Hunting Season: A Novel (16 page)

The tally ended up amounting to two Masses a week for each of the two marchesi, and one weekly Mass each for Donna Matilde and her son, said Masses to be held, of course, over the thirty-six-month period. In addition there were certain offerings to be made to charitable institutions such as the Pauper’s Table and the Orphans of Saint Theresa and so on. The total amount of these offerings was to be disbursed in one single settlement to Monsignor Curtò, who would see to their fair distribution. When all was said and done, an arm and a leg. The banns would be published, in church and at city hall, when the thirty-six months were over.

“But, where I come from, thirty-six months means three years!” Nenè snapped, when he was told the conditions imposed by the bishop.

“Where I come from, too,” said Father Macaluso. “But think about it for a minute. First of all, it means three years starting from the last death—that is, the marchese’s. Well, a good eight months have passed since that sad day. Which means that you must wait two years and four months. Got that? All it takes is a little patience. You, in the meantime, should set yourself up in Vigàta, go calmly about your business, and get to know ’Ntontò a little better. You can even continue your studies of mathematics here.”

“They haven’t got the proper equipment here,” said Impiduglia. Then he added: “And where’s all the money for the Masses and offerings going to come from?”

It came from ’Ntontò. After all, the dead were hers.

Signora Clelia, moreover, did her part to help Nenè Impiduglia pass the time during his long wait. She had him rent a small flat that had just been vacated across the landing from her own apartment.

In the two years that followed, two things happened.

First, one Sunday, when he was eating at the home of his fiancée, Nenè Impiduglia stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence, turned pale, and dropped his face slowly into his soup. Brought to the provincial capital for an examination, he was found to be diabetic.

The second thing that happened was that ’Ntontò had a white border sewn onto the hems of her blouses and skirts, a sign that a ray of light was beginning to shine through the blackness.

6

W
ith only three months to go before the banns were published, Nenè Impiduglia was like a castaway at sea who, breathing his last breaths, could finally see land. And at that moment, the steamship
Pannonia
, the most luxurious of the “Sicilian and International Line,” having sailed from New York, docked at the port of Palermo. Among the many passengers to disembark was a gentleman of about fifty who spoke pure Sicilian and had an American wife. With a great load of luggage in train, he took a suite at the Hotel des Palmes, where only the rich went to stay. For the time being, not a soul knew of his arrival, which would upset not only Nenè Impiduglia’s plans, but the entire town of Vigàta.

They were talking about what sort of wedding it should be, which people to invite, and whether it should be a great celebration or only a family affair, when Peppinella came in with an envelope in her hand.

“This just arrived on the
Franceschiello
; it was sent from Palermo.”

The arrival of a letter was an unusual event, and ’Ntontò wasted no time opening it. Upon reading it, she only had time to cry, “Zio Totò!” before fainting. As Nenè busied himself trying to revive her, he asked himself, “Who the hell is Zio Totò?”

“Any story worthy of respect (and which respects itself first and foremost, before demanding the respect of others) always begins twenty years earlier,” Barone Uccello said at the Circolo, immediately falling speechless in shock, for never had he uttered words so rich and profound. Taking comfort, he resumed his tale.

Salvatore Maria Peluso di Torre Venerina was a year younger than his brother, Don Filippo. But the distance between the two, in their ways of thinking and living, was greater than that separating the earth and the moon. Don Filippo was a jocund spirit, always laughing and enjoying life to the fullest, always drinking, eating, and chasing women. Don Salvatore instead spent his life in the company of books, to the point that he had even started wearing eyeglasses. When they were growing up, a day never passed without them coming to blows over the silliest trifles. Later the arguments between Don Filippo and Don Totò became more serious, even if they no longer raised their fists. The new cause for squabbling was politics: Don Totò being a Bourbon royalist and Don Filippo a firm supporter of Italian unity. By the end of 1860, Don Totò disappeared from Vigàta.

“He’s gone to Calabria, to be with the bandits,” Don Filippo used to say. And by calling the thirty thousand rebels in those parts “bandits,” he was subscribing to the hasty, vague definition given them by the Piedmontese. Then, in one way or another, it came to be known that Don Totò had placed himself under the command of General Borjes, the Spaniard sent to lead the Bourbon troops. When Borjes and his general staff were shot at Tagliacozzo without a trial, the name of Salvatore Peluso did not figure among those executed by the Bersaglieri. Through indirect channels, Don Filippo came to learn that his brother had managed to escape to America. And since that time he had no more news of him. Finally, after some ten years had passed, he believed him dead.

