Tomato Rhapsody

by Adam Schell

  Acqua, Davido heard through the blackness, acqua. And he dreamt of water. Cool and clean water. What a bizarre dream, that water should feel so real. The water flooded his face, filled his nostrils and transformed his dream to one of drowning. Then, with a startle and a cough, the dream ended. The water was real.

  “You two,” said Giuseppe, pointing at a pair of men who happened to be standing closest to Benito’s feet and then pointing to the prone and vomit-covered Benito, “off with him.” The men dragged Benito away by his boots.

  Giuseppe now emptied a second bucket of water upon Davido.

  Davido coughed as he came to awareness.

  “Don’t just stand there,” said Giuseppe to one of the workers from his mill, “help the boy up.” Giuseppe turned his head to the right, “And you too,” he said to what looked like the fittest man close by.

  The men stepped forward and grabbed the Ebreo from under his arms, helping him to his feet. The boy was unsteady and the two men looked to each other for a kind of assurance. It was at that very moment that Luigi Campoverde, chef to the Duke of Tuscany, realized that supporting the Ebreo boy’s other arm was his boss, the duke. Luigi felt his knees weaken as every intoxicated nerve of his body rang with alarm. Surely I’ll be out of a job now! Cosimo too was similarly startled, but the feeling was quickly overwhelmed by a sensation far more powerful. Beneath the odor of vomit and wine, Cosimo’s olfactory sense deciphered a scent that instantly transported him from the task at hand and placed his memory acutely where his nose had once been: the soft armpit of his beloved courtesan after a warm evening spent drinking wine and making love. My God, thought Cosimo, as he felt himself entirely dislocate between what is and what had once been, the boy smells just like his sister!

  “You drunken idiots,” barked Giuseppe to the pair of men who had suddenly and simultaneously crumpled to the ground and brought the Ebreo boy down with them. “This is no way to treat a champion!”

  Dutifully, the Good Padre and many from the crowd moved in and helped all three men to their feet.

  “Bene, bene,” said Davido softly as he steadied his legs under him. It seemed safer to stand on his own.

  Giuseppe lifted the olive and grape vine wreath from the Drunken Saint statue and raised it to the crowd’s attention. “Behold,” he said with a great air of formality, “Il Vincitore!”

  Davido looked about in disbelief as the entire crowd encircling him dropped to one knee as if the Duke of Tuscany himself had just arrived.

  “Let me be the first,” said Giuseppe as he held the wreath over Davido’s head, “to state here admittedly the wrong I’ve done this brave boy of Italy. For never was a braver race ever run and never by a braver knight was it ever won. So let all here recognize and accept without complaint: the hero, the victor, champion of our beloved sain—”

  “Look!” shouted a shocked Bertolli, as he pointed to the donkey that just moments ago had carried its rider to victory. The poor beast was in the throes of death, foaming at the mouth, twitching his lips and flailing his tongue in an entirely unnatural manner. Heads turned. The noise was horrible and sublime at the same time. There was a pounding of hoof, a wheezing inhale of a hee and then a short and desperate burst of haw. But the haw was not complete—the sound suddenly drained of life—as the donkey collapsed to the ground.

  “Ay!” Davido cried out as he leapt out from under the wreath and toward the noise. “Signore Meducci! Signore Meducci e morto!”

  The animalistic wail, the pained look upon the boy’s face, the sound of dead weight dropping to the ground sent a ripple of confusion through the tightly packed crowd. “The duke?” said a skeptical voice in the crowd. “The duke is dead?”

  “Who is dead?” said Mucca as a chorus of “Ehs?” and “huhs?” and “whats?” and “whos?” fluttered through the crowd. Instantly, there was a great reorienting of the mass to see what had happened.

  Vaffanculo, thought Giuseppe as the crowd’s attention entirely shifted focus.

  Luigi Campoverde heard the cry of Signore Meducci echo through his drunk and drugged mind. He felt his heart sink, My boss is dead? Could it be? I was just looking at him! Poor Gian, he thought, I have failed my prince. What am I to tell the boy? Surely I’ll be out of a job now.

