Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions by Mario Giordano Read Free Book Online Page A

opted for a flowing, very low-cut red silk fantasy adorned with gold dragons, invested with a tasteful exclamation mark by an enamel yin-and-yang pendant. Quite unnecessarily, it should be added, but having been a costume designer she ought to know.
    â€œA woman’s supreme rule for success in business,” she told me later, “is: when the chips are down, show plenty of cleavage.”
    â€œUh-huh,” I said, unconvinced.
    â€œUh-huh be buggered. I was a costume designer with Bavaria Films and I should know. Get this – you, with your ripped jeans and navy blue sports shirts: Always overdress , that’s what matters in life. Get it? Always overdress – Karl Lagerfeld told me that. It’s an old theatrical rule: moderation is a sign of weakness. Get that into your fat head.”
    I think she only meant me well, even when she made me wear those Indian cravats that had belonged to my Uncle Peppe. Style-wise, though, I was on a different planet.
    â€œYou’re always well dressed in a sports shirt,” I said defensively. “I’m quoting Dad.”
    â€œExcept, my boy, that your father had genuine style and personality.”
    She really did mean me well.
    Valérie drove her Fiat Panda like a Formula One Ferrari. She roared along the winding Provinciale, headlights blazing, sounding her horn before every bend and seeming to consider the use of brakes a symptom of nervous debility. My Auntie Poldi, no longer sober and rather hungry, clung to the grab handle and tried to breathe calmly.
    â€œThe Pastorella branch of the Belfiores is the only one that wasn’t strapped for cash after 1861,” Valérie said blithely. “Uncle Mimì hasn’t had to do a regular day’s work in his life. He’s been writing a book about Hölderlin for the past thirty years.”
    â€œGood for him,” groaned Poldi.
    Valérie described her uncle as a leone di cancello , or paper tiger. Poldi, rather preoccupied with trying not to faint, gathered only that Mimì’s great-grandfather had managed to do some kind of deal with Garibaldi that stripped the Pastorellas of only half their assets – roughly the equivalent of half Bavaria and all its castles. Since then the Pastorella di Belfiores had survived by selling off the remains of their estates: a parcel of land here, a vineyard there, a country house here, a cottage there, a hectare here, a hectare there. There was enough to spare. By Valérie’s reckoning, the sheer quantity of land and buildings would suffice for another generation. Then it would be finita la commedia , but since Mimì and Carmela were childless they had no need to concern themselves with questions like the finite nature of natural resources. Mimì much preferred to think of Hölderlin, or, better still, to pontificate about Hölderlin, preferably to unexpected German guests. However, Poldi didn’t know that at this stage.
    The drive ended in the centre of Acireale. Just behind the cathedral, plastered with advertising posters, was a high but unremarkable wall with a plain iron gate set in it. Paved with basalt cobblestones, the narrow one-way street was barely wide enough for a car and only dimly illuminated by isolated sodium lights – not a place Poldi would have associated with baroque splendour.
    But Valérie rang the bell beside the iron gate, which automatically opened at once. Even Poldi caught her breath for a moment at the sight of what lay beyond it.
    Immediately inside was a formal garden with neatly manicured hedges, flowerbeds and an illuminated fountain.
    â€œMimì claims that Goethe spent the night here on his tour of Italy and wrote a poem about it. Don’t ask me which one – he’s bound to tell you.”
    An avenue of carefully espaliered orange trees lit by LED floodlights culminated in a U-shaped baroque country house which was also bathed in bluish radiance by ground-mounted