La Cucina

by Lily Prior

  Bartolomeo could already see the bus. It was running on time. He was nearly there. All he had to do was get on it, get out of Castiglione and away to safety: to the mainland, and from there to Chicago.

  The doors of the bus were open. He was about to climb the steps. He had made it. But then his father stepped out of the shadows. Bartolomeo received no warning. Only the silent anger of his father’s face, the glint of a blade, before his eyes filled with a blinding tide of blood.

  The body fell to the ground; the blood pumping from the wound stained the flagstones of the piazza. The bus driver closed the doors and drove off as if he had seen nothing.

  La Primavera

  THE SPRING

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was a day in April in the year 1958. A day of squally showers, of fat slippery drops that slither their way between the back of the neck and the collar of the raincoat.

  As the umbrellas went up in a sudden flowering, the sun came out, and we were glad. The pigeons flapped and scratched and cooed; there were shiny puddles on the sidewalk; dogs sniffed the freshly washed scents. Pink powder puffs hung from the trees; wind blew.

  Poor bedraggled Rosa. The umbrella always seemed to blow itself inside out. It was difficult to carry the packages from the market and the umbrella at the same time. I kept juggling. I wouldn’t allow myself to drop the fresh eggs, no. Or the green cauliflower, ripe yet firm. The delicate rose-colored tuna wrapped in paper; silky skin, so tender to the touch.

  It was essential to get to market early, before work, while everything was fresh, before it had been picked over and pawed by housewives. I loved my daily visits to the market, seeing all of nature’s bounty beautifully arranged for me to choose from. The aroma of the fresh peas, mint, and basil mingled with the smell of raw meat hanging at the butcher’s and reminded me of my early life on the farm.

  It had been only two years since the food riots in the city, when gang warfare among the rival clans of the Mafia stopped supplies of fresh produce from getting through. Shortages and terrible queues marked our daily lives and I often found myself coming to blows with a rival over a skinned rabbit or a bunch of carrots. Those were dark days indeed.

  The bells of San Domenico chimed a quarter to nine. I would have to rush. I could not be late. No. I had never once been late. Not in twenty-five years. I rushed. A gush of icy water sloshed into my shoe. Now I’d be wearing wet stockings all day.

  I struggled to open the door while grasping my packages. I closed the umbrella and placed it in a stand with its dripping friends.

  “Buongiorno, Crocifisso,” I said to the doorman, who was reading the headlines of Il Giornale: MAFIA—NEW RACKET UNCOVERED.

  “Buongiorno, Signorina Rosa. Che tempo!”

  “Si, Crocifisso. C’e la primavera.”

  I started work on the ledgers. There was so much work to do. I was interrupted almost immediately by Costanza.

  “Scusi, Signorina Rosa,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “There is a foreigner at the counter, signorina.”

  “So?”

  “He wants to look at the manuscripts.”

  “But it’s Tuesday, Costanza.”

  “I have told him that, signorina. But he’s a foreigner.”

  “So?” again.

  “He says again and again, signorina. He won’t listen. He says ‘I see the manuscripts now.’”

  “Very well, Costanza. I will deal with him,” I said. “But he must wait. I must finish this first.”

  I continued to enter figures in my ledger as the insouciant Costanza teetered away in her tarty high heels, tip-tapping her way up the spiral staircase that led from the basement to the upper floors.

  An hour later, when I had gathered together my papers, ledgers, ruler, sharpened pencils, and india rubber, I knew I had to turn my attention to the foreigner. I had never been able to leave a task half done.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I looked into the eyes of the foreigner. They were the color of the ocean off Taormina, more turquoise than blue and sparkling like the reflection of sunlight on water. They were the most mischievous eyes I had ever seen. I knew then I would have to be careful.