  Cosimo di Pucci de’ Meducci the Third, also drunk and drugged, felt his heart sink: I am dead! Instinctively, he moved his hands over his back and kidneys to feel for the knife wound—the assassin’s knife always comes from behind! It was not the first time Cosimo had heard the phrase Signore Meducci is dead. He heard it when his father died, and when uncles and cousins had been murdered or passed away. He always imagined it would be the last thing he would ever hear. Who would have thought that death would be so painless?

  Only Nonno immediately understood the true meaning of what was said, and his heart sank too.

  “Oh, no,” sighed Davido as he dropped to his knees beside his fallen donkey, “oh, no.” The boy’s grandfather shuffled over and dropped to his knees beside his grandson. They placed their hands upon the head and neck of the donkey, stroked his hair and together began to sob.

  The crowd fell silent. These were superstitious folk, and death, especially the death of the victorious donkey, seemed a bad omen. It was a sad sight too. The beast, old and gnarled and dangling of cazzone, had raced hard and well and carried the boy to victory. And while the crowd may have had reservations about the rider, they were not at all conflicted in their admiration of the old donkey. They were also drunk, drugged and Italian and therefore predisposed to effusive displays of emotion.

  Giuseppe looked about the crowd. It was eerily silent but for the muffled sobs of the two Ebrei. He noticed eyes welling with tears, and not just his stepdaughter’s, but nearly the entire crowd. My God, he thought, this drug I’ve rendered is true.

  It was difficult to know for sure, perhaps it was Cosimo di Pucci de’ Meducci, or maybe his chef, or possibly Mari who first joined Davido in sobbing, but once the crowd heard the Good Padre’s cries, a wave of emotion spread until the entire piazza became a great sea of tears. They sobbed, at first, for reasons separate from them, but the sobbing began to open that wellspring of sadness that all humans hide within their heart. For who has not suffered?

  Mari found herself sobbing because her heart was bursting with so much love and sadness for the tomato boy that she had no choice but to weep. Cosimo sobbed for his dead courtesan, Luigi for his parents killed by the plague, and Bobo for the secret that lay buried in his heart. The Good Padre sobbed because the spirit that moved him was moved to sob. Mucca sobbed for her own dead child, who, if he’d lived past infancy, would have been about the Ebreo boy’s age. The Cheese Maker sobbed for his favorite cow, dead and gone, whose teats produced the sweetest cream he’d ever tasted. Vincenzo sobbed for all the pigs he’d slaughtered and how sad and terrified they always looked as he slid the knife across their throats, and for how much he hated his task. Signore Coglione sobbed for his long-lost testicle and the fact that he loved men more than women and that his whole life felt like a lie. Even Augusto Po sobbed, suddenly mourning his recently deceased uncle, the old padre, who despite being nasty and cold-hearted was the only family he’d had. Only Giuseppe didn’t cry, his heart alone among the villagers too calcified to crack.

  The assembled crowd sobbed for mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and spouses and friends and lovers and courtesans and horses and mules and goats and sheep and donkeys and cows and cats and dogs and dreams and desires that had died in flesh or spirit. They sobbed for things said and unsaid and for love and efforts unrequited. They sobbed because life is nothing if not a constant reconciliation with death and sadness and loss that leaves one no choice but to sob—sob or lose one’s mind. They sobbed because in sobbing even the vile and villainous, the most closed-hearted and closed-minded may come, even for an instant, to find their humanity. They sobbed for the holy and cathartic sake of sobbing itself. Even the children sobbed, an
d not just because their parents were doing so, but because even children can sense that life can be cruel and unfair and an ordeal entirely worth sobbing over.

  And then, after who knows how long, the sobbing began to miraculously transform into laughter. It began subtly, with a chuckle, perhaps from Davido or Nonno—a chuckle tucked between sighs and moans, but a chuckle nonetheless. And the chuckle spread like a contagion that brought with it the realization that while life was indeed cruel and sad and burdened with anguish, it was also absurd and joyous and a thing worth laughing over—a thing that must be laughed over!

