Lives of the Saints

by Arricale, Frank

• ISBN13: 9781475909852
• ISBN10: 1475909853
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-04-11
• Publisher: Textstream

Summary

Arcangelo Vidi, a middle-aged man in Florence, is tormented, torn between a painting and his wife. In late-nineteenth-century St. Petersburg, Fyodor Petrov returns from the dead and can still juggle, although not very well. Gabriella Sammartini, a talented young mezzo-soprano in Venice, dreams of becoming a hatcheck girl. In medieval England, Eldred the Shoemaker's Son is blessed with an unusual number of noses and multiple pairs of shoes. A Parisian woman carries seven tears with her wherever she goes. Such are the Lives of the Saints, the matically-related, centuriesspanning character studies set mostly in Europe and almost entirely on Earth. By turns poignant and funny, tragic and absurd, Lives of the Saints is at once a thought-provoking meditation on time, mortality, and love, and an entertaining compendium of sheer silliness. In this finely crafted collection of gems, Frank Arricale displays a remarkable range of expression. Whether dealing with the heartbreak of loss or the inanity of everyday life, he demonstrates a brilliant sense of timing and a keen awareness of the human condition.

Excerpts

excerpt from "The Prima Donna": From the time she was a young girl, Gabriella Sammartini had a dream. Born to affluent parents in Venice, she was given a first-class musical education. Every one of her tutors arrived at the same conclusion: this girl had a gift, a natural ability to sing. Her voice was clear and strong, her tone, rich and beautiful, her pitch-control, unerring. Furthermore, her phrasing always seemed to convey the emotional underpinnings of the text, and, perhaps most importantly, she seemed to have an innate sense of when coloratura was called for and when it was simply annoying. "You must be very proud of your daughter, Signore Sammartini," her tutors would say. "Oh, I am, I absolutely am," he would reply. But in his voice, there would be the unmistakable sound of chagrin. For he knew his daughter had a dream. And it wasn't to become a great opera singer. He could still see her as a seven-year-old, looking up at him, smiling, as she held his hand. "Do you know what I'm going to be when I grow up, Papa?" "What's that, sweetheart?" he'd asked, smiling back down at her. "When I grow up," she'd told him proudly, "I'm going to be a hatcheck girl!" The sound of those awful words still rang in his ears. What had possessed her? Where had she gotten such a dreadful idea? "You must put this out of your mind!" he'd told her. "Never!" she'd replied, fire in her eyes, yanking her pudgy little hand away from his, folding her arms. "It is my dream! It is my—my density!" "Your density? You mean your destiny?" She'd pulled out a little slip of paper from her pocket and checked it. "No, it's definitely density. Look—Mama wrote it down for me." "I'm sure she meant destiny." "It says density!" And she wouldn't let go of her dream, even as she entered her teens. Many nights, he would come home from a hard day of mocking gondoliers, hoping she would be practicing her scales, only to find her engrossed in some hatcheck-related activity, the sight of which would make his blood run cold. "What is that? What are you doing?" "You can't stop me!" "What are those things?" "I don't know what they're called! I don't even know if they have a name! They're those things, those little things, that hatcheck girls give out!" "Where did you get them?" "I made them myself! See? They come in pairs, numbered 1 to 100, so that I can check up to a hundred hats!" "Madone! Where's your mother?" "I don't know. Inside somewhere." "Mama! Mama, come quick!" "What is it?" "Do you see what your daughter has done?" "What are those things?" "They're those hatcheck things! She made them herself!" Gabriella's mother examined them more closely and smiled, Gabriella smiling back. "She's such a clever girl." "No! No! No! Don't you understand? This is no good! Don't you see how dangerous this hatcheck business is?" "Of, for God's sake, Pietro! It's just a phase!" "It is not a phase!" Gabriella shot back. "It's my density!" "Destiny, sweetie. We've been through this. I was just having a little fun." "How can you let her spend the day making these accursed things?" "What do you expect me to do, watch her all day? Who's going to write your material?" By the time she was eighteen, when her peers were going out on auditions, or at least practicing in the streets, singing for change, Gabriella had begun to sneak out of the house to stand outside St. Mark's on Sunday mornings, keeping an eye on men's hats. "Check your hat, signore?" "Excuse me?" "Check your hat, signore? Only ten lire. Quite a bargain, signore." "What? Why would I—" "Five lire, signore?" "But I've never heard of—" "Oh, for God's sake, Domenico! Just give the girl your hat! We're late as it is! Do you want the Bishop waving his finger at us again?" "Thank you, signore. Here's your claim check." "The three of diamonds?" "Yes, signore. You see, I have identical decks of cards. I attach this three of diamonds to your hat, so that when you come out and present your three of diamonds, I'll know which hat is yours." "What a clever girl. Come, Domenico." "But you only have two other hats there. Can't I have a better card?" Gabriella sighed. "They go in order, signore." "But must they go in order? As long as you give me the matching card—" "Stop arguing with the girl, Domenico! The Bishop will be furious with us!" "The Bishop! What do I care about the Bishop? When the Doge scolds us, then I'll worry!" "We don't have Doges anymore, signore." "No, we still have Doges. I think. Don't we?" "Domenico!" Gabriella knew perfectly well the Doges were long gone, because their extinction was a staple of her father's material. "Hey, gondoliers! I just got a call from the Doge! He says you'll be joining him and the dodos any day now!" "Keep laughing, fat boy! We'll be here long after you're dead!" Admittedly, the gondoliers' material wasn't as strong as his, but they weren't well-off enough to afford spouses who sat at home all day thinking up one-liners. That was also, as Gabriella's father had once explained to her, why they sometimes worked blue.