  I remember he had a little mustache covering his upper lip; when he spoke, he revealed bad teeth. His nose was prominent, his hair fine and brown and thinning a little. I imagined the silkiness of his hair gently sweeping the contours of my bare flesh, the length of my spine, the valley between my breasts. Could this possibly be a premonition? I shivered.

  He was wearing a cool linen suit and expensive brown brogues, smooth and shiny like melting ice cream. He smelled delicious, a mixture of fine eau de cologne and brandy. Something inside me heaved.

  He took me in immediately with one deliberately slow and encompassing glance. He knew women and instinctively categorized them into types. He told me afterward how my dowdy exterior could not hide from him my deeply sensuous nature. A little dry, perhaps, like a riverbed in summer, but not irredeemably so.

  “Good morning, signorina,” he said in flawless Italian marked by an English accent. “I am told you are the keeper of the manuscripts.”

  “Yes, signor.”

  “Let me introduce myself, I am Randolph Hunt. I am a scholar, signorina, and I am writing a book about the styles of cooking in the different regions of your beautiful island. I am currently researching how the Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Arabs, the Normans, and the Spaniards influenced Sicilian cooking. I understand that you hold here in your archives the ancient manuscripts of Mithaecus, Archestratus, Dionysius, and others which trace the history of the island’s cooking since the fifth century before Christ.”

  “Yes, signor. The Biblioteca Nationale is proud to possess all of these works, and even more. It is a very rare and precious collection.”

  “May I see them, signorina? They would be very valuable to my work.”

  “Do you have a permit?”

  “A permit?”

  “Yes, signor. A permit from the Department of Cultural History.”

  “I was told nothing about any permit, signorina.”

  “If you do not have the necessary permit, signor, I am afraid I cannot help you,” I said, turning and preparing to descend the stairs into the basement.

  “How do I acquire this permit, signorina?”

  “You apply to the ministry, signor. Good day.”

  “Good day, signorina. Many thanks for your kind assistance.”

  L’Inglese took one final look at me, which made me break out in one of my sweats, and then turned to go. Before he reached the revolving door at the entrance, he abruptly turned around and came back again.

  “Signorina?”

  “Yes, signor?”

  “You can’t imagine how much I desire to make love to you at this moment.”

  Aflame, I scuttled down the spiral staircase into the basement, pursued by Costanza’s laughter. In no time at all she was telling her colleagues, the doorman, the university students, the regular readers, and even the postman and the milkman about the scandalous interchange, suitably embellished, between Signorina Fiore and the shameless foreigner.

  That night I found it difficult to sleep, which was, for me, most unusual. At three I was in my little kitchen preparing a dish of formaggio all’ Argentiera.

  I fried slices of caciocavallo cheese with garlic until it had just melted and then sprinkled this with wine vinegar and fresh oregano before piling it onto a thick slice of rustic bread. The whole apartment block woke up to the sumptuous aroma of melted cheese and garlic escaping from my kitchen. Infants cried in imaginary hunger, dogs howled, husbands demanded that wives prepare a similar dish or threatened to make their way to my door. In response, the wives cursed me and my culinary arts and demanded to be allowed to get some sleep.

  My parrot, Celeste, was most upset by this untimely commotion, and she voiced her discontent with a series of muffled squawks, screams, and scratchings that I could hear beyond the cover of h
er cage.

  The squinting grocer and her husband, both of them over a hundred years old, were not awoken by this cacophony, because mercifully they were not asleep. For the last eighty years it had been their practice to make love on a Tuesday evening, and this Tuesday evening was no exception.

  As she deposited her teeth in the glass next to her husband’s Nonna Frolla said: “You can be sure, bello, our Rosa has something on her mind, for not once in the twenty-five years since she first moved in has she ever felt the need to prepare a dish of formaggio all’ Argentiera at three o’clock in the morning.”

  Before she fell into a sweet orgasmic sleep, the good lady made a mental note to find out the nature of my troubles first thing in the morning.

