by Lily Prior
What had begun that morning in the field watched by the carcass of the slaughtered pig was about to happen at last. All through that long, hot, brooding summer it had been simmering away like a pan on a stove. Now the pan was about to boil over.
Her eyes scorched him like a branding iron. Slowly, deliberately, she walked over to where he stood, leaning against the counter. It was as if she were moving in slow motion toward him. And she didn’t stop.
Then she kissed him. In slow motion her lips parted and came toward him, reaching for him, seeking him, and met with his in a fusion that made the earth tremors that had been rocking the district seem like bubbles bursting. Shock waves centered in his groin, they were shooting down his legs and up his back, along his arms; he could feel them running up through his hair, to the tip of each strand, the hair that had a life and a personality of its own, pulsating with the same throbbing sense of urgency that was electrifying his entire body. A mighty dam was crumbling. He gave way to the enormous and overwhelming greed he felt for Fernanda Ponderosa that he had been storing up and breeding since that first time he’d seen her. An insatiable greed.
Now Fernanda Ponderosa’s hands were exploring the landscape of his body. It was uncharted territory and she felt herself a mapmaker. His flesh was firm yet pliant to her touch through the strong white canvas of his overalls. She wanted to peel off these coveralls like the skin of an orange and explore what lay beneath. He felt himself being suddenly released from the confines of the canvas. Air was getting in. There was certainly a feeling of relative coolness and ventilation. He was definitely undone.
His hands were full of her, too. He had never felt anything like it. He knew a nanosecond of agony at the realization life was too short for him to feel her body as much as he needed to. He knew also he had to live out the whole of his life in this moment. The rest of his life seemed suddenly superfluous. Could he die now, like this?
Ghosts of all the sausages that had been produced in this room seemed present with watchful eyes. Every shiny surface of marble, every stainless-steel implement hanging on hooks, reflected their image around the room.
Primo Castorini felt his masculine pride take over. He swept Fernanda Ponderosa up into his arms. She felt weightless, his arms were so strong. She could feel the muscles of the great forearms, which gained their strength from butchering carcasses, holding her aloft.
But then she stopped him with a motion of her hand.
“Not here, not now, not like this,” she said between gasps for breath. “Come to me tonight.”
As carefully as with an egg he set her down on her feet. She couldn’t guess what that gesture cost him. His great chest heaved. He stood back, erect, looking at her in such a way that it was now her turn to lurch. His black eyes bored into hers as though seeking something there he could find in no other place. Did he really have to let her go?
Yes, he did. He had to endure the agony of watching her walk away from him again, but he promised himself it would be for the last time. After that night she would never leave him, ever. He had to make sure of that. He locked the door after her and then let out a roar like a bull in a field.
He tried to compose himself but failed. At last he had her. Or would have her. He could cope with the frustration of the now in the promise of the later. But how to get through the intervening hours? At what time should he go? What did the detail matter? It was four now. He would go at seven. Three hours.
He ran himself a bath. In spite of the heat he needed to submerse himself in water. He let it run deep so that when he got in, the water spilled over the top of the tub and splashed onto the tiled floor. It was hot. But it was good. It eased him. He lay there letting the water into every corner of his body. Steam filled the room with fog. With each small movement more water trickled gently over the edge, cascading like a fountain and hissing onto the floor. Far away in the distance he heard a rumble of thunder.
He didn’t allow himself to think what he would do if she refused him later. He just couldn’t let that possibility creep in. If it did, it would destroy him. He shut it out of his mind, then locked it to make sure.
He knew he could do it. Knew he had what it takes. He was relieved though he hadn’t done it in weeks. So much the better. To have something in reserve. He opened the dungeon where his fear lived, and alongside the threat of rejection he cast down the terror of failure. Then he relocked the door and this time threw away the key.
He stayed in the water until his skin puckered like a prune and he knew then it was time to get out. He shaved, anointed his body with perfume, and dressed in his best clothes and smart shoes. Then he waited for the time to come when he could go to her.
