Ardor (11 page)

W
hile my angel continued to languish in the infirmary, I determined to perform my duties as well as I ever could. I would give Concetta Crocetta no excuse for acquiring the moped that would see the end of my career. And I have to say we were never busier than we were that summer, even before the temperature soared and we experienced the most extreme heat wave the region had ever known. Not ill health so much as confused health blighted our sturdy citizens, and we were always out on the road making calls.

One particular cause of concern was the Fondi baby, Serafino, delivered during the miraculous rain of feathers. Yes, when Serafino Fondi was born, before the tragedy that so afflicted my loved one, the tiny lumps on his shoulders were a worry only to his mother, who chewed her fingernails over them.

Later, as the nodules protruded farther through his thin baby skin, Belinda Fondi had to resort to subterfuge and disguised them under jackets of her own manufacture, embel
lished with elaborate epaulets and tinker-bells and baubles sufficient to distract the eye from any suggestion of imperfection. Passersby cooed over the cherub in the cutesy costumes and for a time all was well.

But then the bumps developed feathers. At first it was nothing more than a fine fluff. A whisper. A touching peach-skin fuzz reminiscent of Easter chicks and the warm linings of nests. Belinda Fondi lied to herself and denied it had come to this, but soon enough she was forced to confront the truth. As the mother and child bathed together in the old tin tub, Serafino laughed and splashed, and Belinda noticed the lumps had sprouted into wings. Tiny wings, it is true, but wings nonetheless, articulated and jointed and clothed in a plumage of pearl gray feathers that repelled the droplets of water that became glistening beads on their sleek surface.

Belinda Fondi squinted her eyes and examined the wings. Tentatively she touched them. It was the strangest feeling. They were like the wings of a tiny bird. Was her baby turning into a bird? There was no one she could confide in. People would say she was mad. They would try to lock her up in the
manicomio,
as they did everyone else who didn't fit in. Folk hereabouts were so old-fashioned, they would be sure to detect the presence of the devil in the wings, or witchcraft, and then who knew what might happen as a result? No, she had to keep it quiet. And pray for the wings to disappear. So Belinda Fondi took herself more often to the
chiesa
than she had before, and she prayed a lot harder than she had prayed before. And each
day, several times, and at night, too, she examined the wings with her heart knocking against her ribs. But her eyes could not lie to her. The wings were developing.

Soon Serafino took his first flight. Belinda Fondi was bending to take a cherry cake out of the oven when she felt a rush of air behind her, and when she turned around, the baby had risen up to the ceiling and was flapping his way around the room. Belinda Fondi was not proud of the words that escaped her lips, but her shock was such that she dropped the burning cake onto her foot and hit her head on the table. She called on him to come down, but he flapped on undeterred. Belinda Fondi climbed onto a chair and tried to take hold of him, but the baby had the knack of slipping through her outstretched arms. To her horror she realized the window was open, and she hurried to shut it, fearing he would get out. Later when her husband, Romeo, came in from work, he found the baby still flapping around the ceiling, and Belinda, who had exhausted herself in her efforts to catch him, crying in frustration.

“Don't let him out,” she howled as he opened the door, but it was too late, for Serafino was already in the passageway and was making toward the front door. What would have happened if Concetta Crocetta had not appeared at that critical moment and neatly netted the baby in the butterfly net she was carrying made Belinda Fondi's blood run cold every time she thought about it.

Concetta Crocetta had soon made a harness of ribbons and bound Serafino to his crib, and she administered a mild seda
tive to Belinda Fondi, who could not calm herself, but the nurse herself felt uneasy. She had never in all her years of experience come across a situation like this. She felt bad that she had at the time of the birth dismissed the budding wings as warts, but she could never have predicted this.

 

When she left the house, she steered me in the direction of Montebufo, for she would not be able to rest until she had discussed the matter with Amilcare Croce, who might have read about the condition in one of his academic journals.

It was around eight when we arrived at the doctor's house. The sun was low, just about to set, and for a while the blue shadows acquired a life of their own. My ears alone appeared the length of a house; my legs were as tall as a skyscraper; and Concetta Crocetta's head with its cap was projected onto the ground as a massive turnip a mile wide.

