanni liked watching them from a distance. The women, of course. He would never stop admiring the beauties of women, how they fluttered so decorously. The devil was wrong—his love of women wasn’t narcissistic. Indeed, he had no delusions about being attractive anymore. So his persistent appreciation of women despite the absence of any chance of carnality disproved the devil’s claim.

  Three years, three months, three days. The first thing he’d do when the time was up was scrub himself new. The second and third and fourth and . . .

  But he also liked watching the men. Here were hats that sat like an overturned bowl on the head, there were ones that hung down at the rear like the sack of an octopus body, and over there were ones that poofed out high above the head like a church bell. Each little isolated mountain town was a world unto itself. Don Giovanni had no sense of what the differing habits of clothing meant. He would have liked to ask someone, but on the increasingly rare occasions on which he’d speak, people shied away from him, if they didn’t outright run.

  People meant other good things, as well. Music. All Don Giovanni’s life he’d enjoyed street musicians as much as the refined musicians who performed chamber music at the banquets in his castle. Randazzo had offered him plenty of the former. The towns in central Sicily that he wandered through after leaving Randazzo offered him more of the same. A simple little tune plucked on a Jew’s harp could bring a wide smile to his lips. In the towns with Muslim residents, the cane flutes held notes that wavered in the air like calls to prayer. He loved the bagpipes and the triangle and the drums and the tambourine. He would step back into the shadows and watch dancing for as long as it went on. Or as long as no one chased him away.

  People meant cooked meals, prepared sometimes exquisitely, letting off aromas that made his mouth water. Sheep cheese flavored with saffron to a deep yellow—ah, he had that in the mountain town of Enna outside the door of a Muslim home. He made Cani wait across the road before he knocked. He had learned that Muslims hated dogs. They used them for hunting and guarding, but never as pets. And they especially despised black ones like Cani. But he saved the last bite of the cheese for the dog. That was their rule—share.

  He had egg drop soup in Enna, too. Scrumptious. Even a simple round loaf of bread came to seem inordinately delicious.

  People meant gardens whose walls Don Giovanni peeked over to admire beds of roses, and delicately fragrant sweet peas. Musky trefoils, ranunculi, fan palms, and Judas trees with their flaming canopies, all arranged to please the eye. Once he watched a troop of slaves pass an entire day trimming graceful curves in hedges.

  People meant an occasional innkeeper, typically needy for business, who let him spend the night in the stable, if not in a room.

  People meant gaily painted carts. Children playing stick games in the alley. Pottery tha
t seemed to caress whatever it held. Fountains carved with nymphs and sea horses. Butchers and farmers who called out their goods. Oh yes, those merchants’ calls.

  And that was it: Most of all, people meant language. This island of Sicily was rich in tongues. Some of what Don Giovanni heard, he couldn’t understand. Some he understood, but only in the vaguest way. Understanding it himself hardly mattered anymore, though. Hearing people talk to each other, seeing them respond with joy or sorrow, that was the marvel he witnessed, nearly awestruck every time.

  That was the most painful loss: without language it was hard to remember he was human.

  But contact with people had to be avoided, for people also meant senseless brutality. Not just toward others they looked down on: slaves and beggars—the misfortunate who were blamed for their own misfortune—but also animals, creatures who couldn’t possibly bear blame.

  Don Giovanni watched a horse-drawn cart near Enna one day in mid-spring. The old mare had undoubtedly served as her master’s reliable mount until the years caught up to her and landed her here, in this very different type of work. A white lather of sweat swathed her neck and withers. One leg bled profusely from high up, near the rump. Her muzzle was red, her nostrils dilated, her eyes despairing. The man leading her slapped her hard with a cane to speed her up. She would die in her tracks one day. Simply drop there. For her sake, Don Giovanni hoped it would be soon.

  People kicked dogs and threw hot oil at cats. People beat donkeys and prodded goats with pokers.

  In his old life, that fantasy life in the castle, Don Giovanni had rarely given a thought to animals beyond considering their usefulness to him. Now how someone treated an animal was the first thing he noticed. He wouldn’t take a chance that someone might hurt Cani.

  The dog impressed Don Giovanni with his intelligence, goodwill, and loyalty. Probably no one had recognized that in him before Don Giovanni came along, or Cani never would have been left to fend for himself.

  Don Giovanni figured his newfound appreciation of animals also came from the fact that an outsider sees things an insider is blind to. Or, rather, he notices what he sees; he gives attention to different details. Observing those details lent a quiet dignity to the role of outcast. Don Giovanni spent his days watching the world. Counting the days until the wager was over made the pain seem longer. But gathering details, reveling in them—that filled his brain so that sometimes he truly lost track of time.

  The wild horses that lived in the Nebrodi Mountains, for example. They were worth study. Many times Don Giovanni wasn’t certain which direction to go in the wilderness. Some directions led to impassable precipices. Some became slopes that were too steep or had rocks so loose they slid out from underfoot. Some went nowhere near water. He quickly learned to look for hoofprints. Horses invariably made paths through the most easily passable terrain. And horses always led to water eventually. Downright clever.

  Plus, horses were a thrill to watch. Their deep brown hides glowed reddish in the sun. They’d run hard and work up a lather and their hair would slick close over rippling muscles. They were everything a healthy body should be, everything Don Giovanni used to be.

