Tomato Rhapsody

by Adam Schell

  Giuseppe took a short and painful breath and did his best to assess his situation. He was stuck, stuck like an animal, as if a man-sized bear trap had folded him in half, leaving only his ass to dangle. He had seen a man break his back once—tossed out a third-story window by his uncle—and it occurred to Giuseppe he should attempt wiggling his fingers and toes. Thank God, he thought, as he felt his digits press against the soles of his boots, I am not crippled. Slowly, the shock began to wear off and the pain began to localize. It hurt most in one place.

  It was an unbearable position and he squirmed and fought to free himself from between the stairs. He could not stand being so vulnerable and he worked desperately to extricate his limbs. In his efforts, Giuseppe keeled abruptly to his right and smashed his right cheek against the sideboard that framed the stairs. “Faccia di merda!” Giuseppe hollered as he lay there stuck and panting. Curiously, his right hand made contact with an object underneath the stairs. It felt like a small olive-storing vessel, the kind people kept in their kitchen. He pushed on the vessel. It was solid and provided some extra leverage to help free his hips and buttocks. Now he leaned to the right, wiggled his hips and back, pressed harder against the olive vessel and, with a great show of effort, managed to roll all the way over his right shoulder. With a grunt and a thud, he fell to the ground on his left hip and shoulder.

  Partially underneath the stairs, Giuseppe laid in a semi-fetal position, his face upon the cool earthen floor, catching his breath. Finally, he could see the broken and splintered wood in front of him; the third stair had split right in half. His right buttock pulled one way, his left buttock pulled the other, causing his poor little asshole to stretch and tear. He noticed a droplet of oil dangling from a splinter of wood. He reached out and touched it, rubbing the oil between his fingertips. Fresh oil? Testa di Cazzo. What idiot would spill oil on the stairs and not clean it up? Next to the broken stair Giuseppe spotted the small olive vessel that his hand had discovered. This was not the proper place where jars this small were stored. He reached out and slid it closer to him. It was full of something. Liquid? Olives? With a groan, he sat up and lifted the lid from the jar. Indeed, there were olives inside: plump, purple and floating in brine. They didn’t look like any olives his mill produced. He popped one into his mouth and immediately everything became clear. Figlia di puttana, he thought. That little bitch!

  In Which We Learn

  the Recipe for Tuscan Toast

  with Fig Jam & Cream

  “No,” said Luigi Campoverde, “I will not call you Princess Margarita, and you know that very well. You have a perfectly good and regal name—Gian Gastone di Pucci de’ Meducci, Prince of Tuscany and sole heir to the duke-ship.”

  The boy frowned and said sadly, “It seems I may be duke sooner than I would like.”

  Luigi felt a rush of anxiety tighten his muscles at just the instant he was to crack an egg against the lip of a bowl. “Tsst,” Luigi snapped his tongue against the roof of his mouth as a fleck of eggshell fell into the bowl and some glop of egg white slimed over the bowl’s rim and onto the table. “Do not say such things.”

  “Where do you think Papa could be?” “How should I know?” Luigi answered without looking at the boy.

  “Well, do you think Papa is dead?”

  “Dead,” repeated the chef as he used a larger piece of eggshell to scoop the smaller fleck from the bowl. “How should I know if the duke is dead? I am a chef, not a teller of fortunes.”

  From the corner of his eye, Luigi noticed the boy’s face deflate. Good God! Luigi felt his own heart wilt. He knew what it was to lose a father and the idea that the young prince was imagining such a scenario unnerved him greatly. He had, after all, just seen the duke five days ago: this past Monday, at market, when he ventured back to the village to stock up on provisions—actually, to barter for them. And there, he spotted the duke looking like a peasant in his dulled and soiled stableman’s outfit that he’d worn for a week straight. Behaving like a peasant too, doling out olives as he gladly assisted the pretty young girl who ran the olive stand. Already, the duke’s body looked leaner and his face darker than Luigi had ever seen it—and with an untidy week’s worth of facial hair. Even from a fair distance, the duke appeared to Luigi to be happier than he could ever recall in the two years he’d known him.

  “No.” Luigi now turned to face the peculiar little prince. “I do not think the duke is dead.”

