by Adam Schell
“And so it is!” shouted the Good Padre, and the crowd erupted, “Bravo!”
Perfect, thought Giuseppe, absolutely perfect. Vincenzo, however, did not like the idea of being outdone by Benito. He also did not like the idea of having staked his pride against Benito—the man was strong as an ox—and he saw for himself the perfect opportunity to opt out of the race with honor. He dismounted his donkey, took hold of the wine bottle on the table set before the Roman numeral eight, his number, and with an air of formality offered it to Benito. “If one does not ride today,” said Vincenzo, “it should be I.” And for once, all in the village—all but Giuseppe—applauded Vincenzo.
With the bottle barely passed from Vincenzo to Benito and the air still loud with applause, the Good Padre felt a tug upon his frock. Bertolli pointed under the stand to the extra Jeroboame wine bottle. Of course his altar boy knew—he knew so many things—that it was tradition for the prescribed Capitano to bring an extra wine bottle to the race. He even knew, as few did, the real and ancient impetus for bringing an extra wine bottle: in case the Drunken Saint, observing the revelry happening in his honor, should decide to reappear.
The Good Padre bent down and lifted up the massive bottle. “By spirit of bless’d Saint,” he said as he handed the extra bottle to Vincenzo and in so doing robbed the aging pork merchant of the very thing he so desired, “be it then twelve plus one, as Vincenzo stays in, and the Ebreo joins the run!”
For the villagers, all but Vincenzo, Giuseppe and a little piece of Mari, a fever of excitement stirred them. Yes, Mari too felt her share of exhilaration, but her enthusiasm was laced with concern. Of course, she was excited that the boy she adored appeared to have some guts, and certainly, his entry into the race would afford her an unadulterated opportunity to marvel upon his beauty. Nonetheless, she was equally concerned about his well-being. He did not seem to be a brutal boy—not with those soft and kind eyes—and the race was a rough affair, bound to be even rougher with this year’s inclusion of Benito. Historically, the race was marked by knocking and punching and jostling and a ridiculous, near-belly-bursting abundance of drinking, none of which— and yet all of which—she desired to see her tomato boy put through. Then there was Giuseppe, who felt not a shred of amity and was instead roiling with the horrible acid of a plan gone awry. All Giuseppe could hope for was that somehow the mind-twisting distillation of Fungi di Santo in the bottle of wine that Benito would now be drinking might not affect a mind so already twisted.
“Then get the boy off his wagon and upon his donkey,” shouted Vincenzo in what would prove to be his last moment of glory for the day, “and let us race!”
17 According to Etruscan tradition, the heart’s arm was the left arm and was considered the peaceful side of the body that evoked the heart’s energy, while the right arm was called the sword’s arm and was used for wielding weapons and tools. Throughout Italy it was considered unmanly for a boy to be left-handed, and children who showed such inclination had it quickly trained out of them.
In Which We Learn
the Unusual Manner in Which the
Battle of the Hours Crowns a champion
The crowd loosed another “Bravo!” as they pressed in and around Davido, undoing the ropes that bound his donkey to the wagon. Others took hold of Davido’s arms and legs, until he found himself hoisted from his wagon seat and set onto the bare back of his donkey, with the wine bottle still on his lap. From the corner of his eye Davido saw his grandfather’s bewildered expresson as he too was lifted from his wagon seat and set gently upon the ground. Then Davido felt his body react against a tug on the wine bottle and suddenly realized the excessive firmness of his clench. Embarrassed, he looked to the Good Padre, who smiled back at him. Davido loosed his grip and watched the enormous bottle pass through the crowd until it wound up in the hands of Nonno. It was heavy and he hoped Nonno would not drop it. Then Davido felt something cool and wet upon his skin—a sensation he thought for an instant to be the precursor of great pain, but quickly realized it to be the coolness and wetness of paint as the Roman numeral thirteen was painted onto the front and back of his tunic in bright red. No sooner had that sensation receded than Davido’s body again twanged with panic; he felt a loop of rope tighten around his right wrist. But the act was done without brutality and Davido’s sudden rush of anxiety receded as he looked up and saw that all the other racers had their right hands tied behind their backs in a similar fashion. Thank God, thought Davido with a clarity that startled him, I’m a lefty.
