Pescara Tales Read online

  ‘Don Giovà, do go and catch your breath!’

  It was the Areopagite, who now in his turn drew the beautiful one into the dance.

  He danced holding his left arm arced over his side, stamping his feet to the cadence, seeking to seem supple and light as a feather, but with graces so buffoonish and expressions so simian in their mobility, that around him uncontained laughter and mocking comments gathered in volume.

  ‘A penny to see this, folks!’

  ‘A bear from Poland, dancing like a Christian! Come see, gentlemen!’

  ‘Medlars for sale! Medlars for sale!’

  ‘O look, look! An orangutan!’

  Don Antonio boiled, but internally, with dignity, and he continued to dance.

  Around him other couples whirled, the hall had filled with every level of citizenry, in the heat and the fervour candles burned with rosy flames between festoons of myrtle, and all that multi-coloured agitation streamed by and was reflected in the wall mirrors.

  La Ciccarina, then the daughter of Montagna, then the daughter of Suriano, the Montanaro sisters, all in turn appeared and disappeared, on each occasion leaving in the crowd the momentary glow of their fresh-faced plebeian loveliness. Donna Teodolinda Pomàrici, tall and thin, dressed in blue satin like a Madonna, let herself be borne about the dance-floor in a somnolent transport, her hair in freed curls swaying on her shoulders; Costanzella Caffè, the most agile and indefatigable of dancers and the blondest, flew in an instant from one end of the floor to the other; Amalia Solofra, a byword for her flaming hair, was dressed as a rustic, and with unmatched audacity had fastened her silk bodice with a single ribbon wound about her from below one arm to join the other shoulder, and while dancing she occasionally displayed a dark stain at her armpits; Amalia Gagliano, a beauty with rheumy eyes, had come as a witch and resembled a vertical coffin walking. Every young woman was in the grip of a kind of inebriation, altered from their daily selves by the hot, dense air as if by a wine whose strength had been unsuspected. Around all, laurels and thyme combined their emanations into a singular odour, almost ecclesiastic.

  The music stopped. Now everyone ascended the stairs leading to the refreshment hall.

  Don Giovanni Ussorio came to invite Violetta to supper. The Areopagite, to show the measure of his intimacy with the singer, bent towards her and whispered something into her ear and laughed. Don Giovanni paid no attention to his rival.

  ‘Will you come, Countess?’ he asked with great ceremony, offering her his arm.

  Violetta accepted. The pair mounted the stairs slowly, Don Antonio trailing them.

  ‘I’ve fallen in love with you!’ Don Giovanni ventured, attempting to instil in his voice the tone of passion he had once heard employed by the Principal Young Lover of a dramatic company in Chieti.

  Violetta Kutufà made no response. She was watching with amusement the concourse of people gathering about Andreuccio’s counter, he distributing refreshments and shouting their price like a barker at a country fair. Andreuccio had a huge head, its pate lustrously polished, a nose that curved ponderously towards a projecting lower lip, and in general he resembled one of those great paper lanterns in the form of a comical human head. The revellers set to eating and drinking with the gusto of ravenous beasts, scattering flakes of sweet pastry and drops of wine over their costumes.

  Spotting Don Giovanni, Andreuccio shouted to him:

  ‘Sir, at your service!’

  Don Giovanni had much wealth and was a widower without near relations, so all flattered him and showed themselves ready to minister to him.

  ‘The makings of a modest supper, we have here…’ he addressed his guest, ‘Nevertheless…’

  And he made a sweeping gesture that implied the viands were in fact of excellent and rare quality.

  Violetta Kutufà sat herself down and with a languid movement removed the mask from her face and opened the domino a little over her breast. Still surrounded by the scarlet hood and animated by the warmth, her face appeared more captivating than ever. The gap that had opened in her domino revealed an edge of rosy underwear resembling living flesh.

  ‘Your health!’ Don Pompeo Nervi exclaimed in salutation, arriving at the laden table and taking a seat. His attention had been attracted by a platter of succulent lobsters.

