Sicilian Tragedee by Ottavio Cappellani Read Free Book Online Page A

delight of Cagnotto, who spends hours seeking the right words to maintain a delicate balance between veiled reproach and patient tolerance.
    Oh, the thin line between courtship and hypnosis! thinks Cagnotto.
    Bobo is like a lost puppy rescued from the street, torn between the appeal of a new owner and the mistrust that drives him toward a dangerous freedom. Only male puppies behave this way, the females jump up and slobber all over you as soon as they see there’s a chance of finding a home, thinks Cagnotto, tormenting—and equally enjoying—himself.
    Cagnotto feels the attraction and the rude ingenuousness of a creature hungry for art but still untutored in the ways of the avant-garde and its experiments.
    He needs to be taken by the hand, Bobo, broken in, almost: seduced, co-opted, gently pushed into the meanders of experimentation. Oh, what a difference, Cagnotto observes to himself, between the unripe, green soul of Bobo, into which (Cagnotto even hears the imperceptible sound) the Wisdom that Cagnotto holds in his hand enters with difficulty, what a difference between that and his own soul, abused over the years by great big experimenters.

    Bobo, all unaware, wounds him, flattens him. The mention of another director, of whom Bobo speaks with enthusiasm, wrings from Cagnotto a tight-lipped nod of approval, then many circumlocutions and verbal pirouettes to wrest Bobo’s mind away from those extraneous claws trying to snatch him.
    Cagnotto carves that unripe mind with the precision of a sculptor carving a block of rare and precious marble. One false move and the whole may end up in splinters.
    Oh, how well Cagnotto knows the cynical world of the theater.
    How to explain to Bobo what true inspiration is, loyalty to his art, seriousness of purpose, artistic humility, without planting in that well-disposed soul the suspicion that all of this is really just the basest of jealousy?
    In this great confusion of worries and invocations, Cagnotto remembers that he must pass by and pick up Bobo.
    He has invited him for lunch at Capomulini.
    Bobo had sighed at the other end of the line, and oh, God, had said yes, not sounding very sure.
    What should he wear?
     
     
    Behind the wheel of the BMW X5, stuck in traffic in Capomulini, he takes a covert look at Bobo.
    Bobo’s too serious today.
    Since he had gotten into the vehicle (Cagnotto had the imperceptible impression that Bobo had slammed the door), he hasn’t said a word. The sculpted cheekbones that are pointed out the window, the sulky lips in sync with the radio, the strong jaw resting on his knuckles.
    His attitude is unmistakable: something’s wrong.
    Cagnotto is sweating. He’s sweating although he has turned up the air conditioner to the max.

    He’s sweating because in his weight-loss anxiety this morning he has taken a diuretic, has spent the whole morning pissing, and now he has low blood pressure.
    When you have low blood pressure, cold sweats, and are stuck in traffic under the broiling sun, it’s normal, thinks Cagnotto, to have a panic attack.
    Cagnotto’s having a panic attack.
    He tries to distract himself by looking at the traffic.
    Capomulini is a little town on the sea between Acitrezza and Acireale, made up entirely of one U-shaped street, one side of the U being the seafront, the other, the road out of town. On the seafront side is a row of a dozen piers looking out onto the water that serve as restaurants. The kitchens are across the street on the ground floor of the buildings opposite and the waiters cross over with platters of bass and bream, spicy sautéed mussels and raw sea urchins.
    Everybody comes here at lunchtime to eat something and cop some sun.
    Often, some shopkeeper of a driver, rushing to get back in time for afternoon business hours, smashes into a boned mackerel, a grouper, or a fritto misto , but since there’s always traffic and it moves at a snail’s pace, nobody ever gets hurt in the collisions, although it can happen that