by Adam Schell
“Believe it or not,” said Nonno, “there is more to life than your tomatoes.”
Maybe so, Davido conceded as he now conducted his donkey-drawn wagon along the road, but what am I to tell my heart? What am I to tell my head, which, since the sight of those glorious feet, those beautiful ankles, that wonderful scar upon her left knee, has thought of little else but Mari? Would Nonno ever understand such a thing? Safety, preservation and love of family and people—this was what mattered most to Nonno. How could I ever explain to him, thought Davido, that I cannot fathom marrying without love and I cannot fathom marrying anyone but—
In the distance, the homeward sight of the Apuan Alps came into focus and interrupted what was left of Davido’s thought. Truthfully, it was such a dangerous thought that he was scared to even think it and grateful to use the mountains as a distraction. Davido loved the sight of those mountains— how the whitish marble of their peaks always made them appear snowcapped—and he estimated that he was little more than one hour from home.
Davido found himself at a fork in the road. To the left was the safer, longer way that skirted the village and eventually led back home—the way they always went. To the right, the more direct route passed along an olive orchard and mill before leading into the village. He’d only taken the direct route one time—accidentally—nearly a year ago, and he hoped his memory served him correctly. Davido turned his head to take in the angle of the sun; he figured that he had at least three hours until darkness. Looking over the other shoulder to check on his uncle, drunk and sleeping sloppily in the wagon-bed, he figured he had at least three hours before he would be awake. Davido felt the purses filled with coins jiggle inside his robe. He felt the heavenly graces of Saint Rachel still upon him. He thought of wrists and ankles and feet and a little scar upon a knee. He had time enough to make a detour.
12 An ancient record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Ebreo law, ethics, customs and history.
In which We Learn
Mari’s Technique for
Curing Black olives
It was late Sunday afternoon and Mari was alone. She ducked into a corner of the mill, under the stairs and below the second-floor office that Giuseppe had built into the barn some years after he took over. He liked for his office to look down upon his workers, something Mari found repugnant and something her father never would have done. The area underneath the office was a shadowed nook used for storing empty olive-curing vessels and the perfect place to hide something.
Mari moved between some of the larger pots, crouched under the steep angle of the stairs and removed a bucket-sized earthen vessel that she had hidden. Finally, she hoped, they would be ready.
On Sundays Mari would put in at least a half-day’s work at the vineyard-orchard; then, by early afternoon, she’d turn her attentions to getting things together for Monday’s market. Giuseppe cared little for the village market as there was far more money to be made exporting oil and wine to the wealthy monasteries and lords throughout Tuscany. Hence, operating the stand was entirely Mari’s responsibility. To that end, she liked to get everything in order on Sunday afternoon. That way, come early Monday morning when she arrived at the barn, she would have little to do but attach the mule to the already loaded wagon.
Mari understood Giuseppe’s mind well enough to express disdain over being forced to work on Sundays, but in truth, she relished being alone in the mill. Prepping and loading the wagon with olives, olive oil and wine in preparation for the village market had been something her father had seen to and taken great pride in. Not surprisingly, Mari took pleasure in replicating many of those same tasks. One such task was to use the quiet of Sunday afternoons in the empty mill to experiment with grapes and olives. Mari remembered well the Sunday afternoon when she and her father first tasted the small batch of green olives he had cured through fermentation. What a flavor that was—buttery, salty, a bit of cheese-like musk—and as she now lifted the lid from the bucket-sized vessel of olives in which she was working her own experiment, the nostalgia of paternal approval washed over her. The olives were beautiful: plump, purple, late-season Frantoi, picked last December at their very ripest.
