The newlyweds stood there a while to follow it with their eyes. Actually only Ida followed it, because Nino saw nothing, heard nothing, his eyes fixed on his bride standing there, finally alone with him, all, all his. But what was this? Was she crying?
“My dad,” said Ida, waving goodbye with her handkerchief. “There, do you see? He, too…”
“But not you, Ida… my Ida…” stammered Nino, almost sobbing, and trembling violently as he attempted to embrace her.
Ida pushed him away.
“No, leave me alone, please.”
“I want to dry your tears.”
“No, dear, thanks anyway. I’ll dry them myself.”
Nino stood there awkwardly, looking at her with a pitiful face and a half-open mouth. Ida finished drying her tears, and then:
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked him. “You’re trembling all over. My goodness, no, Nino, don’t stand there in front of me like that! You’ll make me laugh. And I warn you, once I start laughing, I won’t be able to stop. Wait, I’ll make you snap out of it.”
She gently placed her hands on his temples and blew into his eyes. At the touch of those fingers and at the breath from those lips, he felt his legs doubling up beneath him. He was about to fall to his knees, but she held him up, bursting out in a guffaw:
“On the highway? Are you crazy? Come on, let’s go! There, look, there’s a little hill over there! We’ll still be able see the carriages. Let’s go look!”
And seizing his arm, she dragged him away impetuously.
From all the surrounding countryside, blanketed by sun-dried weeds and grasses scattered by time, there arose in the oppressive heat what seemed like an ancient, dense breath of wind that mingled with the warm, heavy fumes of the manure fermenting in small piles on the fallow fields. It also mingled with the sharp aromas of the tenacious wild mint and the sage. That dense breath of wind, those warm, heavy fumes, these sharp aromas, only he noticed them. As Ida ran behind the thick hedges of prickly pears and among the bristly yellowish tufts of burnt stubble, she heard instead how gaily the woodlarks screeched in the sun, and how in the stifling heat of the plains, and in the bewildering silence, the crowing of roosters resounded portentously from distant barnyards. Every now and then she felt the cool breath of air that arose from the nearby sea to stir the tired leaves of the almond trees, already sparse and yellowed, and the crowded, pointed, ashen ones of the olive.
They quickly reached the top of the hill, but he could barely stand, and almost fell apart, so exhausted was he from the run. He decided to sit down, and, tugging at her waist, tried to make her sit down too, right there beside him. But Ida warded him off with:
“Let me look around first.”
She was beginning to feel restless inside, but didn’t want to show it. Irritated by certain obstinant and quite curious overtures he made to her, she could not, she would not, keep still. She wanted to keep on running, farther and farther away. She wanted to shake him, distract him, and distract herself as well, so long as the day lasted.
There, beyond the hill, lay an immense plain, a sea of stubble, in which one could discern, here and there, the meandering black traces of burn-beating and, here and there, too, a few clumps of caper or licorice plants that broke the bristling yellow expanse. Way, way down there, almost at the opposite shore of that vast yellow sea, one could spot the roofs of a small village nestled among tall, black poplars.
So then, Ida suggested to her husband that they go as far as there, way down to that village. How long would it take them? An hour, not much more. It was barely five o’clock. Back in the villa, the servants still had to clear things away. The two would be back before evening.
Nino attempted to oppose her suggestion, but she pulled him up by his hands and brought him to his feet, and then she was gone, running down the short slope of that little hill and making her way through the sea of stubble, as agile and swift as a fawn. Unable to keep up with her, he grew redder by the minute and appeared dazed. He perspired, panted as he ran, and called out to her to give him her hand:
“At least your hand! At least your hand!” he went on shouting.
All of a sudden she stopped, letting out a scream. A flock of cawing ravens had swarmed up before her. Farther ahead, stretched out upon the ground, lay a dead horse. Dead? No, no, it wasn’t dead. Its eyes were open. Good God, what eyes! It was a skeleton, little more. And those ribs! Those flanks!
