Ardor Read Free Page A

himself and the plants. No. Animals felt it, too. The spiders in their spangled webs yearned for love and spun sonnets of a fragile and unbearable beauty, glazed with tears of dew. Scorpions in dark corners clipped their castanets in courtship, then curled up in pairs in discarded shoes, snug as bugs. The mice in the rafters scurried about gathering wisps of stolen cotton, torn paper, and bits of fluff and formed them into cozy nests from which they subsequently brought forth blind babies the size of peas. The humble newts in the waterspoutsung out in deep voices. The frogs and the toads joined in with them, and soon a chorus of magical croaking was filling the air. The music they made was so beautiful it made those that heard it weep and yearn for the life of an amphibian so they could unlock the secret of the song. Already the beady-eyed blackbirds were busily building their nests, watched slyly by the cuckoos, who were broadcasting the news, for those that didn’t already know it: spring had sprung. Deep in the oak woods, the wild boar grunted his serenade, while, in the sty, his domestic cousins spooned. Deer frolicked, hares chased. High up in the mountains the wolf howled his suit, and the shy brown bears hugged in their caves.
    Arcadio Carnabuci could not help but succumb to the rosy glow that wrapped itself around the region, and his loins hummed with a cruel expectation that in his lonely circumstances he could do little to fulfill. But he had faith in his love seeds, and in this fertile climate their promise would surely come to fruition.
    It was then that he sowed them. He picked the moment with care. In the watery sunlight, frail but willing. Under glass. To keep them warm. They were more beans than seeds. Pleasantly plump, and a palish pink in color. Little crescent moons. He could feel a tingling in the beans; like jumping beans, they possessed the same energy as everything else around him. He held them for a while in the palm of his hand, familiarizing himself with them, scrutinizing them through his half-moon glasses, behind which his eyes seemed enormous, and every pore andhair follicle was magnified a thousand times. Even the beans could feel the strength of his hope, and the plucky little creatures were determined not to disappoint him.
    He tucked them up under the soil, as though tucking his mistress into bed. They were invested with the weight of so many hopes and dreams, little trickles, squiggles of beauty, and longing, trailing ripples of excitement. His slow movements were a symphony. In his hands, the fleshy spades of a farmer, the beans knew they were safe. The pads of his fingers, broad but gentle, pressed upon them, and in the sudden darkness and peaty warmth they fell asleep.
    Then, like the blackbirds in the hedgerows, like the mice under the eaves, Arcadio Carnabuci began to feather his nest. His bachelor home boasted few comforts. The stains on the walls cried out to him. The sun-bleached curtains embarrassed him. He began to clean. He swept up the piles of dust with a broom that had itself grown dusty. He startled the mice by reaching into long-forgotten corners that had ceased to belong to him.
    After many years he finally relented and allowed Fedra Brini into the house to gather the cobwebs she needed for knitting her sails. She was the only sailmaker in this landlocked region, and her sails were sent to the shores of the Adriatic, where they were highly prized among the fishermen for their fineness and durability. She regularly stripped all the other houses in the district, and the cobwebs of Arcadio Carnabuci left unharvested for so long were magnificent, like something from a fairy tale.
    Fedra Brini was ecstatic, the spiders less so. The heritage of generations was lost in a few deft swipes of her pruning hook. Folklore, legend, the family tree inscribed in curly calligraphic script, works of great literature, love stories, poetry, mysteries, whodunits, even recipes and crossword