Hunting Season: A Novel Page 3

  Signora Clelia later recounted the whole episode, blow by blow, to her bosom friend and confidante, Signora Colajanni, a churchgoing woman who spent her life talking and gossiping about others. That same evening, Postmaster Colajanni told the Circolo about it. The opinions and comments varied greatly.

  “The pharmacist doesn’t have a cock,” was the most categorical.

  “The pharmacist doesn’t like Signora Clelia,” was the most plausible.

  “The pharmacist is a true gentleman who will not go with other men’s wives,” was the most amicable.

  “The pharmacist is a blockhead,” was the most drastic.

  On the morning of the last day in February, Mimì opened his master’s bedroom door, intending to dress him, carry him out on his chair, and set him down outside the Circolo. The bed was unmade but the marchese was not in it. The old man was capable, in moments of need, of taking two or three steps by himself. But there was no sign of him in the commode, either. Mimì figured that his master had perhaps needed something during the night and summoned his family for help, and so he went and quietly opened the doors to the bedrooms of Don Filippo and his wife, and of the Marchesina ’Ntontò and the Marchesino Rico. They were all fast asleep. Worried, he ran down to the kitchen, where Peppinella, the maidservant, was already at work. But she, too, knew nothing. Alarmed, Peppinella also began looking for the old marchese. They searched and searched from attic to cellar to storehouse and stables, but there wasn’t a trace of Don Federico anywhere.

  “I’m going to tell Don Filippo,” said Mimì.

  “Looky here,” Peppinella’s voice called out, stopping him.

  Leading out of the old man’s room was a quasi-invisible trail, interrupted here and there, of grains of sand, sulphur dust, and dried pigeon droppings. Mimì followed it to the end of the broad stone staircase and noticed that the front door was open. Going out into the courtyard, he saw that the great entrance to the palazzo was also half open. Running frantically, he combed the entire town all the way to the port in less than fifteen minutes, asking everyone he ran into if by any chance they had seen an old man fitting such-and-such a description. But nobody was of any help. And so he started running down the beach, along the water’s edge, the sea soaking his shoes and trousers. Then, in the distance, he saw a black object that the surf was turning over and over in the water. He approached, growing weak in the knees. It was his master. He dived into the water, dragged the marchese to shore, and went back into town to look for Dr. Smecca. But the doctor, who was running a very high fever, couldn’t get out of bed.

  “Call the pharmacist,” the doctor suggested.

  Fofò La Matina didn’t waste a second. A moment later, he was racing behind Mimì, who was running like a jackrabbit. When they reached their destination, they found Inspector Portera there, summoned by a passing fisherman.

  “It’s no use,” said the inspector. “He’s been dead for a few hours. Killed himself.”

  “But he hadn’t walked for years!” said the pharmacist.

  “Well, this time he walked just fine. At a certain point he fell, dropped his cane, and continued on his hands and knees. Then he couldn’t go any farther that way, either, and so he started dragging himself along.”

  “How do you know these things? Who told you?” said Mimì.

  “The sand told me, Mimì,” said Portera. “Have a look for yourself. It’s all written in the sand. The marchese was determined to kill himself. But I don’t think he drowned.”

  Mimì walked away, retracing his master’s last efforts in reverse. The inspector was right.

  “So how did he die then?” asked the pharmacist.

  “Heart failure. He was too old and too tired, and the water was too cold.”

  Marchese Don Filippo arrived half dressed, having been informed by one of the inspector’s men.

  “Poor Papà! What a terrible way for him to die,” he said upon seeing the old man’s body, scrubbed utterly clean by the sea. “It’s as if he died washing himself.”

  2

  Federico Maria Santo was the twenty-two-year-old heir to the line of the Marchesi Peluso di Torre Venerina. Practically speaking, Federico Maria was not so much an offspring of the legitimate union of Don Filippo with Donna Matilde Barletta-Capodirù as a product, a fruit, of the enchanted garden of the legendary Santo La Matina, quite like the pears that induced rivers of piss, the peaches that caused enormous stool, the myrrh that cured asthma, the bitter almonds that overcame malaria once and for all.