  Young Gian, still wearing his sleeping gown, gave a halfhearted smile. “How do you know?” he asked.

  Luigi Campoverde felt something odd stir inside him, a feeling he resented yet could not ignore. Annoying and queer as the boy may be, he was about the only person that Luigi could ever recall looking up to him and depending on him for something other than his next meal. “Here.” Luigi patted the stool beside the kitchen counter, indicating that the prince should take a seat.

  Gian sat down, resting his elbows on the counter, facing the chef.

  “Pay attention,” Luigi said to the boy, gesturing to the bowl with the raw egg in it. Luigi poured a touch of cream into the bowl and then proceeded to narrate his actions. “A pinch of salt, a small grating of nutmeg, then cinnamon, then clove. Be especially sparing with clove.” Luigi looked at the boy as he grated a fine dust of clove into the bowl. “Too much clove will ruin any dish. Then beat the egg and spices together.”

  Luigi reached for a yellowish loaf of semolina egg bread. Then he set his knife at a slight angle to the loaf before cutting. “Slice the bread on a bias, it’s prettier that way. Not too thick, nor too thin, about as wide as my thumb. Set the slice of bread onto a plate and pour the egg mixture over it. Flip it over a few times so that the bread can sop up as much of the egg as possible.”

  Luigi wiped his hands on a cloth then added a dollop of butter to a hot pan on the stove. “Tilt and rotate the pan so the melted butter spreads about and do not let the butter burn. Now,” he said to the boy as he reached his fingers into a mortar filled with a crushed something or other, “this is my little trick. Finely, very finely, crush some toasted hazelnuts and chestnuts then sprinkle them atop the bread. Dust it, like this. Don’t coat it entirely.”

  Luigi set the slice of bread into the pan. “Do you hear that sizzle? That’s what you want. The pan should be hot, but not too hot or you’ll burn the nuts and ruin the flavor. Then shake the pan very quickly, like this, to make sure the bread isn’t sticking to the pan. Count to thirty and then it should be ready to be flipped.”

  Luigi took a thin-lipped wooden spatula from a vase set on the counter. He held the handle of the pan with one hand and the spatula with the other. “When it comes to flipping,” Luigi continued, “don’t be timid. Make a strong and confident move. Position the lip of the spatula under the bread and then lift it up a bit to see that the color is proper. Then flip the bread away from you, using the lip of the pan to prevent splattering. Always, always flip away from yourself—that way if grease is to splatter, it will splatter away from you. Do you understand?”

  Gian nodded.

  “Good.” Luigi peeked under the bread to see that it was cooked properly then flipped the bread onto its other side; butter sizzled and bubbled at the edges of the bread. “There, do you see that color?” Luigi glanced over his shoulder to make sure Gian was paying attention. “That’s what you want.”

  Luigi left the bread to cook. He took a clean plate off the shelf and set it on the counter, then pulled a knife and fork from a drawer and set it before the boy. Reaching for a pitcher, he then poured a glass of milk from it. “Fresh,” he said whilst sniffing the air, “you can still smell the grass.”

  Gian did not smile. Luigi pursed his lips in a moment of internal deliberation. He had come to know the young prince well enough to understand that if not even fresh milk and a lesson on Tuscan toast could undo the boy’s concern about his father, then he must truly be suffering.

  “Let me tell you a secret that all good chefs know,” Luigi said to the boy.
“A secret I learned many years ago when I was about your age, about how food and flavor can tell the future.”

  Luigi turned to face the stove and with another quick move of the spatula lifted the cooked bread from the pan and set it on the plate. From the cupboard he took a jar of jam and flipped its metal cinch-top open. Discerningly, he brought the jar to his nose and sniffed twice. “Ah, fig jam,” he said, and then spooned some atop the bread. Next, he sunk the spoon into a bowl of fresh whipped cream and shook a dollop of it upon the plate as well. Quickly dipping a knife into a pot of honey, he then drizzled a thin stream of the sweet nectar over the toast in a back-and-forth pattern. Finally, he slid the plate before the prince.

  “Here,” he said, looking into the boy’s eyes. “This is how we’ll know if your father is still alive. This is the secret that all true chefs know. You see, when someone you love dies, even if your eyes have not seen it, nor your ears heard of it, your belly will know of it.”

