Olive softly clapped her hands together. “Is he not delicious! What an actor! Oh, Italy!”
Now that the performance was over the alfieri strolled across the piazza to the barrow that was still drawn up by the column. “Cocomeri! Fresc’ e buoni!”
“I never know what will please you,” Carmela said as she sat down. “But foreigners always like the Palio. You will see many English and Americans and Germans on the stands.”
“Yes, I love it all. Yesterday I passed through the Piazza del Campo and saw the workmen putting palings all about the centre, and hammering at the stands, while others strewed sand on the course and fastened mattresses to the side of the house by San Martino.”
“Ah, the fantini are often thrown there and flung against the wall. If there were no mattresses ... crack!” Carmela made a sound as of breaking bones and hummed a few bars of Chopin’s Marche Funèbre.
Olive shuddered. “You are an impressionist, Carmela. Two dabs of scarlet and a smear—half a word and a shrug of the shoulders—and you have expressed a five-act tragedy. I think you could act.”
“Oh, I am not clever; I should never be able to remember my part.”
“You would improvise,” Olive was beginning, when Carmela sprang up and ran to the window again.
“It is Orazio!” she cried. “He has come in a cab.”
The vetturino had pulled his horse up with a jerk of the reins after the manner of his kind; the wretched animal had slipped and he was now beating it about the head with the butt end of his whip. His fare had got out and was looking on calmly.