Ardor

by Lily Prior

  The air in the room was cool and dry. It was quiet. Almost hermetically sealed. There was no need to say anything. Indeed it would have been unwise to spoil the silence, like breaking open a precious egg. It was a mime or a silent film.

  All afternoon they worked together to prepare the secret mixtures, recipes that Primo Castorini knew his rivals at Pucillo’s Pork Factory would stop at nothing to obtain. They worked with the precision of surgeons, without speaking, and in truth not needing to speak, for there was almost a synchronicity about their movements, an understanding of what was necessary, which is usually only found in people who have worked together closely for a number of years.

  Sometimes, while rolling the pink ribbons of pork on the marble counter, their fingers would inadvertently touch. At such times Primo Castorini flinched as if he had been scorched, and when he did this, the edges of Fernanda Ponderosa’s mouth curled upward into a gentle curve that she licked away with the tip of her tongue.

  At first, Primo Castorini did not have high hopes of Fernanda Ponderosa’s abilities. He considered her the variety of woman who was meant for display. But he was surprised and, although he wouldn’t admit it, even impressed. Her large fingers were dexterous, she worked carefully and tirelessly, she was almost as good as he was. He began to feel inferior. She manipulated the meat in a way that made him feel weak. The way she formed the sausages with a rolling motion was an act of poetry. He began to feel the blurriness taking him over again. He drank a glass of cool water and wiped the back of his hand slowly across his mouth.

  Despite Primo Castorini’s occasional seizures, hot flushes, the palpitations he sought in vain to disguise from Fernanda Ponderosa, they got through an incredible volume of work that silent, smoldering afternoon. Together they made up orders that had been behindhand for weeks. Alone, Primo Castorini could not possibly keep pace with the number of orders that pored in daily from around the world. Yet he would not hire anybody to help him because he trusted nobody with his recipes and was paranoid about spies. In Fernanda Ponderosa his dreams were answered in more ways than one. As she was family, he felt he could trust her with his recipes. But he knew he couldn’t trust her with his heart.

  Later they were able to move on to processing the hams. These, too, in spite of Primo Castorini’s best efforts had been neglected.

  For thirty days, each and every day, the thousand new hams had to be rubbed with salt to cure them before hanging them for a year to mature. It was then necessary to rotate the entire stock of hams in the stores to reflect the stage each had now reached in its development. In showing Fernanda Ponderosa how it was done, Primo Castorini massaged his ham like a lover. It was an act of devotion, and one that made Fernanda Ponderosa want to laugh. She could rub salt into a carcass but she couldn’t fall in love with it.

  Once, running out of salt, Primo Castorini passed behind her to reach for another sack. While he managed to avoid touching her, for her body pulled him like a magnet, the air between them suddenly became alive. It grew momentarily hot and taut despite the tomblike coolness of the room. His body itched, and he couldn’t find the right place to scratch.

  Finally their work for the day was done. The hams were all salted and put away. The sausages were wrapped in greaseproof paper packets and packed into cartons. The cold room was washed down and gleaming in the light of the fluorescent tube. Primo Castorini could think of no other motive to keep her there. Although he didn’t want to release her, he knew that if he didn’t get away from her soon, something inside him would burst.

  She unfastened the tight uniform and shook out her mane of hair. His eyes never left her. They just couldn’t keep away. She was leaving the shop by the front door when she heard his voice breaking the silence. It was soft, only just audible.

  “Why didn’t Silvana tell us she had a sister?”

  “A lot of questions,” she replied.

  “Only one,” he managed. But she had gone, and the darkness outside swallowed her up.

  He picked up the discarded overall and buried his face in it. He had no strength left.

  As Fernanda Ponderosa walked past the fairy-tale window of the Bordino Bakery, lit up with out-of-season angels and marzipan animals, she did not notice the evil eye of Susanna Bordino fixed upon her. All afternoon, Susanna’s mind had been troubled by the stranger who had come among them. The woman was bad news, Susanna could see. Why couldn’t people stay in the place they were born? she wondered. She prided herself that she had been born, lived, and would certainly die within the sound of their own bells. Susanna wouldn’t admit the stranger was a beauty; there was too much flesh on her bones in Susanna’s view. She knew, however, there were some—and amongst this group she numbered her randy father-in-law, Luigi—who might be ensnared by her. Susanna knew his ways. But the stranger could think again if she thought she was going to snap up Luigi and snatch the bakery from underneath Susanna’s nose. Never. Susanna would die first. Of that Fernanda Ponderosa could be sure.

  From an upper window, Luigi, too, was watching, his nose clouding the glass, and from that moment on he never gave my mistress another thought. He hurried down to the ovens he had only just closed up for the night and began to knead some dough. Into that dough he put all the passion he had left to unleash. He had never loved Gloriana. It was obvious to him now. The scales had fallen away from his eyes. The first sixty years of his life had been a sham, a total sham. He was now discovering love for the first time, and his heart sang within his withered chest. Looking down from heaven, Gloriana wept; she had given the best years of her life to that man.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Arcadio Carnabuci was right: Fernanda Ponderosa had come to regret her hasty actions on the previous evening and wanted to apologize for the soaking she had given him.

