The Flying Centaur
The filly grew--skittish and frivolous as her name. Every time the
farmer let her out of her stall she bolted past him, and snorting
like a steam engine, she flew down the aisle, sending goats and geese
scuttling out of her way. Then at the end stall she slowed just long
enough to sink her teeth into the buttocks of the black bullock. In the
split second before he could kick back, she was out in the sunlight,
squeaking a high hello to the world.
"It is a painful thing for the bullock," the farmer told his wife one
day. "But if he is not there, the rascal nips me in the pants instead."
The wife burst into a fit of laughter. She threw her apron over her
face to stifle her merriment.
"Bah!" the farmer stormed. "Women and fillies, they think alike! For
them biting is a funny joke." And he stomped out of the kitchen,
slamming the door behind him.
Away in Monticello, young Giorgio Terni inquired of travelers and
tradesmen about the daughter of Sans Souci. He learned only that she
was fiery and mischievous, unlike her work-horse mother. But he dreamed
often that she had taken the place of his blind mare. In his dreaming
she was an Arabian all the way--an Arabian whose ancestors had raced
swiftly across the sun-scorched desert. She would be steel-gray, of
course, with her muzzle nearly black, and her fine legs black from
knees and hocks to hoof, and her eyes enormous and dark. As for size,
he thought of her as big enough.
He longed to see her, but Magliano Toscano was many kilometers away,
and now was the season of the grape harvest.
Each morning before daybreak, the whole family piled into the donkey
cart and drove off to their vineyard. Up and down the rows they snipped
the purple bunches, dew-drenched in the morning, shiny warm in the
glare of noon. They filled basket after basket to roundness, and
emptied them into big tubs. It was Giorgio who lugged them, two at a
time, to the wine shed, dumping the grapes, stems and all, into a huge
vat. Then at dusk after the animals had been fed, he clambered up the
wall of the vat, grasped the pole across the open top, swung himself
inside, and with his bare feet pushed down the slippery seeds and skins
that had risen to the surface.
One evening when the family, dusty and weary, was returning home by
starlight, Giorgio spoke shyly to his mother. "Some day I would go to
Magliano to see the filly of Sans Souci ... if only I had the time."
"Maybe on Sunday after the mass," the mother suggested.
"I will go!" he cried, and the weariness of the long day suddenly
melted.
But Giorgio did not go. On the next Sunday he was chosen watchkeeper
of the church. And now the Sundays stretched out longer than all the
other days. He had to scrub the floor inside the church and sweep the
earth outside. He had to dust the altars. He had to arrange the benches
and chairs. He had to play the bells, calling the people from houses
and barns. He had to help serve mass. And when the services were over,
he remained on watch. Alone in the deep hush, he listened to the wind
moaning in the cypress trees, reminding him that each tree in the
churchyard stood for a soldier dead. He tried to close his ears to the
dismal sound, but the trees kept on whispering, and the mourning doves
added their plaintive lament.
There was reward, however, in being watchkeeper. It meant that the
people of Monticello considered him more man than boy. His voice was
changing, too, and now when he sang in the choir it cracked, sliding
far off key.
"Tsk, tsk!" the father remarked one Sunday. "Our Giorgio is getting a
voice most strange. More howl than human. Sometimes," he laughed, "I
look up quick to see, is he growing flap ears like basset hound, or
great furred ones, like Pippa? Because he knows how animals think, must
he sing like them, too?"
The family was seated around the table eating their Sunday supper of
_fritto misto_, a mixed fry of little fish from the River Orcia.
Emilio put down his fork in great seriousness. "Maybe some day my big
brother will be saint of the animals, like Saint Francis of Assisi," he
said proudly. "Then, Babbo, you will not laugh."
Giorgio's eyes glanced up from his plate and found the Palio horse
he had made, standing big-chested on a shelf. He saw that the
spennacchiera had fallen off, and he got up to press it back in place.
The mother watched him cross the room. "There are many ways," she said
softly, "for a boy to bring honor to Monticello."
Her eyes and Giorgio's met and held for a brief instant.
* * * * *
It was late in November when the farm work lessened and the fun began.
Hard by the village of Monticello were horse-rearing farms, and often
in the afternoons the older boys who helped in the barns challenged
Giorgio to a race. He was quick to accept each time, but he seldom
rode the same horse twice. "Never do I want to love one so much," he
explained to his father, "the way it was with Bianca, the blind one."
Always he rode bareback, no matter how rough the horse's gaits, and
always he used only his left hand on the reins. Some of the horses in
the Palio, he had heard, were no better bred than those his father
bought and sold. And if they had to be ridden bareback, with the right
hand free for the nerbo, he must practice now.
The other boys were older, taller, and they rode by gripping hard with
their legs. But Giorgio had to work for balance, leaning always with
his mount, thinking with him, flying together like one streamer in the
wind.
The boys soon recognized that Giorgio had a special way with horses.
Even the poor ones ran well when he was their fantino, and when he had
a good one, he was almost never defeated.
In time the races developed into hard-fought contests held on the
winding mountain road. Giorgio's heart sang a high tune as he flew
around the curves, his face lashed by his horse's mane. He was in
Siena! Riding in the Palio! _This_ curve was San Martino, _this_ the
Casato. The rippling of his horse's muscles against his thighs made him
feel like a man-horse, a centaur! He was no longer an earthling; he
flew.
With each race the make-believe intensified. The boys pretended they
were in the Palio, each riding for his contrada.
"I race for the Eagle!" one would shout.
"I race for the Panther!"
"I for the Wolf!"
"I for the Porcupine!"
It was fun at first, but for Giorgio the make-believe did not last. He
saw it for what it was, a pitiful imitation. None of the horses wore
spennacchiera in their headstalls. Nor did the fantinos fight with
oxhide nerbos. It was no battle at all!