To be respected by Federico eased the pain of Agnese's death and so I took my task with even greater seriousness. I spent time in the kitchen learning how different dishes were prepared, how long they had to be cooked, which sauces to use, and so on. I learned from Luigi that too many turnips brought on phlegm and that fava beans were good for men because they looked like testicles. I was so overflowing with knowledge that it spilled out before I could stop it.
One day I advised Federico the veal needed more pepper. Another time I said the chicken should have been marinated a little longer. And he agreed! Once, just by sniffing a venison sauce, I named all the ingredients: marjoram, basil, nutmeg, rosemary, cinnamon, celery, garlic, mustard, onion, summer savory, pepper, and parsley. Duke Federico was so impressed he often asked me to perform this trick in front of his guests.
Now I felt truly at home in the palazzo. Federico trusted me. True, it was only in small matters, but does the acorn not give birth to the oak tree? I was sure I would soon be promoted to a courtier and prayed for an opportunity to prove to Federico that I could be of greater use to him. However, God in His wisdom decided that I was not yet ready for such a post. But did He have to use that ungifted little dwarf, Ercole, to tell me?
The only thing Ercole and Giovanni had in common was their size. Ercole was as cowardly as Giovanni had been brave and as stupid as Giovanni had been clever. Where Giovanni had changed his clothes to suit his mood, Ercole wore the same brown jerkin and hose every day of his life. Had Giovanni been able to straighten his hump he would have been as tall as any man, whereas Ercole was a runt when he was born and will remain one till he dies.
I have hardly mentioned Ercole because, aside from wrestling a sheep to death at the first banquet, the little turd had never done anything worth mentioning; and, since Corsoli relied so much on its sheep, he could only perform that trick once a year. Most of the time, he hopped around in the corner of the hall trying to appear even smaller than he already was by bending his knees and bowing his head and banging softly on his little drum, praying Federico would not notice him.
One evening, Federico idly tossed away a half-eaten trencher which hit Ercole squarely on the head. Ercole rose up indignantly, the fury in his little lined face causing me to laugh louder than I had ever done at his tricks. He hissed at me because he thought I had thrown the trencher. Then, when he realized that it was Federico who had thrown it, he immediately picked it up. But as he did so something occurred to him. I could see the idea blossoming in his brain. He moved his head from side to side, examining the trencher as if he had never seen one before. He sniffed at it like a dog. He turned it upside down and sniffed it again. The little squirt, the little piece of shit was imitating me! Federico nudged Bianca. The diners stopped eating to watch. Aware of this, Ercole sniffed at the trencher some more and again turned it this way and that. Then he broke off a tiny piece and placed it on the tip of his tongue. He stood with his legs apart, hands on his hips, eyes pointed at the ceiling, his big wide mouth and thick lips pausing every other instant to chew and think, chew and think, until he swallowed it with a big gulp and traced its path with his finger down his throat and into his stomach.
I knew what he was going to do next. He clasped his throat, spluttered, and coughed. He sank to the ground, yelling and shrieking, thrusting first one part of his body into the air and then another, distorting his face, clawing at the ground and yelling, 'My bone! My bone!' Then he arched his back and slumped to the floor, silent as if dead.
Bianca burst into laughter and could not stop. She covered her face with her hands, uncovered it, saw me and laughed again. Then Federico started snorting and laughing, and banging his fist on the table. Immediately, the rest of the court began braying like the asses they were. I wanted to plunge a knife into Ercole's neck and pull it down to his little balls. To have a dwarf mock me in front of everyone! After all I had been through?
Ercole bowed solemnly. The applause went on. He bowed again. He bowed four times. Good Christ! You would have thought he had conquered the French single-handedly! Federico wiped his eyes and said, 'Bravo Ercole! Bravo! Do it again!'
The laughter and applause inspired Ercole. Contorting his face, he tried to imitate my haunted looks with his short squat body, making him look even more ridiculous.
'Do you not think he is funny?' Federico asked me.
'Since I have never seen myself eat,' I said, 'I cannot tell if it is accurate or not.'
'Oh, it is accurate,' Federico laughed. 'Very accurate.'
I left the hall, the laughter ringing in my ears. I found Miranda's mirror and watched myself eat in it. Ercole's moves were clumsy, but they were accurate. I wanted to kill him.
'You cannot,' Tommaso warned. 'Federico likes him. If something happens to Ercole, Federico will know it was you.'
Soon Ercole was giving performances to anyone who would watch and the very same servants who had praised me the day before now sniggered when I passed. I tried different ways of eating, but how many ways can you chew a piece of food?
'Federico will forget, babbo,' Miranda said, trying to calm me. But Federico did not forget and asked Ercole to perform his routine whenever he had guests. Once when I did not sniff the food, Federico said angrily in front of Duke Baglioni, 'Do it the old way; otherwise it spoils Ercole's imitation.'
So like the pet I had become, I had to sniff the food and then stand by while Ercole made a fool of me. Whenever Ercole did his imitation, Federico told the visitors about the killings of Pia and her family. They must have retold my story when they returned home, forgetting some things and adding others so that the tale became as varied as the roads they traveled. I became known in cities as far away as Roma and Venezia.
