Ardor (15 page)

T
he cataclysmic storm had restored the region to its usual balance. The sun was benevolent, not blistering, and was already packing for its winter vacation. The rumbles beneath the earth ceased, and we no longer feared an earthquake. Grass grew green again, not brown. The animals rehydrated. Sheep shed their blue coats, revealing fluffy white ones underneath. Goats and cows began to give milk again. Cheese makers the length and breadth of the region could start curding cheese again. Moles started digging. Rats started gnawing. Bees buzzed. Birds sang. Water ran through the rivers and streams and waterfalls. The lake had filled and the swans were swimming on it. Speckled trout stuck out their rubber lips and snatched at the flies who were again flying.

The residents were able to conduct their regular business. All those except Luigi Bordino. The morning found him dead, and Susanna refusing to meet her husband's eye. The corpse was discovered with its head submerged in a basin of pear-flavored dough that was to have been shaped into a tasty treat
for Fernanda Ponderosa. Susanna insisted he had been struck by lightning, but Melchiore was not so sure. Already, high-technology electric ovens were being installed in the bakery, and sign writers were at work transforming the frontage.
Susanna Bordino
was written there large in a curly calligraphic script. It was as though Luigi Bordino had never existed. Yet she had committed the murder unnecessarily.

 

I drew the cart, festooned with white ribbons and rosebuds, containing the blushing newlyweds Concetta and Amilcare Croce home to their cottage in the Via Alfieri. On the way I passed Sancio, the Castorini mule, who was tethered outside the Happy Pig, munching on a leaf of fresh green fern. He gave me one look with his slow eyes and I was smitten. I burned with a love the like of which I had never known. In that instant of revelation I understood the universe. I had never loved Arcadio Carnabuci. It had all been a terrible mistake. It was Sancio I loved, and in his eyes I read that my love was returned.

Tearing my eyes away from my new and tender love, I noticed the town library was closed up. Speranza Patti had followed Arcadio Carnabuci to the district capital, where she was exploiting her civil service connections and was busy making representations on his behalf at the highest level. She would never give up on her mission to clear his name and secure his release from the
carcere
. Languishing in his cell, Arcadio Carnabuci had realized his fatal mistake. The woman of his dreams was not Fernanda Ponderosa. It was Speranza Patti.
He had got their names muddled. What a fool he had been. A complete and utter fool.

Fernanda Ponderosa did not appear for work that day at the Happy Pig. A line was waiting outside before Primo Castorini had even rolled up the shutter and raised the blinds that shaded the window. Pucillo's Pork Factory had been decimated by a thunderbolt the previous night, and now that the temperature had dropped, everybody in the region was craving ham. Primo Castorini worked mechanically. His mind was saturated by Fernanda Ponderosa. He felt guilty, knowing he should be mourning his brother's death, but he reasoned he had mourned him once already. He could still smell Fernanda Ponderosa on his skin. Every so often a microscopic bubble of the aroma they had made together would burst somewhere about him and the vapor would carry to his nose. At such times he would groan loudly in remembered ecstasy, causing the ham-buying public to nod indulgently and wink and nudge one another with their elbows. He replayed incessantly every moment of the night. He relived each extraordinary orgasm. He could not stop his lips from smiling, and he didn't want to.

But then a fear began to gnaw away at him. He couldn't bear to be without her. He had come on ahead. She was supposed to follow. Where was she? He felt a sense of panic. He couldn't explain it. Then he realized it was love. He had never felt it before. And he felt like singing. Then he wore out his watch by looking at it. Anytime now she would come. But she didn't.

In the midst of serving the legions of customers that besieged the shop, he knew he had to go to her, right then. He had been stupid not to do it before. He had wasted a whole hour of being with her. An hour he would never get back. He was furious with himself. So he just walked away, leaving them to it. The citizens looked at one another blankly, then began helping themselves to the hams. Soon the thieving Nellinos were loading up a truck with them.

The five minutes of the journey to the house were the longest in Primo Castorini's life. He felt fear, certainly. All lovers are frightened. It's a big part of the job. He also felt the most terrible impatience to be with her. Hold her. Bury himself in her. Inhale her scent. Kiss her endlessly. Caress her body. Drown in her. Then he was seized by the fear again, only worse this time. She had gone. That's why she hadn't come to the shop. She had left him. Disappeared. And he would never see her again. A great echoing chasm of terror opened up inside his body. How could he bear it?

He approached the old house at a run. He saw a moving van parked out in the yard. Men were loading it with unicorns, chandeliers, statues, grandfather clocks, banana trees, oak chests, and all kinds of stuff. He saw it but he didn't allow himself to accept it. His starving eyes sought her out, panic rising in them like a tide. She had gone. She really had gone.

No. She was here. She was still here. She hadn't gone. It was all right. Everything was all right again. His heart expanded, causing a sharp pain that shot like an arrow through his chest.

That morning Fernanda Ponderosa had said her final goodbyes to Silvana, and although she had hoped her sister might have one last kind word for her in parting, once more she was met with silence. She accepted now without bitterness that Silvana had been right all along: death couldn't make everything right between them; it couldn't change a single thing.

Now she was bending beneath the fig tree, smoothing earth over the grave of the turtle. The pork butcher ran to her and swept her up into his arms and held her there forever, or at least for a long, long time, until the slightest constriction of the muscles of her body made him reluctantly replace her feet on the ground.

Her eyes wouldn't tell him anything. But the sane part of him knew the answers, and he hated that part, wished he could rip it out of him and throttle it. Long ago she had said she would stay until Fidelio came back. He had come. And now she was leaving. That was all. She stroked his cheek with her fingertips and walked over to the van, which was all packed up and waiting to go. He knew he could do nothing to make her stay. He would do anything. But it wasn't enough.

“Where are you going?” He was surprised at the sound of his voice. It sounded the way it usually did. Almost.

The driver started the engine.

“A lot of questions,” she replied with half a smile. And he had to watch as the truck bumped across the yard, turned into the lane, and drove away.

“Only one,” he managed. But she had gone.

I
WAS BORN
, raised, and am currently based in London, England. I studied fine arts at university, and then trained to become a human resources manager. My husband, Christopher, is the leader of a political party. We share a love of travel, and spend a lot of time in Italy, which is also the setting of my two previous novels,
La Cucina
and
Nectar
. We were married in Venice, and have a house in Tuscany. We have a pug, Norman, aged two, who is bilingual and is equally at home in both countries.

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