Three Gold Coins

by Josephine Moon

  On the other side of the ground floor, a simple wooden staircase turned on itself and led to the upper floor.

  ‘Please sit,’ Carlo said, gesturing to the couches. Lara and Matteo sat down together. Lara removed her woollens and Matteo reached for her hand, and her whole body warmed instantly, not just from the fire’s heat. She felt totally comfortable and welcome here, and in that moment wasn’t even worried about having to tell Carlo Samuel’s story.

  Carlo tugged on the red and yellow braces holding up his trousers. ‘It’s so good to see you,’ he said, his eyes shining with emotion as he took in the younger man’s face. Lara couldn’t remember the exact relationship betwen them.

  ‘It’s good to be here, zio,’ Matteo said, using the word for uncle. ‘It’s been too long.’

  Carlo clapped his hands together. ‘Time for grappa!’

  The day progressed so smoothly, with Carlo and Matteo sharing many stories of what had been happening in their lives, and Lara felt so at ease, that she almost forgot the real reason she was here. Carlo assumed that she and Matteo were a couple and showed them to the spare room upstairs—bare timber floors, dark wooden wardrobe and nightstand, and an old double bed with another paisley bedspread.

  Then he said it was time to make cheese. ‘The milk is waiting!’ He grimaced, checking his watch. ‘It is a little late, what with the joy of guests coming to visit.’ He put a paw on each of their shoulders. ‘But still time. Come, you help.’

  The milk was sitting in large metal pails outside the kitchen, but with the icy breeze that blew through the back door, Lara had no concern that it might have gone off. She inched closer to the fireplace as the men dragged the pails inside.

  ‘You like cheese?’ Carlo asked Lara.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve been loving getting behind the scenes and learning how everyone makes their cheese. Matteo taught me how to make ricotta,’ she said, beaming at her man.

  Carlo frowned. ‘You make from milk?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lara answered, a little confused. What else would anyone make ricotta from?

  Carlo wagged a finger at Matteo and tsked. ‘You should know better.’

  Matteo shrugged and smiled, already pulling the huge copper cauldron away from the wall on its industrial arm. It was big enough that Lara could have easily climbed into it. ‘Sometimes you have to improvise,’ he said, then squatted to pick up one of the pails of milk, hoisted it to the lip of the cauldron and poured. A torrent of milk gushed into the pot. Once that pail was emptied, the men hefted the next two pails.

  ‘How many litres is that?’ she asked.

  ‘My cows, they are good milkers, so in here—’ Carlo gestured to the cauldron and waggled his head, ‘—about fifty litres.’ He stoked the fire to break apart the coals and generate more flame, then pushed the cauldron over the fire pit, where it stayed, suspended in the air.

  Noting Lara’s keen interest and clearly proud to be able to share the cheesemaking process, Carlo seated himself on a wooden chair and began to lecture.

  ‘First we will be making Bonomo formaggio di montagna, which is my family name—Bonomo—and mountain cheese.’

  Lara smiled at Matteo, remembering him explaining to her that you could call cheese anything. This was Carlo’s family’s special recipe.

  Matteo had taken a seat too, leaning forward and paying close attention. She didn’t think it was for show either. She’d seen that Matteo was an eternal student, voraciously soaking up new information. It was one of the things she loved about him.

  Carlo got up again. Lara couldn’t help but admire his fitness. The old man picked up a metal shovel and began to stir the milk over the flame. Then he put his hand in it to check the temperature. Satisfied, he pulled the cauldron off the flames, picked up a packet and sprinkled white powder into the milk.

  ‘This will start the ferment,’ he explained to Lara.

  Matteo jumped up, picked up a long-handled slotted spoon and began to stir, his muscles flexing against the weight of the milk.

  She whipped out her phone to take photos. This was what she’d hoped to see the day she visited Matteo’s farm, not the sterilised, white-tiled kitchen with tall silver fridges. This, with its open fire and a cauldron (a cauldron, for goodness’ sake), and two generations of a family making cheese together.

  Now Carlo poured in a small amount of tea-coloured liquid from a test tube. ‘Rennet,’ he explained. Matteo stirred a little longer, then returned to his seat.

