Mozzarella Most Murderous

by Nancy Fairbanks

  Beside me, Bianca was giving Hank a detailed description of the heartburn that accompanied late pregnancy. I provided her with an antacid tablet. Since she was dubious about taking an American medicine about which she knew nothing, I read the instructions on the roll. “There,” I said, having made my way through the directions for usage and a list of off-putting ingredients. “‘Safefor pregnant women.’ You can chew it up without a qualm.”

  After the heartburn episode, we had a fairly peaceful interlude, if travel on that highway, the A3, could be considered anything but traumatic. Eliza mentioned that she and Francis were planning to spend several days in Rome before flying home and asked Bianca’s advice on what new things had opened in recent years that they might not have seen. Bianca suggested Nero’s Golden Palace, which had been excavated.

  “Oh, I couldn’t go to see that!” Eliza exclaimed. “What a dreadful man. Imagine playing one’s violin when the city was burning down.”

  “Actually, he wasn’t a violinist,” I told her. “He was a really bad singer, who wanted to win the Olympic singing contest.”

  “I’ve never heard of a singing contest at the Olympics,” Eliza protested.

  I shrugged. Neither had I, but I remembered the story very clearly. “He came to a music festival in Naples to further his ambition and sang his way right through an earthquake. As bad as he was, he got a good round of applause from an audience who couldn’t leave while the emperor was performing and were greatly relieved to be alive at the end. They left, and the stadium immediately collapsed.”

  Bianca laughed. “What was it? His singing or the earthquake that knocked the stadium down?”

  Before I could say I had no idea, that there had been a bad earthquake the year before that might have started the undermining of the theater, Eliza, who hadn’t laughed, asked whether he ever went to the Olympics.

  “Oh, yes,” I replied. “And he won because he wouldn’t stop singing and no other competitor got to.”

  “Well, that’s not fair,” said Eliza, “although it’s not as bad as the fiddling story.” After that we were all quiet for a while.

  The next problem was, to no one’s surprise, Charles de Gaulle. His head was in Albertine’s lap, she nodded off, and he stuck his nose over the seat. I shrieked and gave the nose a light bop, which, for all Albertine’s complaints, was just the right thing to do. The dog kept his nose to himself for the rest of the trip, although his stomach took to rumbling, and I think we all worried that an accident of a nontraffic nature might be in the offing.

  My pill evidently helped Bianca. She dozed off. So did everyone else, except Hank and I. Now was my opportunity. “I like Rome better than Naples,” I said.

  “Have you seen that much of Naples?”

  “No, but I love Rome. I should have stayed over when I found out Jason wouldn’t be able to get to Sorrento from Paris. Were you able to do any sightseeing before you drove to Sorrento?”

  “Nope,” he replied. “I got into Fiumacino, booked a room at an airport hotel and a car, caught as much sleep as I could, and headed for Sorrento early in the morning.”

  “Too bad,” I said. “I was just thinking of how nice it would be to sit in the Piazza Navone, eating gelato and looking at the fountains. I’ll bet it isn’t raining there. Are the airport hotels nice? I’ve only stayed in the city.”

  “About what you’d expect,” he replied. “On the expensive side for what you get.”

  Well, I hadn’t found anything out so far. Could he have talked to Ricci, slept with Paolina, flown to Naples, driven to Sorrento to kill her, headed back to Rome to rent a room and car near the airport, then driven back to Sorrento? The answer was, probably not. “What hotel did you stay at?” If I kept asking questions, he was going to get suspicious, except that innocent people had no need to be suspicious.

  “A Best Western. I get a discount there,” he replied.

  So much for that, I thought, and mentioned that I’d stayed at a Best Western in Tours and found it very comfortable, with edible food.

  “Edible, huh? Now there’s a testimonial they’ll want to put in their ads.”

  I had to laugh. “You don’t know what the rest of the food was like on that trip. Edible was a high point.” After that, while trying to think of another question, I dozed off myself.