CHAPTER THREE
Over at Montebufo, where even late in the afternoon the plain sizzled like a griddle pan, Amilcare Croce sprawled in the shade of a cherry tree reading. He never changed now out of his running shorts and vest. They were the only clothes that could keep him cool. It was eerily quiet. Even the cicadas were silent. The crispy carcasses of lizards littered the brown grass.
The doctor now spent a lot of time reading learned journals, which were brought irregularly by Carmelo Sorbillo, the postman, who had cut back on deliveries as much as possible, preferring instead to sleep under the counter in the post office.
The heat stopped the doctor from running: he just couldn’t do it anymore. Without his running to occupy him he was like a man lost without a map. He tried to keep my mistress, who he hadn’t seen in ages, out of his thoughts by filling his head with new and amazing medical theories. But of course he never put any into practice. He lived in theory. He loved in theory. As he lay on his back, looking up at the sky where the angry colors of the sunset indicated that the most terrible storm was brewing, he realized that his life had become nothing more than a theoretical exercise, and this came as an enormous shock to him.
In fact he was immobilized by despair, to think that he had come to this. Once he was so full of promise. When he was a student, before that when he was a schoolboy, everybody had expected such great things from him. He was the one who won the prizes. He was going change the world. His feet would tread the path of glory. And what had happened? How had it all gone so badly wrong? He had done nothing. Nothing. He had abandoned his work. His great career. He hadn’t even been capable of loving a woman. He was about to go mad with fury. He had ruined his life. It was a complete mess.
When he emerged from his reverie, he was as fired up as the sky. He got up, threw the periodical into the hedge, left everything as it was, radio playing in the kitchen, door open, and he just walked away from the house. He didn’t even stop to put on a pair of shoes.
The road that passed his house burned his feet like hot coals, and his skin stuck to the asphalt with a hissing sound. Cursing, he hopped up and down, then started to run. Taking long, long strides, and bouncing on his toes to reduce the burning. Not even knowing where he was going. He just put one foot ahead of the other. Without thinking. With no plan. Was he just going to run and keep on running? Leave the region with no word to anybody and never come back?
He felt the roasting air burnishing his face. His hair frizzled. And he began to run faster. In spite of the heat, he flew along, faster than he had ever run before. His inner rage burned inside brighter than the angry sun and filled him with an endless supply of energy, which was fueling his long legs with running juice. People who saw him along the way found it remarkable. His nearest neighbor, Giuseppe Mormile, watched him trail past like a blazing comet and himself puffed over to his wife, Immacolata, who was halfheartedly tending to what remained of her lettuce crop.
“Look,” he said simply, pointing at the doctor, who was kicking up a trail of burning dust along the road. Above him the sun had turned from red to purple. It was an ominous sign.
Immacolata couldn’t understand it. It was as though someone had wound up the clockwork world and set it on a faster speed. She liked things slow. While everything around her accelerated, she be
nt down to her lettuces, slow as the snail creeping on its leaf. The two retained their slowness in a world that had gone mad.
The doctor ran on. He didn’t think where he was going. He just put his trust in his legs. They would take him where he needed to go. He would go with them. He was the slave of his legs. He started to breathe, and the air entered and left his lungs in such a perfect motion that he felt he had never breathed before that moment. It empowered him and gave speed to his legs, urging him onward.
Only when he reached the street where Concetta Crocetta lived did he realize this was his destination. Where his legs had brought him. He was not even short of breath, despite the searing heat. In fact, as he ran, the years had fallen away from him, and he looked twenty-five, not fifty. His skin glowed with youth and health. And now a smile spread over his features as he accepted everything.
Already a crowd had gathered under parasols in the Via Alfieri to celebrate with the doctor and the nurse. Everyone was clapping and laughing. Out of somewhere, and on short notice, the town brass band had assembled in full uniform, and the bandsmen were sweating their way through a medley of popular numbers while a troupe of majorettes twirled their batons.
