The Cart Horse of Casalino
The Sunday train inched its way along toward the Maremma. Instead of Accelerato it should be called the tortoise, Giorgio thought. He paced up and down the aisle. He leaned out the window, waving at peasants working in the fields even on a Sunday. He ate his lunch—thick slices of ham with white bread, and an orange. He took off his jacket and shadowboxed with a fat little boy.
At Sant' Angelo he changed to an autobus and finally, toward noon, arrived at the crossroads of Casalino.
It was one of those freakish days in late spring when the air seems to belong to July. The sun brassy hot, the wind at a standstill. No one was anywhere in sight except a carter, a big loutish fellow with an ear trumpet hanging on a string around his neck.
"Hey, boy," the man called out. "For two hundred lire I carry you ... wherever."
Giorgio felt of the two hundred lire in his pocket. Did the man sitting in that rickety old cart have X-ray eyes to make up for his bad ears?
"No, no, thank you," Giorgio replied. "Only a few kilometers I must walk." He started to explain where he was going, and perhaps if the driver seemed friendly he might even confide that the two hundred lire had been saved for a special sugar bowl in a special cupboard in a special house in Monticello. But he stopped short as his eye fell upon the mare hitched to the cart. She had something of the look of his Imperiale, only finer-boned and more Arab. She was a gray, flecked with brown, but too thin by far and her coat dry and harsh.
He wondered if it was the way she jibbed her head and nervously pawed the earth, or just the general look of her that put him in mind of Imperiale. Or was it the wide-set eyes, so dark and smoldering?
"Excuse," he said, stepping up close to the man and mouthing his words slowly, "but the mare—is she by Sans Souci?"
"Eh?" The driver adjusted his ear trumpet, cocking his head in puzzlement. "Eh?"
"I say, is she by Sans Souci?"
"Si, si. She for sale."
"I don't want to buy her. I only ask...."
"Nobody want to buy her. She spring like cat, kick like kangaroo, chip wood like woodpecker." He started to goad her with the whip; then, as her ears laced back, he changed his mind. He turned to the boy abruptly. "Who are you?" he asked.
"I am Giorgio Terni."
The slit mouth widened in a grin. "O—o—oh, you're Tullio Terni's boy, the little runt of Monticello. For you I cut my price; for one hundred lire I carry you to door of house."
Giorgio smiled his thanks and turned away. He set off down the road, twice looking over his shoulder at the fine Arab head with the small ears pricked against the sky. He thought he heard a nervous whinny, but it might have been the breeze in the poplars.
He strode to Monticello as if there were springs inside him. Along the way people welcomed him, called him by name. "Hi, Giorgio, how is it being a city fellow?"
But the real welcome came within the encompassing walls of home. To his family he was already a hero. They fluttered about him, taking off his jacket, pouring him coffee, peppering him with questions.
"How do they treat you? Do you get nice white bread with your meals, and is the spaghetti cooked done? Do you get used to those noisy streets?" This was Mamma talking.
"Do you like Anna more than me?" This was Teria.
"Did you bring me something? A calf vest, maybe? Is the bump still on Signor Ramalli's forehead?" This was Emilio.
And at long last, from Babbo, the question Giorgio wanted first: "How do you get along with the training of the horses? Tell us all about."
"We—ll—ll," Giorgio answered importantly, "I have four horses in my stable. I get along pretty well. Of course, there are some difficulties. First I have Ambra. She is fine, but has strong dislike for bridling. Then I have Lubiana, who is fine too, but sometimes stubborn like mule. And Dorina, she is awkward in changing gaits."
He saved the best until last. "And I have Imperiale. He is Arab, and he flies!" He turned his chair to face his father. "Now it is I who ask. Babbo! I saw today at Casalino a mare, gray and lightly specked with brown. She is poor and thin, and she pulls a miserable cart with traces and harness held together by rope. But she looks to be one of San Souci's get."
"She is!" exclaimed the father.
Giorgio's heart was a hammer. He could hardly wait to tell Signor Ramalli that now he was a real horseman. His questions came fast.
"How old is she?
"From where does she come?
"Why is she not racing instead of pulling the cart?
"Has she colts?"
The father scraped his chair away from the table. He reached for the stool in front of the cupboard and propped his stockinged feet on it. He loosened his belt and gave a happy grunt. It was good to have man-talk in the house again!
"That poor mare," he began, folding his hands across his stomach, "is sold for convenience from one to the other. She has the nervous tic, so that forever she is biting—on wood, on anything. And her throat...."
"I know, Babbo. It makes the throat swell."
The father nodded, proud of his son's knowledge. "Men beat her, thinking it will stop the biting, but it only gets worse. Now she is good just for carting things from here to there."
Teria interrupted to place before Giorgio a slice of ham and an onion, and the mother brought out a whole loaf of white bread, newly baked and still warm.
"Do you want the crust, Giorgio, or just a thin slice?"
"The crust as always, Mamma, if you please."
"Emilio!" commanded the father. "Your brother cannot eat without a good glass of wine."
Fearful of missing a word, Emilio flew to the grotto of a cellar behind the front steps and returned breathless with a dusty old flask.
Giorgio was busy scooping out a little hollow in the crust with the point of his knife.
"What you doing, Giorgio?" asked the father. "You not eating the ham?"
"No, thank you," he said, noticing how little was left. "I am just hungry to taste again our onions cut up in the crust with vinegar and salt, and maybe some capers, if we have...."
The capers appeared as if by magic from Teria's hand.
Between bites, Giorgio interrupted the silence which surrounded him. "But why," he asked of Babbo, "do they sell that mare from one to the other? Is it the nervous tic?"
The father pursed his lips, thinking.
"That can be controlled," Giorgio added quickly. "The great Sans Souci had it, and my Imperiale has it, too. Is it only because of that?"
"No." The father paused.
"What, then?"
"Well, you can't believe it, but ill luck trails her like smoke from fire. Already she has four colts of no account."
"Four!"
The father nodded. "The first time she got twins, but they died before lifting their heads above the straw."
"And then?"
"Next time her colt is crippled in foaling and has to be put down."
Giorgio stopped eating and sat silent. After a moment he said, "And the fourth colt? Dead, too?"
"No. Not him. He will make big stout plow horse when he is grown. He is no more like Farfalla than bull is like deer."
The mother, who had been listening all this while, now plucked at Giorgio's sleeve. "Farfalla is the one...." she whispered softly. "She is the one born in Magliano Toscano on the day Bianca...."
Giorgio felt the hairs on his skin prickle. So this Arab mare, fastened with ropes to the traces of a shabby cart, was Bianca's successor! He nodded and smiled wistfully in remembrance.
The next morning Giorgio was back at work in Siena, happier and more content there. And for the first time he felt encouraged that Dorina and Imperiale might be ready for the July Palio. As he schooled the well-bred gelding, teaching him to make smaller and ever smaller turns, his mind flew back to the cart horse of Casalino. Clear as a vignette he saw her jibbing her head against the sky.
"It would be a miracle from God," he thought to himself, "to harness that wildness, to calm the frightened soul."
