Ardor (10 page)

I
nside the ambulance, Arcadio Carnabuci was scarcely breathing. Gianluigi Pupini and Irina Biancardi bantered as usual to try to distract the nurse from her worries, but in truth she was far away, lost in the world of her own thoughts. That sweet, tender Arcadio Carnabuci was left lying there, a lifeless lump. All he could see was the white ceiling of the ambulance and, out of the corner of one eye, the hairs in Concetta Crocetta's nostrils.

The journey to Spoleto was much more speedy for the ambulance than it was for me, and before long it drew up in front of the infirmary, and the emergency team wheeled Arcadio Carnabuci inside. But the battery of tests to which he was subjected could not discover the cause of the malady or determine his chances of, if not recovery, then at least the barest form of survival.

Probes were attached to every part of his beautiful body. He was wired up to a television screen that showed the almost flat line of his heartbeat. His brain function was zero at first, then dipped into the minus, then plummeted clean off the scale.

Soon a crowd of doctors and pimply medical students had gathered around the bed, for nobody had ever seen anything like it. Arcadio Carnabuci was demonstrating signs of being both dead and alive. Technically it should not have been possible, as many of the doctors said, but they couldn't deny the truth of what they were witnessing with their own eyes.

Arcadio Carnabuci, already a miracle to me, had become a riddle to medical science.

Concetta Crocetta, who would, under normal circumstances, be excited by something like this, seemed preoccupied and aloof: she could not get Amilcare Croce out of her mind. He should have been here for this moment. He would have broken into a brilliant soliloquy, expounding his theories amongst these distinguished colleagues. It was not only her love he had thrown away: it was also his illustrious career.

Yet Arcadio Carnabuci, for all the varied opinions of the crowd of eminent clinicians gathered around him, was not dead, technically or otherwise. In fact, inside, he felt as he always did. The problem was that his interior had somehow become detached from his exterior. His mind was fine. But it had lost the ability to communicate with his body.

The faculty of speech had deserted him. His mouth wouldn't issue a sound. Not a snort, a squeak, a hiccup, a groan, or a yodel. Inside he roared, but nobody could hear him. He was trying to tell them that he was alive, that he could hear what was being said. He ranted, at least inside his head, until he had deafened himself. Why couldn't they hear him? What was the matter with them?

Eventually he gave up on his mouth and concentrated all his efforts on moving some other part of his body. He willed his fingers to flicker or his toes, his eyes to blink, his nose to twitch, his willy to unfurl from its nest. Something, anything, so they would stop thinking he was dead. He had had nightmares like this, but now it was really happening. It wasn't a dream.

Inside, he churned and chuffed in vain. Nothing worked. Everything had shut down. He could see the faces peering into his. Hear the many excited voices discussing his prognosis. He could feel the probes in his orifices; they had removed his underwear, so he was completely naked and open to the general view. And female doctors were there as well as male ones. He could see them.

“I've known corpses register more brain activity,” said one youthful doctor, tapping the screen with his forefinger in disbelief.

“That's nothing,” countered his med-school rival, “I've seen bottled brains give higher readings.”

“We have to bear in mind his cerebral activity was at the lower end of the range even when he was well,” chipped in Concetta Crocetta.

What was he to do? It was certainly a terrible predicament. He wanted to cry but he couldn't even force tears out of his staring eyes. It was unbearable. If he had been able, he would have killed himself.

Gradually the novelty wore off the way it invariably does, and the cream of the medical fraternity left him alone. The crowd around the bed dwindled until only one or two were left.
Then they, too, drifted away. Concetta Crocetta, who had been quizzed on his medical history and the onset of this strange crisis by everyone from the most elevated professor to the most junior houseman and even by the janitor, was finally released in the early evening.

All of them, from the highest to the lowest, were intrigued by the mention of the ham in the case, and the term
porcofilo
was soon scribbled on his notes. From then on, Arcadio Carnabuci was called this irreverent nickname by the entire staff. Taking one final look at Arcadio Carnabuci and patting him on the arm, Concetta Crocetta set off for home on the bus with all sorts of romantic notions filling her head.

