Desdemona, Tag Cavello [classic literature list TXT] 📗

impatience, as if he felt the boy wasn’t meeting his standards. He always plunked his two dollars into Dante’s hand without a single word, or even the slightest hint of a smile.

Wait, Dante thought, that’s not true. He DID speak to you once. Earlier this summer.

And what did he say? Could Dante remember? Of course he could: “Be careful how you throw those papers, son, or you’ll break a window.”

The man had not sounded nice when he said it. If anything, he’d actually growled the words, and his face looked tired and mean. This after Dante had tossed one of the weekdays onto his step just as neatly as anyone could please.

Now he’d gone and spit in the eye of that warning; he’d gone and broken a damned window. Soon the rotund man would burst out, his face red with rage, his hair on fire. He would scream at Dante, call him names. Maybe even shake him by the shoulders.

Look what you did, boy! LOOK WHAT YOU DID!

Dante looked. The glass on the other door had a scripted B engraved into it. That could only mean the broken piece had been scripted, too. Marvelous. So not only was it destroyed, it was expensive. A one of a kind signature article.

Dante approached the door. Like it or not, he had to knock. He had to get the customer out here and confess his guilt. His stomach was in revolt. Eating itself from the inside. His hands were sweaty.

Run away. Just grab the paper and run away. No one will know.

Yes they would. Who else but the stupid paper boy could have come along at six-thirty in the morning and broken a window? And anyway, this house had neighbors. Others like it—huge and old—stood all along West Main. At least some of their owners had to be awake, had to have heard the crash.

Dante mounted the steps. Glass crunched. Feeling more like an idiot than ever, he kicked a few shards. Then he knocked on the other door—the one still intact. He knocked good and hard. Because hey, this incident needed to put to bed as soon as possible. Lord did it ever—

“Ow!” he cried.

A sharp pain from his ankle. Looking down, Dante saw it was bleeding. One of the shards had somehow gotten under the edge of his shoe. Now his sock was turning red. He was about to kneel for further assessment of the damage when the sound of heavy footsteps approached the door’s opposite side.

Oh man, Dante thought, oh man, here we go.

“Who is it?” the large man called, sounding like he’d not had his coffee yet. “Who… Good Lord!”

He had yet to open the door, but the cause for his exclamation hardly needed detective work to comprehend. He was looking at broken glass on the other side. No doubt it decorated the floor of his anteroom quite prettily in the morning sun.

“Has somebody lost their mind?” Dante heard him cry. The words carried a slightly warbled, somewhat coiled accent, as if bent to fit their speaker’s tongue. “Perche? Perche?”

What in the world does “perche” mean? Dante had time to wonder.

And then the door was flying open. And the large, round man was there, over six feet in height, his hair hanging in black curls around a face sculpted by angry hands: eyes thumbed deep and dark, nose blotted and smoothed crudely about the edges, lips stretched too far towards ears squeezed and molded with hasty, impatient need.

The man’s eyes fell directly upon their target. Dante watched him bare his teeth. They were surprisingly white considering their house of residence, surprisingly straight. The man scowled for a moment longer. The scowl dropped. Then, to Dante’s complete amazement, it became a smile.

“Now what did I tell you,” he said, “about throwing those papers too hard?”

And that was how he met Horatio Donati.

CHAPTER TWO: Horatio

A new friend brings many stories to tell, especially one who has travelled well.

 

The man introduced himself as Mr. Donati. Horatio to his friends. He told Dante this as he swept glass off the step, occasionally pausing to hoist the pants of his blue pajamas. The glass fell into a broken dustpan that made Dante wince. In less than one second it had gone from timeless to trash.

“How old was the window?” Dante then asked, bracing himself for the worst.

He got all of it and then some. “1830, I believe,” said Mr. Donati after a moment.

“Oh no.”

“Oh no indeed. But then nothing lasts forever, boy. Not even the stars.”

“I’m really sorry. My name is Dante, by the way.”

Mr. Donati set the dustpan aside. “I remember. I also know you are sorry. You were very brave to knock on the door. Other boys would have simply run away.”

“I—“

“The window, however, is irreplaceable. I am sad that after so many years it came to its demise under my care.”

“Are you going to sue me?” Dante spluttered. Over the past few minutes the sun had grown very hot. He could feel it on his neck, trying to set the nape on fire.

But Mr. Donati only laughed at the question. “Sue you? Good heavens, no! What could I achieve by suing my paperboy, other than a comic write-up in the very paper he delivers?”

“You mean you’re not angry at all?”

Dante looked at the other window. It looked every bit as old as the man in blue pajamas had told him. The gold letter B was scripted in such a way he somehow knew hadn’t been used for many years. It looked quite regal and masculine.

“What was the other letter?” he asked, before Mr. Donati could answer his first question.

“I must go inside now,” the man said by way of reply. He had stopped laughing, and his heavy shoulders were slumped. Dante caught his eye wander again to the broken door. He was taking things well, but he was still hurt, that much was clear. “I come from Sicily,” he continued, “where we sometimes eat ice cream for breakfast. Brioche, it’s called. And it will melt if I don’t eat it soon.”

