Benino: A Short Story on the Scarlet Delta of Cruelty
The dissolute life of an 18th century Neapolitan noblewoman
I was compelled to write this story to explore the depths of human cruelty and the potential for retribution, even in the most unexpected forms. I wanted to juxtapose the beauty of art and music with the darkness of a corrupted soul and examine the consequences of a life devoid of empathy.
Enjoy the reading.
“Benino”
Lady Elisabetta lay in the wooden tub, the lukewarm water caressing her skin. A wet drape clung to her body like a second skin, veiling the sinuous forms that hands had explored with languid memory just moments before. Hers was a dissolute life, devoted to the softness of pleasures, a constant search for new experiences that led her to cross the boundaries of common morality. While she reminisced with a shiver of pleasure about Fabrizio, the Marquis, his bold touch and the words whispered the night before, another memory, turbid and perverse, surfaced in her mind. Tonino, an effeminate boy, a castrato of very short stature, from a very poor family, whom she had seen at the Conservatory of the Poor of Jesus Christ (Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo).
A whim, a passing curiosity had driven her to adopt him for a few days. She remembered with annoyance the first hours, watching him feast at her table, inadequate to the luxury that surrounded him. Then, one evening, while she was bathing naked, enveloped by the dense smoke of an opium pipe – an exotic voluptuousness spreading among the ladies of Neapolitan high society – she had called him. With languid gestures, almost as if to ensnare him, she had made him touch her body, offering him a vision that had disturbed him. Then, with nonchalance, she had first used the pipe to deposit some ash on the edge of the tub, almost as if preparing the ground for the subsequent act, and immediately after, with an unexpected and brutal gesture, she had extinguished the still burning ember on the boy's head, as if he were an ashtray. An act of pure cruelty, performed with the same nonchalance with which one throws away a withered flower. The next day, Tonino had been taken back to the Conservatory, like any object, a broken toy.
The candles cast dramatic shadows on the peeling walls, creating a dense and sensual atmosphere, reminiscent of Ribera's canvases, with their violent contrasts of light and shadow, as if to emphasize the contrast between Elisabetta's body's beauty and her dark soul. It was in that moment of abandonment that it happened. First a subtle crackling, then a web of cracks spread across the frescoed ceiling. Elisabetta looked up, a premonition of danger running down her spine. Suddenly, a dull roar and a large portion of plaster gave way, opening a chasm in the room's sky.
From that black hole, as if vomited by an angry sky, the Benino began to rain down, the sleeping shepherds of the Neapolitan Nativity scene. Their faces, once carved in the naive bliss of those who ignore the mystery of the Nativity, now appeared fierce. The rain quickly became dense, a whirlwind of terracotta falling without pause, hitting Elisabetta's body with increasing violence. Some shattered on impact, others rolled away, but most remained afloat, rapidly transforming the tub into a sort of clay sepulchre. A scream of fear and horror tore through her throat as her body was struck, scratched, and wounded by the falling statuettes. Streams of blood opened on her skin, tracing a scarlet delta on the terracotta bodies.
Elisabetta began to laugh, a hysterical laugh that soon transformed into desperate crying, sobs that shook her body. Then desperation, an inner void that swallowed her. An inhuman scream escaped her lips, a cry that encompassed all the futility of her existence, a life spent in ephemeral pleasure and gratuitous cruelty. Then, suddenly, silence. She calmed down abruptly, eyes fixed upward, toward the chasm in the ceiling, metallic orbits, as if veiled with rust, fixed on that point of the profaned sky, as if seeking an answer in the void. It was then that a different Benino from the others, much larger, almost a statue, detached from the edge of the hole and plunged on her, violently striking her head. Then a violent sleep. And as the woman's body sank among the shards, a clear falsetto intoned the Allegro non-troppo from Nicola Porpora's "Three Solfeggi." Immobile and serene, the many faces of Benino seemed to enjoy the music.
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