by Adam Schell
The Good Padre was fortunate in that his arrival in the village had coincided with the spring planting season and he was now reaping the verdant benefits of late August in Tuscany. He viewed the success of his small plot as an affirmation of his faith and a harbinger of good things to come. At the center of the church’s garden stood a lovely, five-foot-high replica of the same Virgin Mary statue located above the church entrance. In designing his garden, the Good Padre had intentionally created a nimbus-like shape, with all twelve planting rows angling outward from the feet of the Virgin.
Reaching his decision as to which eggplant to try his recipe upon, the Good Padre set his grip around a fine specimen. It was a slight, gentle action that lent a keen perspective to the Good Padre’s size and complexion, as the bulbous deep-purple eggplant nearly blended with the color of the Good Padre’s skin and disappeared beneath the girth of his palm and width of his fingers. The Good Padre was a huge man, but it was not so much the Good Padre’s height that was overwhelming, as he was only a few fingers’ width taller than the average man; it was his thickness.
The Good Padre’s chest was like an old walnut tree trunk and his arms were like the thick lower branches that had first matured and born fruit three centuries ago. If, in passing, one happened to gently lay a hand upon the Good Padre’s knee or shoulder, he would find it to be the size and oblong roundness of the largest late-summer honeydew melon he had ever touched. The Good Padre’s fingers shared both their size and slightly bulbous shape with a soon-to-be giant squash halfway through its growing season. His nose had the width and slope of a small pear from Piedmont. His nostrils, each the circumference of a colossal green olive from Sicily, and his head, the girth and glabrous sheen of a Mantuan pumpkin in late November. His teeth were like the large acorns that dropped from white oak trees in November, and when he smiled, which he often did, his mouth curved and broadened to the size of an August carob bean hanging from a tree in Lucca. His wide eyes emanated both the wholesome allure and the glint of playfulness that can only be understood if one has sliced a ripe Umbrian fig through the belly of its width and gazed upon its starry innards. Indeed, the Good Padre was a man of startling and perplexing complexion, but as part of his curse (more of a magical enchantment, really), certain physical and temporal details evaded his perception and he had not the slightest idea that his size and color were the least bit unusual.
“Gli Ebrei,” uttered Bertolli as he lowered the letter from his eyes. A thousand invectives the old padre had spewed burst inside Bertolli’s head. His heart began to pound so loudly it clogged his ears from the inside out. “Oh, God!” Bertolli cursed himself as he darted from the confessional. “Why did I let the Good Padre teach me how to read?” But Bertolli’s mind was so astir from the shocking news that his eyes saw not what they had seen a thousand times before, and he promptly crashed into the wood bench of the church’s rearmost row.
A vivid terror overtook Bertolli as he looked up to see the church pews toppling upon one another, one by one. In the stillness of trauma, Bertolli knew exactly what to do and he clearly envisioned he had the strength and agility to stop the toppling rows. However, fate was far more ironic, and as Bertolli sprang to action, he failed to release his grip upon the papal letter, which had gotten pinched between the fallen rows, thus causing him to tear the fine parchment entirely in two.
“Bertolli,” the Good Padre sighed as he heard the spectacular racket echoing from inside the church. He began to count the seconds until the spirited boy would appear before him, panting, all too ready with a fanciful excuse. At roughly the count of four, the Good Padre heard the distant shout of “Padre!” crackling from the boy’s prepubescent larynx. By the count of nine, the voice was right behind him.
“Padre,” Bertolli said, gasping for breath, “urgent news.”
Ignoring the boy’s frenzy, the Good Padre remained on one knee alongside the row of eggplants. With great care, as if detaching a newborn from its mother’s umbilical cord, he separated the eggplant he’d been holding from its vine, lifted it to his nose and gave it a sniff.
“Take heed of this eggplant’s vital glow.” The Good Padre spoke out loud, though not at his altar boy. “But what was key to its bountiful growth? By water and sun both fruit and man can survive, but what are the means by which we thrive? For in richness of man and richness of earth, there is one special nutrient that gives bounty birth. And this nutrient so natural to her soul,” the Good Padre gestured to the statue of the Virgin, “does too make man and land whole.” “But Padre—” Bertolli attempted to speak. “You see, young Bertolli,” said the Good Padre, “this eggplant grows more splendid than another ‘cause it grows by love of the Sacred Mother. And when by love, man or fruit does render, we blossom to beings of utter splendor.” Taking no particular notice of the torn letter, the Good Padre stood up, handed Bertolli the eggplant and took a deep inhale.
