La Cucina

by Lily Prior

  As the day passed I began to feel a deep excitement. I was filled with so much love for Bartolomeo that I feared I would burst if something did not happen soon. What that something was I did not know, for Mama kept me in a state of such complete innocence that at the age of seventeen I still did not know where babies came from, and thought that menstruation was the monthly consequence of eating too many artichokes.

  As we strolled together, I could not help but feel a sense of triumph that I had outwitted Mama, who was at that precise moment arguing over feather beds with her sisters in Adrano; but I also remember feeling a sense of danger, knowing that I was crossing a boundary into the unknown. I felt happy but frightened to be there.

  The two of us wandered together, our arms around each other’s waist, through the olive groves and down into the valley beyond the confines of our farmland. Around us hung an aura of expectation that was almost tactile. Its heavy scent was familiar to the shepherd Luciano, whom we passed in the pasture tending his flock, and who, that night in bed, announced to his wife that Isabella Calabrese would pay a high price for her visit to Adrano in spite of the fine linens and cooking pots with which she would load her cart and return to Castiglione.

  “So, Bartolomeo,” I asked, “what is the very important thing that you must tell me?”

  “Rosa, it is very important,” he replied in earnest. “Tomorrow I have to go away.”

  “Go away?” I cried, my face falling like a collapsed soufflé.

  “Yes, I must leave tonight. I shouldn’t really be here now. I only stayed so I could see you before I go.”

  “But why must you go? Where are you going?” I asked, my bottom lip protruding as tears began to gather in my eyes.

  “I am going to take a steamship to the United States, Rosa, to Chicago, but you mustn’t be sad, for I will send for you in a very short time. You will come to me and then we will be married.”

  “Will we?” I asked, brightening momentarily but clouding again as I asked, “But why are you going?”

  “I have had a disagreement with my father and have to go away until it blows over. You know what he’s like. Anyway, it is the best thing. We’ll start a new life there. There’s nothing for us here, just fields and olives and sheep. In the States there are big cities with tall buildings reaching right into the clouds and the people all drive automobiles and wear smart clothes and have pots of money. There are lots of opportunities for young people who are prepared to work hard. I will go to my mother’s brother, Zio Genco, and he will help me. Then as soon as I can I will send for you. But you must be brave and patient and not tell anyone in case they try to stop us.”

  “Oh, I won’t tell anyone, Bartolomeo,” I said, setting in motion a procession of fantasies that included a mental snapshot of me on a cruise liner bound for the United States, then in a bridal gown dancing with Bartolomeo at our wedding. But then my thoughts turned to Mama’s fury when she discovered that I had gone to America. I knew she planned to keep me at home to help on the farm and to wait on her as she grew older. She would be furious if her plans collapsed.

  We reached the ruined castle of Conte Ruggero, its jagged outline framing the emerald sky. Here we had played as children, Bartolomeo the prince of the Arabs and I his mysterious eastern queen.

  Bartolomeo led me inside and said, “Rosa, there is something we have to do before I go, so that we will truly belong to one another and they can never separate us.”

  Drawing me to him, he began to unlace my bodice. I let him. I did not really see why he shouldn’t. Then his warm, moist kisses wandered from my mouth, across my cheeks to my earlobes. His tongue strayed inside my ears, probing, exploring, and the squelching this made, combined with the sound of his panting breath, made me feel feverish, confused, and unbearably happy all at the same time.

  Bartolomeo’s tongue strayed down to my throat and neck, biting it gently. Then, exposing my breasts, he took my nipples between his lips, one and then the other, kissing, sucking, and nibbling, until they hardened to resemble rosehips in their shape, size, and texture.

  All the while he murmured to me in a voice as low and tender as the breeze with which it mingled, his words undulating, being carried aloft through the ruined turrets and then gradually dissipating, falling, and being lost forever in all but my memory.

  I remember feeling ecstasy and guilt in equal measure. I wanted to run away and yet I wanted more. I felt a crackling electricity, its spark coursing the length of my torso and culminating in a throbbing ache in my loins, which I was too naive to understand and enjoy.

