Paradiso: Utterly gripping and emotional historical fiction (The Paradiso Novels Book 1)

by Francesca Scanacapra

  My father found Salvatore’s predicament very amusing.

  ‘That Bianca isn’t leaving much to the imagination,’ he said. ‘The way she sticks those huge great breasts right under your nose, she’ll have your eye out with her nipple if you’re not careful.’

  ‘I know, Don Luigi.’ Salvatore looked sheepish. ‘And the less I try to look, the closer they seem to get.’

  My father chuckled and patted his shoulder. ‘You’re a gentleman, Salvatore,’ he said.

  ‘Either that or a fool,’ Salvatore replied.

  For a time neither woman knew that she had a rival, but gossip travels between villages. People had noticed Rosalina’s walks with Salvatore and speculated on the possibility of a romance blossoming. The information had reached Bianca, who wasted no time in going to the market in Pieve Santa Clara to weigh up her adversary.

  As Salvatore had feared, the meeting was not a friendly one. Bianca appeared wearing a particularly low neckline and eyed her competitor with contempt. Rosalina gave a similar look in return. The animosity was palpable.

  Bianca leaned over a fruit stall, her shapely cleavage on show.

  ‘These are beautiful melons, don’t you think, Salvatore?’ she said, running her fingertips sensuously over a display of cantaloupes.

  ‘Yes. They’re excellent,’ Salvatore replied, swallowing hard.

  ‘I would imagine that they’re very sweet. Although of course it’s impossible to tell until you taste them.’ She kept her gaze fixed on Salvatore. ‘And right now, they’re fully in season,’ she purred.

  ‘But melons can be very disappointing,’ Rosalina retorted. ‘Over-ripe. Hollow inside. And eventually they turn to mush.’

  The hostile meeting in the market escalated the rivalry.

  In order to increase her chances Rosalina also began to walk back from church with Salvatore on Sundays. Her Sunday clothes were even more pristine than her ordinary clothes. As he did not have a barrow to push, she would link her arm through his.

  However, one Sunday they arrived back together later than usual. Salvatore was looking flustered and Rosalina was unusually dishevelled. Her skirt was creased and muddied and her hair had fallen loose. My aunt raised an eyebrow, but Salvatore quickly explained that there had been an unfortunate accident and Rosalina had fallen over. She had grazed her knee and her elbow. He asked my aunt whether she would mind bathing the wounds and treating both with a dab of iodine.

  It transpired that as they made their way towards Paradiso, Rosalina had surprised Salvatore by stopping suddenly and turning to invite a kiss, but Salvatore had not been paying attention. He had stumbled into her and knocked her into the ditch. The incident had left him mortified, but Rosalina was not deterred.

  Bianca also intensified her efforts. My father commented that if her décolletages got any lower, Salvatore would be able to see her navel.

  As neither woman was making any progress, they began to bring Salvatore gifts of food. He would arrive back from market with cakes, the little round flatbreads called crescentine, pots of pickles and jars of pesto.

  ‘At this rate you’ll never have to cook again, Salvatore,’ my father said.

  ‘Receiving gifts is an expensive business, Don Luigi,’ Salvatore complained. ‘I can’t possibly take what they give me and give nothing back.’

  He would give Rosalina and Bianca fruit and vegetables from Zia Mina’s stall in return, but as they were not officially his to give, he would have to pay my aunt for what he took.

  Eventually the two women concluded that their gifts of food were not doing the trick.

  Rosalina knitted Salvatore a red hat with a matching scarf so that he could be warm when he minded the market stall on chilly days. She said that the colour brought out his dark eyes.

  Not to be outdone, Bianca made him a cologne from rose water and geranium oil. She had insisted on dabbing it on his neck herself. My father said it made him smell like a tart’s handkerchief, but Salvatore wore it throughout the summer, stating that it was an excellent mosquito repellent.

  The situation had gone on for almost a year when one day, by chance, both women arrived at Paradiso unannounced and at precisely the same time. They approached from different directions and stopped simultaneously by the gate, where they eyed one another jealously as they asked for Salvatore.