  ‘Now we wait about twenty minutes,’ Carlo said, also resuming his place near the huge pot of fermenting and coagulating milk. In English, he chatted with Matteo about the goat farm and his brothers, his mother and cousins. The time passed quickly and then the men were up, testing the milk, which was now thick curd, like custard, stiff enough that a hand shovel could stand up straight in it. Carlo declared that this was the point at which the cauldron should go back over the flame. But first they had to break up the curds. Each man picked up a tool like a shovel, dipped it into the curds and pulled it through, raising a sweat with the effort, the custard-like curds breaking into smaller and smaller pieces.

  The cauldron swayed its way back to the fire and Carlo seated himself again. Both men were puffed and Matteo stretched his arm and shoulder after the effort, Carlo chuckling at him. ‘You come, you build muscles, yes?’

  ‘Gladly,’ Matteo said.

  ‘Will the lumps that are left in the milk break down now they’re back over the flame?’ Lara asked.

  ‘Good question,’ Carlo said. He gave Matteo a look that said, Hey, your girlfriend is smart. ‘The size of the curd determines how long it can age. The smaller the curds, the longer the ageing. We are not going to age for long with this cheese—a few months over winter, maybe—so the curds can be bigger.’

  They let the curds cook until they reached forty degrees, stirring constantly, Carlo occasionally picking up a handful to check the texture and temperature. He didn’t use gloves; apparently, the traditional way of making cheese involved a stray arm hair or two.

  ‘You must keep stirring,’ Carlo said. ‘The texture must be even or there will be mistakes in the ageing.’ He indicated that Matteo should have a turn dipping his arm into the mixture, which he did. ‘Spin the milk around, then hold your arm still. You will be able to feel the curds as they move against your skin.’

  Matteo nodded, his eyes alight.

  ‘I love watching this,’ Lara said. ‘This is a really beautiful thing. Thank you for showing me.’

  Carlo’s face became solemn; instead of making him happy, her words seemed to have had quite the opposite effect.

  ‘My family has done this for hundreds of years,’ he said finally. ‘Thousands of years, perhaps. This cheese is the same cheese they all ate, made the same way, passed on from one to another every summer. This cheese, it has come through my ancestors’ hands, all the way to mine.’

  Lara took a moment to really feel the depth of that tradition, sensing the spirits of Carlo’s family still living here in this home, in that fireplace, in that cauldron and, ultimately, in that cheese.

  ‘And now I might be the last one,’ Carlo said, his eyes filling. He wiped at them with the back of his hand. ‘My children and grandchildren, they all live away in cities. They work, you know, in offices, in front of screens.’ His distaste for that notion was palpable. ‘When I go…’ He let his words hang there, and allowed his eyes to drift to Matteo’s. His loss and loneliness and fear hung in the air.

  ‘It’s…’ Carlo was lost for words again for a moment. ‘This is the way cheese should be made, not in big steel factories, milk coming from many farms all over. No identity. No care. This is art,’ he said, flinging an arm out towards the fireplace. ‘Living art. And it will be lost forever.’ A log on the fire popped and crumbled. ‘Sometimes I feel helpless. All this will be lost.’

  ‘Teach me,’ Matteo said automatically, still stirring the curds. ‘I’ll come back again soon and stay with you. T
each me the old ways. I will carry them for you till it is my turn to pass them on.’ He dropped his shovel in the cauldron and went to Carlo and put his arms around him. Carlo buried his face in Matteo’s shoulder and patted him firmly on the back. They whispered in Italian. Then Matteo stood back, his hands still on the older man’s shoulders. ‘So teach me, yes?’

  Carlo gave Matteo one final pat, then pulled himself together, sitting up straighter as Matteo returned to the pot.

  Watching them, Lara’s heart had squeezed up into her throat; tears trickled down her cheeks. She wanted to fling herself on both of them, hug Carlo and take away his worries—and maybe adopt him as her own uncle, since she didn’t have any of her own—and to kiss Matteo all over his face and tell him what a great man he was and how much she loved him.

  She sniffed quietly and the silence stretched on, but not uncomfortably, filled only with the fire’s crackling, hissing and popping.

