by Babs Horton
She noticed the scarf next, or was it a piece of brightly coloured blue cloth that had been blown round the neck of one of the naked cherubs in the fountain, making him look ridiculous?
Then she spotted the donkey’s face, half hidden by shadow, peering out of the doorway of a hovel near the church. Then her attention was drawn to a narrow side window of the blood-red house, where an oil lamp burnt dimly and someone was looking out into the night. Underneath the painting, written in faded black ink, were the words Piazza Santa Rosa, Italia 1751.
On the second page of the book there was a painting of a plump woman with an expression of such glee on her face that made Catrin smile without meaning to. She had dark eyes deeply set in a broad face, her skin brown as an early conker. Her round cheeks were highlighted with downy pink; her full-lipped mouth stretched into a wide grin. She was holding a loaf of bread out in front of her as if offering it to someone. It was a round loaf, with a glorious golden crust glistening with crystals of salt that looked delicious.
Beneath the title of the painting someone had written something in a foreign language. Catrin sighed with disappointment but then she saw, further down the page, written faintly in pencil by an unsteady hand, How to make focaccia bread by Maria Paparella.
She supposed that the gleeful woman in the painting was Maria Paparella and that this was her recipe for focaccia bread, whatever that was. Bread was just bread, as far as she was concerned; full of calories which made you put on weight. At school they always had stale white bread which curled up at the edges and tasted vaguely of onions. The baker’s shop near her house in Ermington Square sold all different types of bread: brown and white, batches and bloomers, split tins, soda bread and milk loaves. In the Jewish shop on the high street they sold exotic rolls with poppy seeds, bagels and French baguettes but she’d never seen focaccia bread anywhere.
She read the recipe with interest. It was fun to read about food, almost as good as eating it but without the anxiety of counting the calories. As she read she glanced from time to time at the cheerful face of Maria Paparella, whose flesh looked so warm and comforting that she felt she could reach out and touch the soft downy skin of the woman’s cheek, feel the beat of the pulse in her neck. It was so fine a portrait, so utterly lifelike, that she would not have been surprised if Maria had stepped out from the page and spoken to her.
Oh, if only that were possible! How lovely it would be to have someone normal to talk to instead of awful Aunt Ella with her scarecrow hair and mouth like a sewer.
She turned the pages of the book slowly, marvelling at the portraits of all the different people. She read their names hesitantly out loud, the Italian words awkward on her unpractised tongue. Maria Paparella, Ismelda Bisotti, Piero di Bardi, Luca Roselli and a tiny little dwarf fellow who had just the one name, Bindo. She wondered who they were and why someone had taken such trouble to paint them. It was curious, too, that a book from Italy had found its way here to the wilds of Kilvenny.
So engrossed was she that she was unaware of the church clock chiming eleven o’clock or that beyond the latticed window the moon had disappeared behind banking clouds. Far out at sea thunder growled ominously and then came the soft pattering of rain against the window. As the rain fell faster and the wind stirred the velvet curtains, Catrin turned the pages slowly, oblivious of the call of the white owl from the castle tower and the sound of hesitant footsteps in the quiet lane below.
12
It was almost noon and the bell marking the Angelus began to ring out from the ancient church, echoing throughout the narroiv streets of the small hilltop town of Santa Rosa. Pigeons flew up from the roofs of the old houses around the piazza, and a startled donkey broke into a trot, spilling lemons from his panniers as he clattered along the Via Dante.
In the garden of the Villa Rosso Maria Paparella, hands on her broad hips, stared in astonishment at eleven-year-old Ismelda Bisotti.
“Mamma mia! What do you mean when you say you’ve hidden the dwarf? What nonsense is this that you speak?”
“It’s not nonsense, Maria. I had to hide him. He was here in the garden and Papa heard him and came looking for him. He would have beaten him senseless if he’d found him here. You know how much he hates him.”
Maria nodded knowingly. It was true that her cantankerous master, Signor Bisotti, hated little Bindo with an intensity which was quite ridiculous. It was absurd for a grown man to feel such hatred for a child. Bindo was a cheeky little beggar, to be sure, but he did have a charm that was all his own and God knows he had enough to put up with in his young life.