  At first people chuckled because the Good Padre chuckled and because they remembered what began all the sobbing. A donkey had died, yes, and that was sad, but it was also absurd. With a hee and haw and a huge cazzone dangling ‘tween its thighs, a donkey had died, which proved to one and all that God was not without humor. A donkey named after the Duke of Tuscany had died, which allowed the lowly to mock the mighty (this was what made Cosimo laugh most), and showed to all that Ebrei too are not without humor.

  And the chuckle grew to a laugh. The gathering of festival-goers laughed at first for reasons outside themselves, but rather quickly the laughing opened in each and every one that wellspring of laughter that all humans share; for who has not a pain that craves the balm of laughter? And the laughter spread into something that could not be controlled: a plague of laughter. They laughed for mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and husbands and wives and friends and lovers and courtesans and animals and dreams and desires that had died in flesh or in spirit. They laughed for things said and for things unsaid, and for loves and efforts unrequited. They laughed because life is nothing if not a constant reconciliation with death and sadness and loss that leaves one no choice but to laugh or to lose one’s mind. Even the children began to laugh and not solely on account of their parents’ laughter, but because even children know that life is cruel and unfair and an ordeal worth laughing over. Adult and child alike laughed because in laughter even the vile and villainous, the most closed-hearted and closed-minded may come, even for an instant, to find their humanity. They laughed for the holy and cathartic sake of laughter itself. They laughed because life is something that cannot be endured without laughter.

  The villagers laughed as Giuseppe finally managed to lay the victor’s wreath upon Davido’s head, because what could be funnier and more ironic than an Ebreo winning the Race of the Drunken Saint and being declared Il Santo del Giorno? They laughed as Davido made his blessing over the crowd and asked the Drunken Saint to bless the year’s harvest. They laughed as Davido made his request of the people that they should all eat a tomato. And then they laughed as they bit and chewed, as tomato juices dripped from their lips. They laughed as they swallowed and laughed at their fears, that a thing construed so evil would prove to be so delicious.

  They laughed as they drank and as they toasted. They laughed as they ate and danced. They laughed as the stars grew bright and they laughed as the sky went blue with dawn’s first light. They laughed as they grew more and more drunk until their bellies could hold not another drop of wine or laughter. Some laughed as they stumbled home and fell into bed; others laughed as they crumpled to the piazza floor and passed out. They laughed as they fell asleep and then went right on laughing in their dreams.

  Mari laughed because she did not fall asleep and Davido laughed because Nonno and every Ebreo from Pitigliano had. Together, Mari and Davido laughed, because as the entire village fell with sleep and intoxication, they remained standing. And they went right on laughing as they snuck off down an alley. Laughing that a plan unspoken could come so perfectly together. Laughing as their arms and hands and lips and tongues slithered and constricted around one another, proving that love too is a thing worth laughing over.

  In which We Ponder

  Four Types of Death

  Nonno was in the lead. He was too old to sleep in a wagon-bed with a group of drunken men half his age and younger. Illuminated by the dawn light, he was conducting a pair of donkeys along the road that led from the village to his farm. Behind him, in the wagon-bed, lay his beloved donkey. Behind him farther still, two other wagons, each pulled by donkeys and conducted by half-asleep men from Pitigliano. It was a good thing that the Ebrei from Pitigliano had been there at the feast. Had they not, Nonno and Davido would never have been able to transport all the crates of wine and oil back to the farm, let alone deal with the task of moving Signore Meducci so he could be buried in the very ground he considered his rightful property.

  Davido had been given much: eleven cases of the finest wine, eleven cases of the best olive oil, with nine bottles per case. The wine wasn’t kosher, but to Nonno, that fact made it all the sweeter. True, he had reservations about Davido being declared the victor, but he was, nonetheless, the proudest he had ever been of his grandson. The boy had some fight in him, a touch of madness too! He had bested a village full of gentiles and a miracle such as that was more than enough to make kosher any Cristiano wine.

  Nonno peered over his shoulder and noticed that the rigor mortis that had set in within hours of Signore Meducci’s death had yet to relent. Like a comically macabre statue, the poor dead beast was frozen in the position of his last moment of life, including his enormous cazzone, petrified in its final semi-erect state. Yes, it wrenched his heart, but Nonno nearly chuckled at the look of annoyance calcified upon the donkey’s face; that death should visit him at such a public and inopportune moment.

