I shouldn’t be sitting here, I told myself—no, I certainly shouldn’t be sitting here. Nor should my Auntie Poldi, of course, but in her case this series of misunderstandings could justifiably be regarded as an occupational hazard. I, on the other hand, was merely the chronicler of her escapades and investigations. I was the nerdy author of a halfbaked family saga, the untalented nephew devoid of a girlfriend or profession. What was the point of slicing me in half? Needless to say, though, this cut no ice with Handsome Antonio. To him, we were both in the same boat.
The unproductive to and fro between my aunt and Handsome Antonio had bred a certain irascibility on both sides—one that was steadily eroding my hopes of a favourable outcome for the situation, which were in fact nearing zero. However, all of Antonio’s threats seemed to trickle off my Auntie Poldi like beads of condensation off a freshly pulled tankard of beer. This was because, unlike me, she had the knack for switching to a belligerent mode that in-oculated her against all kinds of everyday tribulations and fears of failure and the future. Admittedly, she could have looked better. Squinting sideways at her, I saw that her camouflage- pattern trouser suit was torn in several places. Her Nefertiti makeup was smudged after our strenuous crawl through the undergrowth, and a small graze was reddening on her forehead. She was still wearing her wig, but this had also suffered quite a bit on our trek; it was dishevelled and partially disintegrating. Although she didn’t look her sixty years as a rule, your age tends to show when you’re tied to a chair with your wig mussed up and your mascara smudged. That makes it hard to preserve a bella figura. I felt momentarily relieved that Vito Montana couldn’t see her in that state, although Montana’s presence would have signalled a welcome turn of events. Why? Because it was true to say that my Auntie Poldi and I were in a really tight spot.
“Go on, Poldi, tell him!” I hissed.
“I’m not telling him a thing, the jerk!”
Handsome Antonio now changed his interrogation tactic: he gave up on Poldi and applied the cleaver to my throat instead.
“Poldi!” I whimpered.
“Take it easy, my boy! If I tell him, he’ll kill us anyway, you know that, don’t you, so calm down, you hear? I know his sort. He’s a typical leone di cancello, a textbook example of a paper tiger. Big mouth but no balls. Besides, Death hasn’t turned up with his clipboard yet, so relax.”
“WHERE. IS. IT?”
“I’venoideaI’mjustthechauffeur!” I gasped in bad Italian.
“And a right wimp into the bargain!” said Poldi.
“Poldi, he’s going to kill me!”
“Easy, sonny. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
I was nearing the end of my tether.
“WHERE IS IT?”
“I DON’T KNOW,” Poldi snapped, “AND THAT’S THAT! BASTA!”
“I DON’T KNOW EITHER,” I moaned, “I SWEAR!”
“I’M GOING TO KILL THE BOTH OF YOU, STARTING WITH YOU!”
“NO, I DON’T WANT TO DIE, NOT YET!”
We were all yelling fit to bust, I squeaking in mortal terror, Poldi barking like a drill sergeant and Handsome Antonio bellowing like a maddened bull. He brandished the cleaver in my face and uttered obscene oaths involving genitalia, the Mother of God and unappetising sexual practices. And, as he rampaged around in front of us, I saw something that finally robbed me of speech: my Auntie Poldi had taken on that look again. I refer to the slightly dreamy expression she assumed whenever she sighted a handsome traffic cop. Hard to grasp though I found it, she had taken a shine to Handsome Antonio.
Now it has to be said that Handsome Antonio was not undeserving of his sobriquet. He was an exceptionally handsome young man, even by Italian standards. The fine rib vest he wore over his jeans accentuated his muscular but not overly hairy chest, and his physiognomy, which would have captivated any Renaissance painter, could have been described as classical. His was a sensual face unblemished by any sign of mental acuity, and there was a hint of melancholy in his eyes whenever they weren’t, as they were at this moment, blazing with histrionic rage. Even so, Handsome Antonio radiated a kind of—how shall I put it?—animal grace. More suited to the movies than the Mafia, he looked just the way I envisioned Barnaba, the hero of my halfbaked family saga.