Here was how Mari had cured them: first, she handpicked several dozen fat and exceptionally ripe olives, which she then salt-cured for twenty-one days, drawing out their bitter water and causing them to prune from dehydration. Next, Mari had set the olives into a bath of red wine, salt, rosemary and dried bay leaves. Her hope was that the olives would rehydrate and swell with the brine’s flavor. And as she now lifted the lid, this was exactly what had happened. Thank God for that, thought Mari, because it sure took longer than she had originally calculated. Even after six months, the last time she checked, the olives weren’t quite ready. But now it was month eight, and as Mari dunked her fingers into the vessel and plucked out a plump purple olive, it felt just right. She brought the olive to her mouth; its flesh was meaty and firm enough under tooth, easily separating from the pit. The flavor was excellent—a balanced integration of the olive’s butter and the brine’s salty red-wine pungency. As Mari swallowed, she could not help but wonder if he was a lover of olives too?
Suddenly, this seemed like the most important question in the world. It had been that way for much of the last six days. In fact, ever since seeing him at market, nearly everything Mari did was accompanied by a corollary thought of the tomato boy and the curiosity—the hope—that her likes and dislikes would concur with his. I wonder if he likes wine, Mari would think as she drank wine, or cheese when she ate cheese, or anchovies; and she certainly hoped that he was no fan of raw onion or sanguinaccio 13, which Mari found disgusting.
“Whoa!”
A voice and the noise of a horse-drawn wagon coming to a halt outside the barn’s eastern door startled Mari. Immediately, the pleasant sensations in Mari’s mouth and mind soured from fear. Fear that she was doing something wrong and fear that her olives would be discovered. Mari stilled her breath as she made herself small under the staircase. She heard someone dismount the wagon and footsteps approach. She peered between the open spaces in the steps as a silhouette entered the barn. It was Giuseppe and he was carrying an elaborate contraption comprising tubes, a copper teakettle and a glass wine bottle. She had no idea what it was.
Mari held her breath as the brown leather of Giuseppe’s overly fine Florentine boots flashed before her eyes and his wood heels clacked upon the wood steps leading up to his office. She heard him open the door and step inside.
Mari exhaled with relief; her olives were safe. Above, she heard the clang of metal as Giuseppe set the contraption down, and then the door of the office’s small furnace open, the tossing in of kindling, the strike of a match. Hmm, she thought, ’tis a warm afternoon for the lighting of a fire.
Quietly, Mari placed the lid upon her jar of olives. She wanted to go home. Not to the place she shared with Giuseppe and her stroke-crippled mother, but to her home of ten years ago. A time before the death of her father. A time before Giuseppe’s usurpation of the orchard and her mother. A time before her mother’s apoplectic undoing rendered her lame and mute and left only her sad, watery eyes to speak of relentless heartbreak.
Mari slid the olives back under the stairs to hide her creation from the man who would no doubt usurp this too. That was his pattern: to first arrogantly dismiss any idea she may have, thus demeaning the fruits of her endeavors, only to later commandeer the very idea and claim it as his own. Dismiss, demean, usurp—that was how it was with Giuseppe.
A clang from the office above her snapped Mari back to the present moment. Why not on this day a little vengeance? Giuseppe had no idea she was anywhere near the mill and it was as clean a shot as she would ever get. She felt her pulse quicken with excitement. Softly, Mari stepped over to the wagon loaded for tomorrow’s market and removed a jug filled with olive oil. She slunk back underneath the stairs, pulled the cork from the jug and drizzled a cup’s worth of oil all over the third stair from the bottom. Not so
high as to maim, merely to bruise. With her fingertips, Mari massaged the oil evenly about the stair. She smirked: the old wood felt slick as ice. But then she heard the mill door creak and the smirk slipped from her face.
Mari looked up; she thought she saw a little tuft of Benito’s dirty hair dart out of view behind the mill door. “Testa di Cazzo!” Mari said under her breath. Even her minor act of vengeance had been foiled by that ogre. Dear God, she thought, if Giuseppe learns of this there’ll be hell to pay. Terror turned quickly to fury, a gurgling, roiling volcano aimed at Benito. That vulgar beast, thought Mari, as she lowered herself onto her hands and knees and, hidden from sight, crawled out the mill’s western door, the one opposite Benito. Outside and hidden from view, she picked up a wooden bucket by its iron handle and walked down the slight knoll to where Benito kept his truffle sows penned up. She stepped into the pen and filled the bucket with an altogether vile combination of pig manure, rotting food slop and the putrid, muddy muck in which the pigs liked to roll around to cool their bodies.