  ‘He’s around here somewhere,’ my aunt said. ‘I saw him in the garden barely ten minutes ago, so he can’t be far.’

  She called for him repeatedly, but no answer came.

  When neither lady showed any inclination to leave, my aunt finally said to me, ‘Graziella, go and see if you can find Salvatore.’

  I searched the house, the garden, the barn, the outbuildings, every place he was likely to be and every place he was unlikely to be, calling his name as loudly as I could, but there was no sign of him. He had vanished into thin air.

  It was a full hour later, when my aunt had finally managed to convince Rosalina and Bianca to go on their way that I saw him peer down from the old hayloft. He had climbed up and pulled the ladder up behind him.

  ‘What are you doing there?’ I asked. ‘We’ve been looking for you.’

  ‘I know,’ he replied. ‘I was hiding.’

  ‘Hiding?’

  ‘I couldn’t go down there with both those women looking for me. It could have been carnage.’ He shuddered. ‘Are you sure they’ve gone?’

  ‘Yes. Zia Mina sent them away.’

  Salvatore gave a sigh of relief, re-positioned the ladder and climbed back down.

  ‘That was a close one,’ he said.

  ‘But why don’t you like them, Salvatore? They like you a lot.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, picking bits of hay from his hair. ‘It’s not that I don’t like them. I do like them. They’re both lovely women, each in their own special way, but I don’t feel anything beyond liking them. The thing is, when you’ve loved someone as I have, from the depths of your heart and your soul, and they’ve loved you back in the same way, anything else just seems like a pointless compromise.’

  He and I walked slowly to the door of the barn. Before we left, he added: ‘Maybe one day in the future, when I’m sitting all by myself as a lonely, childless old man I’ll think back and realise I’ve been an idiot, but when you’ve known real love, it’s like being used to eating migliaccio and strufoli, and then just being offered plain sponge cake.’ Seeing my incomprehension he explained, ‘Lemon cake with ricotta and honey balls. There’s nothing wrong with plain sponge cake, criatura. It’s delicious. But it’s not migliaccio or strufoli.’

  *

  The incident with the two women had made Salvatore very thoughtful. Later that same day, he asked me, ‘Have you heard of pizza, criatura?’

  I said that I had not.

  ‘It’s very common in Naples. It’s nothing more than flatbread, mozzarella cheese and tomato and anything else which is going spare. There are places in Naples which sell only pizza, by the slice if you want. People eat it in the streets. And I was thinking, if they can do it in Naples, why not here?’

  ‘Here in Pieve Santa Clara?’

  ‘I was thinking in Cremona. All those busy people would probably be thankful for a quick, hot meal. The thing is with pizza, even if you’re not hungry, the moment you smell it, oh, then you really want it! But it needs to be cooked in a proper wood oven. It’s just not the same if you cook it in a stove.’

  Salvatore’s words drifted into Neapolitan. He was talking more to himself than to me. The incident with Bianca and Rosalina seemed entirely forgotten. Later that day I found him with my father in the laundry room.

  ‘We have one good back and three good hands between us, Don Luigi. We should be able to lay a few bricks,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not as easy as that, Salvatore. We’d have to build a platform for your oven. And a proper flue. And building a domed structure is quite a process. We’d have to make up a profile - a supporting structure made of wood.’

  Sa
lvatore scratched his chin. ‘Could we not ask Don Pozzetti to help us?’

  Shortly afterwards, Pozzetti also joined them. The three men stood deep in conversation.

  ‘What are you all plotting?’ asked my mother, appearing in the doorway which led through to our kitchen.

  ‘Salvatore wants to build an oven to cook his pizzas,’ said my father.

  ‘It’s not real pizza if it hasn’t been cooked in a wood oven,’ said Salvatore.

  Over the following days Pozzetti constructed an arched profile from pieces of scrap wood and an old door. My father and Salvatore set about gathering everything else they needed to construct his oven.

