Tomato Rhapsody

by Adam Schell

  Davido began to swell to life. A swell that pressed and parted the second lips of Mari’s love. She was still warm and wet. Mari moved her hips from side to side and then slowly slid down upon him, swallowing him fully inside of her and exhaling the slightest of moans into his ear. This thrilled Davido, the fact that she slid onto him: that a woman so beautiful and wonderful desired him.

  Dear God, Davido took a deep breath and squeezed her tightly against his chest—his will suddenly set like iron, his heart like a lion! For the chance to love a woman so wonderful, he thought, there is not a thing in the world that I wouldn’t risk, no battle I would not fight! For her, thought Davido, as he felt the weight upon his chest lighten and the elixir of victory proliferate his heart with courage. For her, how can I not?

  How Pizza Came to Be, Part II

  At the river, during the crumb-tossing procession, when the enormous priest put his hand upon his head and dunked him under the water, Luigi Campoverde, chef for the Duke of Tuscany, felt a sublime light shatter his body, blinding him from the inside out. He felt, for the briefest instant, that he was not separate from anything, that the river water, the hand of the Good Padre, the stones beneath his feet, everything and anything that existed was intricately a part of him and he a part of it. The feeling was so extreme that Luigi lay for hours upon the bank of the river, crying and laughing and mumbling to himself: “E cosi bello, it’s so beautiful, so beautiful.”

  It was true that Luigi had not known much love in his life, given his parents’ deaths when he was so young and the harshness of the orphanage where he was subsequently raised. Nonetheless, what he felt as he lay there upon the riverbank transcended even the vague remembrances of love that he’d received from his own mother. A spontaneous revelation, an all-encompassing feeling, that not only was he loved, but he was made of love. That God was love and all life sprung from this love.

  When Luigi awoke on Wednesday morning he was so grateful to the Good Padre and the altar boys who’d fed and sheltered him for the night that he spontaneously gave all his bodily possessions to the Church. These included the mule and cart he had arrived upon, a bag full of coins and the dozen or so items carried off from the Meducci villa that he had planned to barter at market. All Luigi asked in return was for the Good Padre to make a breakfast of the same meal he’d consumed for supper the previous night: a thin wheel of dough laid with sliced tomatoes, a few olives and some shavings of pecorino that were quickly baked in a hot oven, “until,” as the Good Padre said out loud, “the dough begins to pizea” 21.

  Once removed from the oven, the pane pizea (Bertolli’s name for it) was drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with salt, laid with some freshly torn pieces of basil and then immediately eaten. True, by Tuesday evening Luigi had gone a full day without a morsel of food and his senses were both tender and heightened. Nevertheless, the pane pizea was the single most delicious thing that Luigi had ever eaten and he would have gladly given all the gold in the world for the chance to eat such a thing again.

  To say that Luigi awoke on Wednesday morning a changed man was something of an understatement. He was so transformed, so in doubt of his previous life that he may never have returned to the Meducci villa had it not been for the viciousness of the beating he witnessed a bit later that morning. He had seen people beaten before—indeed, many of the monks in his childhood orphanage had seemed to take great delight in beating the young Luigi—but he had never seen anyone beaten for the crime of love. And as the blows landed upon the poor boy’s head and the smacks across the girl’s face, they impacted Luigi far more than any wallop he’d personally received. How, pondered Luigi’s fragile mind, could mankind be so cruel? The couple seemed to be deeply in love and the tomato sauce they’d made possessed a flavor so exquisite that Luigi felt a just and caring God would send an army of angels to guarantee their protection.

  But the miracle never transpired. The sight and sounds of slaps and punches and screams horrified Luigi, and as he saw the crock of tomato sauce upon the stand begin to sway and tumble from the tumult, Luigi took action. He stretched forth his hands and lunged with his body, his deluded mind convinced that the souls of the two lovers and everything that was good and beautiful about life was somehow held inside that crock and that it must be saved. But Luigi’s coordination was not as keen as his intent, and as his hands reached for the crock, his face passed right before Giuseppe’s flying fist. There was pain and an instant of blackness as the blow struck his cheek and pitched him to the ground, but not so much that he did not hear the crack of the crock upon the cobblestones. He felt the warm splatter of tomato sauce upon his neck and then he, in turn, felt himself crack too.

