Pescara Tales Page 23

  Inside the tavern, sitting around an oaken table, the drinkers multiplied their laughter and clamour, and everyone helped to pour for the dupe. It was that good vermillion juice of the Poltorese vines – tart, just slightly effervescent, rich in flavour and colour – and down his gullet it flowed in agile streams.

  ‘’Nother carafe!’ Don Bergamino was soon ordering, banging his fist on the table.

  Assau, a man with crooked legs and a face brutally hairy to the very eyes, kept arriving with carafes of the ruby liquid. Ciávola sang a bacchic ditty with riotous insinuations, beating time with a glass in each hand. La Bravetta, his tongue already impeded, and whose eyes had begun to float in the fabulous rapture of wine, babbled incomprehensible praises for his splendid pig, keeping the priest’s attention by a grip on his cassock sleeve. Over their heads from the vaulted ceiling hung a succession of yellow-green watermelons; here and there among them smoked lamps, grudgingly fuelled with inferior oil.

  It was well into the night when the band of friends recrossed the river by the light of the setting moon. In negotiating his way from the boat to the bank Mastro Peppe almost fell into the mud, his legs by then become unstable and his vision blurred.

  Il Ristabilito said:

  ‘Let us do a good deed. We will take this one to his house.’

  And they supported him under his armpits, up through the lane of poplars. As he made out the white trunks in the night, the drunk remarked:

  ‘Ekh, what a lot of Dominican friars!...’

  ‘They’re out lookin’ for Sant’Antuone.’

  And the drunk again, a little later:

  ‘Oh Lepruccio, Lepruccio, seven artal of salt’ll be enough, d’you think?’

  At the path to the house the three conspirators left Mastro Peppe and continued on their way, he with great difficulty mounting his own steps, in turn sneezing and repeating more instructions to Lepprucio apropos the weight of salt; then, unaware that he had left the farmyard portal open, he threw himself heavily on the bed and there he remained inert in the arms of sleep.

  Ciávola and il Ristabilito, in excellent humour, partook of supper at Don Bergamino’s; then, having perfected their plans on his table, they departed to deal with the central matter of the night. The moon had set, the sky was all aglitter with stars, and a briskly-cool little mistral wafted about in that great solitude beneath them. The pair advanced in silence, ears pricked, stopping at times; and all the venal virtues and hunter’s agility of Matteo Puriello were now brought into full employment.

  Arriving at their goal, il Ristabilito could hardly contain an exclamation of joy at the sight of the open portal. Perfect silence reigned over the house, or would have reigned were it not for the bass snoring of the sleeper. Ciávola went up the steps first, followed by the other; in the storeroom at one side of the house, where they had been taken to that day, both saw immediately by the weak light filtering through a window the vague mound of the carcass lying on the table. With infinite caution they lifted the great weight and with straining arms carried it out. They stood for a moment listening, but all they heard was a rooster’s sudden call, and then a sequence of other roosters responding from their own perches above neighbouring threshing floors.

  And so, the two gay robbers followed the lane away, shouldering the body of the pig between them, laughing together with long and silent hilarity; and to Ciávola it all reminded him of times when he was leaving some park or proscribed forest, absconding with the head of a deer or of a wild pig; and because this pig was heavy they came to the priest’s house quite out of breath.

  III.

  Next morning, having digested the night’s wine, Mastro Peppe woke; but he remained lying on his bed for some moments, stretching and listening to the bells that were saluting the vigil of Saint Anthony. Already, even in that first confusion of awakening, he felt expanding in his soul the contentment of possession, and he experienced in advance the delight of watching Lepruccio butchering the pig and covering the lard-rich cuts with salt.

  Stirred to activity by that thought, he rose and walked out on the landing that led to the storeroom, animated by his satisfaction, rubbing his eyes the better to see.

  What they saw on the table, and all that remained there to see, were some stains of dried blood, and on that scene the sunlight laughed with virgin innocence.

  ‘The pig! Where is the pig?’ the robbed victim cried out in a raucous bellow.