  Yet even the cooking could not release my tension. I returned to bed but again tossed and turned, reenacting for the fiftieth time the scene between myself and l’Inglese. The hot blush would not leave my cheeks. I burned with a fever that could not be quelled, even by the opening of a window on a cool April night.

  When I finally fell asleep at dawn I was plagued by curious dreams from which I woke up sweating, parched, and panting.

  In the first dream I was shopping in the market before work as usual, only I was totally naked and exposed in all my fulsome glory to the lewd remarks of the merchants and the titters of the housewives. In vain I tried to shield myself with my shopping basket, as I ran from the Piazza San Domenico down the Via Bandiera.

  The cobbles cut into my feet with every step and my largesse wobbled and flapped.

  At the end of the Via Bandiera stood a figure. As I came closer, panting and stumbling, I saw that it was l’Inglese. He had me fixed with those penetrating eyes, and however hard I tried I could not raise my bare feet from the cobbles where they were rooted. I stood frozen as a statue as l’Inglese approached me. He came so close I could smell him: the underlying but overpowering odor of a man.

  L’Inglese stopped just short of touching my breasts with his body. He was so close that the air filling the tiny space where I ended and he began became highly charged with spikes and crackles and barbs.

  I remember fighting through the smothering layers of sleep to wake myself from this nightmare, like a mummy trying to escape from its bandages. When I finally jerked my eyes open, imagine my horror at finding l’Inglese at the foot of the bed, standing casually and quite naked.

  The scream dried in my throat. Silence filled this room-sized world. L’Inglese sniffed, in that aristocratic way he had, and the curl of his upper lip revealed the glint of the yellow teeth in the half-darkness.

  He lifted the covers at the foot of the bed and burrowed underneath them. Suddenly the bed stretched and became the length of the street outside, and I watched the bulge that was l’Inglese as it inched closer and closer under the covers.

  It came slowly but steadily, without stopping, along the center of the bed, the glossy coverlet rising and falling.

  My eyes followed it as it came on and on. I almost wanted it to come so that the agony of fear and suspense would be over.

  Still it came, slowly and surely, and all I could do was wait for it. I had to force myself to breathe.

  Finally it reached my feet. A mouth, it had to be a mouth, moist and warm, closed over one of my toes and started to suck it. Something resembling the bolt from a crossbow shot through the veins of my leg and exploded into a shower of shooting stars in the long-slumbering layers of my loins.

  The mouth moved on and played in the spaces between my toes, where there are no toes, only tender spaces, and then it moved on to the other toes.

  Now a tongue flickered on the soles of my feet, alternating between the left one and the right, while I writhed at the tickling and tried in vain to wriggle away.

  Now hands had taken hold of me. Hands cool and dry. Small and manicured.

  They stroked my feet in a rhythmic motion, and then moved on, up past my ankles to my calves, with so light a touch that I could not but purr like a massive cat.

  The hands caressed my knees, and moved on again upward to my inner thighs, pushing back my nightgown and parting my legs. I gasped. The hands stroked my thighs like a whisper, as light as zabaglione.

  The fingers then began their work. I could feel the pad of the fingertip applied squarely just with a hint of the tip of the nail, tracing a path up and down, up and down, the insides of my thighs. By now I had lost even the desire to resist. My longing was only that this torture never end.

  The gentle fingers now strayed to the secret place between my legs, parting the silky hair and stroking the folds of flesh. My groans grew louder and louder, the faster and deeper and heavier the magic fingers probed and pressed and vibrated. The groans grew and grew in volume and strength until they filled the apartment block, wakening the residents for the second time that night.

  There came a ferocious rapping at the front door, which entered the wonderful dream and tore me most unwillingly from it.

  The parrot responded to the knocking with a perfect imitation of a dog’s bark.

  At the door was Nonna Frolla, the diminutive grocer, wearing nothing but a nightgown. Her arms were folded across her withered chest and her one good eye was flashing.

