La Cucina

by Lily Prior

  As I wandered through the walkways I felt that I was living someone else’s life; could this really be happening to Rosa Fiore? I looked down into the well, its yellow stone walls clad in rambling roses. I called out my name. The well echoed back, calling, “Rooooooooosa, Rooooooooosa.”

  “Rooooosa!” Someone else was calling me; it was l’Inglese, bringing me a glass of wine. He was wearing a shirt, a pair of greasy espadrilles, and a broad-brimmed hat. Nothing else.

  “Are you all right out here, my Rosa?”

  “Yes, I’m fine, really. It’s so beautiful here.”

  “I won’t be too much longer.”

  He kissed me, feeling my tongue with his, deeply, softly, before trotting back to his kitchen with a bulge distorting the line of his shirt.

  I could never have imagined feeling so at ease with another person. I loved everything about him. Most of all I loved his daring: his bravura, his wildness, the way he did not care about convention, or what people thought of him. He was a free man, free to be himself. I guess this is what first spoke to me in him: it felt at first like danger, but it was more than that, something deeper; it was a voice that spoke to me of freedom, giving me courage, for the first time, to be myself.

  I loved his warmth, his passion, his hunger for life, his exuberance. Life with him was a constantly expanding adventure, and I was learning from him all the time.

  Physically I loved his smell, his breath, his warm soft body, the wonderful things his body did to my body, the way he made me feel like a princess, the way he made me laugh. He had changed my life.

  I did not realize at the time just how much I did not know about him. Being so totally immersed in him, I could not look at him with any degree of objectivity. The eye cannot properly see things that are too close: newsprint becomes a blur of black stripes on white, colors merge into one another, features become distorted and hideous. I was caught up in the business of living, like a paper is snatched up in a gust of wind; it is blown up to the rooftops and floats giddily around before plunging back down to the street below.

  Wandering among the banks of marigolds, I inhaled the salty scent of the sea. The slight breeze ruffled the hair of the palms and tickled the clusters of laburnum draped over the walls.

  Out beyond the safety of the harbor a tiny fishing boat bobbed up and down, its little gaslight illuminating the gathering inkiness. The sky was indistinguishable from the sea.

  As I watched the lonely little boat, l’Inglese came up behind me and circled me in his arms; I nestled into him.

  “Everything is ready for your pleasure, Signorina Fiore, if you please come into the house.”

  We walked in with our arms around each other.

  Inside, he had transformed the kitchen into a magical grotto. Everywhere there were flickering candles and vases of lilies exhaling their intoxicating scent. The various aromas escaping from the pans on the stove stirred my own juices: my taste buds and my loins both began to water.

  “Now, my love,” said l’Inglese, “while I make the very final touches I want you to take your clothes off.”

  I felt a hunching of sinews deep down inside me as I began to undress. Slowly, provocatively, I undid the buttons of my dress and slipped it off. I could feel his blue eyes on me as I peeled off my slip, the static crackling and drawing my hair up on end behind it. I had left off my corset since that night when l’Inglese had been forced to cut me out of it. I felt resplendent and not the least bit embarrassed. My nipples stood up huge and hard in their excitement and a silvery liquid slipped gently down my inner thighs.

  I started caressing him in the ways he loved. My touch was like that of an angel playing its harp, he had told me.

  “Rosa, you mustn’t interfere with me while I’m cooking: it spoils my concentration. Now you go and get onto the table. I’ll be right there.”

  It is impossible to say whether the ripe aroma of sex or the scents of baking bread, melting cheese, roasting flesh, and garlic dominated the air.

  I climbed on a chair and then onto the table.

  There I lay, luxuriantly, the cool silky oak sticking to my naked flesh. Rump, thighs, plump. This night was the culmination, the final lesson. By the light of the candles I stretched out and watched l’Inglese as he moved gently among the shadows on the far side of the kitchen, the clattering of his pans punctuated occasionally by the sounds of the summer night, the buzzing of a mosquito, the braying of a mule.