  A furious agitation invaded him; he went down the steps, saw the open outside portal, clapped the palm of his hand to his forehead, erupted into the farmyard, roaring, calling the workers to him, asking them all if they had seen the pig, if they had taken it. With every minute his lamentations multiplied, his voice and then the voices of those around him rose; and the grieving clamour, echoing over the river and its environs, arrived finally at the ears of Ciávola and il Ristabilito.

  They walked over placidly to enjoy the spectacle and further the buffoonery as planned; and as they came into sight, Mastro Pepe turned to them an all-suffering, tear-stained face and howled:

  ‘Poor me! My pig is robbed! Ah, poor me! And now what’s to be done? What am I to do? What?’

  Biagio Quaglia stopped for a moment to consider the features of the unfortunate, bent his head slightly sideways towards one shoulder and half-closed his eyes the better to study their subject. He seemed to be judging the mimetic artistry of the desperate man’s performance, seemed to be halted by it in a state somewhere between derision and admiration. Then, coming nearer, he said:

  ‘Eh, yes, yes… Can’t be denied… You’re doin’ the mummery well.’

  Peppe, not understanding, lifted his face, all beaded with teardrops.

  ‘Aye, you’re turnin’ to a proper rogue,’ il Ristabilito continued with a certain air of collegial approval.

  Peppe, still not comprehending, stared at him now, and the tears in his baffled eyes stopped flowing for a moment.

  ‘But in truth I ne’er believed you were so wicked,’ il Ristabilito concluded. ‘Bravo! Bravo! It makes my heart happy to see it.’

  ‘But what are you sayin’?’ La Bravetta asked through his renewed sobbing. ‘Ah poor me! And how could ye laugh at me now, after what happened?’

  ‘Bravo, bravo, very good!’ il Ristabilito pursued. ‘Gi’e us more! Shriek louder! Make more noise cryin’! Tear your hair! Be heard! Aye, like that! The others’ll believe you then!’

  And Peppe, weeping:

  ‘But I’m speakin’ the truth! That I’ve been robbed! Oh God! Poor me!’

  ‘Load it on, don’t stop! The more you bellow the more you’ll be believed! Harder! More! More!’

  But Peppe, now with indignation added to his pain, kept repeating:

  ‘I’m telling the truth. May I die now, here on this spot, if the pig wasn’t stolen!’

  ‘Oh the poor child,’ squeaked Ciávola, scoffing, ‘As if we might take notice of its words. How could they be believed, when yestermorn we saw the pig there? Did Sant’Andonie gi’e it wings to fly away, then?’

  ‘Sant’Andonie be… blessed! I tell you, it’s as I say.’

  ‘Eh? Is it true?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘No.’

  Peppe gave a series of groans and repeated now in a tone of desperation:

  ‘It is! It is! I’m done for. I don’t know how ye can laugh. Pelagia won’t believe me, and if she does she won’t give me any peace… I’m done for!’

  ‘Well, we would like to believe you,’ il Ristabilito acceded, ‘but look here, Pe’, Ciávola might have put that little shift in your head, yesterday, about selling the pig; and I wouldn’t want you to turn a trick on Pelagia and on us. You know you’re up to it…’

  At which La Bravetta began again to weep and cry out and fall into such a desperate fit of mad dolour that il Ristabilito out of pity quickly added:

  ‘Well now, well now, calm down, we believe you. But if tho
se be the facts, we must look for a remedy then.’

  ‘Oh, what remedy?’ La Bravetta asked, instantly reducing the current of his tears and showing signs of hope.

  ‘Here is how things stand,’ proposed Biagio Quaglia. ‘It must be that someone here, around us, has it, because for sure no one from India has sailed up the Adriatic to take your pig. No, Pe’?’

  ‘Yes, yes, well?’ admitted the shorter man, listening eagerly, his nose, filled with his indrawn tears, lifted up to the two friends.

  ‘Now then, and mind me well,’ continued il Ristabilito, who was enjoying the other’s open-mouthed attention. ‘If no one travelled here from India-land to rob you, then someone hereabouts must be the thief. No, Pe’?’

  ‘Yes, well? Yes, well?’

  ‘So what must you do? You must gather up all those tenants of yourn, and then we’ll need to call on some canny divinin’ to find the thief. When you’ve got the thief you’ve got the pig.’

