La Cucina Read online

  Mama fared even worse. Had Giacomo Meletti not seen her mating with a ram? Or was it a sheep? Further exotic reports suggested an antelope or a water buffalo, but these possibilities were discounted by the more sensible folk who pointed out that none of these creatures were known to inhabit the region. And if they did, none had been seen except by the garrulous and not entirely reliable altar boy Donatello Mancini.

  Mama’s relationship with Padre Francesco, the parish priest, was also called into question. Had they not been caught in the campanile swinging from the bell ropes? In flagrante on the high altar itself? Could the birth be a judgment on the couple for flouting the canons of clerical celibacy and marital fidelity? Should the bishop be informed about this?

  Mama was also accused, wrongly, I am sure, by some of the more vicious-minded town gossips of oedipal couplings with her sons Luigi, Leonardo, Mario, Giuliano, Giuseppe, and Salvatore.

  There was so much gossip that I couldn’t even recall the details, until I was forced to live through it again many years later. But I am getting ahead of myself again.

  Whatever the cause of the judgment, for judgment it certainly was, the result was all too plain to behold: a monster with two heads and one body had been delivered of Isabella Fiore.

  Even Mama’s constitutional sangfroid was shaken visibly on beholding the fruits of her womb for the first time. At first she thought she was hallucinating, either due to the pain experienced during labor or the evil cocktail of drugs dispensed by Margarita Gengiva, the midwife.

  “Jesus, what the fuck is that?” she cried.

  “It’s a baby that’s gone a little bit wrong,” I replied, having finally been allowed upstairs to see my baby brothers.

  Grappling with the ungainly form of the twins wrapped in a blanket I asked with all seriousness:

  “Are you quite sure you put the right ingredients into the mixture, Mama?”

  Papa hung his head in shame. He could not feel entirely blameless for the tragedy. Still, it was not his nature to brood, and before long he had sold an expurgated version of the story of the twins’ birth to La Sicilia, Catania’s main newspaper, complete with photographs, which brought him a brief moment of fame and some hundreds of lire.

  Unfortunately the publicity generated by this feature in the newspaper led to the attempted kidnapping of the twins by the gypsies of the Circo Veneziano, whose purpose, it appears, was to exhibit them in a traveling sideshow and charge admission. The attempt was foiled, I am proud to say, thanks to my unwavering vigilance.

  On the day in question I was sitting out on the step watching the boys, who were asleep in their crib, when two strange men came into the yard. They were dressed in parti-colored hose with ruffles and flounces and shiny shoes and pointy hats and were quite unlike any men I had ever seen on the farm.

  I stared long at them as they approached.

  “Who are you?” I charged them boldly.

  “Don’t be afraid. We’ve come to take the little ones away. Your mama says it’s all right to. Come on now, hand them over.”

  “I will not,” I replied defiantly.

  One of them reached over to take the crib. Quickly I bit a sizable chunk from his hand. He jumped up and down with pain as blood dripped onto the ground and he used words that I had never heard before (Mama didn’t allow cursing in the kitchen).

  I took hold of the crib and began to shout for help. This woke the twins, who added the strength of their disgruntled voices to mine.

  Undeterred, the second man tried to wrestle the crib away from me, but I hung on to it with my little fingers, screaming all the while.

  At long last Papa emerged from the cowshed still fastening his pants while at the same time brandishing a pitchfork. He charged at the men, who fled at the sight of the shiny prongs.

  From then on we never let the babies out of our sight for a second, and for a long time afterward I saw the horrid brightly colored men in my dreams. I have never visited the circus.

  Mama, regrettably, could never quite overcome her feelings of repulsion toward the twins. And so I became almost a mother to the hideous little creatures, remaking the baby clothes I had knitted while Mama was pregnant, and changing their diapers.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When I was twelve, Padre Fiore disappeared.

  It was not uncommon in Sicily in those days for people to disappear. Their bodies were never found. They formed the foundations of new roads or railroad tracks or buildings, were hidden in disused wells or mine shafts; some were chopped up and fed to dogs; others were dissolved in baths of acid.

