Hunting Season: A Novel (7 page)

That evening, as ’Ntontò and Don Filippo were eating the supper cooked up by the maid Peppinella and her husband Mimì, an ex-highwayman and convict taken into their home by the marchese’s father out of pure compassion, Don Filippo could not take his eyes off his daughter. The black of mourning became her; she looked like a sugar doll, plump as a quail with her generous haunches, long blond hair, rosy cheeks, and blue, somewhat crazed eyes.

But who does she take after?
the marchese wondered, himself being swarthy as a crow, as was Donna Matilde. He quickly dispelled the question, remembering his wife’s enigmatic smile.

“Has Mamma eaten?” ’Ntontò asked Peppinella.

“Not much, but she did eat,” replied the maid. Donna Matilde no longer wanted to leave her room for anything in the world.

Even her voice is beautiful
, thought the marchese. Then he addressed her directly:

“So, tell me, why don’t you want to get married? You’ve certainly had some good offers.”

“I don’t want to settle down just yet.”

“And when will you, my dear? Don’t forget, you’re almost twenty-five, and in these parts—”

“So now you suddenly want to play the patriarch?” ’Ntontò snapped. “After blithely shrugging it off your whole life?”

The marchese did not react, and they continued their meal in silence.

“That was a nice necklace you gave Mamma,” ’Ntontò said a few minutes later, to lift the pall that had fallen over them. “But why did you have them mount five pieces of lead in it?”

“I told her those were the bullets that killed Rico.”

“But Rico was killed by mushrooms!”

“I know, but I decided to prove her right in her obsession by telling her a lie.”

“But why?”

“Because now, you’ll see, she’ll calm down. She’ll stop screaming, and we’ll be able to sleep again at night.”

Instead, it was a night of horror. Flung sideways across the double bed, the marchese had been dead to the world for some two hours when something grazed his cheek. Thinking it was a
pelacchio
, one of those big flying cockroaches that during the hot Sicilian summers fill the air like flocks of swallows, he dealt himself a such a slap that it completely woke him up. Opening his eyes, Don Filippo saw, in the faint light of a small lamp he kept lit during the night, a white shape standing at the foot of the bed. The marchese was a superficial but temperamental man, and thus as prone to acts of heedless bravery as to others of repulsive cowardice. This night it was his chicken-hearted side that went into action. In a twinkling, and for no reason whatsoever, he became convinced that the white figure before him was Rico’s ghost. He became drenched in sweat.

“What do you want? What have I done to you?” he began imploring, kneeling in bed, hands folded: “Take pity on me!”

Seeing that the ghost wasn’t answering him, and remembering that these shades from the afterworld abhorred light, the marchese managed, after several attempts thwarted by the tremor in his hands, to light the oil lamp on his bedside table. Instead of disappearing, however, the shape acquired substance in the person of a barefoot Donna Matilde in her nightgown, hair loose, eyes glistening, all made up and looking twenty years younger than her age.

“I wanted to thank you,” said the marchesa, “for the present you took the trouble to bring me.”

She fell silent, as Don Filippo looked on, flummoxed at finding her so youthful as to enflame his desire. Then Donna Matilde continued:

“But it wasn’t only to thank you that I disturbed your sleep.”

“At your service,” said Don Filippo, and he made room for her beside him in the bed. In so doing, however, his mood darkened. How dare his wife enter the bedroom of someone who was a stranger to her, at night, and with unmistakable intentions to boot? But he was dead wrong as to her intentions.

“What I wanted to ask you, sir, was this: Do you know the name of the person who shot my son?”

“His name? I’m afraid not. It must have been someone who didn’t like him.”

“No one could ever dislike Rico.”

The marchese reflected that, if he gave her a name, any name at all, she would go quietly back to bed, and he could go back to sleep.

“All right. His name is Abdul. He’s an Arab who lives out Trapani way.”

“And why did he kill Rico?”

“He belongs to a sect of fanatics who kill twenty-two-year-old young men by the name of Federico who eat mushrooms.”

“Thank you. You’re very kind. Will you be staying with us?”

