Hunting Season: A Novel (5 page)

He kissed Carmelina again and, feeling he could not hold out much longer, he called out the farmer’s name, to see if he was around. There was no reply; the coast was clear. And so, almost by force, he dragged her into the straw hut, took off his clothes, and lay down on the ground, naked. With patience and devotion, Carmelina began to lick his body. A few moments later, realizing he was about to explode like a wild cucumber and scatter his seed all around, Carmelina turned her back to him and waited to feel the weight of her man on her body.

As soon as he entered the woods, still sweaty from lovemaking, Rico began to recite the litany:
Clavaria pistillaris, Elvella mitrata, Morchella esculenta, Amanita caesarea
 . . . These were the scientific names of the mushrooms he had learned by heart by studying over and over the plates in Marsigli’s
De generatione fungorum
, a 1714 book he had bought from a friend for a small fortune. The litany was an enhancement, an evocative foretaste of the real pleasure of the mushroom he would soon savor. Once he was inside and had a look around, he came to an abrupt halt. In the middle of a dense thicket of brambles, he thought he saw the pale, bald head of an infant a few months old with its eyes torn out. The rest of the little body was not visible. Rico shuddered in fear, and was immediately tempted to run away. But he summoned his courage and began to draw near, back bent, one slow step at a time, hunching over as if to avoid a blow. When he was at arm’s length and could see more clearly, he sighed in relief and let out a deafening bleat: what he had seen was an enormous mushroom, by far the biggest he had ever seen. Overcome with excitement, he reached down, armed with the little sickle, paying no mind to the thorns shredding his palm and the back of his hand.

Carmelina became worried when Rico was late returning. Night was falling, and she knew that he didn’t like to walk at night. Even his horse, tied to a tree trunk, was getting restless. No longer able to contain her anxiety, Carmelina started running towards the woods. She only had to go in a short way: Rico was leaning against a tree, eyes closed, spittle dripping out of his mouth, not responding to the sound of her voice desperately calling him. And it was those same cries that made the farmhand come running.

“Bloody Jesus Christ!” Bonocore cursed and, perhaps to unburden himself of the fright he felt at the sight of Rico, who looked already dead, he dealt the howling Carmelina a powerful kick. But the nanny goat didn’t budge an inch.

For two hours Donna Matilde had been wailing like Mary at the foot of the cross, hopping around next to the bed on which Rico lay dying.

“They killed him! They shot my son!”

In vain ’Ntontò tried to stop her, in vain she told her it had not been a murder, that it had only been a misfortune. To no avail. At most, Donna Matilde would utter a variant, in a voice so shrill that the horses in the stables answered back.

“They cut him down with shotguns!”

The marchese looked glumly on, motionless as a statue, as Dr. Smecca and the pharmacist La Matina, summoned for consultation, busied themselves with the moribund Rico, but at a certain point he sprang to his feet from the little sofa on which he had been sitting beside his friend Uccello, and, in a very calm tone that contrasted with the violence with which he had stood up, called his wife.

“Come here, you silly goose.”

The woman approached, trembling all over.

“Either you pipe down,” he continued, “or I’m going to start kicking you.”

Donna Matilde withdrew to a corner, whimpering softly.

“You have to forgive her, poor woman,” said Barone Uccello, adding, at precisely the wrong moment: “Just think of all she had to put up with to conceive him.”

The marchese looked at him thoughtfully.

“Barone, would you do me a most welcome favor?”

“By all means,” said the other, leaping to his feet.

“Would you please get the hell out of here?”

Now the Baron Uccello was a good, kind man, but he also had a knack for kicking up a row in any circumstance—even such as the present one, in front of a dying man.

“No one has ever told me to get the hell out of anywhere, you know.”

“Well, now you know what it’s like.”

They were interrupted by Fofò La Matina.

