The Wager Read online

  The younger man put out his hand. “Anything you can spare, sire.” His arm was skinny; his hand, bony.

  “A little charity.” The other extended his claw.

  Neither wore a jacket on this cold morning.

  Don Giovanni looked at the open palms. That’s what he would be reduced to if he didn’t come up with a plan fast. He held his own hands out. His pale, soft hands beside their brown, rough ones. Laughter bubbled up. Lack of sleep on top of everything else was making him hysterical, but he couldn’t afford to give in to it. He couldn’t afford anything. He pressed a hand over his mouth to hold in the laugh at that joke.

  The younger man cocked his head. “You don’t look well, sire. Do you even know about the disaster?”

  “The wave, sire,” said the other man. “Came and smashed everything. Washed people clear away. Don’t you know?” He spoke as though to an idiot.

  Don Giovanni had always given to the less fortunate. Always. His father said Muslims had that rule right, a foundation for a superior civilization; it was built into their religion—give to the poor. Give. Give, give, give to the poor. “I have nothing to give.”

  “Fine clothes, and nothing to give?”

  “I don’t owe you an explanation.” Don Giovanni straightened his collar. Humiliations lay ahead; he didn’t need to start early. “You’re trespassing.”

  “And whose property would it be, sire?” asked the other man. “Yours?”

  “Or are you trespassing, too?” asked the younger man. He cozied up beside Don Giovanni as if in cahoots.

  Insufferable! “I was born here. I’m Don Giovanni.”

  “Oh, Don Giovanni takes the time to speak to us,” said the other man. “I’m not worthy of this honor.”

  The words the old crone had said. Words that almost always meant the opposite of what the speaker was thinking. Don Giovanni waved them away.

  “What’s in those bags?” asked the younger man.

  “Get out of here.” Don Giovanni was too tired to deal with this nonsense. He walked toward the door.

  The younger man blocked his way. “How about a wager? You’re an educated man, the way you talk. You probably read massive tomes all the time. In funny languages, too, right? But I bet I can tell you a truth you’ve never thought about before, excellent scholar.”

  Could this possibly get more vexing? “Of course you can. You work in your world, I work in mine. We know different things.” Don Giovanni tried to walk around him.

  The man jumped in his path again. “A truth about human nature.” He held one finger up in front of Don Giovanni’s eyes. “If I can tell you a truth about human nature, one you never thought about before, I get those goatskin bags. Deal?”

  “I don’t gamble.”

  “You hear that?” the younger man said to the other. “He’s a godless man.”

  Of all the ridiculous things. Don Giovanni raised his voice. “How would you know the first thing about me?”

  “It takes hope to gamble. And a man without hope is a man without God.” The younger man smiled and held out his hand.

  Don Giovanni shook his head.

  “I told you a truth you hadn’t thought about before.”

  “I didn’t accept the wager.” Don Giovanni pushed the man aside and walked through the door. He squinted in the rude sunlight. Which way to turn? Did it matter?

  He took a step when—whap!—he went sprawling. Pain bloomed between the wings of his shoulders. It billowed down his spine, up his neck. He curled one arm backward to reach the source of the searing heat.

  Crack! His hand diverted quickly to the back of his head, where it hurt much worse than his shoulders. The wool hat was sticky wet.

  “Serves you right.”

  The breath that delivered those words hit Don Giovanni warm in his face. The young man was squatting beside him, his cheeks dark with anger. And that breath so foul, Don Giovanni stopped his own breathing in order to be free of it. He closed his eyes.

  “If you’d have paid up, we three could have had a bag each. But you showed no mercy. You get what you give.”

  Don Giovanni felt the goatskin bags ripped from his shoulder. He felt the shoes pulled from his feet.

  “Another truth,” came the stink, close again now. “The world’s gone bad out there. Commit that to memory.”

  He felt tugs on his trousers.

  “Leave him his trousers, at least,” said the voice of the other man.

  “We can sell them.”

  His trousers were jerked from his legs.

  Don Giovanni passed out.

