Ardor

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Chapter One

The man who was responsible for this whole mix-up wasour own Arcadio Carnabuci, the olive grower. Demoralized bythe rejection he had suffered from every woman he hadapproached in the region, and exhausted by his debilitatingloneliness, he grew desperate. At precisely the moment thishappened, there was a knock on the door and he was seducedby the glib patter of a passing peddler. Within seconds he hadpurchased at great expense a handful of seeds the gypsy guaranteedwould bring him love.

Gleefully the peddler pocketed the cash and ran off beforethe olive grower could change his mind. But he need not haveworried. Arcadio Carnabuci was delighted with his purchaseand couldn't wait to change his life. Nobody could have predictedthe way things would turn out, but I will faithfullyrecord it all in these pages, for I myself was intimately involvedwith everything that happened.

Yes, responding to the irresistible surge of nature, ArcadioCarnabuci sowed the seeds of his love early in the spring, when the short days of fleeting February were hurrying into March,and already the earth was coming alive. Mists hung around theskirts of the hills like tulle, and on the plains tiny figuresbecame visible, muffled against the cold, sowing the cropswhere the snow had melted.

Arcadio Carnabuci spent the daylight hours on the rungs ofa ladder, pruning the olive trees that had been in the care of hisfamily for one thousand years. But his mind was not on hisolives. No. It was on love.

In the crisp air that clouded with his breath, he could feelthe tension, taut like the twigs that snapped beneath his knife.Overnight, the almond trees poured forth their blossoms. Notto be outdone, the cherry trees followed; so, too, did the persimmons,the chestnuts, and the pomegranates. The stickybuds on the willows gave forth curly catkins, and the meadowsexploded into a blaze of spring flowers: lily of the valley, dwarfnarcissi, bluebells, crocuses, and irises formed a carpet of dazzlingcolor. Wild asparagus and sweet-smelling herbs perfumedthe newborn air, and up on the mountains, rhododendronsbloomed.

Arcadio Carnabuci could feel the earth's energy through thesoles of his stout boots. This effervescence bubbled up into hislegs and made him dance in spite of himself.

"Look, I'm dancing," he cried to no one in particular, all themore amazed because he had never danced a step in his lifebefore. And he started to laugh.

"I'm dancing."

And so he was. Slowly at first, but as his confidence grew, hethrew himself into the rhythm of the dance. His arms joined in;his feet, usually leaden, became weightless. They bounced offthe hardened earth and soared into the air. He dipped and divedlike a swallow. He gyrated his hips. He flung his head about.

Those that saw him turned up their coat collars and examinedtheir mittens to cover their embarrassment. ArcadioCarnabuci, always strange, was growing stranger. That day mycolleague Concetta Crocetta, the district nurse, received sevenseparate reports calling for Arcadio Carnabuci to be interred inthe manicomio at Cascia for the benefit of all in the region. Yetwhen we trotted past the olive grove to witness ArcadioCarnabuci's antics, we saw it was nothing more than high spiritsconnected with the coming of spring. Smiling indulgently,she gave me a tap with her little heel to encourage me. Backthen she was never rough with my tender flanks, and we set offagain for home.

The impulse that was tickling away at Arcadio Carnabuciwas not confined to himself and the plants. No. Animals felt it,too. The spiders in their spangled webs yearned for love andspun sonnets of a fragile and unbearable beauty, glazed withtears of dew. Scorpions in dark corners clipped their castanetsin courtship, then curled up in pairs in discarded shoes, snug asbugs. The mice in the rafters scurried about gathering wisps ofstolen cotton, torn paper, and bits of fluff and formed them intocozy nests from which they subsequently brought forth blindbabies the size of peas. The humble newts in the waterspout sung out in deep voices. The frogs and the toads joined in withthem, and soon a chorus of magical croaking was filling the air.The music they made was so beautiful it made those that heardit weep and yearn for the life of an amphibian so they couldunlock the secret of the song. Already the beady-eyed blackbirdswere busily building their nests, watched slyly by thecuckoos, who were broadcasting the news, for those that didn'talready know it: spring had sprung. Deep in the oak woods, thewild boar grunted his serenade, while, in the sty, his domesticcousins spooned. Deer frolicked, hares chased. High up in themountains the wolf howled his suit, and the shy brown bearshugged in their caves.

Arcadio Carnabuci could not help but succumb to the rosyglow that wrapped itself around the region, and his loinshummed with a cruel expectation that in his lonely circumstanceshe could do little to fulfill. But he had faith in his loveseeds, and in this fertile climate their promise would surelycome to fruition.

It was then that he sowed them. He picked the moment withcare. In the watery sunlight, frail but willing. Under glass. Tokeep them warm. They were more beans than seeds. Pleasantlyplump, and a palish pink in color. Little crescent moons. Hecould feel a tingling in the beans; like jumping beans, they possessedthe same energy as everything else around him. He heldthem for a while in the palm of his hand, familiarizing himselfwith them, scrutinizing them through his half-moon glasses,behind which his eyes seemed enormous, and every pore and hair follicle was magnified a thousand times. Even the beanscould feel the strength of his hope, and the plucky little creatureswere determined not to disappoint him.