  The young boy raised his eyebrows.

  “It’s true,” Luigi answered the expression, “your stomach has a mind of its own. And if someone you love has died, even the sweetest and most delicious foods will taste like merda.” Luigi gestured to the plate, letting the boy know it was time to sample the dish.

  Tentatively, Prince Gian Gastone picked up his knife and fork and sliced into the toast. He was a refined eater for a boy his age and made sure to get equal amounts of fig jam, cream and honey upon the fork. Slowly, the boy brought the fork to his mouth.

  Faccia di Merda, thought Luigi Campoverde, as he watched the boy’s face light up, this could assuredly cost me my job. But Luigi knew that he had no choice but to fetch the duke from hiding. A boy deserves his father, after all.

  In which We Learn

  the Divine Reason

  Behind an Unruly child

  Wonderful, thought Cosimo di Pucci de’ Meducci the Third, Grand Duke of Tuscany in peasant disguise, absolutely wonderful. He was working in tandem with the colossal and perplexing Good Padre. It was only yesterday that Cosimo had such an extraordinary experience in the Good Padre’s company, and he felt something akin to a childlike excitement just being in the man’s presence again. Cosimo was particularly giddy about all the commotion going on around him. It was the day before the feast and nearly the entire village was present in the piazza, arranging tables, festooning donkeys and setting up all manner of decorations and preparations for the great day. Cosimo and the Good Padre themselves were busy lifting hay bales off a wagon and helping in the construction of a hay-bale-lined oval track that circled the statue of the Drunken Saint.

  Cosimo had been living with the villagers for nearly two weeks now and, ironically, had found that he was almost as useless a peasant as he was a duke. This realization, though a touch disheartening, hardly undid his newfound joy in being among the common folk and working the land. How easy it was for Cosimo to shed the falsity of his life as Duke of Tuscany and so heartily adopt the falsity of his life as a village peasant. Even the ribbing he received as an inept farmhand was oddly droll when compared to the humiliations he suffered as the duke. Not a single bone-tiring day of work over the last two weeks left his soul anywhere as exhausted as the simplest day spent as the Duke of Tuscany. Even the mockery dished out by the locals carried but a fraction of the venom that poisoned even the pleasantries doled out in the corridors of power. No, among the villagers, Cosimo found that insults and ridicule—lavishly lobbed about—were not so much meant to demean their recipient, but rather to provide a collective moment of amusement.

  The work, however, was grueling and shattered the romantic fantasies Cosimo had so ripely held for much of the last two years. If only I were a farmer, he would so often repeat to himself to counter the toxic melancholy that ate away at his soul, if only I were a farmer. Well, now Cosimo was a farmer and what he’d imagined as joyous hours spent working the land with the sun bronzing his face, a peasant song ringing in his ear and his stomach never far from a hunk of cheese and a bottle of wine, proved a touch overidealized. Indeed, there was often wine, cheese and song, but so too were there chilly mornings, sweltering afternoons and back-breaking labors.

  In fact, every part of Cosimo’s body ached, every muscle and joint—even places where he had not known there was a muscle or a joint. But the ache of Cosimo’s muscles proved to be a pittance in comparison to the soreness of his self-image. Cosimo was not so deluded as to perceive his soft flesh and paunchiness as Atlas-like, as many aristocrats did, but he had no idea that he was such a spongy, unfit and ill-coordinated twit. Hefty sacks of salt that Benito would easily toss over each shoulder and then effortlessly carry through the mill, Cosimo would have to drag one at a time. A row of six olive trees that Mari would have picked clean in three hours would take him nearly all day. Even the de-pitting of green olives (a task reserved for the retarded and infirm) proved daunting. So much so that Benito’s drooling cousin, who had been kicked in the head by a mule many years past, could remove four olives of their pits before Cosimo could de-pit a single one. And when it came to hoisting the pulley to load the wagons with barrels of wine and olive oil (something of a virility challenge among the men of the vineyard), Cosimo was so pathetically weak that the workers would gather round to marvel and mock his futility (except Mari—she never laughed when it came to the pulley).