  After conceiving their eldest daughter Antonietta, known to all as ’Ntontò, with the listless collaboration of her husband the marchese and bringing her happily into the world to the joy of family, friends, and relatives (a joy shared only for the sake of appearances and personal honor by the father, who would have preferred a son), Donna Matilde believed that her obligations as woman and mother had been fulfilled. Great, therefore, was her surprise when, the first night back in her bed, just after putting out the lamp, her husband came looking for her and thereafter persisted in trying to attain his goal, despite the fact that she complained of a wandering pain that would migrate, on a whim, sometimes towards her belly, sometimes towards her head.

  One night, already mauled by three endless penetrations about an hour apart, the marchesa had just drifted off to sleep on her side when, at the toll of the bell calling worshipers to the day’s first Mass, she felt her husband’s hands grab her yet again. And in the twinkling of an eye she found herself facedown with her legs spread. It was, for the marchesa, the most comfortable position, one which allowed her to doze for some ten minutes while her spouse labored and sweated behind her. This time, however, the marchesa remained awake and, indeed, spoke out. The upshot was that the sound of her voice paralyzed her husband in astonishment, given that, according to the teachings of the late Father Carnazza, who had joined them in holy matrimony, relations between man and wife must take place in strict silence—with the only allowance being made for the utterance, on the woman’s part, of a short prayer suited for the occasion, but in a soft voice, as though sighing.

  “Why?” Donna Matilde asked bluntly, raising her cheek slightly from the pillow.

  “Why what?” the marchese asked back, panting but continuing to impale her firmly.

  “Why are you doing what you’re doing?”

  A bull, when asked this sort of question, would have become confused and let everything drop. But the marchese was made of iron ore.

  “Because I want you to give me a son,” he said and resumed riding her.

  The attempt to impregnate the marchesa went on for almost two years, and Donna Matilde began seriously considering retiring to the convent of Santa Maria di Cupertino, lost in the Madonie Mountains, where it was said that no man had ever set foot beyond the entrance gate.

  “Of course not, because the men come and go through the windows,” quipped Barone Uccello, an unbeliever and, on this occasion, an important advisor to the marchese concerning the manner most suitable for conceiving the heir to the house of Peluso di Torre Venerina.

  “Have you tried the position the Germans call ‘the dancing bear’?”

  “Yes. Nothing.”

  “How about the one the Arabs call ‘the serpentine’?”

  “That too. No dice. You see, carissimo, I am convinced that success in this matter has nothing whatsoever to do with the position or the day or the sun or the moon. There has to be another reason. Nor can it be a case of what Dr. Smecca calls impotentia generandi, since I’ve already had a daughter.”

  At these words Barone Uccello had a sudden flash, a suspicion that burst inside him like a shot in the silence of the night. He quickly buried its echo in the deepest recesses of his consciousness, but a vivid twinkle in his eyes sufficed to give him away. The marchese had already read the thought and its implications in his gaze as clearly as if it had been printed black on white.<
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  “If you ever get that look in your eyes again—and I know what it means,” said the marchese in a single breath, “I’ll shoot you on the spot. My wife is a virtuous woman. And I don’t even have any brothers.”

  In asserting he was an only son, Don Filippo was alluding to the well-known story of the Baron Ardigò, who, unable to conceive a son, and having ascertained that it was he, and not the baroness, who was sterile, had resorted to the “second barrel”—as hunters called it—that is, his younger brother, who rose to the task quite willingly and impregnated his pretty sister-in-law, whom he had long coveted, at the first go.

  “Actually, there’s another concern that gives me no rest,” the marchese resumed, the offense forgotten. “And it’s this: what if, after all this effort, my wife ends up suckling another girl?”

  “Why, don’t you follow the Sciabarrà method?” the baron asked in astonishment.

  “No. What’s that?”

  “The Sciabarrà method—”

  “Is he a doctor?”