  Luigi did not move; he couldn’t. The sound of the lovers’ wailing paralyzed him. He could do nothing but lie there, partially under the tomato stand, being kicked and stepped upon as the crowd swayed violently above him. He felt his right eye begin to swell, his chest constrict, his breath shorten and a great, ungodly ache emerge from his heart. He was certain this was the death of him. “E cosi orribile,” Luigi mumbled as he began to sob with the exact converse of the energy that he’d experienced at the riverbank. “It’s so horrible.”

  Luigi lay there sobbing as the screams of the girl grew distant and the wails of the boy ended with a clatter of hooves and the roll of a wagon wheel. As the piazza went quiet with shame, Luigi did not get up. He laid there awaiting his death, until he felt something bump against his face. There, in front of his nose, was a tomato. Suddenly, a thought entered Luigi’s mind—a thought worth living for. He sat up, untucked his tunic and gathered up as many fallen tomatoes as he could manage to hold between his longish shirt and belly. Then he stood up and began to walk. He walked from the piazza and he walked from the village. He walked past farm and forest, walking through the night, arriving back at the villa just before dawn, thinking the entire time the one thought that had saved his life: that young Prince Gian Gastone would very much enjoy a pane pizea for breakfast.

  But there would be no breakfast. “E cosi orribile!” Luigi cried out as he let go his shirt-end and the tomatoes fell to the floor. He ran to the prince and cradled the convulsing and near-ruined boy in his arms. There was vomit, blood and diarrhea covering the child’s sheets. The left side of the boy’s face had fallen, wilting with paralysis. Blood ran from his nose and his eyes. It stained his thin linen pants as it leaked a trail down his legs. It was as if his very organs were being cooked to soup inside his body; but it was the retching and the reeling fits of pain that made Luigi feel as if his heart would shatter into a thousand pieces.

  Poor Prince Gian had been alone in his quarters, abandoned by his mother and staff for fear that it was the plague, but Luigi knew the effects of poison when he saw it. He had been trained at the monastery to keep an eye out for such things. “Dear God,” lamented Luigi as he eyed suspiciously an empty jar of fig jam sitting on the boy’s nightstand. Poison was a slow and awful death and Luigi knew the prince’s worst hours still lay ahead.

  The prince looked up at Luigi; his eyes were opaque and running with tears and blood, yet they seemed to register the face of his beloved chef.

  “Oh, my little Margarita” was all Luigi could think to say, “how you would have loved the pizea.”

  21 Ancient Etruscan word describing the blackening of bread in an oven.

  In Which We Learn

  the Meaning of

  La Dolce e Piccola Morte

  Among the courtesans of the Sisters of Esther they called it la dolce e piccola morte—the sweet and little death—and while Davido’s sister may have known of it, neither Davido nor Mari had ever heard of or experienced such a thing and they knew not to be on the lookout. And so they slept, the sweet and delicious sleep that occasionally follows perfect lovemaking. It had been sublime, the wave-like buildup, the way their bodies and hearts and minds—even their souls—seemed to meld and explode into one another. And then sleep came over them, like a perfect and painless death, and th
e lovers drifted from orgasm to unconsciousness with their bodies still entwined and without the least bit of awareness.

  Usually, as Davido’s sister may have attested, the sleep would last for but a few exquisite moments and was more often than not a male-oriented phenomenon—the end result of a heaving, humping, grunting, sweating mass of flesh suddenly erupting and then just as quickly cooling off and passing out. As one might imagine, this was often a rather unpleasant experience for the woman. One moment, she was doing her best to endure a torrent of thrusting, jostling and panting, and the very next, near-suffocating under an intractable blanket of blubber. But in instances of inspired lovemaking, when true love is involved, and especially when the woman’s body was atop the man’s, the few moments of sleep that followed the couple’s climax often proved to be a transcendent siesta for both. Such was the case with Davido and Mari. However, after the physical and emotional trauma of the day, the late hour, the repeated lovemaking and their total exhaustion, what normally would have been a short siesta went on a good bit longer. Had it been a moment or a lifetime? Davido knew not as he was stirred to semi-consciousness. It was that good and deep a sleep, but he wondered—or perhaps he dreamt— why would Mari wake him in such a manner, with her fingernail digging sharply into his neck?

