The Brewer of Preston Read Free

since there certainly were no people about at that hour on a night of such dreadful weather.

    For Gerd, too, who’d been left alone at home, it was a strange night. Hearing his father leave, he got up out of bed, went and locked the front door, and lit all the lamps in the house, one after the other, until he was in a sea of light. Then he sat down in front of the mirror in his mother’s bedroom. (The engineer and his wife slept in separate rooms, which was the biggest scandal in town and considered scarcely Christian, but in any case nobody really knew what religion the German and his wife belonged to.) He took off his nightshirt and, sitting there naked, began staring at himself. Then he went into his father’s study, grabbed a ruler from the desktop, and returned to the mirror, which was a full-length glass. Taking in hand the thing between his legs (dick? peter? cock? peepee?), he held it along the ruler. Repeating the action several times, he remained unsatisfied with the measurement, despite having pulled on the skin so hard that it hurt. He laid down the ruler and, discouraged, went back to bed. Closing his eyes, he began to address a long and detailed prayer to God, asking Him, by apposite miracle, to make his thing like that of his classmate Sarino Guastella, who was as tall as he, weighed the same as he, but was inexplicably four times longer and thicker down there than he was.

    When they got to the Piano della Lanterna, below which lay the town of Vigàta, the engineer and his men realized, to their consternation, that the fire was no joking matter. There were at least two large buildings in flames. As they stood there watching, and the engineer contemplated which side of the hill they should descend with their machine in order to attack the flames most quickly, they saw, by the dancing light of the blaze, a man walking as if lost in thought, though swaying from time to time. His clothes were burnt and his hair stood straight up, either from fear or by choice of style, it wasn’t clear which. He was holding his hands over his head, as if in surrender. They stopped him, having had to call to him twice, as the man seemed not to have heard them.
    â€œVat is happenink?” asked the engineer.
    â€œWhere?” the man asked back in a polite voice.
    â€œVat you mean, vere? In Figata, vat is happenink?”
    â€œIn Vigàta?”
    â€œYes,” they all said in a sort of chorus.
    â€œThere seems to be a fire,” said the man, looking down at the town as if to confirm.
    â€œBut how come it happent? You know?”
    The man lowered his arms, put them behind his back, and looked down at his shoes.
    â€œYou don’t know?” he asked.
    â€œNo, ve don’t know.”
    â€œI see. Apparently the soprano, at a certain point, hit a wrong note.”
    Having said this, the man resumed walking, putting his hands again over his head.
    â€œWhat the hell is the soprano?” asked Tano Alletto, the coachman.
    â€œShe’s a voman who sinks,” Hoffer explained, rousing himself from his astonishment.

A spectre is haunting the musicians of Europe
    â€œA spectre is haunting the musicians of Europe!” Cavaliere Mistretta declared in a loud voice, slamming his hand down hard on the table. It was clear to all present that by “musicians” he meant musical composers. The cavaliere dealt in fava beans and was not very fond of reading, but occasionally, when speaking, he liked to indulge in apocalyptic imagery.
    The yell and the crash made the members of the Family and Progress Social Club of Vigàta, already nervous after more than three hours of intense discussion, jump in their seats.
    Giosuè Zito, the veteran agronomist, had a very different reaction. Having dozed off some fifteen minutes earlier because he’d been up all night with a terrible toothache, he woke with a start after hearing, in his half sleep, only the word “spectre,” then