Ardor (4 page)

W
hen Fernanda Ponderosa had said what she wanted to say, she got up from the ground and stretched out her shapely legs. Her knees hurt. As she gave them a rub, she suddenly had the feeling of being watched. Nonsense, she reasoned.

“Scared of ghosts, Fernanda Ponderosa?” she chided herself.

As Fernanda Ponderosa retraced her steps to her sister's house, Arcadio Carnabuci followed her, and I in turn followed him. I could not help myself. Where he was, I had to be.

Somehow Arcadio Carnabuci and his love fruit had upset the delicate balance of nature in the region, and I was one of the first casualties. Yes, I, Gezabel, the District Health Authority mule, fell in love with that man. Although he was ridiculous and puny to human eyes, he was a god to me.

Before last Tuesday I had not been aware of him. I had seen him, of course, tending to his olive grove, in the fields, and around the town in the course of my duties, but I had never noticed him
as a man
. Yet, that night, I was racked by feverish dreams that left me weak and parched and wobbly on my legs.
His ardent eyes promised me the passion I had never found in one of my own species. The touch of his hand upon my coat was a burning brand. I grew hot and uncomfortable, dewy and soft. We wandered together through the spring grass. We drank from the same crystal brook, by the banks of which he pressed his tiny lips against the soft folds of mine. Later, as we lay in the comfortable bed in his cottage, he kissed my dainty hooves, tickles that sent ripples through my four legs to meet in a fusion of sparks in the long-slumbering layers of my loins. We loved one another through the long, slow hours of that sultry night, and when morning came, I was his, and his alone.

When I awoke, roused cruelly by Concetta Crocetta with my oats, I was exhausted and heavy and bathed in a white foam of perspiration that caused her to check my temperature. I could not do justice to my breakfast because of the butterflies that fluttered in my stomach, thousands of them, tiny ones with the palest yellow wings.

From then on I was struck with a passion bigger than I was. I was a foal again. I began to smell roses in the air everywhere I went. I was jumpy, giddy, excited for no reason; I flushed hot and cold, I trembled, I sweated, I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. I lived only to see him and took many a detour past his cottage, which the nurse did not seem to detect, lost as she usually was in her own thoughts, just to catch a glimpse of him that sent my pulse racing and my heart thumping.

My long ears heard music in the wind rustling through the wheat fields. In the sighing of the doves. In the whispers of the
night. Above all I loved Arcadio Carnabuci's singing, for his voice could bewitch the leaves on the trees, the rocks on the mountains, the river racing through its course.

When my work for the day was done, and I did not anticipate a night call, sometimes in the dead of night I came quietly out of my stable and tiptoed to Arcadio Carnabuci's cottage to watch him through the windows. I wasn't peeping, really. I just wanted to see him. I couldn't bear the thought of a day passing without feeding my hungry eyes upon him. Then, the glow of warmth from the candlelight indoors melted my heart, and I would imagine myself tucked up cozily inside with him, just as I was in my dreams.

But outside of my glowing fantasies it was cold. I knew that he did not notice me. Would not even consider me. And this made my despair bitter as lemons. On the outside, yes, I had the appearance of a mule, but inside, couldn't he tell I was a beautiful woman with shapely limbs and glossy brown hair? Yet how could I get Arcadio Carnabuci to notice this, when, even if he looked at me, he saw only the dusty gray fur, now shabby and a little bit moth-eaten, the mealy mouth, the oat-stale breath, the yellowing teeth, and the broad nostrils of a mule? This was my misery. My cross to bear. And now that this glamorous stranger had come amongst us, a real woman, what chance did I stand now?

And so our little procession followed in Fernanda Ponderosa's footsteps back to the house of the Castorini. He walked in step with her, matching right, left, and right again,
trying to feel as close to her as he possibly could. And I did the same with him.

Soon we arrived. The door opened and the house swallowed her up. A little time later a light appeared in one of the upper rooms, the one with the balcony, shining out through the chinks in the shutters. It was a bright night, there was a full moon, a good omen for lovers, and the sky was peppered with thousands of tiny stars, bright worlds millions of miles away, some of which had by this time already ceased to exist. It felt like the most romantic night that had ever been invented.