  Giuseppe knew the smell. He had been about to enter her room when the scent stopped him in his tracks. Could they be so stupid? He was imagining that the day and events to come would be much more arduous: gathering up Mari and making a bit of a scene as he led her out of town and banished her to the nunnery at far-off Assisi, then rallying some villagers, mostly men under his employ, to storm the Ebrei land. But this, thought Giuseppe, as he took one more sniff of the musk emanating from his stepdaughter’s room, this would make everything easier. Quietly, he walked past Mari’s room to his own bedroom. Delicately, he opened the door one-third of the way. He reached in and removed the key, then closed the door and locked it. It wasn’t much of a lock, but Giuseppe imagined it would be more than enough to keep his wife in her place. After all, the last thing he needed was a hysterical invalid disrupting his plans. Giuseppe slid the key into his pocket and strode over to his study. He lifted his crossbow off its wall mount, cranked back the bow and slid an ivory-tipped bolt into the chamber.

  “Get up, boy.”

  Davido heard a voice, an awful voice, and then he heard the panting and screaming of Mari as her weight suddenly, violently lifted off his body. He opened his eyes only to find himself blinded. Sunlight filled the room. What was going on? Had he slept so long? He was naked, he knew that. Mari was screaming and it was not, he realized—as the pointed pain against his neck increased and the crossbow came into focus—Mari’s fingernail pressed to his throat.

  Giuseppe turned and glared at Mari. “Shut up,” he said, forcefully pressing the arrow end of the crossbow against Davido’s throat. Davido squirmed. The arrow broke the skin; a trickle of blood ran down Davido’s neck and stained Mari’s bedsheet. Mari quieted; she understood Giuseppe’s point: you scream, he bleeds.

  Davido strained his eyes to catch Mari in the periphery of his vision. The panic etched upon her face told him that the situation was not good, that his life was in grave danger. Davido trained his eyes back on Giuseppe. He opened his mouth to speak, but the pressure of the arrow tip against his throat stole his voice. Davido knew not what to make of the pair of brown eyes behind the crossbow. They seemed to express emotions other than hate. Davido prayed that his eyes could do all the things his voice couldn’t—declare his love for Mari, claim that she was blameless. Please God, he thought, do not let me die naked and helpless, slaughtered through the neck like a sheep.

  And the prayer was answered, or so Davido believed. Slowly, the fierce pressure of the arrow against Davido’s throat relented. Odd, thought Davido, noticing the tense pursing of Giuseppe’s lips give way to something like a smirk. He looked pleased, genuinely pleased. And then, in a blur, the arrow end of the crossbow spun away from Davido’s throat and the blunt, solid-wood handle came crashing into the side of his head. Davido thought he heard Mari cry, thought he felt something like pain, and then everything went black.

  “Oy,” groaned Nonno, pushing open the door to Davido’s room to find the bed empty and unslept in. Please God, thought Nonno, may I find him sleeping among the tomato plants. Nonno made a quick pass through their small home. Clearly, Davido was not in the house. Nonno slipped on his boots and jacket. It was early morning, the air was chilly and the ground was still wet with dew. He stepped outside toward the bushy green rows and their red fruits. As he feared, there was no sign of Davido sleeping, walking or working among his beloved tomato plants. Could he be so foolish? Nonno sighed his morning’s second “Oy” and then quickly walked the twenty paces to the barn, only to find that it too was empty.

  Since the death of the donkey Signore Meducci, they had but three donkeys left, only one of which was still tethered to the far side of the barn. Could he be so foolish? Yesterday’s donkey was still attached to the wagon and the wagon-bed was still full of tomatoes. He and Davido hadn’t even thought of detaching the donkey or unloading the wagon when they limped home from yesterday’s debacle.