  And next arrived to take their places, equally without ceremony, Don Tito De Sieri and Don Giustino Franco, followed by Don Pasquale Virgilio and Don Federico Sicoli. The group at the table continued to grow, and after much torturous passing and repassing, Don Antonio Brattella joined it as well. The majority there were Don Giovanni’s usually invited companions, who formed about him a kind of adulatory court, gave him their vote in the communal elections, laughed at his every facetious comment, and referred to him by the title il Principale.

  Having been introduced to Violetta Kutufà by Don Giovanni, the parasites launched into the food, bending voraciously over their plates. Any word, any sentence uttered by Don Antonio Brattella met a hostile silence. Every word, every sentence uttered by Don Giovanni was applauded with smiles of pleasure and nodding heads. Don Giovanni in the surroundings of his court triumphed. Violetta Kutufà attended the show benignly, for she had detected some time ago the chink of gold coins, and freeing herself from her hood, with her hair a little disordered at the front and back, she was pleased to contribute to the party her own by nature somewhat loud and puerile humour.

  All around them people moved, met and redeployed in a variety of formations: in the middle of the crowd three or four Harlequins scrambled about the floor on their hands and feet, rolling over periodically like great scarab beetles; Amalia Solofra, standing on a chair, her bare, raised arms red at the elbows, was shaking a tambourine, while beneath her, giving forth short yelps, a couple leapt about in a village dance, and a ring of youths looked up at her with excited eyes. From time to time from the lower hall rose the voice of Don Ferdinando Giordano, officiating with great bravura at the quadrille:

  ‘Face-to-face! Turn-with-hands! Round-your-left!’ calling out long-domesticated forms of the French commands: Balanzé! Turdemè! Rondagósce!

  The crowd at Violetta Kutufà’s table was not diminishing: Don Nereo Pica, Don Sebastiano Pica, Don Grisostomo Troilo, had arrived, all three again members of the Ussorio court; then came Don Cirillo d’Amelio, Don Camillo D’Angelo, Don Rocco Mattace. Many others, outsiders, could only stand about with fatuous expressions, watching the gathering eat. Women passed, burning with envy. From time to time an explosion of raucous laughter lifted from the table, and again and again a cork flew ceilingward and foaming wine spilled into glasses.

  Don Giovanni found pleasure in spraying the heads of his guests, especially the bald ones, a trick to make Violetta laugh. Under the snowy deluge the parasites lifted flushed faces and, while still chewing, smiled in the best of humour at their Principale. But Don Antonio Brattella took the spraying ill and made as if to leave. All the others raised a bass clamour that sounded like baying. Violetta said:

  ‘Do stay.’

  Don Antonio sat down again. Then he offered a toast, during which he took the opportunity to quote a pentasyllabic verse.

  Don Federico Sicoli, already half-intoxicated, followed that with a toast to the glory of Violetta and Don Giovanni, a loud declamation in which were heard references to ‘sacred wedding-tapers’ and to ‘happy Hymen’. He was a long, lean man of greenish-waxy complexion. He lived by composing epithalamiums and minor strophes in honour of the saints as their days followed one another in onomastic sequence, and by laudatory sermons on the occasion of ecclesiastical festivals. Now, affected, his rhymes left his mouth without order, new ones and old. At a certain point, unable to support himself any longer on his legs, he folded into his chair like a candle softened by heat and fell silent. Violetta Kutufà was overcome with laughter. People pressed around the table as if at a spectacle.

  ‘But now it’s time for me to go,’ she said eventually, donning her mask and hood again.


  Don Giovanni, at the peak of his amorous fervour, his face grown vermillion and oozing sweat, extended her his arm. The parasites hastily drank a last glass and rose in disorder to follow the couple.

  IV.

  A few days afterwards, Violetta Kutufà was occupying an apartment on the main square in a house belonging to Don Giovanni, and Pescara was abuzz with talk. The company of singers left for Brindisi without their Countess of Amalfi. In the deep quietude of Lent the Pescarans satisfied themselves by conducting a relatively reserved campaign of whispers and calumnies. Every day some novel news made the round of the city, and every day the popular imagination created a new fantastic tale.