“Where in God’s name have you hidden him?” Maria asked, looking around the garden in bewilderment.
“In the peelings bin.”
“Sweet saints of heaven! And he has been in there for the last two hours? The poor child will be suffocated.”
Maria hurried across the garden, opened the flap of the makeshift wooden bin where she put all the fruit and vegetable peelings. Then she stepped backwards, wafting the air in front of her nose.
“Holy Santa Lucia – we must get him out quick.”
Maria thrust her chubby arms into the bin and, with Ismelda’s help, dragged Bindo out from the mound of rotting vegetables and laid the unconscious boy gently on the grass in the shade of the pomegranate tree.
He lay quite still. His face was crimson, sweat ran down his skin in grimy rivulets, and his breathing was laboured.
Ismelda shifted her weight from foot to foot in consternation, and made the sign of the cross. She had heard all about Bindo the dwarf, but she had never set eyes on him until today. He was a peculiar boy with a large head and a tiny body, as if God had muddled up the body parts and put them together in the wrong way.
As she studied his face a shaft of sunlight burst through the branches of the pomegranate tree, illuminating the freckles scattered across his snub nose.
He was beautiful.
Bindo came to slowly and, realising he had been pulled out of his hiding place in the peelings bin, opened one green eye surreptitiously. He saw the pomegranate tree above his head and beyond that an eternity of blue sky.
He winced, thinking of what would happen next. Any moment now Signor Bisotti would take his stick to him.
He swallowed hard and cursed inwardly. He hated Signor Bisotti with a vengeance. He was such a pompous old fool with his fancy clothes and his viper’s tongue. Scabby old fart and wanton arse licker.
Bindo had lit many candles in the church of Santa Rosa, sent up prayers for Signor Bisotti: Blessed Virgin, may his figs shrivel and his piles grow ever bigger.
Then, with a rush of relief he heard Maria Paparella’s voice and he began to breathe more easily.
“Fetch a clean rag and some water, Ismelda, quickly.”
“Will he be all right?” Ismelda asked anxiously, peering down at the prostrate boy.
“I hope so, but we must cool him down. Now run. Presto.”
Bindo opened his eyes a fraction and saw Maria Paparella looming over him, her voluminous breasts just inches from his nose. He closed his eyes and drew in her womanly smells, warm skin laced with a hint of lemon and sweat.
Maria Paparella was a wonderful woman, as big as a carthorse and full of fun. You had to watch her, though, because she was changeable. Some days she was as soft and cuddly as a laying hen, but she had the talons of a cockerel if you crossed her. Catch her on a good day and she’d maybe slip you one of those gorgeous brutti ma buoni biscuits she made, or bestow on you one of those melting smiles of hers. Oh, but if the milk had curdled or mice had got into her larder then look out. She had been known to wrestle grown men to the ground, chew them up and spit out the pips.
Maria pushed Bindo’s silky hair back from his brow, and the touch of her cool fingers on his hot skin was the most tender thing he had known in all his twelve years. He sighed with contentment and closed his eyes; he could have lain there for hours.
He heard Ismelda hurrying back through the garden an
d then Maria was wiping his face and gently wetting his lips with a piece of cloth soaked in water.
“Do you think he’ll live?” Ismelda asked, kneeling down and taking his hot hand in her own.
“Ah, he will survive. You’re lucky: he’s a tough one,” Maria said.
Gesu bambino! He was a beautiful child if ever there was one, with a face on him like a holy cherub. He wouldn’t disgrace a Renaissance painting, with those endearing dimples and rosy cheeks.
He had been abandoned one winter’s night when he was a tiny baby, left in an olive jar outside the convent, wrapped only in a dirty old shirt. Who but a monster could have done that? It was probably some desperate peasant girl, dumped by her fellow when she found she was pregnant, and without any means of supporting a baby.
“Why doesn’t he wake up?” Ismelda asked fearfully.
“If he doesn’t open his eyes soon I will prick the soles of his feet with a needle to make sure he is not dead.”