“Merda!” gasped Mari as she suddenly remembered her mother sitting there. Though it nearly killed Mari to give up such a fine vantage from which to watch the action, she knew it was too dangerous a spot for her mother. With her attention so fixated on the boy and her hands so busy filling wine goblets, the area around her wine barrel was now precariously overcrowded. One good jostle of the crowd and the half barrel upon which her mother sat would no doubt topple over. Quickly, Mari closed the spigot on the barrel and saddled up to her mother. “Maggio!” (short for formaggio), Mari shouted, purposefully catching the Cheese Maker’s attention.
“Oh, goodness!” said the Cheese Maker, bushy eyebrows vaulted with concern as he shuffled over to Mari and her mother. “Uno, due, tre,” he nodded to Mari as he took hold of the crippled woman’s right arm and together they helped lift her to her feet and usher her out of the crowd.
As always, there were a few benches set up on the roof of the bakery so the old and infirm could have a safe place from which to watch the action. It would take an able-bodied person hardly two minutes to make it there, which meant it took her mother, even with help, at least twice as long. Mio Dio! Mari felt a cleaver of guilt and desire split her in half. It was just too long to be away. “Please?” Mari looked desperately to the Cheese Maker and then gestured to the bakery’s roof. “I’ve got to get back to my wine barrel,” Mari lied. “If Giuseppe sees it unattended, I’ll be in an awful heap.”
“By all means, love,” answered the Cheese Maker, both sweetly and urgently. “Go, go! I’ll see to your mother.”
Now Davido heard the strum and beat of the minstrels’ lute and drum, and the crowd pushed in more forcefully. A man whom Davido might one day come to know as Signore Solo Coglione, the tavern keep, smiled at him warmly as he took hold of Davido’s donkey’s rein and paraded the boy, with all the other outlandishly adorned Cavalieri, around the piazza. Everything was happening so fast. It seemed to Davido like pure chaos, but he could tell in the ecstatic faces of the villagers and the coordination of their actions that there were centuries of purpose and tradition informing every move.
The parade continued about the piazza, while the villagers began to divide and cluster together by color around their quadrant’s Cavaliere and donkey. The townspeople frolicked and gulped from wine-filled goblets, jugs and bottles. They sprinkled knight and donkey alike with wine, not unlike priests sprinkling parishioners with holy water, until it seemed as if it were raining red wine. They kissed the donkeys’ noses and scratched lovingly between their ears, and many, to Davido’s surprise, even rubbed their donkey’s testicles in a way similar to how Davido had seen Catholics rub the bald head of Saint Francis statues for good luck. The villagers now pumped their fists in the air as each Quadrante took turns shouting out their number at the top of their lungs: “Numero Uno, Numero Due, Numero Tre…” and so on. Davido’s ears perked with expectation as the piazza rung with dieci, undici, dodici, but alas, not even one voice called out in support of number thirteen. And before Davido knew what was happening he found himself coaxed into position, side by side with all the other Cavalieri into something of a starting line.
Davido did not turn to look—he was too nervous to do so—but on his right he glimpsed the beefy ogre of a man who had given him his wine bottle, and on his left, the pork merchant who seemed to dislike Ebrei immensely. This did not strike Davido as an especially promising starting position. Then a rope was pulled before the racers to keep
the donkeys from moving forward. The crowd was pushed back to the hay-and dirt-lined edges of the track until they formed a perimeter of humanity ten persons deep, creating a perfect race oval, with the statue of the Drunken Saint at its center.
The noise echoing throughout the piazza was overwhelmingly loud as the crowd continued shouting out the cycle of numbers time and again: “Numero Sei, Numero Sette, Numero Otto …” Davido scanned the crowd to find the stabilizing face of Mari. He could not locate her, but his vision found his grandfather just as the Good Padre positioned Nonno beside the wine table and placed a wine screw in his hand. Davido held his grandfather’s eyes, hoping to glean from them any strength and insight he might have to offer. Slowly, Nonno’s lips broke with the slightest of smirks and in an instant Davido got what he was searching for.
