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

us.”
    â€œD’you really think so?”
    â€œThe way the madame said ‘You oaf!’ I could have kissed her feet!”
    â€œSorry to have to disappoint you, old boy, but the madame was beside herself because she hadn’t been able to receive a client of hers who brings her some narcotic or other every evening. After you all left she swore to me, tears in her eyes, that she’d give ten years of her life just to spend a single night with Mussolini.”
    â€œWhat depravity! Makes you weep! To think that I, this very morning, learnt by heart a chapter in the
Annals
of Tacitus. I’ll quote it to you. ‘Nero bethought himself of Epicharis, and, not believing that a woman was capable of bearing pain, ordered her to be tortured. But nor rod nor fire nor all the fury of the executioners made her confess; and so she won the first day. Borne the following day to the same torments, and incapable of standing on her lacerated members, she drew from her bosom a sash, tied it to the chair, secured a noose around her neck and drew it tight with the weight of her own body, thus extracting what little breath remained in it. A memorable lesson this is to us, that a prostitute, inflicted with so much agony, was prepared to save the lives of strangers; while men – knights and senators – and this without torture, would denounce even the persons dearest to them.’ These days, in Italy, not even the women… When a society can no longerrely even on its prostitutes, it’s done for. There’s nothing more to be hoped for! personally, I have resigned myself. In fact, I’m going to ask you a favour.”
    â€œWhat is it? Go ahead.”
    â€œSince the Deputy Secretary-General has taken a liking to you, do ask him to have me appointed mayor of Catania!”
    â€œWhat!… I don’t follow you…”
    â€œAntonio, my friend, I’m thirty-two and in need of a job. I’m not going to salve my conscience by sitting at home earning nothing and getting dirty looks from my father-in-law. This regime is going to last at least a hundred years, so no need to feel guilty about what we do. But even if the regime falls, I’m not out to make excuses for myself. If I bothered about cutting a figure as an upstanding man with posterity I’d be a fool, and be giving undue importance to pomp. Because becoming a Party official, or not being enrolled in the Party at all, is all a lot of hogwash compared with the black misery we’ll be forced to live through, whether we’re Party officials or we stay at home and mind our own business. But I must say I have every intention of being an honest man, and my honesty will take the form of not stealing, of treating everyone courteously, while wishing all manner of ill to the regime I serve as punctiliously and conscientiously as is only made possible by being firmly inside and knowing its secrets!”
    If Antonio had lent a more attentive ear, and if the channels of his intellect had not been more or less obstructed for some time now, he would certainly have considered his friend’s effusion very strange and incoherent. As it was, he confined himself to stating that he never again, for any reason whatever, wished to set eyes on the Deputy Secretary-General.
    Edoardo’s determination flagged – he had no come-back to that one; and the two friends continued their walk in silence, unaware that the emaciated white face of a nun had stationed itself behind the grating of a high window, and had fixed on the person of Antonio a long, disapproving stare, which she had not the slightest wish to tear away.
    â€œHeavens alive!” exclaimed Antonio out of the blue, “I simply must get back to doing some reading. Do you know that for ten years I haven’t read a single book right through to the end! I feel positively doped with ignorance. Books keep you on your toes!… Hey d’you think it’s really