She had not seen the doctor since the day my Arcadio had been struck down, and that was a while ago now. Although at that time she had felt a cautious optimism, her hope had been extinguished during the following weeks when they had seen nothing of one another. She feared they would be back at the beginning again, and it was with trepidation that she took the lion's-head knocker in her hand and rapped hesitantly.

When Amilcare Croce opened the door, he was rumpled and adorable. His hair was slightly awry. A three-days' growth of stubble was on his chin and cheeks. He was dressed casually in a linen shirt and pants, which had become old friends over
the years. His eyes were a little tired. And his smell dealt Concetta Crocetta a blow somewhere deep down inside her, in a place she despaired of his ever discovering. He couldn't have been more surprised at seeing her standing there on his doorstep. She was the person whom, given the choice, he would have most wished to see at that moment. She was also the last person he would have expected. The thin veil of tiredness immediately evaporated from his face, and he ran a worried hand through his hair, regretting he looked a wreck. He wished he had shaved, bathed, changed his shirt, as he had done before many times when false feelings made him imagine she would come. To Concetta Crocetta he looked what he was: the love of her life. She felt a huge surge of tenderness toward him and she had to resist the impulse to seize hold of him and never let him go.

There was a pause, a long pause, as they fought through all the layers of everything they wanted. How they wanted it to be. Joy. Elation. And then finally despair as all the layers of impossibility crowded in and smothered the sparks.

Concetta Crocetta's fears reached her first. After all, she was the one who had made the approach. She had to justify her actions in coming here in this unorthodox way with sane and sensible reasons. Despite her promises to herself on the journey back from the infirmary, every old awkwardness and embarrassment was magnified and strengthened. And the doctor himself flushed scarlet at the thought of how foolish he had been when last they had met. What had started promisingly
enough two seconds before had deteriorated dramatically into an abyss of stupidity and shame.

Quelling the quavering in her voice, she explained the strange condition of the Fondi baby. From her rational discourse, no one, least of all the doctor, could have understood the welter of her emotions. The spell was indeed broken. So well did she succeed in being strictly professional that Amilcare Croce was left with the firm belief that she cared nothing for him, and never had, and that all these years he had been laboring under a delusion. His curiosity was roused by the notion of a baby with wings, and he hurried to put on his running shoes and fasten onto his back the knapsack in which he kept the liniment and mustard plasters for his personal use, and also the implements and equipment for his academic care of patients.

We set off together, but despite my recent training I was impeded by the weight of Concetta Crocetta on my back, and besides, I had covered many miles already that day. Although she kicked me mercilessly on my soft, white underbelly, we were soon outstripped by the athletic performance of the doctor. From the first hilltop he waved shyly, then disappeared from view.

The sun, too, chose that moment to sink down behind the mountains, plunging us into an inky darkness that was reflected in the misery of each of us. This had been another day when my beloved had lain like a corpse. How many would follow before this agonizing wait was over?

W
hile Belinda Fondi lay inanimate as a result of the sleeping draft administered by Concetta Crocetta, Romeo took charge of the baby. But somehow he managed to leave the straps of the harness undone and the window open.

What happened next he was not fully able to articulate, but there came the gentlest impression of the flapping of wings, like a swan simply rearranging its feathers, a breeze as soft as zephyr, and in an instant Serafino was gone. Thrown into sharp relief against the light of the moon, the huge, fat, waxy moon, the baby flapped away, ever higher and higher, trailing behind him a flock of white doves.

At this point Dr. Croce arrived, and he witnessed the tragedy from the yard without being able to do anything about it. He would scarcely have believed it possible, even though he saw it with his own eyes. Romeo Fondi ran out of the house, armed with the butterfly net in which Concetta Crocetta had netted the baby once before that day, and although he ran along, leaping up into the air as far as he could, it was a hope
less cause. Dr. Croce ran alongside the frantic father, and when it became apparent to Romeo Fondi that his son was lost, and that he would have to explain how it had happened to his wife, he collapsed at the roadside and wept.

Together they gazed up into the sky and watched as the baby with wings and the flock of doves grew smaller and smaller, and from being the merest dots in the distance on the surface of the moon, they disappeared into it, and no trace of them was ever seen again.

Dr. Croce let Romeo Fondi weep, and the following spring, where the tears had fallen, sprung up an entirely new and undiscovered species of wildflower that caused great excitement among botanists throughout the world.