  Such disappearances were known as lupara bianca, or “white deaths”: a way for the Mafia to dispose of people who had become inconvenient, dangerous, or embarrassing.

  Lupara bianca were particularly distressing for the relatives, largely because it was so difficult to determine whether the loved one had simply disappeared on his own, or whether he had been forcibly disappeared. You couldn’t be sure. A niggling doubt would never go away completely.

  For some days Mama resolutely refused to believe that Papa had disappeared. There had been some mistake, she said; he had no connection with the Mafia. But after a week she was forced to accept what everyone else had known all along: that he had gone and would not be coming back. I knew he was dead; he would never separate voluntarily from his mountain cap, which I found in the yard on the day of his disappearance.

  Despite the fact that there was no body, Mama arranged a lavish burial, and arrayed us all in black for the occasion. The twins, then aged four, were decked out in a three-legged suit of knickerbockers with matching tricorn hats and were cajoled into trotting alongside the coffin as a sort of mascot. They shed no tears.

  For appearance’s sake, Mama screamed with a grief she could not feel, and in an impressive display even managed to collapse at the graveside in a well-received show of anguish behind a thickly veiled hat.

  Luigi, Leonardo, Mario, Giuliano, Giuseppe, and Salvatore acted as pallbearers and still managed to crack jokes; I clutched the mountain cap in my fist and all alone grieved for my papa.

  Life went on, however, and within three months suitors were being received at the fattoria, for Mama was a wealthy widow and one who, according to local legend, was able to satisfy more than a man’s pockets.

  Rehearsals were held during the long, hot summer of 1927. With all the elder boys out working the fields, Guerra and Pace and I were sent out of the way when the suitors came.

  The suitors were put through a trial run according to a strict timetable: morning, afternoon, and evening. When their time was up they would emerge from the fattoria bathed in sweat, dabbing at their brows with handkerchiefs and adjusting their rumpled clothing.

  We would sit on the gate and watch them come and go: the judge, the councillor, the pharmacist, the candle-maker. All were given a fair shot.

  Then, one Wednesday morning during the school holidays, a new suitor came to call: he was a stranger to the region, and was much younger than any of his predecessors; he was even younger than Mama.

  As usual Mama shooed me and the little ones out of the house before admitting the man inside. This time, however, something unusual happened. We soon began to hear noises coming from the house: the sound of ripping cloth first, and then furniture scraping across the floor or being thrown across the room; strange banging noises filled the air along with squeaking and thumping sounds; then human sounds added to the din: groans, grunts, cries, and finally screams.

  Mama had not made so much noise since the night of the twins’ birth four years earlier. I was frightened, it is true, but I could not let the little ones see it, so we continued with our play and tried to block from our ears the clamor that was coming from the house.

  At one especially loud burst of cries the twins ran across to the window and peered inside. They were nimble on their three little legs and could run quite fast. I just could not catch them in time.

  “No, boys, you must not look,” I said, bu
t it was too late to stop them.

  With their little noses smudging the glass they could see a strange four-legged creature writhing on the table in the front parlor.

  At first they thought it was a fellow creature: one like themselves with the wrong number of legs, a strange torso, and no real place in the world.

  When the mist created by their breath on the glass diminished they could see that part of the creature was their Mama, without clothes on, and the other part was the man who had crossed the yard and entered the house a little while ago.

  They were still trying to register all this when they were spotted by Mama and waved away from the window with the kind of angry gesture that is used to shoo flies.

  Unlike the previous suitors, this one stayed a long time. The screams and crashes continued throughout the morning, afternoon, and into the evening. All day long we waited in the yard for the time when we would be readmitted into the house. The twins grew bored with play and occupied themselves with tracing patterns in the dust with their three little feet. Their etchings showed the writhing monster they had seen through the window.

  As the sun went down I crept into la cucina to prepare supper for the older boys and the unmarried farmhands who sometimes ate at the fattoria.

