In secluded country inns he came across excellent rustic delicacies that cost little, including acqua cotta: all you had to do was put slices of bread in a tureen and dress them with plenty of olive oil and freshly ground pepper; then you boil chopped onions, peeled sliced tomatoes and wild mint in three quarters of a liter of water; after twenty minutes, pour this over the bread in the tureen and allow it to rest for a few minutes, then serve it hot.
On the outskirts of Bagheria he found an inn with a few tables in a dark hall. In that pleasant shade, welcoming even during the winter months, a landlord of grubby appearance prepared wonderful offal dishes such as stuffed heart, pork brawn, sweetbreads and every type of tripe.
There he met two characters, each quite different from the other. Only later, by a stroke of genius, was he able to bring them together as part of a single plan. But let us not rush ahead.
The first seemed half mad. The landlord said he gave him food and lodging out of pity, though the man was actually able to perform many useful chores. Everyone called him Bronte, and in fact it seems he had escaped from the Bronte massacres. He was continually haunted by memories of the rebellion and after a few glasses of wine would bang his fist on the table and shout in thick dialect, which might roughly be translated as: «You masters beware, the hour of judgment is at hand! Fear not, citizens, be ready!» This was what his friend Nunzio Ciraldo Fraiunco, one of the four men later executed by Bixio, had shouted before the insurrection.
Everyone called him Bronte, and in fact it seems he had escaped from the Bronte massacres.
Bronte wasn’t particularly intelligent, but at least he had one fixed idea. He wanted to kill Nino Bixio.
Bronte was, for Simonini, just a simpleton with whom he could pass a few winter evenings. Of more immediate interest was another figure, a hirsute man who at first kept to himself, but when he heard Simonini asking the landlord about the recipes for various dishes, he joined the conversation and turned out to be a fellow gastronome. Simonini told him how to make agnolotti alla piemontese, while he revealed the secrets of caponata; Simonini described tartare all’albese until his mouth watered, and he expounded on the alchemy of marzipan.
This man, Master Ninuzzo, spoke something approaching Italian, and hinted that he’d also traveled abroad.
And then, after describing his great devotion to the various effigies in the local sanctuaries, and expressing his respect for Simonini’s ecclesiastical dignity, Ninuzzo confessed his curious situation. He had been an explosives expert with the Bourbon army—not an ordinary soldier but the keeper of a nearby powder magazine. Garibaldi’s men had driven back the Bourbon army and seized the munitions and powder, but instead of dismantling the bunker, they’d kept Ninuzzo in their service to guard the place, in the pay of the military authorities. And there he was, getting bored, awaiting orders, resentful of the northern occupiers, faithful to his king, dreaming of rebellion and insurrection.
«I could blow up half of Palermo if I wanted to,» Ninuzzo whispered, as soon as he understood that neither was Simonini on the side of the Piedmontese. And he described how, to his amazement, the usurpers had failed to realize that beneath the magazine was a vault containing more kegs of gunpowder, grenades and other weaponry. These were to be kept for the imminent counterattack, seeing that resistance groups were organizing themselves in the hills to make life difficult for the Piedmontese invaders.
His face gradually lit up as he talked about explosives, and his pug-nosed features and gloomy eyes became almost handsome. Then one day he took Simonini to his bunker and, reappearing from an exploration of the vault, showed him some blackish granules in the palm of his hand.
«Ah, most reverend Father,» Ninuzzo said, «there’s nothing more beautiful than fine-quality powder. Look at that slate-gray color. The granules don’t crumble when pressed between the fingers. If you had a piece of paper and put the powder on it and ignited it, it would burn without touching the paper. They used to make it with seventy-five parts of saltpeter, twelve of charcoal and twelve of sulfur. Then they moved on to what they called the English blend, which was fifteen parts charcoal and ten of sulfur, and that’s how you lose wars, because your grenades don’t explode. Today we experts (though unfortunately, or thank God, there are few of us) use Chilean nitrate instead of saltpeter, and that’s quite another thing.»
«Better?»
«It’s the best. You see, Father, they’re inventing new explosives every day, and each is worse than the other. One of the king’s officials (by which I mean the real king) appeared to know everything and told me I should use a brand-new invention, pyroglycerine. He didn’t understand that it only works on impact. It’s difficult to detonate because you have to be there banging it with a hammer, and you’d be the first to blow up. Let me tell you, if you ever want to blow someone up, old-fashioned gunpowder’s the only thing. And it makes a fine show.»
Master Ninuzzo seemed overjoyed, as if there were nothing more beautiful in the world. At the time, Simonini didn’t attach much importance to his ramblings. But later, in January, he thought about it again.
Mulling over ways of getting his hands on the expedition’s account books, he reasoned as follows: Either the accounts are here in Palermo or they will be back in Palermo when Nievo returns from the north. Nievo will then have to take them back to Turin by sea. Therefore it’s pointless to follow him night and day, as that won’t get me near the secret safe, and even if I do get near the safe, I won’t be able to open it. If I did get there and open it, there’d be a scandal, Nievo would report the disappearance of the accounts, and my masters in Turin might be blamed. Nor could I keep the matter quiet even if I surprised Nievo with the accounts and knifed him in the back.
The dead body of someone like Nievo would always be a cause for embarrassment. They told me in Turin that the accounts had to go up in smoke. But Nievo ought to go up in smoke with them, so when he disappears (in a way that seems accidental and natural), the disappearance of the accounts will fade into the background. Therefore, why not burn down or blow up the revenue offices? Too obvious. The only other solution is for Nievo to disappear, along with his accounts, while he’s sailing from Palermo to Turin. If fifty or sixty people lost their lives in a disaster at sea, nobody would think it was done to destroy a few scruffy account books.
It was a bold and imaginative idea. Simonini was apparently growing older and wiser, and this was no longer the time for silly games with a few university friends. He had seen war, he was used to seeing death (fortunately that of others), and he was most anxious to avoid ending up in the dungeons of those fortresses described by Negri di Saint Front.
Simonini had, of course, thought long and hard about this project, not least because he had nothing else to do. Meanwhile, he spent time with Master Ninuzzo, offering him excellent lunches.
«Master Ninuzzo, you ask why I am here, and I can tell you that I’ve come on the orders of the Holy Father, to reestablish the kingdom of our sovereign of the Two Sicilies.»
«Then I’m at your service, Father. Tell me what to do.»
«On a certain date—I don’t yet know when—a steamship will sail from Palermo to the mainland. It will carry a safe containing orders and plans designed to destroy forever the authority of the Holy Father and humiliate our king. Before it reaches Turin, this steamer must go down with every soul on board.»
«Nothing could be simpler, Father. You could use a very recent discovery, apparently developed by the Americans. It’s called a coal torpedo, a bomb that looks like a lump of coal. You hide this lump under the heaps of coal used to fuel the ship, and once it’s in the furnace, the torpedo heats up and explodes.»
«Not bad. But the piece of coal has to be thrown into the furnace at the right moment. The ship mustn’t explode too early or too late—in other words, as it’s leaving or just about to dock—otherwise it would be too obvious. It has to explode halfway through the journey, far from prying eyes.»
«That’s more difficult. You can’t bribe a stoker, since he’d be the first victim, so you’d have to calculate the exact time when a certain quantity of coal is to be put into the furnace. Not even the Witch of Benevento could predict something like that.»
«And so?»
«And so, dear Father, the only solution that never fails is once again a keg of gunpowder with a good fuse.»
«But who’s going to stay on board to light a fuse knowing the whole thing’s going to explode?»
«No one,