Nino suddenly arrived, hobbling and panting.
“Let’s get out of here immediately! Let’s go back!”
“It’s alive, look!” cried Ida, in a tone expressing both revulsion and pity. “It’s raising its head. Good God, what eyes! Look, Nino!”
“Yes, yes,” he said, still panting heavily. “They came and dumped it here. Leave it alone. Let’s get out of here! What’s the attraction? Can’t you smell that the air already…”
“And those ravens? she exclaimed, shuddering from fright. “Are those ravens going to eat it alive?”
“Now Ida, for heaven’s sake!” he begged, clasping his hands imploringly.
“Nino, stop it!” she then cried, her anger violently provoked at seeing him so suppliant and foolish. “Answer me: are they going to eat it alive?”
“How am I supposed to know how they will eat it? They’ll probably wait….”
“Until it dies here of hunger, of thirst?” she continued, showing a face contorted by compassion and horror. “Because it’s old? Because it’s no longer useful? Oh, poor animal! What a shame! What a shame! Haven’t those peasants any heart? Haven’t you and your people any heart?”
“Excuse me,” he said, displaying anger, “you feel so much pity for an animal…”
“Shouldn’t I?”
“But you don’t feel any for me!”
“And what are you, an animal? Are you perhaps dying of hunger and thirst? Have you been dumped in the middle of the stubble? Listen… Oh look at the ravens, Nino. Come on, look… they’re circling around. Oh, what a horrible, shameful, monstrous thing! Look… oh, the poor animal… it’s trying to get up! Nino, it’s moving… Perhaps it can still walk… Nino, come on, let’s help it… Do something!”
“What in the world do you expect me to do? ” he burst out in exasperation. “Do you expect me to drag it along behind me, or haul it away on my shoulders? All we needed was this horse! That’s all we needed! How do you expect it to walk? Can’t you see it’s half dead?”
“But what if we have someone bring it something to eat?”
“And something to drink too, I suppose!”
“Oh, how mean you are, Nino!” said Ida with tears in her eyes.
Then, overcoming her feeling of revulsion, she bent over to gently, very gently caress the horse’s head. The animal had managed with some difficulty to raise itself up from the ground onto its front knees, displaying, despite its degrading infinite misery, what remained of its noble beauty in head and neck.
Nino, owing possibly to the blood boiling in his veins, possibly to the spiteful bitterness she had shown him, or to the mad dash and to the perspiration trickling down his limbs, felt a sudden chill and shuddered, his teeth chattering and his entire body trembling strangely. He instinctively turned up the collar of his jacket, and with his hands in his pockets and a feeling of gloom and desperation in his heart, went over to sit, all hunched up, on a rock some distance away.
The sun had already set. In the distance one could hear the bells of a cart passing down along the highway.
Why were his teeth chattering like that? And yet, his forehead was burning, his blood boiled in his veins, and his ears rumbled. He seemed to hear the ringing of so many bells in the distance. All that anxiety, the agony of waiting, her capricious coldness, that last mad dash, and now that horse, that accursed horse… Oh, God, was it a dream? A nightmare within a dream? Was it fever? Perhaps it was a more serious misfortune. Yes! How dark it was! God, how dark! Had his vision darkened, too? And he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t cry out. He
was calling hen “Ida! Ida!” but his voice no longer issued from his parched and almost cork-like throat.
“Where was Ida? What was she doing?”
She had run off to the distant village to seek help for the horse without stopping to think that the peasants who lived there were the very ones who had dragged the dying beast over here.
He remained there, alone, sitting on the rock, completely at the mercy of those increasing tremors; and, as he sat there, huddling like a great owl upon a perch, he suddenly caught a glimpse of what seemed to him to be… why yes, of course, now he could see it, howsoever horrible it was, howsoever much it looked like a vision of another world. The moon. A large moon, rising slowly from that yellow sea of stubble. And silhouetted in black against that enormous, vapory, copper disk, the skeletal head of that horse, still waiting with its neck outstretched; it would perhaps always wait like that, so darkly etched upon that copper disk, while the ravens, circling overhead, could be heard cawing high up in the sky.
