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.
