A Time to Seek
The next weeks that should have been all gay and rejoicing for a hero
of the Piazza turned dark with worry. It concerned Gaudenzia, and yet
it didn't concern her. The August Palio was less than six weeks away,
but already Giorgio felt troubled by a thing he did not understand.
Suppose another fantino should ride her then, and he would have to
fight against her!
He tried to argue with himself. "Look here, Giorgio, in your pocket you
have some money. In the streets children salute you with flags. In the
Palazzo Pubblico men treat you man-sized. And every day you receive
poems, presents, and pictures. Yet you are not happy."
Deliberately he turned all his attention on the mare. He would keep
her stall cleaner than a kitchen, and her mantle spotless. And if he
worked on a new training program for her, he might be too busy to worry.
This time he did not bother with a calendar. He had only to ease her
off from the pinnacle of July second, then build her right back up
again.
The Chief-of-the-Guards was too happy to notice how silent Giorgio had
grown. He lived in a state of blissful pride, for Gaudenzia seemed in
no way weakened by racing on the treacherous course.
"If anything, she is now more strong," he said time and again. "Legs
firm and trim. No puffy swellings around the joints. No cuts from
overreaching or crossfiring. And no bruising or splitting of her hoofs.
As for the corners of her mouth, they are soft like a young filly's.
Who could recognize her as the sad bag-of-bones we rescued from the
sausage maker. Eh, son?"
The Chief was aware that other contradas would now want the famous
Vittorino to ride for them, but his contrada, Nicchio, had asked first.
He refused to think that in the next battle the boy might have to ride
another horse and so fight against Gaudenzia. Surely, whoever drew
Gaudenzia would buy Giorgio from the Nicchio.
Giorgio, however, did not have this assurance. And whenever he tried to
voice his fears, the Chief seemed so happy that the words died unspoken.
But if the boy had grown broody and silent, Gaudenzia was just the
opposite. She felt intensely alive. Let out of her stable, she tried
to rake the sky for sheer joy in living. She felt good! Never was she
alone, not even on rainy days; her fantino was groom and companion,
too, steadfast as the earth. And so she thrived.
From fast work she went to slower and longer work. She walked and
trotted one week, two weeks. Then gradually Giorgio intensified her
training. More trotting and galloping, less walking. More grain, less
hay.
"For you, your life will always be mountains and valleys," he told
her one morning as they jogged along a country byway. "Always between
Palios comes the easing off, the nice rest. Then you must start all
over again and make the steep climb to new peaks."
A fluffy seed blew into her nose. She blew it out again with a loud
snort.
"Yes, you can snort away your little troubles. But me?" Sighing, he ran
his eye along the distance, along the tufted terraces of olive gardens,
and he followed the aerial maneuvers of a pair of swallows snapping
insects on the wing. By keeping his mind busy he hoped to wear blinders
to what was bothering him. But it was no use. The worry kept eating at
his heart. Maybe he would feel better if he put it into words, instead
of letting it run around in his head like a mouse in a mill.
"Listen, Gaudenzia," he spoke into the fine pricked ears, "for one
little month you are Queen of the Palio. But you won your crown
without...."
His talk sounded silly against the shimmer of distance. He clucked to
the mare. A faster pace might make the words come faster, easier.
He tried again to make his voice strong, to empty his thoughts.
"Gaudenzia! You won the July Palio without real battle, without the
nerbo, without the secret arrangements." The words flowed faster. "Now
you are marked. You are the one to beat. You and I--in the next Palio
we could be separated. The contrada which draws you could already have
engaged some other fantino." He burst out shouting: "What if you have
to be beaten and slashed back? By me!"
The sweat broke cold on his face. He pulled the mare to a halt, and she
stood trembling at his tone as if already she were beaten over the head
with his nerbo. Thinking of her nervous tic, he quickly dismounted and
quieted her.
* * * * *
July passed. Giorgio had no peace. His dream of the Palio had become
sullied. He called on the Chief-of-the-Guards in his own home. He
called on General Barbarulli. He sought out Signor Ramalli. With each
he tried to unburden his worry, but the talk was roundabout and never
came near the sore spot.
