The Brewer of Preston by Andrea Camilleri

not, because I can never deny my wife anything. Anything at all, believe me. Why, you may ask?”
    He heaved a sort of sob, extracted a red-checked handkerchief, bobbed his head back and forth several times as if to ask for the compassion of those present, blew his nose with a powerful blast, put the handkerchief back into the pocket of his coat and tails, and, with a bitter smile on his face, resumed speaking.
    â€œMy mother used to ask me, over and over: ‘Could you please explain to me how you got it into your head to marry that girl? Concetta is thirty years younger than you. Ten years after your marriage, you’ll already be sixty, while she’ll still be only thirty. To keep her from running away and to keep the family in peace, you’ll have to become worse than a servant, ready to bend over backwards for her every slightest whim.’ How right the good woman was, God rest her soul! Her words were the Gospel truth. To give you an example: I knew nothing about this Luigi Ricci, and I truly didn’t give a damn about him or his music, if you’ll excuse my saying so. At any rate, there aren’t many things that appeal to me anymore. But it was hopeless. You
have
to give this lecture, the wife commanded, or else . . . And don’t I know what ‘or else’ means! But, enough, let’s forget about that. And where did my wife get this idea? You all know that Concetta is a close friend of the wife of His Excellency, the prefect Bortuzzi. Do you see the problem now? Is it clear? This is why I am now standing in front of you like a jackass.”
    Sitting in the front row beside the prefect’s gilded chair, which was luckily absent the latter’s august form owing to some unexpected and unavoidable tasks of governance, Don Memè Ferraguto had been feeling lost for the past several minutes, ever since, in fact, the speaker had begun talking. Indeed he felt more lost than he ever had in his life, though he had never lacked occasions for feeling that way. For it was he who had had the brilliant idea to tell the prefect that his own wife, Luigia, known to intimates as Giagia, should speak to Signora Concetta, wife of
dottor
Carnazza, headmaster of the grammar school of Fela. Friends he had asked for advice on the matter had recommended Carnazza as the most refined of musical connoisseurs, without, however, mentioning—the bastards—that the headmaster was also, indeed perhaps to a greater degree, the most refined of wine connoisseurs. And to think that His Excellency himself had warned him of this.
    â€œAre you sure we han hount on this Harnazza?”
    â€œOf course, Your Excellency. Why do you ask?”
    â€œBecause my spouse told me that Signora Harnazza honfided to her that the headmaster goes at it rather often.”
    â€œGoes at what, Your Excellency?”
    â€œWhat the hell do you think he goes at, Ferraguto? He goes at the bottle, and when he does, he talks rubbish.”
    â€œDon’t you worry, Excellency. I’ll keep after him like his own shadow. I won’t even let him drink water.”
    And there he was now, in front of everyone, drunk as a skunk. Never mind talking too much—he was speaking in tongues like the Sybil of Cumae. No doubt he had knocked back one of the bottles he kept hidden in the large pockets of the overcoat he put on before leaving home, and had done it when he’d asked for permission to go to the restroom a few minutes before beginning his lecture. Chock-full of wine as he always had to be, a mere whiff of the cork had been enough to set him off.

    â€œAnd then and then and then . . . this Luigi Ricci was born one fine day in Naples, one
hot
day, actually, since he was born in the month of July, in 1805. And as if the misfortunes the Neapolitans are customarily subjected to weren’t enough, four years later his brother Federico was also born, soon to become a composer as well.
    â€œBut