quite incredible. They’d peeled and roughly chopped half a bucket’s worth of garlic. They added olive oil and salt and oregano and bay leaves and chili flakes, the same spices Mari used to cure her olives. And once the mass of crushed tomatoes had begun to simmer they’d emptied four bottles of red wine into the cauldron, just as Mari had suggested. And then they waited—waited and stirred and made love, twice more and less frantically—allowing time for the crushed tomatoes, garlic, salt, herbs and red wine to simmer, reduce and thicken into a sauce. They also washed their clothes, scrubbing and beating and pounding until nearly all the olive oil and tomato juice was rinsed out. And after four hours, by early afternoon, a few hours before Davido expected Nonno’s return and their clothes were dry, Davido took the cauldron off the fire and swung it onto the iron cooling rack.
And it was done. The sauce was burgundy-red and flecked with herbs, glistening in olive oil, yet thick enough to nicely coat the piece of bread Mari dipped into it and then fed to Davido.
Davido smiled with delight. They had done it! Mari was right: the red wine and long, slow cook time had stewed the acid out of the tomatoes, leaving the sauce robust and the slightest bit sweet. It tasted of the sun and earth, and was exactly the flavor his palate had been searching for. Hungry after so much cooking and lovemaking, the two ate a whole loaf of bread, torn into pieces and slathered with sauce, careful this time not to soil their clothing.
Davido sat on an overturned bucket, digesting the bread, the sauce, the immensity of his feelings for Mari. Mari was up, moving about the barn, and caught Davido staring just as she grabbed an earthen clip-top jar off a shelf, the kind of jar she’d filled with olives on a thousand occasions. “Just one,” she said playfully to Davido as her empty hand reached for a ladle.
Davido’s eyes widened. “With sauce?”
Mari let her smile reply.
“It seems not a decent thing to do.”
“Well,” answered Mari, sinking the ladle into the sauce, “he is not a decent man.”
Davido’s expression crinkled.
“What’s the matter,” asked Mari mischievously, raising her left eyebrow—a gesture Davido had already come to adore—”have you not the nerve to feed the wicked the dish they most deserve?”
Davido couldn’t help but smile. “And what will you tell him as to how you acquired it?”
“I will play to his vanity,” Mari replied formally as she struck a pantomime of servitude. “Look, sir, what the Ebreo boy delivered to the mill in return for your kindness at the feast.” She held the jar forward and bowed her head. “A sauce made from the tomato.”
Davido looked at Mari gravely. “He treats you that poorly?”
Instantly, Mari’s countenance went heavy with sadness and her eyes welled with tears. She did not answer. She did not have to.
“Then let him eat,” said Davido. “Serve the knave a bucketful!”
Mari’s expression lifted with a smile.
“Now,” said Davido, intentionally lightening his tone, “what of the rest? I fear this sauce will go to waste. Are there not a hundred more scoundrels to serve?”
Again, Mari’s lips turned upward with mischief.
“I was only joking,” Davido answered her look.
“Why not?” Mari shrugged her shoulders as she glanced from the cauldron to the shelf that held a few dozen randomly sized jars. “Jar it up and bring it to tomorrow’s market. You are the hero of the feast; they will eat anything you serve.”
“Serve the sauce?”
Mari bit her lip. “Our little secret.”
“Really?”
“Oh.” Mari waved her hand nonchalantly as if to wipe the concern from Davido’s brow as she stepped in his direction. “If grapes are squished beneath feet, then why not tomatoes between bellies? Besides, all things are purified by fire and boiling.” Then she kissed him upon the lips. “What harm in our little secret? Is it not a greater shame to waste something so delicious? Truly, no one will ever know. Plus, we should do it for us. Your feast day heroics opened the villagers’ hearts and minds, now let your sauce sway their stomachs in kind. Believe me, should we be courageous—or foolish—enough to make this anything more than a heartbreaking tryst, we’ll need to throw our prayers, our passions and our sauce into the mix.”
Nervous, Davido glanced upward and caught the angle of the sun gleaming through a slat in the wood. “’Tis time,” he said.