Ardor Page 3

  As the seedlings developed, the image of Fernanda also came into focus. Arcadio Carnabuci knew her name from the start. It did not come as a surprise. It seemed that he had always known it: Fernanda. It spoke to him from somewhere in a distant past that they had shared, long ago and far away from here. This reinforced his notion of the inevitability of it all. Their coming together at long last was their destiny.

  He took to repeating her name over and over like a mantra: Fernanda, Fernanda. Sometimes, when he was feeling a little tipsy after too much wine, or sometimes even without the wine, just when he was feeling joyful and irrepressible, he would couple her name with his own: “Fernanda Carnabuci. Signora Fernanda Carnabuci.” How good it sounded. And so right. So natural. He didn’t want to tempt fate by mentioning it to anybody else, but he wore it in his heart like a mascot.

  He knew all sorts of intimate things about her. He knew the curve of her thighs so well he could draw it with one unfaltering pencil line. His mind when at leisure would unconsciously trace that curve. He worshiped the pale blue network of veins on her inner arms, the tender place that, when he stroked along its length softly with the whisper of a fingertip, would gather her up into a endless line of pleats and make her mew and arch like a cat. Her skin was always cold to the touch, cold and smooth as marble. Just short of the place where her cheeks melted into her hairline, they were crosshatched with downy hair too fine to be described as hair, as delicate as the blush of felt on a ripe peach, and the sight of it made him want to weep. Her long, narrow feet—he loved every one of the tiny bones that composed them. He loved the part of her she was herself less familiar with: her back. The two hinted indentations either side of the base of her spine, the freckles that flecked across her shoulders, the adorable vertebra that became pronounced when she bent over, the aspect her back bore of being younger than her front because it was less looked at. Her succulent breasts startled him every time they came into his mind, tinged with guilt perhaps because he knew he shouldn’t be looking at them. Perfect, that was all.

  After a night of delirious dreams, her legs entangled with his, the clinging, rich perfume of warm salt bodies released with every rise and fall of the quilt, the air outside the bed cold, strands of her hair lay across his face, stray hairs in his mouth, his arm forming a pillow for her neck. Her almost imperceptible breathing, the only sound in the world just then, made him hold his own breath so terrified was he of waking her and disturbing her. Her mouth, slightly open in repose, plucked a string that connected straight and deep to his loins and set them twanging with pleasure.

  Yes, on the morning directly after he had seen this dream, the morning of Easter Sunday, Arcadio Carnabuci, dredging himself reluctantly from the slow, deep, burning sultry beauty of the night, and the heavy fug of sleep, was jarred to reality and shocked to discover miniature fruit dangling from slender tendrils beneath the leaves of his saplings. It was incredible. There had been no hint of them the night before. And here they were. Three of them. Triplets.

  They were unlike any fruit he had ever seen. They were the shape of eggplants, only small, so small, and sweet, with a creamy-colored flesh splotched irregularly but charmingly with brown, like the markings of a Friesian cow. And literally as he watched, the fruit swelled. Their little bellies grew rounded and sleek. He couldn’t resist touching them ever so gently with the pad of a finger, a touch as light as a blade of grass bowing to the breeze. He was almost certain he heard a giggle coming from the tickled fruit.

  Impatiently he waited for the public library to open after Holy Week, for he wanted to find out all he could about the love seeds (the peddler had been cryptically vague when questioned about cultivation, but had made elaborate promises for his seeds and sworn Arcadio Carnabuci wouldn’t be disappointed). The first morning of reopening, he was loitering on the steps as Speranza Patti, the church organist who was also the town librarian, arrived at work. She ignored him, hoping he would slink away again, but Arcadio Carnabuci was a persistent man. Although she attempted to shut the heavy door against him, he followed her inside and spent several hours rummaging among the shelves in the section on agronomy and horticulture.

  All the while, in some discomfort, Speranza Patti tried to perform her duties while keeping a trembling finger close to the panic button. What on earth could Arcadio Carnabuci want in the public library? He wasn’t even a member. She shivered at the thought that they were alone together in the building. Who knew what he was capable of? Anything could happen. Unbeknown to her, Arcadio Carnabuci had his head buried in Lucentini’s aged volume of Exotic Fruits. He was not a fast reader, and painstakingly he examined each and every page looking for something that resembled his own precious fruits, but when he reached the end, he had found nothing even remotely similar.

