Loves & Miracles of Pistola. Hilary Prendini Toffoli
is another lively sphere of action. La Famosa Orchesta Farina has progressed from a dozy waltz to an animated boogie-woogie. In the crowd of antediluvian couples gyrating with cringe-making abandon on the wooden planks laid down on the grass, Pistola gets a horrific glimpse of his ancient uncle, Zio Umberto the butcher, making a spectacle of himself with his equally large and flabby wife, Zia Dalia.
Fortunately, there’s a distraction. In the queue are two pretty strangers in voluminous skirts and puffy petticoats. One is directing coy looks at Donato from behind her cats’-eye sunglasses as she loudly crunches her way through almond brittle.
‘My sister broke her teeth on that last year,’ Donato tells her, casually removing his aviator sunglasses.
‘Told you we should’ve got the torrone,’ the girl snaps to her friend.
Pistola instantly moves in, attempting Donato’s droop of eyelids followed by a direct gaze. ‘Be glad you didn’t get the tiramola. I know a girl who got her tooth pulled out.’
Then it’s Fiorenzo’s turn. He zeroes in on the friend. ‘Didn’t I see you at the Esther Williams movie?’
She giggles. ‘No.’
‘Gone with the Wind?’
‘No movie places where we live.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Ponte Lungo,’ a masculine voice announces. It belongs to a tall older youth who has moved up behind them, built like an oak. ‘What’s going on here?’ he growls, too young to be a Fascist militia leftover, but imbued with the same bullyboy spirit.
The girls exchange grimaces.
‘Just talking,’ says Cats’ Eyes petulantly. ‘Go away, Giorgio.’
‘You’re going to end up in a maize field with your skirts over your heads,’ he sneers.
‘Give it a break!’ she says.
He glares at the boys, repositions himself closer and snarls, checking their reactions: ‘Campino studs-in-training!’
Instantly Donato becomes the epitome of cool shrugging nonchalance. Pistola, on the other hand, resorts to some ludicrously ineffective prize-fighter shoulder-hunching while Fiorenzo goes one further and surreptitiously gives the Ponte Lungo bully the finger.
Mistake. The brute lifts him off his feet, shakes him hard, and then throws him down and kicks him. A couple of times. Against background sounds of stuck-pig squealing from the two girls.
Mindful of their Socratic Dialogue about wounded soldiers in battle, Pistola is about to leap to Fiorenzo’s defence when he’s shoved aside by a tornado of enraged maternal flesh that comes whirling across from the next-door stall, clutching the heavy metal spoon with which it has been scooping frogs from the frying pan. Drops splatter the bully’s fancy shirt as Sandrina smacks him around the head with the spoon. She then bends over her precious baby and indulges in a bout of demented shrieking, louder even than Tosca’s after her lover’s execution: ‘Murderer! He’s all I’ve got left! You killed him!’
As people come running from all directions, Fiorenzo tries to get to his feet, groaning as much from mortification as from pain. The humiliation of having your life publicly saved by your mother has to be even greater than any shame you might feel at being brutally kicked to death in front of the entire village. Pistola knows this too, though secretly he thinks he would probably enjoy an unashamed public show of maternal love.
He’s contemplating this unachievable prospect when he notices Giorgio’s friends are approaching. Judging by the expressions on their faces, they aren’t coming to smooth things over. Is an innocent chat with two pretty girls going to turn into World War III? Is he once again going to find himself involved in a death that is somehow his fault?
By now Giorgio has pulled himself together after Sandrina’s battering and is managing to laugh the kind of nasty cowboy-villain laugh that’s supposed to suggest someone is going to pay.
Into the breach steps Giacinto the bar owner, a man used to handling confrontations between irrational males. Pistola hears him quietly informing the sinister-looking group from Ponte Lungo that it might be in their best interests to retreat, a point he makes by casually indicating with his eyes Zio Umberto the butcher. The strongest man in the village has abandoned Dalia on the wooden planks and is ambling nonchalantly towards them. Forearms the size of Parma hams are bouncing gently against his massive thighs. Hands that can tear a deck of rummy cards in two are clenched. On his face Pistola recognises the same calm but intently purposeful expression it wore when he was helping Nonno Mario strangle the goose for Teresa’s wedding.
The Ponte Lungo boys instantly get the message and move off, dragging with them the ever-defiant Giorgio and his uncomfortable sisters, both girls casting longing backwards glances at Campino’s studs-in-training.
Pistola feels a hand on his arm. It’s Teresa, even more pinched and stricken than when he last saw her.
‘No worries, I think he might pull through,’ he tells her jokingly. Then, when she doesn’t smile, he resorts to Campino’s routine midday greeting: ‘Had a good lunch, Teresina cara?’
‘Not hungry,’ she says in a low voice.
‘Heard from him?’
‘No, and don’t want to.’
‘Eat something.’
‘I’ll vomit.’ She shakes her pale miserable head.
‘I know where he is,’ he says. He takes her away from the crowd of boys who have gathered round Fiorenzo with endless jokes about his warrior mother, and sits with her on a bench. ‘I’m going to go and get him.’
‘Never want to see him again.’ She’s vehement. ‘You were right. He did have another woman …’
There was once a time when, hearing this, he would have felt vindicated. Now he just feels terribly sad, and is about to tell her so when she doubles over and throws up all over his new camel-coloured mock-suede lace-ups.
‘Cristo! What the …!’
Though he doesn’t normally care too much about his possessions, he has only two pairs of shoes. This is the brand-new pair. Now their fashionably pointed toes have been ruined by a red mass of what looks like half-digested berries.
‘Mulberries,’ Teresa squeaks. ‘Breakfast …’
She looks so wretched he doesn’t know for whom to feel more sorry, her or him.
‘You’re sick, Teresa. I knew—’
‘You knew what?’ she shrieks.
Even wretched and with puke all over her mouth, she can still let loose with her famous temper.
‘What did you know, you scandalous boy?’ she screams. With a sudden wild-eyed lack of control, she begins waving her arms around. Is she going to hit him again?
Just then, Dottor Pacchioni’s wife comes by and gives him a stern look. As quickly as she has whipped herself into a frenzy, Teresa collapses in a small, sobbing, puke-smelling heap on the bench where he has taken her. He nervously pats the heaving little mound of misery.
‘Teresina cara, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
She sits up, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘Well, now you do. I’m pregnant! I found out yesterday.’ Her eyes are abject. ‘I haven’t told anyone. I want to kill myself.’
He stares at her in stunned silence. ‘Porca miseria! Not even your mother?’
‘She’d kill me.’ She shudders. ‘Can we find water?’
Why, he wonders, has she chosen to tell him of all people? This is something he doesn’t want to know. Doesn’t want to think about her and Aguinaldo making a baby together.
Yet as they