Animal grace notwithstanding, however, Antonio was still waving his cleaver in my face, and I was getting sick of it. I was sick of his ravings, sick of the hullabaloo, sick of anticipating sudden death and sick—above all—of my Auntie Poldi’s salacious expression. It irked me that her mind dwelt on one thing only—that she never passed up an opportunity to flirt. So Handsome Antonio was sick of messing around? Benissimo, so was I!
“That’s enough!” I yelled. “Basta! Shut up! Pipe down, the two of you!”
Miraculously enough, silence fell at once.
Poldi stared at me in alarm. “What is it, my boy? Feeling all right?”
Struggling to regain my composure, I cobbled together my best Italian. “Look, let’s find a solution to this problem that satisfies everyone, okay?”
“Like what?” Poldi said in German. “I’d be interested to know.”
“Like some way of getting out of here alive.”
“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, sonny. Leave this to—”
“Shut up!” I turned to Handsome Antonio, who seemed to find the German language likely to provoke a fresh outburst, and I said in Italian, “On certain conditions, my aunt would be prepared to tell you where it is.”
“Well I’ll be buggered! You’ve got a nerve!”
“Shut it, Poldi.”
“Hey, I’m still your aunt. I deserve some respect.”
Handsome Antonio held the blade to my throat again. “Fuck your conditions,” he snarled. “Where is it?”
“It’ll do you no good to kill us.”
“I’ll just kill you, then—very slowly. Your aunt’ll spill the beans all right if I cut you into strips.”
“You’ve seen what she’s like. You honestly think that’d impress her?”
Handsome Antonio thought for a moment, a process that briefly crimped his harmonious features.
“Yes, I do.”
“I ought to mention,” I said, lowering my voice, “that she isn’t quite, well, all there. Know what I mean?”
“Whisperers are liars!” my aunt interjected loudly.
“She’s gaga,” I went on in an undertone. “Age, booze. I know her. She lives in cloud-cuckoo-land. Even if she told you something, you could never rely on it. It’d confuse her even more if you killed me. I’m the only one who can get her to talk.”
“You’re just her effing chauffeur.”
“I’m her nephew and chronicler, chauffeur and booze destroyer, spiritual adviser and scapegoat, millstone and manager.”
“Eh, what’s that? Are you crazy?”
I did my best to ignore Poldi and looked Antonio straight in the eye. “It’s up to you, Don Antonio.”
Handsome Antonio’s face clouded over again. He even knit his brow in thought and paced up and down for a bit.
“Not bad, sonny, not bad at all,” Poldi whispered in German. “You’ve obviously picked up some of my know-how. I told you, where there’s a will, there’s always a way.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” I said offhand. But, secretly quite pleased with myself, I thought, Yeah! Bingo! You cracked it! You’re a cool dude, a wizard at empathetic negotiation.
Handsome Antonio stared at us both with the huge blade dangling at his side. He was looking quite calm and relaxed.
“You’re just jerking me around,” he said wearily. You really don’t know where it is.” He pointed the cleaver at my aunt. “All right, shut your eyes.”
And he took a big swing.
I always wake up at this point. It’s like a bad film in which the protagonist has to overcome some trauma before he can save the world, his family, his dog and the USA—they always belong together somehow. We don’t have to do all that, fortunately; we simply wake u
p from a nightmare and are happy to be still alive. Then I go down to the kitchen, drink a glass of water, take the first coffee of the day up to the roof terrace and feast my eyes on Etna and the sea. That has been my routine for the past few weeks. It’s now the end of March, and I have to admit that, in the interim, my dream gave my role in the above predicament a rather more heroic character than it actually possesses.
