Padgett Powell - Typical - Stories

“Masseur, I have dread to give offense, because so presto I seize that you may be a much important writer personally to me. But if you are making to carry a wire, it will be vietato.”

As soon as he delivered himself of this warning, he felt foolish. The Frenchman was so tightly packed into the cab that his arms were pinned immobile against the doors. Only in fantasy was there danger. “Anyway,” he said, by way of apology, “one wire would not hurt much.”

The Frenchman glared at him.

At the first bar they passed, a favorite of his, Mario jumped out and went in and got himself a caffè, leaving the Frenchman stuffed in the standing cab. He told Neutro, the bartender, that he was tempted to multiply the day rate by three because he had three times the weight of one man in his taxi. “Such a thing would be perfectly legal,” he said.

“Such a thing would anger. You are not capable of so fantastic a suggestion.”

“Such a thing must to have a opposite and a equal reaction, Neutro. Newton, Sir Isaac.”

Neutro shrugged. Mario was forever quoting science to him. They were equals as nonpracticing scientists.

Mario drank a tall glass of mineral water and announced, “Neutro, I once saw a flea drink a glass of water and swell to twice its original size.”

“Preposterous. You know full well, Dottore, that the flea would burst. Bernouli.”

“You contradict me?”

“Science herself contradicts you, Mario Moscalini.”

“A cognac portare via.”

“As you will.”

Outside, Mario carefully handed in the pony of cognac to the Frenchman, who struggled to get his hands up to take the glass, but appeared to be genuinely grateful. Mario cautioned himself that this might be entirely his imagination. He could not trust a man this large, this unpassionate, this unnimble.

Getting in the cab, Mario saw, across the street, carrying a large loaf of bread and waving cheerfully at him, his wife. This was curious, because there was no bakery nearby. He decided at that moment to drive the Frenchman first to the large new vineyards of his friends the Buffala brothers, because he knew that the Michelin guide did not yet contain reference to a business so new. And if the Frenchman’s appetite for the morning cognac was any sign — he had poured it smoothly into his mouth in one motion of his tiny, cramped hands and sighed appreciatively, almost whimpered — there was a good bet he might have a good time tasting the Buffalas’ special wines.

Passing the spot where the sailor had jumped fare on him the day before, Mario again saw his wife. How she got across town so fast was a mystery. She waved to him again but, he thought, not quite so cheerfully this time. She will see, he thought. She will learn. He looped the block several times looking for the sailor. It was fantasy, of course, to expect to find him, but he was prepared to be illogical if that was the only price for avenging yesterday’s loss. He stopped at a second bar for a second caffè and another cognac for the wedged Frenchman. He phoned the Buffala brothers to warn them he was bringing so important a tourist.

“Adriano, for this one, I suggest you say the wine is radioactive. That is best with a Frenchman. They are advanced.”

“The radioactive defense, you think?”

“Yes. You do not want a Frenchman considering mummies. They don’t believe in that. They are advanced.”

“Well, why not tell him the truth?”

“Oofah, Adriano. You are fantastic. He wants to believe in the modern Italy, and he is health-conscious. He has a lot to be conscious of, too. He is big. Tap a keg, my advice to you.”

“All right. I will find Germano and get our story straight.”

On the way, Mario told the Frenchman that there was an ugly rumor concerning the strange potency and unique flavor of the Buffala brothers’ new wine. “They have had un sacco di success with this wine, my friend. It is a product verily of the modern Italy. But of course, with success, with a sack of success, you have a sack of talk.”

“How far is it?” the Frenchman asked. “If it is far, stop for another aperitif, I’ll remain aboard.” It was like a clever Frenchman to feign uninterest in the slander of successful wine.

“It has been said that the heavy bocket and the risputed hallucinogenic quality — a California wholesaler is very interesting in this — is because the soil is refused from a nuclear power station fuel dump and the grapes, they have changed mutationally in one generation or less to a new fruit. Mendel, Gregor.”

This was all baloney. The nuclear defense which Mario was setting up was just a herring to keep people from thinking certain other theories regarding the weird wine. These theories were all supplied by the Buffala brothers. It was policy to tender the theory they wanted a given customer to swallow, and then to deny it less vigorously than they denied the competing theories, which they discreetly let slip out. Once a customer was sottoed on the wine, and the psychology correctly applied, he believed the wine special for reasons he found comforting, or credible, and bought, as it were, sacks of it. “That is how you have a sack of success,” the Buffala brothers were fond of saying. “You sell sacks of it.”

What was special about the wine actually varied from week to week. Benzine was getting too expensive, isopropyl was boring. This week they were using ethylene glycol — antifreeze. The third Buffala brother, Sevriano, was a psychiatrist, and he was the technical adviser to his brothers, the true vintners. He was also the originator of all the rumors and the psychology of their applications, and he was the only one among the brothers who did not at least partially subscribe to one or several of the bogus stories at any given moment. Sevriano had taken his training in Paris. Germano and Adriano put the contaminants in the wine themselves, yet they found themselves arguing the logic, and finally the truth, of the fictions, or marketing strategies, as Sevriano liked to call them. What was special about the wine had been summed up neatly once by a redheaded American hippie, who commented after his first two bottles, “Man, this is some bad shit,” and bought all he could carry on his back.

Mario Moscalini also had trouble maintaining a purchase on what was really the matter with the wine, but he had proved remarkably adept at adducing the psychologies of prospective buyers and getting them to subscribe to a working marketing strategy. He had been so adept that Sevriano had considered making him a Buffala brother, which was not a difficult thing to do, since the Buffala brothers were not brothers.

To the Frenchman, whose eye was peeled for a bar and another cognac, Mario now delivered the denial phase of the nuclear-mutation strategy. “This mutation calendar is a clear false,” he said. “They found some welding rods on the site. That is all.” The denial was so weak it convicted of the contrary — Mario thought it was like saying, I didn’t kill him, I just shot him a little.

The Frenchman produced his notebook and made a note in it. “Calumny,” he said, and chuckled. He might chuckle, Mario thought, but it will work. He is a nuclear man if I ever saw one. The French are advanced. After about two bottles of the wine, he would look at the bottle, and then at the ground, and then at his hand that had touched the bottle. The question would then not be far off: “How’d this nuclear waste thing get going, Signor Buffala?” And Adriano and Germano would laugh and deny it all, and the Frenchman would feel so buzzedly good sitting there as they brought him another bottle that he would actually like the idea of a mutant wine, a wine with even a little radioactivity itself in it — that’s how they treat cancer, with a little fire, you fight fire with fire and this fire feels good.