By the light of the moon and the stars Arcadio Carnabuci noticed a roomful of furniture out in the yard. It seemed strange to leave furniture out, with those thieves the Nellinos down at Folpone, who would take anything that wasn't bolted down and guarded by a vicious dog.

Nevertheless he availed himself of the chaise longue and looked up at the window where his darling remained. He thought happily of how the pink plush had brushed against her bottom as it was now brushing against his. Then, under the influence of the moon and the stars and the singing of the night creatures, the owls and bats and cicadas, the voles and the newts, it came to Arcadio Carnabuci what he should do. He should sing. Sing to Fernanda Ponderosa and thereby announce his love to her in the way he knew best.

Trembling, he could scarcely believe this was happening to him. He knew that here, tonight, history was going to be made. The rest of his life depended upon the song that was about to
burst from his lips. The object of a whole lifetime of feverish dreams was here, now, and he wanted to savor the moment, the final bittersweet moment of loneliness and heart-wrenching desire, now so close to being fulfilled, before unleashing the full force of their shared and beautiful destiny. Having waited so long, a minute, maybe two, was in many ways a self-indulgence, but one that Arcadio Carnabuci decided he could allow himself.

With his eyes fixed on the twinkling stars far away in the night sky, he walked toward the front of the house, positioning himself below the balcony with the precision of an opera singer on a stage. Slowly he took a deep breath, then, deliberately, he licked his lips, and from them pored forth the pure notes that ascended to the firmament, causing people throughout the region to sigh and weep at their unbearable beauty. The whole world seemed to have gone suddenly silent, and the sound carried on the slender breezes over immense distances.

Way up on the mountain, the hermit Neddo was roused from contemplation by Arcadio Carnabuci's song, and with a rapturous expression on his face he truly believed he had found enlightenment. Nearby, Neddo's friends, the brown bears, emerged from their caves and began dancing in time to the rhythm of the music that was falling from the stars. Lower down in the foothills, the shepherds stood in amazement amidst the flocks and the newborn lambs and wondered if the beautiful song heralded the Second Coming, and in vain they looked to the east for a star to guide them. Prowling in a circle at the
edge of the flocks were the wolves, slavering at the sight of so many tender lambkins, yet so struck were they by the beauty of the song that they abandoned all thoughts of dinner and they, too, raised their voices to the skies.

Closer to home, the citizens of the town threw open their windows or came to their doors enraptured by the sound. Even the baker, Luigi Bordino, broke off from kneading his dough, dusted the flour from his hands, and came to the door of his bakery. Fedra Brini stopped knitting. Speranza Patti stopped reading. My mistress was distracted from her fantasies about Dr. Amilcare Croce.

What could be the meaning of the angel's voice filling the air?

The widow Maddaloni chose to interpret it as a requiem for her husband, who had died in mysterious circumstances earlier in the week.

“Clearly that angel is lost on earth,” said Teresa Marta, whose blindness had endowed her with the best hearing in the region. “Can't you tell that from the plaintive beauty of the song? We must help it to find its choir.”

But although an extensive search was carried out, the lonely angel could not be found. The baffled citizens stood in the streets with their heads bowed as though in silent prayer, and Padre Arcangelo wandered amongst them uttering benedictions, firmly believing they were all participating in a miracle.

Truly, the only person in the entire region who was not caught up and swept away by the haunting melody was Primo Castorini. Indeed he didn't hear so much as a note of it. He was
as usual secreted in the cold room at the Happy Pig working throughout the night to prepare his secret sausage recipes. The concentration while he worked was such that nothing could penetrate his consciousness. All his senses shut down, and he put all of himself—and a lot of him there was—into his sausages. Incredibly, in the past, Primo Castorini had neglected to notice the earthquakes that had rocked the region while he was working, until the roof had fallen down around his ears. So no song, however miraculous, could distract his attention from the serpents of pork that were his life.

Arcadio Carnabuci's song was echoed by the frogs in the lily pads, by the swans on the distant lake, silver in the moonlight, and by the waterfalls cascading in the mountains. It was taken up by the swallows soaring amongst the notes of the melody, and by every humble creature in the region, even the field mice and the naked worms. The almond trees wept a carpet of fragrant blossoms. The statue of the goddess Aphrodite, shoved rudely into the yard by Ambrogio Bufaletti, was silently sobbing, and marble teardrops fell amidst the dust. Just beyond the yard, hidden behind the hazel hedge, I was quivering. My long eyelashes were strung with tears, like crystal beads on an abacus. In them I counted the cost of my hopeless love.