I’ve been living on my own at No. 29 Via Baronessa since the beginning of the month. I’ve scoured the winter mildew from the corners and whitewashed the walls. I carry out minor repairs in the house, go shopping, water the plants, put out the rubbish, chat with Signora Anzalone from next door and patronise Signor Bussacca’s tabacchi, because I’ve recently taken up smoking. At nine every morning I consume a granita mandorla caffè and a brioche in sad Signora Cocuzza’s café bar. Sometimes I visit the aunts or hang out with my cousin Ciro. The rest of the time I write—or rather, spend the day typing a succession of sentences which I usually delete in the evening. I’m busy, in a manner of speaking.
But first things first.
At the end of October, Poldi, who had become quite the amateur detective since she retired to Sicily from Germany, had just solved the Avola case. And that was when John appeared at the door like a ghost from the past. To be more precise, John Owenya, Poldi’s Tanzanian husband.
My Auntie Poldi had seldom told me anything about her Tanzania episode. As soon as it was mentioned she promptly changed the subject, and she could become quite grumpy if anyone harped on it. As a result, the wildest rumours circulated in the family. My cousin Marco long persisted in claiming that Poldi had joined a Masai tribe and had returned only because of its teetotalism—a theory she never explicitly denied. My Aunt Luisa expressed the view that “Tanzania” was merely a code word for Poldi’s spell in a rehab centre. Uncle Martino is still firmly convinced that Poldi was working for the CIA during that period and was on the point of uncovering the occult secret of the Knights Templar, a mission that would logically have brought her to Sicily, where they had long been based. I sometimes think Martino’s theory came closest to the truth.
All that was known for a fact was that three years before her move to Sicily, Poldi had bought a house on the outskirts of Arusha, a Tanzanian town at the foot of Kilimanjaro. Masai country. Why Tanzania, nobody knew, but at that time even my Aunts Teresa, Caterina and Luisa had little contact with Poldi. She returned to Munich less than six months later, relieved of all her savings and so sick at heart that she had to get drunk every night—which, as everyone knows, has bad long-term effects on one’s health. Poldi had always been fond of lifting her elbow, but I imagine that this was when she formed the plan to drink herself to death. The following year, both her parents died in quick succession, leaving her their small house in Augsburg. Poldi promptly sold it and used the proceeds to move to Sicily on her sixtieth birthday, intending to enhance her alcoholic suicide with a view of the sea.
We naturally suspected that there must be a man behind the Tanzania episode, and that it was there that Poldi’s heart had been so thoroughly broken. We also surmised that she had probably been cheated out of her house there. When Poldi told me about it by degrees later on, however, the truth was more outrageous than I could have imagined.
I hadn’t been back to Sicily for over three months—an eternity, and I was still feeling miffed because her husband’s sudden appearance had virtually uninvited me until further notice. John had moved into my attic room with the dampstained walls and the stuffy, windowless bathroom. Poldi had merely told me to bide my time until she had “settled a few things.” It was Aunt Teresa who had first told me about John, but even she had shrouded the precise circumstances of his visit in silence. It wasn’t that the aunts uninvited me, but they no longer suggested that I fly to Sicily and look after Poldi for one week a month, and, well, I had my pride. Sicilianità demanded it.
Feeling offended, I got my job back at the call centre and didn’t write a single word of my family saga the whole time, though there were other reasons for that. Total silence prevailed for weeks. Not a single phone call—not even a text.
From November onwards, though, I was preoccupied with other things that kept me relatively busy and steered my thoughts in a quite different direction. I spent Christmas at my parents’ place. January got off to a stormy start, unpleasant and really cold.
Early in February my Auntie Poldi called me in the middle of the night and genially invited me back as if nothing had happened. More precisely, she ordered me back to Sicily, having already booked my flight.
“And mind you, don’t forget your driving licence, okay?”
“Are you feeling all right, Poldi?” I retorted rather sniffily. “You think I’ve got nothing better to do? You think you only have call me when I haven’t heard a word from you in three months—three months? You think I’ll shout hurrah and hop on a plane at the drop of a hat? No way!”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning forget it, Poldi. I’m busy!”
