The Brewer of Preston (7 page)

Giosuè Zito's wife, Signora Filippa, sat in serene bliss. Having been born deaf, she heard none of what was being said either in the pit or onstage. For her, everything was unfolding in angelic harmony. At the sight of the giant soprano, however, her curiosity was aroused.

“Giosuè, who's that?”

Upon Effy's entry onto the stage, Giosuè Zito, for his part, had felt alarmed.

They're not playing straight
, he thought.
There's something fishy going on here. That's not a woman. That's a man.

“That's George, the twin brother!” he replied with conviction, and, naturally, he had to shout it for his wife to hear him.

Laughter broke out again, even though Giosuè Zito's contribution to the opera's downfall had been completely unintended.

Apparently panic-stricken by everything that was happening in the audience and by what she had managed to hear while getting ready to enter the stage, the soprano playing the part of Effy displayed, in her face, eyes, and convulsive hand-wringing, and in the jerky movements of her considerable bulk, the exact opposite of what she was supposed to express: joy over her imminent marriage. At the maestro's imperious gesture, she began singing in a voice that was like an oil lamp with no wick:

“I too know a bit of the art

of sweet words and coy smiles,

and can win a man's heart

with glances and other wiles:

thousands of lovers and suitors

I've seen swoon over me . . .”

At this point the voice of Lollò Sciacchitano was again heard from the gallery.

“Hey, Sciavè, would you ever swoon over a cow like that?”

Sciaverio's reply boomed stentorian:

“Not even after thirty years of hard labor, Lollò!”

Dr. Gammacurta felt sorry for the woman onstage, who bravely kept on singing. He felt that it wasn't right. The poor woman was trying to earn her living and had nothing to do with the Vigatese, the Montelusans, and that shit of a prefect.

“I'm going to go see how Cavaliere Mistretta is doing,” he said to his wife. And he got up from his seat, made the four people blocking his path to the aisle stand up, then headed towards the lobby.

“L
adies and, so to speak, gentlemen. It was suggested to my wife, Concetta, that I should give a lecture on Luigi Ricci, the composer of the opera
The Brewer of Preston
, which will be performed several days hence in Vigàta's new theatre, the pride and glory of that delightful town. And I have to give this lecture, like it or not, because I can never deny my wife anything. Anything at all, believe me. Why, you may ask?”

He heaved a sort of sob, extracted a red-checked handkerchief, bobbed his head back and forth several times as if to ask for the compassion of those present, blew his nose with a powerful blast, put the handkerchief back into the pocket of his coat and tails, and, with a bitter smile on his face, resumed speaking.

“My mother used to ask me, over and over: ‘Could you please explain to me how you got it into your head to marry that girl? Concetta is thirty years younger than you. Ten years after your marriage, you'll already be sixty, while she'll still be only thirty. To keep her from running away and to keep the family in peace, you'll have to become worse than a servant, ready to bend over backwards for her every slightest whim.' How right the good woman was, God rest her soul! Her words were the Gospel truth. To give you an example: I knew nothing about this Luigi Ricci, and I truly didn't give a damn about him or his music, if you'll excuse my saying so. At any rate, there aren't many things that appeal to me anymore. But it was hopeless. You
have
to give this lecture, the wife commanded, or else . . . And don't I know what ‘or else' means! But, enough, let's forget about that. And where did my wife get this idea? You all know that Concetta is a close friend of the wife of His Excellency, the prefect Bortuzzi. Do you see the problem now? Is it clear? This is why I am now standing in front of you like a jackass.”

Sitting in the front row beside the prefect's gilded chair, which was luckily absent the latter's august form owing to some unexpected and unavoidable tasks of governance, Don Memè Ferraguto had been feeling lost for the past several minutes, ever since, in fact, the speaker had begun talking. Indeed he felt more lost than he ever had in his life, though he had never lacked occasions for feeling that way. For it was he who had had the brilliant idea to tell the prefect that his own wife, Luigia, known to intimates as Giagia, should speak to Signora Concetta, wife of
dottor
Carnazza, headmaster of the grammar school of Fela. Friends he had asked for advice on the matter had recommended Carnazza as the most refined of musical connoisseurs, without, however, mentioning—the bastards—that the headmaster was also, indeed perhaps to a greater degree, the most refined of wine connoisseurs. And to think that His Excellency himself had warned him of this.

“Are you sure we han hount on this Harnazza?”

“Of course, Your Excellency. Why do you ask?”

“Because my spouse told me that Signora Harnazza honfided to her that the headmaster goes at it rather often.”

“Goes at what, Your Excellency?”

“What the hell do you think he goes at, Ferraguto? He goes at the bottle, and when he does, he talks rubbish.”

“Don't you worry, Excellency. I'll keep after him like his own shadow. I won't even let him drink water.”

And there he was now, in front of everyone, drunk as a skunk. Never mind talking too much—he was speaking in tongues like the Sybil of Cumae. No doubt he had knocked back one of the bottles he kept hidden in the large pockets of the overcoat he put on before leaving home, and had done it when he'd asked for permission to go to the restroom a few minutes before beginning his lecture. Chock-full of wine as he always had to be, a mere whiff of the cork had been enough to set him off.

“And then and then and then . . . this Luigi Ricci was born one fine day in Naples, one
hot
day, actually, since he was born in the month of July, in 1805. And as if the misfortunes the Neapolitans are customarily subjected to weren't enough, four years later his brother Federico was also born, soon to become a composer as well.