  At last everything was ready and l’Inglese approached with the antipasto, a salver bearing plump oysters. I noticed that he had removed his shirt and was now as naked as I. Carefully he tucked a little pillow under my head and then began to place the oysters on my body. They were soft, cool, moist, slimy on my naked flesh. Oh, it was the most wonderful, the most sensuous feeling I have ever experienced.

  He arranged them on my throat, around and between my full breasts, on my curved stomach, and on the little thatch of my pubis. He tucked several in between my legs, and others at regular intervals along my thighs, knees and calves. I found it very difficult to keep still. The moment was so erotic that I was on the verge of orgasm already.

  L’Inglese stood back with half-closed eyes to get an overall view of his arrangement, and made a little adjustment here and there in the spacing of the oysters on his living platter. Finally, satisfied, he sucked up the first oyster from my foot. I felt his whiskers brush my skin, and the combination of this bristliness with the oyster’s slimy softness was so exquisite that I lurched and nearly dislodged everything.

  Holding it between his lips, he placed it in my mouth. It tasted of the sea, the salty blue-green depths. I swallowed and felt it ooze into my throat, filling it, before slipping silkily away.

  Now l’Inglese climbed onto the table and drew into his mouth the oysters with which he had clothed me, alternately feeding me and then himself, and moving up along my body. My excitement was so intense that I was almost delirious; I felt as though I was drowning in a sea of honey that filled my every space, engulfing me totally.

  L’Inglese’s magnificent member brushed against my electric flesh and I gasped out loud, yearning to satisfy this agony of expectation and desire. But still he fed me and fed off me, slowly and deliberately.

  Finally all the oysters had been swallowed and I was limp and weak and full of yearning. Carefully l’Inglese wiped me down with a napkin bathed in ice water to eradicate the fishy odors. I produced so much lubricant that it was dripping from the edge of the table, and still it continued to gush, sending rivulets of silver onto the floor.

  During the brief lull while l’Inglese adjusted the seasoning of il primo, my mind wandered to my colleagues at the library: the director, the hussy Costanza, and the other library assistants. What would they think if they could see me now, the frigid spinster, the laughable virgin Signorina Fiore, lying naked on l’Inglese’s table while he ate his food from the folds of her flesh? What would the interfering Nonna Frolla think, or my neighbors in the apartment building on the Via Vicolo Brugno, or indeed the perverted Signor Rivoli? I smiled at the thought of their moral outrage and at the thought of my wonderful secret life. I had always loved secrets.

  In the midst of my reflections the pasta appeared. L’Inglese had evidently paid attention to my lessons in the kitchen and had managed to make his own spaghetti. Admittedly, it was not as fine as my own, but nevertheless he had taken a great deal of time and care over it.

  He had produced a marvelous ragù with meat, tomatoes, and lots of garlic. As I watched, he mixed in the sauce with the spaghetti. After making sure it wasn’t too hot, he ladled it onto my body. What a mess it made. It was everywhere, covering my ample body’s entire surface. Then, climbing astride me, he began to take up the spaghetti in long strings into his mouth, sucking it in, so that he too quickly became covered in the rich sauce. It was clinging to his mustache, his chin, his chest, his stomach, his legs. With his hands, he fed the spaghetti to me, trailing its tendrils between my parted lips. It
was divine. Mmmmmm. A truly wonderful sauce; lots of garlic, tender chunks of meat.

  “Is it all right?” he asked shyly.

  “It’s wonderful, it really is.”

  It felt lovely; both of us bathed in it. I sucked greedily at the spaghetti. He wove it into my hair. It got into my ears, my eyes, everywhere.

  Finally, when we had licked each other clean of the sauce, we vowed we would never eat spaghetti from a plate again. How much better it tasted like this.

  And so we continued with il secondo, tender young veal in a sauce of wild mushrooms, served with spinach and baby peas. This time I insisted that l’Inglese be the one to lie on the table. I sliced the meat into bite-sized chunks and arranged them over his belly and crotch.

  How I delighted in snatching up with my teeth the sweet morsels of veal and the plump field mushrooms. I loved to eat off him, nuzzling into him with my nose, lapping up every drop of the delicious sauce filling his navel and the folds of his groin. I sucked up the sauce from his penis, causing it to spring up with a jolt as though it had experienced an electric shock. Now it was his turn to moan and groan as I teased him with my tongue.

