La Forza del Destino, or, Arnie, the Camel of Death

by John M. Joyce (Aug. 2008)

Given the exigencies of getting to Inverburgh, and returning from the same, one tends to go shopping no more than once in a week and it was on my return journey from just such a trip that this story more properly begins.

It was, therefore, with some small degree of pleasurable anticipation that I walked round my motorcar and stood to her left in the warm, heather scented, autumn sunshine and waited for her to initiate conversation. She did not do so. Her entire attention remained focussed on what I now saw was a large black immobile slug sprawled across several blades of grass on the verge. Feeling that I and the wreckage of her motorbike were perhaps of greater import than a slug I politely cleared my throat to let her know that I was there.

After a minute or two of standing together in total silence gazing at the slug she plunged her right hand into a pocket and brought out a pair of pinking shears. In one swift movement she lowered the shears to a point just above the slug and closed the jaws with a distinctly audible snick, tick, click. There was also another sound behind the snicks, ticks and clicks: a sound almost exactly like the top E sound which rare old Murano glass makes as it shatters into a thousand pieces on the marble floor of the piano nobile of a Venetian palace.

I seized the initiative.

Then suddenly she looked up at me. There was no humour, no self-pity, no awareness of pun, in that look (no smile, either, which was very disappointing from my point of view), just an expression such as anyone would wear after stating a fact.

Like all men would, I thought that now might be a good time to try to retrieve the situation.

She laughed! Now many poets have compared the laughter of their adored ones to tinkling brooks, to the tintinnabulation of tiny silver bells, to strings of delicate seashells gently touching in a warm breeze on a romantic South Sea Island, and they may be correct, but my adored one, standing in front of me clad in black skin-tight leather, laughed a laugh which had a built in echo. She laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

I felt certain parts of me shrivel and make a spirited bid to retract to a pre-pubescent position of safety. Then she smiled at me again and looked me up and down in a way that very clearly let me know, on some subconscious level, that she liked what she saw.

Then a look of quite genuine regret crossed her beautiful face.

She laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

24 Hispano-Suiza 32 Convertiblesport 1. (Yes, I’m an Hispano-Suiza anorak – live with it! There are worse things to be.) I raced to the front of my motorcar and there, sure enough and hanging off the bumper, was a large black leather handbag. I grabbed it and holding it out proudly in front of me, much as my cavemen ancestors must have returned to their ladies with their kills, I stepped proudly across to her and proffered said bag.

Idiot I might be, but I know how to eat!

My heart, etc, etc, etc.

She patted her black velvet handbag!

She was, still is, a vision of loveliness. That night she wore a long gown of shimmering black silk, what other colour would you expect, with a fine lace trimming in the darkest, deepest red which you could possibly imagine. A black shear-lace mantilla worn over a midnight-black comb of jet set off her magnificent, coal-black, glowing hair. Around her neck she wore seven strands of magnificent Black Tahitian Pearls which complemented, to perfection, the creamy complexion of her perfect skin. I gasped at her beauty.

***

Later, much later, as the candles guttered in their sockets, I kissed her.

I was only too happy to oblige.

***

We overslept.

Over a hurried, but wonderful, breakfast, I asked her what her day held.

We smiled at each other, with each other.

***

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