Hunting Season: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

the sake of appearances and personal honor by the father, who would have preferred a son), Donna Matilde believed that her obligations as woman and mother had been fulfilled. Great, therefore, was her surprise when, the first night back in her bed, just after putting out the lamp, her husband came looking for her and thereafter persisted in trying to attain his goal, despite the fact that she complained of a wandering pain that would migrate, on a whim, sometimes towards her belly, sometimes towards her head.
    One night, already mauled by three endless penetrations about an hour apart, the marchesa had just drifted off to sleep on her side when, at the toll of the bell calling worshipers to the day’s first Mass, she felt her husband’s hands grab her yet again. And in the twinkling of an eye she found herself facedown with her legs spread. It was, for the marchesa, the most comfortable position, one which allowed her to doze for some ten minutes while her spouse labored and sweated behind her. This time, however, the marchesa remained awake and, indeed, spoke out. The upshot was that the sound of her voice paralyzed her husband in astonishment, given that, according to the teachings of the late Father Carnazza, who had joined them in holy matrimony, relations between man and wife must take place in strict silence—with the only allowance being made for the utterance, on the woman’s part, of a short prayer suited for the occasion, but in a soft voice, as though sighing.
    “Why?” Donna Matilde asked bluntly, raising her cheek slightly from the pillow.
    “Why what?” the marchese asked back, panting but continuing to impale her firmly.
    “Why are you doing what you’re doing?”
    A bull, when asked this sort of question, would have become confused and let everything drop. But the marchese was made of iron ore.
    “Because I want you to give me a son,” he said and resumed riding her.
    The attempt to impregnate the marchesa went on for almost two years, and Donna Matilde began seriously considering retiring to the convent of Santa Maria di Cupertino, lost in the Madonie Mountains, where it was said that no man had ever set foot beyond the entrance gate.
    “Of course not, because the men come and go through the windows,” quipped Barone Uccello, an unbeliever and, on this occasion, an important advisor to the marchese concerning the manner most suitable for conceiving the heir to the house of Peluso di Torre Venerina.
    “Have you tried the position the Germans call ‘the dancing bear’?”
    “Yes. Nothing.”
    “How about the one the Arabs call ‘the serpentine’?”
    “That too. No dice. You see, carissimo , I am convinced that success in this matter has nothing whatsoever to do with the position or the day or the sun or the moon. There has to be another reason. Nor can it be a case of what Dr. Smecca calls impotentia generandi , since I’ve already had a daughter.”
    At these words Barone Uccello had a sudden flash, a suspicion that burst inside him like a shot in the silence of the night. He quickly buried its echo in the deepest recesses of his consciousness, but a vivid twinkle in his eyes sufficed to give him away. The marchese had already read the thought and its implications in his gaze as clearly as if it had been printed black on white.
    “If you ever get that look in your eyes again—and I know what it means,” said the marchese in a single breath, “I’ll shoot you on the spot. My wife is a virtuous woman. And I don’t even have any brothers.”
    In asserting he was an only son, Don Filippo was alluding to the well-known story of the Baron Ardigò, who, unable to conceive a son, and having ascertained that it was he, and not the baroness, who was sterile, had resorted to the “second barrel”—as hunters called it—that is, his younger brother, who rose to the task quite willingly and impregnated his pretty sister-in-law, whom he had long coveted, at the first go.
    “Actually,