Ardor (13 page)

I
n the Happy Pig, that sealed world, the writing was on the wall. Primo Castorini had borne the burden of the failing business for too long. Fidelio was never coming back. He had no sons to take over from him. Someday he would have to let it go. Why not now? Let Pucillo's Pork Factory take over. What did he care? For what he could sell the business for, he would buy a yacht and sail away with Fernanda Ponderosa. Away from everybody and everything and be alone with her at last.

Even the pork butcher's succumbed to the heat. Once an oasis of cool and tranquillity, the heat could not be kept out. It permeated through the pantiles of the roof. Through the glass frontage despite its being draped with canvas. It seeped into the masonry, the bricks and mortar; it snaked in beneath the doors. And Primo Castorini was generating heat, too. Yes, he was giving it off. You could fry eggs on his skin. And it wasn't because of the weather. It was because his blood was boiling inside him. Boiling with lust for Fernanda Ponderosa.

In fact, it was hotter inside the butcher's than outside. And of course it wouldn't be much longer before things started to go off. Cured pork keeps better than fresh, but soon the heat would begin to affect the hams stored everywhere throughout the building. Unless the weather began to cool quickly, drastic action would be required. The cold room, though no longer cold, was cooler than anywhere else, and there Primo Castorini shut himself away allowing himself to drift on the raft of his fantasies.

He was still no closer to understanding her. To penetrating her reserve. She treated him always with distance, courteous but cool. Undoubtably he had become addicted to her, but he could never get any inkling of how she felt about him.

Of course, she knew what he couldn't know: that her stay here was coming to an end, and soon now she would be moving on. But before that time could come, she knew that she and the pork butcher would be lovers.

One afternoon she came back from running errands and hurried into the cold room to cool down. Perspiration glistened on her upper lip, and the scent she gave off was like a melon at the peak of its perfection and ripeness, just waiting for you to savor its succulent juices. At least it seemed that way to Primo Castorini.

What had begun that morning in the field watched by the carcass of the slaughtered pig was about to happen at last. All through that long, hot, brooding summer it had been simmering away like a pan on a stove. Now the pan was about to boil over.

Her eyes scorched him like a branding iron. Slowly, deliber
ately, she walked over to where he stood, leaning against the counter. It was as if she were moving in slow motion toward him. And she didn't stop.

Then she kissed him. In slow motion her lips parted and came toward him, reaching for him, seeking him, and met with his in a fusion that made the earth tremors that had been rocking the district seem like bubbles bursting. Shock waves centered in his groin, they were shooting down his legs and up his back, along his arms; he could feel them running up through his hair, to the tip of each strand, the hair that had a life and a personality of its own, pulsating with the same throbbing sense of urgency that was electrifying his entire body. A mighty dam was crumbling. He gave way to the enormous and overwhelming greed he felt for Fernanda Ponderosa that he had been storing up and breeding since that first time he'd seen her. An insatiable greed.

Now Fernanda Ponderosa's hands were exploring the landscape of his body. It was uncharted territory and she felt herself a mapmaker. His flesh was firm yet pliant to her touch through the strong white canvas of his overalls. She wanted to peel off these coveralls like the skin of an orange and explore what lay beneath. He felt himself being suddenly released from the confines of the canvas. Air was getting in. There was certainly a feeling of relative coolness and ventilation. He was definitely undone.

His hands were full of her, too. He had never felt anything like it. He knew a nanosecond of agony at the realization life was too short for him to feel her body as much as he needed to.
He knew also he had to live out the whole of his life in this moment. The rest of his life seemed suddenly superfluous. Could he die now, like this?

Ghosts of all the sausages that had been produced in this room seemed present with watchful eyes. Every shiny surface of marble, every stainless-steel implement hanging on hooks, reflected their image around the room.

Primo Castorini felt his masculine pride take over. He swept Fernanda Ponderosa up into his arms. She felt weightless, his arms were so strong. She could feel the muscles of the great forearms, which gained their strength from butchering carcasses, holding her aloft.

But then she stopped him with a motion of her hand.

“Not here, not now, not like this,” she said between gasps for breath. “Come to me tonight.”

As carefully as with an egg he set her down on her feet. She couldn't guess what that gesture cost him. His great chest heaved. He stood back, erect, looking at her in such a way that it was now her turn to lurch. His black eyes bored into hers as though seeking something there he could find in no other place. Did he really have to let her go?

Yes, he did. He had to endure the agony of watching her walk away from him again, but he promised himself it would be for the last time. After that night she would never leave him, ever. He had to make sure of that. He locked the door after her and then let out a roar like a bull in a field.

He tried to compose himself but failed. At last he had her. Or
would have her. He could cope with the frustration of the now in the promise of the later. But how to get through the intervening hours? At what time should he go? What did the detail matter? It was four now. He would go at seven. Three hours.

He ran himself a bath. In spite of the heat he needed to submerse himself in water. He let it run deep so that when he got in, the water spilled over the top of the tub and splashed onto the tiled floor. It was hot. But it was good. It eased him. He lay there letting the water into every corner of his body. Steam filled the room with fog. With each small movement more water trickled gently over the edge, cascading like a fountain and hissing onto the floor. Far away in the distance he heard a rumble of thunder.

He didn't allow himself to think what he would do if she refused him later. He just couldn't let that possibility creep in. If it did, it would destroy him. He shut it out of his mind, then locked it to make sure.

He knew he could do it. Knew he had what it takes. He was relieved though he hadn't done it in weeks. So much the better. To have something in reserve. He opened the dungeon where his fear lived, and alongside the threat of rejection he cast down the terror of failure. Then he relocked the door and this time threw away the key.