“Boun Pa …” said Bertolli, until the word suddenly deflated upon his tongue. He was halted by the length and depth of the Good Padre’s inhale and how his already massive frame seemed to expand like a sail catching wind. The sound too was overwhelming, a great drawing in of air that played before the ear like a giant bellows stoking a blacksmith’s kiln. “Urgent tidings,” the boy said meekly, his fervor undone by awe.
“Ah, do you smell this morn’s fine air?” said the Good Padre. “Oh, the joy to be young and without care! Now, young Bertolli, listen to your padre and the wasted youth that I’ll attest, less time in church and more at play would do you best.” The Good Padre paused as it occurred to him he couldn’t exactly remember his own youth.
“But Padre, urgent tidings from Holy Rome.” “Rome,” said the Good Padre with a wave of his hand. “For youth, Rome can wait.”
“But Padre, please. This is serious.” “Well,” chuckled the Good Padre, “then ’tis a fine day even better that Vatican courier hath entrusted you with papal letter.”
Bertolli groaned in dismay.
“Oh, Bertolli,” said the Good Padre, his attention suddenly fixated on a bee as it disappeared between the petals of a burgundy rose in full bloom, “nothing is so serious ‘til man think it so.” He bent over and brought his nose dangerously close to the bee’s endeavoring then gently sniffed the air. “Do you see, Bertolli, is it not sublime, this interplay of life? Do not all actions, be they elaborate or random, seem governed by divine accord? For the rose will choke upon its nectar unless extracted by the bee, and the bee that takes the nectar gives honey to man.” The Good Padre turned his head and looked directly into Bertolli’s eyes. “Who could imagine sweetness to arise in such a manner?”
“Bertolli,” said the Good Padre, breaking the extended moment of silence.
“Yes, Padre,” the boy said faintly.
“Speak. Speak.”
“Oh,” said Bertolli, with hardly the fervor of a moment ago. “Gli Ebrei, Gli Ebrei sono liberi.” The Ebrei are to be free.
3 Historical Note: throughout medieval and Renaissance Italy, the word black, nero, was not considered a color, rather the absence of color, and was used only to describe inanimate objects. Vernacular of that day commonly used fruits and vegetables as a means for describing the skin color of an individual or ethnic group. For example, travelers from the British Isles were described as having skin the color of cow’s cream; Ottomans, the sun-bleached hue of dried apricots; and Africans, the profoundly purple sheen of a ripe eggplant.
In Which we Learn of
Truffles & Other Mushrooms
With a knowing snort and a taut yank on the leashes around his wrist, Benito knew his little pigs had caught a whiff. This was the moment of the hunt and Benito shouted through the forest, “Tartufi! Tartufi!” to share his joy with the one he both loved and hated.
It was early Sunday morning and though Benito had already been up for hours, he felt stiff and unprepared to match the morning vigor of his little ladies. He belched as he struggled to keep control over the three knee-high sows l
eashed to his right wrist, and tasted an acrid teaspoon of last night’s drink as it sloshed back up from his belly. He feared he might vomit. Benito knew why his boss desired to go truffle hunting at such a premature time—Benito wasn’t as stupid as people thought him to be—but he never imagined that his trio of adolescent female pigs would actually catch a scent in late August. Last evening, at the tavern, as he ordered one, two and then three more pints, he did so figuring that today’s endeavor would prove nothing more than a futile walk in the woods with his lazy sows and greedy boss. But Benito’s truffle-hunting sows most certainly had caught scent of something and the familiar feeling of both joy and dread shot through Benito’s ale-bloated body.
Though it might seem more logical for Benito to balance the stress by holding two of his sows’ leashes in his left hand and one in his right, or vice versa, he knew better. He had never forgotten his first truffle hunt, when he mistakenly held two of his sows’ leashes in his left hand and one in his right and was left helpless as the fervent creatures divided around an oak tree, pulled his arms in two directions and ran his splayed-out body directly into the knobby old tree. The impact did poor Benito’s appearance no favor and furthered the expansion of a nose that had already faced numerous hardships.