  37

  Another Ticket

  Bianca

  We must have been about halfway back to Sorrento when I woke up with cramps in my left foot and my right calf. Pregnant women get those along with nausea and heartburn. You name it, I had it with that pregnancy. The rain was coming down like the end of the world without an ark. I pressed the cramping foot hard against the hump in the floor, wishing I hadn’t offered to sit in the middle where I couldn’t stretch my legs out and the gearshift limited my mobility further. The foot eased up a bit, but my calf—oh, it felt as if the pain would eat it up. I guess I groaned because Hank asked what the problem was.

  “Nothing, nothing,” I mumbled. I could see that he had his own problems. With rain flooding the windshield, the wipers weren’t keeping up. I couldn’t see a thing and hoped his view of the road was better than mine. Biting my lip to keep from crying, I let up pressure on the foot and tried to stretch my wretched calf out. Both of them spasmed, and Hank muttered curses under his breath, as if he could feel my pain. Or had I interfered with his driving? I was on the right side of the floor shift, and he was reaching for it.

  In trying to scoot further over, I woke Carolyn up. She mumbled something I didn’t catch because not only was I suffering from two cramps again, but also the convertible roof had started to leak down my neck. Oh, perfect. I’d probably catch a cold.

  “I’ve got to pull over to the side,” said Hank, grabbing the stick shift and catching a piece of my skirt. “I can’t see a damn thing.”

  “Thank God,” I said. “I’ve got to walk around.”

  Carolyn, now fully awake, asked, “Where? You can’t get out in this rain. I’d have to get out too, and we’ll both be soaked.”

  Hank was edging cautiously over, but who knew where to? I certainly couldn’t tell. “I’ve got to walk,” I insisted.

  “Are you going into labor?” asked Eliza. “They made me walk when I—”

  “Mon Dieu!” cried Albertine. “You can’t have the baby here, Bianca.”

  “I’m not.” I could feel the car sliding. Hank turned into the skid. “My legs are all cramped up,” I complained. “It really hurts.”

  “Jesus,” said Hank. “Everybody shut up before we drive into a ditch.”

  But we didn’t. The car came to a stop, and a sheet of water washed over us from another car passing, so we must have made it off the road. “I’ve got to get out!” I insisted.

  Carolyn groaned and opened the door, saying, “I knew you shouldn’t have sat in the middle.” Then she tumbled out into the deluge. “Come on,” she shouted at me.

  Of course my leg hurt so badly I couldn’t move, so she reached in and pulled me out while Hank pushed. Shades of the first time we met in the hall, when I couldn’t get up off the floor. Carolyn, not very gently, stood me up, moved me to the middle of the opened door, and slid back inside. I started to cry. She was going to leave me out in the wind and rain by myself when I could hardly stand up.

  “Start moving your weight from foot to foot,” she ordered.

  “We’re getting wet back here,” Albertine complained.

  “Too bad,” said Carolyn, who had taken my hands in hers and was saying, “Move, move.”

  I moved. The damn door only shielded the middle of me. My feet were squelching in mud, my chest and head were completely soaked, and I hurt. Oh Holy Mother, I did hurt!

  “Any better?” Carolyn shouted.

  Now I was hearing sirens and didn’t bother to answer her. I just kept shifting my weight and sniveling because it hurt so much that I felt faint. Another wall of water roared over us, and I thought I’d be washed away, but Carolyn was hanging onto me s
o hard my hands hurt almost as much as my foot and calf. Ahead of the car I thought I saw flashing lights. Help had arrived. Maybe. No one was coming to my aid. “Over here,” I yelled into the rain. “I’m an expectant mother. Help me.” Thinking back, that sounded pretty stupid, but I was hoping for an ambulance. A nice, dry ambulance with a cot I could lie down on and medics to massage my poor legs and assure me that my baby was just fine.

  But wouldn’t you know? It was the police. And no one came to rescue me. An officer in a big rain hat and coat splashed over to Hank’s side of the car and knocked on the window. He was shouting that we couldn’t park here; it was illegal. That infuriated me so much that I stamped harder and harder, ready to go right around the car and tell him a thing or two. And the cramps let up. Oh, blessed Mary Magdalene, the pain was almost gone. Just that lingering soreness in the muscles. I moved cautiously to see if it would come back.