Bindo opened his eyes and smiled up at Maria Paparella.
She grinned back at him and said, “Thank God for that. For a moment I thought you were a gonner.”
Bindo sat up with difficulty and looked bashfully at Ismelda.
“He could have died in there, Ismelda – if not of the heat then of the stink,” Maria scolded.
“I’m sorry but I had nowhere else to hide him. And he did stink a bit before I put him in there, but of horse shit mostly.”
“Mind your tongue, my girl. Come, we must clean him up and then we will feed him before we throw him back over the wall.”
“But what about Papa?”
“Your papa has gone over to the church to speak with Father Rimaldi, then he is going to the widow Zanelli’s for lunch and after that he will take his siesta in the courtyard, as he often does these days, so I am told. I am not expecting him back until late this evening.”
Ismelda got to her feet, danced up and down on the spot, clapping her hands. “Can we have a feast here under the tree?” she squealed with excitement.
“A feast she wants! This is the girl who barely eats enough to keep a sparrow alive. Si. We will have a feast but hush, now. We don’t want the whole of Santa Rosa to know what we are up to.”
“Okay. Okay. I’ll be quiet”
“First we must fill the bath.”
Bindo struggled to his feet. Bath? No way was he bathing. Bathing was bad for you. It wasn’t good to get naked and lie in warm water. It weakened the back and made your skin wrinkle like a raisin.
Maria swiftly scooped him up into her enormous arms and carried him, wriggling and yelling, towards the Villa Rosso.
“You can go quietly and wash yourself, but any more struggling and I will scrub you with my own fair hands.”
“Okay. Okay. But nobody is to look.”
“No one will look. While you’re bathing I’ll wash these clothes and put them to dry.”
He stopped struggling and allowed himself to be carried into the villa.
Half an hour later Maria managed to coax him out of the bath, and, dressed in one of Signor Bisotti’s voluminous old white shirts and smelling sweetly of lemon soap, he sat down beside Ismelda in the shade of the pomegranate tree.
Bindo breathed in the glorious smell of the garden; the perfume of many herbs mingling with those of lemons, oranges and limes. The sound of bees fizzing around the trailing honeysuckle filled his heart with joy and he watched in wonder as a dragonfly flew close by, its wings beating rainbows upon the soft afternoon air.
He looked shyly across at Ismelda, hardly believing his luck. He had heard many things about her but until today he had never seen her in the flesh because Signor Bisotti kept her well away from public view.
The villagers of Santa Rosa whispered about her, said she was a wild one and that Signor Bisotti kept her hidden behind the high walls of the Villa Rosso because she was an embarrassment to him.
They were wrong, though. Ismelda Bisotti was lovely. Not that she was a real beauty, not like that sniff-nosed sister of hers who had married a rich fellow and moved across the sea a few years back.
Ismelda had large, lively blue eyes which sparkled with mischief behind silky dark lashes. And her mouth. Oh, what a mouth, such a sweet little mouth, puckered and pink and softly moist. It was said that when she opened that mouth of hers she had a tongue on her like a drunken carter.
Bindo thought her the most whimsical, magical girl he had ever seen.
One day, when he had made his fortune he would seek the hand of this lovely girl and marry her. So what if God had shortchanged Bindo in the body parts? At least he hadn’t been standing behind the door when the looks were handed out. He had a handsome face and he had talents which would one day stand him in good stead, of that he was sure.
And one day he knew that Ismelda would fall in love with him.
Tutto e possibile. Everything is possible.
Fate was smiling on him at last. Only a few hours earlier he had climbed the garden wall of the Villa Rosso in pursuit of Signor Bisotti’s cat. He had seen it crossing the piazza, its mouth clamped tightly on the limp body of a dead squirrel. Usually Bindo wouldn’t have dared to climb that high wall, but a squirrel was too good a prize to miss. The peculiar artist fellow Piero di Bardi, who lived in the Via Dante, paid handsomely for the tail fur of squirrels, which he used to make his paintbrushes.
Bindo had nearly come a cropper, though, because Signor Bisotti had looked down from his balcony and seen him just as he cornered the furious cat. Thank God Ismelda had appeared in the garden and, swift as a wink, had shoved him into the peelings bin and saved him from a certain beating.