She collected me from Catania Airport the next day. No one can say I’m not consistent.
“God Almighty, you look terrible!” were her first words, and who wouldn’t welcome such a greeting? “Been fighting?”
She was alluding to the bandage on my broken, swollen, green-blue nose.
I harrumphed sheepishly. “I’d sooner not talk about it, okay?”
“That novel of yours will never come to anything if you don’t get over your eternal bashfulness, take it from me. My dear friend and mentor, Simone de Beauvoir, once told me that anyone with pretensions to being a novelist must drop their pants. Make a note of that.”
“I’ve got my little secrets, that’s all.”
“For God’s sake, drop your pants!”
I sighed. “All right, I’ll make it short. Two days ago I’m buying a currant bun in a bakery when I spot someone walking past out of the corner of my eye. We were at uni together.”
“A real hottie who always ignored you,” Poldi broke in, “or a nice girl who kept giving you the eye and you were too uptight to speak to her?”
“Does that matter, Poldi? Anyway, I catch sight of her and think, hey, maybe she’s got time for a coffee. So I grab my currant bun and dash out of the bakery. And—wham!—I run full tilt into this plate glass door. It’s suddenly there out of the blue, freshly washed but clean no longer, and all I can see is stars, and my nose is bleeding like a stuck pig.”
“And the hottie?”
I shrugged.
“Then it wasn’t meant to happen. Still, it suits you somehow, the broken nose—it looks tough, and I know what I’m talking about.”
“If you say so.”
Poldi was in a hurry. She strode swiftly off to the car park, homed in on a red sports car and opened the driver’s door.
I mean, a genuine sports convertible! An old Maserati Cabrio from the eighties. A Biturbo Spyder, six cylinders, 230 horsepower, with cream leather upholstery, an immaculate paint job and a white hood.
“Where did you get it?” I asked delightedly.
“Don’t ask. Did you remember your driving licence?”
“Yes, of course. Why?”
She tossed me the car keys. “Because.”
This was something entirely new. Poldi isn’t the passenger type; she prefers to be in the driving seat.
“Oh!” I exclaimed. “To what do I owe the honour?”
“I’ll explain in due course,” she said irritably, and squeezed, swearing, into the passenger seat.
She slammed a prehistoric cassette of eighties pop songs into the slot, turned the volume up full, and we were assaulted by “Africa,” “Down Under,” “It’s Raining Men,” “Eye of the Tiger,” “Gloria,” and “Like a Virgin.” Poldi sang along with all of them. When we got to Spliff’s idiotic “Carbonara,” I eventually cracked and joined in.
Spaghetti carbonara—e una Coca-Cola!
Carbonara—e una Coca-Cola!
Built
in the year of my birth, that Maserati was just a joke compared to the average sports car of today. But it had charisma. I enjoyed roaring round the orbital motorway in the direction of Torre Archirafi, the sound of the six-cylinder engine, the crash of the gears, the bone-hard steering. I felt like a pop star in an eighties music video. All that irked me was Poldi, who kept alternately flooring an imaginary brake pedal and urging me not to dawdle.
“Have you gone senile or something? Step on the gas, sonny! This car is like a racehorse—it wants to race! Race, not trot, understand? Okay, so burn some rubber!”
She surprised me by instructing me to take the motorway exit at Acireale, not Giarre, and directed me onto the secondary road at the Bellavista Bar.
“I know the way,” I grumbled.
“We aren’t going to Torre,” she said.
“Where, then?”
“Femminamorta.”
My heart skipped a beat with excitement. At long last, I was going to be introduced to Poldi’s secret paradise, and to Valérie, Poldi’s friend and Femminamorta’s ethereal, preternaturally beautiful, utterly sexy chatelaine.
Poldi, who seemed to have read my mind, looked at me askance. “No need to grin in that goofy way. Valérie isn’t there. She’s visiting her family in France.”
“So why are we going there?” I said, disappointed.
Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna Page 28
