Read Online The Wager by Donna Jo Napoli - Free Book Online Page A

yourself, change your clothes, shave your beard, comb your hair. Easy, like I said. Simple. A little wager. A game. And at the end, you even get to keep the purse, with all its magic.” He kicked the purse toward Don Giovanni. “But if you break the rules, not only will the charm be broken, but the whole deal is off.”
    â€œMy soul . . . ?”
    â€œYour soul.”
    Don Giovanni had experienced poverty for nearly nine months. Like a gestation. From it something akin to desperation was born, shattering the air and any chance of peace withits primal screams. How on earth could it be so damnably hard to climb up out of poverty? He worked and worked, and the next day all that faced him was more work. If he was lucky.
    When the weather was good, poverty was, at heart, simply a pointless discomfort. Don Giovanni even enjoyed aspects of it. Waking to the clean spice of perfume from conifers and herbs, the interlacing songs of sparrows, the wavering colors of butter-flies and wildflowers. Eating berries as he picked them, fresher than anything had a right to be. Watching eagles float in winds over the mountain.
    But when the weather was bad, poverty was hideous.
    He should have left Randazzo in late September. He could have gone to the south shore, rocked in the winds from Africa. Or, if he didn’t want to wander again, he should have at least prepared for this winter. He could have searched out a cave in the countryside. Lots of people lived in caves year-round. He could have stashed away food for winter. Even dumb animals did that.
    Don Giovanni hadn’t thought ahead.
    Just as he hadn’t thought ahead when he’d squandered his fortune in Messina.
    What would it be like to be dirty for three years, three months, three days?
    He was lucky in a way. He’d gone down to the freezing river just the day before and scrubbed himself from head to foot, even though it made his teeth ache right up through his eardrums. It had taken a good hour of stamping in place tomake his blood hot enough to ease the shivers. He’d put on his second set of trousers, his second smock. He’d even washed his cape. He was clean. There was no better way to begin this particular proposal.
    And right now, in this very moment, hunger tightened its bones around him. Hard bones. Hard enough to break anyone’s spirit.
    The philosopher-thief’s words came back. This was a wager. A gamble. A game for the hopeful.
    And the devil had cleverly posed it in Randazzo, the home of the hopeful. Everyone here had hope. Just living under the shadow of Etna’s unpredictable convulsions, they proved that. They looked out on the black, scorched earth after Etna’s lava flows and they counted on those little yellow flowers coming again. Maybe not even in their lifetime, but eventually. Hope was a long-term affair.
    The flowers’ name danced on his tongue: aconite.
    On Etna yellow was the color of hope. Yellow butterflies. Yellow orchids.
    Was Don Giovanni still capable of hope?
    Bong
. The church bell.
Bong.
    For the moment existence was only listening to the bells. When they ended, there was nothing. The air died.
    Don Giovanni watched his hand move, steadily, as though it were someone else’s, controlled by something beyond him. He picked up the purse.
    It didn’t burst into flames. His hand didn’t wither. The purse was flat, empty. A snatch of limp white linen.
    Like Saint Agata’s veil.
    The devil was gone. He didn’t leave; he disappeared. A trick of the eye?
    â€œDear one,” whispered Don Giovanni in a tremolo he couldn’t control. “Oh, dear one, give me money.” How much? How much did things cost? Since he’d left Messina, Don Giovanni had bartered—sweat for food. And before that, his manservant, Lino, and housekeeper, Betta, had taken care of paying for things. “Enough for a room at the inn,” he murmured. “Enough for a dinner. An overflowing