Rejected
On his way to the trials the next morning Giorgio Terni heard the news, but it carried no weight with him. He was riding Dorina to the Piazza del Campo to present her before the august body of judges. As he drew rein at a busy corner, he saw the tall figure of the Chief-of-the-Guards and heard his deep voice ring out:
"Attenzione! Make way for the horse!"
Motorcycles, cars, pedestrians, all came to a sudden halt. As the boy guided Dorina across the street, the Chief walked alongside. "Giorgio!" he said confidingly, "Ramalli's horses now have greater chance for being chosen."
"Why, Signore?"
"Because Doctor Celli's mare is withdrawn."
"So?"
The Chief nodded. "She suffers severe with the colic. Now only fourteen horses remain in the trials."
Giorgio felt honored that the Chief had stopped traffic for him and had called him by name. But the news was in no way startling, for who was Doctor Celli and how could an unknown mare affect his chances?
When the judges accepted Dorina and Imperiale, too, in the trial races, Giorgio felt an inward satisfaction, yet he was not surprised. He had known all along they would be chosen. They were ready. They were sound. They were, as the judges agreed, "neither too fine-boned for the cobblestone track, nor too clumsy for the perils of the course."
But when Dorina was assigned to the Contrada of the Panther and Imperiale to the Giraffe, it came as a shock that neither one hired him as fantino.
"Did I not train these horses? Do I not know their ways? Why," he implored Signor Ramalli, "why did they not choose me?"
Out of kindness the man gave no real answer at all. He only shrugged and said, "Man's ways are strange, Giorgio, very strange." And to lessen the blow, he added, "Perhaps, months ago they hired their fantinos."
Little Anna, however, told the truth. On the morning of the Palio she came into the stable while Giorgio was solemnly mucking out the two empty stalls. "Poor unhappy Dorina and Imperiale," she said. "They must be homesick in the strange stables of their contradas. And maybe they will bolt when the new fantinos leap on their backs."
Giorgio flushed. Even this small girl felt pity for him, and took this way of showing it. He turned his back on her, but every fiber of him was listening.
She prattled on. "I think it most foolish of the Panthers and the Giraffes to choose riders from far away."
Giorgio wondered. Did she know the real reason? "Why did they?" he blurted.
Anna stood twisting her braids, almost afraid to say. "You promise not to tell Babbo if I tell you?"
"I promise," he quickly agreed.
"Well, then," she began importantly, "to our house came some visitors. You see, it is sad, and Babbo already is sad. So you must not sadden him more. You promise?"
"Twice now I promise."
"Well, one man says to Babbo, 'Giorgio is too young for Palio battle,' and the other says, 'Giorgio is not only young, he is puny. And his hands....'" Anna caught her lips between her teeth and hesitated.
"Go on! Go on!"
"They say, 'His hands are ... girl's hands. They cannot whack with the nerbo and hold the reins too.'"
Blood climbed hot in Giorgio's cheeks. "Girl's hands!" Was that it? He would show the Giraffe! He would show the Panther! He would show all the contradas! Because his hands were small, did this make them weak? Because he had less beard than other fantinos, did this make him green in the handling of horses? No! A thousand times no! Some boys are old before their time. "I was born old," he thought. He could never remember when he had not worked, nor when in the sweat of his work he had not dreamed of doing great things, of proving himself big for his size.
The day that was to have been all shining glory turned to ashes. In dull numbness Giorgio lived out the Palio of July second. As the sound of shields rattling and drums beating and battle cries came to him, he bridled Lubiana and rode far outside the city walls. She was not good enough for the Palio; neither was he. He rode for hours. He could almost have reached Monticello, but purposely he went the opposite way. How could he face the unasked questions of Mamma and Babbo? How could he face Emilio wearing a spennacchiera in his thatch of hair, daring his little friends to knock it off?
It was long past dark when he returned to the city. From within the walls he heard music coming toward him. The Wolves were chanting their victory song, loud in celebration.
Unable to bear the haunting sadness, he led Lubiana through the narrow side streets to her stable. Then, exhausted, he tip-toed to his room and fell across the bed. He lay there staring into the darkness, the din of the drums beating through his tired brain.
From that day on, Giorgio worked his string of horses with renewed dedication. It was the only way to hide his hurt. Men and children came in twos and threes to watch, then in knots of ten or more. He was hardly aware of them. He did not look to see if they were peasants or landowners, strangers or Sienese.
One early morning when he was working Imperiale, a new exercise boy came to Giorgio's favorite road to school his mare. He was really not a boy at all, but a small-headed, long-bodied weasel of a man, and he rode a tight rein.
Giorgio made a quick appraisal of the mare, and something within him snapped. His heart seemed to stop in its beating, then began to race wildly. The creature was an Arabian, her mantle a gleaming gray, flecked with brown. And her head was delicately shaped, with the muzzle small, and the eyes enormous and wide-set. There was no mistaking the eyes. He did not even need to think. She was, she had to be—Farfalla!
