Roberto kisses the bride, holding his blackened hands behind his back so as not to dirty her dress.
Everyone at the table in the orchard sits down to eat. With the meat they will drink the dark wine of Barolo. The guests start to touch each other more often, the jokes pass quicker. When somebody forgets, somebody else remembers for him or her. They hold hands when they laugh. Some take off things they were wearing before — a tie, a scarf, a jacket, a pair of sandals which have become too tight. The cutlets on the board demand to be picked up and stripped clean with the teeth. Everybody shares.
The wedding guests are becoming a single animal who has fed well. A strange creature to find in a widow’s orchard, a creature half mythical, like a satyr with thirty heads or more. Probably as old as man’s discovery of fire, this creature never lives more than a day or two and is only reborn when there’s something more to celebrate. Which is why feasts are rare. For those who become the creature, it’s important to find a name to which it answers whilst alive, for only then can they recall, in their memory afterwards, how, for a while, they lost themselves in its happiness.
Luca will fetch the wedding cake from his van. It has five tiers and is decorated with sprays of orange blossom in icings of three colours. Written in moon-silver on the topmost face is the name: GINON.
Only five letters, he says, and you’re both there! I suddenly saw it when I finished doing the flowers. Do you know what I’m going to do, Mimi? I said. I’m going to write GINON. The two of you in one!
And this becomes forever the name of the thirty-headed creature in the orchard.
Ninon will offer a slice of the cake to everyone who has come to the wedding, offer it herself. They will make a wish, they will remember, they will relish the sweetness of it. On each piece there are sugared petals of orange blossom.
She carries the plate high against her bosom. Before each guest she stops, says nothing, smiles and lowers her eyelids with their long lashes so that the guest has the impression the bride has inclined her head. Behind the plate she is holding, the white buttons of the bodice of her dress tug in their little nooses of white cotton. The top three have come undone.
The thirty braids on her head, which bob up and down and gyrate as she walks, have taken so much patience and time to plait that she proposes to let Gino only undo one a night after they are married. Each night they will choose which little lock.
On her left hand she is wearing the turtle ring from Africa, and today the turtle is coming home, swimming towards her, his head pointing to her wrist. On her right hand is the wedding ring which has never been worn, which Gino slipped on to her finger five hours ago, and which she will die with on her hand.
Gradually everyone stops talking as they watch her. Her gait is so light and at the same time so solemn.
I’m leaving you, the poetess Anyte said, I’m leaving you, across my eyes death draws his black scarf, it is dark where I’m going.
The kids come out of school. Several tear across the square to look down into the orchard.
They’re still at it!
The bride has taken off her thingamajig! See him — the one there on the grass — he’s drunk.
At weddings there’s always people who go drunk, they wait for the excuse, my mum says.
When I get married I’m going to—
What’s she doing?
When you get married! First you have to find a boy big enough—
She’s waving to us.
She’s telling us to come down.
They tumble down the bank, yelling and laughing. When Ninon approaches them with the plate, they become a little shy. They take a piece — yet are not sure whether to eat it now or keep it for later.
Eat! orders Federico, it’s the best you’ll taste in your lifetime.
Chico, who is twelve and the son of the Fiat garage man, stares at her so intently that he forgets to lift his hand and take a slice.
What, his eyes are asking, what is she underneath? He has never been so close to a bride before. What is she underneath? Is she the same every day? She is already half undressed. Or is she different, never the same twice? He knows how they fuck, there is nothing mysterious, he has seen enough strip cartoons, but she’s so small, she’s scarcely bigger than him and the mystery is on her skin, it shines and comes from her legs and her body and her face and her strange hair and the million things she can do with them. It shines and glistens and has a temperature and a smell and all the time it changes with the expression of her eyes and with what her fingers are touching when they touch. To the man she marries she is going to give something. If he shuts his eyes he can guess what. It’s not what you feel with the girls, when you put your finger there. If he shuts his eyes, he can guess. She’s going to give him a secret which is the bride. All the soldiers know every bride is the same. Minas dressed up, about to give their secrets to men in the big marriage beds. The thing is, each secret is a secret which nobody can guess with their eyes open. So it goes on. All of her is the secret and the secret is sweet and warm, with nothing between grazing, nothing keeping them apart and everything underneath helping. Pure like orange flowers, the bride’s secret, tasting of sugar. In the tree underneath the dress, which is undone, a little bird is telling what?
What’s your name? Ninon asks him.
Chico.
Don’t you want a piece of my wedding cake, Chico?
It is the hottest time of day. Even the butterflies perched on poppies on the bank of the dyke flutter more slowly. Scoto who sells watermelons goes to fetch some jugs of iced tea from one of the vans. Gino has found a hose with which he is filling a red plastic bath with cold water. Some kids are already plunging their heads in and shaking the water from their hair.
When Ninon passes on her way to the house, her skirt gets soaked and on her legs she feels a pattern of coolness where the lace holes of her stockings have let the water through.
In the bedroom which last night was hers, she dabs on to the back of her neck some of the perfume her father gave her. Saba. Where they will sleep tonight she doesn’t know. Gino says it’s a secret. Perhaps they don’t have to sleep …
Zdena has followed her daughter into the house.
Lie down for ten minutes, my little one, says Zdena, who has come into the room. You mustn’t get tired.
They’re honking! The musicians are coming. Ninon hums the tune: Last Friday Drives Monday Crazy. They’re as wild as Gino, she says. Drives Monday crazy …
Don’t tire yourself out, says Zdena, there’s all night still to come, dear. Lie down for ten minutes.
Tired! Today I’m tireless. I could do more today than you’ve done in all your lifetime, Mother.
That’s true.
You didn’t even marry, did you? Not even when you left and went back. Perhaps you will one day, Maman. I wish that for you. A passionate man with big shoulders whom you don’t know … and one day you’ll tell him about your daughter Ninon and her wedding in this house and the banquet in the orchard.
Zdena can’t stop the tears coming into the corners of her eyes.
Take some of Papa’s perfume. Ninon holds out the flask to her mother. Saba it’s called. Ninon is alive, you can see that. This morning Ninon was married, you can see that. Don’t talk about Ninon being tired.
A lorry will draw up by the plane tree in the square. Five men will climb out with long hair and sleeves with fringes. They seem too tired to walk or talk. Two lean against the lorry, one lies on the bench by the bus stop and the other two look up at the sky. Perhaps they are waiting for their own music to remind them of why they promised to come to play in this godforsaken square.