When the disappointed and indignant Ida returned, after making her way back through the plain, all the while shouting “Nino! Nino!” the moon had already risen; the horse had again collapsed to the ground as if dead; and Nino… where was Nino? Oh, there he was; he, too, was lying on the ground.
Had he fallen asleep there?
She ran over to him. She found him with the death rattle in his throat. His face, too, was on the ground, and it was almost black. His eyes were swollen and tightly shut. He was flushed.
“Oh, God!”
She looked around as if in a trance. She opened her hands where she held a few dried beans which she had brought from the village in order to feed the horse. She looked at the moon, then at the horse, and then at this man lying here on the ground, he, too, looking like a corpse. She felt faint, suddenly assailed by the suspicion that everything she saw was unreal. Terrified, she fled back towards the villa, calling for her father in a loud voice, calling for her father to come and take her away — oh, God! — away from that man who had that death rattle… who knows why!… away from that horse, away from that crazy moon up above, away from those ravens cawing up in the sky… away, away, away…
Fear Of Being Happy
Before Fabio Feroni decided to take a wife (no longer guided by the wisdom he once possessed), he had cultivated a unique pastime for many long years. While others sought relief from their usual occupations by taking walks or by going to cafes, he found his recreation, loner that he then was, on the small terrace of his bachelor home where he curiously and passionately studied the lifestyles of the many flies, spiders, ants, and other insects that lived among his numerous flowerpots.
He especially enjoyed watching the clumsy efforts of an old turtle that for several years stubbornly, pig-headedly persisted in scaling the first of the three steps leading from the terrace to the dining room.
I wonder, Feroni often thought, I wonder what great delights it imagines it can find in that room, since it has persisted in these efforts for so many years.
When at long last it would place its tiny protruding feet on the edge of the step, after having managed to reach the top with enormous difficulty, it would scratch desperately to pull itself up, then suddenly lose its balance and fall backwards, landing on its hard, bumpy shell.
Though certain that it would want to go back down to the floor of the terrace, once it had finally scaled the first, then the second, and then the third step, and had wandered about the dining room, Feroni more than once had picked it up gently and placed it up onto the first step, thereby rewarding its useless persistence of so many years.
But he had been astonished to discover that the turtle, either out of fear or mistrust, had never wanted to take advantage of that unexpected help. Retracting its head and feet into its shell, it remained there for a long time, as still as a stone, and then, turning around ever so slowly, returned to the edge of the step, showing unmistakable signs of wanting to descend.
And so he had put it back down, and a little later, lo and behold, the turtle would repeat its eternal labor of scaling that first step by itself.
“What an animal!” Feroni exclaimed the first time he saw it happen.
But then, thinking it over more carefully, he realized that he had called an animal an animal, like one might call a man an animal.
In fact, he had called it an animal, certainly not because after so many years of trying, it still had not been clever enough to realize that the face of the step was too high, and that in attempting to adhere vertically to it, it would naturally lose its balance at a certain point and fall backwards. No, it was because, though he had tried to help it, it had refused his help.
What followed from this observation? That in calling man an animal, you do animals a very great injustice, because you take for stupidity what instead is their integrity or instinctual prudence. You call a man who doesn’t accept help, an animal, because it doesn’t seem right to praise a man for what is appropriate in animals.
This, in brief, is how he reasoned.
Feroni, moreover, had his own particular reasons for feeling scorn for the old turtle’s integrity — or prudence, if that’s what it was — and for a while he enjoyed seeing the ridiculous and desperate kicks it thrust in the air, as it lay there upside down. Finally, tired of seeing it suffer, he would extend it a mighty kick.
Never, never had anyone ever wanted to lend him a hand in all his efforts to climb. And yet, all things considered, not even that would have greatly upset Fabio Feroni, since he was aware of life’s harsh difficulties and of the selfishness that they bring out in people, if it had not been his lot in life to have another and much sadder experience. Because of it, he felt that he had virtually earned the right, if not exactly to people’s assistance, at least to their compassion.