Dante nodded. He felt awful all over again, as if he too would melt, and very soon indeed.

∞

They did not speak again until the start of the school year. It was the last Sunday of August, and as always, Dante had saved the final paper on his route for number 114. Rather than throw it, however, he walked it carefully to the door, as if it were a girl at the end of a date. He placed the paper on the porch, taking in the fact that the glass had not yet been replaced. The doorframe was still empty. Through it he could see Mr. Donati’s anteroom. Coats and hats. An umbrella cane.

“Good morning.”

The man himself appeared from round side of the house, looking cheerful. No pajamas adorned him today. He wore a pair of faded blue jeans with boots and a yellow t-shirt. A garden spade hung from one hand. The other clutched a twisted mass recently murdered weeds.

“Good morning, Mr. Donati,” Dante said.

“Is that my paper?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good lad. And to judge by the empty wagon, your route is done, yes?”

“Yes sir,” Dante repeated. “Done for the whole year. School starts on Tuesday.”

“So I have read,” Donati told him. “Which leaves me perhaps another month to do my gardening. Perhaps two. The weather in Ohio is so volubile.”

“Volu…what?”

Donati smiled. “That is an Italian word. It means ever changing.”

“Oh.”

“Nothing at all like this house, mind you. This house is costante.” He gestured the upper windows with his spade. “Built in 1827 and still standing, just as strong as you please.”

Dante’s eye went to the windows, but only for a moment. The house’s huge pillars drew his gaze upward towards an ornate pediment that could have once been part of Siculus’ ancient wonders. “It’s Greek, right?” he said, neck still craned.

“You mean the style?” he heard Donati reply. “Indeed it is. Greek architecture was quite popular in 19th century America. This house was originally a seminary for young girls. A boarding school.”

Now Dante looked at the man. Here was something he certainly hadn’t known about 114. “This house used to be a school?”

“A long time ago,” Donati nodded. “And if you don’t believe me, I can show you one of the old chalkboards. It’s still in place on the wall.”

“Will you? That sounds really cool!”

Donati winked. “If you promise not to throw my newspaper at it, I will.”

∞

It occupied one of 114’s two living rooms off the main hallway. A crooked black slate, cracked in places, took up most of a dirty, peeling wall of dismal beige. The whole thing looked to Dante like a very old man holding in his last breath of life. Seeing it instantly made him feel that Donati was telling the truth. The dark texture looked almost liquid, ready to ooze off the wall at any moment. To lay chalk to it would no doubt make it fall apart on the floor.

The rest of the house, Dante soon discovered, quartered similar issues. Cracked paint and faded wallpaper—all beige—surrounded not only the chalkboard, but everything else as well. Crooked pictures, their frames caked with dust, hung despairingly from rusty nails. Fireplaces with cold, forlorn hearths stood in both living rooms. What little furniture Donati had chosen to decorate with did not look antique so much as merely old. Old and cheap. Still, he showed Dante the ground floor without the slightest trace of shame, explaining that there had once been a wall to separate the two living rooms.

“So there could be two classrooms?” the boy asked.

“Two classrooms,” Donati answered. “I purchased this house for a song, due to its dilapidated condition. In fact my words are almost literal, for I was once an opera singer. Can I get you some cappuccino?”

He showed Dante into the kitchen. It was a tight, narrow room behind the chalkboard. Seeing it nearly caused the boy to gasp in horror. By far it was the worst-looking room on the ground floor (who knew what ruin lay above?). Strips of paint hung from a sagging ceiling like jungle vines. Stained counters, all crooked, lay atop droopy cabinets of rotting wood. The floor had once been white but was now stained so deeply that Dante thought it would never come clean.

“Cappuccino!” Donati said again. Near the stove stood a silver, clumsy-looking contraption. Smiling, he poured a cup from it, then another for himself. “I could never drink too much cappuccino. In my mind it would be ridiculous for one to say ‘I have had too much cappuccino.’ It’s like saying you have too much money, or too much love.”

Dante nodded. In truth he knew nothing about cappuccino. The stuff was almost as alien to him as Jack Daniels. He took a sip. It was thick and warm—not at all hot.

“Good?” Donati asked, looking hopeful.

Dante found it surprisingly sweet but still good, and told him so. Then he asked: “Were you really an opera singer?”

They went back to the living room to sit by one of the cold fireplaces. Here Donati explained that he had once travelled the world, performing on the small stage (his voice was good but not, by his own admission, exceptional). He claimed to have played almost all the popular operas, from Vivaldi’s L’Olimpiade to Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.

“Albeit L’Olimpiade became awkward at times, for my troupe lacked money for set pieces. We played almost all of our operas on an empty stage, to small audiences in candlelit backwater theaters. Set pieces were usually trivial, provided the singers were good. And many of us were damned good. Marie Comfit. Louise St. Claire. Alfred Puissance. They could sing. Oh my, could they ever.” The older man seemed to have forgotten his drink. His eyes had filled with the mist of years gone by. “Nor did the time of day matter much,” he continued. “To us or our audience. Parents would bring their children to see