I cannot deny this pleased me and I told Septivus I would soon be the most famous food taster in Italy. He smiled, gnashing his little yellow teeth together. 'Dante tells us that fame is like a breath of wind that is forgotten as soon as it dies.'
'No doubt that is true. But while the wind blows everyone else is touched by it.'
'Yes,' he said, 'some to praise and some to curse.' How right he was, but I am ahead of myself.
Of course, since I was only a food taster, none of the diners could believe I had thought of faking my death. No, they assumed Federico had told me to do it to justify his killing of his wife and mother-in-law. Soon Federico was convinced of it himself, and once, while I was standing right next to him, he boasted to the ambassador of Bologna that he not only had invented the plot, but also had shown me how to fake the death throes!
I remember thinking about this one winter's evening. The nights came with increasing swiftness and the rain turned the white walls of the palace gray in front of my eyes. Stories, it seemed to me, were like the walls in that someone seeing them for the first time would never have known they were once white, just as someone hearing my tale from Federico would have never known the true story. If the listeners enjoyed the story, they cared little for the truth. Perhaps, then, Jonah was not swallowed by a whale at all, but had eaten the large fish. Or maybe Jesus had never been killed, but had climbed down from the cross and hidden in the cave. Perhaps, too, Socrates had not joked before drinking the hemlock, but had begged and screamed for mercy.
This did little to comfort me. The rain beat down harder. I wondered where Miranda was; she had not returned from her classes, and so I searched for her. Outside a room where she sometimes played, I heard a voice say, 'Oh, Miranda, do not be so upset.'
I peered in. A few of her friends were huddled together in front of a large fire, their heads leaning against each other, their arms around one another's shoulders as girls will often do. They were laughing at Miranda, who was sitting a little way off, hugging her knees under her chin.
'Anyway,' Miranda said sullenly, 'you are not doing it right.'
'You do it then,' a girl teased and the others joined in. 'You do it.'
Miranda bit her lip. She stood up, my hand trembles as I write this, and imi
tated me tasting some food. Ercole was limited by his talent, but Miranda was gifted and knew things about me even I did not know. After she had mimicked me eating, which made the girls shriek with laughter, she pretended to examine her throat in a tiny mirror. She coughed and gargled and stuck her fingers inside her mouth as if a crumb had become stuck between her teeth, something I often did when I returned to our room after a meal. She did this with great earnestness, twisting her face, licking her lips, wiggling her tongue, and digging in her mouth as if she was mining for gold. One girl laughed so hard she wet herself.
Suddenly, Miranda looked in my direction, and when our eyes met she immediately ran out of the room. Her friends chased after her while I turned my face to the wall so they would not see me.
Later, I asked why she had made a fool of me.
'How do you think I feel?' she said. She did not say it, but I knew what she meant. It was because I was a food taster. 'I will never have a dowry worth anything.'
I wanted to laugh but I feared I would choke. I had done such a good job of raising Miranda to be a princess that she was now ashamed of me. I left her and went to Ercole's room.
'If you are asking me not to imitate you,' he said, leaning back in the little chair he had made for himself, 'I cannot. God has granted me a gift which Federico loves. If you were talented, you would be able to entertain him, too.'
I put one foot on top of the other to prevent myself from kicking the chair out from under him. 'Well then,' I said, 'You should do it correctly.'
'I do do it correctly,' he said hotly.
'Not according to Federico. From where I stand, I hear things.'
'What things?' He frowned. 'What have you been hearing?'
I pretended it was difficult for me to explain. I wanted him to get so interested that his eagerness would cloud his judgment. 'Well, I overheard . . .'
'What?' he demanded in his squeaky voice.
'Federico thinks you are not as funny as you used to be. He thinks your movements should be bigger and grander.'
Ercole raised the tip of his nose, which was already pointing straight up, and looked at me suspiciously. 'Federico said I should make bigger movements?'
'That is what I heard. I wanted to tell you because you know if you do not please Federico ...' I did not need to say anymore.
The next time Ercole imitated me he chewed and waved his arms as if he was having a fit. No one laughed. Federico's lower lip dropped to his chin. Ercole became so afraid he picked up his drum and started banging it for no reason.
'What are you doing?' Federico roared.
'Your Excellency,' he stuttered. 'You said—'
'What? Do it properly,' Federico said.
By now, however, Ercole was so flustered he no longer knew what to do.
'Maybe this will help you remember,' Federico shouted and threw a bowl of soup at him, followed by several knives, spoons, and loaves of bread till Ercole was hunched up like a little ball on the floor.
'I think he should be hanged,' I said loudly. 'He was given a gift by God which he has abused.'
'Shut up,' Federico said. There was nothing more I wanted to say. I knew Ercole would never imitate me again and now others would think twice before they tried. But God had not finished with me, and worse was yet to come.
CHAPTER 16
Our second winter in the palace, the winds drove the snow into huge piles which dotted the courtyard and the streets of the city. The boys made lions and birds out of snow and one morning Tommaso made a wolf sitting on its haunches. He used almonds coated with saffron for its eyes and a piece of leather for its tongue. He wanted Miranda to see it, but she refused, saying she was too busy reading the Bible.
