La Cucina

by Lily Prior

  Her pain, her breathing, and her cries all deepened. I was really panicking but was determined not to let her see it. She kept asking where the doctor was, and when he was coming. I could see he was not going to arrive in time.

  Her contractions came more closely together and I urged her to push and breathe and push again, and then, quite suddenly, a tiny red head emerged between her legs. I took hold of it and pulled gently. A tiny slippery body emerged too, covered with a purple-colored mucous. Biancamaria Ossobucco strained her neck to see.

  “Is it joined, Rosa?” she whispered, as if scared to speak out loud for fear of knowing the answer.

  “No, dear. It’s a beautiful baby girl. Look!”

  I held the baby up for Biancamaria Ossobucco to see. She was a sweet little thing. Like a piglet. I knew that I had to cut the string that still bound her to her mother, so I took a sharp knife and sliced through it, close to the baby’s stomach. And then I took her and washed her in the basin to remove the slime, and dried her carefully. As I turned to hand her to her mother I was amazed to see another little head poking out.

  “Biancamaria Ossobucco, I think it’s twins. Don’t panic. You take hold of this one while I get the other one out.”

  I could tell that Biancamaria Ossobucco was still in fear that the second baby could somehow be joined to the first, and she examined the first one all over for some evidence of abnormality. She continued to look fearful while I eased the second one out of the birth canal. The second one, also, was perfectly formed.

  “There dear, another one, just like the first, no marks or blemishes at all.”

  Again I cut the string, washed the baby, dried it, and wrapped it up to keep it warm. I gave it to Biancamaria Ossobucco and she balanced one of them in either arm, scarcely believing her good fortune. The poor woman had convinced herself that her babies would be deformed, and she did not want to congratulate herself too soon in case the Fates changed their minds.

  I bustled around and cleaned everything up, satisfied at the way that I had managed it all. After all, I had no experience, and delivering babies is no easy matter.

  As I raised the sheets to wash Biancamaria Ossobucco, you will not believe it if I tell you that there was yet another child seeking to force its way out into the world. Another tiny head was protruding from between Biancamaria Ossobucco’s legs. The poor wretch was in such a state of confusion and relief that she had not realized that she was still in labor.

  It was another girl, identical to the first two. This time I took the precaution of poking around Biancamaria Ossobucco’s belly, and felt reasonably confident that this was the last.

  “Can you feel any more inside you, dear?” I asked her.

  “No, Rosa. There will be no more. That was the last one.”

  And so my nieces were born. Three of them. All of them identical. All of them beautiful. And delivered by their aunt.

  In the early hours, after the excitement had died down and Biancamaria Ossobucco and her triplets had fallen asleep, I took refuge in the kitchen, and sought to calm my nerves by making a pan of panelle. There was still nothing like it for soothing my soul and easing my conscience. As I fried the slabs of chickpea paste in crackling hot oil, the twins and the doctor came in together.

  “Is she all right?” the boys asked as I gestured the doctor up the stairs. Their four eyes were filled with the same look of fear as Biancamaria Ossobucco’s had been a few hours earlier—the fear of passing on their legacy of deformity to their unborn child.

  “She’s fine, boys,” I answered. “And you have three beautiful, separate daughters.”

  “Then they’re all all right? And Biancamaria Ossobucco?”

  “They’re fine. She’s fine. They’re all fine. They really are. Go up and look at them.”

  They leapt on their three legs up the stairs. I followed and saw their tears of joy on beholding their beautiful family of girls. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  That night was three years ago now, and today I am in la cucina at the fattoria minding my nieces, Rosa, Rosita, and Rosina. True to their word, the twins named all three of them after me. They come to me often. They are happy with me. I love them tenderly. They are like my own girls. I am the only one who can tell them apart; even their parents sometimes make mistakes.

  I never knew I had such a deep, encompassing ability to love. These three tiny girls have brought me to life again. I give them all the love I have inside me: I have nowhere else to give it now.

  And something else too. They are all, even at this tender age, excellent cooks like their aunt Rosa. They are never happier than when they are in the kitchen, covered in flour up to their tiny elbows, kneading miniature dough balls, forming pasta shapes with their baby fingers, or making little cookies, which they distribute among their favorite farmhands.

  I am helping baby Rosa, the eldest, to make “little oranges”: fritters made from rice and three types of cheese. Now that we have boiled the arborio rice in water until tender, drained it, and let it cool, we mix it with mashed ricotta, grated pecorino, chopped mozzarella, parsley, egg, nutmeg, and salt and pepper.

  With wet hands we form the mixture into balls. This can be a messy procedure, especially for a three-year-old, and baby Rosa and I are caked in the gloop, which she is happily smearing on both our faces with her teeny fingers. I can’t help but laugh, which encourages her to do it all the more. However hard I try, I can’t be strict with my girls.