Alone in the ward, Arcadio Carnabuci was left to stew in his own juice. What could have caused this thing to happen to him? He couldn't work it out. He was after all an olive grower, not a doctor. True, he had been overexcited of late. He had suffered several disappointments. Had he suffered an allergic reaction to all the ham he had been forced to purchase recently? Then realization dawned: it was the singing. It was the song that had done it to him. Perhaps his poor, feeble body had that night given more than it was capable of giving. Yes, that one night, that one song, had done it for him. And it hadn't even succeeded in making her love him. Fernanda Ponderosa. In fact he had reason to believe it had made her hate him.

Would he be forced to stay like this for the rest of his life? Had the song cut him off in his prime? Well, if not his prime, then just after it for sure. It was just too awful. To be in the
midst of this living death. With everyone thinking he was virtually dead, when inside he was as alive as everybody else. He couldn't bear to think about it. His despair was growing deeper with every thought.

 

As the bus on which Concetta Crocetta was seated pulled out of the infirmary forecourt, it passed me as I staggered in on legs as unsteady as butter. But the nurse did not see me. Her mind was far away from there. As it grew dark outside and her reflection against the glass grew stronger, Concetta Crocetta lapsed into the sacred secret world of her fantasies, and anybody watching her would have seen a slow smile lighting up her face like a candle. She felt finally that Amilcare Croce and she understood one another. That when they met again, all awkwardness would be over between them. This had been a decisive day.

However, unbeknown to the nurse, the fickle breeze of romance was already beginning to blow in the other direction.

Amilcare Croce was by now at home in Montebufo, resting his sore legs on a cushion and drinking a goblet of the herbal tea that he believed, despite its bitter taste, would hold back from him the gnarled hand of time.

He had thought long and hard on the homeward journey after he had bidden me farewell and watched me follow after my lover to Spoleto. I don't know how he had discovered my secret. Perhaps the expression of my eyes betrayed me, or maybe his own hopeless love had heightened his intuition.
Common sense told him there could be no love between the species. The very idea of a mule and a man finding true love was patently ridiculous. And yet a part of him wished me luck. He thought me a plucky creature and considered me if anything too good for that pitiful wretch on whom I threw my love away at such a great cost to my own well-being.

And what of himself? Was he not also ridiculous? Running along after the ambulance the way he had. It made him embarrassed now to think about it. What had led him to do it? How could he face Concetta Crocetta again? He had made himself look a fool. Hopefully she would overlook it. Never mention it. And he would act as though no guard had slipped from between them the next time they met. For once he thanked the fates that conspired always to keep the two of them apart. With luck, by the time they came together again, she would have forgotten all about it.

I stationed myself outside the window nearest to Arcadio Carnabuci's narrow bed and watched him through the glass. His back was to me, but however hard I watched, forcing my eyes to stay open without blinking, he did not move. Not a single muscle of him twitched. He scarcely seemed even to breathe. I kept my eyes fixed to his chest so long it made me go cross-eyed, but even then I did not see it lift to draw breath. What agonies wrote their words in my mind as I watched him. I willed him to respond to my prayers. Just lift a finger, please, just one finger to show there is still some life left in you. But poor Arcadio could not, and I scarcely felt able to stand under the weight of my misery.

Eventually the supper trolley wheeled its way around the ward and Arcadio Carnabuci remembered he had eaten nothing since breakfast. How good the rabbit stew smelled. He could still detect smells. Even though most of his body had shut down, smells were still able to get in around the edges of the plastic pipes that had unceremoniously been shoved into his nose. Yet there was to be no rabbit stew for Arcadio Carnabuci. He was forced to lie immobile and watch as the other patients, elderly men in pajamas, gathered round a central table to devour it. The supper of the olive grower was administered intravenously by means of another drip in his arm, and it didn't taste of anything except antiseptic.

Arcadio Carnabuci passed the night with his eyes open and unblinking, despite the efforts of Carlotta Bolletta, the night sister on the ward, who tried to close them with her gentle fingers. But repeatedly they sprang open of their own volition. Outside, I kept watch over Arcadio Carnabuci like a guardian angel while he seethed at the injustice of his fate.

While he was lying here, entombed in his own body, he knew he could miss his chance with Fernanda Ponderosa. He hadn't liked the look the butcher had given him the previous morning. He had lost track of time. Concetta Crocetta reported to the doctors he had been slumped in his chair for twenty-four hours. How had she known that? Was it only yesterday? It seemed he had lived a whole lifetime since then.