It was amazing to Benito how creatures with such short legs and small strides could move at a clip so challenging to match. For the most part, sows were lazy animals, but once they caught a truffle’s scent, the little creatures went through an utter transformation: a demeanor marked by reluctance and sloth suddenly became one of vehemence. Thighs and hindquarters that moments ago jiggled like spongy adipose now snapped and shimmered with sinewy muscle. The rapture, though, was not without a certain grace, and no one could attest to that more than Benito.
For those unfamiliar with the near-narcotic flavor of a truffle, it may come as a surprise to learn that the most expensive and sought-after food in all of Italy is foraged by such unlikely creatures. There is, however, nothing ordinary about truffles. On the chance that the reader has never eaten a truffle of the Tuscan variety and quality, let it be known it conveys both a flavor and a sensation unlike any other food. In the most tangible sense, a good truffle tastes something like a cross between porcini mushrooms, roasted garlic and fresh-shelled walnuts. However, it’s the intangible that makes the truffle so resplendent. Along with the earthy flavor of porcini, garlic and walnut, truffles exude a profound and slightly unnerving gaseous musk. A scent that is unique among all the foods of the world.
The authentic truffle experience begins in the olfactory gland as the clump of fungus (about the size of a garlic bulb) is shaved over a steaming plate of fettuccine in sweet butter or a puree of wild mushroom soup with roasted barley. Caught in the steamy vapors, the truffle’s aroma enchants the nostrils with an otherworldly quality, at once sublime and disturbing. In some cases, a deep whiff or mouthful of fresh truffle has been known to cause women of weak constitutions to faint and men to awkwardly contend with a sudden bastone tenting up their trousers and colliding against the underside of the dinner table. In fact, the age-old Tuscan adage for good luck—Tocando Legno (knock wood)—was widely believed to have originated with ancient truffle hunters who equated good fortune with truffle-inspired erections knocking against wooden tables.
In order to maintain the truffle’s elevated allure and price, truffle hunters have historically exaggerated both the mysteries of the fungus and their own prowess to excavate it. But, in truth, a truffle hunter can only be as good as the pig he has trained. Pigs have extraordinary olfactory capabilities, and well-trained truffle-hunting sows, like Benito’s, are skilled enough to locate the faint gaseous aroma of a ripe truffle from five hundred paces out, all the more impressive considering truffles grow an average of six inches under the forest bed.
Benito’s call of “Tartufi!” shot through the forest and pierced the bull’s-eye of Giuseppe’s ire. The animalistic echo of his underling’s voice startled Giuseppe and his toes instinctively clenched inside his boots. This slight, near imperceptible twitch of muscle and tendon aroused Giuseppe’s gout and sent a painful spasm up his nervous system. His trigger finger quivered at the worst possible moment and he watched his ivory-tipped bolt 4—purchased in Pistoia at some cost—miss its target and lodge irrevocably into the thick bark of a chestnut tree.
“Vaffanculo!” Giuseppe murmured unpleasantly as he lowered his crossbow and watched his would-be prey bound into oblivion. “Benito.” Giuseppe said it like a curse word. It was bad enough to lose a good kill and the opportunity to torment his stepdaughter by forcing her to skin and roast a rabbitte bunnio; but to waste such a fine and costly arrow was especially irksome.
“Merda,” huffed Giuseppe as he finally relented in his struggle to remove the impacted arrow when something caught his eye. “Merda,” Giuseppe said again, this time with an inquisitive tone. There, just to the side of the tree, basking in a slender stream of sunlight and growing up from the loose, decomposed forest bed, sat an enormous patch of some two hundred mushrooms. “Sacra merda!” By their shape—slim two-inch stems and smallish, wavy caps—he knew precisely what he had found.
Giuseppe removed a small cloth from his pocket and spread it on the ground. He hadn’t seen this type of mushroom in years, but remembered it well and knew this patch he’d come upon, once extracted of its toxins, would make enough poison to turn half the village into a drooling mass of idiots. Giuseppe reached inside his right boot and removed a gleaming, ox-bone-handled seven-inch dagger. He used its sharp tip to loosen the soil under the mushrooms, pluck them up and set them on the cloth.