'She is going to become a nun,' Tommaso said, forming the wolf's paws. 'She says she has no time for foolish things.'
'She will have changed her mind by dinner,' I said.
He nibbled his nails. 'She gives her food to the poor.'
'How do you know? Have you been following her?'
He told me he had watched her kneeling in the rain in the Piazza Del Vedura and that had he not pulled her out of the way a knight on horseback would have trampled her to death.
'Did she thank you?'
He shook his head. 'She said I had no right to interfere in God's will.'
Miranda was in the Duomo praying to a statue of the Virgin Mary. In between her entreaties I asked her gently why she was punishing herself so.
'I am preparing for the privilegium paupertatis,' she answered, her voice filled with anguish and heartache as if she had just climbed down from the cross itself.
'Miranda, you do not have to have the privilege of being poor. You are poor. I am poor. This is because of the dowry, is it not?'
She turned away and went back to her prayers.
'You think because you will never get married you might as well devote your life to the church: am I right?' She did not answer. 'Miranda, those nuns you admire so do not have to be poor either. They spend all day making things for free and then they beg for alms so they can eat. If they charged the churches just a little for their work, they would not have to beg from people like me who can ill afford to give them anything!'
'Begging reminds them to be humble,' Miranda admonished me.
'Hunger reminds you how to be humble,' I yelled. 'Basta!'
But she did not stop. She continued to give her food away and would drop to her knees and pray wherever and whenever she felt like it. The old half-blind washerwoman said she was a saint. It did not matter whether I was angry or kind to her, Miranda would not listen to me.
'This will kill you and then what good will you be?' I pleaded, after I found her shivering in the snow. Her lips had turned blue and her teeth chattered. She recited Hail Marys and novenas to drown me out.
Two nights later I awoke to find her bed empty.
'She said God told her to go to the convent at San Verecondo,' the guard at the gate said. I swear those guards are the most stupid of all God's creatures. It does not matter which city you go to, if the city has a gate and the gate has a guard, then the guard is bound to be stupid.
'This is madness! How could you have let her go in this weather?'
'She looked holy,' he shrugged.
The sky was covered in a blanket of gray clouds. Soft, fat snowflakes fell silently like goose feathers from God's pillows. I ran as fast as I could, calling, 'Miranda, Miranda!' A wolf's howl answered me. I prayed it had not found her and that I would soon catch her and if I did not it was because she had already reached the convent. The snow grew deeper. Every bush, each tree, each blade of grass was white. My shoes and hose were soaked through, my hands and face numb with cold. I called Miranda's name again, but the night swallowed my voice. I could not make out the hills and no longer knew if I was going in the right direction. Exhausted, I fell to my knees. As I knelt there I realized I was in the same position I had seen Miranda in. I wondered if this was God's way of punishing me for forbidding Miranda to do as He had wanted. I threw myself in the snow, weeping for forgiveness and promising God that if I found Miranda I would deliver her to the convent myself.
No sooner had I said this than a light came toward me through the trees. It was the Virgin Mary herself. She reached out her hand to me, saying in a soft, sweet voice, 'Sleep. Rest. Then I will lead you to your daughter.'
But another voice said, 'This is not the Virgin Mary, this is Death.' I rose to my feet and stumbled onward, plunging into the snow up to my waist, crying out to God to protect me. And when I was at my last breath I tripped over a body — Miranda.
I do not know how I returned to Corsoli for it was God alone who guided my footsteps. I knocked at Piero's house and though it was past midnight he woke his wife and children and ordered them to boil hot water while he covered Miranda in blankets. He bathed her hands and feet, gave her medicines, and, when I had to return to the palace to taste Federico's breakfast, watched over her as if she was his own daughter.
I spent every moment I could at Miranda's bedside, for Piero said her life was in danger. Tommaso brought soups and pastries— it was her illness that inspired him to become a cook— and I prayed and wiped the sweat from her brow.
I had never been inside a Jew's home and was surprised to see it was much like anyone else's. Since Federico was always complaining of some ailment, I asked Piero why he did not live in the palazzo.
'Duke Federico does not allow it because we are Hebrews. Besides, here,' he smiled, 'I am closer to the citizens of Corsoli.'
Just then Miranda, whose face had turned from blue to white, gave out such a racking cough that it rattled the bones in her body. She became feverish and cried out in her sleep. Piero said that although it did not seem so, it was in fact a good sign.
At last, through God's good graces and Piero's care — for which I could not thank him enough — Miranda was well enough to be taken back to the palazzo. She stayed in bed, and although Tommaso still brought her food and her friends inquired about her, she refused to see anyone. She did not say so, but I knew it was because the two smallest fingers of her right hand had withered as well as two of the toes on her right foot. She would never recover their use and wailed that she would never be able to walk again. I told her of soldiers who walked with only one leg and of an aunt of mine who walked all her life even though she had been born without a foot. I said she should give thanks to God and Piero that she was alive. This did little to comfort her. Indeed, she said I should have left her to die. 'I have failed Santa Chiara,' she wept, 'I have failed Our Lord.'
The Food Taster Page 9