Yes, he had detected something he didn't like in Primo Castorini then, whenever it was. Doubtless the butcher was in love with her, too. Why shouldn't he be? Fernanda Ponderosa was
so voluptuous any man would be a fool not to love her. And he knew the butcher's ways, his shameless pursuit of women throughout the region: teenagers, widows, housewives, mothers, even, it was rumored, nuns. And now he, Arcadio Carnabuci, was making it easy for him to snatch her away, just as his brother had snatched her sister from under his very nose. It was history repeating itself.

Oh, what an unlucky soul he was. But he couldn't allow it to happen. He couldn't allow that wretch of a butcher to steal his bride. Why hadn't she come for him in the first place? He had summoned her up by planting and eating his love seeds, like a genie out of a bottle. He wouldn't accept defeat. He would fight for her. To the death, if necessary.

He just had to get himself out of here. But how?

Again he struggled silently to move his useless body. Concentrated all his efforts on raising just his pinkie, but the slab of sluggish flesh resisted his every attempt to move it. Eventually, exhausted, he fell into a terrible nightmare in which he was lying a prisoner in his own body that wouldn't move.

T
he following morning Pomilio Maddaloni, the eldest of the Maddaloni boys, and the natural heir to his father's wide-ranging business empire, swaggered into the Happy Pig and tossed a copy of
il Corriere
across the counter in the direction of Primo Castorini.

“You're finished, Castorini,” he muttered without seeming to move his upper lip, above which blossomed down he was trying to pass off as a mustache.

The headlines screamed up at the butcher, “Ham Leaves Local Man Close to Death.” Lurid details followed. There were photographs of Arcadio Carnabuci in his infirmary bed, with seven tubes up his poor swollen nose; in the background you could just see me, peering in through the window. I did not feel the shot did me justice.

There was also a photograph of what purported to be the ham in the case, with the sensational caption “Castorini hams: link with mysterious medical condition,” but Primo Castorini could see straightaway it was an impostor. He would recognize
one of his own hams anywhere. A new mother was more likely to mistake her baby than was Primo Castorini to mistake one of his hams. But nevertheless he had to admit the ham had a passing resemblance to one of his own, which would be good enough for the uninitiated.

Beneath the article, the rest of the page was taken up with a full-color advertisement for Pucillo's Pork Factory, where the smiling pigs appeared with the slogan “Housewives, can you afford to run the risk? Buy your ham with confidence: come to Pucillo's.”

Fernanda Ponderosa, who had come over to look at the newspaper, caused the youth in the too wide pinstripe to experience a sudden surge of hormones that he hadn't felt since puberty. His mouth fell open, and although he quickly shut it up again and made a pretense of being a man of the world, he could not disguise his lust from Fernanda Ponderosa or from Primo Castorini.

Like a pricked balloon he fizzled out of the shop, red and flustered, and burning with a young man's livid blushes. Primo Castorini was stroking the big knife under the counter. He would show that schoolboy. Eyeing up his woman. In his anger he thrust the knife through the offending article into the butcher's block beneath, where it twanged ominously.

Pomilio Maddaloni left behind him a trail of uncomfortable feelings, prickly heat, fury, mirth, moistness, and awkward spaces, which hung in the air until the cowbell rang again, heralding the arrival of Signor Alberto Cocozza of the Envi
ronmental Health and Sanitation Department, who wanted to sequester one of the hams to conduct tests upon it.

“It's absurd,” said Primo Castorini, boiling with anger. “I can't help what people do with my hams after they leave the shop. I can't be held responsible. It's a conspiracy. They're trying to put me out of business. That's what this is about.”

“The Environmental Health and Sanitation Department has a duty to protect the health of the public, Signor Castorini. I'm only doing my job.”

Primo Castorini felt he was losing control. He could have believed he was participating in a nightmare, a long, lifelike nightmare. He was physically shrunken, the strain of the past weeks having taken its toll upon him. He was a nervous wreck. Everything was slipping through his grasp. His eyes desperately sought out a meaning in the eyes of Fernanda Ponderosa, but they could find none. She was inscrutable. He trawled there like a deep-sea fisherman but netted nothing.