He stayed in the water until his skin puckered like a prune and he knew then it was time to get out. He shaved, anointed his body with perfume, and dressed in his best clothes and smart shoes. Then he waited for the time to come when he could go to her.

O
ver at Montebufo, where even late in the afternoon the plain sizzled like a griddle pan, Amilcare Croce sprawled in the shade of a cherry tree reading. He never changed now out of his running shorts and vest. They were the only clothes that could keep him cool. It was eerily quiet. Even the cicadas were silent. The crispy carcasses of lizards littered the brown grass.

The doctor now spent a lot of time reading learned journals, which were brought irregularly by Carmelo Sorbillo, the postman, who had cut back on deliveries as much as possible, preferring instead to sleep under the counter in the post office.

The heat stopped the doctor from running: he just couldn't do it anymore. Without his running to occupy him he was like a man lost without a map. He tried to keep my mistress, who he hadn't seen in ages, out of his thoughts by filling his head with new and amazing medical theories. But of course he never put any into practice. He lived in theory. He loved in theory. As he lay on his back, looking up at the sky where the angry colors of the sunset indicated that the most terrible storm was brewing,
he realized that his life had become nothing more than a theoretical exercise, and this came as an enormous shock to him.

In fact he was immobilized by despair, to think that he had come to this. Once he was so full of promise. When he was a student, before that when he was a schoolboy, everybody had expected such great things from him. He was the one who won the prizes. He was going change the world. His feet would tread the path of glory. And what had happened? How had it all gone so badly wrong? He had done nothing. Nothing. He had abandoned his work. His great career. He hadn't even been capable of loving a woman. He was about to go mad with fury. He had ruined his life. It was a complete mess.

When he emerged from his reverie, he was as fired up as the sky. He got up, threw the periodical into the hedge, left everything as it was, radio playing in the kitchen, door open, and he just walked away from the house. He didn't even stop to put on a pair of shoes.

The road that passed his house burned his feet like hot coals, and his skin stuck to the asphalt with a hissing sound. Cursing, he hopped up and down, then started to run. Taking long, long strides, and bouncing on his toes to reduce the burning. Not even knowing where he was going. He just put one foot ahead of the other. Without thinking. With no plan. Was he just going to run and keep on running? Leave the region with no word to anybody and never come back?

He felt the roasting air burnishing his face. His hair frizzled. And he began to run faster. In spite of the heat, he flew along,
faster than he had ever run before. His inner rage burned inside brighter than the angry sun and filled him with an endless supply of energy, which was fueling his long legs with running juice. People who saw him along the way found it remarkable. His nearest neighbor, Giuseppe Mormile, watched him trail past like a blazing comet and himself puffed over to his wife, Immacolata, who was halfheartedly tending to what remained of her lettuce crop.

“Look,” he said simply, pointing at the doctor, who was kicking up a trail of burning dust along the road. Above him the sun had turned from red to purple. It was an ominous sign.

Immacolata couldn't understand it. It was as though someone had wound up the clockwork world and set it on a faster speed. She liked things slow. While everything around her accelerated, she bent down to her lettuces, slow as the snail creeping on its leaf. The two retained their slowness in a world that had gone mad.

The doctor ran on. He didn't think where he was going. He just put his trust in his legs. They would take him where he needed to go. He would go with them. He was the slave of his legs. He started to breathe, and the air entered and left his lungs in such a perfect motion that he felt he had never breathed before that moment. It empowered him and gave speed to his legs, urging him onward.

Only when he reached the street where Concetta Crocetta lived did he realize this was his destination. Where his legs had brought him. He was not even short of breath, despite the sear
ing heat. In fact, as he ran, the years had fallen away from him, and he looked twenty-five, not fifty. His skin glowed with youth and health. And now a smile spread over his features as he accepted everything.

Already a crowd had gathered under parasols in the Via Alfieri to celebrate with the doctor and the nurse. Everyone was clapping and laughing. Out of somewhere, and on short notice, the town brass band had assembled in full uniform, and the bandsmen were sweating their way through a medley of popular numbers while a troupe of majorettes twirled their batons.

Dr. Croce, however, saw and heard none of this. For him the world was strangely silent. All he could hear was the pulsing of the blood in his ears and the no longer timid voice of his heart calling out the name of Concetta Crocetta.

In her little cottage, my mistress was not aware of the carnival taking place outside. She had just fed me my oats out in the stable, and now back in her kitchen she was demolishing a tub of ice cream. Her hair was pulled up into a straggly bun and she was wearing nothing but her silk slip, and even that was too hot.

The doctor was like one in a dream, although he was wide-awake and fully conscious. His body seemed to be acting without any commands from his brain. Even if he wanted to, which he didn't, he couldn't have called a halt to what his body had begun and was going to follow through with. Stored up within his bones and blood and cells and sinews were the memories or
blueprints of all the actions he should have carried out over the past twenty years but didn't.

He opened the back door to the cottage without knocking, as though coming home, and entered the tiny kitchen. Obviously, he had never been inside before. It did not even surprise Concetta Crocetta to see her door opening and the tall person of the doctor stoop slightly to come inside. There was not the slightest embarrassment or hesitation on either side. The careful observer would have noticed Concetta Crocetta replace the spoon she had been raising to her lips in the tub of ice cream and set it down on the table.

For a long moment they looked deep into one another's eyes as they had longed to do for so many years. They seemed to swim there, unhurried, exploring, probing into the hidden depths, the secret corners, and instinctively they understood everything.

It seemed obvious that the doctor should simply admit himself into her home, that she should stop eating ice cream, that she should not feel the slightest amazement. But that moment, the last of the old moments, the cusp of the new and the old joining, could not last forever, and of course nobody should want it to. With one long stride of his athletic legs the doctor crossed the room and was standing before Concetta Crocetta not as a doctor, but as a man.