The Brewer of Preston Read Online Free PDF Page A

but to remain standing, far from the altar.
    â€œWe can just stand back here,” Agatina had said to her.
    Then the inner door to the church opened, and
he
entered. Concetta had never seen him before, but one look at him and she knew that for the next few minutes her ship would no longer answer the helm. He was beautiful, beautiful, an angel from heaven. Tall with thick blond curls and very lean, but only so lean as was proper in a healthy man, with an eye as blue as the sea and the other, his right eye, not there. That eye lay hidden under an eyelid that was sort of stuck to the part below, walled up. But this was not offputting; on the contrary, all the light of his extinguished eye poured into the other, making it gleam like a precious stone, a beacon in the night. She later learned from Agatina that he had lost the eye when he was stabbed with a knife during a scuffle. But this mattered little. She realized, at that exact moment, that all her navigational parameters had changed: he would, of necessity, become her port, even if she had to sail around Cape Horn. And he, too, had felt it, to the point that he turned his head to meet her eyes and dropped his anchor in their waters. They gazed at each other for a minute that lasted forever. Then, since by now the die was cast,he brought the fingers of his right hand together,
a cacocciola
, artichoke-like, and shook them up and down repeatedly.
    It was a precise question:
    What shall we do?
    Concetta slowly stretched her arms away from her body, letting them hang down at her sides and turning the palms of her hands outwards, with a disconsolate look on her face.
    I don’t know.
    It was a brief, rapid dialogue, expressed in minimal, barely sketched gestures.

    The violent jibbing maneuver he decided to make at one point took her by surprise. But she raised no objection and quickly obeyed. Having now become a boat, a lateen-rigged fisher, Concetta found herself with her prow on the pillow and her stern raised high to catch the wind blowing indeed astern, making her bounce from breaker to breaker and driving her irresistibly out to the open sea without compass or sextant.

    At Mass on the following Sunday she did everything human and divine in her power to arrive late, to the point that her sister Agatina had become impatient and called her a dawdler. Yet the moment she entered the church, the heavenly-blue beacon lit her, warmed her, and filled her with contentment. In its light and heat she felt rather like a lizard sunning itself on a rock.
    Then he pointed his index finger at her.
    You.
    And then turned his index finger towards himself.
    Me.
    He clenched the same hand into a fist, brought the index finger and thumb together, then made a turning motion.
    The key.
    She shook her head from larboard to starboard and vice versa.
    No, the key, no.
    Indeed she could not give him the key to the house, because on the ground floor lived Mr. and Mrs. Pizzuto and upstairs, Signora Nunzia, who never slept. It was too risky. Someone might see him climbing the stairs.
    He spread his arms, cocked his head to one side, smiled regretfully, then let his arms fall.
    I guess that means you don’t like me
.
    She felt as if she were sinking; her legs began to shake, her rosary fell to the floor. She bent down to pick it up and kissed it once, twice, letting her lips linger a long time on the crucifix and looking him straight in his one eye, which seemed to redden with fire, its blue turning to flame.
    What are you saying? I’d like to have you on the cross so I could kiss you all over the way Mary Magdalen did to Christ.

    Now they were sailing close-hauled and smooth, the sea flowing softly as it rocked them like a cradle, with nary a wave to shake them up. They were a deckless coaster, he the sails and she the keel.

    At the third Mass he finally bent his index and middle fingers and touched his chest.
    Me.
    His fingers mimed a man walking.
    I’ll come to your place.
    Her