Unconsciously he slowed the pace of his mount. He thought: "She is like a piece of sculpture. Some day I will make a statue of her. And I will give it to our museum at school and there she will stand among my childish works."
All this he thought before he deigned to look at the groom who had bitted Farfalla too tightly. Should he tell the clumsy fellow you handle an Arabian differently from all others? That you ride with almost a slack rein? And the whip, does he not know it only makes creatures like her more nervous, sometimes even vicious? Where has she been since that Sunday morning at Casalino? Who owns her now? Is he kind or cruel?
Giorgio rode Imperiale alongside Farfalla, changing his pace to match hers. Then he rattled off his questions. Each one was met with glum and stolid silence.
At last the man nosed the air. "I got no time to talk to a boy with the slough of the Maremma all over him!" And he dragged out the word "boy" to put Giorgio in his place, and also to get rid of him. Then, digging his spurs into the mare's sides, he made a rude sign with his thumb, and galloped off.
Day after day the two schooled their mounts along the same road. Always the wizened groom kept his distance. It was almost as if he might be tainted by associating with someone from the Maremma. There were other roads about Siena, equally good, but the man and the boy seemed drawn to this one by some urge beyond their control, some sinister force egging them on to match their mounts and their wits.
One day the schooling gave way to a fist fight.
"Boy, go find yourself another road!" the man commanded.
And Giorgio leaned forward. "Why should I go?"
"Because you're a milksop; too sissy to fight!"
This was the spark that touched it off. Giorgio leaped from his mount, tied him to a sapling, caught the man's foot, swung him off Farfalla, and began punching with both fists.
The wiry groom ducked the blows, tossed Giorgio into the dirt, and would have trampled him mercilessly had not Farfalla taken this moment to fly past, her heels narrowly scraping the man's head. It was all the advantage Giorgio needed. He caught the groom off guard, sprang to his feet, and grasping the man's arms, he pinned them tight to his sides. The groom lowered his head, butting it against Giorgio's, and at the same time twisted his shoulders, trying to wrench free. But Giorgio held fast, his arms locked tight around the lean body.
"Look!" the groom cried in mock alarm. "Farfalla escapes!"
Giorgio turned. The two animals were quietly eating the leaves of the sapling. After one well-planted blow, he freed the man in great disgust. "Get on your horse!" he cried, and watched the bowed legs scuttle off to mount Farfalla.
In this way the suspenseful days of July passed and the August Palio drew near. A week before, Imperiale developed a swelling on his left foreleg, had to be blistered, and was withdrawn from the race. But Dorina again passed the trials, and this time was assigned to the Contrada of the Porcupine. And again, no one from any contrada approached Giorgio to say, "Giorgio Terni, we earnestly desire you to be our fantino." And he could not use the reply he had rehearsed awake and asleep: "Signore, I am honored deeply to ride in the Palio for your contrada."
When the day of August the sixteenth came and the bell in the Mangia Tower began tolling, Giorgio forgot he was man-grown. With all his clothes on, even his high-laced country boots, he went to bed like a child and pulled the covers up over his head. But still he could hear the bell, sonorous and deep; could see the pageant unfold in his mind, telling the beads of history. The solemn tolling went on and on. And when he could stand the reverberations no longer, they suddenly stopped. The dead quiet that followed was even harder to bear. It meant the race was on! Giorgio saw it in all its wild and glorious beauty, heard the onlookers cheering, then roaring loud and louder until the noise filled his room. Drenched in sweat, he burrowed deeper into the covers. He wished he could suffocate and die. Unless he could be part of the Palio, he would rather be dead.
At last exhaustion took over and he fell into a jerking sleep. It was Signora Ramalli and Anna who wakened him, turning on the electric bulb. He flew out of bed, embarrassed to play the role of a sulky child.
"Giorgio," the Signora spoke in a mothering voice, "we come with the special things you like—macaroni and coffee for strength, and a good mocha torte to sweeten your bitterness." She set the tray on his table and pulled out his chair. Then she and Anna sat down on the chest to watch him eat.
Giorgio smiled his thanks. He picked up his fork and tried the macaroni, but it stuck in his throat. He tried the frosting of the torte, and to his relief it melted on his tongue.
"Better you were not there," Anna said. "Our Dorina was nearly last. Niduzza won for the Goose. But I thought a white mare, Farfalla, had won, so close were their heads."
Giorgio's spirits lifted. The cart horse of Casalino had nearly won!
"Babbo says the reason Dorina failed is not because there is weakness in her."
"Nor in her training," Signor Ramalli added, coming into the room. He sat on the edge of Giorgio's bed and sighed heavily. "By now you must know, son, that the agreements of the contradas beforehand play a vital role."
Giorgio put down his fork, listening.
"It will be enough for me to say that even the most unseasoned horse could win. Take any of the losers. Take Farfalla. In today's battle she may have been deliberately held back at the last moment. You must know," he repeated with all the force he could summon, "that sometimes there are secret arrangements between the captains of the contradas. The fantino is given orders. He has to lose, even when his heart cries out to win. There is no choice."