  When he finally opened his eyes, the sun’s glare made him close them again fast. His eyes hurt, his head hurt, his back hurt. And he was cold. It was still full daylight—so he must not have been unconscious that long. He sat up slowly, fighting off dizziness. All that remained to his name was the shirt he wore, blood spattered on the left shoulder, and the wool cap.

  He carefully peeled the cap off. His hair was a mat of congealed blood. It hurt just to smooth it.

  Now that the weight of his head wasn’t pressing it down against the ground, his bottom lip hurt, too. His teeth had cut the inside when he fell. He used the clean cap edge to wipe the dirt off. He tossed the cap away.

  He stood. Surprisingly, he wasn’t shaky. He must not have lost as much blood as he’d thought.

  He took off his shirt and tied it around his waist, like an apron. It covered his private parts. He would go to a friend’s home. They’d give him clothes. And food. It was simple charity.

  Only then someone else would just rob him again. Nobles’ clothes wouldn’t serve him in his role as beggar. The role Don Alfinu had cast him in.

  Well, not everyone destitute was a beggar. He could work. Peasants did. He’d start by going back to Lino’s.

  He rubbed his arms and chest and moved quickly. The rocks of the path cut his tender feet.

  Women dressed in the black of mourning passed and looked the other way, embarrassed for him. Children pointed at his backside and laughed. Men in black looked through him; he didn’t exist.

  All of them had nothing. Less than nothing—they had the misery of the wave, the reasons for the black clothes. Yet they felt superior. Because of his bare bottom.

  This was a nightmare. He was Don Giovanni. The richest baron around. The most handsome bachelor of Messina. People looked with admiration when he passed. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.

  But each step of his bare feet proved it was.

  He veered around the dead fish and seaweed, broken dishes and benches washed from people’s homes, drowned cats, dogs, even birds. And a lone deer, a stupid thing that had strayed from the forest at exactly the wrong time.

  Given the rate he was going and the breeze that had picked up, he was a quivering mass of gooseflesh by the time he finally stood in front of Lino’s door. He knocked.

  A sharp-nosed woman came out of the next house.

  He wiped his hair off his face and nodded politely.

  She spat on the ground, as though he were a bearer of ill fortune. Her suspicious mug reminded him of the old crone who’d called him a thief the morning before.

  He rapped harder on Lino’s door. When no one answered, he went in. The odor of death hovered over the empty room. He called out just to be sure. Then he sank onto the bench by the table to wait.

  It would be safe to sleep here. Heaven knew his body needed the rest. But his eyes roved the room. There were clothes in the basket in the corner. He knew, because the stiff, wide weave of the wicker allowed a glimpse inside.

  On a shelf was the end of a round of bread. The smell of it fought with the odor of death. His mouth watered.

  Don Giovanni was no thief.

  On the other hand, he’d been generous with Lino. In the year that Lino had been in his employ, he must have been generous many times. He couldn’t remember now. He remembered gifts to his friends, though, so surely he must have done similar things for Lino. What
? Just one thing—that’s all he needed to ease the guilt already rising in his chest. But nothing came to mind. His head wasn’t functioning properly after that blow. There had to have been many acts of generosity. Many.

  He folded his arms across his bare chest and hugged himself. He could wait.

  But his eyes prowled now. Sneaky. They returned to the basket of clothes, the bread on the shelf.

  That jug under the shelf probably held wine.

  Don Giovanni walked over and opened it. The floral aroma of Malvasia made him giddy. He would have preferred something not so sweet, but then, beggars can’t be choosers. He laughed at his joke and took a long drink.

  He dumped out the basket. A woman’s dress. It draped from his hands like a maid in full surrender. Long sleeves, long skirts, guardians of modesty. And a girl’s dress. Such a simple thing, a swathe of cloth to hide the body that would one day lure. A man’s smock and pants. What weak things humans used to protect against the forces.

  This was all they had—the clothes on their back and one extra set. His cheeks went slack. A meager life.

