That was the joke in Palermo that year, where the Mafiosi were blowing each other up in touring cars like this. The Gräfin did not find this the least bit funny. In fact, she was annoyed by it.
“What can you possibly do?” she said, a sort of belittling challenge.
I said, “It's almost dark. We're not going anywhere. The only other living things here are goats.” I could hear their clinking bells. “What do you think I should do?”
This little speech, so theatrical in its rhetoric and unnecessary detail, served to make her more afraid, which was my intention. But fear also made her nervously bossy, and she began to bully Fulvio in German-accented Italian.
“C’era d’aspettarsela,” he said, meaning, We should have expected this.
I said to the Gräfin, “He doesn't seem to care very much.”
“We must go now to the d'Oro,” she said. “I have had so much to drink. Ich muss mal. I must pass water.”
The idea of relieving herself anywhere except in her suite at the palazzo being out of the question made me smile.
“I have pain here. Ich muss pinkeln,” she said, touching herself unambiguously, and I stopped smiling. “Maybe we need benzina.”
“We've got benzina.” I looked under the hood in the last of the daylight. Although the Alfa was fairly new, the engine was greasy and looked uncared-for. The battery appeared serviceable yet the terminals were gummed up with that bluey-green mold, as lovely and delicate as coral froth, that accumulates on copper wires. I could see that the clamps were loose and sticky with the same froth. This bad connection could have accounted for the faltering start. I easily twisted one terminal and lifted it off, and I guessed that it was overlaid with scum, a sort of metallic spittle.
Flicking the wire onto the terminal produced a strong audible spark. It might be just this simple, I thought. I had dealt with enough cheap old cars to reach this conclusion. A more expensive car would have baffled me, but this was Sicily, and although this was an Alfa-Romeo it held the same battery as a Fiat or an old Ford.
The Gräfin got out, and from her stamping and hand-wringing I could tell that she was bursting for a pee — or a pinkel, as she kept calling it in a little girl’s voice. She berated the driver. I took pleasure in showing her the large greasy engine, of which she knew nothing.
I made an elaborate business of pretending to fuss and fix the engine, tweaking wires, testing wing nuts, tapping the caps on the spark plugs, all the while hoping it was just the battery. Fulvio stood just behind me, sighing, muttering “Mannaggiai morti tui!” —Damn your dead ancestors!
With a broken knife blade I found in a toolbox in the trunk — Fulvio seemed surprised there was a toolbox at all — I scraped the terminals clean, shaving the lead to rid it of scum. I did the same to the clamps.
Fulvio looked hopeful, though it was now fully dark, the goat bells clanking in the deep gully beside the road, the hooves scrabbling on the stony hillside.
The Gräfin said, “What shall we do? It’s all his fault.” She turned to Fulvio and said, “Cretino! Can’t you learn how to fix the car?”
“I am a driver, not a mechanic,” Fulvio said, and made a gesture with his hand and his fingers that can only have meant: This is irrelevant.
“You could try — you could learn,” the Gräfin said.
With another rapid hand gesture, Fulvio said, “If you are born round, you cannot die square.”
“This guy is useless,” I said, laughing at his Sicilian folk wisdom.
“This guy is useless,” she repeated, using my words approvingly. But she was still twitching, needing urgently to pee, clutching her sunglasses as though to ease her need.
“Don't worry. I’ll get you back there. You’ll be fine, Gräfin.”
For the first time, I used her title. She looked at me with a kind of promise, a kind of pleading.
She was now a small girl. I was her father. I scraped away at the terminal for a while longer. Then I tightened the nuts on the clamp — just fuss and delay, for at last I was in control.
“Get out,” I said to Fulvio, a little louder than I should have, but I wanted the Gräfin to hear.
I ostentatiously took the ignition key and sat in the driver’s seat. Seeing the Gräfin beating her feet beside the car, I said, “Sit here,” and indicated the passenger seat. Getting in awkwardly, made fragile by her fullness, she looked more than ever like a little girl.
I turned the key, pumped the gas, got the engine to chug, and then it roared.
“Ai!” The Gräfin clapped. “Hurry.”
“Get in the back seat, Fulvio,” I said.
So we drove back to Taormina sitting side by side, the Gräfin and I, Fulvio muttering “Mannaggia” in the back seat.
The Gräfin said, “I can hold it. Ich muss dringend pinkeln. I need to pass water but I like the feeling. The pressure makes a nice feeling. Hee-hee!”
She was five or six again, a pinkel on her mind, with her daddy in the car on the road heading home, but I was still thinking, What?
“I don’t want to make an accident!”
We were going up the steep hairpin curves of the Via Pirandello to the town. She had never seemed so frail and small and helpless, so lost in the world. Gratitude did not come naturally to her, yet I could sense something like an admission of her dependency in her respectful way of addressing me.
She said, “I give you the key. You run and open the door to my suite — you are faster than me. Also, I think I can't open the door.”
She was a bit breathless and almost hysterical in the same girlish way.
“This is so funny. The chauffeur is sitting in the back!”
At the hotel, she pressed the key into my hand. I hurried through the palazzo and into her suite, racing ahead of her, opened the door and switched on the lights. The suite was beautiful, smelling of floor wax and fresh flowers.
I was in the hall, turning on the light in the toilet stall when she pushed past me, flung the door open and ducked into the toilet, lifted her skirt and lowered herself. Not quite sitting, and canted slightly forward, she pissed loudly into the shallow ceramic bowl, sighing, straining, her face shining with pleasure, while I stood gaping, too fascinated to move. I thought that if I ducked aside and hid my face, she would be embarrassed. As it was, she seemed triumphant, like a suddenly spattering fountain.
I had heard of people so used to having servants that they walked around naked in front of them, got the servants to dress them, treated them as though they were blind, obedient, without emotion. But this was different. The Gräfin was engaged in an intimate, deeply satisfying act, and, still crouched there, she groaned with satisfaction. Then she straightened and slowly, fastidiously wiped herself with tissue, pulled the chain, rearranged her dress, and stepped into the hall where I stood, glowing from the sight of her.
“That was great,” she said in a hearty way, and kissed me. “Now, you go,” and she flicked the dampness from her fingers at me, but playfully.
I was not disgusted. I thought, Germans! The breakdown, this simple inconvenience, was our adventure. I told her that I liked her courage. I used this trivial event to apotheosize her. And she saw the day as a triumph with a terrific ending, the payoff that farce in her suite.
She told Haroun: “We were left by the side of the road. The driver was an idiot. Ich musste pinkeln. We could have died!”
As a result of this successful day, we spent more time together, and on better terms than before. She seemed much happier and more trusting. I began to dislike her, first in an irritated way and then with a deep loathing.