  With equal care he ploughed his way through every other volume in the section: treatises on beans, encyclopedias of plants, compendiums, digests, dictionaries, directories, handbooks. None bore fruit. His fruit were unique: of a type unknown to botanists and husbandmen. This confirmed what he had already himself suspected: they were little miracles, all his own. His slight feelings of disappointment at his fruitless search were outbalanced by his secret joy at his own fruits’ uniqueness and he left the library singing.

  At last Speranza Patti was able to relax and enjoy her bread and cheese in peace behind the counter, but she had developed a cramp in her forefinger that took a long time to ease. Word that Arcadio Carnabuci had been skulking in the town library soon circulated, and Speranza Patti was besieged by citizens who demanded to know what he had been doing in there. The library had never had as many visitors as this in a single day. Speranza Patti, now the center of attention, had to admit to feeling rather pleased with herself and played up to the crowd in a way she thought was demanded of her. Soon bizarre rumors went round concerning Arcadio Carnabuci: he was in league with the devil; he was planning to overthrow the town council; he was the cause of the recent earthquake; he was a fugitive on the run from justice; a pirate; a vampire; a eunuch; a secret transvestite.

  Back home, oblivious to the wildfire of gossip about him, Arcadio Carnabuci continued to monitor his fruits minute by minute. They rewarded him by developing before his eyes. Fascinated, he watched each minor change: each minuscule swelling in the girth of the three fruits, the trembling variations in hue of the suedey skin. Tenderly he cupped each of them in the palm of his hand to assess their individual weights, taking care so as not to damage them or cause them to drop prematurely from the umbilical stalks that bound them to the parent plants.

  He waited with a mixture of patience and anxiety. Of course he was eager to taste the fruit and unleash the forces of the miraculous change that was destined to take place in his life. But he also realized that he should wait until the magic fruits had reached the perfect pitch of ripeness so they would have maximum potency. Arcadio Carnabuci figured he had waited forty years; a few more days wouldn’t matter. He not only watched, he inhaled the scent of the fruit, noting subtle gradations in depth and tone, fearful of the least whiff of putrefaction and decay.

  The turning of the world had almost stopped for Arcadio Carnabuci. So much now happened between each single tick of the clock. His fruits were everything. There was nothing else.

  Then, finally, on the twenty-seventh of April at twenty-five past ten, he knew the time had come. The fruits were perfectly ripe, they had reached the precise moment of ripeness, which his whole life of farming olives had taught him. And so, not a second too early or too late, he garnered his courage, swallowed hard, and plucked them manfully from the supporting stalks.

  The little dears had a feel almost human. They were warm, soft, and fleshy. Yet Arcadio Carnabuci could not afford to be sentimental now. With a sharp knife he began to pare them, stripping the thinnest sliver of the cream-and-brown peel away, causing it to curl in a snaking spiral onto the table. The cut fruits released an aroma that almost knocked Arcadio Carnabuci off his feet. It was the smell of vanilla,
champagne, longing, marzipan, peaches, smiles, cream, strawberries, raspberries, roses, melting chocolate, lilac, figs, laughter, honeysuckles, kisses, lilies, enchantment, ardor itself.

  Then, after so much patience, he could no longer wait, and greedily, lecherously, he crammed the juicy fruits into his mouth, one after the other. His mind could not believe the signals his taste buds were relaying to him through the spaghetti of his senses. It was like a star bursting in his mouth. The taste was fruity, certainly, but unlike any other fruit he had ever tasted. He closed his eyes with the pleasure of it, and rivulets of joy—no, waves, huge breakers of surf—washed over him, saturating him, leaving him weak.

  When he had consumed the fruits and licked up every last drop of juice from the table, licked his fingers and the palms of his hands, and his lips and jowls and chin, he felt full to the brim with creaminess and satiation.

  Finally, he slumped down into his chair with the vestiges of a smile covering his face. Only later did he feel the calm that crept upon him, and he settled down to wait for what would happen next.