In desperation, one day, he put Gaudenzia in the care of a barbaresco
and went home to Monticello. He planned to arrive in the late
afternoon, when he knew his mother would be cooking supper. She would
be standing in the pool of light from the single bulb over the stove,
and her back would be toward him, and the room would be steamy warm,
and in the semi-darkness it would be easy to speak right out.
It happened exactly like that. Giorgio was there in the kitchen,
leaning against the wall where the patched green umbrella hung, and
both cats were sidling up against his legs as if they remembered him
from yesterday, and he was saying, "Mamma, now that I am grown, the
Palio is a thing I do not understand."
His mother was making pizzas, shaping each pie carefully. She stood
there in her black dress and did not turn around. And yet Giorgio felt
her motherliness spread over him like wings over a young bird.
"Giorgio," she began, then corrected herself. "My boy is now Vittorino.
He has the wished-for name, and in his keeping he has the wished-for
mare. Yet he does not understand the workings of the Palio, and so he
is unhappy."
"That is the way of it, Mamma."
"You are not alone in this, Vittorino. Many things of history _I_ do
not understand. Nor does your Babbo. But the part that torments you,
maybe it is a thing to pull out of the dark and into the light. Maybe
then...."
She stopped short, choosing silence for urging the boy on.
Giorgio blurted out: "Mamma! It is the secret arrangements between
the contradas. The Palio is a religious festival. Is it right, do you
think, to hold your horse back, to make her lose? What if"--the words
came tight and strained--"what if for Gaudenzia another fantino should
be chosen? And I should have to strike her?"
The shaping of the pies went on in silence.
"I had to ask it! Everyone in Onda is happy. And the Chief is happy.
And Gaudenzia is happy. But I, I am sad! Some nights, for hours I do
not sleep. How can I be a fantino so soon again if in my heart there is
a heaviness? How can I?"
The mother sighed deeply. Why is it, she thought, that always children
have questions like knots which they throw into the lap of the mother?
Little children, little knots; big children, big knots. Always it is
so. She thought a long time and the room grew so still that the whir of
a hummingbird at a flower in the window sounded big and loud.
"I think there is someone," she said at last, "who could ease your
burden."
Giorgio was hearing with every fiber. "Tell me! Who is it?"
The mother seemed to be talking to herself, convincing herself. "Yes!
He would be the one; he is wise in the mysteries that trouble the
heart."
"Who, Mamma?"
"He is a thoughtful, listening man."
"But who _is_ he?"
"He knows especially boys; he believes they deserve to be heard."
"But _who_?" It was a cry for help.
"His name," the mother said with a little glow of wonder, "his name is
Monsignor Tardini."
"Monsignor Tardini!"
"Si."
"Why, he is a great man at the Vatican. He stands next to the Pope
himself!"
The mother went to the cupboard and took out plates and cups to set the
table. "Soon now the pizzas will be done," she said, "and Babbo and the
children will come from the farm, and we eat."
"But why does the Monsignore understand especially boys?"
"Because, in a pine grove on the skirts of Rome, there sits a beautiful
villa for orphans. It is called Villa Nazareth, and Monsignor Tardini,
he is the guiding spirit. Even the grown boys, after they go out into
the world, bring their troubles to him."
"But, Mamma, how do you know all this?"
"I know because young Arturo, a boy from the Maremma, is there. _He_
says so."
"You mean I should go all the way to Rome? To the Vatican?"
The mother nodded. "You should go, even if it costs dear. In the sugar
bowl there is money. Yours and Gaudenzia's," she smiled, "from the
victory of Onda." She stopped to pinch off a few faded flowers from
the pots in the window. Then she went back to the stove. "There comes
a time," she said, turning to look right at Giorgio, "when to make a
pilgrimage is necessary for peace of the mind."
A far look crept into the boy's eyes. Suddenly he burned with the urge
to go to Rome.