“Of course it was,” said Angelo; “he did not really want you to wash your hands, he wanted to get a number out of you.”
“Did he get one?” said I.
“He told me to put his money on 14.”
“That must have been because I said I paid 14 francs a metre for this cloth. But he changed that afterwards.”
“Yes,” replied Angelo. “He thought the number that came out of your packet of cigarettes would be better.”
Angelo was not strictly right about the brigadier not wanting me to wash, he said so merely to agree with me, for in Sicily, among those who have not become sophisticated by familiarity with money and its little ways nor cosmopolitanized by travel, and whose civilization remains unmodified by northern and western customs, it is usual for the host to give his guest an opportunity to wash after eating. Sometimes the lady of the house has herself taken me into her bedroom, poured out the water and held the basin while I have washed; she has then handed me the towel and presently escorted me back to the sitting-room.
We soon overtook a man who had caught a rabbit and wanted to sell it for a lira and a half. Angelo bargained with him for ever so long and, being at last satisfied that the rabbit was freshly killed, bought it for a lira and put it into the basket, saying he would
cook it for supper, and that no doubt the Madonna had sent it to make up for the loss of the fish.
I asked him what I must do to get a ticket in the lottery for the following Saturday. He replied that his cousin would be happy to sell me one and, if I would settle how much to risk and what number to put it on, he would take me to the office in the morning. I said I would risk a lira, which he thought overdoing it, as he and his friends seldom risked more than four or five soldi, but there was still the troublesome matter of the number. He asked whether anything unusual had happened to me lately, either in real life or in a dream. I told him that I seldom remembered a dream, but that I had had an unusually delightful day in real life at Selinunte. In his capacity of padrone he acknowledged the compliment, but feared there would be no number for that in the book. Then I asked if there was likely to be a number for having breakfast with a coastguard as it was the first time I had done so. He mused and said no doubt there would be a number for breakfast and another for coastguard, but not for the combination. Could not we add the two numbers together
and bet on whatever they amounted to, if it were not over 90? Angelo would not hear of anything of the kind; we must think of something less complicated. It would never have occurred to him to read for Metaphysics under M and for China under C, and combine the information into the article that appeared in the Eatanswill Gazette as a review of a work on Chinese Metaphysics. He asked if I had not lately had “una disgrazia qualunque.” I reminded him of the theft of our fish, but that did not satisfy him, he considered it too trivial, though he had made enough fuss about it at the time, and 17, which in Sicily is one of the numbers for an ordinary misfortune, was too general. It seemed a pity I had not been involved in the fall of a balcony because that was a very good thing to bet on and he knew it had a number, although he did not remember it at the moment. Filippo, the hunchback, was no use because, though it is fortunate to meet hunchbacks, and of course they have a number, there was nothing remarkable in seeing Filippo at the caserma—he is always there.