  A scene of devastation met my eyes.

  Chairs were overturned and several were even broken; a barrel of ale had been turned over and flooded the floor with suds; the shelves had collapsed, smashing every jar of preserves I had so lovingly prepared; plates were broken, the dresser drawers had been pulled out, and their contents were spewed all over the room. The earthenware water jars lined up along the sink were smashed, the huge kettle was on its side, and the fire had gone out.

  I set about tidying things up, and soon had the fire lit and the food cooking before bathing the twins in the sink and singing them to sleep.

  That night as I sat with my brothers Luigi, Leonardo, Mario, Giuliano, Giuseppe, and Salvatore and the farmhands at the long table having supper, Mama and her new suitor appeared in la cucina without a hint of embarrassment. He looked as exhausted as it was possible to look. Mama, by contrast, was radiant. She looked seventeen again.

  “My children, this is Antonino Calabrese,” she said. “From now on he will be living here and will be your new father.”

  Antonino Calabrese, it appeared, had passed the test.

  Four months after the funeral, a wedding procession that started at the fattoria wound its way up through the steep streets of Castiglione to the Chiesa di San Antonio Abate.

  This time the twins were done out in a white sailor suit but they skipped along less jauntily than on the previous occasion. Mama became Signora Calabrese and Signor Calabrese became a wealthy young man.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  La cucina is the heart of the fattoria, and has formed the backdrop to the lives of our family, the Fiores, as far back as, and further than, anyone can remember. This kitchen has witnessed our joys, griefs, births, deaths, nuptials, and fornications for hundreds of years.

  Even now the ghosts of our forebears gather in the kitchen, sitting around like old friends, participating in discussions and passing judgment on the activities of the living.

  La cucina bears the scents of its past, and every event in its history is recorded with an olfactory memorandum. Here vanilla, coffee, nutmeg, and confidences; there the milky-sweet smell of babies, old leather, sheep’s cheese, and violets. In the corner by the larder hangs the stale tobacco smell of old age and death, while the salty scent of lust and satiation clings to the air by the cellar steps along with the aroma of soap, garlic, beeswax, lavender, jealousy, and disappointment.

  La cucina runs along the entire length of the rear of the farmhouse. Along one wall is the huge fireplace containing the various ovens for baking, and a number of open fires. Above these hangs the collection of roasting spits and fire-blackened kettles and cauldrons.

  The walls of the kitchen are discolored by wood smoke and the grease from suckling pigs, and are now a rich sepia, which is reflected in the hue of the mellow flagstones of the floor. The windows are small and placed high up to keep the kitchen cool in the sweet, hot days of summer and warm in the depths of winter, when snow lies deep on the slopes of the volcano in the distance and the frozen farmhands come in after a long day in the fields to drink a cup of Mama’s strong ale.

  In the center of the kitchen is a huge oak table that has been in our family since the days of Pasquale Fiore, the pirate; it was said to have been constructed from the wrecked remains of the deck of his ship, La Duchessa, which was washed up on the shore just south of Taormina after the cataclysmic storm in which he and his pirate band perished.

  I was born on this very table. On the day of my birth, back in the summer of 1915, Mama was making sfincione for lunch, and as she kneaded the dough her water broke. She was alone in the fattoria, for Papa and the elder boys were out working in the fields farthest from the house, and there was no one to summon help or to give assistance.

  Mama hauled herself on to the table and before the dough had time to prove, she had delivered me on her own, severing the umbilical cord with the same knife with which she had been filleting anchovies moments before.

  On opening my tiny lips to scream I revealed a full set of teeth, with a large gap between the two front ones. This was interpreted as a good omen. It was said that Rosa Fiore would be lucky.

  My passion for cooking seems to have stemmed from the circumstances of my birth. Even as a stocky tot I was always to be found in the kitchen, learning my art and preparing doll-sized feasts in my miniature pots and pans.