  Mastro Peppe’s eyes glinted with longing for his lost pork, and he was more easily drawn to agree by the mention of divining, a word that had awakened his native superstitiousness.

  ‘As you know, there be three kinds of magic: white, red, and black; and there be hereabouts, as you know, three females of the art: Rosa Schiavona, Rusaria Pajara, and la Ciniscia. You choose one.’

  Peppe hesitated a moment, then selected Rusaria Pajara, who was known to have had great success as an enchantress and done marvels on a number of occasions.

  ‘Then let us make a start,’ concluded il Ristabilito. ‘There’s no time to lose. I will go on your behalf, as a favour, to Rusaria’s house. I’ll speak with her and she will give me what is needed and I’ll be back later this morning. Gi’e me some money.’

  Peppe took out of his waistcoat-pocket three small silver coins and offered them.

  ‘Three carlini?’ the other cried, refusing them, ‘three carlini? I’ll need at least ten.’

  At that the husband of Pelagia fell into profound dismay and babbled:

  ‘What? Ten carlini for a bit o’ divinin’?’ while searching with trembling fingers in his pocket again. ‘Here – that’s eight. I don’t have any more.’

  Il Ristabilito said dryly:

  ‘Very well. They might be enough. Are you comin’ too, Cià?’

  The two friends left, one behind the other, making a good rate towards Pescara on a footpath through the trees; and on the way Ciávola needed to bring his fist down hard on the back of il Ristabilito to express his barely controlled glee. Arriving at the town, they headed for the shop of one Don Daniele Pacentro, a seller of drugs and spices with whom they had an acquaintanceship, and there they ordered certain ingredients with powerful aromas, had them compounded into pellets resembling medicinal pills as big as walnuts, well covered in sugar and syrup and finally baked. When the apothecary had completed that, Biagio Quaglia, who during that procedure had left the shop, returned with a paper twist containing some dry canine droppings he had collected, and the apothecary was instructed to confect two more pills with those, similar in appearance to the former ones, except that those two should be covered in aloes and finally lightly dusted with sugar. When the man had made up those two, il Ristabilito asked him to add a small mark on them so that they could be identified.

  With uninterrupted hilarity the impostors returned on the same country path and arrived at the house of Mastro Peppe at about midday. He was waiting in great anxiety, and as soon as he spied the long and reedy body of Ciávola emerging from the trees, he shouted:

  ‘Well?’

  ‘All in order,’ il Ristabilito replied, triumphantly holding up a box with the enchanted confections. ‘Now, today is the vigil of Sant’Andonie and your tenants are having a holiday. Bring them together out here in your yard and give them somethin’ to drink. ‘Tis said you have a certain wee flagon of Montepulciano hoarded away somewhere. Lay hands on it today and bring it out. And when all of your folk are gathered, I’ll look after what needs to be done and said.’

  IV.

  Two hours later, the afternoon was warm, serene and clear. La Bravetta had passed word around, and the invited cultivators and householders had come from their blocks to the manor’s threshing floor. Tall heaps of sun-flushed straw rose on it in glorious gold; passing unhurriedly beside the heaps, a gaggle of geese moved like some single white body flecked with the orange of beaks, the birds noisily and in unison demanding access to a pond; odours from the sheep pens wafted on breaths of alternating wind. Adjacent to that rural scene, a throng of rustics stood waiting for their wine, bantering and joking, rocking on curved legs deformed by a life of rude agricultural duties. Some had faces that were as wrinkled and red as old apples, with eyes made gentle by long patience or made glowing by long-borne ill will; others, with the beginnings of beards and the attitudes of youth, still showed some sense of amour-propre in their carefully patched clothes.

  Ciávola and il Ristabilito lost no time in taking a central part in the proceedings. Holding the box of confections in one hand, il Ristabilito directed all there to form a circle and, standing in the middle of it, he made a little speech, not lacking in his voice and gestures a certain pomp and gravity:

  ‘Good folk!’ he said, ‘’Tis certain none of ye know why Mastro Peppe De Sieri has called ye here…’

  This strange preamble produced a small wave of movement and some murmuring in the crowd of listeners, and the eager expectation of wine gave way somewhat to an audible measure of disquiet. The orator continued:

  ‘But in case some evil should occur, and ye might want to reprove me for it, I want to say what this is all about afore we go on.’