  For dessert he smeared my breasts with gelati and a sauce of raspberries. Ooooh, it was cold! As a garnish he placed individual raspberries in the mounds of ice cream so that it looked as though I had many nipples, and it was impossible to tell which were the real ones and which were not. L’Inglese took his revenge for the anxiety I caused him with my lusty nips at the veal chunks. He made snarling noises and bit savagely into the raspberries, making me squeal.

  After the meal was finally over, he lowered himself into me and the yearning of the past two teasing hours on the table was satisfied at last.

  And so we had both learned our lessons: l’Inglese had become skilled in the arts of the Sicilian kitchen, and I, the librarian, had learned what it is to love and be loved by a man. What a banquet of the senses it had been.

  L’Autunno

  THE FALL

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was now the end of summer.

  A special between time follows. In any one year it lasts at most two or three days. In that brief interval it is no longer summer and not yet fall. The air loses its softness, like a once-fluffy bath towel that has been too many times to the laundry. The days are still hot but the nights become cooler, and in the morning there is a slight sadness in the heart for the long hot days that will soon be over.

  It was a Saturday afternoon. I was walking out to l’Inglese’s villa in the Via Belmonte. That evening it was my turn to cook. My basket was straining with the weight of beef, salami, tomatoes, caciocavallo and pecorino cheeses, raisins, pine nuts, and onions.

  I was going to make a braciolettine for l’Inglese. I knew he would enjoy it.

  It was very hot in the afternoon sun, and climbing the hill I started to breathe deeply. I could feel the pulse twitching at the nape of my neck, and smell the heat of my body rising between my breasts. A trickle of sweat began to trace its way down my spine.

  My laboring heartbeat was the only sound. The city was sleeping. Soon I would be naked, splayed out like a precious butterfly on the crisp linen sheets of l’Inglese’s bed under the mosquito net and the cooling whirr of the ceiling fan.

  Perhaps he would tether my limbs to the bed frame with veils. I liked the idea of being so completely open to him.

  Perhaps he would stroke me with a white feather starting at the soles of my feet, tickling me until I squealed.

  Perhaps he would blindfold me, enabling me to plunge in the crystal waters of an ocean of sensuous bliss, the waters finding and filling every space in my electric body.

  I was already wet inside with anticipation.

  I walked up the long gravel drive of the villa. The white house shimmered in the sunshine like a mirage in the desert. My footsteps crunched on the tiny stones. Fleeting lizards shied away; their shadows could not keep pace with them.

  The long drive was overhung by dwarf palms, willows, and lemon trees.

  There was only silence and heat and the crunch of the gravel and the sound of heat pulsing in my ears.

  I expected to see l’Inglese coming out from the house or the gardens to meet me. He ran down the steps sometimes wearing only a shirt and his floppy hat, sometimes wearing only his hat and nothing else, a wide smile, sparkling blue eyes. But he did not come. He hadn’t heard me; he was probably preparing something in the kitchen to surprise me. Perhaps he was engrossed in a book or snoozing in his hammock. I planned to surprise him, to creep up to him noiselessly and kiss him gently awake. I would kiss his sleeping eyelids and relaxed mouth; I would take his sleeping willy into my mouth and coax it to life. He would pretend to still be asleep to prolong the wonderful awakening. I smiled to myself.

  I climbed the steps and pushed open the door. There was an emptiness in the house that I felt but did not acknowledge then.

  “Darling?” I called. My voice echoed through the marble hall.

  He had to be in the gardens. I wandered along the gravel walkways overlooking the sea, to the miniature temple on the far side. He was not there.

  “He is hiding somewhere,” I thought.

  A game of cat and mouse. I would find him before he found me. A frisson of excitement bubbled through me. He was watching me from a hidey-hole somewhere, ready to spring out at me and make me jump. He was hunting me, stalking me. He would lunge at me from behind, unawares, push me to the ground and ravish me. I imagined the gravel indenting irregular shapes on my knees, palms, cheeks, my mouth full of dust, the force of his thrusts, which had the power to make me scream out loud, with no care of being overheard.

