Hunting Season: A Novel Read Free

be the stranger and approached him with the satisfaction of a pointer seeing his sense of smell confirmed.
    “Hello. The name’s Fede, surveyor by trade. Could I be of assistance to you in anything?”
    “In nothing at all, thank you,” replied the stranger, touching his cap with two fingers.
    “Beautiful building, isn’t it?”
    “Yes. It wasn’t here before.”
    “Before when?” the surveyor quickly replied, hoping to broaden that opening.
    “Before,” the stranger repeated. And he walked away.

    The moment he arrived in the central square on his way back to the boardinghouse, the stranger felt the same uneasiness as the first time he had passed through. This time, however, he knew the reason and had no need to look for it. And indeed the old man had him in his sights again. So the stranger, too, stared back at him, straight in the eye, and began to draw near, with the measured step of someone approaching something dangerous. When he was in front of the old man, whose name he didn’t know, he touched his cap with two fingers and said: “Here I am.”
    He was the first to be surprised. Why had those words come out of his mouth? What on earth was he saying or doing? And why?
    The old man looked down and, as he had done that afternoon, muttered:
    “ Madonna biniditta! ”
    “May I, sir?”
    For the stranger—who was as taut as a violin string—the sound of another voice right beside him had the same effect as a pistol shot. He took three quick steps back, ready to start running. The man who had spoken was tall and husky, dressed in black, completely bald, and looked to be about sixty. In his hand he held a blanket, which he then delicately wrapped around the old man’s body. When he had finished, he turned and eyed the stranger.
    “Need anything?”
    “Goodbye,” was the stranger’s reply.

    An hour later, he couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened. At last, no longer able to stand the torment, the stranger turned to Signora Adamo, who was serving him a dish of fried calamaretti and shrimp.
    “Excuse me, signora, but do you know who that man in front of the Circolo dei Nobili is?”
    “There are so many idlers around there.”
    “No, I was referring to a very old man who sits in a wicker chair.”
    “Well, Signor Liquori—”
    “Liguori.”
    “—That’s the Marchese Peluso, Don Federico Maria u vecchiu , as they call him in town—‘the elder,’ so as not to confuse him with his grandson, who has the same name.”
    “So he would be the father of the Marchese Don Filippo?”
    “That’s right.”
    “But doesn’t the old man have anyone to help him?”
    “What do you mean? His manservant, Mimì, a tall man dressed in black without a hair on his head, carries him four times a day, in his chair, from his house to the Circolo and back. He looks after him, brings him blankets if it’s cold, removes his jacket when it’s hot. And he’s always keeping an eye on him from a window in Palazzo Peluso.”
    “By ‘helping him’ I meant, I dunno, changing his clothes, washing him . . . He looked utterly filthy to me.”
    “The marchese’s filth is his own business. It’s nobody’s fault. When Mimì tries to wash him down a little, the old man starts screaming so loud you’d think a pig was being slaughtered. One time, when he could still walk, he came here to eat with a friend and got some sauce on his hands.
    “‘Would you like to wash your hands, sir?’ I asked him.
    “‘My dear,’ he replied, ‘for me, even rinsing my hands is a calamity.’”

    That same evening, at the Circolo dei Nobili, there was a general meeting to appoint the new members. The only person missing was Signor Fede.
    “He must still be out hunting for strangers,” quipped Barone Uccello.
    The Marchese Peluso requested permission to speak.
    “Before we begin considering names,” he said, “I have a serious proposal to make. And that is, that the Circolo dei Nobili should no longer be called