  Of all the beings that Nonno had loved and who had died, this was the best death. He had seen many deaths, some honorable, some pathetic and some horrible. He once saw a starved and syphilis-mad sailor aboard Colombo’s ship chase a rat right off the stern, plunge into the ocean and be consumed by sharks—a pathetic death. In Il Nuovo Mundo, he watched, bound and helpless, as the Indiana woman he loved sacrificed herself so he might live—an honorable death. And then, many years later, he witnessed his second wife, son and daughter-in-law die slowly and miserably of plague in the ghetto of Florence—a horrible death.

  Yet with all the death Nonno had witnessed, he’d never before been privy to such a good and perfect death, a death in which a being takes leave of this world in a manner both glorious and entirely consistent with how it lived. Such was Signore Meducci’s: a perfect donkey death—proud, defiant and ridiculous in a way that only an old donkey or old man can be. Nonno only hoped that one day he would have such a death. Perhaps, thought Nonno, I too should have died at the Festa along with my favorite donkey. I could have died laughing.

  SAUCE

  In which We Learn

  of Tossing Crumbs

  & Furthering Plans

  Only Benito never laughed. He could not stop sobbing. He’d been dragged off into the dark of an alley, where he lay unconscious, his body blanketed in vomit, his dreams wracked by a demented orgy of demons. And when he awoke hours later and spotted the entwined bodies of Mari and Davido kissing in the alley, his sobs turned to cries. Deep and horrid cries that lasted through the dawn and into the next day. Cries that did not abate with the sunrise as most cries do. Cries that ran his body dry of tears, until all that remained was a pathetic, fluidless whimper.

  “For Cristo’s sake,” said Giuseppe with a quick smack to Benito’s left cheek, “basta!” Enough.

  Remarkably, Benito stopped his whimpering; his hatred of Giuseppe instantly halting his sobs. The two men were now sitting across from each other at a table in the tavern, a mug of ale before each. It was Monday, dusk, the day after the feast, a day of rest and cleaning. It was considered offensive, even sacrilegious, not to participate in the cleanup; hence, by early afternoon, even Giuseppe could be found sweeping, lifting and cleaning every last vestige of dirt, hay, vomit and donkey poop from the previous night’s revelry. It was both village tradition and an integral part of tomorrow’s religious procession to take a handful of dirt and crumbs from the piazza’s cobblestones on the day after the feast and
secret it in one’s pocket until the next day’s ceremony. Of all who lived in the village, only Benito did not come to the piazza to clean. In truth, no one expected him to.

  By early evening the piazza was clean and most of the villagers, especially the more devout, stumbled on home to prepare themselves for Tuesday’s ritual of Per Gettare le Briciole 18. A few headed to the tavern.

  “Giuseppe,” said Benito with some difficulty, his hand shaking as it gripped the handle of his mug. “I … I …”

  “Oh, shut up, man. You’re perfectly fine, just a tad hung-over.”

  But Giuseppe knew Benito was not merely recovering from drink. He looked horrendous. Giuseppe had seen this look before, how too strong a dose of Fungi di Santo unhinged the mind. For the two hundred or so persons at the feast positioned behind the Nobiluomi’s table who shared a few gulps from the bottles of fallen riders being passed about, the effects of the narcotic seemed slight and rather delightful; but Benito had drunk down an entire Jeroboame bottle himself, and even Giuseppe feared what that might do to Benito’s mind. He still needed him, after all. “Nothing a good ale or two and a romp with your favorite lady won’t cure,” said Giuseppe as he dropped a pair of silver coins before Benito.

  Benito watched the coins as they hit the table. He had little desire for ale or whores.

  “Now,” said Giuseppe, “are you certain what you saw?”

  “Eh,” said Benito as he lifted his mug, “’twas a lusty lip-lock.”

  “Good, for soon she’ll have those lips upon his co—”

  There was a loud clang as Benito’s pewter mug slipped from his grip, crashed upon the table and splattered the last few drops of ale upon himself and Giuseppe.