La Cucina

by Lily Prior

  I was still sobbing and rocking Mama when the boys, Leonardo, Mario, Giuliano, Giuseppe, and Salvatore, returned to the fattoria from the fields for supper.

  On seeing the scene of carnage in the kitchen—the discarded knife with the blood-soaked blade and the huge pool of blood darkening the flagstones—and then coming upon the figure of their sister, in a state of disarray, bending over their mother’s body, their one immediate thought was that there had been the most dreadful accident.

  “Rosa, what have you done?” asked Leonardo with a look of horror in his eyes as he regarded me in the light of a murderess, worse still, a matricide.

  “Mama is dead,” I bawled, my tears flowing anew as I was forced to confront the reality of the situation by explaining it to the others. “I came in from slaughtering the pig and found her hunched over the table; she only lasted a few moments. I didn’t have time to fetch you or call the doctor; as I was holding her she just slipped away.”

  My brothers looked at each other, each thinking the same thought: that I had gone mad and killed our mother. Leonardo signaled to Mario, Giuliano, Giuseppe, and Salvatore, indicating that they should follow him outside.

  “Mario, you run into town with Giuliano and fetch the doctor. Salvatore, you go with them and get the police: tell them that Rosa has murdered Mama. Giuseppe, you round up a few of the lads in case things turn nasty. I’ll try and keep her calm until you get back, now hurry.”

  Mario, Giuliano, Salvatore, and Giuseppe ran off as fast as they could and Leonardo came back into the kitchen to deal with his crazy sister.

  “Rosa, why don’t you put Mama down?” he asked me in the tone of voice we all used on the simpleton Rosario.

  “I just want to hold her a little longer, Leo. I don’t want her to get cold.”

  “Come on now, Rosa, put her down. We need to lay her out flat on the table, otherwise she’ll set in that position and grow hard and we won’t be able to get her in the coffin. You don’t want that, do you now?”

  I reluctantly relinquished my grip and helped Leonardo place the tiny body on the table. Unfortunately the corpse was covered in blood that must have come from its contact with me, bloodied as I was from the slaughter; my handprints in blood were on Mama’s cheeks and hands and clothes.

  Leonardo picked up the knife when he saw my head was turned and kept it clenched in his grasp behind his back in case, as he said afterward, the situation worsened. Presumably he thought I was going to attack him. After what seemed like ages his reinforcements arrived. His relief was palpable.

  The old family doctor, Dr. Leobino, entered while the two officers of the carabinieri flanked the door in case I tried to escape. They both had their pistols cocked and ready. In the background, at a safe distance, hovered the despicable Padre Francesco.

  “Now, Rosa,” said Dr. Leobino, gingerly approaching the table where Mama was lying and where I was standing with my arms folded across my chest, “tell me what has happened here.”

  “Doctor. Mama is dead.”

  “Can I take a look at her?”

  “Yes, Doctor, but I don’t think anything can be done.”

  “Well, let me just have a little look.”

  He carefully examined the body for wounds, but of course, could not find any.

  “You’re quite right, Rosa, nothing can be done for her now. Tell me, how did she die?”

  “I had been slaughtering the pig for Christmas night, Doctor. As I came inside from the yard I saw Mama slumped over the table; she was kneading dough, and her head had fallen into it. I knew something was wrong. In my panic I dropped the bucket containing the blood with which I was going to make my special sausages…”

  “Ah yes, I’ve never tasted a sausage to rival one of yours, Rosa,” interrupted the doctor.

  “And the blood spilled all over the floor. I ran over to Mama. I thought she was dead, but she was still just alive. I pulled her up out of the dough. She tried to say something to me but she couldn’t breathe. I told her to wait while I called you and the boys, but she said there wasn’t time. She sort of gasped and choked and made a funny sound in her throat and then her head dropped down and I knew that she was dead. I held her for a long time in my arms; I didn’t want to let her go. Did I do wrong, Doctor?”

