Read Online Beautiful Antonio by Vitaliano Brancati - Free Book Online Page A

later, at table, addressing his wife and pretending not even to see Antonio. “Your son comes here to get engaged, and the very first evening he lands up in a whorehouse!”
    â€œHe’s a bachelor,” retorted the mother, with a bitter allusion to those who did likewise despite being bound by obligations of conjugal fidelity. “He doesn’t have anyone to answer to.”
    â€œAll you ever do is make nasty cracks about me! Don’t you realize that if such a thing comes to the ears of Father Rosario, the uncle of this… er… yes, this Barbara, the wedding will go up in smoke?”
    The following day the aforesaid monk paid a visit on Signor Alfio, who at the mere mention of his name was seized with a fit of nerves and had to drink three glasses of water in quick succession.
    â€œI have heard the good news,” began Father Rosario, as soon as he had taken his seat opposite Magnano Senior.
    â€œWhat good news?” queried the other suspiciously.
    â€œI have been informed that your son is in the good graces of the Deputy Secretary-General of the Party…”
    â€œI couldn’t say,” replied Signor Alfio, all the more fearful that this priest was out to trap him. “Don’t even know if they ever met…”
    â€œIt appears they met the other evening…”
    â€œFather, let’s not beat about the bush,” snorted Signor Alfio, already as testy as if he had received a reprimand, “let’s talk in plain terms.”
    â€œVery well, plain terms it shall be: I would be highly grateful if Antonio were to beg the Deputy Secretary to put a damper, once and for all, on the Union boss in Viagrande, who, I assure you, subjects me to every sort of vexation, to the point – last October – of sending me all the thieves in the province to harvest my grapes! I can’t tell you what they didn’t steal from me… everything, including my night-cap!”
    â€œOh, if that’s all you’re on about…” exclaimed Signor Alfio with relief.
    â€œWhy, whatever were you expecting?”
    â€œNothing, nothing!” declared Magnano senior. “I thought, er… nothing, in short…”
    This conversation with the monk was passed on to Antonio amid a series of grunts which rendered it incomprehensible.
    Antonio listened, his thoughts wandering, until his father, hawking up the phlegm which had thitherto engulfed his words, clear and true came out with “My boy, for some time now you’ve had a bee in your bonnet I don’t much care for. What is it?”
    â€œNothing special,” answered Antonio, getting up from the table and edging towards the door.
    â€œSo I’m a Dutchman!” grumbled the old fellow, minutely observing his son’s receding back and the listless way in which he pushed open the door and left the room.
    That evening Antonio and Edoardo Lentini went strolling up and down the short and infinitely beautiful Via Crociferi. The three churches and two convents between which the street sloped away were deserted and silent; the gates in the high wrought-iron railings which embraced the brief, steep flights of steps leading to the church doors were bolted and barred.
    The two young men were gripped by a romantic nostalgia more troubling and unhappy to them even than to a real,genuine Romantic who might have trodden that same street a century earlier.
    â€œIt’s shaming to have to suck up to a man like that Deputy Secretary!” said Edoardo. “Times were when we’d have had to avert our gaze rather than return the least nod from such a man. Ugh! How I’d have liked to kick him…”
    â€œHe’s very virile,” observed Antonio. “He managed to go with three women in less than an hour!”
    â€œI might have done the same myself if I hadn’t realized something that he, crude brute that he is, didn’t notice at all: the women despised