No Morning Glory
When Giorgio awoke the next morning he felt whole and strong and full of purpose. He hurried at once to the barn and set to work. He grained Gaudenzia and gave her fresh water. Then he nailed hardwood boards over the lower half of the two windows. "In case of kicking," he explained to an early visitor, "splinters of wood are better than splinters of glass."
Word quickly flew from house to house that "the little runt of Monticello" was back home with a race mare. Neighbors, relatives, friends came from far and near just to look. A few recognized that she was Farfalla, the cart horse, but they seemed puzzled by her fineness, awed by the Arabian head. In her shabby harness they had never really noticed her before. They were not speechless, however. The advice Giorgio got was enough to fill a book.
"Worm her! It is the worms that make her thin."
"Mix tiny pinches of snuff with her grain."
"Pull her shoes at once, before she kicks you over the moon."
Giorgio listened with only half his mind. He wondered how he was going to handle the curious visitors and get his work done, too. But the novelty soon wore off. For everyone, that is, except Giorgio.
Each time he opened the door to her stable he felt the same inward excitement as on the first day he had seen her. And each time he held the water bucket for her to drink, or felt her head scratching against his shoulder, the joy was so deep the whole world seemed different. It wasn't exactly a fatherly feeling he had; it was stronger, more fantastic, as though he lived in ancient times and some oracle had said: "Fate has given her to you. You, Giorgio Terni, are all to her—master, teacher, god. Now prepare her for the great battle of the Palio."
Never before had Giorgio paid much attention to calendars; he had enjoyed the pictures on them and noticed the holidays. But now, suddenly, the pages of the months flashed and signaled importantly.
Hanging on a nail in Gaudenzia's barn, beside the bunches of drying anise-seed, were several dusty old calendars. The top two were 1948 and 1949, but they would do. He tore off the first eight months of 1948 and wrote on the bottom of the page marked Settembre, "Rest her."
On Ottobre he wrote, "Walk her four kilometers."
On Novembre, "Walk three, jog one."
On Dicembre, "Walk two, jog two."
On the 1949 calendar, for Gennaio he wrote, "Walk one, jog three, gallop one."
On Febbraio, "Two-two-two."
On Marzo, "Walk one, trot two, gallop three."
Then he put ditto marks on Aprile and Maggio, and for Giugno wrote, "Walk one, jog three, gallop three and one-half."
As he lifted the page for Luglio he solemnly circled the second, the Festival of the Visitation of the Madonna, the day of the Palio. He turned then to face Gaudenzia and found her blinking at him, yawning in contentment.
"Our life-threads squinch closer and closer together. No?" he asked of her. He wanted to say more, to show her he grasped the total wonder of their fate, but there were things he could not put into words.
With the training program laid out on paper, Giorgio went to work with a frenzy. He felt that no force on earth could stop him. Each day he glanced at the calendar on the wall as if it were a generalissimo barking out orders.
One morning when Gaudenzia stood bridled and ready for exercise, Babbo burst into the stable with startling news.
"The government!" he announced proudly. "It has jobs—for you and for me!"
"Jobs?"
"Si, si. Down the slope of Mount Amiata we must plant trees."
"But already there are many!"
"More they need, to hold the soil. You see," he explained, "the rain washes away the earth, causing great damages. The pay is not much," he added, "but it helps. We both go."
Giorgio's stomach rose and fell. I will have to tell Babbo "no," he thought. On the calendar I have already fixed the plans for Gaudenzia. She is in training for battle; we cannot stop now.
"Babbo," he said, "every morning I take Gaudenzia to the road that winds round the hills. We walk, and we jog, and then we begin the gallops and...." He broke off as a sudden thought struck him. Instead of working Gaudenzia in the morning, he would plant the trees, and take her out at night. Was not the Palio held at sundown? Why not accustom her to the late hour?
He smiled. "But from now on I train her by night. Yes, Babbo, I will go with you. We will plant the trees together."