  Bartolomeo pulled away my dress and long panties, leaving me naked in the moonlight and flushing hot to the roots of my hair with a searing embarrassment.

  I shivered although I was not cold, and abandoned myself to the aching pains which made me want to cry out loud while my beloved removed his own clothes. I was completely shocked to see his penis standing erect and almost angry at an acute angle to his body.

  It seemed a thing with an independent existence, and I was scared of its obscene magnificence. Although I had eight brothers, I had never seen such a sight, and I have to confess I was repulsed and fascinated by it.

  Bartolomeo guided my hand toward it and I felt it clumsily, tentatively, not knowing what to do with it, and feeling quite afraid. It felt smooth, hard, cool, and unlike anything I had ever touched before. I must have done it reasonably well, for Bartolomeo gasped at my touch and pulled me down to the ground. He climbed on top of me and felt surprisingly heavy for such a slim boy. I could not really breathe but I did not want to say anything.

  Suddenly I felt the most unexpected pain in the secret place between my legs. A searing pain that scorched through me like a hot poker. I didn’t know what it meant then, but it was of course Bartolomeo forcing himself inside me.

  I screamed out loud but he covered my mouth with his so that now I could not breathe at all. I tried in vain to wriggle out from underneath him, to free myself from that brutal and persistent thing that was wrenching me apart and was surely going to kill me.

  At the very point when I knew I was going to die, Bartolomeo gave one last enormous, wood-splitting thrust and then suddenly lay still, panting for breath, and pressing so heavily on my rib cage that I very nearly suffocated.

  “I’m sorry it hurt you, Rosa,” said Bartolomeo when he had finally recovered his breath. “It always hurts the first time. After that it gets much easier.”

  Right then I was very sure there wasn’t going to be a second time.

  “Does it not hurt you, Bartolomeo?” I asked.

  “Oh, no,” he replied. “It gives me such a feeling of relief when I have discharged myself. All my troubles seem so little and I feel free as a bird flying over the ocean or a feather floating downstream.”

  I could not at all understand how this could be so, but my musings were interrupted by the discovery that the insides of my thighs were covered in blood.

  “You have killed me, Bartolomeo,” I cried piteously, pointing to the bloodstains.

  “No, Rosa, I haven’t killed you. It is usual for a girl to bleed the first time. Surely you know that?”

  “I know that I have not eaten an artichoke for a long time,” I said stiffly.

  Bartolomeo smiled at me as though I were stupid, and as he dabbed me clean he said: “Rosa, there are many things that I need to explain to you, things that your mother should have told you; I will tell them to you when we are together again.”

  “Very well,” I replied, greatly relieved that I was not going to die, and clinging to Bartolomeo’s neck I covered him with kisses.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Father, forgive me, for I have sinned,” I said, crossing myself as I settled down onto my knees in the confessional.

  “What was your sin, my child?” asked Padre Francesco from behind the grille.

  I paused before I answered, trying to frame my words. I felt a deep sense of shame and an awareness that the world had suddenly changed and
would never be the same again. I was no longer the girl I had been yesterday; everything was imperceptibly yet definitely different.

  It was very late when I had left Bartolomeo in the upper pastures. He had stayed too long. He should have left earlier, but it was so hard to part. Each time he set off on his long journey he turned and ran back again for one final kiss, then another, and another still. With tears filling my eyes I finally watched him disappear into the darkness and then I came through the gate into the farmyard and slipped quietly up the steps into la cucina.

  I could not quite quell my feelings of unease, and even the comfort of preparing a dish of frittedda could not calm me. Something was very wrong if my food could not comfort me.

  I tiptoed to my room and splashed my face with water, and as I caught sight of my reflection in the looking glass over the washstand it seemed to me that my face had changed; I looked somehow older and not like my usual self. Removing my soiled clothes I could still smell Bartolomeo on my skin, a warm and delicious scent of fomenting sheep’s yogurt, barley, and wood smoke which I did not want to wash away.