Mari set her jaw in a determined clench as she walked past the large olive-curing vessels sitting alongside the south side of the mill. She did not care that her footsteps were not especially quiet or that the bucket full of slop was splashing about and soiling her hand. She was going to carry out this deed like a proud and charging knight who looks not for cover as he storms into battle. She quickened her pace as she neared the barn’s edge. The sun was setting and the light was poor on the eastern side of the barn. She turned the corner, and, just as she suspected, he was ten paces off, his back to her, hiding in the shadows and peering into the barn.
“Vaffanculo!” Mari yelled as she let fly with the bucket’s contents. “Faccia di merda!”
Run! his instincts urged. Surely, she had heard the barn door squeak. Run, you fool! It would not look good to be found spying. But he could not bring himself to leave before getting one more chance to gaze upon her. His eyes beheld her beauty for only an instant before she slipped into shadow. But, my God, even sweaty and soiled from a hard day’s labor, she was more beautiful than any girl he’d ever seen. Run, his instincts commanded again, yet his body disobeyed. He could not bear to leave such beauty in the shadows.
And then it was too late. First came the footsteps from behind him. Then the onslaught of curses. So he turned, as anyone would, in absolute panic to face his attacker. He did not know what came toward him, but he did see her, ever so briefly, before his survival instincts closed his eyes, sealed his mouth and raised his arm to shield his face. He’d seen Mari, and it was wonderful.
Mio Dio! Mari gasped as the bucket of pig slop exploded across her target’s throat and chest. It was not Benito, definitely not Benito.
Davido felt something cool and foul crash over his chest and drip down his neck. Thank God the monk’s frock came nearly up to his chin and that he still had the hood up and that his instincts were fast enough to raise his forearm defensively. Quickly, he wiped his sleeve across his face to clear it of the splatter. Then he opened his eyes. There, standing along the east side of the barn, next to its open, squeaky door, Mari and Davido beheld each other for the second time in six days. For an instant, they knew intimately of their shame. Davido for being dressed as a monk and furtively spying upon Mari, and Mari for acting rashly, for cursing him and then dousing him with a bucket of slop.
For a moment, a brief moment, these were the prevalent emotions and they crippled both speech and movement. But then, a new emotion took over, one far more powerful than shame. For the very thing in life that both Mari and Davido desired more than anything else was suddenly before them. And it was enormous and overwhelming. A feeling so great as to obliterate all other feelings, so that no thing needed explaining, no apology or excuse needed to be given. Not even their skin and noses could perceive offense in the smell and feel of muck. It was as if Davido and Mari were not themselves, or maybe for the first time ever they were entirely themselves—raw and honest and fearless.
There was a shared breath—a quick inhalation. A critical launching-off point, and then, without a word spoken, Mari and Davido rushed into each other’s arms—desperate to eradicate any distance between their lips. Though they had never kissed before, not each other nor anyone else, a sublime instinct took over. Something that had them turn their heads to just the perfect angle, both tilting slightly to the right, something that had them press their bodies against each other and slide their hands past cheeks and around necks to tenderly secure the seal of their mouths so their lips and tongues could dance and devour one another in perfection; something that unbound them from the earth and sent them spiraling heavenward, so that they did not know nor care what was up or what was down.
It is impossible to say how long the kissing lasted, as kisses such as these are not easily assessed by the parameters of time, but suffice it to say that as the wooden heel of Giuseppe’s left boot slipped upon the freshly oiled third stair from the bottom, pitched his legs out from under him and sent his buttocks spectacularly crashing into and through that very third stair, well, the racket did also bring Mari and Davido crashing back to earth.
