Trinacria by Anthony Di Renzo

Author:Anthony Di Renzo [Di Renzo, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Italy
ISBN: 9781550717273
Publisher: Guernica Editions
Published: 2014-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter V

A Century of Progress

BREAD AND CIRCUSES, EH? DON’T presume to judge. You people are no better, with your malls and expositions. Lord, the Cuccagnas of democracy! All the world’s a sale, and every day a feast! Enjoy the carnival while you can. Death is a permanent Lent. But at least one is spared the indignities of Vanity Fair.

God knows I bartered all my life. I had a genius for it. Why, then, did I fail in business? I could blame my partners, but that would oversimplify the case. Essen­tially, our values were incompatible. Mine was for the tangible. I always sought the best bargains at the Vucciria. It took a special cunning to navigate that market. I had to sail between the Scylla of roiling prices and the Charybdis of spoiling goods. Rot always bid against me, so I had to make an offer before the fish lost its iridescence, the meat attracted maggots, or the fruit turned into mush. My instinct never erred, but instinct is blind to the intangible. I was unfit for a world where prices are fixed and goods never spoil. In England, iceboxes preserve fresh chops, tins seal brine-cured ham, and bacon-faced men in Prince Albert jackets speculate on lard.

Christ warns us about casting our pearls before swine, but Christ never ran a plantation. Blight had ravaged the orchards. At first, we blamed the yellowing leaves on chlorosis. We had dealt with that before. The fruit would harden, the trees would wilt, but the groves would survive. But when the gnarl of barren branches became a tangle of witch’s hair, we knew it was more serious. The veins and roots had been affected, and parasites had bored into the bark. “‘A tristezza,” Nino Tumeo pronounced. When I cut open an infested blood orange, it was like slicing into my own heart. It would take ten years, maybe more, to recover, so I accepted Don Joseph’s offer. What good is a name without land?

After signing the contract, I went to confession, even though I did not believe in God. I needed to share my shame with someone, and Regina would have scoffed. I had done many terrible things in my life — rejected a mother, murdered a husband, condemned a poet — but never before had I whored myself ...

Ortensio Pitarresi smiled like a pimp. “Comare,” he said, with oily familiarity, “I knew you would come!”

He presumed too much. Born prematurely on my estate, he had become my godson by default. No one had expected the runt to live, so I agreed as a mere formality. Just long enough for the priest to sprinkle his head and mumble the words of baptism in garbled Latin. But the brat survived to spite me. Now he was the prissy and poodle-headed secretary at Ingham & Whitaker.

Ortensio offered me a chair. “Make yourself comfortable. I will fetch Don Joseph.”

I sat stiffly and leaned on my gorgon-headed walking stick. The grandfather clock ticked the minutes, and my heart served as weight for the pendulum.

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