Hunting Season: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

there’s another concern that gives me no rest,” the marchese resumed, the offense forgotten. “And it’s this: what if, after all this effort, my wife ends up suckling another girl?”
    “Why, don’t you follow the Sciabarrà method?” the baron asked in astonishment.
    “No. What’s that?”
    “The Sciabarrà method—”
    “Is he a doctor?”
    “A doctor? Sciabarrà? No, he’s the comptroller of the regional government. But he has eight sons with cocks between their legs. Isn’t that enough? At any rate, I got my two boys using his method. So, to be sure to have a son, you have to fast for an entire day, walk twelve miles in the evening, and then have sexual relations immediately afterwards.”
    The marchese did not seem very enthusiastic about the idea.
    “But is it certain?”
    “It’s guaranteed. Look at Totò Cumbo. After three girls, he practiced the Sciabarrà method and had a son.”
    After strict application of the method for one month, the marchese fainted in the town square one day. He suddenly collapsed when racing back to his palazzo after his daily twelve miles, trousers and shoes covered with mud because the heavens had opened the floodgates that day. Unable to explain the marchese’s sudden deterioration, Dr. Smecca prescribed tonic treatments and a month in bed. Donna Matilde immediately took advantage of this, changing room and bed with the excuse of not wanting to disturb her husband, and thus was able finally to shut her eyes as well as other parts of her body.
    “I’m wasting time,” Don Filippo said to his friend Uccello, who had come to see him. “I feel like a hunter tangled in the underbrush, watching the rabbit run away.”
    The baron smiled and gave him a mysterious look.
    “Don’t despair,” he said. “I have a wonderful idea. Trust me.”
    Three days later Barone Uccello paid him a visit with a parcel under his arm, eyes twinkling with contentment. Making certain no one would come and disturb them in the marchese’s room, he set about delicately opening it. Out came a great big cucumber the length of a forearm and firm, clearly the product of hybridization, since grafted at one end were two peaches as big as the knobs at the head of a bed. The marchese looked dumbfounded at the enormous vegetal phallus.
    “I paid a call on Santo La Matina. I described your situation to him. He didn’t want to hear about it, said it’s wrong to go against nature. I threw myself at his feet, and in the end he was moved to pity. And here’s the solution.”
    The marchese felt more and more confused.
    “Am I supposed to use that thing? It’s not going to be easy to convince my wife.”
    “What kind of ideas are you getting in your head? You’re supposed to gobble this up. Without removing the skin, you are to cut it into slices and soak them in a mug of red wine. Then you must eat the cucumber and peaches at the crack of dawn on the first day of the second lunar quarter, which will be in one week’s time. Do you follow?”
    “Will that be enough?”
    “Let me finish.”
    He slipped his hand back into the parcel and pulled out a tiny envelope, which he opened with great care. Inside were two seeds that looked like they came from a watermelon, blackish and dried up.
    “Now, you are to swallow these seeds with a bit of water before having relations.”
    “And you think it will work?”
    “It’s guaranteed to work.”
    “But you also said the Sciabarrà method was guaranteed.”
    “Well, you can forget about that now.”
    It worked. Exactly nine months later, Federico Maria Santo Peluso di Torre Venerina came into the world to the tearful joy of the marchese and the genuine delight of Donna Matilde, who knew the nightmare of her nightly persecution was over. The third name given the newborn, Santo, was clearly a token of thanks from the marchese to La Matina for the pharmacist’s gardening wizardry. Equally clear was the fact that the baby, with his melon-like head, potato