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."
CHAPTER XIII
The Goddess Fortuna
Time in Siena is reckoned by the Palio. Trips, even important ones, are postponed until after a Palio, or made hurriedly before. In the family Bible, births and deaths are often recorded by it; this person was born on the eve of the Palio of July, 1939; that one died during the August Palio of 1880.
Giorgio, too, began counting time by the Palio. In between, he felt himself in a vacuum. There seemed no real stuff and substance to living. He remembered an incident when he was a small boy. He was watching a veterinarian standing over a sick horse, and the man had said, "This beast I do not pronounce dead; it exists in a state of suspended animation." Then with a long needle the doctor injected medicine into the horse's heart, and it began to breathe, and to live again. The Palio was a stimulant, just like that. Even the hopes dashed and the despair were easier to endure than the dull ticking of time between.
Signor Ramalli kept Giorgio on for the winter, but often on Sundays he was allowed to go to Monticello. At home one evening, with the cat purring on his shoulder and Emilio and Teria looking on, he started work on his statue of Farfalla. It was strange how he remembered everything about her, even to the length of her mane and tail. As he worked, he found himself putting a shapeless lump on her back. He pinched and pressed, adding clay here, taking it off there, until the lump began to take form.