  But his fingers tightened around the trousers and smock. It was regrettable, but unavoidable. With all the dead in Messina now, it shouldn’t be hard to find another outfit. Don Giovanni needed these clothes immediately, whereas Lino already had some. Lino had the luxury of time to get replacements from the dead.

  Don Giovanni winced as he pulled the smock fast over his cut head. The coarse cloth scratched his skin. He donned the trousers just as quickly. After all, once the decision was made, hesitation was pointless. Dangerous, even. What if Lino came home and objected? The thought of such a mortifying scene turned Don Giovanni’s stomach. He grabbed the bread and walked out the door, chewing at it.

  “Thief!” screamed the old woman from her post next door. “I knew it.” She held out a dried hot red pepper toward him, a talisman against evil. “Thief! Thief!”

  Don Giovanni ran. With every third step, it seemed a rock jabbed his tender soles. He looked over his shoulder.

  Four little boys had taken chase.

  He twirled to face them, holding his arms up and out. “Don’t be foolish,” he said firmly. “Go back home.”

  The boys stopped and closed ranks; eight black eyes burned at him. Barefoot and filthy, the lot.

  The sharp-nosed hag caught up to the boys. Her arms were clasped around a basket of bashed and stinking fish. Another woman came running up. “Quick,” the women said to the boys. “Quick, quick.”

  Instantly, Don Giovanni understood what was about to happen. He turned and ran, despite his wounded feet.

  Rotted fish parts came hurtling onto his back.

  “Thief!” screamed the chorus. “Thief!”

  The Forest

  THE STONES OF THE HILL PATH WERE LOOSE AND DON GIOVANNI moved fast. Too fast. He fell into thistles with needles longer than his nose. He rolled away, slapping hard at the flaming sting in his feet, ankles, calves. How hideous to have no shoes.

  He rocked from side to side and screamed in pain. Squirrels chattered back at him. Nightingales, warblers, buntings sprang to attention, watched beadily, then resumed their singing. Spring was coming, they insisted. Spring, food, sex. The splendor of it only drove Don Giovanni to tears of frustration.

  He uncurled himself with difficulty. He stood and surveyed the path. The rocks looked loose for as far as he could see. There was no choice but to go through the forests, dense with birch and holm oak and undergrowth that poked and pricked. That was better than thistles, though.

  He ate the last of the bread. Then he balled his hands into fists against the pain and walked and walked. Finally he stumbled across a beech grove, with its characteristic ground cover of fungus and moss. A respite for his poor feet, at last. He collapsed.

  When he woke, he pushed his back up against a smooth trunk and stroked his feet and ankles. The flame was gone, but it was as though the memory of it lingered in his limbs. His skin hurt just at this light touch.

  He walked on. The sunlight played off yellow flowers on spindly stems. Orchids? His mother used to pay great sums for orchids from the slopes of Etna. What a surprise to find them here. With the sun on them, the ground seemed stippled with gold. An altar.

  His mouth was dry. He needed food, but first, water. He hiked northward fast, despite the rocks and sticks. It was full afternoon; only a few hours of light left. Hurry.

  Soon he reached the shore of the long, narrow Ganzirri Lake, with its whitish-blue water. Bee-eaters, fabulous in their green throats and yellow and orange chests, sent rolling trills from the sandy banks. Purple martins flitted past. Slender-billed gulls cried out. Near the opposite bank flamingoes fed. Behind them the mountains held deep grooves hollowed out by the streams of torrential spring rains. The rocks alternated stripes of gray and darker gray, like the folds of a woman’s skirt, now catching the light, now falling into shadow. Don Giovanni gaped. Such extreme natural beauty demanded attention even now, in his terrible straits.

  He pulled his smock off, careful of his wounds, and spread it neatly in the sun. The same with his trousers. This way they’d absorb whatever warmth the sun offered and they’d feel so much better when he put them back on.

  He slipped into the water. Cold, but hardly more than the air. This was a marine lake, connected to the sea by two channels, no good for drinking. But salt made wounds heal; swimming was medicine for his feet and head.

  The waters teemed with anchovies, eels, bass, mullet. If only he had a way to catch them.