  CHAPTER THREE

  While Arcadio Carnabuci sat back and waited, far to the south Fernanda Ponderosa and her retinue were also waiting, but for what, nobody knew. Then, quite by chance, the appearance of a truck on the quayside, driven by one Ambrogio Bufaletti, propelled them onto the next stage in their journey.

  Signor Bufaletti licked his lips at the sight of Fernanda Ponderosa; in fact, he was slavering at the mouth, but he was a businessman first and foremost, and he could not allow his lust to prevent him from driving a hard bargain. And so protracted negotiations followed, complicated by the fact that Fernanda Ponderosa, guided by her instinct alone, did not know where they were going. She closed her eyes and tried to intuit the place while Ambrogio Bufaletti rolled his eyes toward the skies and made the typical gestures of impatience.

  In her mind’s eye, Fernanda Ponderosa saw a big and naked man with animal eyes. She smelled the irresistible aroma of baking bread. She saw meadows of bluebells. She saw pigs, both the domestic variety and the wild, tusked kind. She heard their grunts and snorts. And she saw cheese. Which made her sneeze. She saw olive groves climbing over gently rolling hills. She saw hands forming sausages. She felt whispered kisses on the back of her neck. She tasted ham. She saw vines in neat rows. She saw dark oak woods, and then, suddenly, a cemetery.

  “Mountains,” she said at last. Her voice was deep, almost too deep for a woman, and rich. It was resonant, as if it belonged deep underground. It made every sailor, stevedore, fisherman, and customs official loitering on the dockside stop what he was doing and look in her direction. She felt their notice warming her but did not give the tiniest flicker of acknowledgment.

  Ambrogio Bufaletti made no effort to remove his eyes from Fernanda Ponderosa’s magnificent breasts.

  “So, you want the Himalayas, signora?”

  “Just head east, signor,” she said with a flash of her dark eyes, “I will navigate.”

  Ambrogio Bufaletti insisted on being paid an inflated price, in cash, in advance. Only then were the goods loaded aboard the truck, and they set off in search of the mountainous region of Fernanda Ponderosa’s imagination. Only then, when Fernanda Ponderosa was out of sight, did the commercial travelers feel it prudent to descend the gangplank, and hauling behind them their heavy suitcases, they set about their business.

  So began a journey that was to haunt the monkey’s nightmares for years to come. Behind the wheel of the truck, what remained of Ambrogio Bufaletti’s patience was blown out the window along with the smoke of his endless cigarettes. He preferred the view of Fernanda Ponderosa to the road ahead of him, and despite her requests that he keep his eyes on the highway, he did not seem able to control them. Where the road meandered in bends, he took a straight line as his path, and the oncoming traffic was forced to divert into the ditches alongside to avoid collision. He careered along at speeds for which his ramshackle vehicle was not designed, and he did not feel concern for the pieces that dropped off and formed a trail in their wake. In towns and in places of congestion he mounted the sidewalk to effect a shortcut around the traffic. In Collesalvetti he plowed through a group of nuns, scattering them like doves. In Ponsacco they were flagged down by an officer of the carabinieri, but Ambrogio Bufaletti refused to stop and jammed his foot on the gas, leaving the officer coughing in a cloud of blue smoke while he radioed for reinforcements. The journey had only just begun and already they were fugitives from justice.

  The monkey kept his tiny hands clamped over his face and from time to time emitted plaintive howls that were barely audible above the roar of the laboring engine and the expletives of the driver.

  Fernanda Ponderosa also shut her eyes, and Ambrogio Bufaletti was not slow to take advantage by groping her thighs with every movement of the shift stick. This assault she attempted to ignore, but when he grew bolder and reached for her bosoms, she lashed out at him with the nearest object to hand, cracking a tin plate against his skull like a cymbal. In his surprise he struggled to keep control of the truck and narrowly avoided plowing through the barriers of a bridge and plunging into the raging torrent below.