  The listeners now looked with lost expressions into each other’s faces; then, next, they turned their questioning and dubious gaze towards the box held up very prominently in the orator’s hand. One of them, when il Ristabilito paused to assess the effect of his words, exclaimed with some impatience:

  ‘Well? Get on with it!’

  ‘Very well, I will, my good man. Last night Mastro Peppe’s pig, a goodly porker that he had killed and was going to salt, was stolen. Who the robber is, we ken not; but we can be sure that he is someone among ye here, because we can also be sure that no one has travelled here from India to steal Mastro Peppe’s pig!’

  Whether it was the singularity of this argument by exclusion or the action of the warm sun on his pate, at that moment La Bravetta exploded with a barrage of sneezes. The villeins stepped back and the tribe of alarmed geese dispersed, while seven consecutive detonations rent the rural peace. That cannonade returned a spirit of humour to the crowd and it quickly recomposed itself. Il Ristabilito continued, still in a grave voice:

  ‘To flush out the thief, Mastro Peppe has thought to give ye to eat certain fine confections, and to drink with them an old Montepulciano wine which he has brought out specially for this occasion. But I must tell ye one thing. The moment the thief puts one of these confections in his mouth he will find the taste so bitter, so bitter I say, that he will be forced to spit it out. Are ye all ready for the test? Or will the thief, so that he should not be discovered in that foul way, confess and avoid it? Good people, decide!’

  ‘We will eat and we will drink,’ came the response, almost in a chorus, while also in the instant following that affirmation an uncertain movement passed through the simple gathering. Each one there, looking at his neighbour, now considered the other with an assessing eye; each one attempted to wave away any suspicion towards himself by a spontaneous display of smiling insouciance.

  Ciávola said:

  ‘Get into line for the test. No one shall hide.’

  And when they had marshalled themselves he took up the flagon and the glasses and without further ado began pouring, while il Ristabilito carefully distributed the confections at the rate of one per mouth. The pills passed between the sturdy dentures of the peasants and disappeared in a moment with sounds of crunching and exclamations of satisfaction. When he came to Mastro Peppe,
il Ristabilito picked out one of the confected dog droppings and gave it to him, passing on to the next person without paying the landlord any particular attention.

  Mastro Peppe, who until then had been watching each peasant, narrow-eyed to catch the sign that would betray criminality, popped the sweet greedily into his mouth and began chewing. Instantly, the round mounds of his fat cheeks rose almost to the height of his eyes, deep lines appeared across his forehead and at the corners of his mouth, his nose reddened, his chin twisted sideways, and every feature of his face combined in an involuntary grimace of horror, while a discernible tremor coursed from the nape of his neck down to his shoulders; and, promptly, because his tongue could not sustain the bitterness of aloes, and an invincible resistance against swallowing the droppings rose from his stomach to his throat, the unfortunate was forced to spit out all that he had in his mouth.

  ‘Ahoy, Mastro Pé, whatcha doin’!’ chortled Tulespre dei Passeri, an old goatherd with a greenish and hairy complexion like a moss-overgrown bog turtle.

  Il Ristabilito, who was still handing out sweets, turned at the sound of that grating voice. On seeing La Bravetta in contortions he said benevolently:

  ‘Hmm, that one might have been cooked too long. Here, here’s another! Munch on that!’

  And picking out the second canine pill he inserted it with his own fingers into Peppe’s mouth.

  The poor man willy-nilly had to accept it; and feeling the malign and sharp eyes of the goatherd on him he made a supreme effort to endure the second surge of bitterness: he did not chew nor swallow, he kept his tongue firmly against his teeth. But as the warmth of his breath and the seepage of his saliva began to dissolve the aloes, he could not long bear the ghastly taste: as before, his lips twisted in disgust, his nose filled with tears, and large drops began to form in the cavities of his eyes and then to bounce down his cheeks in a series like the loosened pearls of a necklace. At last, he spat the evil out again.