Maria Paparella laid a crisp white cloth on the grass and, to Bindo’s delight, began to set out the most sumptuous spread of food that he had ever seen. He looked with wide-eyed wonder at the feast before him and his small belly ached with hunger.
The nuns at the Santa Rosa convent were kind enough to him, and in return for running errands and doing odd jobs they let him sleep in the stables. They fed him twice daily but mainly on thin soup and under-cooked beans which gave him the gripe.
There were slices of spicy sausage and ham on a roughly hewn wooden platter, pale cheeses wrapped tightly in vine leaves and small, orange-yolked eggs on a bed of crispy green leaves. There were dusky grapes and downy-skinned peaches. And in the centre of the cloth, a basket of golden bread which gave off the sweet smells of rosemary and olive oil and made his belly ache with longing.
Ismelda picked up one of the loaves, broke it in two, and handed him half. “You like focaccia?” she asked.
He nodded, his mouth too full to answer. It was the most delicious bread he had ever tasted. The convent bread he was used to was dark and chewy and could be used to fill holes in the walls, but this bread was fit for angels. It was golden and crisp to the touch, dusted with salt, dimpled and stuck with sprigs of rosemary.
After they had feasted for some time Bindo looked up in surprise that they had a visitor. It was his good friend Luca Roselli, who worked as a shop boy for Piero di Bardi.
Luca stopped in his tracks when he saw Bindo, winked at his friend and grinned.
Ismelda leant towards Bindo and said, “Luca comes here most afternoons when Papa is out of the way. Maria teaches him to cook, and one day he’s going to be the best cook in all Italy and open his own eating house, isn’t that so, Luca?”
Luca smiled and blushed with pleasure. “Si, one day I will be able to leave that hell-hole of a place where I work.”
“You don’t like working for Piero di Bardi?” Ismelda asked.
“I hate it,” he said with feeling.
“But don’t you learn a lot of things?”
“I don’t want to learn how to make cheese glue and varnish and have to trail around farms looking for white hogs so I can make paintbrushes.”
“You don’t?”
Luca shook his head sadly, and Ismelda sighed. She would give her eye-teeth for a job like that but she was
just a silly rich girl and would never be allowed to work.
Luca knelt down and held out an earthenware dish for their inspection.
“Panecotta with a juice of summer fruits,” he announced. “Maria has taught me to make it.”
“How does she know how to make all these wonderful things?” Bindo asked.
“She has an uncle, an old shoe seller, who comes up to Santa Rosa once in a while from Naples, and he brings her all the latest recipes from the grand houses there. She can’t read so I read them for her and then she teaches me how to make them.”
“Next week my uncle has promised to bring me a very new exciting recipe,” Maria said, sitting down on the grass beside them. “Something very special, which Luca and I will make for you.”
“What is it?” Ismelda asked eagerly.
Maria tapped the side of her nose and laughed gaily. “It’s a secret. You will have to wait and see.”
“Can Bindo come and have some of this secret stuff?”
Maria grinned. “If we can get your father out of the way for a few hours, we will have another little feast all together.”
Bindo beamed and his green eyes glittered with happiness. He looked up at Luca and saw that his eyes danced with delight; he had never seen Luca looking so happy.
He put out his hand tentatively, brushed his fingers gently against Ismelda’s warm cheek and sighed. This was the most wonderful day of his life.
In an upstairs bedroom in the Villa Rosso Piero di Bardi woke from a drunken sleep, rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand and groaned. He was soaked in a muck sweat and the inside of his mouth tasted like putrefied meat.
He sat up and looked around, wondering where in the name of God he was. Then he remembered with embarrassment the conversation he had had here with Signor Bisotti earlier in the day.
A month ago Signor Bisotti had commissioned him to paint a scene of cherubs to be hung in the church, and he had agreed out of desperation because he owed money to half the population of Santa Rosa. In a week’s time he needed to have the preliminary sketches ready to show Signor Bisotti, and all he had at the moment was a blank canvas and an empty head.