  The smell emanating from between my legs was stronger still, musky and salty and pungent. I knew Mama’s sharp nostrils would fix upon these alien scents immediately upon her entrance into la cucina the following morning, and so sadly I rubbed them away with my sponge, hiding my drawers with my other secret little treasures in the space under the loose floorboard so Mama would not notice their stench and watery bloodstains while sorting the laundry.

  I lay down and tried to sleep, but I tossed and turned, and couldn’t settle. In my mind I relived every moment of the past evening, and began to feel guilty about what had passed between us. I was scared of Mama’s homecoming. I felt she would look at me with her black eyes and somehow know what had happened in her absence. Then there would be trouble, I knew.

  As I turned over for the hundredth time I had the idea of going to confession. I knew it helped others in times of trouble, and I hoped that talking to the priest would soothe my soul the way a dish of frittedda usually did. Once I had been given absolution for my sins perhaps I could meet Mama’s inquisitional gaze without betraying myself.

  Impatiently I watched it grow light and then made myself wait some more because it was still too early. Then, when life on the farm finally began to stir in the new day, I wrapped a shawl around my shoulders, for the air was still damp and cool, and hurried the few kilometers to la chiesa. Padre Francesco, the town’s only priest, was still opening the doors and tending the altar when I asked him to hear my confession.

  “I have sinned much, Father,” I spoke at last, summoning my courage.

  “In what way, my child?” asked the priest.

  “The sins of the flesh, Father,” I blurted out, after a long pause.

  “Come now, explain it all to me, my child, and the good Lord will forgive you.”

  “Well, Father, Mother went to Adrano because Nonna Calzino is dying…”

  “May the Lord God grant her eternal peace,” interjected the priest, crossing himself.

  “…Mama has gone to bring back what is rightly hers, what has been promised to her, and what Zia Caterina, Zia Ida, Zia Rita, and Zia Lucia, and Zio Guglielmo, Zio Lorenzo, and Zio Pietro have no right to…” I continued, reciting Mama’s words, which I had heard many times, especially in recent days when the good Lord was preparing to draw Nonna Calzino to His holy side.

  “Your mother is a dutiful daughter, Rosa,” sighed the priest, crossing himself once more.

  “So, my child,” he went on, “what has this to do with the sins of the flesh?”

  “I sinned, Father,” I said. “When Mama had gone to Adrano, Antonino Calabrese brought up the barrel of grappa from the cellar. Luigi, Leonardo, Mario, Giuliano, Giuseppe, and Salvatore helped him to drink the grappa. They sang songs and danced. The twins were attending to their business out in the pigsty.”

  “And what did you do, my little Rosina?” asked the priest.

  “I went walking in the pastures, Father.”

  “Alone, child?”

  “No, Father.”

  “With whom did you walk in the pastures while your mother was away from home, Rosa?”

  “With Bartolomeo, Father.”

  “Bartolomeo Sogno?”

  “Yes, Padre.”

  “My poor, poor child,” murmured the priest. “Go on.”

  “We walked a long way, Father. Down through the valley to the old fairy castle, and there we did things.”

  “What things, Rosa?”

  “Things without our clothes on,” I said, hanging my head.

  “I see,” said the priest sternly. “You have sinned greatly, Rosa, very greatly, and for me to be able to tell how great the sin was I will need you to describe the things that you did in exact detail, the both of you, without your clothes on.”

  Faltering, and burning with shame, I described in a voice scarcely louder than a whisper the course of events as they had taken place.

  I noticed as my story unfolded that Padre Francesco’s breathing was becoming much heavier on the far side of the grille. He began, it appeared to me, to twitch and to jerk, and then he began to pant in that same strange way that Bartolomeo had the night before while he was lying on top of me. Then the padre began to groan, his moans filling the chapel until, all of a sudden, at the climax of my confession, they ceased.

  “And so, Father,” I said, breaking in on the long pause that followed. “What is my absolution?”

  “Your absolution, Rosa, is to come and make that same confession tomorrow,” murmured the priest in a small voice, “and mind that you do not change a word of it, for the Holy Father will know if you do and your sins will be multiplied a hundredfold.”