Later that day the father proudly told the townfolk, "That Giorgio of mine, he makes of Gaudenzia no morning glory! Horses has time-clocks in their heads. The morning bloomers wilt by noon. Oh, that boy, he thinks like the four-footed!"
As the days grew shorter, the workouts grew longer, more intense. Long walks with little jogs gave way to long jogs with little walks. By starlight, by moonlight, the white mare rounded the curves of Mount Amiata like some floating phantom of the night. She was never extended, never pushed. Without anyone's telling him how or why, Giorgio knew he had to build up her confidence in herself. Always he stopped short of what she could do. There was plenty of time to reach the peak. The real mountain, he knew, was not Amiata.
October, November, and December were torn off the calendar. In January there were many days of mist and drizzle when Giorgio still had to work, planting trees. Then no one passed the stable for hours at a time, and Gaudenzia's nervous twitching came on again and she took to crib-biting. One dismal evening when he came to bridle her, she stood grunting as she clamped her teeth on her manger, sucking air into her stomach. Giorgio tried fastening his belt around her neck, loose enough so that she could munch grain, but tight enough to prevent her opening her jaws for swallowing air. It worked! After this, on rainy days, he made her wear the belt, and all went well. And so, regardless of weather, they left the stable each evening at the same hour, clattering down the stony lanes of Monticello, and out upon the lonely road cleft in the hill.
Nothing was too good for Gaudenzia. He gave her rub-downs, first with straw, then with burlap bags. He borrowed the flour sifter from home, and each measure of grain he sifted free of bugs and dust, saving the dead beetles for the kittens. He begged old sheeting from his mother and spent precious lire buying cotton and alcohol with which to bandage her forelegs.
"You cannot even imagine," he told Gaudenzia, "how firm we make your legs." Sometimes she threatened to bite him as he worked, but she never did. More often she lipped the back of his sweater, in the way a dam gently nibbles along the neck of her colt.
Giorgio lived all day—digging and planting—for the night. He might have been sticking faggots in the earth for all he knew. His mind was everywhere else: on the calendar in the stable, taking the curves of the mountain, putting on his helmet for the race. Trumpets and drums beat like blood in his ears. Unconsciously he began whistling the "March of the Palio." It made Babbo and all the other men work better, happier.
The months of winter passed, not in days and weeks, but in developing Gaudenzia's wind and stamina. When Giorgio came home each night, mud-spattered and hungry, his mother reheated the soup and stood by as he drank it. One night when his hair was wet with snow, and his jacket sagging and sopping, she cried, "Giorgio, Giorgio, Giorgio, why can't you let up?"
The boy stopped eating. "Mamma, I can't!" he said firmly. "Have you forgot the Palio? Three times around Il Campo is four and a half kilometers. She must go the whole way and still be strong at the finish!"
By March she was galloping three kilometers.
On the fifteenth of May, Giorgio walked her to nearby Casole d'Elsa and entered her in a race on a straightaway course. She flew ahead at the start, and with no sign of difficulty, led all the way. It was a stunning triumph for the mare and her young trainer.
The whole family took a long time deciding where to hang the little red-and-white flag she won. Teria chose the spot. "Here," she said, "beside the cupboard. On this wall the sun comes just before setting."
Often, when no one was looking, Giorgio ran his fingertips over the painting of the white mare on the red silk. Was this the work of a soothsayer? He read the artist's name in the turf beneath her flying hoofs. How did the man know that a white mare would win, and so picture her instead of a black, or a bay? And under the date of the race was painted a golden crown bright with jewels. Had the oracle spoken to the artist, too? Or had he seen a boy flying in the night on a white phantom?
Once when Babbo caught Giorgio fingering the little humps of oil paint that made the jewels of the crown, he pulled the boy aside. "Jesters," he said, not wanting him to be hurt, "sometimes wear the crown like king and queen. Maybe that artist fellow, he dangles the carrot before Gaudenzia only to tease."