The experience he had had was this: whenever he was just about to achieve a goal for which he had striven patiently, tenaciously, and with all the strength of his spirit, chance, despite all his efforts, would arrive with the sudden spring of a grasshopper and take pleasure in throwing him down, belly up — just like that turtle.
It was a ferocious game. A gust of wind, a puff of air, a little shake at the crucial moment, and then everything would collapse.
Nor could it be said that, because of the modesty of his aspirations, his sudden falls merited little sympathy. First of all, his aspirations had not always been modest, as they were of late. But then… yes, of course, the higher you fly, the harder you fall… But isn’t the fall of an ant from a twig six inches high, in effect equivalent to the fall of a man from a bell tower? Besides, if anything, the modesty of his aspirations should have made that little game that chance played on him seem a greater cruelty. A fine sort of pleasure it was, taking it out on an ant, that is, on a poor individual who for so many years has been scraping along and doing all he can by hook or by crook to bring about and set into motion some small enterprise to slightly improve his condition! A fine sort of pleasure it was, surprising him suddenly, and in an instant frustrating all his subtle strategies and the long, painful hope that was ever so carefully nurtured, but that remained ever more illusory.
To hope no more, delude oneself no longer, desire nothing more; to continue along in this manner, in total submission, abandoned to the whims of chance — that would be his only alternative, and Fabio Feroni knew it well. But alas, hopes, desires, and illusions germinated again within him irresistibly, almost as if to spite him. They were seeds that life itself sowed, and that fell even on his ground, ground that, no matter how hardened by the chill of experience, could not reject them, nor prevent them from sending out even a weak root and sprouting palely and with inconsolable timidity in the frigid, gloomy air of his hopelessness.
The best he could do was to pretend not to notice them, or tell himself that it wasn’t at all true that he hoped for this, or desired that, or that he had the slightest illusion that this hope or that desire could ever be realized. He kept on, just as if he no longe
r either hoped or desired anything more, just as if he no longer had any illusions at all. Yet he kept looking at hope, desire, and secret illusion, as if from the corner of his eye, and he followed them in all seriousness, almost behind his own back.
So when chance suddenly, inevitably tripped them up as usual, he certainly did give a start, but would pretend that it was a shrug of the shoulders, and he laughed sadly, drowning the pain in the bitter satisfaction of not having hoped at all, not having desired at all, not having entertained any illusions whatsoever. Thus, he would pretend that chance, that wily old demon, really didn’t get him this time, oh no, not this time!
“But of course! But of course!” he would say on these occasions to his friends, acquaintances, and fellow workers, there in the library where he was employed.
His friends would look at him without quite understanding what he meant.
“But don’t you see? The government fell!” Feroni would add.
“But of course!”
It seemed that only he understood the most absurd and unlikely things. No longer entertaining real hopes directly, so to speak, but cultivating imaginary ones as a pastime, hopes he could have had, but didn’t, illusions he could have had, but didn’t, he had begun to discover the oddest cause and effect relationships for every little thing: today the fall of the government, the next day, the arrival in Rome of the Shah of Persia, and the following day, the power failure that left the city in the dark for half an hour.
In short, Fabio Feroni had already become obsessed with what he called “the spring of the grasshopper,” and thus obsessed, had naturally fallen prey to the most fantastic superstitions. These superstitions, which diverted him increasingly from his former calm philosophical meditations made him commit several truly strange acts, as well as endless frivolities.
One fine day, so as not to give chance the time to turn everything topsy-turvy, he got married on the spur of the moment, as quick as one can suck an egg from its shell.
Actually for some time he had been watching (usually from the corner of his eye) that young lady, Miss Molesi, who worked at the library. The more Dreetta Molesi appeared beautiful and charming to him, the more he told everyone how ugly and affected she was.
Tales of Madness Page 9
