Tomato Rhapsody

by Adam Schell

  Giuseppe scanned the piazza to see if he could locate the fool, when, by the law of ill attraction, his telescopic gaze happened upon the Cheese Maker. Now, there was a person Giuseppe certainly couldn’t count on. A pathetic being in that uniquely Italian capacity, who both looked and acted like a winged little Cupid perched on a cloud, all roly-poly, dizzy-eyed and soft-hearted. Giuseppe jerked his vision elsewhere to avoid witnessing the Cheese Maker bellowing “Oi Mari” when the real thing suddenly rolled her wagon before his eye. There she was. The little vacca herself, looking as nonchalant as ever and in her casual beauty reminding Giuseppe of his own shortcomings and past failures. Oh, how much Mari looked like her mother when she was around that age, the age at which Giuseppe sought after her and was in turn rejected. Oh, how much Mari looked like her father too when he was around that age, the age at which Giuseppe lost the Race of the Drunken Saint to him, and the hand of the woman he had so desired.

  Mari’s image was noxious to Giuseppe, a lowly, self-loathing, addictive narcotic. Truth was, he had more than enough money to pony up a dowry and marry her off, and at nineteen she was well of marrying age. But the thought of marrying her to some local peasant or having her marry and move away was as anathema to him as selling off his own kidney. He needed Mari. She was the kindling that fed the fire and indignation that drove him, and he secretly desired to do to her what her father and mother had done to him: ruin his life. He followed her past several vendors to their slot in the market row, where Benito awaited her. Giuseppe couldn’t help but gloat as he witnessed all the melody in Mari’s countenance fall flat as she laid eyes upon the pig. Now, Giuseppe pondered, with twenty-some years of retribution gurgling in his psyche, what part shall she play in this plot?

  In Which We Learn

  of Carciofi alla Judea &

  Il Fodero di Moses

  By Nonno’s standards, the village market was nothing compared to the giant markets of Florence, Venice and Rome, which stretched for hundreds of stalls and were crowded with people, produce and goods from all parts of the world. In Venice alone you had more fishmongers than this market had vendors, but despite its relative paucity, Nonno could not help but think that the market, piazza and surrounding village were not without a modicum of charm. In the Etruscan tradition, streets were narrow and had a slight bend to them before flowing into the piazza. The piazza itself was small, Nonno estimated sixty paces in diameter. The encircling buildings were uneven in height but stood at roughly two stories. They were covered in various tones of amber-colored mortar, which in many places had begun to crumble, revealing the brick and stone beneath. Vines crept up walls, and in the sunnier spots, flowers bloomed from pots and hung from balconies.

  As in many towns Nonno had seen throughout Tuscany, a sculpture stood at the center of the piazza. Only this statue was no bombastic recounting of Neptune’s adventures or some biblical epic. A slightly larger than life-sized figure of a monk gazed benevolently, if slightly dazed, at passersby. He sat upon a donkey and drank eagerly from a goblet in his left hand. A wine jug was slung across the monk’s chest, wine grapes hung from his mendicant sack and by facial expression—rather cherubic—one could reasonably assume the monk was drunk and happy. Though obviously Cristiano, the statue appeared blatantly pagan, a left-handed Bacchus draped in a monk’s frock. To punctuate the incongruity, the monk’s robe was fashioned in such a way that he seemed to have no right arm.

  “Thank God,” Nonno mumbled to himself after pondering the statue for a moment. Experience had taught him well, and he preferred when Cristiano religious art conveyed some lightness of spirit. Goodness knows how the sculptures throughout Spain, with their fixation on the devil and sin, persecution and crucifixion, used to unsettle him. Hardly a surprise that the Inquisition found such ripe soil there. Thankfully, thought Nonno, this sculpture differed from those in Spain and suggested that the village might have the necessary sense of humor that would allow a pair of forbidden-fruit-selling Ebrei to escape the day unscathed.

  Regardless, Nonno was hardly comfortable with what he’d gotten himself involved in. The village padre had not been there to greet them, and their entry into market was one of the more mortifying instances in Nonno’s life. He should have just conducted his wagon right through the piazza and headed home, but by some foolish impulse he did not rightly understand, he followed the pointing of his grandson’s finger and parked their wagon at the last spot in the market row.

