Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions Read Online Free Page B

Strike and fifty euros’ worth of credit for his mobile phone.”
    Poldi remembered this. On Monday, after hefting the heavy pot containing the lemon tree onto the roof terrace, Valentino had opened a new packet of cigarettes, scratched a new telephone card and activated the voucher code via his mobile.
    â€œDo you remember which phone company the scheda telefonica was for?”
    â€œA TIM. The others had run out.”
    Recalling the blue and red card, Poldi felt puzzled once more, because Valentino had always charged his mobile with a red and white card before. It now occurred to her that he had also been in possession of a brand-new folding mobile that Monday.
    â€œWhy did he change providers?” she wondered aloud, but Signor Bussacca’s only response was another “ Boh ”, which is short in Italian for “I don’t have a clue.”
    â€œWhere’s the best place to go when you want information?” Poldi asked me later, only to supply the answer herself. “You go to the waterhole, because all the animals always go there, big and small alike. Predators or prey – they’re all attracted to the water and folk are no different. And where, I ask you, is the waterhole in Torre Archirafi?”
    â€œThe old bottling plant, you mean?”
    Poldi sighed. “I was talking figuratively.”
    â€œThe bar?”
    â€œ Cento punti ,” she exclaimed, and took another swig of her drink.
    Poldi had long been a familiar figure in the Bar-Gelateria Cocuzza, of course, because that was where she partook every afternoon of a mulberry granita with cream top and bottom and a brioche on the side. Fragrantly, in a white caftan and gold gladiator sandals plus dramatic eyeliner and plenty of rouge, she used to sail into the bar like a cruise liner visiting a provincial marina – always around five, when the houses opened up after a long, sweltering afternoon and the whole town set off on its passeggiata . Since there were no shop windows to graze on, the promenaders would take a brief stroll along the esplanade before veering off towards the air-conditioned paradise of the bar like comets that have ventured too close to the sun.
    No wonder, for wafting out of the bar’s two ventilators from morning to night – except on Tuesdays – came a wonderful polar breeze laden with the promise of vanilla, almond milk, coffee and aromatic substances calculated to arouse ecstasy in anyone not made of stone. Outside in the square the Sicilian summer afternoon shimmered like a mirage, but the interior was dominated by the arctic hum of the ventilators and air conditioning, which dried off your sweaty armpits and made you forget the August heat for the duration of a gelato. Eight varieties of ices were displayed in creamy, glistening mounds alongside fresh cream cakes filled with wild strawberries, almond pastries, cornetti , brioches, and marzipan fruit. Scenting the air at the far end of the counter were golden arancini , pizzette and tramezzini , and slumbering behind it, hidden deep beneath aluminium lids, were granitas and bottles of ice-cold almond milk – guarantees, in short, of a kindly god’s existence.
    However, this impression was dispelled as soon as you entered the bar and looked into the face of Signora Cocuzza, who sat behind her till with an expression of such sadness, it almost wrung your heart. How old was she? Nobody knew for sure. Fifty? Sixty? A hundred? She might have been a ghost. Frail and thin, she exuded a faint odour of mothballs and eternity. All Poldi had managed to discover was that her husband had died ten years earlier. By contrast, her two grown-up sons looked the picture of health, their August lethargy notwithstanding, as they lounged behind the bar with their plucked eyebrows, upper-arm tribal tattoos, delinquent buzz cuts and football strips.
    Signora Cocuzza never smiled, and seldom spoke. She merely operated the cash register,