  The house of Violetta Kutufà stood in the neighbourhood of Sant’Agostino, across from the Brina mansion and next door to the Memma’s. Each night all its windows were illuminated and below them the curious assembled.

  Violetta received visitors in a room decorated with French wallpaper illustrating mythological events according to the then Parisian fashion. On each side of the fireplace stood a chest of drawers of the seventeenth century, bulbous at the front. A yellow settee stretched along the opposite wall between two door-curtains of material similar to that covering the settee. On the mantelpiece posed modestly a small plaster version of the Medicean Aphrodite, flanked left and right by a gilded candelabra. On the chests of drawers stood various porcelain vases, a presentation of artificial flowers under a bell-shaped crystal cover, a basket of wax fruit, a Swiss cottage in wood, a block of alum, some sea-shells, and a coconut.

  At first from a species of lumbering pudency the men hesitated to ascend the stairs of the opera singer; then, little by little, they overcame that. Even the gravest among them from time to time made an appearance in the salon of Violetta Kutufà, including the married men, arriving in trepidation and with a sense of furtive pleasure, as if they were about to commit a minor infidelity by being present at some location of sweet sin and perdition. They came in twos and threes, leagued for security and to justify themselves afterwards, laughing among themselves and elbowing each other forward in encouragement. Then the light in the windows and the sound of the piano and the songs of the Countess and the voices and applause of the other visitors overcame caution. They were taken by a sudden enthusiasm, held up their heads and thrust forth their chests like so many hell-determined youths, mounted the steps resolutely, convinced that when all was said and done one must try to rejoice in life and pick its flowers in their season.

  But Violetta’s receptions had an air of surprising propriety, were almost formal. She welcomed the new arrivals with courtesy, offering them syrups in water and fruit cordials, and they were somewhat taken aback, knew not how they should act or sit or what they should say. The conversation turned around the weather, the political bulletins, the substance of the Lenten sermons and other common and tedious subjects. Don Giuseppe Postiglione deliberated on the strength of the candidature of the Prussian Hohenzollern prince for the throne of Spain; Don Antonio Brattella liked at times to talk about the immortality of the soul and similar edifying matters. The complex of dogmas and principles the Areopagite adhered to was vast. He spoke slowly and roundly, from time to time speeding his pronunciation and then swallowing a syllable when a word was difficult. To show his contempt for the notion of truth in history, one night, he took up a wand and bending it said: ‘How fleble is that!’ meaning flexible. Another night, pointing to his open mouth and palate and excusing himself for not being able to then play the flute, he said: ‘My upper plat is inflamed’, intending to say palate. And on yet another occasion, pointing to the lip of a vase, he recommended that to make children take their medicine the whole origin – meaning in his pompous style orifice – of the glass should first be daubed with some sweet substance.

  From time to time Don Paolo Seccia, an infinitely sceptical soul, hearing described some too-singular oddity, would leap up and demand:

  ‘But Don Antò, really, what on earth are you saying there!’

  And Don Antonio with his hand on his heart would assure everyone:

  ‘The testimony of a witless! The testimony of a witless!

  One night he arrived walking with some difficulty and sat down very carefully: he had suffered a rheumatic attack to the kindies, intending to say kidneys. Another night he came with his right cheek bruised: he had fallen underground. When he was asked how it happened, ‘Look,’ he said, pointing to his shoe, ‘The vampire has parted!’ meaning to use the vernacular for upper, as in the proverb Vamp sans sole, the boot baint whole.

  Of such was the fine conversation of those gentlemen. Don Giovanni Ussorio was necessarily always present and affected a patronising air over those proceedings, every so often approaching Violetta familiarly to murmur something in her ear. There were also long intervals of silence, in which Don Grisostomo Troilo blew his nose and Don Federico Sicoli coughed like a consumptive macaque and agitated his hands apologetically before his mouth.