  At last Carlo felt the milk and declared it ready to be made into cheese. Matteo swung the cauldron back out into the room, the curds lapping the sides.

  Carlo bent over the cauldron and buried his arms in the cheese, his nose practically touching the surface of the liquid. He began to move his submerged hands, his face reddening with exertion. One arm swept in from the left, then the other did the same from the right, working mysteriously beneath the surface of the now watery whey bath, over and over until, with a grunt and a heave, he lifted an enormous ball of hand-pressed white cheese, which broke through the surface like a baby birthed in a bathtub. He held it there for a moment, this huge and obviously heavy creation, floating in the sea of whey, while he got his breath back.

  ‘Oh, wow,’ Lara breathed.

  Matteo stood by the cauldron, nodding. ‘Magnificent.’

  Carlo took a wire with a handle at each end and used it to cut the ball of cheese into two, each about the size of a fat cat. He heaved both out onto the stone bench nearby. Whey ran from the balls, draining down a gutter and into a bucket on the floor.

  Matteo reached to the shelf above for wooden rings with clips, about the size of bamboo steamers. They were moulds, lined with cheesecloth, and the men stuffed each cheese ball into a ring, tightening it with rope, more whey gushing out and running down the drain into the bucket. They tied the cloth around each ball and placed heavy wooden weights on top, squashing the cheese further.

  ‘Now we drain them,’ Carlo said, removing the full bucket that had been catching the whey and replacing it with an empty one. He heaved the first bucket to the cauldron and Matteo assisted him to empty it in.

  ‘Now we make ricotta,’ Carlo said, his words dripping with superiority.

  ‘With the whey?’ Lara asked.

  Carlo was already pushing the cauldron back to the flames.

  ‘Ricotta means recooked,’ Matteo said.

  ‘Recycling at its best,’ she marvelled.

  ‘Nothing is wasted,’ Carlo confirmed, taking a seat again while he waited for the whey to heat once more over the open flames, this time reaching a much higher temperature. He was sweating, and reached into his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe his brow. ‘The whole reason we have cheese is to preserve the goodness in milk,’ he said. ‘The cows, they give milk in summer, lots of milk. We want to save it for the harder, colder months. This is how we save it.’

  Lara nodded, seeing clearly the way cheese had been invented. It had always been about preserving the nutrients to keep people healthy during the hard months. It was genius.

  Matteo rested by her side, one ankle on the opposite knee. ‘That’s why cheese comes in round balls,’ he said, grinning. ‘So they could roll them down the hills at the end of summer and collect them at the bottom. That way they didn’t have to carry them on their horses or donkeys.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Lara asked, unsure if he was joking or not.

  ‘Sì, sì!’ Carlo said. ‘Everything for a reason.’

  Before long, Carlo declared the whey was ready, and the process of making ricotta began. Lara jumped in to help fill the cheesecloths with the white clumps of cheese, straining off the last round of whey, which Carlo said he would use to water his vegetables.

  Near the end of their ricotta-making, Carlo suddenly asked, ‘Where did you two meet?’ and Lara’s bubble of joy popped. The time had come. Once Samuel’s name was mentioned, she would have to explain why she was here.

  Minutes later, with everyone seated in the living room once more, she began the story.

  50

  Samuel, 2003

  It had been raining for two weeks.

  When Samuel got home it was already dark, his Alfa Romeo’s headlights casting erratic beams across the grass and the short rows of young olive and pine trees that he and Assunta had recently planted around their outdoor table where they held their feasts. It would give them more shade during summer, and become a boundary to show the kids where the footballs had to stop. Not that there were many kids left. Giovanna’s children, Lily and Antonio, were nineteen and twenty-two, and Gaetano’s daughter, Aimee, was fifteen. They were past the footballs now. But then again, at the rate Assunta made new friends and collected people along the way, there was always someone’s child or grandchild coming. And some of the young men of the family, like Matteo and his brothers, still wanted to play football. Anyway, all this soaking rain would at least be giving the trees a good head start. When they were bigger, he and Assunta would hang kerosene lanterns on the branches to create atmosphere.