Did he imagine what happened next or did Fernanda Ponderosa really touch him? As he looked into her eyes like a drowning man, looking for her to save him, did she really come closer toward him, causing the space between them to warp and glow? Then her aroma enclosed him in an embrace, saturating him. She leaned toward him and with her fingertips she touched his, which were spread out on the counter. He flinched at the contact. Her touch burned him and he gasped involuntarily. Her fingers moved up to his bare forearms, thick with solid muscle, and sprouting hairs like a forest. He lurched then,
as if in agony. After holding himself so taut and tight for so long, he was about to collapse. He was breathing through his guts, through his willy, quick to rear its head. He almost couldn't bear it.

He wanted to murder the person who made the cow chime chime again and snap the moment off. It was Luigi Bordino, bearing a rose made of bread as a gift for Fernanda Ponderosa, and wanting his first consignment of sausages for the day. He was taking no notice of the note that had come under his door, and that of every other house in the town, advising him to transfer his custom to Pucillo's Pork Factory. He would die for Fernanda Ponderosa. What an honor it would be. The swaggering baker swaggered more at the thought that he was living dangerously.

Primo Castorini smoldered like an underground fire. He had to murder Luigi Bordino soon or he wouldn't be responsible for his actions. Yet behind Luigi were other reckless men all wanting to buy something from her, to have the joy of being served by her or having her personally weigh out their sausages. Slap their pork chops together in the scale pan with the sound of kisses. If her fingers had touched the brains, the great coarse tongues, the rubbery hearts, so much the better would they enjoy them. Some of them were worried by the threats, but they couldn't make themselves stay away.

Though the place bustled with customers, more so than expected after the damaging newspaper article, not a single ham sold all day.

Primo Castorini wanted to close the shop, turn the customers away, fling them out into the street. Sullenly he honed the blade of his knife while Fernanda Ponderosa waited on the customers. Had she really caressed him? His skin was still alive, but bore no traces of her touch upon it. But he couldn't really believe it had happened. He must have imagined it. Nothing about her alluded in any way to a moment of intimacy between them. Nothing at all. She was as arch and haughty as ever and wouldn't even look at him now. He was losing his mind. He felt his reason slipping away like sand in an hourglass.

Of course, the subject of Arcadio Carnabuci was on everybody's lips. Fernanda Ponderosa heard with relief the news that he had been taken away, although she betrayed no hint of this to anyone. Primo Castorini continued to watch her closely. His whole life was now devoted to watching her, it was the one meaning he had left, but he didn't detect any feeling for the olive grower. He had nothing to fear there.

In the town, public opinion was divided. Some people heard the news with relish and were relieved that Arcadio Carnabuci the pervert had been removed from the community. Naturally enough, Susanna Bordino was the ringleader of this group, which included the nuns from the convent, the hairy-faced Gobbi sisters, and Arturo Bassiano, the vendor of lottery tickets, who had inherited a grudge against the Carnabuci clan that stretched back over five hundred years.

But others had changed their attitude to my poor sweet
heart and now regarded him as the victim of poisoned pork, rather that the author of his own misfortune.

Primo Castorini's enemies were delighted that his hams had fallen under suspicion, and even those such as the widow Filippucci who had previously championed the butcher's cause were now baying for his blood.

The widow went so far as to join the expedition to visit my darling at the infirmary in Spoleto, a journey of such length that it would have deterred all but the wholehearted. Old Neddo, the hermit, had hired a minibus specially, and it really was a squeeze to get everybody inside. Speranza Patti took the wheel as Neddo had long since lost his license. Next to her sat Fedra Brini, who was busy knitting a balaclava helmet for the patient. Amelberga Fidotti, being small and slender, was allowed to sit on Fedra's lap, but she would keep fidgeting. The rear was occupied by the seven thieving Nellinos and their dog, Fausto. They shoved their way in first and refused to budge. They were joined by Policarpo Pinto with two of his rats, the widow, and three representatives from the town council, who had to contort themselves into the space behind the rear seat.

On the way, Neddo enthralled the travelers with the vision he had seen concerning Arcadio Carnabuci. He had beheld my love riding the golden symbol of the Happy Pig through a flaming sky. While he rode, Arcadio sang mystical songs, songs as old as the earth, if not older, and where he passed, tiny clouds wept drops of olive oil. The listeners were amazed. They agreed the vision was miraculous, but nobody could make any sense of
it. They implored Neddo to interpret the meaning for them, but at the crucial moment, as his mouth opened to speak, the sage was struck by one of his characteristic silences, which continued throughout the rest of the journey.