  It was also on this table that every departed member of the Fiore clan was laid out in his best clothes to accept the last respects of family, friends, and neighbors before making his final journey to the cemetery on the hill.

  When Nonno Fiore died he was set upon the table according to tradition, and on the morning of his funeral I fed the corpse with some freshly fried panelle, the delicious chickpea fritters I did so well, believing they would restore my Nonno to life. I was disappointed, however, to discover that the panelle could not resurrect the dead. For a fleeting moment my faith in food was shaken. Nonno Fiore was buried with the grease still clinging to his whiskers, his toothless mouth bulging with food.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was not unnatural then for me to take refuge in la cucina following the tragedy, but no one was able to anticipate the scale of my culinary catharsis.

  I began by preparing pasta: my deft little fingers forming the intricate shapes of rigatoni, ravioli, spiralli, spaghetti, cannelloni, and linguini. Then I would brew sauces of sardines, or anchovies or zucchini or sheep’s cheeses, of saffron, pine nuts, currants, and fennel. These I would simmer in the huge iron cauldrons, which were constantly bubbling above the fire. My pasta dishes, I have to say, were famous throughout the province, and the scent of my sauces carried by the breeze was sufficient to fill a poor man’s stomach.

  I also kneaded bread and produced the finest pane rimacinato, the most delicious ciabbata and focaccia that had ever been tasted in the region. Sometimes I would add wild thyme to the dough, or fragrant rosemary, plucked fresh from the hedgerow, with the dew still on the leaves.

  The velvety texture of my breads could be produced only by the most thorough kneading, and soon I developed biceps and quadriceps to match those of any of the farmhands, while my pectoral muscles expanded to augment the already generous proportions of my breasts.

  Late one night, as I pounded the dough, the thumps of my nocturnal thrusts disturbed the other occupants of the fattoria, Luigi in his solitary lovemaking and Mama and Antonino Calabrese in their conjugal bliss.

  Mama rushed from her bed, leaving her young husband withering, fearing that Lui had again managed to sneak that whore from the locanda at Linguaglossa into his room. At any other time she would have beaten him around the head for his sins, but on this occasion she was relieved to discover that he was enjoying the pleasure
s of the flesh alone.

  Mama flew along the corridor with nightgown gaping and feet bare to ensure that no venal sin was taking place under her roof, a sin which was likely to jeopardize the eternal salvation of her only daughter and her other seven sons.

  She found the twins, Guerra and Pace, still sleeping soundly on the mattress in their little cupboard. Leonardo, Mario, Giuliano, Giuseppe, and Salvatore were quaking under the bedclothes fearing an imminent eruption of the volcano.

  “Rosa, figlia mia, come to bed,” Mama said wearily as she entered the kitchen to discover me at work with my brawny forearms preparing yet another batch of dough.

  “Later, Mama, later,” I replied, although in truth I could barely stand without supporting myself on the table, such was my exhaustion.

  And yet my kneading, exhausting though it was, brought me relief like nothing else, and my fatigue purified me, bathing me in a rarefied feeling of calm.

  I produced bread of such quality in such quantity that Paolo Alboni, the panettiere in the town, feared I would put him out of business. When our family and our neighbors, friends and distant relatives throughout Catania Province could eat no more, I was forced to give the bread away, leaving it on a makeshift table on the main road to Randazzo, so that pilgrims could nourish themselves when passing by. Soon a long line of the poor and needy was gathering at the kitchen door of the fattoria awaiting my bounty, only to be shooed away, and if they were persistent, beaten by Mama.

  In time I had spent all my savings, the savings that were to have paid for my trousseau, on flour and other ingredients, and once my savings were gone, then I started to borrow, driving the cart to Randazzo to secure the necessary provisions on the black market, paying an escalated price and falling prey to the town’s many usurers.

  It was not only pasta and bread that I made out of my grief. I brewed tomato sauce in a quantity so immense it could vie with the output of Pronto’s Pomodoro factory at Fiumefreddo, which was at that time subject to a protection racket run by the Mafia.