’Tis strange, thought Davido through the noise and chaos, that a smirk can reveal so much. On the surface, Nonno’s smirk did exactly what a good smirk does: it mocked Davido’s current predicament and reproved him for ignoring the wisdom and cautions of his grandfather. But beyond the mockery, there was a crinkle of the lip and a glint in the old man’s eyes that revealed how it was that his grandfather had survived Colombo’s voyage, the desperate years living among the Indiani of the New World, the decade spent hiding throughout Italy, the plagues, the heartbreaks and everything else. Put simply, his Nonno was mad. Not mad as in angry or crazy, but mad in that he possessed a cultivated and indomitable life force that was somehow greater than the circumstances life threw at him, no matter how dire. In that moment Davido saw that there was something about Nonno that could not be broken. He hoped to God that he too possessed such a madness.
The Good Padre walked past the line of Cavalieri and up to the statue of the Drunken Saint. Then he turned toward the Nobiluomi table and raised his hulking arms. Instantly the reveling of five hundred villagers stilled, just as Bertolli said it would (this was, after all, the Good Padre’s first time presiding over the Festa and he had relied on his altar boy a great deal). The silence was startling to Davido—the proverbial quiet before the storm—and a good part of his being wanted nothing more than to run from this crazed village all the way back to the safety of his farm. But then, just as one might expect in a tale such as this, the drunken, sea-like swaying of the crowd parted and Davido found his eyes locked upon those of Mari. The sight stiffened Davido’s resolve and he remembered precisely his motivation for why he’d come to the feast. For such eyes, such a look, were worthy of risking life and limb for.
In the midst of the silence, Bertolli, dressed in his finest altar boy cassock, made the ceremonial walk past the line of Cavalieri and up to the Good Padre. He carried a pillow upon which sat a wreath made of olive and grape vines and leaves and an ornate aspergillum filled with holy water. The Good Padre lifted the wreath from the pillow, held it high for the entire crowd to see and then, with a great ovation from the crowd, turned and set the wreath upon the Drunken Saint’s bald head. Next, the Good Padre lifted the aspergillum from the pillow, spoke a few words in Latin, and then sprinkled the first Cavaliere and his donkey with holy water.
Davido had never been sprinkled with holy water and looked anxiously to Nonno as the Good Padre made his way down the line of Cavalieri. Nonno returned his grandson’s gaze with a slight shrug and lift to his eyebrows that seemed to say: when in Rome … Davido felt the cool water sprinkle upon his face. A drop ran down his cheek, perched on his lip and sent a ripple of conflict through his psyche. The confusion, though, was short-lived, as quickly Davido sucked the holy water into his mouth, figuring he could use all the luck he could get today.
The Good Padre raised his arms again and the crowd fell silent. Standing before the wine table, he commanded: “Nobiluomi del Vino, reveal the sacred juice.” Swiftly, the men who manned the wine table set their corkscrews to bottles and Davido saw that even Nonno fell in line as corks were pulled. With the wine bottles open, the Good Padre again addressed the table and said, “Squires of the Wine, pour forth the first goblet.” In near-unison the Nobiluomi tilted the great bottles and filled the goblets before them. Davido noticed that Nonno did not spill as much as some of the other men.
Now the Good Padre turned his attention to the riders on the track. Slowly he stepped to the side, out of the direct line of the racers’ path. The men holding either side of the starting rope across the track pulled it especially taut. Davido felt the muscles of his donkey twitch with urgency. With his free left hand, he gave a gentle, reassuring pat upon the coarse hair of his donkey’s neck. The beast bristled defiantly, as if he knew that it was not he who needed the reassurance. This was just one of the ways that Davido found the donkey to be a lot like Nonno: still full of piss and vinegar and with no tolerance for placation.
The donkey Davido sat upon was the obstinate old male first introduced in the opening page of this story—the one most favored by Nonno: Signore Meducci. Named thusly because he appeared to have been left by the Meducci winemakers years earlier, the creature roamed about the farm with an air of entitlement that was nothing short of regal. The old donkey listened to and seemed to respect no one but Nonno. He pretended to be deaf when called, but always seemed to hear well the hoof-steps of his favorite female.
Despite his somewhat haughty and cantankerous demeanor, Signore Meducci was old and slow and thought to be blind in one eye. Worse still, the old beast had begun to lose control of the muscles that keep a donkey’s penis drawn up tight to the belly, so that when he walked, his prodigious cazzone would often waddle and knock between his bony thighs. However, on occasion, he could still muster some spirit. Nonetheless, it had not been Davido’s idea to harness him to the wagon this morning, but Nonno deemed Signore Meducci something of a talisman. The conversation about Nonno’s choice of donkey had gone like this:
“Buono,” said Nonno as he and his grandson regarded the swayback, penis-dangling, sorry sight of old Signore Meducci begrudgingly harnessed to a wagon full of tomatoes.