  Though he didn’t say anything, Ambrogio Bufaletti was not pleased, and the atmosphere within the smoky cab definitely darkened. After this he took to purposefully removing both hands from the steering wheel to increase Fernanda Ponderosa’s terror. She controlled her impulse to scream and grabbed the wheel. It was a war of nerves, which Fernanda Ponderosa intended to win.

  They crossed and recrossed Florence as Ambrogio Bufaletti repeatedly missed the right turn. The vast groups of Japanese tourists following flag-waving guides were forced to run for cover as the truck careered between their ranks, and blurred images of a grim-expressioned Fernanda Ponderosa were snapped by thousands of high-speed telephoto lenses. The Duomo itself became dizzy as the battered truck circled it for the twentieth time. The Fontana di Nettuno, the Palazzo Vecchio, the Davide, the Uffizi, the Arno, all whirled past at dangerous speeds in this nightmarish sight-seeing tour. And finally they were out and on their way again, leaving the city’s treasures and tourists to regroup themselves as best they could.

  After many hours and many miles, it seemed to Fernanda Ponderosa that they were finally coming closer to the journey’s end. The landscape seemed familiar, although she had never been in the region before. She felt she recognized the gentle hills, rolling in the blue distance into steep mountainous peaks, the clusters of hill towns with walls and houses of creamy-pink stone, the olive groves, the vineyards, and the neat fields of multicolored crops. As the light faded, they approached the walls of the ancient town of Norcia.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  And so Fernanda Ponderosa was drawing closer to the man who waited for her.

  Since he had woken that morning from another feverish night of frenzied dreams, Arcadio Carnabuci had been seized by the grip of an excitement that was bigger than he was. It seemed to squeeze him like an udder. He knew instinctively what was causing it: Fernanda was on her way.

  How he got through the day he didn’t know. He ran into the midst of his olive grove and tried to bury himself in his work, but he was too fidgety and it was not long before the venerable trees cast him out while they got on with the serious business of nurturing olives.

  From there he hurried back to his cottage and danced from room to room trying to straighten things, but in fact making more of a mess. He toyed with the idea of making up the bed with the heavenly sheets, but even he realized he was being premature. The house didn’t matter anyway. On this of all days he would be foolish to worry about tidiness.

  With a grin smeared across his face like jam, he ran outside and embraced the sky plump and blue with his arms outstretched. He was so happy he began to cry. The joy of anticipation was practically unbearable.

  As the day drew on, his elation turned into impatience. As the air cooled, and dusk was preparing to fall over into the plain from the other side of the mount
ains, Arcadio Carnabuci took up his ax and began to chop firewood to vent his excess energy. He chopped and chopped away with the vigor of a man twice his size. Splintering a great tree trunk, he cleaved it with such force that a little wisp of dust rose up from it like smoke. He was so busy with his chopping that he failed to spot the ramshackle removal truck that limped along the lane at the back of his house and turned into his neighbor’s property.

  At this point, Ambrogio Bufaletti had reached the frayed ends of his already short string of patience. In his mind he had just resolved to perform an emergency stop and unload Fernanda Ponderosa and her baggage onto the roadside there and then and drive homeward. This journey had gone on too long already. The woman looked well enough, but she wasn’t the least bit friendly. There was no chance of anything there by way of a gratuity. As his boot hovered above the foot brake, Fernanda Ponderosa herself spotted a house that she knew immediately was the right one, the journey’s end. She cried, “Stop!” which Ambrogio Bufaletti duly did.

  The force of the sudden halt shunted the truck’s contents to the front, then, just as quickly to the rear. The turtles piled into a tower in their tank, their little legs kicking in the air. The monkey collided with the windshield, sustaining a nasty bruise to his head. In the rear of the truck, Fernanda Ponderosa’s belongings combined with one another in a rich furniture stew. In its shock the clock began striking the special tune usually reserved for feasts and holy days. The truck itself shuddered and shed its last remaining accessories: the exhaust pipes, the license plate, and the headlamps. It had run its last race, and this was its death rattle. Signor Bufaletti’s mouth issued a string of obscenities.

  He began without ceremony to unload the goods in the yard at the back of the house where the truck had been brought to a standstill, and having done so, he hastily drove off before Fernanda Ponderosa could change her mind and ask him to drive on again and try somewhere else.