Eventually the shutters were thrown open and Fernanda Ponderosa emerged cautiously onto the balcony. “Who is there?” In her resonant whisper the magic of the night was liquefied.

Arcadio Carnabuci stepped forward into the light thrown
by her lantern but did not cease singing for a second. The song had taken him over, he was its servant, its instrument, and he had no choice but to obey its command.

Fernanda was not exactly as in his dreams. She was a little older than the maiden he was expecting. So much the better. It would be well if at least one of them knew what they were doing. Though more mature, she was much more beautiful than his imagination could render her. The eyes of his heart had drawn her but imperfectly.

Her voluptuous body was dazzling; how much better to sink into her softness like whipped cream, like a goose-down-filled mattress, in place of that slight and angular form he had anticipated. She was bigger than him for sure, but he liked big women. More to cuddle up to. More to keep you warm on a winter's night.

Without missing a beat he absorbed every detail of her like a sponge. Her eyes were not the green of jade; rather they were darkest shade of brown before you reached black. They glittered in the light of the lamp. Her lips were bee-stung and sumptuous. Her hair, despite the frenzied dreams it had caused him, was not the color of tarnished gold. Instead it was black, thick and full, rich, deep, distracting. How he longed to toy with it. It would be a life's work just to adjust it every so often and stop its falling into her eyes or straying across her lips. The fingers holding the lamp were not little slender sticks; they were rounded, bejeweled, lovely. He could write a book about them alone. The poetry of her body would fill a thousand vol
umes. Of course his pitiful imagination had not been capable of picturing all this.

As she stood there in the lamplight, looking down upon him from the balcony, the bubble of air surrounding them was warm and soft as velvet, although it was only yet the end of April, and the song was filling every spare place in the universe with an unbearable beauty. It was all Arcadio Carnabuci could do to stop himself weeping. But he could weep later. Now he had to sing. Sing now, and then afterward—well, what did the afterward matter? So he sang on, willing her, imploring her, to love him in return. His voice was making love to her, of that there was no doubt. There were contrasting larghetto and allegretto passages, soaring crescendos, followed by the softest diminuendos, which seemed to hang suspended in the air like a feather, during which the enraptured listeners scarcely remembered to breathe.

On the balcony Fernanda Ponderosa waited, shivering slightly although she was not cold. Eventually she stepped forward and opened her full lips. Was she about to join him in song?

“Signor,” she said calmly although she was furious, “I beg you to cease singing.”

But Arcadio Carnabuci could not stop. It is likely he had not heard her words for his own voice was filling his ears. So he sang on. And while he did so, he kissed the tips of his huge fingers, fingers that were out of proportion with the rest of his meager body, fingers that made Fernanda Ponderosa shudder and indeed did more to harden her heart against him than any
thing else. Yet Arcadio Carnabuci could not know that his fingers had already nailed down his coffin in Fernanda Ponderosa's heart, and he flicked the offending digits toward the balcony as though scattering his kisses like deep-red rose petals over her.

She responded by retreating inside. Arcadio Carnabuci's heart performed a somersault within his straining breast. Was she coming down to join him, to clasp his fingers in her own jewel-encrusted ones, to declare her own tender love for him? He was weak, about to faint.

Instead she reemerged with a pail of water and upended it on Arcadio Carnabuci. What a tragedy it was that of all the people in the region she alone was unmoved by the song. She had never understood music.

The sudden silence fell like a curtain after a performance that no one wanted to end. Fernanda Ponderosa went back into the room and banged the shutters behind her. Although Arcadio Carnabuci felt the dampness on his head, was temporarily blinded by moisture in his eyes, and became conscious of it permeating his clothing, he was at a loss as to what had happened. This was not the outcome he had anticipated. In due course, an uneasy feeling came to him: that he had somehow offended her. Slowly, and seemingly shrunken to half his former size, Arcadio Carnabuci slunk the short distance to his cottage.