The Three Acts
That evening when Giorgio returned to Siena, the undercurrent of the August Palio was running strong. The first act, the drawing of lots of the contradas, had already taken place, and the flags of the ten who would run were flying from the Palazzo Pubblico. As Giorgio stood in the Piazza looking, the torment in him began again. If only by some miracle the flag with the sea-shell were missing, then whichever contrada drew Gaudenzia would surely ask him to race her. But of course, the flag was there, as he knew it had to be, and he was bound irretrievably to Nicchio, the Shell.
Feeling trapped and helpless, he hurried at once to the stable to see how Gaudenzia had fared. She was always a surprise to him each time he saw her, always belonging to him more closely—the pricked ears listening, the dark eyes asking, the nostrils fluttering in a welcome that said more than any words.
"See!" he said quite out of breath, "I come presto, pronto, subito. For you, too, was this day endless like eternity?" He let the mare lip his shirtsleeve, not minding the warm wetness nor the greenish tint from the hay she'd been munching. "I got to tell you," he said soberly, "there is now only one chance in ten you will have me for fantino in the August Palio. If Nicchio does not draw you...." He turned away and grabbed a pitch-fork with both hands. The mare was already bedded for the night, but with slow, forceful motions he shook up and freshened the straw. Then he waited until she buckled her knees and lay down in contentment before he left her and went to his own bed.
The days until the Palio were cut to a pattern and moved on schedule. Seven days before, the workmen dumped cartloads of yellow-red earth and tamped it down on the track. Four days before, carpenters put up tier upon tier of seats in front of the palace buildings, and the chest-high railing to fence the spectators within the shell.
Three days before came the second big act of the Palio—the trials to determine which horses were strong and stout enough to negotiate the course. The day was clear, the air still fresh with morning. An expanding crowd was filling up the newly erected seats. There was no shrieking or yelling yet. The people were murmuring, waiting.
At the express wish of the Chief-of-the-Guards, Giorgio rode Gaudenzia in the trials. Again he held her in, and again she obeyed, acting almost sedate in her performance. Some of the new horses shied at the ropes, were afraid to enter between them, and some lurched and sprawled at the hairpin curves. And so the heats, in batteries of five, had to be run again and again until the judges were ready to make their decisions. Then behind closed doors the secret voting took place while the fantinos waited tensely in the court of the Palazzo and the crowd in the Piazza began chanting for the favorites:
"Give us U-gan-da!"
"Give us Gau-den-zia!"
"Give us Pin-noc-chio!"
At last a deputy stepped importantly into the courtyard with a page at heel like a well-trained dog. At a command from the deputy, the page took numbered discs from a box and fastened one on the cheekstrap of each of the ten horses chosen. At the moment he fastened the number 6 on Gaudenzia's bridle, a horseboy took hold of her reins. He almost had to pry Giorgio's hands loose. "Let go!" he said in annoyance. "Let go!"
Giorgio, with the other fantinos, was ordered into the Piazza. They stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the long table with the two urns on it. Three times he had witnessed this third act before the Palio—the assignment of the horses. Three times he had watched twin pageboys draw the wooden capsules from the urns. Three times he had watched the Mayor's hands tremble and the captains' faces pale.
And three times he had stood in this same strip of shade made by the Mangia Tower, with the ten grooms in front of him, waiting to lead away their charges in joy or sorrow, and behind him the anxious contradaioli, repeating the phrase he had grown to hate: "Fate is Queen of the Palio."
Like the Mayor himself, Giorgio was beginning to tremble. Not just his hands; he was shaking all over. Perspiration trickled freely down his back as the capsules were opened and the pairing began.
"Uganda to the Snail!"
The clamor was loud in Giorgio's ears, growing with each announcement.
"Dorina to the Panther!" Poor Dorina, he thought, always running, never winning.
"Gaudenzia to the Giraffe!"
"Rosella to Nicchio, the Shell!"
Giorgio had heard all he needed to hear. The capsules had sealed his doom. A horrified gasp broke from his throat. It was the same sound he had made when he hit the cobblestones with Turbolento.
The ritual of the assignment went on. But for Giorgio it was over. It was done.
He watched Rosella and Gaudenzia going off with their grooms, each surrounded by joyful contradaioli. The spectators, too, were melting away—going home, going into cafés, returning to work. The captains and the Mayor vanished into the communal hall. Only Giorgio and the pigeons were left. And in a silent semi-circle behind him three tall youths from Nicchio had taken up their positions as his bodyguards. He turned to them. In a daze he shook their hands, and in a daze smiled crookedly at their small talk. The pigeons, in their pigeon-toed gait, waddled around them. He envied the birds, earthbound one moment, soaring into sky the next. He reached into his pocket and scattered a few kernels of oats, and watched the airborne ones come in for a landing. One perched on his shoulder, eyeing him with a shiny shoe-button eye.
"Our fantino, he thinks he is St. Francis!" a guard laughed, not unkindly.
Giorgio remembered the time Emilio had said almost the same words, and suddenly he longed to be at home in the two little rooms in Monticello. Forlornly, he followed the guards to his new sleeping room in the quarters of Nicchio. He had half a mind to steal out tonight and go back to the Maremma, but if he did, it would be only his body that left.
The Captain of Nicchio, Signor de Santi, came later in the afternoon to see him. For a moment Giorgio felt a spear of hope. Perhaps Giraffa and Nicchio had exchanged fantinos, and the Captain had come with the news.
It was a cruel hope, dashed almost as it was born. Sensing the boy's unhappiness, the Captain said, "Son, you are a fantino, not a mere horseboy. On this mount, or that, you must win. Rosella is a big, rangy mare and she, too, has good possibilities."
Giorgio made no answer. Empty of feeling, he managed to live out the afternoon. Toward evening the Chief-of-the-Guards came to him. "It will be some comfort," he said, "for you to ride Gaudenzia tonight in the first Prova. Of course, you understand," he added, "it will be in this one only."
But it was no comfort at all. It was like digging at a wound so that it could bleed anew. He let Gaudenzia win the first Prova, lengths ahead of the others. No one had challenged her.
On the morning of the second day he rode the rangy Rosella. Captain de Santi gave his orders beforehand. "Make the getaway clear from the ropes, and the gallop light. In all the Provas, her strength and vigor must be preserved."
Time passed for Giorgio. The minutes and the hours flowed on, sunup to sundown, one Prova after another, and the pinch of pain spread until it was a dull, dull aching.
In the Prova Generale, on the afternoon of the third day, tension tightened among the fantinos. Each wanted to show his skill, to make certain of being selected for the Palio itself. In July, Giorgio had been tortured by the fear that his name would not be made official in the archives. Now it did not matter. Again he brought Rosella in safely, as his captain had ordered.
That evening, escorted by his bodyguard, he attended the great banquet in the hall of Nicchio. Wearing the little jacket and the striped trousers of the race, he sat at the head table, next to Captain de Santi. There was joy and hospitality all about him ... people eating their fill of chicken cacciatore and drinking the red wine from the grapes of Tuscany. He tried to be one of them, but he was silent as a nut in a shell, and the good food knotted in his throat. In his mind he saw Monsignor Tardini in the cool, shuttered room of the Vatican, and he saw the Umbrella Man sitting cross-legged at the fountain, and he saw Gaudenzia without wanting to see her.
When it came his turn to stand up and face the members of Nicchio, he did not fumble in his mind or in his pocketless jacket for any prepared speech. He just got up and stood quiet a while. Then, remembering his talk with the Monsignore, he said: "To Nicchio I will be loyal." It was as if another's voice were speaking for him as he went on, "And the orders of my Captain I will obey."