  Yes, Cosimo was weaker than a woman, as inexperienced as a child and less dexterous than a drooling retard. But he was happy, happier than he had been in years. True to his imagining, hard work proved a panacea to his soul. And the locals, for their part, seemed not to mind his presence at all— except for Bobo the Fool, who found himself befuddled and oddly tongue-tied in Cosimo’s company. Indeed, even those like Mari who were suspicious of anyone whom Benito took a liking to found themselves won over by Cosimo’s enthusiasm, his odd manner of speech (the poor man had not a stitch of rhyme to offer), his gentlemanly disposition and his gleeful subservience to all. He seemed, without a doubt, the easiest person in the entire village to get along with. Even Giuseppe, who until four days ago found Cosimo contemptibly useless, did a quick turnabout. It happened like this:

  “Benito,” said Giuseppe pointedly upon seeing Cosimo struggle under the not-so-significant weight of a sack of salt. “Should you desire to employ this useless foot-licker, then you shall pay his wages.”

  “Very well, sir,” said Benito.

  “What do you mean, very well?”

  “I mean what I mean,” said Benito, “and it is very well what I mean.”

  “Well, it’s not to me!” Giuseppe seemed in no mood for foolery; his torn anus had turned his disposition especially foul. “Between the insatiability of your gullet and groin, from where do you spare a coin?”

  “Well, sir,” said Benito, with a touch of fumble and delay as if he had a card up his sleeve, “the thing is … eh, the point being …”

  “Faccia di culo! Get to the point.”

  “Well,” said Benito, “the man asks for no wage.”

  “Ah,” Giuseppe smiled, patting his underling upon the shoulder, “excellent hire.”

  And with that, not even Giuseppe objected to Cosimo’s presence. The sole person who seemed to object to Cosimo’s newfound life, only most recently and only a little, was Cosimo himself. When he first ran off, Cosimo believed that his life as the Duke of Tuscany was over and that he would simply disappear from that world entirely. All the anguish and pain and sadness that had beset him since the murder of his beloved courtesan had been a ceaseless murmur in his mind, pleading with him to escape, to run away from it all.

  Only a simple life as a farmer could cleanse his mind and heart of all the sorrow that plagued him. At least, that was what Cosimo had hoped. And amazingly, it was proving true. As he lay in bed, dirty and bone-tired, after a full and exuberant day preparing the piazza for tomorrow’s feast, Cosimo found that the myriad regrets and miseries that for years had churned his sleep into a nightmarish mess had almost entirely receded. Ther
e was only one longing that interrupted his fatigue as he drifted toward sleep: Cosimo longed for his child, Gian. Of all the revelations and realizations of the past two weeks none had been as profound or shocking to Cosimo as the fact that he had come to miss his boy. This was odd, because while Cosimo was decent and kind to his son, he loved him only with half his heart, the way one loves an ugly, embarrassing little dog.

  Oh, Cosimo had tried to love his child in the manner he imagined a proper father should, but to him the child was a living affirmation of his own inadequacy. Every time he looked upon his son he saw the boy not for who Gian was, but for what he, Cosimo, was. And that was a fraud and a weakling and a coward. The kind of man who bore a child with a woman for whom he had not an inkling of love (nor she for him). The kind of man who could not even father a proper and manly child at that, and through whom the distinctly Meducci disease of spawning queers and sodomites had come to such spectacular fruition.

  But that was yesterday, the past. For even Cosimo’s understanding of his own child and the very nature of love was now reborn. It had happened the other day, on the afternoon of L’Iniziazione dei Bambini 14, as he worked an olive tree free of its green fruits alongside the Good Padre, Bertolli the altar boy and Bertolli’s grandmother. Cosimo could not help but notice that Bertolli was not a good boy—not a good boy at all—but that he was a perfect boy, full of life and vigor, mischief and curiosity. Cosimo could also not help but notice that Bertolli seemed to have initiated a covert war of olive-throwing amongst the children and that every so often a ripe green olive bounced off the back of his head. While the Good Padre, in all his infinite grace, seemed to pay no mind to the mischief going on about him, the same could not be said for Bertolli’s grandmother. The old woman appeared to be growing so angered by the boy’s antics that Cosimo felt she might spontaneously cure the olives with the acid of her frustration. Finally, the plump and feisty nonna could take no more and, with a cat-like agility that belied her age, she took hold of Bertolli’s ear and bent it to debilitating effect.