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hands, my friend.”
    â€œI don’t understand, Your Excellency.”
    â€œIt’s a saying from my parts. It means there’s not much time left. The opera will be staged the day after tomorrow—actually, in three days’ time. And I’m very worried.”
    They allowed themselves a pause, looking one another in the eye.
    â€œWhen I was a little kid,” Emanuele Ferraguto said slowly, breaking the silence, “I liked to play with black
comerdioni
.”
    â€œOh, really?” said the prefect, slightly disgusted, imagining some sort of black and hairy spider with which the child Ferraguto amused himself by pulling off its legs one by one.
    â€œYes,” Ferraguto continued. “What do you call, in your parts, those toys that little kids make—”
    â€œAh, so it’s a game?” the prefect interrupted him, visibly relieved.
    â€œYessir. You take a big sheet of colored paper, cut it into the right shapes, glue two reeds to it with starch paste . . . then you attach it all to a string and send it up in the air.”
    â€œAh! You mean a hite!” His Excellency exclaimed.
    â€œYes, exactly, sir, a kite. I used to fly them around Punta Raisi, near Palermo. Do you know the place?”
    â€œWhat a silly huestion, Ferraguto! You know very well that I don’t like to set foot out of the house. I know Sicily from picture hards. It’s better than going there in person.”
    â€œWell,Punta Raisi’s not a very good place for kites. Sometimes there was no wind and neither man nor God could make them rise. Other times there was wind all right, but as soon as the kite got up in the air it ran head-on into a current that would flip it over and send it crashing into the trees. I would dig in my heels and keep trying, but I was wrong. Do you get what I mean?”
    â€œNo, I don’t.”
    Forever the Florentine dickhead
, thought Ferraguto. He replied with a question.
    â€œWould Your Excellency mind if I spoke Latin?”
    The prefect felt a bead of sweat trickle down his back. From the very first time he had come up against
rosa-rosae
he had realized that Latin was his bête noire.
    â€œJust between you and me, Ferraguto, I wasn’t exactly the head of the class at school.”
    Don Memè beamed his legendary smile.
    â€œWhat did you think I meant, Your Excellency? Here in Sicily, ‘to speak Latin’ means to speak clearly.”
    â€œAnd when you want to speak unclearly?”
    â€œWe speak Sicilian, Your Excellency.”
    â€œGo ahead, then, speak Latin.”
    â€œYour Excellency, why do you insist on trying to fly the kite of
The Brewer of Preston
here in Vigàta, where the winds are unfavorable? Take it from a friend, which I’m honored to be—it won’t fly.”
    At last the prefect grasped the metaphor.
    â€œWhether it’ll fly or not, people, in Vigàta, have to do what I tell them to do, what I order them to do.
The Brewer of Preston
will be staged, and it will have the success it deserves.”
    â€œYour Excellency, may I speak Spartan to you?”
    â€œOh my, what does that mean?”
    â€œSpeaking Spartan means using dirty words. Would you please explain to me why the hell you got it in your fucking head to force the Vigatese to watch an opera they don’t want any part of? Does Your Excellency want to provoke another forty-eight, perhaps? A revolution?”
    â€œThose are big words, Ferraguto!”
    â€œNo, sir, Your Excellency, those are not big words. I know these people. They are good, honest people, but if they’re crossed they’re liable to wage war.”
    â€œBut, good God, why would the Vigatese wage war just to avoid listening to an opera?”
    â€œIt depends on the opera, Your Excellency.”
    â€œWhat are you trying to tell me, Ferraguto? That Vigàta has the best music critics in the world?”
    â€œNo, it’s not that, sir.