  I crouched down behind the hydrangeas and scanned through half-closed eyes the sleeping windows of the house. All were shuttered; nothing was visible. I moved stealthily behind the hedges, trying to keep down and out of sight. I moved like this through the rose gardens toward the fountain.

  He had not doubled back and snuck into his hammock. He was not in the lemon grove. He was not in the arbor under the clusters of vines. Where was he?

  I circled the house before going inside.

  Of course, he was in the bedroom, waiting for me.

  “What has taken you so long, signorina?” he would ask. He still called me this sometimes.

  I would take him into my mouth and feed on him. Hungrily enjoying the taut, smooth skin, the warmth, the weight, the size, the involuntary spasms, the taste of yogurt, the smell of warmth, the moaning, groaning, wincing pleasure.

  I dashed up the stairs and, now out of breath, threw the door open.

  He was not there. All was silent. The bed was undisturbed. The clock ticked. His smell lingered in the still air. His cologne, the peppermint freshness, the manness.

  He was in the kitchen, obviously, preparing some delicious dish to feed me after our lovemaking had sapped us of all energy, leaving us euphoric and ethereal. Then we were like snails without shells: we were soft and new-formed and felt the world as a new place against our dewy pink skin.

  Perhaps he would feed me oysters or caviar; perhaps he would make his wonderful recipe of eggs cooked slowly with butter and chopped chives; or wedges of deep-fried cheese oozing glossy tongues into beds of lollo rosso and fingers of toasted bread. Lovers’ food, which he would eat off my naked body, his mustache tickling me as he fed me from his own lips with the most succulent morsels. My mouth watered in anticipation of the delights to come.

  I ran down the stairs, my legs going almost too fast for my body, through the marble passages to the kitchen. The marvelous kitchen with its long table, the scene of that magical evening when my body became a part of his banquet, our passion for the food melting into our desire for the other’s flesh.

  And yet he was not there. Where could he be? The copper pans gleamed on their hooks against the walls. The solitary fly zigzagged under the central lamp. There was a smell of burnt sugar and vanilla and I yearned for l’Inglese to touch me. I opened the shutters, a
dmitting the light. From outside came the hum of warmth and insects and sun and heat. How I loved him. Loved him with every nerve in my body. Where was he?

  I experienced a sudden panic. For the first time it occurred to me that he had gone; that I might never see him again. I felt a deep pain, as though a large smooth stone was inside my stomach, weighing it down.

  But the elasticity of the lover’s thoughts is such that I banished from my mind the horrible truth and persuaded myself that he would certainly reappear, and soon.

  I retrieved my basket from where I had abandoned it on the front steps and, bringing it into the kitchen, I unloaded the contents onto the table. I would get on with preparing the food, ready for his return.

  I fried the onion and, while it was sweating in the pan, I cut the beef round into thin slices. When the onion was soft I removed it from the heat and stirred in the bread crumbs, pecorino cheese, raisins, pine nuts, tomatoes, salt, and pepper. Mixing these ingredients thoroughly together, I then placed a spoonful on each of the beef slices and added a cube of cheese and a chunk of salami. Finally I rolled up the slices of meat, threaded them onto skewers, brushed them with oil, and placed them to cook in the wood-burning stove.

  When the meat was cooked it sent a tantalizing aroma into the warm air. Still l’Inglese had not returned. It was now around four and the sun was beginning to lose its fierceness. I wandered out into the garden with a book and gingerly clambered into the hammock. As I lazily turned the pages sleep slowly stole me away. My eyes blinked heavily and closed, and soon the gentle sound of my snores joined the hum of the cicadas and the buzzing of bees.

  Much, much later, the cooling of the air roused me from my luxurious dreams of dumplings and fleshy sausages. Goose bumps pricked my arms. A chill passed through my body. It was growing dark. I swung myself down from the hammock and walked up to the house. Inside there was still no sign of I’Inglese. The dish of braciolettine was cold and congealed on the table. The copper pans jeered at me, reflecting the hideous mask of my face.