wedding day!’
They sneak up closer to the window and crouch behind an oleander bush. The Faccincanis live in one of Campino’s fancier farmhouses, a residence befitting a pig farmer with a lucrative sideline in wine broking. Every space not taken up by sofas and chairs is filled with cabinets, sideboards, dressers and desks, all varnished to a brilliant shiny gold and displaying every kind of porcelain knick-knack under the sun.
Standing on top of the dining table in the middle of all this ornate clutter is Teresa. She’s in her wedding dress, her mother fiddling with the hem. In her anxiety to produce the quintessential bridal outfit, Signora Faccincani has managed to turn the most expensive French tulle – courtesy of Teresa’s cousin Annamaria, whose soldier boyfriend lives in Paris – into something far removed from the simple elegance Pistola knows Teresa would have envisaged. Wreathed to her ankles in frothy white layers, the tiny bride looks like a multi-tiered wedding cake herself.
Yet she remains breathtaking. A vision so glorious to Pistola, he’s terrified his friends will notice how he’s trembling.
The boys can hear her pleading, ‘Mamma, please, it’s my wedding!’ while a stony-faced Signora Faccincani merely keeps fiddling with the pins, shaking her head and commanding: ‘Turn! Slowly!’
‘Cristo, what a beautiful sight!’ Donato’s whisper is full of such undisguised lust Pistola has to firmly control the desire to hit him.
He gives him a shove. ‘Come on, move, let’s go!’
His friend ignores him. ‘Don’t know what your brother has done to deserve her, Fiorenzo,’ he murmurs, gazing at the bride with the urgent need of a dying man for water in the desert.
‘It’s horrible, Mamma!’ The bride’s wails redouble. ‘All so loose and floppy over the bosom! It should be like this!’ She ferociously grabs the frothing tulle and pulls it so tightly that the flesh of her breasts pops out in two little mounds.
‘God, those firm little peaches!’ Donato’s voice is choked with desire. Out of the corner of his eye, Pistola can see him virtually panting.
He doesn’t mean to hit Donato quite so hard, but blood is suddenly pouring from his friend’s nose and he’s lying spread-eagled across the oleander bush, screaming that he’s going to break Pistola’s neck and then both his legs.
Signora Faccincani comes rushing to the window, yelling at these delinquenti who have broken her oleander bush. On his feet again, Donato is now laying into Pistola, managing in the process to smear him with the blood from his own nose, while Fiorenzo, never one to miss out on a good fight, gets stuck in too.
The sight they present is evidently so gory that when Pistola looks up he sees Teresa’s eyes are wide with horror as she stands glued to the table, a hand over her mouth.
The next minute he feels himself being drenched with water. Bepi has done what he always does when Diavolo gets into a dog fight. He’s tossed a bucketful over the three of them.
A day later, Pistola is still scraping squashed black figs out of his trouser pockets when Nonno Mario comes into the house with the startling news that the wedding is off and the bridegroom has left town.
As his grandfather wonders aloud who is going to eat all the food he has been preparing, the image that instantly fills Pistola’s head is of the most exquisite bride in the world standing on the table in her wedding dress with her hand over her mouth.
It takes exactly seventeen minutes for word to get around the village, precipitating a general feeling of gloom. Everyone has been looking forward to the wedding feast for months. It was the highlight of the year, talked about endlessly. Naturally, they all have their own opinions about why Aguinaldo has departed.
Nonno Mario has his opinions too. ‘They’ve been putting pressure on him,’ he mutters cryptically as he chops up onions for the evening’s ragù, holding the knife at arm’s length to avoid tears. ‘Nobody’s saying anything but you pick it up. Bepi wanted him to take over the pigs. Pino wanted him to take over the silkworms. Teresa wanted him to open a trattoria, and with her father’s financial backing she was pushing hard.’ He pauses, thoughtful. ‘I did wonder what he was up to, though, when I saw him with Ignazio. Zia Andromaca will know where he’s gone. Bet you a million lire.’
So concerned is Pistola about the turn Teresa’s life has abruptly taken – and so worried that his comments to her about Aguinaldo’s sexual leanings might have had something to do with it – that he goes rushing off to find Zia Andromaca immediately. He forgets that at this time of day the baker will be catching up on sleep. As he stands on the street below her shuttered windows he can hear her snoring lightly. No more chance of waking her than rousing his great-grandfather Vittorio in the graveyard.
Turning to go home, he’s nearly knocked over by Fiorenzo racing round the corner, eyes wild. His father has collapsed at home and he’s rushing to get Dottor Pacchioni. Pistola joins him. By the time the three of them get back to the house, it’s too late. Sandrina, still clutching a jiggling stocking full of leaping frogs, is crouched by the body of her husband on the sofa in the living room. Pino is reclining as peacefully as if he’s just gone to sleep after an exhausting day cleaning silkworm trays.
It’s a deceptively tranquil scenario until Dottor Pacchioni tells Sandrina that it looks as if it was a heart attack that killed her husband. She bursts into roof-lifting wails. Frogs go leaping all over the carpet as she pulls at her hair and curses her black-sheep son for having brought death and destruction upon the house.
Later, Pistola hears from Fiorenzo that his thieving bastard of a brother has not only abandoned his bride on the eve of the wedding, but taken the family’s only valuable piece of inheritance, an exquisitely engraved silver fob watch left to Pino by his father.
Thanks to Squarcione’s assistant Camillo, who gave Aguinaldo a valuation on the watch, the whole of Campino already knows about the devious bridegroom’s latest trick. Everyone is convinced that’s what killed Pino.
Dignified Corpse, Decorative Widow
The swooshing sea sound that has filled the Bersella house for as long as Pistola can remember now lulls Pino’s body as it lies in state in its open coffin in the darkened living room. Thousands of fully grown fat white silkworms are consuming their last piles of mulberry leaves before entering their own new incarnation.
Sandrina’s dear departed husband has undergone a sartorial transformation. She has dressed him for the viewing in his one and only suit – worn for weddings (his own) and funerals (now also his own.) The badly cut black woollen double-breasted three-piece was made a quarter of a century ago by Peschiera, the Campino tailor, and has aged badly.
On his lapel she has pinned the World War I medal he earned for bravery. As a plucky eighteen-year-old helping the Italians drive out the Austrians in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, Pino dived into the most ferocious part of the fighting and dragged out a wounded soldier from his own village. It was Massimo Cremonini the coffin maker, his close friend and dedicated rummy opponent.
As a tribute, Cremonini has supplied the family with his most expensive coffin at his lowest price. It’s an elaborate affair in polished mahogany with ornate brass handles and a sumptuous ruby-red velveteen lining. Around it, Sandrina has