  The singer then would revive the company by narrating her triumphs in Corfù, in Ancona, in Bari, gradually, growing stimulated by her own stories, giving herself over to flights of imagination, hinting with discrete reticence that there had been princely amours, regal favours, romantic adventures. Confident in the credulity of her listeners, she evoked with liberality scenes from disordered recollections left her by novels she had read in girlhood. Don Giovanni, uneasy and restless at those moments, kept his eyes fixed upon her, bewildered yet excited into a state of arousal that had a vague and confused resemblance to jealousy.

  Violetta would finally fall silent and sit with a faraway expression on her face, smiling a wistful smile. The conversation would languish again.

  Then she would sit herself at the piano and sing. Everyone listened with profound attention and applauded at the end.

  The Areopagite would rise with his flute. An immense melancholy would overtake the other men, feeling at the sound of the instrument a fainting of the soul and body. Heads would droop almost to the breast in an attitude of suffering.

  At last everyone left, filing out. After having taken Violetta’s hand, a remnant of strong musky perfume remained on the men’s fingers, a faintly disturbing thing. Then, on the street, they gathered in groups and held ribald conversations, became again heated, tried to envisage the occult contours of the singer, lowering their voices or falling silent if a passer-by neared. They slowly wandered to the Brina mansion on the other side of the square, and from there they monitored Violetta’s lighted windows. Indistinct shadows passed across the panes. At some point the lights in the rooms by turns went out, remaining at one last window. After a little, a figure was seen leaning out to close the shutters, and those below believed they could identify it as that of Don Giovanni. The discussion continued under the stars, with occasional outbursts of laughter and reciprocal shoving and waving of arms. Don Antonio Brattella’s face, perhaps from the poverty of a street light, seemed to reveal itself as greenish-toned. The parasites would gradually begin to express in their comments a certain animosity towards the singer, who had so gracefully plucked the plumes of their Amphitryon. They had begun to fear that his lavish feasts were likely to cease. Don Giovanni had already shown signs of frugality in his invitations.

  ‘Someone should try to open the poor fellow’s eyes.’

  ‘An adventuress!...’

  ‘Humph! She’s quite capable of making him marry her.’

  ‘Absolutely. And then imagine the scandal…’

  Don Pompeo Nervi, assenting with a nod of his great calf’s head:

  ‘It’s true, very true. We should give that some thought.’

  Don Nereo, possessing internally the soul of a polecat, hinted that there might be measures, stratagems. He, a pious man habituated to the secret and laborious wars of the sacristy, was skilled at disseminating discords.

  Thus did those murmurers keep long discourse, and their lubricious words left and returned to their bitter mouths. It was spring, and in their vicinity the trees i
n the public gardens sent forth fragrant odours and waved with white blossoms; spring, love’s season was abroad; and so were Pescara’s ragged harlots, whose passing traffic could be glimpsed in the lanes adjacent to the square.

  V.

  When therefore Don Giovanni Ussorio, having learned from Rosa Catana of the departure of Violetta Kutufà, re-entered his widower’s house and heard his own parrot modulating the air of the butterfly and the bee, he was overcome by a new and even deeper dismay. A zone of light spread with great clarity over the vestibule floor. Through an iron grating the tranquil back-garden was visible, bursting with heliotropes. A servant slept out there on a mat, his straw hat over his face.

  Don Giovanni let the servant sleep on. Tiredly, he mounted the stairs, keeping his eyes fixed on each step, pausing more than once to mutter:

  ‘Oh what a thing! What a thing to happen!’

  Attaining his room, he dropped on his bed with his mouth against a pillow and began to sob again. Then he rose. The silence was a vast presence. In the midday quiet the trees in the garden, their crowns level with the window, rustled lightly. There was nothing unusual in things around him. He almost wondered why.

  He began thinking, and he remained long calling to mind the fugitive’s postures, gestures, words; he turned over in his memory the slightest movements of her head, her eyes or her hands that might have communicated some intention. Her form was as real as if she were present. At each new recollection his pain grew, until at length his mind was overcome by a kind of numbness. He sat on the edge of the bed, almost immobile, his eyes red and his temples darkened by the hair dye his perspiration was gradually dissolving, the wrinkles on his face showed suddenly deeper. Here was a figure grown ten years older in an hour, ridiculous and miserable.