  Faccia di merda, thought Nonno as he considered the sheer stupidity and danger of their current situation. Have I grown senile? At one point in his life he’d been considered the shrewdest man in all Toledo, but at this moment he seriously wondered whether he was beginning to lose his mental faculties. How could he have been so foolish as to consent to his grandson’s desire? Of course the village priest wasn’t present to greet them—if that odd character had even been the village priest. Only a priest bent on excommunication would be reckless enough to escort a pair of Ebrei and a cart full of Love Apples to market. Nonno considered whether the whole thing wasn’t a ruse, a humiliating setup by the nasty old padre. And if it was, how could he have been so stupid as to fall for it? Why didn’t I do, Nonno cursed himself, what I have always done? Send in some scouts, a few of Rabbi Lumaca’s men from the nearby lesser city of Pitigliano, to assess the situation and report back their impressions of the village.

  It was a grievous mistake, he feared, one of many. All stemming from the original mistake of entertaining the bizarre padre’s invitation in the first place. It had always been Nonno’s idea to introduce the pomodoro to the Ebreo markets of Florence, Venice, Siena and eventually Rome. These larger urban markets were often visited by gentiles, where locals came to snack upon carciofi alla Judea, a ghetto delicacy of battered and fried baby artichokes, eaten with a sprinkle of salt and a squeeze of lemon. Nonno had witnessed how carciofi alla Judea had become a guilty pleasure amongst the citizens of Rome and Florence, and not just the common folk. By late spring, when the wild artichokes were plentiful, priests, bishops and even the occasional cardinal could all be found lining up before the vending stalls of the ghetto, squeezing lemons and licking oily lips as they devoured platefuls of the delectable Ebreo specialty. This was how Nonno wanted things to progress: to expose the new fruit to their kin in the ghettos and let the more sophisticated urban gentiles who frequented the Ebreo markets be introduced to it at their discretion. Eventually, Nonno assured his grandson, just like fried artichokes, ivory dentures, Il Fodero di Moses 8 and a hundred other Ebreo inventions, the pomodoro would one day be highly regarded.

  Davido, though, felt differently and made a compelling argument. “This is not Florence, Rome or Venice,” Davido rebutted his grandfather. “In these parts, Ebrei and gentiles do not live in proximity to one another, and the more we are strangers to them, the more we live in harm’s way. We’ll sell only tomatoes at market, so not to compete with any of the village’s existing fruit or vegetable vendors. It only makes sense, Nonno. How are the locals to gain any familiarity with us or with tomatoes unless we take up this kind padre’s offer? Besides,” Davido added for emphasis, “what does it say of us if we do not?”

  Well, that was yesterday and as Nonno now reflected on the idiocy of his grandson’s reasoning he couldn’t stand to keep his mouth shut. “So much for your kind padre,” said Nonno to Davido as the old man set an empty basket on the rear of the wagon. The market had begun to bustle, but their stand was empty of customers—as empty as if they were selling the plague.

  Davido paused before he set a tomato in its place on the pyramid of tomatoes he was arranging upon the stand. “The day is not yet done.”

  “No?” Nonno whispered sharply. “The day is wasted and done as sure as it was foolishly begun. I only pray this day knocks a daft idea from your mind and you see, finally, an Ebreo‘s place is best among his kind.”

  My God, thought Davido, what a good rhyme!

  For their part, the villagers reacted to the e
ntrance of the Ebrei like a pair of lepers in their midst, stealing glances at the odd beings, but never, never for goodness sake, daring to approach their stand. Those villagers who attended last evening’s mass had heard, or at least thought they heard, the Good Padre announce the new decree and mention he’d invited their Ebreo neighbors to Monday’s market. It was just that most of the villagers were hesitant to believe anything uttered by such an enigma, especially something so outrageous.