  Samuel cut the engine, bracing himself to get drenched, regretting that he hadn’t yet built a carport. He was late getting home, the students’ English-speaking exams having run over time; he couldn’t leave them half done. Assunta would be unhappy with his late return, as she had been for many weeks now in the lead-up to the exams and with Samuel’s extra tutoring responsibilities, but they would benefit from the extra money. She’d be happy when he told her it meant they’d saved up enough for their trip to Holland. Assunta had seen the little windmill figurines her cousin had brought back from there, and fallen in love with the idea.

  He slammed the car door and held his document wallet above his head as he jogged lightly to the back door, water dripping down his shirt collar, reminding him that the roof in the spare bedroom would be leaking too. Again. Shutting the door to the kitchen behind him, dripping water all over the floor, he resolved that as soon as this rain stopped he would get up there and fix that leak once and for all. He’d get Carlo to help him if necessary. He hated asking anyone for help, truth be told, because he felt he was forever having to prove to the Palladino family that he was worthy of their Assunta.

  To provide for her and their family was his job. And he prided himself on it as much now as he did back when he first met her, her contagious laugh ringing through the geranium-filled street.

  ‘Assunta!’ he called, stripping off his soaked white shirt and tossing it on the back of a dining chair, heading for the stairs. She must be upstairs. He took them two at a time, excited now, imagining her face when he told her about the money for Holland.

  ‘Assunta!’ he called again, popping his head into their bedroom. It was empty, just as it had been when he left this morning, the white duvet pulled up tight and the pillows tucked in neatly. Mother Mary on the wall above the bedhead. Lace doilies and fresh flowers from the garden a bright contrast against the mass of dark wood in the room. But the double doors that opened to the balcony were ajar, the curtains flapping wildly in the wind, rain blowing in. He crossed the room and slammed the doors shut, nearly slipping in the puddle on the floor, but righting himself just in time.

  ‘Assunta!’ he called, annoyed now. Where was she?

  Then he heard a scrape and shuffle up on the roof.

  Surely not. His darling wife had been threatening to get up there and fix the leak herself, but he’d laughed off the suggestion along with her teasing. Well, mostly it had been teasing. Sometimes she set her jaw and lifted her chin, hands on hips, challenging him. He
called it her bull stance—the moment the bull stands square and stares the matador in the eye, metaphorical steam shooting out of its nose, daring the challenger to wave his red cape. Samuel never waved the cape; instead he merely took her in his arms and nuzzled her neck until she softened and slapped him away, laughing.

  But she couldn’t have gone up there in this downpour.

  He swept the wet curtains aside to peer out onto the balcony. Sure enough, there in the corner was the old wooden ladder, paint-spattered from when they’d freshened up the bathroom.

  Christ!

  Rain stung his eyes as he lunged out into the weather, almost toppling the ladder as it protested under the violence of his ascent. One foot after the other, his fingers digging into the wood as he pushed himself higher and higher, his heart galloping.

  The truth was, Samuel was afraid of heights.

  That was why he hadn’t been up to the roof. He’d been ignoring it, somehow convincing himself that it would fix itself in time. Assunta didn’t truly understand the depth of his fear, thinking he was being melodramatic, and he was too embarrassed to admit his shortcomings to her family. Instead he buried his anxiety under jokes and teasing. Long dry spells allowed him to forget there was a problem with the roof. Or with himself.

  Now Assunta had done what he wasn’t man enough to do. He cursed himself viciously as he neared the roof, his head starting to spin, his vision blurring and failing in the low light. His hands were shaking so much he was sure he wasn’t going to be able to climb up onto the roof. He couldn’t get a grip.

  A sob caught in his chest.

  ‘Assunta,’ he called. But it came out as a whisper. He paused and leaned his forehead on the gutter, working hard to control his terror, closing his eyes so he couldn’t see what was around him. A huge gust of wind rocked the ladder and he squealed. He squealed.

  He was paralysed. He couldn’t go up and he couldn’t go down.

  And then, like an angel, Assunta was above him, squatting on the edge of the roof, water running in rivulets down the terracotta tiles around her. She reached out a hand and placed it on his cheek and he cried, with relief, with shame, with love.