“Just a little while longer.”

“Then I’ll say goodbye, because I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“And where are you going, Marchesa?”

“Out Trapani way. And the minute I see him, I’m going to shoot that Arab. With this.”

All the while she had been keeping her right arm behind her back. Now that arm reached out towards the marchese. In her right hand Donna Matilde was gripping a large pistol tightly and aiming straight at him. At this point that other aspect of Don Filippo’s character, his temerity, came to the fore. Emitting a yell that would have frightened a wolf, the marchese leapt at his wife and seized the wrist of the hand holding the gun. They rolled about on the floor. A first shot was fired, shattering the lamp, spilling the oil onto the bed and setting the sheets ablaze. The two continued grappling, squawking and yelping as they struggled. The second shot went towards the door through which Mimì was entering at that exact moment. Recovering his former highwayman’s instincts, the manservant, judging from the report alone, was able to calculate the angle and distance, and stepped aside just enough to dodge the bullet. ’Ntontò and Peppinella also came running, and the two antagonists were finally separated.

“This man jumped on me, wanting to do lewd things to me, and pointed a gun at me,” said Donna Matilda, perfectly calm, and all in one breath.

“Me?! It was
you
who pointed the gun at
me
, you liar!”

“How dare you speak to me that way! I don’t even know you!”

’Ntontò and Peppinella led the marchesa away and locked her in her room, then rushed back to help Don Filippo and Mimì put out the spreading fire. It kept them busy until morning.

“Everything all right at home?” asked Barone Uccello.

“Yes, why do you ask?” shot back the marchese, who was losing his third game of the morning.

“Well, it’s just that people in town are chattering.”

“Saying what?”

“That late at night they heard two gunshots inside your house and saw flames through the slats of the shutters.”

“Why don’t people in this town sleep at night and peddle their own fish?”

“Dunno. They say there were two shots from a rifle . . . or maybe a pistol.”

“That was me,
carissimo
. I’d bought two firecrackers to set off on San Calorio’s day, but then I couldn’t do it because we were in mourning. So I tried them at home.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“Why, is there a specific time of day or night for setting off firecrackers at home?”

It was no use. The marchese sat at his desk, with ragioniere Gegè Papìa, administrator of the estate, beside him, putting papers in front of him to sign. And before writing each signature, Don Filippo sniffed his fingers. It was no use. He had washed his hands repeatedly, but the smell of Donna Matilde’s skin remained stuck to his hands, arms, all over. They had clung to each other too long during their struggle. Don Filippo signed the last document. The Pelusos were, in a sense, traitors to their class and wealth: they knew how to read and write, whereas the majority of other
Sicilian nobles customarily signed with an X. “He won’t sign because he’s noble,” they would say. Reading and writing were for miserable paper pushers and clerks. Papìa bowed and went out, leaving Don Filippo to sniff himself undisturbed.

After lightly knocking, ’Ntontò came in.

“Did you tell Papìa to pay for nonno’s and Rico’s funerals?” she asked. “Father Macaluso reminded me again this morning. Papìa never wants to give a cent to priests, not even at knifepoint.”

“Yes, I told him. The church will be paid this very day. But while you’re here, ’Ntontò, tell me something: Does Mamma still have the curse?”

’Ntontò immediately took offense.

“How can you make light of these things at a time like this? She’s in distress, not cursed!”

“You misunderstood me. I meant, does Mamma still have her periods?”

’Ntontò turned bright red.

“What kind of filth have you got in your head? Mamma stopped being a woman two years ago!”

She burst into tears and ran out of the room.

Don Filippo went back to smelling his hands.

It was a second straight night of hell. His wife’s scent had grown even stronger on his naked body, bringing back memories of nights twenty years earlier, when he and Donna Matilde had grappled together for more pleasant reasons. And the burnt smell lingering on the walls, moreover, made him cough, but he didn’t feel like getting up and going into another bedroom. He blamed his agitation on the intense heat that still prevailed, though it was late September. When, at last, he heard the church bells calling for morning Mass, he got dressed and slipped out with a light step, closing the great front door behind him without a sound.