  Nonetheless, the people of the village were not so closed-minded that they would not accept the arrival of a new person. Heaven knows, countless souls, and not all of them ordinary, had come and gone through town. Even Giuseppe and the odd and irksome Bobo the Fool had wandered into town years ago and grown to become village fixtures. But the Good Padre was different. Being in his company seemed to fracture the relationship between time and constancy, eyes and brain, thought and tongue, and forced upon one and all the stupefying idea that the world was larger and more mysterious than their ability to comprehend it.

  For most in the village, including Vincenzo, Mucca, the Cheese Maker, Augusto Po and Signore Coglione (all characters we will soon come to know), this was not a welcome notion and for the first six weeks of the Good Padre’s tenure they kept their distance. In fact, over those initial Sundays, only the blind, nearly blind and those consigned to escort the blind attended mass. The Cheese Maker, like virtually every other villager, did his best to dismiss the disconcerting fact that young children and infants were drawn to the Good Padre as if he were made of butter and honey, and that his mere presence would calm a crying toddler and cause a gaggle of youngsters to follow in his wake, laughing and giggling with delight. However, when Vincenzo’s mother, old Signora Donnaccia, whose pupils had long ago been obscured by milky cataracts and whose anus had long been painfully obstructed by bloody hemorrhoids, awoke the morning after Good Friday mass to behold in crystal clarity the greatest bowel movement she’d had in thirty-five years, well, even the most obstinate villager took note.

  Slowly, with great hesitancy and pulled by opposing forces of hope and fear, the villagers returned to church. They sat in the dim candlelight with their eyes closed, too fearful to look upon the priest who both warmed the heart and roasted the brain, yet too superstitious to miss out on the chance of a miracle. Even as church attendance grew and small miracles seemed to be occurring throughout the village, there was very little public talk of the new Good Padre. Yes, Mucca found it possible to speak of the Good Padre’s sonorous voice and his melodic way with Latin, and Signore Coglione praised how well he’d trained his nephew, Bertolli, and the other altar boys to sing. But these were superficial topics that merely masked the gnawing, voracious desire everyone felt to speak about the one thing that, when attempted to be spoken of, disappeared into the ether and, for reasons they could not comprehend, left them disoriented, tongue-tied and staring at one another in awkward silence.

  Hence, word of the decree and the Good Padre’s shocking invitation did not spread with the fervor that one might usually associate with big news in a small town. It was uncharacteristically not blabbered about by Mucca or conspiratorially whispered by Augusto Po. No, much like the Good Padre’s presence itself, the idea that foreign Ebrei and their illicit fruit would be appearing in town seemed incomprehensible. And though the temptation to be the bearer of foreboding news was as pressing as ever to Mucca and Po and many others, the uncertainty and embarrassment of speaking about the Good Padre was enough to quell the urge.

  Work seemed to be the beleaguered villagers’ only recourse. And so they took to their morning tasks with a special fastidiousness. Vincenzo fussed excessively over how thin he could slice the prosciutto, sharpening his knife again and again and cursing with dissatisfaction. Signore Coglione overscrutinized each onion and head of radicchio he placed in his basket. Augusto Po made certain to remind each and every one of his tenants exactly how overdue on rent they were. Mucca haggled over prices with people she had known too long and too well to expect any kind of discount. And the Cheese Maker set and then reset and then set once again his freshest and ripest Gorgonzola, each time thinking he’d found the perfect angle to display his favorite cheese. Yes, all the villagers pretended as best they could to be consumed by their tasks and dared not utter a word to one another about the new arrivals. The only thing Mucca, the Cheese Maker, Vincenzo, Augusto Po, Signore Coglione and just about every other villager could do was peek, stealing glances at the Ebrei with all the trepidation of a hedgehog peering up from its hole to see if it’s safe to come out.

  But not Mari. She stared like an owl at midnight: brown eyes wide open, transfixed by the move and bob of the boy’s chestnut curls and the red fruits piling up there down the market row.

  8 Precedent for the modern condom, the Sheath of Moses was a prophylactic made of bound sheep intestine, preserved and lubricated in olive oil. After being pulled over the erect penis, the Sheath of Moses was held in place by fastening the intestines’ open end in a figure-eight-like pattern around the testicles and base of the penis, and then tucking the remaining end into the anus. Its creation is credited to Moses Goldone, a 15th-century Roman Ebreo who owned a kosher butchery and sausage shop.