Dr. Croce, however, saw and heard none of this. For him the world was strangely silent. All he could hear was the pulsing of the blood in his ears and the no longer timid voice of his heart calling out the name of Concetta Crocetta.
In her little cottage, my mistress was not aware of the carnival taking place outside. She had just fed me my oats out in the stable, and now back in her kitchen she was demolishing a tub of ice cream. Her hair was pulled up into a straggly bun and she was wearing nothing but her silk slip, and even that was too hot.
The doctor was like one in a dream, although he was wide-awake and fully conscious. His body seemed to be acting without any commands from his brain. Even if he wanted to, which he didn’t, he couldn’t have called a halt to what his body had begun and was going to follow through with. Stored up within his bones and blood and cells and sinews were the memories or blueprints of all the actions he should have carried out over the past twenty years but didn’t.
He opened the back door to the cottage without knocking, as though coming home, and entered the tiny kitchen. Obviously, he had never been inside before. It did not even surprise Concetta Crocetta to see her door opening and the tall person of the doctor stoop slightly to come inside. There was not the slightest embarrassment or hesitation on either side. The careful observer would have noticed Concetta Crocetta replace the spoon she had been raising to her lips in the tub of ice cream and set it down on the table.
For a long moment they looked deep into one another’s eyes as they had longed to do for so many years. They seemed to swim there, unhurried, exploring, probing into the hidden depths, the secret corners, and instinctively they understood everything.
It seemed obvious that the doctor should simply admit himself into her home, that she should stop eating ice cream, that she should not feel the slightest amazement. But that moment, the last of the old moments, the cusp of the new and the old joining, could not last forever, and of course nobody should want it to. With one long stride of his athletic legs the doctor crossed the room and was standing before Concetta Crocetta not as a doctor, but as a man.
CHAPTER FOUR
In the kitchen of number 37 Via Alfieri time was standing still as the doctor and the nurse sought to make up for twenty years of starved passions, oblivious to the ominous rumbling of the storm that was gathering in the sky.
The air was electric. The suspense was growing. Everybody waited on tenterhooks. The storm would surely come and bring with it cooler temperatures and much needed rain. Already in their imagination, the citizens were running out naked into the rain and glorying in it, feeling the delicious icy drops tingling on their bodies, dancing, laughing, singing, with no embarrassment at all, just rejoicing at last that the terrible heat was over.
First the thunder started. The foreshadowing echoes of which Primo Castorini heard while languishing in his bathtub. At least it sounded like thunder. Although many were convinced it was the cracking of the earth beneath their feet. Great bellows of thunder set the wolves howling up in the foothills. It echoed around the basin formed by the circling mountains and resounded across the plain, setting up a ripple of thunders that were magnified amid copies and originals; the peals clanged against one another and merged. A frightful din followed. The cows lowed in the meadows, a low, eerie lowing that sent shivers down the spines of those who heard it.
The thunder rumbled on. It went on so long the citizens of the region began to fear that there would just be thunder and nothing else. No storm. No rain. And no end to the heat.
Then, later, much later, when we had nearly given up hope, a flash of lightning cut the sky open and laid it bare. The sky went white and stayed white.
In the blinding white light Primo Castorini left the Happy Pig and set out in the direction of his old family home. There would be no more holding back. He was going to Fernanda Ponderosa, and he was going to have her. He marched along with a determined stride, and those who saw him had no doubt as to where he was going and what he was going to do when he got there.
That same lightning flash that sent Primo Castorini out on his mission was responsible for amazing phenomena. Events that nobody could ever have predicted.
