And even if she is brainless, what’s that to you? That’s life, isn’t it? So come on, buck up a bit!”

Three days later Antonio set off for Catania, shadowed by a lanky, skinny, droopy dog which, despite suitcases thumped against its nose, kicks from people struggling against the tide and whacks from the umbrellas of exasperated old ladies, unflinchingly persevered in tailing Antonio’s white poodle, with whom it had struck up a lightning friendship in the booking hall. The poodle, firmly on the leash and hauled swiftly along by Antonio, never ceased – he himself so handsome and sprucely groomed – from turning longing backward looks at his hideous though courteous friend.

At the carriage door was waiting Luigi d’Agata, who embraced Antonio with tears in his eyes, and uttered in tones of reproach, “In the name of God! Do you have to up sticks right now when things are looking a bit brighter? Just imagine, yesterday, round at the General’s place, they’d invented a new game. If you tell them about it in Catania they won’t believe you even if you fall dead at their feet. They call it ‘Nothing but the Truth’. You can ask any question you like and the others have to answer it truthfully. Just listen what they put to Signora Pollini: ‘If armed bandits broke in here and forced you to go to bed with one of those present, you’ve got to tell us in all truthfulness whom you would go with.’”

“And,” replied Antonio, climbing into the carriage with his dog and then reappearing at the window, “what was the lady’s answer?”

Calling up from the platform d’Agata continued: “She went as red as a beetroot, and God knows who she was thinking of in her heart of hearts, but so as not to make a scandal and let the cat out of the bag and – with that mouth of hers that anyone would have nibbled right down to the teeth with kisses – she said, as demurely as could be, ‘Why, the General himself!’ Well she could tell that to the Marines… Go to bed with the General, forsooth! But then they got round to me: ‘And how about you? Which of the ladies present would you like to take to bed?’”

“So what did you say?” enquired Antonio, lifting up his poodle so that it could make its adieux to the doggy friend stationed beneath the train window as if it had forgotten exactly what reason had brought it there and couldn’t think of another for going away again.

“I…” began d’Agata, though as the train had begun to move he was now trotting beside it, with the dog galumphing awkwardly at his side. “I said, ‘With Signora Bertini and Signora Gallarati.’”

“What, both at once?” screamed Antonio.

“Yes, both!” yelled d’Agata, puffing to a halt and waving his hanky, laughing fit to bust and winking now one eye and now the other in quick succession, so that the one wink or the other must surely come to the notice of the friend steaming off this instant for the South, where nothing exciting ever happened.

II

ANTONIO’S FAMILY HOME hovered on the third and top floor of an old building in the centre of Catania. A number of its windows overlooked the courtyard all a criss-cross of cords which, issuing from the caretaker’s cubby-hole, were used to wield the clappers of a dozen bells attached to the railings on the various storeys, in readiness to summon a maid, or the lady of the house.

There was a slip of a terrace jammed between their dining-room and the wall of the house opposite, a loftier building at one time totally blank and windowless at this level, but now pierced by French windows at which it was the custom of a certain Stately Elder to appear; to wit, Avvocato Ardizzone. Avvocato Ardizzone who, in spite of his flowery eloquence and the billowing folds of his peignoir, and his tendency to flaunt his gown in court, and his forefinger levelled point-blank at his adversary, and – the decisive stroke, thought he – his portrait in oils occupying half a wall in the Great Hall of the Bar Association, in which he was depicted with that celebrated forefinger (though here, from noblesse oblige, directed at the ceiling), his other hand resting on a highly-coloured Fascist symbol, the so-called Lictoral Fasces… despite these merits and high deserts, and the despatch of hundreds of boxes of oranges to influential people in Rome, and a plaintive, ranting, suppliant, peppery correspondence with ministers’ secretaries… had never secured a place in the Senate. And talking in his sleep at night, “Great God!” he would cry, “there’s so many coppers have hung up their handcuffs because thanks to my connections they got appointed Chiefs of Police, now toasting their arses in the Senate House, leaving me here behind them like a fart in the dark… Three cheers for Giolitti!” he added – risking arrest had his neighbour happened to be a dyed-in-the-wool Fascist. “At least this sort of thing didn’t happen in his day!”

This terrace, on the one side, looked onto the two-mile-long Via Etnea (“the Corso”), rackety with old trams, the lash of whips on the rumps of skinny horses; flurries of talk and of laughter, cries of newsboys; a place awhirl with hat-doffings, back-slappings, gesticulations, collisions, bowings and scrapings… On the other it gave onto a short side-street running straight as a die to the façade of a church in the topmost niche of which shone the Madonna, clad in her blue mantle, her fingers ten rays of light, her head haloed at night by electric bulbs which lost their dazzle in the haze of the sirocco.