While these particular fungi had not the gastronomic value of the truffle, they were still quite valuable. Fungi di Santo, they were called: Saint’s Mushrooms. The name, rightly or wrongly, was attributed to a sect of 12th-century Gnostic monks, Il Ordo Fratrum Risata, Order of the Laughing Brothers, who were believed to use the mushrooms as part of their religious practices. The fungi were a poison of sorts, and while not wholly lethal, once ingested they brought on visions and dementia, fits of laughter and a special kinship with nature. The intoxication typically lasted six or so hours; but a highly concentrated dose, by Giuseppe’s recollection, could severely alter the mind for an extended period of time and, in certain instances, cause permanent derangement.
As a teenager in Rome, Giuseppe had helped his uncle use Fungi di Santo-tainted wine to turn a cadre of pompous French diplomats into a choir of giggling girls. On another occasion, he and his uncle used the same fungi-laced wine to transform a reserved and ruthless bishop into a babbling fool before the Pope. However, when the irate bishop discovered the whereabouts of the boy who’d delivered the tainted wine, it was a fifteen-year-old Giuseppe who took the fall for his uncle and the Meducci Cardinal who hired them. For the offense, Giuseppe spent two years in a dank prison cell, where he was intermittently beaten and abused, and ironically, after his release, it was a bottle of wine infused with Fungi di Santo that Giuseppe used to bludgeon his uncle to death.
“Tartufi, tartufi!” Benito’s voice rang through the forest.
“Yes, you idiot,” Giuseppe mumbled as he collected the mushrooms, tucked them into his satchel and made his way in the direction of Benito’s voice. My God, Giuseppe thought with some surprise, could those little pigs have really caught a scent of a truffle in late August?
Benito was relieved to see Giuseppe approach, as his sows had been halted by a new chest-high wood fence that cut through the forest. Benito couldn’t remember his pigs ever behaving this excitedly. Such commotion would have normally thrilled him, but he found the circumstances before him quite conflicting and he looked to Giuseppe for direction.
“Ebrei,” said Giuseppe as he stepped aside the pigs and gazed over the wood fence protecting a patch of recently cleared land and a lone tombstone marked with strange letters and a six-pointed star. “Gli Ebrei,” Giuseppe repeated, lips crinkling with disgust.
Benito’s sows snorted anxiously as
they dug with their snouts about the base of the fence, where the wood planks ran into the earth. Benito found this unsettling and though the muscles of his lower back ached and his belly gurgled with nausea, he mustered the strength to pull the hot-blooded creatures back.
Giuseppe could excuse the snorting and salivating of the sows as a bestial sound common to their nature, but he found the labored panting of Benito intolerable. To Giuseppe’s never-ending vexation, Benito was always making some disgusting and distracting noise, be it his heavy mouth-breathing, his habit of humming and singing songs to which he hardly knew the words or, even worse, the combination of moaning, lip-smacking and belching that accompanied his eating.
“Will you stop your Goddamn slobbering!” Giuseppe spat out the words like rancid wine. He needed to think. How, Giuseppe pondered, as he’d pondered over much of the last year, could a sorry handful of Ebrei have come into possession of such a fine parcel, which had belonged to the Meducci for as long as anyone could remember?
Over the course of summer, Giuseppe’s curiosity had grown to the point where he could no longer ignore it and, under the guise of hunting for game and foraging for truffles, Giuseppe began bringing Benito and his pigs to the forests southeast of town to get a clearer sense of just how much property the Ebrei possessed. Though Giuseppe had no information on how the small clan of Florentine Ebrei had managed to acquire the land, experience had taught him that only guilt, greed or love could cause a man to blatantly ignore and contradict every law and tradition that governed property ownership in Tuscany. But what does one as rich and powerful as the Meducci feel guilt or greed over, especially from a lowly lot of Ebrei? It must be a woman, thought Giuseppe. One of the famed Courtesane Ebreane 5, perhaps? The reason hardly mattered, for what was now clear as day was that Giuseppe was no longer the preeminent landholder in the area and this was entirely unacceptable to him.