  “Thank you, Father,” I said as I crossed myself and left the confessional, trying to feel cheerful, but in reality feeling more uncomfortable and heavy with sin than I had before.

  Looking around, I noticed Nonna Sogno, Bartolomeo’s grandmother, sobbing violently in the Sogno family pew. Strange. Again crossing myself, I left la chiesa and emerged into the bright daylight of the piazza.

  CHAPTER TEN

  While Padre Francesco was attending to my confession, in a gray lava-stone town house on the far side of Randazzo, Donna Sophia Bacci lay with her face buried in the soft pillows of her heavy oak tester. Periodically her tiny frame, clothed in black, was convulsed by sobs, desperately gasping for breath. Then she would remain silent until the sobs welled up again and had to be released in a burst.

  Sophia fixed her eyes on the white sunlight that forced its way through a small chink in the shutters, slicing through the solid darkness of the chamber and forming a burning brand on the ceiling.

  A solitary fly made a rectangular motion in the center of the room beneath the lantern. Again and again it traced the same pattern.

  No one knew that Sophia had loved Bartolomeo since they had both attended the wedding of Sophia’s cousin, Franco, when she was twelve years old. She remembered that day very clearly. She had watched Bartolomeo as he stood shyly in the corner of the churchyard while the photographs were being taken: bride and groom, bride and groom with bride’s family, with groom’s family, and finally the whole family of some three hundred people, two dogs, and a goat.

  A dead lizard lay on the sand and Bartolomeo explored it with his toe as he waited for the grown-ups to finish talking. A succession of distant relatives ruffled his hair and pinched his cheeks.

  I cannot say for certain what it was about Bartolomeo that marked him out as an object of such intense passion when he was a boy, but as Sophia watched him toying with the dead lizard she came to love him, and from that moment onward she loved him quietly but fully for the rest of her life.

  Sophia had seen Bartolomeo occasionally at weddings and funerals and festivals but had never once spoken a word to him. Her diary entries of the period record her girlish ardor for the boy whose death she would eventually and unwittingly cause.


  When, in her seventeenth year, her father, Don Fredo, proposed the match with Bartolomeo, it seemed to Sophia that her dreams had literally come true. The love she had nurtured in secret for so long was finally to bear fruit.

  The night before the tragedy, as she prepared herself for the betrothal at the house of the Sogno, Sophia could not quite believe her good fortune. While performing her toilette she took time to unlock her little chest of treasures, the girlish relics of five years of yearning. The fork from which Bartolomeo had eaten at the wedding where she first saw him; the rose, withered and parched, which he had thrown with his own hand onto the grave during the funeral of Don Vito Barzini a year later; an olive stone which he had spat out at another wedding; a button from his shirt; a used paper napkin; and a single hair that she had removed surreptitiously from his coat collar at the Festival of Light the year before.

  Sophia pored over her little treasures now with the same sense of awe that she had felt for them in the past, when Bartolomeo remained to her an impossible dream. Now she was to be his wife, and this very evening she was to see him, talk to him for the first time, if she was bold enough to find her voice, and possibly even receive a kiss from him.

  Sophia felt faint at the very thought of all the happiness in store. She imagined herself in the church taking her wedding vows, Bartolomeo lifting her veil and gasping at her beauty. She imagined the wedding night, when he would remove her bridal gown and take her to him, blushing, as a virgin should at the raucous innuendo of the serenading crowd gathered beneath the window. She imagined the birth of their first child, a boy whom she would name Bartolomeo after his father. Never would a child be so loved.

  Sometimes it is better for our wishes not to be granted. Our dreams should remain dreams for our own good. Our prayers are only answered by a jealous God. When we get what we want most it is a sure sign that our troubles are about to begin in earnest.

  Sophia’s mother, Donna Theresa, smoothed her daughter’s golden hair and applied cologne to her temples and her wrists. When little Sophia sobbed, Donna Theresa’s pain showed itself in the puckering of her brow and the twitching of her lips. She wished she could ease her daughter’s suffering, but she couldn’t.