“Could I have your attention, please?” He looked over at Dr. Smecca, who was on the other side of the bed, and continued: “The doctor is right. It is a clear case of mushroom poisoning. Don Rico must have mistaken an
Amanita virosa
, which is lethal and grows in abundance in those parts, with
Agaricus silvaticus
, which is edible. A tragic mistake.”

Donna Matilde’s cry startled them all, including Rico, who opened his eyes for a moment then closed them again.

“No! My son was a god of mushrooms! He would never have made a mistake! He was shot! With pistols!”

Federico Maria Santo Peluso di Torre Venerina, heir to the title, did not make it to midnight. He breathed his last at 11:59, practically choking on the Viaticum the choleric Father Macaluso had forced into his mouth, leaving Rico no longer able to swallow with the wafer stuck between his palate and throat. But he was going to die one way or another.

The day after the funeral, the marchese disappeared after informing Barone Uccello:

“My good man, I’m in need of some distraction, to cheer myself up. I’m going to go and spend some time on my lands. I don’t enjoy sitting down at table with my family anymore.”

“Have they done something to upset you?”

“Nothing at all. You see,
carissimo
, when my father jumped into the sea for reasons known only to him—”

“What do you mean, for reasons known only to him? He was ninety years old, had been glued to a chair for ten, depending on others—if I may say so—to clean his bottom . . .”

“So what? My father would have enjoyed life anyway, to the last drop, even with his arms and legs cut off and stuck inside a pot of parsley. Forget about it. No, I’m not going back home, and I’ll tell you why. When my father killed himself, I put on a black tie and a black armband a foot long. Since Rico died, we’re all dressed in black and are in deep mourning. Even the servants wear black. Yesterday evening, at the dinner table, we looked like a flock of crows being served by crows. I need a change of scene for a little while,
carissimo
.”

The marchese made a first, brief stop at Bonocore’s house.

“I want you to tell me, in minute detail, exactly what happened.”

“Your excellency must know that on that same accursed day I had to go to Sant’Agata to buy seeds. I returned at nightfall, but didn’t know that your son had come here. I only realized it when I saw his horse tied to a tree. And as I was breaking in my she-mule I heard Carmelina—”

“Who is Carmelina?”

“That goat who’s looking at us over there. She was screaming like hell, an’ I thought she got lost in the woods or some animal’d bit her. So I ran out to look for her and found ’er next to your son. It looked like Don Rico’d managed to drag himself out of the woods and crawl towards my house, but ’e didn’t quite make it. ’E was leaning against a tree and ’d thrown up and shat ’is pants, with all due respect. So I picked ’im up an’ put ’im on ’is ’orse and brought ’im into town. I lost some time when the goat kept following after me, acting like she was crazy, and I had to turn back and lock ’er inside the straw hut.”

He paused.

“’Cause your excellency should know that Carmelina . . .”

He stopped.

“. . . that Carmelina and Don Rico were in love.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes.”

Silence fell. The marchese then cut a slice of bread from the loaf he had in his haversack and walked up to Carmelina. The animal stood still, waiting until the marchese was three steps away before preparing to sidestep.

“There’s a good girl,” said Don Filippo, crouching and tossing the bread to the goat. “I only wanted to thank you for bringing a little happiness to my son.”

He stood up, returned to Bonocore, took his wallet out of his jacket, extracted some bills, and held them out to the farmhand. Bonocore felt faint; he had never seen so much money.

“Make her a nice house—for Carmelina, that is. One with a roof. And buy the best food you can for her.”

“For the goat?!”

“No, not ‘for the goat,’ as you put it. No. For Carmelina, my son’s beloved.”

Bonocore felt like laughing, but he held himself back when he saw the look in his master’s eyes.

“And if, when I come back, I find you haven’t done what I asked, I’ll give you such a thrashing I’ll leave you for dead in a ravine somewhere.”

Bonocore realized it was no time for joking.

“I swear on my life,” he said, putting his right hand over his heart. “She’ll be treated like a queen.”