  Blushing like a furnace, Arcadio Carnabuci opened the door to his bedroom and admitted Fernanda Ponderosa, who looked pale, but determined. They had dispensed with the usual chitchat in the parlor. What use had they for words? She had come to him. Nothing else mattered. He watched Fernanda Ponderosa’s eyes scan the room. Thank God he had had the foresight to change the sheets. The magnificent new ones made all the difference. He hoped she was impressed.

  They looked into one another’s eyes. Arcadio Carnabuci was unsure of what he saw there. Was it love? Desire? Laughter? What, for that matter, did she see in his? He felt naked, although he was yet fully clothed. Without drawing her eyes away from his, Fernanda Ponderosa began to undo the buttons of her blouse. Arcadio Carnabuci’s mouth went dry. He hadn’t had much practice. In truth he hadn’t had any practice. Leastways not with other people. He had read manuals of course but it wasn’t the same thing. He was seized by a feeling of panic that he didn’t know what to do. And what was worse, she would know that he didn’t know what to do. And she would hate him for it. Should he make for the door, now that his dream was on the verge of being realized? What would she think of him? Was it worse to repel her by his ineptitude or to make her feel rejected? Already he was on the verge of collapse.

  Then something incredible happened. Fernanda Ponderosa, without his being aware of it, had climbed out of her clothes, which now lay in a tender heap on the floor around her feet. She came up close. Closer than anyone had ever come to him before, anyone other than his mother that is, and possibly other family members when he was still a baby, his father, perhaps, possibly his grandmother. So close in fact that he couldn’t see her in detail anymore—he lost sight of her—she was just one big sun-browned mass. He realized then he didn’t have his glasses on. Where were they? He didn’t remember taking them off. But that didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered except this moment.

  He felt lips on his. Whispering against his. Warm, soft, fleshy lips. He felt the tip of a nose brush ever so lightly against his. The lips were moving around, still in contact with his. They sort of sucked up his bottom lip and manipulated it. He had never experienced anything like this. He didn’t know whether it was acceptable to breathe. Whether i
t was possible even. But then he stopped thinking, and his lips, his whole mouth, responded to the lips of Fernanda Ponderosa. He was kissing. He was actually kissing. And it looked as though he was doing all right.

  Without knowing it they had become locked in an embrace. He was standing on tiptoe, trying to stretch himself out as tall as possible. If she was having to stoop, she was hiding it well. Now he was holding her close. Her smell overpowered him. The cascade of her hair rippled over his arms. His bare arms. He was somehow naked. How had that happened? There had been not the least awkwardness or embarrassment. No tangling in the legs of his pants. No shoes that wouldn’t come off until their laces had been completely loosened. No smelly socks to be regretted. How had she managed it? How on earth did it matter? He could feel her against him. Around him. Surrounding him with softness. Her arms enclosing him. Her glorious flesh pressing against him. He could feel the gentle pressure of her breasts pushed against him. Her endless legs running up and down the length of his. And all the time their lips working frantically away, trying to make some kind of meaning out of their yearning for one another that was so strong nothing could hold it back. Sucking, plucking, probing. Her hands roved over him. He wished himself bigger so there would be more of him to feel her touching him. Her powerful fingers exerted a pressure on his face, his neck, his chest, his sides, his bottom, his thighs. A smell hung in a cloud around them. It was a smell that was new to him. But it was the most intoxicating smell it was possible to imagine. It was the smell of their two bodies murmuring to one another.

  Arcadio Carnabuci began to yowl like the wolf that lived high above in the mountain peaks. He didn’t know how he could bear any more of this pleasure, so intense it was agonizing.

  Out in the yard, the dog, Max, took up the cry, fearing that the wolves had come down to the plains to carry off the few chickens his master kept. The wretched dog was so insistent. It’s barking was so loud.

  “Don’t stop, I beg you,” yelled Arcadio Carnabuci over the din, in a voice that was straining with all the naked force of his pent-up passion. The voice of a man in torment. And a much different voice to the one he usually spoke in.

  But Fernanda Ponderosa had stopped. Arcadio Carnabuci couldn’t understand it. In that cold, empty place between sleeping and waking, he finally realized he had been tricked by a dream. Max was still barking away. The only spurting was that of Arcadio Carnabuci’s tears of rage and frustration.

  When he found the light and looked at the clock, he couldn’t believe it. Then the awful truth dawned upon him. He had been asleep for more than twenty-four hours. He had slept through the night and through the next day, and now here it was night again. It was the aftereffects of the song that had drained him dry, to the very dregs. He suddenly panicked that he had missed the Maddaloni funeral at which he was due to sing. If he had missed that, he could expect to be attending his own funeral anytime soon. But then he realized the funeral was tomorrow; he hadn’t missed it. Thank God. But nevertheless had missed a whole day. He had been robbed of a whole day of being with her. A day he would never recover. What had gone on in that time? He was racked with jealousy. Anything could have happened.