  They collected and scavenged bricks from different places. There were several dozen which had been stacked in the barn since my father’s accident. Pozzetti had a few dozen more. Salvatore, who had an uncanny talent for finding exactly what he needed when he needed it, managed to charm several people in the village into letting him have spare bricks in exchange for the promise of pizza once the oven was built.

  The bricks were collected and stacked ready for work to start. My father counted, re-counted and calculated.

  ‘They should be enough, just about,’ he said. ‘But we will have to be very careful with the cuts and hope we don’t get too many breakages.’

  I was eager to be involved.

  ‘You can load out for me,’ said my father.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, a bricklayer always needs a helper. Someone to make sure he has everything he needs close by. Loading out means you have to stack the bricks where I can reach them.’

  It was agreed that I would be in charge not only of loading out, but also of passing my father the bricks. I was very excited. I stood poised with a brick in my hands ready for his instruction.

  ‘I haven’t laid a brick for over eight years,’ he said, biting his lip and turning his trowel over uncertainly in his hand.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Don Luigi. It will be like riding a bicycle,’ Salvatore said kindly.

  ‘I haven’t ridden a bicycle for over eight years either,’ my father replied.

  The new oven took shape very gradually. Papá laid each brick with deliberate care, tapping it level with the handle of his trowel and cleaning the excess mortar from underneath with a single, skilful swipe. He stood back after each course was laid. It was like watching an artist at work.

  ‘There was a time when I would have had this built in a couple of days,’ he said, rubbing his back.

  By the sixth day the work was almost complete, but despite his careful calculations, my father was one brick short.

  ‘I could go and ask a few more people,’ said Salvatore.

  ‘Don’t worry about that now. I just want to get this finished today,’ replied my father. ‘I know where I can get one.’

  He limped off and came back a few minutes later carrying a brick. We did not ask where it had come from, but it later transpired that he had removed it from our front step. Knowing that my mother would not be pleased, he had covered the gap with a flower pot - but a displaced flower pot was easy for my eagle-eyed mother to spot.

  She came marching into the laundry room as Salvatore, my father and I were standing back admiring our finished masterpiece. It was indeed a thing of beauty.

  ‘I hope you intend to replace that brick very promptly,’ she said sternly.

  My father laughed. ‘I don’t suppose I will have any choice, my dear,’ he replied. ‘Now, what do you think of our oven?’

  My mother conceded that it was a beautiful structure and that he had done a fine job.

  ‘I may not be as quick as I was, but I can still lay a brick or two,’ he said, then sniffed, turned away and wiped his eyes with his hat.

  I had hoped that we would be eating pizza that very evening, but it was explained to me that it would be at least ten days until the mortar was sufficiently dry for the fire to be lit, and even then we would have to be careful. We would start with small fires and heat the structure gently over several days to ensure it was fully hardened.

  We set a date for the grand opening. It was to be two weeks from the following Friday, which was market day in Cremona. Salvatore would go to the market that day and purchase fresh mozzarella.

  My father checked the oven daily. He rubbed his finger gently along the mortar joints, gauging how dry they were. He was nervous about removing the supporting profile, but a week after its completion he declared that it was sufficiently set.

  ‘This will be the moment of truth,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if it holds together.’

  Salvatore and my father slid the profile out between them and when the new oven did not collapse, they both cheered.

  The first time the oven was lit it billowed out clouds of acrid, dust-laden smoke which wafted through the cracks around the door and invaded our kitchen, which made my mother yell as she was working on somebody’s wedding sheets. However, as the new flue warmed, the smoke was drawn up the chimney.

  The laundry room had never been heated and within a few hours of the oven being lit the walls wept with slimy, greenish condensation, which settled into puddles on the floor. The smell of a century of steam, sweat, soap and starch which had infused the plaster oozed into the air. It took four days for the heat to burn off the last of the moisture.

  On the day of the great pizza-oven inauguration Salvatore set off early to pick up the mozzarella. He returned with his purchase in an excited and emotional state.

  I watched as he kneaded dough with his good hand, then flopped it over his claw hand and stretched it until it was almost paper-thin.