  What few balls remain we roll in flour, beaten egg, and lastly bread crumbs. As I set the oil to heat on the stove I glance over the top of the half door, out onto the yard.

  The light is so intense at this, the height of summer, that my eyes water as they struggle to adjust to the brightness. In the glare I think I see a figure walking up the lane toward the gate. Something about this figure interests me, I don’t know what. Something about it speaks to me, and draws me to it. I squint my eyes trying to make out who it is.

  It is the figure of a man. I recognize the figure, and the walk, and the bearing from a distance. Then I wipe my eyes on my sleeve and tell myself I am imagining things. I have not had a daydream for a very long time. I must have grown out of them as I have gotten older. Nevertheless, I remove the oil from the heat. My fantasies had already been responsible for one fire. My concern for the safety of my nieces has become instinctive.

  When I cross to the door and look again, the man is still there. Closer. Clearer. More definite. I wipe my hands on my apron and lift little Rosa down from the table onto the floor, where her sisters are playing with a kitten. She protests loudly; she wants to continue cooking. For the first time, Aunt Rosa does not listen and baby Rosa howls.

  The air seems to have grown thick around me. I am conscious of the girls’ voices babbling in the background, the mewing of the over-loved kitten, the smell on my hands of freshly chopped parsley. But all of that seems very far away now. I feel like a sleepwalker, or a deep-sea diver, far away from everything except the bubble of joy expanding in my heart, which I am struggling to suppress. Don’t let me be dreaming this, I hear my voice saying inside my mind, I’ll die if it isn’t real.

  My legs walk me toward the door. My arms reach out and release the catch. I shut the door behind me so the girls can’t get out and fall down the steps. They start crying because they don’t want to be left behind.

  I feel the shock of the sudden heat as I emerge from the cool air of la cucina into the full force of the sun. I come down the steps. My legs feel unsteady, as if they can’t really support my weight. I want to fly, dance, sing, cry, scream.

  I cup my hand over my eyes to shade them so I can see better, and I realize my face is still caked with the rice and cheese mixture. But I can’t worry about that now. The figure of the man is standing at the gate, leaning on it with his forearms, waiting for me. I feel his eyes on me. They’re blue and sparkling as ever.

  “Have I come to the right place, signo
rina?” he asks in an English accent, his rakish smile lighting up his face and my world.

  “You have,” I answer, and my voice sounds from somewhere strangely far off.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  LILY PRIOR lives in London, England. An admirer of Italian cuisine and culture, she has traveled extensively in Sicily, where she found the inspiration for La Cucina, her first novel.

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  PRAISE FOR LA CUCINA BY LILY PRIOR

  “Succulent saga…with a sensuous tone, a folkloric narrative style and a most original set of characters, La Cucina could well satisfy the hungriest of appetites.”

  —People magazine

  “La Cucina is a heady concoction, like a long meal with relatives, by turns funny, frightening, sad, and joyful. Lily Prior has given us a startling and fresh look at Sicily, a land of economic hardship, great beauty, and ancient magic, not all of it benevolent. I’ve rarely seen a first novel of such originality and confidence, or encountered a narrator as quirky and engaging as Rosa Fiore, a spinster who finds in cooking what saints find in prayer: consolation, recollection, and, unexpectedly, ecstasy. I’ve rarely seen a first novel of such originality and confidence.”

  —Valerie Martin, author of Mary Reilly and Italian Fever

  “Reminiscent of Laura Esquivel and John Irving, mixed with a healthy dollop of Gabriel García Márquez, Prior’s debut is clever, untamed, funny, and at times shocking.”

  —Library Journal

  “Sumptuously appointed, celebratory and sensuous, this debut novel is a mouth-watering blend of commedia del-l’arte and Greek tragedy. Prior cooks up a cinematic yarn full of characters so rich you’ll fear they’re fattening, but readers will be sure to splurge on this saucy tale chockfull of sex, recipes, and murder.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  COPYRIGHT

  LA CUCINA. Copyright © 2000 by Lily Prior. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

  First Ecco paperback edition published 2001.

  *

  The Library of Congress has catalogued a hardcover edition as follows:

  Prior, Lily.

  La Cucina : a novel of rapture / by Lily Prior — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-06-019538-X

  1. Middle-aged women—Fiction 2. Women librarians—Fiction. 3. Sicily (Italy)—Fiction. 4. Women cooks—Fiction. 5. Cookery—Fiction. I. Title

  PS3566.R5767 C84 2000

  813’.6—dc21 00-058205

  *

  ISBN 0-06-095369-1 (pbk.)

  EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2013 ISBN: 9780062283498

  04 05 /RRD 10 9

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