  “A doctor? Sciabarrà? No, he’s the comptroller of the regional government. But he has eight sons with cocks between their legs. Isn’t that enough? At any rate, I got my two boys using his method. So, to be sure to have a son, you have to fast for an entire day, walk twelve miles in the evening, and then have sexual relations immediately afterwards.”

  The marchese did not seem very enthusiastic about the idea.

  “But is it certain?”

  “It’s guaranteed. Look at Totò Cumbo. After three girls, he practiced the Sciabarrà method and had a son.”

  After strict application of the method for one month, the marchese fainted in the town square one day. He suddenly collapsed when racing back to his palazzo after his daily twelve miles, trousers and shoes covered with mud because the heavens had opened the floodgates that day. Unable to explain the marchese’s sudden deterioration, Dr. Smecca prescribed tonic treatments and a month in bed. Donna Matilde immediately took advantage of this, changing room and bed with the excuse of not wanting to disturb her husband, and thus was able finally to shut her eyes as well as other parts of her body.

  “I’m wasting time,” Don Filippo said to his friend Uccello, who had come to see him. “I feel like a hunter tangled in the underbrush, watching the rabbit run away.”

  The baron smiled and gave him a mysterious look.

  “Don’t despair,” he said. “I have a wonderful idea. Trust me.”

  Three days later Barone Uccello paid him a visit with a parcel under his arm, eyes twinkling with contentment. Making certain no one would come and disturb them in the marchese’s room, he set about delicately opening it. Out came a great big cucumber the length of a forearm and firm, clearly the product of hybridization, since grafted at one end were two peaches as big as the knobs at the head of a bed. The marchese looked dumbfounded at the enormous vegetal phallus.

  “I paid a call on Santo La Matina. I described your situation to him. He didn’t want to hear about it, said it’s wrong to go against nature. I threw myself at his feet, and in the end he was moved to pity. And here’s the solution.”

  The marchese felt more and more confused.

  “Am I supposed to use that thing? It’s not going to be easy to convince my wife.”

  “What kind of ideas are you getting in your head? You’re supposed to gobble this up. Without removing the skin, you are to cut it into slices and soak them in a mug of red wine. Then you must eat the cucumber and peaches at the crack of dawn on the first day of the second lunar quarter, which will be in one week’s time. Do you follow?”

  “Will that be enough?”

  “Let me finish.”

  He slipped his hand back into the parcel and pulled out a tiny envelope, which he opened with great care. Inside were two seeds that looked like they came from a watermelon, blackish and dried up.

  “Now, you are to swallow these seeds with a bit of water before having relations.”

  “And you think it will work?”

  “It’s guaranteed to work.”

  “But you also said the Sciabarrà method was guaranteed.”

  “Well, you can forget about that now.”

  It worked. Exactly nine months later, Federico Maria Santo Peluso di Torre Venerina came into the world to the tearful joy of the marchese and the genuine delight of Donna Matilde, who knew the nightmare of her nightly persecution was over. The third name given the newborn, Santo, was clearly a token of thanks from the marchese to La Matina for the pharmacist’s gardening wizardry. Equally clear was the fact that the baby, with his melon-like head, potato nose, and watermelon-seed eyes, still belonged to the plant kingdom.

  As he grew up, Federico Maria Santo, for simplicity’s sake, came to be called Rico by the rest of the family, but the kids he played with quickly renamed him Ricò. The accent on the last syllable was not a form of endearment, but rather a judgment of his character. Since ricò meant none other than ricotta cheese—“A ricò! Cu a voli a ricò!” the street vendor would cry out in the early morning with his cart full of cheese baskets—that accent implied that the matter inside Federico Maria’s skull, as well as the boy’s bearing, appeared to consist of fresh, quivering ricotta. Rico was thus a bit sweet in the head, his thoughts never coming out seasoned with the salt that would seem to be a feature of human brain function, and this was perhaps why he enjoyed a perpetually serene temperament and never took offense at anything. Unable to string more than two words together in a sentence, he often burst into a laughter that had nothing human about it, but sounded exactly like the bleating of a goat.