“But there's something important that needs to be said, so please pay attention—Jesus Christ! Why are you laughing? If you carry on I'll throw you straight out of the classroom, understand? So. The father of the two boys was one Pietro Ricci, who was not, however, Neapolitan but Florentine by birth, if you know what I mean—just like a certain person we all know—and he played the piano the way everyone plays piano these days, like my wife, for instance. A dime a dozen, know what I mean? But since my dear wife is pretty, everyone always tells her she plays like an angel, whereas, as far as I know, angels play winds and brass, never the piano. Speaking of which, is there anyone present who could sell me a used but good piano? The one my wife made me buy got smashed up when we moved house from Bìcari, where I taught Latin, to Fela. Not a particularly fancy piano, mind you, just so long as it plays, or can play what she's going to play on it . . . Now, where was I? Where the hell was I? Ah, yes, I was talking about Luigi Ricci. Well, he studied music and started composing. The first crap he wrote—oh, I'm sorry, that just slipped out—anyway, his first compositions, for whatever reason, were very successful. Theatres all over Italy wanted him, from Rome to Naples to Parma to Turin to Milan. And, since he couldn't manage to keep up with all the music they were asking him to write, he started copying stuff wherever he could find it, the way some of my pupils do. There's one, in fact, who seems to take his lessons from the devil himself. You know what he does, when I give them Latin dictation? He goes . . . Where does he go? But what's this got to do with anything? Ah, yes, Luigi Ricci. Anyway, the applause kept coming for Ricci, and he wasted no time; he wrote and copied and slept with all the sopranos who came within his grasp. In Trieste he made the acquaintance of three Bohemian women—no, actually, that makes them sound like they were made of glass, or crystal; in fact it would be better to say
from
Bohemia—so, these three women from Bohemia were sisters, their family name was Stolz, and individually they were Ludmilla, Francesca, and Teresa. The last one, Teresa, was the same angelic soprano—in this case
truly
angelic—known for interpreting the operas of Verdi, the swan of Busseto. And apparently this Teresa would fairly often turn into Leda for the swan. Ha ha ha! Get it? Why aren't you laughing? Don't you know the story of Leda and the swan? No? Well, I'm not going to tell it to you, if you're that ignorant. Anyway, to go on—actually, to go backwards—Luigi Ricci started dipping his biscuit with Ludmilla and Francesca. And apparently he was dipping with Teresa, too, but only when the other two cups weren't within reach. Heh, heh. Between Ludmilla and Francesca, little Luigi didn't know which one to choose. He would lie awake at night, between the two women, eaten alive by doubt, and so, in order not to offend either of them, he would be fair and lend his services to both. In the end he married Ludmilla and had a son with Francesca. These sorts of things happen. You don't believe it? I swear to you that the exact same thing happened once, the exact same way, to a friend of mine, whom I see seated here, in the audience, next to his worthy wife. He had two women, he told me once in confidence; and with the one, he talked, and with the other, he did you-know-what. Then he had a daughter with the one he talked to. So, my question is: With what did my friend do his talking?”

Patanè the broker, sitting in the fourth row, recognized himself at once in the words of Headmaster Carnazza and had such a fright that he felt like he had been punched in the stomach. He doubled over.

“What's wrong? Do you feel sick?” asked his wife, worried.

“It's nothing, nothing. A little acid, that's all. The suckling goat didn't agree with me,” the broker replied, wishing that an earthquake, waterspout, or some other sort of natural disaster would stop Carnazza from continuing his talk. But the wine in the headmaster's veins and head kept following an unpredictable course. In the end, Carnazza did not name his friend.

“Begging your pardon, I shall pick up Ariadne's thread again—or, actually, the thread of the subject, if you will, which is the same thing. Yes indeed. Ariadne's thread, which leads one back to the subject, is made up of conjunctions. Have you ever noticed? If you can grab a hold of one and then follow the others that come after, you'll find your way out of the labyrinth. So, Ricci. Luigi Ricci, after all this, died a few years ago, and in Prague, no less. He made trouble everywhere he went. With a little help from his brother, perhaps. Which brings us to
The
Brewer of Preston
. It was first performed in Florence, in 1847. So here we are again. In Florence. Get my point? You can see how it all makes sense. Luigi's father is Florentine, the first performance is Florentine, and you-know-who—who happens to govern us—is Florentine. I believe that the man who wrote the libretto, a certain Francesco Guidi, copied it from a French author, one Adolf Adam, who in 1838 had staged a comic opera at—where else?—the Opéra Comique . . . Wait a minute, I've lost my train of thought. So, Guidi copies an opera by Adam in French but with the same title. Enough said. And at this point it seems to me we're talking about copying like there's no tomorrow, copying lyrics, copying music . . . I'd like to develop a concept here. I need to go to the bathroom; my belly feels like it's been turned upside down.”

He went out staggering as if he was on rough seas, rolling one minute, pitching the next. Don Memè then made a desperate decision:
I'm going to go after him
, he thought,
follow him into the lavatory
,
and the moment he sits down on the pot
,
I'll bash him in the head with the butt of my pistol and leave him there for dead
. As he was getting up to do this, he suddenly found the Marchese Coniglio della Favara planted in front of him.

“Thanks, Don Memè,” the marchese said with a grin. “I didn't know you were on our side, in spite of everything.”