  “No, Rosa, you haven’t done anything wrong. I am most sorry for you in your grief. Your mother was a good woman. May she rest in peace with the Lord.”

  Then, turning to the officers of the carabinieri, he said, “Come, gentlemen, I don’t think we are needed here,” and with that he swept out of la cucina, past my brothers, who were all looking rather sheepish.

  “‘Sister has murdered Mother’ indeed,” muttered the doctor under his breath as he passed Giovanni in the passage.

  Assured that all was safe and that I was not about to run him through with my filleting knife, Padre Francesco entered from the yard. He performed the rites and in the process himself became smeared with blood. The blood on the floor soaked into the hem of his crisp white chasuble as it brushed the flagstones, and when he left he looked as though he had been administering the last rites in a war zone.

  We laughed about it afterward, but I have never forgotten that my brothers thought me capable of matricide.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The funeral was delayed for a few days to allow Luigi time to take an airplane over from Chicago. An airplane! No one had ever heard of anyone who had flown in an airplane.

  The wait was extremely inconvenient because Mama was laid out on the kitchen table. Meals had to be taken with my brothers and the farmhands and myself crowded around one end of the table, while Mama presided at the other.

  I had done my best with my mother’s corpse. I had dressed her in one of her best nightgowns and had woven some artificial flowers into her hair. Around her I had placed jars of scented leaves and berries; there were not many flowers around at this time of year, and I knew Mama would disapprove of any unnecessary expense at a florist’s store. Candles were kept lit day and night. Fortunately the weather was cold and the liberal dousings of eau de cologne I sprinkled all over the corpse were sufficient to stop it from reeking.

  Christmas was a miserable time, although we all pretended to enjoy ourselves. The roast pork was succulent with my special crackling, as crunchy and crisp as any that could be imagined. I served it with a sauce of home-grown apples, some roast potatoes with rosemary, and some mountain spinach. The porker was tender, there was no debate on that; she had been well slaughtered, all had to agree. It was acknowledged by all that I was an expert with a filleting knife.

  At last, on New Year’s Eve, Luigi arrived from the States with his wife, the barmaid from Linguaglossa. They looked like movie stars. The barmaid even had a fur coat that she twirled in my face the second she stepped inside. She was too grand for the old place now and wrinkled her nose at the dust and the cobwebs and my housekeeping; she herself had a maid in Chicago.

  She screamed on seeing the corpse, saying how grotesque it was and how pleased she was she had not brought the children: such a thing would surely give them nightmares for life. She had brought so much baggage with her that the weight of it nearly induced a hernia in the daft farmhand Rosario, whose lot was to carry it inside, and he was accustomed to heavy work on the farm. She seemed to regard the whole trip as nothing more than a fashion parade, and throughout the visit she changed her clothes at least four times a day.

  Luigi was lenient with her. He had more important things on his mind. He had grown fat on his diet of pizza in Chicago and he went everywhere with the end of a cigar clamped between his teeth. From the time he arrived to the time he left, a stream of shiny automobiles came up the lane to the house, a succession of strange men in suits got out of them, and Luigi spent hours closeted away in meetings with these strangers, so it was virtually impossible for the rest of us to speak to him.

  The funeral could be delayed no longer, and took place on the morning of New Year’s Day. It was unusually cold
as our little procession made its way up the hillside to the Chiesa di Ave Maria, and on to the cemetery. This was the third time I had made this journey; my lover, the empty coffin of the man I now feared wasn’t my father, and now, finally, my mother I had followed up this hill. Soon it would be my own turn.

  We passed the grave of Bartolomeo; he smiled at me, still a boy, from the photograph set in the stone. How strange that he should stay young and I should grow old and stout; what an odd couple we would make now, I thought.

  The procession stopped at the Fiore plot. The ground next to Papa’s empty tomb had been opened up to receive Mama.

  Padre Francesco officiated; he made a living out of burying my loved ones.