  Nonno placed his foot upon the side step and readied himself to mount the wagon when he suddenly thought better of it. He hurried back into the barn, pushed aside a pile of hay in the corner and used an iron crowbar to remove a pair of floorboards. Reaching down into the hollow, he lifted out a burlap sack. From the sack he removed a white and seemingly weighty quilted vest specially designed for holding sums of money in an inconspicuous fashion. Nonno jiggled the vest and quickly judged by its weight that it held enough coin. He removed his jacket and tunic, brushed a little dirt from the vest, laced his bare arms through the money vest and secured its buckles against his chest and upper belly. Who knows, he thought, what kind of trouble I may need to bribe Davido out of today?

  Sobbing & laughing, Part II

  It was Thursday, not one of the main market days of Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but still a dozen merchants and food vendors filled the piazza. There was some produce to be found, but the emphasis was clearly on breakfast, and nearly all of the hundred or so villagers milling about the piazza were there to fill their mugs with hot tea or scoff down hard-boiled eggs with olive oil and salt for dipping, or, perhaps, the most popular and traditional breakfast in the village, yesterday’s bread sliced thick, spread with honey and laid with cheese.

  The mood about the piazza was unnaturally pensive. On just about any other day, there was an unspoken agreement to engage in as much conversation and folly as possible before heading off for the drudgery of work in the fields, mills, trade shops and stores; but with nearly half the piazza momentarily heading off to work at Giuseppe’s vineyard and mill, the idea of conversation carried an ironic burden that could not be lifted. Hence, most in the piazza looked to their feet or overly fretted about the hotness of the tea or staleness of the bread, anything to avoid talking about the very thing that weighed most upon their hearts and minds. How could Mari have done such a thing? Why in the world would the Ebreo boy serve that sauce? And what was to be done about Giuseppe’s desire for banishment and forfeiture?

  Alas, Bertolli, walking through the piazza on his way to the church, was not so fortunate to avoid the thing that weighed equally as heavy upon his heart. He had always liked Mari, and after his experience eating tomatoes with the Good Padre and the shock of the Ebreo winning the Feast of the Drunken Saint by vomiting into Benito’s face, Bertolli couldn’t help but admire the Ebreo. So it was that Bertolli was the villager who noticed them first, and the sight stopped him on the spot. He squinted to better focus his vision over the distance between where he stood and where they were entering the piazza. Could it be? Was such a thing possible?

  THE EBREO WAS NAKED. His hands were bound with rope before him, blood dripped from his neck and the side of his head. Right behind the Ebreo, Giuseppe followed with his raised and loaded cross
bow, occasionally jabbing the Ebreo in the back and prodding him forward. Close behind Giuseppe trailed Mari, apparently tied and bound upon a long-eared donkey.

  The short, sharp moans of pain grew louder and began to capture the attention of others besides Bertolli. Heads turned, conversations ceased and mouths fell agape. It was a shocking sight and quickly brought to the surface the array of conflicting emotions the villagers harbored. Just about all mistrusted Giuseppe, at least a little bit, and conversely adored Mari, but that did not make her love affair a right or accepted thing. Neither did they want to lose Mari to a nunnery.

  However, what approached was more than just a startling sight. It was an archetypal image, and though no villager was conscious of it, something about the scene profoundly struck their psyches. With his lean body, bruised and bloodied face, bound hands and utterly helpless nakedness, the Ebreo boy was a near-phantasmagorical likeness of Cristo incarnate reliving the Via Dolorosa, and this brought the entire piazza to a silent, almost reverent halt.

  Bertolli looked to Mari. Her hair was a mess, she wore a white sleeping gown and her hands were bound with rope and tied to the donkey’s bridle. Her ankles were also bound by rope, secured to each other under the donkey’s belly, trapping her upon its back. Mari lifted her head and caught Bertolli’s eye. Immediately, Bertolli understood what the terror in her eyes was beseeching him to do and he ran from the piazza to fetch the Good Padre.