  ‘It has to be so thin you can see a beautiful woman’s smile through it,’ he said, then he turned to my aunt, saying, ‘Smile for me, Donna Mina. Let me see if it’s thin enough.’

  My aunt told him to behave himself. Salvatore laughed and winked at me.

  ‘Ah, you’re too skinny for me anyway, Donna Mina. But maybe after you’ve eaten a few pizzas you’ll fatten up and I’ll agree to marry you.’

  My aunt just rolled her eyes.

  That evening, we set out a table under Zia Mina’s vines and invited the Pozzettis to eat with us. Rita and I ate so much pizza that we felt quite sick.

  ‘There’s a future in pizza,’ repeated Salvatore. ‘I know there’s a future in pizza.’

  I didn’t see Rita very much outside school as she was always busy helping her mother, who had given birth to twins a year after Pozzetti’s return and now was pregnant again. Looking back, I think my aunt felt a little sorry for Rita and suggested that she should come over more often and play. She could bring the perambulator, my aunt said, and park it in the shade. We would all take turns bouncing the babies.

  That summer, my aunt’s old peach trees groaned under the weight of fruit. Fallen peaches carpeted the ground around them. The glut attracted swarms of large, aggressive wasps. The ominous drone of their approach provoked great fear, but Rita and I knew the procedure for avoiding their stings. We had to stand very still and not aggravate them. By doing this, they would soon lose interest and fly away.

  We placed a muslin net over the pram to protect the babies and set about making a classroom for our dolls. Rita had brought along her peg dollies, which her father had carved for her. We played a game where my rag dolly taught her class of peg dollies to sing their times-tables. The peg dollies struggled with their seven times-table, but my rag dolly was a patient and kind teacher.

  Suddenly Rita shrieked, leaped to her feet and began running around the peach tree, beating her arm.

  ‘I’ve been stung!’ she squealed. ‘I’ve been stung! A wasp! A wasp stung me!’

  ‘Zia Mina! Zia Mina!’ I screamed. ‘Come quick! Rita’s been stung!’

  My aunt, who was well-versed in old remedies, knew that in the case of a wasp sting the best thing to do was to suck out the poison with her mouth and immediately apply something cold and metallic to the area to stop the inflammation. As she was in he
r kitchen when she heard my cry for help, she grabbed the first metallic thing which came to hand. It was an enormous meat-cleaver with a broad blade.

  Rita was not familiar with the procedure of applying cold metal to a wasp sting. On seeing my aunt emerge from the house brandishing a huge knife, she presumed that Zia Mina was about to hack the sting from her arm, or worse, remove the whole limb.

  She ran away so fast that she almost burst the gate from its hinges, flew across the road without checking for traffic and was finally found whimpering under a bench in her father’s workshop. It took quite some time to convince her that no part of her was going to be amputated.

  As my aunt had not been able to catch Rita in time to suck out the poison and apply the cold metal, Rita’s little arm swelled to twice its normal size. She was taken to the pharmacy in Mazzolo where the pharmacist gave her medicine and advised that dressings should be soaked in vinegar. Rita spent the following days sitting forlornly outside her house with her arm bandaged. She would not come anywhere near Paradiso for fear of being stung again. She smelled of vinegar for weeks. I saw even less of her after that.

  The incident with the wasp made me wary of the peach trees. Salvatore said the fruit should be picked as quickly as possible or we would be plagued with even more wasps. He filled five crates with windfalls and there was still more fruit on the branches. My aunt preserved what she could, but the scarcity of sugar and paraffin to seal the jars caused there to be a glut of fresh fruit. Peaches could not be kept for long without spoiling.

  Salvatore had garnered the affections of many people in the village. He had proved himself as a great organiser and always seemed to know someone who could help in some way. He had managed to charm Maestra Asinelli into giving him an old blackboard, which had been lying discarded in a corner of the schoolyard since I could remember.

  He brought it back to Paradiso, cleaned it up and presented it to my aunt.

  ‘What do you think, Donna Mina?’ he said. ‘We could place this by the roadside to advertise your produce. That way we’ll get the passing trade as well as the market trade.’