  “In nomine padre, filii, et spiritu sanctus…”

  Luigi had arranged for a group of professional singers to be brought all the way from Agrigento, and as they sang the Ave Maria, the tiny coffin was lowered into the ground.

  As we walked home, the mourners fell into groups of ones and twos chatting about the things one invariably talks about after funerals. I found myself walking along with Luigi. Fortunately we were out of earshot of the others, although the strident voice of the barmaid from Linguaglossa could be heard resounding from some way away. There was something I had to ask him. Of all my brothers, Luigi would know the truth.

  “Luigi, Mama talked a little to me before she died.”

  “She did?” He spoke now with an American accent.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, what did she say?”

  “It was difficult to make out as her breathing was so irregular and she really was on the brink of death, but I’m sure she said that Papa was not my real father.”

  “Oh, so she told you that.”

  “Do you mean it’s true?”

  “Yeah, it’s true.”

  I felt as though I had been hit in the stomach with a fist, just below the rib cage. I could hardly breathe. So it was true. Naively I was hoping he was going to say that Mama’s mind was wandering as death came closer and that she had somehow invented it all.

  “I know it must have come as a shock to you, Rosa, hearing it in that way, too, but it’s true, you were not born from Filippo Fiore’s seed.”

  “So who is my real father, do you know, Lui?”

  “I did hear some things, of course, but Rosa, Papa always looked on you as his little girl. You know I think he believed you were his. I don’t think he ever knew, ever suspected, even. Certainly you were always his favorite. It didn’t make no difference to him. It was all such a long time ago now, are you sure you really want to know?”

  “Of course I do. I need to know. There’s no going back now. Tell me who it is.”

  “It happened like this. Mama, when she was younger, was a very passionate woman. She always enjoyed the company of men. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Papa or anything like that. When she was young, if a man showed an interest in her, it was very difficult for her to refuse him. It didn’t mean nothing to her. Nothing at all. It was just a physical thing.”

  “So who was it, Luigi? Don’t keep me in suspense.”

  “All right, I’m coming to that. I’m just explaining a bit of the background to you first.”

  “Lui,” I pleaded.

  “All right, have it your own way. It was the priest.”

  “Padre Francesco?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re telling me that the priest, Padre Francesco, is my father?”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry to break it to you like that, but you forced it out of me. It don’t make no difference to the rest of us. You’re still our little sister.”

  Padre Francesco, the pervert priest. I could not believe it. My flesh crawled. Luigi dropped behind, sensing that I needed to be alone to digest this most unwelcome piece of news. Oh, that it were not so. That there had been some mistake. The priest was abhorrent to me. All my life I had felt a repugnance for him, especially at the time of Bartolomeo’s death, when he had abused my trust, denied me the protection of the church, and jerked himself off on my story. I had never spoken a single word to him again, and from then on I had turned my back on the church that he represented. To think that I was the issue of such a man was just too horrible to bear. While the man that I had always thought of as my father, the kind, simple, decent Filippo Fiore, was no more than a cuckold. Perhaps he had hated me, the visible evidence of his wife’s infidelity.

  After asking about my father, I had intended to go on and ask Lui what he knew about l’Inglese, but this news was such a shock I couldn’t take any more just then. As I marched along toward the fattoria I heard the distinctive sound of the twins clattering along the path behind me. I turned and they limped alongside with their strange three-legged gait. They were smiling shyly.

  “Rosa, we have something to tell you. There is some joy to be had on this sad day after all. Rosa, we wanted you to be the first to know; we are going to be a father.”

  “Oh boys, that’s lovely. I’m very happy for you both. For all of you.” I tried to sound enthusiastic, but it was difficult given that I just wanted to start screaming and never stop.

  “Thank you. We only found out this very morning. Biancamaria Ossobucco is with child. Our child. It does not matter to us which of us is the father. There is no way of knowing, and besides, we are one flesh. It will be our child. The doctor says it has every chance of being born normal, and if it’s a girl, we will name her after you.”