“Good?” repeated Davido incredulously.
“Indeed,” answered Nonno, “’Tis always best to appear humble before gentiles.”
Merda di toro, Davido thought. He knew his grandfather too well to take a half truth for whole—better to have a senile old donkey dangle his fat cazzone before a village of rhymers was more like it. Indeed, by all outward appearances Signore Meducci could not have seemed more unfit for the challenge ahead; but like Nonno, the old donkey was tough and shrewd and seemed to share a penchant for survival.
“Cavalieri,” the Good Padre’s voice now boomed as he raised his arms. The crowd looked on anxiously. This was all part of the ritual and they knew well the words to come. “By bless’d Saint and sacred season, gather all for holy reason.” Many voices from the crowd began to join the Good Padre as he led the ancient invocation. “Gather for grape and wine, gather for olive and oil, gather to honor Saint and soil. Gather young men of honor and power; gather to battle for the hour.”
The crowd roared with applause. The Good Padre continued as more voices joined in. “Quadranti and Capitani send forth your knights and hear the rules to race it right.” Five hundred voices now rang like thunder through the piazza. “Twelve laps, twelve goblets drunk, he who’s dropped is he who’s sunk.” Davido felt his hair stand on end. He took a quick, panicked gulp of air. It was happening. “First to finish in twelve laps’ time; first to finish his bottle of wine; first to place a hand upon the shrine; is he who wears the olive and vine. So raise your goblet and Cavalieri set your mark, for the Race of the Drunken Saint does hereby start!”
Attraverso Gli Occhi di un Estraneo, wrote Pozzo Menzogna in his eloquent treatise on drama, Il Trattato Definitivo sul Dramma. The idea being, according to Menzogna, that when faced with a large and compelling scene (an epic battle, or perhaps a donkey race) filled with familiar faces, it is, on occasion, insightful to establish the scene and relay the action through the eyes of a stranger. This need not mean an absolute newcomer to the story,
which Menzogna argued would be quite distracting, but a character or player familiar to the tale in general, and yet unfamiliar—or strange, as Menzogna put it—to a particular environment. The introduction of strange eyes to a familiar environment affords the reader a heightened sense of objectivity and increases that all-important quality of verisimilitude. Additionally, witnessing an event through strange eyes eradicates the need to move between numerous perspectives. This intensifies the wonder and immediacy of the action at hand and allows for a more natural compression of linear time, for instance, as may happen here, moving straight from the first lap of the donkey race to the penultimate. Finally, viewing events through the eyes of a stranger makes for a telling juxtaposition when in the climactic moments the perspective shifts back to the familiar and subjective eyes of the story’s hero: Attraverso Gli Occhi dell’ Eroe.
Hence, with Davido and Benito directly involved in the action and Mari, Nonno, the Good Padre, Giuseppe, Bobo the Fool and Cosimo di Pucci de’ Meducci the Third all pressed in among the exuberant throng and overtly or secretly hopeful for one outcome or another, and with Mucca, Signore Coglione, Bertolli, Vincenzo, Augusto Po and the Cheese Maker all present but not significant enough to our story to entrust the retelling of such important events, Menzogna would assuredly recommend that we look through the eyes of Chef Luigi Campoverde to recount the opening lap of the Drunken Saint’s Race, for Luigi, familiar as he may be to the reader, had no idea what in the world he’d just happened upon.
Luigi had arrived in the village just an hour ago, yet he was already disappointed in himself for getting drunk so quickly. Of course, rolling into the village on what happened to be its most raucous and celebratory feast day proved compelling even to a tightly bound elitist adamantly averse to keeping company with lowly rhymers. And yes, the sight of the profoundly pleasant priest, or Good Padre, as he seemed to be called, prompted Luigi to drain his first two goblets with great urgency. Plus, the wine was free and delicious, and the girl who served it a delight to look upon. But what should happen to him if the duke were to find him in such a debauched state? Certainly, he’d be out of a job.