Ardor (14 page)

I
n 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. But 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.

The flickering candlelight drew him at last to the bathroom door, hanging open just wide enough for him to see inside. He stood there, his square shoulders filling the doorframe, uncer
tain, watching, and although she feigned not to have noticed him, she wanted him to watch her.

Slowly, rhythmically, she allowed the sea sponge to soak up its weight in water, then, lifting it high above her, the excess water tracing the veins in her forearms, she squeezed it out. The expelled water cascaded onto her glistening flesh: her throat, her glorious breasts bobbing up and down, sometimes below the surface of the water, sometimes tantalizingly above it. The sound of water falling into water was all there was in the world.

As he watched, Primo Castorini's mouth went dry. He didn't remember to breathe. He felt like the sponge when it had been wrung out. His body, not his hands, pushed the door open. It couldn't take any more, and it was wise not to. His smell overpowered the perfume of bath oil and unguents: the smoldering musk of pheromones, longing and lust. He came and knelt on the floor beside the tub. He leaned in and began to rescue the rivulets of hair from the water and weave them into the knot on her head. The water soaked up into the cuffs of his shirt, splashed over the rim of the tub onto his chest, and from the floor tiles it permeated the knees of his pants. He was saturated but he didn't notice. The strands of hair defied his attempts to snare them and slipped back silently into the water.

His feral eyes washed over her and his hands followed his eyes. Her wet body was the most sensuous creation imaginable. She lay back with her eyes shut and allowed the most sensitive hands in the region to explore her fully. In future, he never
wanted to touch anything that wasn't her. Beneath the water he caressed her, all of her. Instinctively he knew the spots that made her pucker. Her breathing grew heavier and more urgent and he had to hold himself in chains.

Thunderbolts shook the house on its foundations. Lightning cracked, coloring the sky outside green then yellow then red. The storm was directly overhead. Primo Castorini stood up, and in the colored lights that lit up the room, their eyes met and fastened. Was the roar that sounded then the thunder, or did it come from someplace deep inside Primo Castorini? It was difficult to tell.

With one hand he tore off his saturated clothes. They peeled off together, like paper, in one piece. They knew it was futile to resist. Shirt, pants, undershorts, even, amazingly, his socks and shoes. There was to be no scuffling here. No hopping and yanking and cursing and squirming and embarrassment. At what she saw, Fernanda Ponderosa's black eyes widened momentarily. It was the only time she had given anything away. She felt herself being lifted out of the water. She was Aphrodite rising from the waves. The water streamed away from her in rivulets that cascaded onto the floor.

With the sound of artillery, great blistering drops of rain the size of eggs burst on contact with the roof tiles. It was finally raining. And what rain it was.

Primo Castorini carried Fernanda Ponderosa out of the bathroom and into the bedroom.

B
y some trick of the light the writhing figures of Fernanda Ponderosa and Primo Castorini were magnified to huge proportions and projected through the bedroom window onto the ever-changing canvas of the lowering sky.

Outside, the rain fell in a battery. It hissed onto the parched surfaces and was immediately absorbed. Anyone foolish enough to be out in it suffered blows that left indelible marks on the skin. It was not the benevolent rain the citizens had dreamed of dancing naked in. It was spiteful.

Meanwhile the zombies who had been woken by the white light were making toward the house. The first to arrive was my sweetheart. Without his glasses it was a miracle he arrived at all. The moped had run out of gas two miles back and he had been forced to cover the remaining distance on foot. The great raindrops bit at his face and at his body through the flimsy flannel of his pajamas, but he didn't notice. He was aware of nothing except the thought of Fernanda Ponderosa, which drove him relentlessly onward. He was consumed by a jealousy big
ger by far than himself. It dogged his footsteps like an overfed shadow, whispering its poison into his ears, so loud it drowned out the clarion call of the storm. The shadow told him that night he would commit murder. And he believed it.

Fidelio Castorini was making slower progress. His body had suffered during the months he lay dormant in the cave. It was now the body of an old man. The mountain paths and passes made suddenly treacherous by the rain lay in wait for him, and he fell down many times, sustaining terrible injuries.

Arcadio Carnabuci could see nothing clearly, and his eyes were doubly obscured by the rain. He could almost believe the rain was part of the conspiracy against him. The nightmarish quality of the night and the storm was made more nightmarish by his poor eyesight. Monstrous shapes loomed up out of the shadows, terrifying him, and then just as mysteriously, disappeared. Eventually he found the right house. He had been confused by his own cottage not being where he'd left it, but after going round and round in circles, he found the Castorini house, which was in complete darkness, poised between shards of lightning.

As he staggered toward the house, the evil shadow sitting on his shoulder called upon Arcadio to arm himself. A murderer needs a weapon.

