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Prelude
It
hung in the air over the region that summer, like a cloud, rendering the air
thick and pearly. Suspended
spangles of gold dust caught the sun and twinkled, causing a pang of longing.
Cloying and rose-colored. A
perfumed ectoplasm.
‘Gardenias’,
‘freesias’, ‘sweet peas’, ‘apple blossom’, said the garden lovers,
their noses straining to put a label on it.
‘Fresh
cream’, ‘molten chocolate’, ‘baking bread’, ‘ripe melons’,
‘wild strawberries’, said the gourmands, their mouths watering.
‘Lust’,
said the moralists applying pegs to their noses.
‘A
saintly emanation’, said the sisters of the monastery of Sant’Antonio
Abate, giving praise in a special mass officiated over by the bishop.
‘Drains’,
wrote the municipal inspector of environmental health with a flourish on his
clipboard.
‘Fog’,
said the meteorologists.
‘Fresh
air’, said the purists.
‘Death’,
said the pessimists.
‘Hogwash’,
said the intellectuals.
‘Cholera’,
said the medics.
Yet
it was none of those things. It
was ardour, and those that inhaled it, myself included, were stricken.
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