Instead he was alive and kicking and ready to set foot back in Vigàta. Rumors about town told that he was so rich that if he loaded all his money onto the
Franceschiello
, the steamboat would sink straight down from all the weight. They also said that Don Totò’s ’Merican wife was called Harriet and had the look and bearing of a wife, and that they had brought with them a secretary named Petru, a Calabrian by birth and a friend of Don Totò’s since the days when they fought together with the bandits, as well as an elderly woman as black as night who went by the name of Nettie and was a sort of cook and maid.

On the day long awaited by all, four carriages pulled up in front of the great open door of Palazzo Peluso. All of Vigàta was at their windows or in the piazza, looking on. It was like the patron saint’s feast day.

Out of the first carriage stepped Don Totò, tall, erect, and bespectacled, his face so marked by wrinkles and scars that it looked like a sea chart, and Signora Harriet, a sort of beanpole with no tits or hips and sallow skin. From the second coach emerged Petru, he, too, about fifty years old, small of stature and thin, looking around, his little head turning left and right like a ferret’s. Out of the third carriage stepped the black maid, fat and old and with two eyes so big they looked like portholes on a steamship. Little children began to cry at the sight of her. The last carriage was full of luggage, which Mimì and Peppinella hoisted onto their shoulders and carried inside. Then the great door shut behind them, and the celebration, for the moment, was over.

Zio Totò spared his niece the task of recounting the family’s misfortunes. For reasons unclear, he already knew everything, even about the baby his brother had sired with Trisina.

“Tomorrow we shall all go to the cemetery to see them,” said ’Ntontò.

“Why?” asked Zio Totò, looking at her in astonishment. “The dead are dead, after all.”

Then, after a pause, he continued: “Have you still got Curcunella?”

’Ntontò sprang to her feet, left the room, and returned with a doll, a baby doll her uncle had given her when she wasn’t yet three years old. Curcunella was the name they had given her, and she had remained a secret between them.

“Here she is.”

Don Totò took the doll into his hands, while ’Ntontò, who until that moment had managed to hold back, broke out in tears.

“Come here,” said her uncle.

He sat her down beside him on the sofa, put an arm around her shoulders, and ’Ntontò quite naturally laid her head on his chest.

But then the door suddenly flew open. It was Peppinella, trembling and shouting:

“I won’t work in the same kitchen as that black thing!”

’Ntontò quickly found a solution.

“Let’s do this: you cook in the other kitchen for yourself and Mimì, and Nettie will cook for the rest of us.”

“And what about tonight?”

“What you mean, ‘tonight’?”

“I mean that that black thing has put her baggage in the room next to ours.”

“But what are you afraid of? Haven’t you got Mimì sleeping beside you?”

“Mimì don’t like the look of this, either.”

Nettie, the “black thing,” was asked to move her luggage upstairs. She would sleep in the masters’ wing.

That afternoon, Barone Uccello asked if he could pay a call. He and Don Totò threw themselves into each other’s arms, and then immediately locked themselves in the little room where the late Don Filippo had his office. Totò offered the baron a cigar as big as a stovepipe.

“So why did you let us think you were dead?”

“That wasn’t me. It was my brother who became convinced of it.”

“All right, but you went twenty whole years without giving any sign of life!”

“Well, for the first few years I couldn’t afford to send news. When I arrived in America with Petru, the war between the North and the South was on. I was on the side of the South, and took part in the Battle of Chattanooga. In fact our commander, General Lee, made me colonel. Then I met Harriet, whose father owned some cotton fields, and we got married. I have two children, a boy and a girl, named Federico and Matilde, like my father and mother. At the moment they’re with their grandmother, Harriet’s mother. Then I moved to a place called Texas and bought myself a well. And I made some money.”

“With a well?”

“An oil well, Barone, not a water well.”

“All right, but why, after the war, when you got married and made all that money, did you never drop me a line?”

“What would have been the use? I would have had to write a whole novel, and nobody would have believed it.”

“Will you be staying long in Vigàta?”

“A few months. Then I shall go back to America. But while I’ve got you here, I’d like to ask you something. ’Ntontò told me she’s engaged to a cousin I can’t remember, Nenè Impiduglia. Do you know him?”

“My children, who live in Palermo, know him well. They also know he’s made his share of mischief in his day.”

“Oh, really?”

“Really.”

And the baron told him what he had to tell him.