Speranza Patti, who was terrified of the surges of the gas pedal, maintained a speed close to walking pace, and it was some hours before the minibus reached the infirmary. At last, as she witnessed for herself the number of tubes and hoses attached to my beloved's body, the librarian felt a huge wave of compassion washing over her and she realized she had judged him unfairly. While nobody was looking, she slipped into her pocket the only relic she could find: his spectacles. He had no need of them now, she reasoned. From that moment on I considered her my rival, and what anxiety she caused me, I tell you.

All the visitors stared down at Arcadio Carnabuci, pitying him his terrible fate. He could hear all they said, but of course he could not respond. He was a broken man. The relentless struggling of the past forty-eight hours had exhausted him and had taught him the awful truth of his predicament. How he implored Neddo to work one of his miracles, but of course the holy man could not hear him.

Beaten, the spirit of Arcadio Carnabuci retreated to a tiny corner of his brain, where it slumped down with its back against the wall and its tiny hands covering its face in a gesture of despair. Eventually the visitors were forced to leave the ward and they journeyed home, again at a snail's pace. It was a
somber group that made its way back to the town, and whereas in the morning they had sung songs to pass the time, on the return journey they were uniformly glum.

 

Meanwhile, back at the Happy Pig, Primo Castorini was at last able to close up the shop behind the paying customers and draw down the shutters against those who were too scared or too cheap to buy anything, but just wanted to avail themselves of the sight of Fernanda Ponderosa through the great plate-glass window.

His eyes were still glued to her, but she treated him with her customary disdain. As usual when he closed up the shop, she said nothing but left him without a word. After he watched her go, he was mad. He knew then that he had imagined it all. His mind was playing tricks on him. If something didn't happen soon, he would be joining Arcadio Carnabuci in the infirmary. She would ruin them all eventually, he knew. He examined the blade of the big knife for the thousandth time that day, and wincing, he made himself put it away out of sight.

 

Throughout the weeks since her arrival, Fernanda Ponderosa had kept up her one-sided conversations with her sister, trying to piece together a relationship out of the scraps and tatters of the one they had had in life. But after that first evening, Silvana never came again.

Tonight, however, as Fernanda Ponderosa was reminiscing about a big-eared youth they had fought over as teenagers, but
whose name she couldn't remember, she clearly heard Silvana's voice calling up crossly from the cellar:

“Even in death there's no escaping you. Why don't you do us all a favor and disappear off somewhere else? You've caused enough trouble here already.”

“Do you have to be so nasty?” Fernanda Ponderosa snapped back, her patience exhausted. She waited, but there was no reply. It was infuriating how Silvana would never discuss anything.

Fernanda Ponderosa realized then that all her efforts had been futile. Silvana was just as unreasonable dead as she was alive. If she didn't want to make amends, Fernanda Ponderosa couldn't do it alone. It was sad, but perhaps she had to accept there wasn't going to be a happy ending for the two of them after all. And so, inevitably, Fernanda Ponderosa began to think about leaving. She always left while she could walk away easily, without a backward glance.

 

Despite the terrible weight of my sorrow, I knew I could not stay indefinitely at the infirmary, watching out for Arcadio Carnabuci to come back to life. Although it broke my heart to leave him there all alone, I had to return to my duties. I knew that in spite of our long history, Concetta Crocetta needed transport to carry out her work, and if I let her down, she would have no choice but to replace me.

With a heavy heart I relinquished my place at the window and the little spot of turf I had grown very attached to of late,
but giving a final loving kiss to the glass, I set off with a sense of purpose. I expected to be racked with pain when I moved, but once I got out on the open road, my muscles eased and I was able to trot along with more vigor than I had known in a long time.

My hooves had healed and were now as supple and strong as they had been in my youth. Feeling good, I increased my pace to a rocking canter, and thence to a flat-out gallop. Love had given wings to my heels. From then on I was able to gallop back and forth between my stable and the infirmary like an athlete.

The more I ran, the more I wanted to run. I understood now what drove Dr. Croce onward. I was no longer exhausted. I was fit and limber. And I ran and ran and ran, feeling the wind in my fur, roaring past my ears, and whistling through my long teeth. Perhaps I was running for my darling as well as myself, since as he was trapped inside his body, I in my running could give him freedom.