On this terrace, on August nights at the dawn of the century, Antonio would fall asleep, face buried in his mother’s lap, hearing the comfort-sweet murmur of her fan above his head, while his father, seated nearby, smoked cigar-butts in his pipe and spat continuously; or else gulped noisily from the rim of a jug and then, smacking his lips with pleasure, was wont to exclaim, “Ah, there’s nothing on earth to beat cold water!”

This same terrace saw his mother and father greeting Antonio on his return from Rome: here he was hugged and kissed, and here brought coffee and biscuits, raw egg and milk; here, with tears in his eyes, he told them how his lovely white dog had dashed out at the open carriage door never to return… And here his mother gave him his first tidings of the city:

“… Dipaola’s son is dead of pneumonia; poor Aunt Santina’s pulse-rate is down to thirty beats a minute but the doctor maintains that she could live to a hundred just the same; and don’t even think of using the word ‘whore’ while you’re talking to Avvocato Palermo! – I know you swear too much, just like your father…”

“Why’s this?”

“His wife ran off last Sunday with a young man on his staff… Give the cold shoulder to young Baron Benedettini: he was gambling at the Coronets Club and they spotted a card up his sleeve… Zuccarello’s son died, just like that, in a couple of days. No time even to cross himself. Professor Callara hasn’t eaten for a week, because (heaven preserve us!) he finds that every morsel he puts into his mouth tastes like a turd. If he goes on like this he’ll be a goner…”

“Ye gods and little fishes!” exploded Antonio’s father. “Can’t you think of anything jollier to talk about? Come along inside, Antonio, and we’ll have a bit of man’s talk.”

Signor Alfio led Antonio to his study, plumped down on the sofa, the high, shelf-laden back of which was set a-jangle with dozens of knick-knacks in peril of falling.

Then, with a sigh, he said: “I think I’ve got angina pectoris.”

“God in heaven!” observed Antonio with some bitterness. “You call that jolly?”

“No, it’s not a jolly subject, but it’s one I can’t avoid bringing up.”

“But Dad, how many times have you been convinced you had angina and then the doctor declared you as sound as a bell?”

“Well, maybe it’s not angina, but it’s certainly something!… In any case, I have diabetes – there’s no two ways about it! That was discovered by your – what-d’ye-call-it? – your uncle, the evening I went to dinner with him and drank water endlessly. ‘Friend,’ said he to me, ‘d’you realize that’s your sixth glass of water? Get a blood-test done, at once, tomorrow, and no shilly-shallying!’ Next day I had the test and they found more sugar in me than in a candied orange. Come on, don’t pull that long face at me! I’m still full of beans, and if it weren’t for the fact that your mother takes it so much to heart… Good Lord, in a word, I’m still a man in the matters that count… I say this so you realize there’s no reason to feel ashamed of your father…”

Antonio blushed to the roots of his hair.

“Why’ve you gone all red?” continued Signor Alfio. “I’ve never minced my words with you. I’m perfectly certain you wouldn’t like your father to be a damp squib, just as I didn’t like it the day I was told your grandfather was in the habit of paying a pittance to gape at some woman in the nude, mop his face with a hanky, and go off again without so much as a lick or a promise… But then he was almost eighty…”

He paused a moment.

“Good Lord, I’m rambling… rambling… It’s the one affliction I simply can’t bear! Always escapes me, what I started to say… Ah, yes!” (picking up his thread). “I’ve been going on about all this because it’s time you got married.”

“But Dad…”

“None of this but-dad stuff! If you don’t marry this… what’s her name? Hell! Oh yes, this Barbara Puglisi, it’ll mean you’re your own worst enemy!”

“But I’ve never set eyes on her!”

“And why? I ask you that! Because when you like the look of a girl you turn your back on her, as if she’d called you a son-of-a-… well, let that go. You’re a nitwit. I can read your thoughts like the back of my hand. You’re ashamed of yourself because you fancy well-built girls with sturdy ankles. But why be ashamed of that, you nincompoop. If you want to know, your grandfather fancied them too, not to mention me, and they’re still favourites with… umm… umm… who was I thinking of?… Ah yes, me! Yes, I still fancy them. Come off it, this… what’s her name?… this Barbara Puglisi is a girl with every button where it ought to be. What’s more, she’s rich, she’s taken with you, she’s respectable… Lumme! what more d’you want?”

“It’s just that I’d like to put it off for a year or two.”

“Listen here my friend, you’re nearly thirty. You soon won’t be able to make it any more… I speak loosely, of course, because we come of good stock, and we unfailingly make it. But it’s one thing to marry at thirty and quite another to marry at forty.