Hunting Season: A Novel by Andrea Camilleri Read Free Book Online Page B

grief rose up inside him and tore him apart.

    That evening, as ’Ntontò and Don Filippo were eating the supper cooked up by the maid Peppinella and her husband Mimì, an ex-highwayman and convict taken into their home by the marchese’s father out of pure compassion, Don Filippo could not take his eyes off his daughter. The black of mourning became her; she looked like a sugar doll, plump as a quail with her generous haunches, long blond hair, rosy cheeks, and blue, somewhat crazed eyes.
    But who does she take after? the marchese wondered, himself being swarthy as a crow, as was Donna Matilde. He quickly dispelled the question, remembering his wife’s enigmatic smile.
    “Has Mamma eaten?” ’Ntontò asked Peppinella.
    “Not much, but she did eat,” replied the maid. Donna Matilde no longer wanted to leave her room for anything in the world.
    Even her voice is beautiful , thought the marchese. Then he addressed her directly:
    “So, tell me, why don’t you want to get married? You’ve certainly had some good offers.”
    “I don’t want to settle down just yet.”
    “And when will you, my dear? Don’t forget, you’re almost twenty-five, and in these parts—”
    “So now you suddenly want to play the patriarch?” ’Ntontò snapped. “After blithely shrugging it off your whole life?”
    The marchese did not react, and they continued their meal in silence.
    “That was a nice necklace you gave Mamma,” ’Ntontò said a few minutes later, to lift the pall that had fallen over them. “But why did you have them mount five pieces of lead in it?”
    “I told her those were the bullets that killed Rico.”
    “But Rico was killed by mushrooms!”
    “I know, but I decided to prove her right in her obsession by telling her a lie.”
    “But why?”
    “Because now, you’ll see, she’ll calm down. She’ll stop screaming, and we’ll be able to sleep again at night.”

    Instead, it was a night of horror. Flung sideways across the double bed, the marchese had been dead to the world for some two hours when something grazed his cheek. Thinking it was a pelacchio , one of those big flying cockroaches that during the hot Sicilian summers fill the air like flocks of swallows, he dealt himself a such a slap that it completely woke him up. Opening his eyes, Don Filippo saw, in the faint light of a small lamp he kept lit during the night, a white shape standing at the foot of the bed. The marchese was a superficial but temperamental man, and thus as prone to acts of heedless bravery as to others of repulsive cowardice. This night it was his chicken-hearted side that went into action. In a twinkling, and for no reason whatsoever, he became convinced that the white figure before him was Rico’s ghost. He became drenched in sweat.
    “What do you want? What have I done to you?” he began imploring, kneeling in bed, hands folded: “Take pity on me!”
    Seeing that the ghost wasn’t answering him, and remembering that these shades from the afterworld abhorred light, the marchese managed, after several attempts thwarted by the tremor in his hands, to light the oil lamp on his bedside table. Instead of disappearing, however, the shape acquired substance in the person of a barefoot Donna Matilde in her nightgown, hair loose, eyes glistening, all made up and looking twenty years younger than her age.
    “I wanted to thank you,” said the marchesa, “for the present you took the trouble to bring me.”
    She fell silent, as Don Filippo looked on, flummoxed at finding her so youthful as to enflame his desire. Then Donna Matilde continued:
    “But it wasn’t only to thank you that I disturbed your sleep.”
    “At your service,” said Don Filippo, and he made room for her beside him in the bed. In so doing, however, his mood darkened. How dare his wife enter the bedroom of someone who was a stranger to her, at night, and with unmistakable intentions to boot? But he was dead wrong as to her intentions.
    “What I wanted to