The Council of Egypt by Leonardo Sciascia

Author:Leonardo Sciascia [Sciascia, Leonardo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784978020
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter III

Toward vespers, a messenger from Monsignor Airoldi was dispatched to the house of Abbot Vella with a blancmange and sesame cookies, two delicacies that the Abbot doted on and that Monsignor often thoughtfully sent him; the man found two policemen stationed by the outer gate, both stiff with boredom.

“What’s happening?” The messenger was alarmed.

“Nothing’s happening. We’re here to curry the cow,” one of them answered; they were finding it a dull business to mind the stable from which the cattle already had been stolen.

“Where is the Abbot?”

“In bed, lucky man.”

The outer door was open. The messenger went in, thinking he would leave the gifts in the antechamber if the Abbot really was in bed. All the doors were open, and from a room nearby he heard a hoarse rattle, a series of gasps, and broken speech. The man stood for a moment undecided, package in hand; he did not want to be indiscreet and enter the Abbot’s bedroom, yet on the other hand those sounds struck him as coming not from a sleeping but from a dying man. Without putting his package down, he crossed the threshold into the bedroom. The Abbot lay in the half light of a deep alcove; his face looked like the face of a hanged man, the head thrown back against the pillows, the bulging eyes rolled upward until only the whites showed, the mouth sagging.

The messenger went over to the bed and called, “Abbot! Abbot Vella!,” at which the rasping grew louder, the gasps more frequent. But the raving became more coherent; it had to do with the codices, the robbery, and certain people who wished him harm.

“Poor man, just see what a state they’ve brought him to,” the messenger murmured. Then: “Abbot, I am here on behalf of His Excellency... Monsignor Airoldi, you remember Monsignor Airoldi?” as if he were speaking to a child. “He sent me with this blancmange and the sesame cookies you like...”

Irises flowered again in the white globes of the hanged man’s eyes, which now rested briefly on the box that the messenger held out.

“Put it down here,” the Abbot said, pointing to the night table by the bed. He fell to raving again.

And so, before nightfall, all Palermo knew that Abbot Vella stood at death’s door. The news aroused conflicting reactions and opinions, interminable discussion, and even bets. Some said the illness, like the theft, was a fiction; some, on the other hand, believed it and were sympathetic; others attributed it to terror that the fraud, sooner or later, would be discovered, and still others to the unjust persecution he had suffered and to the robbery. That evening the police were obliged to rush to the Albergaria quarter, where a scuffle over Abbot Vella had broken out among the women, half of them taking his side and commiserating with him, the other half denouncing him; later they had to hurry over to the Kalsa, where some fishermen had taken to knives pro and con the authenticity of the Council of Egypt.

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