  In which We Learn

  How to Properly Care

  for chamomile

  The eggplant dish the Good Padre had thought up in the morning, with its crunchy herb and pine nut crust, rich and smoky innards and mint-basil-sage pesto looked and smelled delicious. The bread too, garlicky, crisp and sprinkled with coarse salt, appealed to eye and appetite. Yet despite great hunger and pride in their efforts, Bertolli and the other altar boys could not bring themselves to set their plates with food. Their bellies were full with fear, as there, inches before their noses, glistening in olive oil, specked with mint and chunked with cheese, sat a bowl of Love Apples.

  Bertolli and the boys loved their new ritual of cooking and eating with the Good Padre after Sunday evening mass, but the idea that their Good Padre was soon to be killed terrified them. The old padre had told them more than once and most fervently that within an instant of a Pomo di Amore touching the tongue, death was imminent. So Bertolli and the boys waited, guts gripped, for the painful writhing and devilish seizures to begin. But as the Good Padre chewed, he moaned not in pain or panic, but in delight. It was a sound that Bertolli and the boys knew well, a sound they often made when eating the Good Padre’s food, and as the Good Padre reached for the tomato salad and ladled another helping on his plate, another horrible thought flooded Bertolli’s mind— what if I’m missing out and there might not be any left to eat? This was an overwhelming notion to Bertolli and before his mind fully registered the action of his body, his chubby fingers were dripping olive oil, his mouth suddenly stuffed with tomatoes, mint and cheese.

  “Mmm,” Bertolli hummed through a full mouth, eyes blazing with joy. He had hardly swallowed when his hand dug into the bowl for another scoop. Bertolli’s brazen act freed the hands of his three mates, who rose from their chairs to likewise scoop from the bowl. With bare hands, they stuffed tomatoes into their mouths. Juices ran between their fingers and down their chins; olive oil shined upon their lips as they smiled and cooed with pleasure. Their cooing quickly turned to laughter as they dug their hands into the bowl for a second, third and fourth time. Laughing as they stuffed tomatoes in their mouths, laughing as they swallowed, laughing as they sunk their teeth into the hot eggplant and crisp bread. Tears began to well up in their eyes as their bliss transmuted into a weeping of sorts. And while their young minds did not realize it, for the very first time, Bertolli and his mates laughed and wept as adults. They had opened Pandora’s box to find it held a false demon.

  The Good Padre, in his seemingly oblivious wisdom, just allowed the boys to be, offering no words or comfort beyond the quiet, unspoken calm he seemed to naturally exude. And when the festival of laughing and weeping and eating was finished and every tomato, eggplant and crust of bread devoured, the group fell sile
nt, prayerfully so. And there they remained for several moments, heads bowed in reverence, tears of joy drying on their cheeks, bellies tingling with delight.

  “Buono,” said the Good Padre, finally fracturing the silence.

  “Buono,” the boys repeated.

  Good it was, indeed, and as the Good Padre slept that night, so too did a goodly amount of liquid fill his bladder. The day’s excitement, the rigors of traveling by mule in the hot sun, and the evening mass had left him parched. He had been thirsty beyond measure, and during the preparation and consuming of his evening supper he drank two bottles of wine, the first one white and the second one red. For many, this would have led to an awful night’s sleep, ruined with sweats, spins and vomiting. But unbeknownst to the Good Padre, ever since his divine curse some centuries back, he’d become largely indifferent to the negative effects of alcohol and tended to sleep even more soundly after a bottle or two of wine. Regardless of intoxication, or lack thereof, it was a great deal of fluid to ingest so shortly before bed, and as the Good Padre set his head to hay for the evening he had more than a bucket of liquid swishing about his belly.

  As the Good Padre slept, the fluids meandered the length of his intestines and slowly filled the cistern of his bladder. The liquid, however, kept coming. It occupied every nook and cranny until the final droplets trickled down and pressured the cantilever of his nether regions. As the night wore on, the Good Padre’s internal pulley drew taut, steadily growing and swelling into a volatile, voluminous and unbendable bastone.