  “You’re okay?” Carolyn yelled. She’d paid no attention to the policeman who was trying to knock Hank’s window in, while Hank just leaned his head on the steering wheel as if he’d had more than enough of all of us. “Get back into the car,” Carolyn ordered.

  I got back in, noticing that she, having moved over, had her knees under her chin because of the hump. Not that I was going to offer to change places this time.

  “Keep your legs stretched out and move them from time to time,” she advised as I pulled the door closed behind me. And did we look terrible, like two drowned cats ready to snarl at the first person that gave us trouble. And that was the policeman yelling at Hank and pounding on the window. What the heck, I thought. I’m already soaked. So I got out again and yelled over the car, “Hey you. Officer. Get over here before I go into labor.”

  The idiot heard me because the rain had let up a bit and no cars were presently passing. He splashed around the car, ready to yell at me until he got a look at my stomach.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked. “We’re about to drown or get washed away, and you’re not even offering to help.”

  “This is not a parking zone. I must see the ownership papers and the driver’s license to drive,” he insisted.

  “It’s a rental, he’s an American, and I’m getting soaked. Why don’t you just go away if you’re not going to help?”

  “I will have to arrest all of you,” he said, peering into the back seat, where two women, a large French poodle, and Sergeant Gambardella were peering back. “If you don’t cooperate, I will have to—”

  Hank had passed his license to Carolyn, who passed it to me. I shoved it at the officer, who took it up under the shelter of his plastic rain hat and said, “This is in a foreign language.”

  While I was re-explaining that the driver was an American so the license was in English, Hank was going through his coat pockets, looking for the rental papers. Finally he said, “They must be in the glove compartment,” and reached across Carolyn.

  “I’ll get them,” I shouted, ducking back in the car. “No use everyone getting wet.” I opened the box and shuffled through the papers, looking at each carefully so that I could stay out of the rain for a minute while Hank kept offering to do it himself. Then I stuffed some papers back in that didn’t seem to be what the officer was looking for, inched the door open, and handed out the rental contract. It got a bit soggy between my hand and his hat brim, but he read it over carefully, probably highly relieved to see something in Italian.

  Then he leaned down, and I edged the door open again. “I don’t like the foreign license, but the rental seems all right. Now I will write a ticket for the illegal parking.”

  For me that was the last straw. I shoved the soggy papers at Carolyn, from whom Hank grabbed them and stuck them in his pocket. Now, that was going to do his sports jacket a lot of good! Fortunately, his clothes weren’t my problem. Pushing the door open again and shoving the officer back, I heaved myself out. “You’re going to give a ticket to a man who pulled off the road because he couldn’t see and didn’t want to kill me and my baby and everyone else in the car?

  “This isn’t America, you know. Killing unborn babies is illegal here, and it would be your fault. So we’ll all go back to your police station, and I’ll tell your superior how you’ve treated a pregnant woman, mother of two, who is this close to giving birth.” I held my thumb and finger about a quarter inch apart and pushed them right under his nose. “What real Italian man would keep an expectant mother shivering in the rain, probably endangering both her health and the health of the child? You must be a Yugoslavian immigrant.”

  I could hear Carolyn behind me hissing, “Just take the ticket, for God’s sake.” In the back seat Sergeant Gambardella was roaring, “Let me talk to him.”

  “I’m not getting out in that,” squeaked Eliza.

  “You there,” shouted the sergeant. “I am a sergeant of the Polizia de Stato in Sorrento, escorting these important visitors back from Naples. I intend to file a complaint against you for endangering my charges and myself, not to mention the unborn infant of this good lady.”

  The eager writer of parking tickets backed away, throwing up his hands, stamped around our car and back to his, and sped away, sending a shower of mud onto our windshield. I got back into Hank’s car and said, “That was impressive, Sergeant Gambardella. I’m going to tell your lieutenant that you must be the best officer in his department.” The sergeant flushed with pleasure, and Hank muttered that now all he needed to do was clean the windshield, change the wipers, and we’d be on our way.