  He came out on the mountainside and went straight to the natural spring, where warm water thick with minerals bubbled up through the rocks into a little pool. He drank until his belly was a swollen melon.

  He sat in the warm water, legs folded, and rested his forehead against a rock. What next? Without a home the elements affected you much more. The sun. The rain.

  As a child, Don Giovanni had listened to the servants talk. They believed you could predict weather from the gassiness of this thermal spring. Extra gassy meant rain would come. It seemed very gassy, yet the sky was clear.

  The faintest breeze came, carrying the pungent perfume of rosemary. His stomach contracted, but he wasn’t up to chewing those needles in the wild. People said fairies inhabited rosemary, wicked fairies that shape-shifted into snakes. He didn’t believe that, of course. Nevertheless . . .

  He walked back around the tip of the lake and dressed slowly. He ached everywhere. Someone simply had to help him. Someone had to put a stop to this awfulness.

  Who was he kidding? His best friends hadn’t offered anything. Not even the truth; they’d let him go to Don Alfinu’s unaware, easy prey for the old man’s malice.

  The words of the thief this morning came back: The world’s gone bad out there. Had an inconsequential thief who fancied himself a philosopher made Don Giovanni lose confidence in humanity just like that?

  He wandered, racking his brains for a plan.

  Dusk made the woods dreamlike. Yellow fluttered in his peripheral vision. It gave the odd sensation that he was fluttering, too—floating on the breath of the woods.

  Don Giovanni walked softly toward where the yellow cloud had passed. A group of almond trees with their clusters of small pink blossoms had attracted butterflies. It was early for almonds; usually their budding coincided with the start of Lent. The trees hadn’t even leafed out yet. Blossoms on bare branches. And so many butterflies all over them. Lemon-colored. Like the butter-flies he’d seen the morning his parents died.

  That sense of being before an altar returned. Maybe it was the effect of having gone so long without food.

  On the ground in little clumps among the trees were pendulous snowdrops. Bees crawled inside the white bells. Bees in your garden were auspicious. They meant prosperity was on the way. He walked toward them.

  Trotting came from behind. He knew without looking there was no chance of outrunning it. He dived behind a tree.

  The black-brown boar raced a
fter him. Around and around the tree. He was small, barely up to Don Giovanni’s thigh, but his tusks extended upward a hand’s length. They could slash the life out of a man. Danger, danger, danger beat the drum of Don Giovanni’s running feet.

  Until he fell.

  In an instant, the boar stood over him. It straddled his arm. It huffed and puffed, tense and strong.

  Was Don Giovanni’s arm long enough to grab this boar’s scrotum? He slowly stretched it, at the ready.

  Man and beast waited. A standoff.

  Somehow the boar gave in first. Or maybe the animal just lost interest. He wandered over to the snowdrops and ate flowers and bees together indiscriminately. Then he rutted in the roots of the tree.

  Don Giovanni breathed shallowly. If the boar didn’t hear or smell him, it might forget him. Already it was far enough away that it probably couldn’t see him well; boars were notoriously poor-sighted. Finally, the animal trotted off.

  Don Giovanni lay in the dirt unmoving. Slowly the tension left. He felt heavy, so heavy he might never be able to get up. He might blend into the earth.

  Somewhere in the back of his brain he realized he had entertained the idea that he could live in the forest temporarily. That way he wouldn’t have to demean himself by begging. That idea had now been exposed as absurd.

  He got to his feet. He would sleep on a beach tonight. Tomorrow he would walk south, past Messina. He’d never seek peasants’ work where people might recognize him. But there were other cities.

  At last, a plan.

  Water

  THE RAIN PELTED HIM. EVEN WITH BOTH ARMS CURLED around his head, even bone-tired, Don Giovanni couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t that the rain was cold; no, the weather had turned decidedly springlike. It was the driving force of it. It beat him numb.

  He gave up, got to his feet, and walked.

  It would be delightful to be in a home right now. Homes slowed you down, calmed your innards, smoothed you out. Homes rested the skin and the eyes and the heart.