“If the pork butcher shows up tonight, he will die,” said the gravelly voice.

Nodding as though mesmerized, Arcadio took hold of a large rock he had tripped over in the yard. It was the turtle
Olga, who had been rehydrating herself in a puddle. Quaking, she drew her head, legs, and tail into her shell, offering up a mother's prayer for the safety of her babies.

Lightning irradiated the scene, this time with a yellow glare like mustard gas. In that split second of blinding light, Fidelio Castorini identified his screen door and made toward it. He had come home. Home at last. In that split second of blinding light, Arcadio Carnabuci's eyes focused and he beheld the pork butcher from the rear making toward the house.

“Bingo,” cried the voice.

Arcadio Carnabuci's worst fears were confirmed. All the while he had lain in the infirmary, he had been right to fear that evil seducer. He hoped things had not progressed too far in his absence. The butcher had to die. Of that he was certain. It was the only way. In a frenzy he ran forward and smashed the turtle against Fidelio's skull. Fidelio let out an abominable scream. In that scream, magnified above the pandemonium of that clamorous night, was contained all his diabolical anguish at the sudden realization of his plight.

Arcadio Carnabuci, too, tried to scream, but nothing came out. He had lost his voice forever, the one abiding residue of his illness. He would never speak or sing again. The form of the pork butcher fell back onto Arcadio, causing him to try to scream again. Or perhaps he had not stopped trying to scream throughout. Who can tell?

Lightning struck again and this time the light stayed on, green and lurid, and by it Arcadio saw his mistake. It was not
the pork butcher at all. For all their figures were exactly the same from the back view, from the front they were different. This character had a bushy beard grown down to his knees. A shock of hair like a bush. Admittedly the pork butcher had a shock of hair, but it was mild in comparison with this. And from his mouth from which a trickle of blood was flowing were great fanglike teeth that struck more terror into Arcadio Carnabuci's soul than anything else.

Fernanda Ponderosa and Primo Castorini in a brief lull between their seventh and eighth bouts of lovemaking heard the scream ripping apart the night. Primo Castorini was all for carrying on regardless, but Fernanda Ponderosa sensed tragedy and hurried to dress in spite of his attempts to stop her. So he, too, threw open the closet and pulled on some of his brother's things that hung there still.

The rain suddenly stopped, leaving the air fresh and cool. The thunder had rumbled away over the mountains, and the sky remained lit as bright as day.

The breathless lovers appeared on the scene of the carnage at precisely the same moment as I galloped into the yard with my mistress clinging to my back. We were followed by roaring sirens heralding the arrival of a truckload of officers of the carabinieri, and the ambulance driven by Irina Biancardi, supported by Gianluigi Pupini.

My darling, still screaming a silent scream, looked deranged, particularly when he witnessed the all too obvious state of relations between she whom he persisted in regarding
as his future bride, and the pork butcher, who was all too much alive.

“Fidelio,” roared Primo Castorini, recognizing his brother in spite of his lupine appearance, and throwing himself on his knees beside the body.

“Silvana,” murmured Fidelio at the sight of Fernanda Ponderosa. Then with his last breath he added, “I love you,” and promptly died.

Olga the turtle, who had sustained horrific injuries, died also, leaving seven orphans.

The yard was suddenly full of people. Our grapevine is more efficient than that of any other region, and our citizens are not slow to heed its call. Some were wearing pajamas and nightgowns, although most were wearing very little, having cast off their sleepwear long ago on account of the heat. A murder usually brings people together, especially when it happens on your own doorstep. There had never been such a feeling of camaraderie amongst the citizens, who were usually quick to stab one another in the back.

“Arcadio Carnabuci a murderer! Who'd have believed it, eh?”

“Always thought he was an odd one.”

“What a lucky escape we have had, neighbors.”

“Praise be.”

There was a ripple of excitement as my beloved was placed in handcuffs. I tried to make my way over to him, to comfort him, but I, too, was tethered, by means of a rope. Although my
eyes were glued to him, and full of love, he had eyes only for Fernanda Ponderosa, who had eyes only for Primo Castorini. Speranza Patti, wearing a nightgown far too revealing for a woman of her age and avoirdupois, looked dewy-eyed at my darling, and had I not been tethered, I would most certainly have given her a nasty nip on the rump with my teeth.

While the body of Fidelio Castorini, who had come back from the dead only to die once more, was being placed in the ambulance, my darling's legs were frog-marching him away amid those of two young officers clad in tight pants with a wide red stripe running down the side. He was bundled into the rear of the official vehicle, the door slammed before being padlocked, and his only view of the outside world was through the bars at the tiny window, which revealed a glimpse of Speranza Patti mouthing the words:

“I'll wait for you. Forever.”

If only I could have got free of that rope.