It woke a sleeper. Yes, it roused Fidelio Castorini, who had been in a coma in a cave high up in the mountains for the past nine months since Silvana’s death. He opened his eyes and stared about him in the blinding whiteness. His mind was numb. He didn’t know where he was or why. He had no recollection of the catastrophe that had led him to wander away. The ground was hard: it was solid stone. He sat up. His body was stiff. Where was he? He didn’t recognize anything. But the light showed him the way out of the cave, and cautiously he got to his feet and hobbled out into the night. Outside he became aware of where he was. He was somehow at the top of the highest mountain, and in the whiteness he could see the whole of the great plain below him, stretching out for many miles. His eyes strained toward something in the far distance. Home. He would go home.
The mighty flash awoke a second sleeper. My Arcadio. My own true love. Tears of joy fill my eyes as I think about it. He was alive and restored to me. Yes, the end of the lightning flash reached all the way to Spoleto, where it entered the infirmary through the window behind my darling’s bed. It connected with the dusty machine to which he was wired up, shooting stars like fireworks. Electricity shot down the wires, through the probes, and entered his poor, useless body. Inside, the high voltage raced through his nerves and fused somewhere in his brain, causing a connection that brought him back to life with a jolt. A wisp of smoke came out of the top of his head and the air on the ward was filled with the smell of burning rubber.
Immediately he sat straight up in bed and ripped off the probes that were stuck to his head and body. The moment he had so long prayed for had come suddenly with no warning. If he was dreaming this moment, he would die a million agonizing deaths. As the other patients quaked and gibbered beneath their bedclothes, my heroic Arcadio leapt from the bed and ran along the corridors determined to make straight for Fernanda Ponderosa. Yes, even then, at that defining moment, it lacerates me to report that I did not enter his thoughts.
Wearing nothing but his faded pajamas, he emerged onto the forecourt, snatched a moped then being parked by the night nurse, Carlotta Bolletta, revved up the engine, and roared off in the direction of home. he had never driven before but it didn’t matter. He could do anything now. Out on the forecourt, Carlotta Bolletta was left gaping.
The thunder rumbled with each step Primo Castorini took. It was as though his footsteps were responsible for forming it. He had allowed an hour for a journey that took ten minutes. Instead of going slowly, his legs accelerated. He could not hold them back. The journey that should have taken ten minutes took five in these circumstances. The result was he was too early. Bu
t the truth was he just couldn’t wait any longer. Any suggestion that he could was ridiculous.
Almost at a run he crossed the yard where the eight turtles lay in wait for the rain. They knew it was coming and they would be the first to feel it pattering on their shells. They would feel it gushing through the dry gullies of their wrinkly necks, revitalizing their protruding heads and scaly legs.
The butcher’s hair acted as a conduit for all the electrons in the atmosphere, and it seemed more alive now than ever. Or perhaps it was the hormones rampaging within him. Whatever the cause, his hair was ready for the night ahead. So, too, was the rest of him. He was bigger now than usual. He seemed to have grown both taller and broader. The buttons of his shirt were straining. So were the seams of his pants. His body was struggling already to shed its clothes, the way a reptile sheds its skin. He had bounced back from the repression of the preceding weeks that had in a sense shrunk him. Now he was magnificent.
His huge form was silhouetted by the light against the screen door. Like an ogre. Oscar and her babies cowered on the top of the dresser. A turnip moth fluttered around the light, casting a monstrous shadow on the ceiling.
He was early and Fernanda Ponderosa wasn’t ready. She was still in the tub, squeezing water from a giant sea sponge over herself. Her hair was caught up in a knot on top of her head, and tender fronds escaped from it, trailing into the foaming water lapping the edge like a tide. She heard the screen door open and shut. Let him come. A coiled thrill unfurled itself in the center of her body. She felt him lumbering around the house like a blind bear, knocking over the furniture, looking for her, scenting her out. She, too, was impatient, but she continued with her bathing ritual, raising each of her legs in turn and applying the frothing sponge to her silver skin. His heavy footfalls were on the stairs. He was coming. She felt a surge of water entering her.