Tales of Madness (13 page)

"Goodbye, Nino."

"Goodbye, Ida," said the bridegroom's mother laughingly; and their carriage moved on at a fast trot in order to catch up with the other ones transporting the guests.

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."

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.

"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!"

"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?"

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...

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.