Read Online The Brewer of Preston by Andrea Camilleri - Free Book Online
Authors: Andrea Camilleri
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point he gave a start and shook himself from his torpor, worried. How long had it been since Carnazza left the room, anyway? He hadnât had time to answer his own question when the marchese reappeared before him.
âI beg your pardon,
carissimo
Ferraguto, but donât you think Professor Carnazza is taking advantage of my guestsâ patience and mine?â
Fucking marchese
, thought Don Memè.
He wants to savor my ruin to the very end!
There was no sign of Carnazza in the little toilet chamber. Indeed, a servant who was planted in front of the bathroom door declared that Headmaster Carnazza had not availed himself of its services. Don Memè asked another servant standing at the end of a long corridor if he had seen Carnazza pass that way, but the domestic said no. He opened a door or two and found nothing. Cursing, he returned to the music room and approached the marchese, who was now laughing in his face disrespectfully and with no restraint.
âI canât find him,â said Don Memè.
The marchese promptly assembled all servants, family members, and guests who wished to take part in a sort of game. For the headmaster must certainly have got lost somewhere inside the palazzo, since the doorman swore by all that was holy that he had seen no one leave the building. They searched for hours and hours, equipped with lamps, candles, and lanterns. They descended into the cellars, went up into the attics, and spent the entire night searching, in part because around midnight, the marchese had the good idea to call for a recess and send for a round of spaghetti with pork followed by four roast suckling goats. They fell to with gusto, but never did manage to unearth Carnazza. He had vanished the instant he walked out the door of the music room.
âWhen he gets over his bender, heâll resurface,â the marchese said at the first light of dawn.
He turned out to be a bad prophet. Headmaster Antonio Carnazza never resurfaced. Someone ran into him, or thought he saw him, years later in a seedy tavern in Palermo, reciting verse by Horace to a crowd even more wine-soaked than he. The Baroness Jacopa della MÃ nnara swore she had seen him among the ruins of the Greek theatre at Taormina, wearing a crown of vine leaves on his head and noisily declaiming verses of Catullus. The only sure thing was that a few years later, his wife had a declaration of presumed death drawn up and was thus accorded the status of widow. After duly waiting out the period of mourning, she remarried a nephew of Prefect Bortuzzi who happened to be in Sicily for a hare-hunting party.
(A slight digression is in order here, not because the narrator so wishes, but because the story itself imperiously demands it. In 1942, during the war, Montelusa, unlike Vigà ta, which was repeatedly bombed by the Americans, suffered only one bombing, but it was a devastating one. In the course of this act of war, Palazzo Coniglio was half destroyed. Once the all-clear sounded, the rescue squadsânot to mention a handful of people with serious intentions of getting their hands on some of the treasures that according to local lore were in that palazzoâscattered in every direction to look for possible dead and wounded. In the attic of the west wing, which was miraculously left standing, a skeleton of a man in formal dress was found inside a trunk, surely dead of natural causes, since there was no visible trace of violence.
It was a special sort of trunk that opened on the outside but which, once closed, released a spring that made it impossible to reopen from the inside. Anyone who might climb into it, even as a joke, could never come back out again without outside help. Beside the remains were found some sheets of paper with some barely visible, incomprehensible writing on them. With great effort one could make out a name that looked like Luigi Picci or Ricci.)
Turiddru Macca, son
T uriddru Macca, son of Gnà Nunzia and a
âI beg your pardon,
carissimo
Ferraguto, but donât you think Professor Carnazza is taking advantage of my guestsâ patience and mine?â
Fucking marchese
, thought Don Memè.
He wants to savor my ruin to the very end!
There was no sign of Carnazza in the little toilet chamber. Indeed, a servant who was planted in front of the bathroom door declared that Headmaster Carnazza had not availed himself of its services. Don Memè asked another servant standing at the end of a long corridor if he had seen Carnazza pass that way, but the domestic said no. He opened a door or two and found nothing. Cursing, he returned to the music room and approached the marchese, who was now laughing in his face disrespectfully and with no restraint.
âI canât find him,â said Don Memè.
The marchese promptly assembled all servants, family members, and guests who wished to take part in a sort of game. For the headmaster must certainly have got lost somewhere inside the palazzo, since the doorman swore by all that was holy that he had seen no one leave the building. They searched for hours and hours, equipped with lamps, candles, and lanterns. They descended into the cellars, went up into the attics, and spent the entire night searching, in part because around midnight, the marchese had the good idea to call for a recess and send for a round of spaghetti with pork followed by four roast suckling goats. They fell to with gusto, but never did manage to unearth Carnazza. He had vanished the instant he walked out the door of the music room.
âWhen he gets over his bender, heâll resurface,â the marchese said at the first light of dawn.
He turned out to be a bad prophet. Headmaster Antonio Carnazza never resurfaced. Someone ran into him, or thought he saw him, years later in a seedy tavern in Palermo, reciting verse by Horace to a crowd even more wine-soaked than he. The Baroness Jacopa della MÃ nnara swore she had seen him among the ruins of the Greek theatre at Taormina, wearing a crown of vine leaves on his head and noisily declaiming verses of Catullus. The only sure thing was that a few years later, his wife had a declaration of presumed death drawn up and was thus accorded the status of widow. After duly waiting out the period of mourning, she remarried a nephew of Prefect Bortuzzi who happened to be in Sicily for a hare-hunting party.
(A slight digression is in order here, not because the narrator so wishes, but because the story itself imperiously demands it. In 1942, during the war, Montelusa, unlike Vigà ta, which was repeatedly bombed by the Americans, suffered only one bombing, but it was a devastating one. In the course of this act of war, Palazzo Coniglio was half destroyed. Once the all-clear sounded, the rescue squadsânot to mention a handful of people with serious intentions of getting their hands on some of the treasures that according to local lore were in that palazzoâscattered in every direction to look for possible dead and wounded. In the attic of the west wing, which was miraculously left standing, a skeleton of a man in formal dress was found inside a trunk, surely dead of natural causes, since there was no visible trace of violence.
It was a special sort of trunk that opened on the outside but which, once closed, released a spring that made it impossible to reopen from the inside. Anyone who might climb into it, even as a joke, could never come back out again without outside help. Beside the remains were found some sheets of paper with some barely visible, incomprehensible writing on them. With great effort one could make out a name that looked like Luigi Picci or Ricci.)
Turiddru Macca, son
T uriddru Macca, son of Gnà Nunzia and a
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