But they say it brings good luck. I can scarcely wait to throw open the windows again and let in some fresh air… This afternoon we must write that letter to the minister.”

Antonio got down to it and wrote the much solicited letter. The notary had it typed out in duplicate and read it over a hundred times, each time disgruntled by the fact that Antonio did not address the minister familiarly as tu. The letter, express registered, was duly posted at the station.

“Will I get an answer?” muttered the notary again and again until Barbara got huffy and came out with a simple, yet stern, “Daddy!”

A week later the minister replied, announcing that the mayor, “for this and for other far more serious reasons”, would be sacked and replaced.

Our good notary was beside himself with joy and, conquering his natural caution, took his good tidings off to the Law-courts.

“Very strange,” scowled the Prefect, “I have not been informed of this. Am I to believe that the minister communicates his decisions to private citizens?… In saying this I do not wish to cast aspersions on your son-in-law, whom I know to have excellent connections in the Capital. But after all I am the person who represents His Excellency and enjoys the honour of carrying out his orders… No, my dear sir, I doubt very much that the decree to dismiss the mayor has as yet been signed… It may, perhaps, be something the minister has in mind, that might be put into effect in the more or less foreseeable future… but as things stand today… To put it mildly, I have my doubts.”

Our notary blushed.

“What if this were the case?” he thought to himself. “How utterly imprudent of me to count my chickens before they’re hatched. I’ve never done anything so silly before in my life! If he’s right, I’ll shut up shop and move to another town. It’s my own fault for getting into cahoots with young people. Go to bed with a babe and you wake up in wet sheets!”

However, it came about that three days later the Prefect received a telephone call from the minister, and after the following aside (“What’s up in Catania? What are the police doing at night? I have been informed that in a urinal in Via Pacini someone has written a rhymed couplet about me that’s now going the rounds of the whole of Italy, and those nitwitted egg-heads in the Caffè Aragno are already bandying it back and forth!”), he received the news that the mayor of Catania could start packing his bags.

This information spread like wildfire the length and breadth of the city, and procured for Antonio respectful salutations from people he didn’t know from Adam. As he walked along the street the word whispered behind his back was “potent…”

“He’s a potent youngster,” everyone repeated. “Count K would give his right arm to be in his shoes!”

The one time this chit-chat came distinctly to Antonio’s ears, he flew into a rage, drew himself up before the old gentleman who had uttered it, and stared him squarely in the face. The old man blanched and shook like an aspen.

“I only said that you were a potent youngster!” he stammered. “D’you call that an insult? I’m a friend of your father’s. In fact it was Signor Alfio who told me…”

Antonio turned on his heel and left him standing. But from that day onward he began to check up on his father and was rewarded, through a half-open doorway, with the following peroration: “He’s inherited it from me and his grandfather! Old boy, I tell you with us Magnanos women go weak at the knees if we touch them with a fingertip… I know nothing about my son’s relations with the contessa: but I do know that when a woman has been with him, she goes licking her lips for the rest of her life.”

Antonio waited for his father’s friends to take their leave, then shot him a fiery glance.

“What’s up with you then?” demanded Alfio. “Why are you glaring at me like that?”

“I overheard what you said just now.”

“So what? What did I say wrong? Anything to be ashamed of if you’re a good stallion? Why, you’d be ashamed if you weren’t!”

Antonio stamped his foot with vexation and burst out, “But don’t you understand that…”

“Oh ho, my friend,” broke in his father, “I understand very well indeed. What matters is that you should understand that I am entitled to talk about my own son when and how I please!”

Antonio bit his lip and said nothing, though the following morning, perhaps in search of comfort, he rang up his cousin Edoardo.

“I’m very anxious to speak to you too,” replied his friend. “Wait for me there at home, and I’ll be with you in a brace of shakes.”

He came, huffing and puffing. His eyes were red about the rims and he had every appearance of suffering from the pangs of unrequited love. They went out together onto the terrace.

“I’m disgusted with myself!” said Edoardo, leaning on the railing that overhung the sun-drenched Corso. “We’ve really hit rock-bottom!”

“Who’s we?” asked Antonio.

“All of us… you, me… but specially me.”

“But why?”

“I tell you I haven’t slept a wink for six nights or swallowed a morsel. Yesterday in the street I had to prop myself on a beggar’s shoulder because the ground was reeling beneath my feet. And what’s more, I’ve got an itch I can’t get rid of… I’m always shunting off to the “Pensione Eros”… Today I laid hands on the charwoman – who’s all of fifty – and rammed her against the wall…”

“Why on earth?”

“Listen here, Antonio! I’ve got to be made mayor of Catania. Me, and no one else! It’s a debt of honour I’ve taken on with myself and the entire bunch of my relatives, who regard me as pretty small beer. You’ve got to write to the minister! If necessary we’ll go up to Rome together. I’ll pay the fares and everything. But I’ve simply got to be made mayor of Catania! In any case,” he added, raising his face, with half-closed eyes, and filling his lungs with moist February air, “this dud show can’t last, if it’s true they’re gearing up to invade Abyssinia. You need to be as dimwitted as a schoolmarm if you plan to do today what the English already did three centuries ago! Listen to what Croce has to say, for godsake.”

“Come again?” queried Antonio.

“Benedetto Croce. Never heard of him! He’s the only reason we can claim that Italy’s a country fit for human habitation, and not just a sheep-pen…”

And drawing forth Croce’s History of Europe from where he held it, secreted under his arm, he read aloud a number of pages peppered with such comments as “No!… The man’s mad!… No, No and No again!” in case the book should fall into the hands of a Fascist fanatic or a policeman in mufti.

Edoardo read aloud with great fervour.