  If only he had looked outside and seen me there, waiting for him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The following day the paths of my mistress and her doctor crossed again. It was an extraordinary stroke of good luck for them, being thrown together twice in two days. The circumstances of this encounter, however, were not auspicious. It was the funeral of the town’s undertaker, Don Dino Maddaloni of the Maddaloni Funeral Home. His death had caused a stir, largely because nobody had expected the funeral director himself to die. It was as though his occupation made him exempt. A Rotarian and a player of bridge, he was a big man in the community, and naturally an important man in the local organization of the Mafia.

  Concetta Crocetta had been treating him for a stomach ulcer, which periodically gave the undertaker cause for alarm, interrupting the schedule of lavish banquets for which his household was famous. In addition, she had been applying poultices to Don Dino’s right foot.

  Nevertheless, neither the ulcer nor the gout carried him off. It was a sausage. Or so the rumor told. Word circulated that Happy Pig sausages, those same sausages made with such care by Primo Castorini, were responsible for bringing Don Dino down in his prime.

  Of course there was no truth in this rumor. Don Dino’s associates had made it up, for the pork stakes in the region were high, and the Mafia-controlled Pucillo’s Pork Factory on the outskirts of the town was out to destroy its rivals. The Happy Pig was the last family concern to remain in business.

  The funeral, as might be expected, was perfect in every detail. The widow Maddaloni’s grief for the loss of her husband was overshadowed by her regret that he wasn’t there to witness his glorious send-off. The six Maddaloni sons, Pomilio, Prisco, Pirro, Malco, Ivano, and Gaddo, were the pallbearers, and they moved with the precision of soldiers on a parade ground. So perfectly timed were their movements they looked like clockwork dolls. No fewer than three priests officiated over the service; indeed, there could not have been more pomp and circumstance if they had been burying the bishop himself.

  Whispers that the Maddalonis were reaching above themselves with the excessive and even impious funeral were soon silenced.

  In the clouds of incense, the mourners who weren’t weeping in their grief were crying because of the inflammation of their eyes and nasal passages. Countless wax candles lit the interior lighter than heaven itself, and the smoke was blackening the ceiling, which had been repainted for the occasion.

  In spite of his reluctance and natural shyness, Arcadio Carnabuci was singled out for the particular honor of singing the Ave Maria, on account of the impression he had made that Palm Sunday on Don Dino. In case his resistance got the better of him at the last moment, he was collected from his cottage in a car, seated between Don Dino’s cousins Selmo and Narno. He was even supplied with a robe to wear that gave him the appearance of an overgrown choirboy.

  What agonies did Arcadio Carnabuci feel during the service. And it had nothing to do with his grief for the departed. All he could think about was seeing Fernanda Ponderosa again, clearing any misunderstandings, and hopefully delivering a proposal of marriage to her; instead he had to sing at this funeral. Of course he could not refuse. He knew only too well if he tried to assert his will, the ancestral olive grove of the Carnabuci dynasty would be set ablaze. But how bitter were his feelings at the injustice of it all. And how he willed the proceedings to get under way so he could run off as quickly as possible.

  In the midst of all of this, through the haze of incense, Dr. Croce spotted the distinctive form of my mistress in a pew a few rows behind him. It was a pure fluke that he had arrived on time. They exchanged nods, and when the service was finally over, after three hours of eulogies interspersed with hymns and readings and the Mass itself, they met in the aisle.

  Wearing matching blushes, they both spoke at once in their anxiety to break the ice.

  “Lovely service,” she.

  “Lavish send-off,” he.

  Their words collided in the thick air and jumbled themselves, causing them both to blurt half-suppressed giggles and then look around furtively for fear that others in the congregation had heard them.

  They looked into one another’s eyes for what seemed an eternity, but was probably no longer than a few seconds.

  “Keep moving there,” said someone from behind.

  The doctor felt an elbow in his back.

  “There’s a blockage in the aisle.”

  “Don’t push.”

  “Be patient, won’t you?”

  “I can’t breathe in this scrum.”

  “Move along.”

  The force of the stream pulled them apart. The bodies of the mourners, like a weight of floodwater, came between them. The moment was gone. They kept looking back at one another from their relative places in the surge. Neither could struggle aga
inst the current. Were the doctor’s sensuous lips forming some word intended for the nurse? She craned her neck to see, but it was too smoky in there, and too dark now that the candles had burned away. Had he said something, anything? He felt her eyes upon him still, brown, warm, smooth. Afterward, when he closed his eyes, he could see them still.

  Outside, each was engaged in conversation by interfering busybodies. Policarpo Pinto wanted to talk about his bunions. Filiberto Carofalo wanted a remedy for the aggressive warts that marred his life. Fedra Brini got out her cellulite in full view of the congregation.

  In the throng they lost one another, and although the eyes of each continued to search for the other in the swelling mass of people, the figures they sought had vanished.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  As soon as Arcadio Carnabuci was able to squeeze through the pressing mass of mourners and discard his chorister’s costume, he tore along to the Happy Pig, where he heard with dismay that the object of his dreams was now working. He knew the butcher’s ways and he didn’t like it at all. Arcadio would ask her to resign at the earliest opportunity.