  “Now, Rosa,” said her gums, for she had not had time to replace her teeth, “in the name of the blessed Virgin, protector of the sleeping innocents, what is going on in here tonight?”

  Once back in bed I tried in vain to reenter the dream, but despite my best efforts it had gone.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The next day, I was again at work in the basement. After my hectic night, the first in twenty-five years, I was not in a happy mood, and my dissatisfaction was increased by my shame at never being able to look my neighbors in the face again.

  I was roused from gloomy thoughts by Costanza, who summoned me to the front desk. L’Inglese was back, this time equipped with a permit.

  When I had completed my cataloging duties, I approached the counter on which l’Inglese was lolling, flirting ostentatiously with Costanza and the other air-heads the director had seen fit to employ despite my reservations about their suitability for library work.

  As his eyes turned toward me I flushed the deepest shade of red, fearing he could read from my eyes the substance of my dreams of the night before, which, to a greater or a lesser degree, he could do with just a glance. He knew I had not been able to stop thinking about him. He could tell. He had planned it that way.

  “Good morning, signorina,” he said, reaching for my hand and kissing the inside of my wrist. His mustache tickled the soft skin. I flushed again and drew my hand away. L’Inglese kept hold of one of my fingers, which he continued to caress as he spoke.

  “Signorina, I have my permit,” he said, producing it with a flourish from his breast pocket.

  I inspected it.

  “So I see, signor,” handing it back.

  “Is all now in order?” he asked.

  “It appears to be.”

  “So lead on, signorina, lead me to your basement where you hide yourself away. Lead me to your lair, and to your precious manuscripts.”

  “I am afraid, signor, that that is impossible.”

  “Impossible?”

  “Impossible.”

  “No, that cannot be. Why is it impossible?”

  “It is impossible, signor, because today is Wednesday.”

  “So?”

  “So, the manuscripts may only be seen on Mondays.”

  “I cannot believe it. I am a famous chef and author of books. I am involved in a very important piece of work. I ask to see the manuscripts. I am told I require a permit. I duly obtain the permit. Then I am told that I can only examine the manuscripts on a Monday. Today is Wednesday. I must kick my heels until Monday. That is five whole days—wasted. Wasted because of your petty bureaucracy. It is too much. Too, too much.”

  “Those, signor, are the rules,” I said, turning to go.

  “Signorina, signorina.” L’Inglese softened
, his manufactured rage subsiding immediately as he realized it would have no effect upon me. He prepared instead to try a different tactic.

  “Let us be friends, eh?” he said. “Let us cooperate with one another,” looking me directly in the eye, “let us help one another, hmmmm?” edging very close.

  “Monday, signor, come back on Monday.”

  “Oh, signorina,” said l’Inglese, beaten, as I walked away, “you drive me to distraction, you tantalizing woman.”

  My heart was pounding as I retreated, forcing myself to retain the outward appearance of a composure I could barely sustain. I must not let him see that he had gotten to me, I knew that. I had no idea, however, that I might have gotten to him. I had no sense of the painfully cramped erection that was, at that very moment, straining inside his pants as a result of this interchange; and indeed, he did not understand it himself. I was clearly not his type. The easy little tart at the front desk was probably more to his liking. But, as he said much later, there was definitely something about me. He thought I was a real woman, someone with courage and passion, a woman who was hiding from herself, but a woman who, once released from her self-imposed exile, would overwhelm him with the sheer exuberance of her return to life.

  I only just made it to the rest room before my legs gave way beneath me and I slumped into the decaying sofa donated many years before by the director’s wife.

  I had a sudden fantasy of myself bending over the back of this very sofa with l’Inglese entering me from behind. I imagined the brief glorious instant of penetration and moaned out loud. Then I thought of his repeated thrusts, each deeper and more furious than the last, plumbing my innermost depths, and I almost heard the slap of his thighs against my bottom, before we reached in perfect unison a crescendo of agonizing orgasms.