  So he and Cani mostly avoided people and stuck with the animals. They lived in the wild through the rest of that spring and the first part of summer. The times when the valleys were lush. Instead of the flutterings of women, they had butterflies in orange and black by day, and moths in blue and white by night. For music they had the evening chorus of cicadas, but also sparrows, robins, nightingales, magpies. The birds were so lyrical, sometimes Don Giovanni was sure they were singing just for him and Cani. For gardens they had wood asphodels and astragalus and so many other wildflowers, and the white, gaudy blossoms of caper bushes. For food they ate berries and greens and chewed on fennel. They trapped rabbit and beaver. They caught eels and crabs. Cani made sure they steered clear of porcupines and boars and snakes and wildcats and weasels and martens.

  It was as close to Eden as a man without a woman could find.

  But by July most streams had dried up. It wasn’t like on Etna, where streams flowed year-round. The heat of central Sicily was unrelenting. Dirt rose as the finest dust—not a hint of water in it. The sun threatened to split the rocks. Don Giovanni and Cani were forced to stop their random wanderings and seek water from reliable sources.

  Lakes were the obvious choice. They were few and far between and small, but Don Giovanni was delighted to find that he and Cani learned their locations easily. It was like a homing instinct. Whenever Don Giovanni’s tongue would get fat with heat, whenever he was sure that this time he’d pass out before they managed to slake their thirst, they’d stumble out onto a perfectly cool patch of blue water in the middle of woods, with wagtails and coots and mallards and kingfishers cavorting. What a fine thing to have this gift.

  Oh, Don Giovanni was no idiot. It wasn’t luck that made him find lakes. It wasn’t some beastlike instinct. He was led to them. The devil was protecting his wager. But that knowledge never made the discovery of a lake less welcome. Joy was joy, and Don Giovanni was learning that a little humility didn’t ruin it.

  He knelt beside Cani and the two of them lapped water companionably. They looked at each other and a message of relief passed. It was strange, but Don Giovanni knew it was unquestionably true: he and Cani were best friends. Friendship so deep and true was new to Don Giovanni. When they sat under the stars, with Cani snapping at fireflies, he felt nearly peaceful.

  It must have been August, a full year and a half since the wave, when Don Giovanni found himself staring into clear water at a man who didn’t look the least bit peaceful. A wild man. Head hair stuck out in long clumpy locks, so thick and snarled it was impossible to disentangle one from the others. Facial hair covered cheeks, protruded over lips, hid any hint of a jawline. It came down past his neck, past the hollow at the base of his throat. All that showed through that furry mess were half-crazed eyes, a grimy nose, and the inner rim of a cracked lower lip.

  He held his arms out slightly away from his body because the boils in his armpits hurt if he lowered them. He’d worn through his shoes a couple of months ago now and he favored his right foot because of a cut that oozed pus. Each night he’d press out the guck, but by morning it would be swollen again. It simply wouldn’t heal.

  And the itching. He’d dig his fingers through his matted hair and try to get at the source of it. He’d roll on the ground and scrape his back and chest to try to rid himself of it. Day and night. Itching.

  And there was all that water. Cool, cleansing water.

  He stared. The wild man stared back.

  Who had the crazier eyes?

  You cannot wash yourself, change your clothes, shave your beard, comb your hair.

  Was swimming washing himself?

  No, swimming was swimming. It wasn’t washing.

  Except if he went swimming in order to get rid of some of this filth, then it was washing. And that’s exactly how he had cleaned himself during his nine months of poverty before the devil came to him. He’d bathed in the rivers. So swimming was washing.

  Or was it?

  Don Giovanni turned his back and took a few steps away through the crackling grasses. The ghastly heat made the air waver. It carried his stinking sweat like a cloud. All he could smell was his own decay.

  If he didn’t think about washing, if he just kept his mind focused on swimming, then that’s all he’d be doing. Swimming.

  He turned back around and waded into the water up to his calves.

  Cani didn’t need further encouragement. He splashed past Don Giovanni gleefully and paddled out to the center of the lake, disrupting the peace of the mallard family. They took to the air in noisy quacks and came down again at the far tip of the lake.

  Don Giovanni stopped. He felt beyond time, as though floating in some place that didn’t exist. He looked around, taking in the details in this windless moment. Secrets hid in the details.

  Klu-kluklu-kluee. An eagl
e rose from a tree on the other side of the lake. Don Giovanni had seen pairs of these brown birds before, but they’d been silent. Something had disturbed the bird. Something was still disturbing that bird. He soared in a wide circle, crying. Birds of prey were harbingers of bad news. But the eagle was the symbol of Palermo, of the strength of Sicily. A double message. How to make sense out of it?

  Cani turned abruptly in the water and let out a growl.

  Instantly Don Giovanni jumped out of the water.

  Swimming would have cleaned him. He knew that. He knew it, he knew it, he knew it. No matter whether he managed to control his brain so that he thought only of swimming, he knew. That’s what counted.

  He trembled. How close he’d come to the precipice.

  “Trickster!” he screamed.

  The devil appeared beside him, as pristine and handsome as ever. “Do you really believe it’s necessary to scream? I hear your thoughts . . . beggar.”

  The eagle was still crying. And Cani’s growls grew louder as the dog swam fast toward his owner.

  “Do all animals hate you?”

  “One eagle and your groveling dog, and you jump to the conclusion that all animals hate me.” The devil lifted his chin. “You really have become provincial quickly, haven’t you?”

  “You didn’t deny it. So they do. Every animal knows you’re filth.”

  “Filth? Oh, nothing could be sweeter than hearing you, of all people, call someone else filth.” The devil hissed in his ear, “Stupid beggar, people are animals and people don’t all hate me. You have no idea how many are drawn to me. But you will.” And he disappeared just as Cani came out of the water.

  Don Giovanni sat on the shore, one leg bent, cradling his sore foot, and cried. Never had he been more grateful. The wager was still to be won. It had to be won. He couldn’t go through all this only to lose.