  “I would be honored. I am so pleased for you, I really am. We need some good news, boys, for there is too much misery in this world.”

  They scampered away with a spring in their joint step to tell their brothers of their joy. How Mama would have hooted. The whore to bear a child. Suppose it too was born with the curse of deformity like its fathers? My head was heavy with the weight of these thoughts.

  Soon we were home and I prepared the tea, which I served in the front parlor. There was prosciutto in abundance from the slaughtered porker, and bread and pickles. None of us could quite fancy it; it was too painful a reminder of the awful day of Mama’s death; but the barmaid from Linguaglossa ate enough to make herself sick, and the distant relatives and the villagers observed few niceties. There was cold pheasant too and some apple tart with quince to follow. Mama would have been pleased with the spread. As soon as they had all gone, I tidied away the dishes and took myself up to bed. I had too much to think over. It had been a horrible day.

  The following day Luigi and the barmaid from Linguaglossa were to return to the States. Just as they were climbing into the automobile to go to the airport, I knew it was now or never: I had to ask Luigi what he knew about l’Inglese.

  “That man was no good, Rosa. I didn’t like it when I heard you had started fooling around with him. A no-good piece of trash, that’s all he was. That’s why I had him removed.”

  The driver started the engine.

  “Removed?” I asked, not following him.

  The automobile began to pull away. I walked alongside, by the open window. Everyone started waving them goodbye.

  “I had him taken out,” I heard Luigi say above the shouts of goodbye and the noise of the engine. “You won’t be seeing him again.”

  I could no longer keep pace with the vehicle.

  “You mean he’s dead? You had him killed?” I shouted after him. But it was too late, Luigi had gone. I was never to see him again. The next year he was found in an underground automobile parking lot with a bullet through his brain. But again I am getting ahead of myself.

  I hurried to la cucina and began pounding at some dough for the evening bread. So my brother had killed my lover. What a way to start the day.

  I pounded and pounded at the dough with such force that the venerable table shook on its legs. Now my mother was dead, the priest was my father, and my brother had killed my lover. For the first time in my life I feared for my sanity. Suddenly I could feel everything slipping through my grasp. My fists came down on the dough with a crash. Ju
st what else were the fates going to throw at me?

  So my supposition had been correct: Luigi’s henchmen were not interested in me at all, but in l’Inglese. But how? Why?

  How did Luigi know him? It could only mean that l’Inglese was somehow mixed up in Mafia affairs: after all, that was Luigi’s world. How could the two of them be connected?

  Why had Luigi said l’Inglese was no good? What did he know of him to make him think that?

  I had often found myself mulling over l’Inglese’s words: that he could not tell me where he had been on that trip out of Palermo at the time of Crocifisso’s death, or what he had been doing, “for my own safety.” When the danger was past, he said, he would tell me everything. Clearly this had little to do with writing cookbooks. How I wished I had pressed him further at the time, and made him tell me. But I was so in love with him I had just accepted everything.

  Now I would never know; my brother had had l’Inglese killed. I knew I would get nothing further out of Luigi, even if somehow I managed to pursue him on the other side of the globe. I knew also that even if I drove myself completely mad considering all the possibilities, it would still not bring l’Inglese back.

  L’Inglese was dead. I had felt it, that he was dead, before now. In my heart I had known it all along. Objectively I knew no one survived a disappearance. Yet up until this time, when I knew it for sure, I had always liked to fool myself with the hope that by some miracle, in the future, however distant, we might come together again. Now all hope was gone. He was dead. That so alive, so vital man was dead. I tried to imagine it, but couldn’t. I forced myself to imagine his corpse, to make myself believe it. How could that life force so strong in him be extinguished like the insignificant flame of a candle? I couldn’t accept it. I hated Luigi. I punched at the dough as though punching him in the face. I had not kneaded like this since Bartolomeo’s death.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The following day I went into town, as I had business with my father the priest. My mental turmoil gave speed to my legs, and I was almost running by the time I reached the chiesa.