  Carolyn and Eliza were discussing the neon shrines they’d seen in Naples. Neither of them thought neon was a tasteful example of religious décor.

  Lorenzo, my dear husband, was all kindness when I dripped into our room at the Grand Palazzo Sorrento. He helped me out of my wet clothes and into a warm shower, then tucked me into bed and fed me hot soup. It was heaven to be warm, dry, and free of leg cramps, with my children fast asleep and my husband sliding into bed, curling up behind me, and wrapping an arm around my shoulders.

  “You know, Lorenzo,” I said after I had related the high points of the adventurous trip to Naples. “It’s the weirdest thing. I’m sure that while I was dozing I heard Hank tell Carolyn about flying into Fiumacino, getting a car and an airport hotel room, and then leaving early to drive to Sorrento for the meeting. But the rental papers I had to get out for the stupid policeman said Hank had rented the car in Sorrento the day before.”

  “You’re sure of the date?” Lorenzo asked sleepily.

  “Well, I was wet, and I was dripping on the paper, so I could have misread that, but I know it said Sorrento.”

  “He probably had trouble with the car coming down from Rome and turned it in for another one,” said Lorenzo. “Remember the car we rented in Spain? Fifty kilometers into the countryside and the transmission broke down.”

  “And the children were crying, and that farmer came along, towed us to his house, and gave us a really bad wine to drink with some of his own olives.” I laughed at the memory.

  “Girol was lucky he made it to Sorrento. He could have been stuck anywhere along the way.”

  “Umm,” I agreed. “And since he’s American, there might have been no friendly farmer to give him a tow.” Then we both dozed off, all comfy and warm.

  When it rains in the Campania, one is best advised to stay safely inside a waterproof building or vehicle. I’d almost forgotten how wet an unwary tourist can become when confronted with a real thunder storm. I returned from a trip to Naples on such a day, sneezing and feeling on the verge of a terrible cold. Certainly I was not up to eating anything prepared by a Swiss chef, which would be our lot at our Sorrento hotel. I called the kitchen and begged them to provide us with something made by an Italian. A pot of vegetable soup arrived at our door. Never did anything taste better on a wild night after a comfortless day. My husband and I had three bowls each and went to bed. I am pleased to say that the fine Italian soup saved me from viral infections.

  Ribollita Italian
Vegetable Soup

  • Heat 3 tablespoons olive oil in a large saucepan. Sauté gently in the oil for 10 minutes 2 chopped onions, 3 sliced carrots, 4 crushed garlic cloves, 2 thinly sliced celery stalks, and 1 trimmed and chopped fennel bulb.

  • Add 2 large, thinly sliced zucchini and sauté for 2 minutes more.

  • Add a 14-ounce can of chopped tomatoes, 2 tablespoons pesto (which can be purchased at your grocery store), 3 1/2 cups vegetable stock, and a 14-ounce can of drained pinto or navy beans. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer gently for 25 to 30 minutes, until vegetables are tender. Season with salt and pepper.

  • Sauté 1 pound young spinach leaves in 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil until wilted.

  • To serve, place slices of crusty white bread in soup bowls, top with spinach, ladle soup over spinach, and serve with extra virgin olive oil, which can be drizzled onto the soup, and Parmesan cheese shavings sprinkled on top.

  Carolyn Blue,

  “Have Fork, Will Travel,”

  Milwaukee News-Register

  Saturday

  Yearning for Capri

  The one place I particularly wanted to see during my trip to southern Italy was Capri. I had heard so much about its beauty, not to mention its food. A friend of Italian ancestry in El Paso told me that the one thing I had to eat, even if I didn’t get to Capri, was Torta Caprese, which she said was “truly a dessert to die for.” Here is a recipe, which I made when I got home. My husband and guests loved it.

  Torta Caprese

  • Chop as finely as possible 8 ounces of cooking chocolate and 2 cups of almonds with skins on.