Hunting Season: A Novel Read Free Page B

the doorjamb in a pose that looked nonchalant but was in fact dictated by the need to lean against something. Taormina, who was unloading a crate of peas, didn’t even respond.
    “May I come in?”
    “Go ahead.”
    Now that he had to say something, the surveyor felt his mouth go all dry.
    “I have a question, just one, and then I’ll leave you to your work. Who is Santo Alfonso de’ Liguori?”
    The other stared back at him with bovine eyes.
    “A saint. My mother prays to him.”
    “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t make myself clear. Who is the new stranger in town?”
    “A man,” said Taormina, his eyes darkening.
    Fede did not insist, realizing that one question more might prove fatal.
    But the surveyor did manage nevertheless to gain satisfaction.
    “I know the whole story!” he cried triumphantly two days later to his friends and the Circolo. “Signor de’ Liguori has bought the house that used to belong to Taormina’s brother, Jano, who died at sea. It’s right on the Corso, near my place, and has a store downstairs and an apartment above. The masons and carpenters start work tomorrow.”
    “Why has he come to Vigàta?”
    “I know that too,” said the surveyor, puffing up with pride like a peacock. “He’s going to open a pharmacy.”

    Thus nobody was curious when, the next few times the Franceschiello called at port, Sasà Mangione unloaded some huge trunks stuffed so full they risked giving him a hernia with every step he took; and nobody was curious when a crate full of glass tubes and bottles and flasks in theretofore unseen forms arrived at the post office; and nobody was curious when pharmacist de’ Liguori spent the morning combing the countryside looking for and gathering certain kinds of grasses and flowers. These things were all part of his profession.
    “He’s thought everything out very carefully,” said Fede the surveyor. “On the ground floor there’s the pharmacy, behind which there’s a great big room full of counters with glass gizmos on them. There are also two big jugs full of water and a little oven for drying plants. There’s also a door in this back room which gives onto the street, so that if the pharmacist wants to come and go when the shop is closed, he doesn’t have to open the front door; and there’s a broad wooden staircase that leads to the apartment upstairs, where there’s a living and dining room, a bedroom, a kitchen, and a commode.”
    “What is the bed like?”
    “Small.”
    “A sign he doesn’t want to settle down,” said Signor Colajanni, who had two marriageable daughters.
    “You’re telling us things that anyone can see with his own eyes,” Barone Uccello cut in, “but you still can’t tell us who Santo Alfonso de’ Liguori is or why he got it in his head to set up a pharmacy in Vigàta.”
    “That is the question,” the surveyor said pensively.

    “Tomorrow afternoon they’re going to open a pharmacy in town,” Mimì said as he was carrying his master, chair and all, from the palazzo to the Circolo. He often told him of the goings-on about town, such as: “Pippineddu the mason fell from a ladder and broke his leg,” or “Signora Balistreri gave birth to a baby daughter,” and he would say these things just to amuse him and help the time pass, knowing he would never reply. But as he was covering him with the blanket, since it was late February and frosty, the old man made as if to speak.
    “No,” he said with such effort that he began to sweat, despite the cold. “No, Mimì. Tomorrow hunting season opens.”
    “What are you saying, sir? It’s a pharmacy that’s opening, and the pharmacist is that gentleman stranger who greets you every time he passes by.”
    “No, Mimì, tomorrow hunting season opens. And I don’t want to get shot.”
    “But what are you afraid of, sir? What, are you a quail or something?”
    Mimì was dumbfounded. The marchese had not spoken so much in years.
    The old man bobbed his head forward, as if to