When Romeo Fondi had sobbed himself to the brink of exhaustion, Dr. Croce helped him to his feet, and with a kindly arm around his shoulders, he led him slowly back to the house where Belinda Fondi, still immersed in the dreamless sleep of the drugged, was unaware that her baby had been lost to the endless reaches of the universe.

Later, when the doctor had given what little comfort he could to the grieving parents, he left the house and for a while wandered around aimlessly, not knowing which way to go. He could not understand the baby's extraordinary condition, and he was shaken. Medicine, he knew, could not explain it. There was no rational, scientific explanation for what had happened. But he didn't believe in magic. Or in the devil. Or in God. It was easier for him to say what he didn't believe in than what he
did. He himself had seen the baby flapping away on wings that sprouted from his shoulders. Never in all his years as a doctor had he read reports of, let alone seen, such things. Where could he begin to seek an explanation?

Amidst the chaos that was the world, there was one certainty. That certainty was Concetta Crocetta. He knew he needed her, and the feelings he had of being out of sorts, disjointed, and not at peace within his own soul or his own body, of being a stranger in a foreign land, all of this he attributed his being unable to get through to her. He was wary of regarding Concetta Crocetta as a general panacea for everything that was wrong in his life, but on the other hand he felt that until this one issue, unresolved for twenty years, and unconsummated, was decided, one way or the other, then he could not look beyond it.

Without realizing it, he had arrived outside our cottage. It came as a surprise to him. He worried he would be seen. But so what if he was? What did it matter now? Only one thing mattered. That he claim her as his own. He walked the block around the cottage a thousand times. If only he could go to her. Hold her. Sink into her and let go of the world, for a while, forever. But his legs wouldn't allow him to turn in at her gate. Each time he hovered there for a second, they moved him on, relentlessly, and continued pounding around the block.

I was not there, of course, for I chose the dead of night for my visits to the infirmary, but when I returned, I detected with my sensitive nose that the doctor had passed much of the night
on the block, waiting for his chance with my mistress, as in the past, before the tragedy, I had waited outside the cottage of Arcadio Carnabuci.

Eventually, though, the doctor went away. In the one thousandth and first lap, he realized the hopelessness of it all. Concetta Crocetta hated him. She had been so formal earlier that evening. So brusque and businesslike. He had missed his chance with her, he knew that now. She was punishing him. Years ago, had he spoken, they might have found happiness. But now he knew he was lying to himself if he thought she returned even a droplet of the great ocean of love that he contained for her.

 

At the same time, Concetta Crocetta was lying awake, gnashing her teeth at how she had messed everything up with the doctor. What a fool she was. A stupid fool. She replayed every word of their stilted conversation. It didn't really qualify as a conversation. More of a business meeting really. Oh, it was hopeless. She was hopeless. She had lost the art of conversation. She no longer knew how to talk to a man. No wonder she was on the shelf. And now because of her stupidity, on the shelf she was destined always to remain.

She was still gnashing away when I turned into my stable, for with my acute hearing I could always tell when she passed a bad night. If only she had got up and gone to the window and looked out, out there, by the light of the great white moon still in the sky, she would have seen Amilcare Croce amongst the
roses beneath her window, and then everything would have been so different.

But she didn't. And sadly, slowly, the doctor retraced his steps to his own cottage in Montebufo. It was almost dawn when he reached there, and though he climbed fully clothed into bed, he lay staring up at the one damp spot on the ceiling and couldn't sleep. He was thinking of moving away. Starting afresh someplace else. He had buried himself alive in this depressing hamlet for twenty years. He had stayed on so long because of her. But perhaps it was time to accept the truth, bury it, and move on. He again had the feeling of now or never. If he didn't go soon, it would be too late. It would take time to reestablish himself elsewhere. Perhaps he should return to the city. He was getting too old for these cross-country runs. His bones ached. His whole body hurt. At least in the city his patients would be closer to one another. A brisk walk of an hour, two at most, would take him from one side of the city to the other. He was getting out of touch here. Out of practice. He lacked company, conversation, civilization. He was going rusty like an old nail stuck in a plank of wood. Perhaps going away was the only way to excise Concetta Crocetta from his heart.