And as suddenly as their lips had met, they also parted, breathless and gasping and stinking of muck and merda. The couple looked toward the mill, where the racket had come from, and then back at each other. A delirious moan came from inside the barn, prompting Mari to bite her lip and raise her eyebrows. Then, her lip slid from under her tooth and her mouth stretched into a wondrous, bewildered and embarrassed smile that in an instant had Davido smiling too. Neither Mari nor Davido knew what to do or say and somehow they both had the awareness and good grace to do the exact same thing at the exact same moment. The only thing one really could do after such a first kiss. They ran; Mari into the orchard of her father, and Davido down the road to where his wagon and sleeping uncle waited.
13 A Tuscan specialty: pork blood pudding flavored with anise, cinnamon, cloves, raisins and pine nuts.
in which We Learn
the Fine Art of
Steam Distillation
Giuseppe moaned. It all happened so fast. The onslaught of curses from outside the mill that caused him to drop his apparatus and rush down the stairs; the sudden burst of panic as his feet slipped out from under him; the awful jolt of pain; and then, darkness. He was not sure how long the darkness lasted, but within the darkness, there it was, gleaming like a gem. He was at the Feast of the Drunken Saint, watching the men race their donkeys round and round the piazza, stopping only to drain their goblets of wine. Wine that he’d provided for this year’s race, wine that was laced with Fungi di Santo.
Earlier in the day, he and Bobo the Fool had traveled to Lucca to visit with the owner of a local perfumery and see about acquiring a steam distillation apparatus. It was not an entirely unexpected visit, as Giuseppe had a business relationship with the perfumery. Each December, for the last six years, Giuseppe had sold the perfumery of Lucca the vineyard’s pressed grape skins that were left over from the wine-making process. The perfumery would separate the tiny grape seeds from the skins and then press a delicate oil from the seeds. The oil was then used in the making of fine soaps, cosmetics, body lotions and shaving creams.
For Giuseppe, selling the grape skins was an excellent way to squeeze every ounce of profitability from the land. While pressed grape skins were not hard to come by, the owner of the Lucca perfumery deemed the oil from Giuseppe’s seeds exceptional and was therefore more than happy to barter an old and rarely used steam distiller for the coming season’s grape skins.
As a teenager, Giuseppe had frequently distilled mushrooms, barks, roots and other poisonous compounds. Hence, as he arranged the steam distiller in his office, the whole poison-making process returned to him in a flash of memory. 1) Crush the dried fungi into a fine powder with a mortar and pestle. 2) Set the fungi dust into the copper distillation kettle along with a bottle of red wine and a spoonful of honey. 3) Set a fire underneath the kettle and bring the honey,
red wine and mushroom dust to a slow boil. 4) Wait for the liquid to turn into steam. 5) Trap the steam and run it down the steam-distillation tubing so that it may cool just enough to form droplets of liquid. 6) Collect the liquid into a glass bottle at the device’s other end. 7) Test a drop on the tongue to make sure all bitterness and mushroom flavor has been removed so that not even the most skilled food-taster—Giuseppe recalled his uncle’s words with a clarity that startled him—could tell the wine was tainted.
Yes, Giuseppe knew exactly what he was doing when it came to distilling the Fungi di Santo mushrooms he had chanced upon last Sunday whilst foraging for truffles with Benito. He just wasn’t certain why he was doing it. Of course, he reasoned, a non-lethal yet debilitating toxin might come in handy at some time or another, possibly even in his current scheme to usurp the Ebrei land. However, he had no specific plan in mind until he crashed through the stairs and the perfect idea came like a light shining through the trauma: taint the racers’ wine with Fungi di Santo at the Feast of the Drunken Saint; guarantee the Ebreo’s victory by drugging all the competitors but the tomato boy and Benito.
And then the pain arrived, a pain that overwhelmed any and all visions of narcotized donkey riders and a victorious Ebreo. At first the pain seemed to emanate from every part of his body and he feared that his back might be broken. He had crashed in such a way that his buttocks broke through the stair, collapsing his knees and chest into one another, and brutally wedging his body and right arm between the second and fourth stairs. Everything hurt. His hamstrings felt pulled and his back bruised and raw. His stomach pressed uncomfortably against his thighs and he realized that had it not been for his potbelly and general inflexibility, he would have folded and fallen straight through the stairs like a limp noodle.