  On the evening of June 30, 1880, as they were all supping, Rico announced to the family that he didn’t want there to be any celebrations for the following day, his twenty-second birthday. He was going to get up very early in the morning, take a horse, and go meet the farmhand Bonocore at the edge of the Citronella wood, which he said was a sort of inexhaustible mine of mushrooms. Rico was, in fact, a glutton for raw mushrooms. He had even had some leather bags expressly made with several pouches in which he kept special knives, a little rake, a sickle, a hook, a small box of salt, and a bottle of vinegar. Whenever he found mushrooms, he would eat them on the spot. He never brought them home; he claimed they lost their flavor that way.

  “You’re all worked up over the mushrooms in the Citronella,” said Don Filippo, “when there are far more in the Zàgara woods.”

  “Yes, but less tasty.”

  He left the next morning at dawn, rifle on his shoulder. The double-barrel was just for show; Rico would never have been able to use it against another living being. The sight of a sparrow with a grain of wheat in its beak, a rabbit scampering into the underbrush, an ant dragging a piece of straw filled him with a strange happiness, and a kind of music began to play inside him, growing louder and louder until he burst out in a colossal bleat.

  When, after three hours on horseback, he arrived at the clearing in front of Bonocore’s house, Carmelina came running up to him, breathless. She was his secret. It wasn’t at all true that the mushrooms in the Citronella woods were more flavorful than the others. But at the farmhand’s little house lived Carmelina, the only creature, he was sure, who could understand him deep down inside. Their love had begun a year earlier and still endured, while growing in intensity. For a year now, Rico had been wondering what had first attracted Carmelina to him, what was the origin of the miracle he was living. He had been speaking—he confusedly remembered as he embraced Carmelina and kissed her—with the farmhand, who had told him something that made him laugh; and, upon hearing his laugh, Carmelina, who was at the edge of the clearing, had suddenly turned around and started walking slowly towards him without taking her eyes off him. Yes, that was how it had all begun: with his laughing.

  He kissed Carmelina again and, feeling he could not hold out much longer, he called out the farmer’s name, to see if he was
around. There was no reply; the coast was clear. And so, almost by force, he dragged her into the straw hut, took off his clothes, and lay down on the ground, naked. With patience and devotion, Carmelina began to lick his body. A few moments later, realizing he was about to explode like a wild cucumber and scatter his seed all around, Carmelina turned her back to him and waited to feel the weight of her man on her body.

  As soon as he entered the woods, still sweaty from lovemaking, Rico began to recite the litany: Clavaria pistillaris, Elvella mitrata, Morchella esculenta, Amanita caesarea . . . These were the scientific names of the mushrooms he had learned by heart by studying over and over the plates in Marsigli’s De generatione fungorum, a 1714 book he had bought from a friend for a small fortune. The litany was an enhancement, an evocative foretaste of the real pleasure of the mushroom he would soon savor. Once he was inside and had a look around, he came to an abrupt halt. In the middle of a dense thicket of brambles, he thought he saw the pale, bald head of an infant a few months old with its eyes torn out. The rest of the little body was not visible. Rico shuddered in fear, and was immediately tempted to run away. But he summoned his courage and began to draw near, back bent, one slow step at a time, hunching over as if to avoid a blow. When he was at arm’s length and could see more clearly, he sighed in relief and let out a deafening bleat: what he had seen was an enormous mushroom, by far the biggest he had ever seen. Overcome with excitement, he reached down, armed with the little sickle, paying no mind to the thorns shredding his palm and the back of his hand.

  Carmelina became worried when Rico was late returning. Night was falling, and she knew that he didn’t like to walk at night. Even his horse, tied to a tree trunk, was getting restless. No longer able to contain her anxiety, Carmelina started running towards the woods. She only had to go in a short way: Rico was leaning against a tree, eyes closed, spittle dripping out of his mouth, not responding to the sound of her voice desperately calling him. And it was those same cries that made the farmhand come running.