“Your money vest.” Davido pointed to Nonno’s midsection. “I doubt a marauder’s sense of charity would extend to monks who forgo poverty,” he mumbled.
“Oh, dear God,” said Nonno as he simultaneously rearranged his robe to quell the noise and shot his grandson a disapproving glance. “Don’t start that nonsense.”
“What?” said Davido defensively, though he knew he was guilty.
“You very well know what.”
“I have no idea,” Davido lied as convincingly as he could.
Nonno frowned. “The rhyming.”
“Oh.” Davido smiled guiltily. “That. Sorry.”
But he wasn’t really sorry at all. True, the local village’s nasty old padre had prohibited Nonno and his kin from setting foot in his town, but they were nevertheless living among rhymers now and Davido felt he should do his best to master the odd local dialect. The funny thing about rimatori, Davido recalled from the country farmers who would set up their fruit and vegetable stands at the weekend markets in Florence, was how they clearly felt their way of speaking made them smarter than the city folk. To the citizens of Florence, however, Nonno included, the rhyming, antiquated Italo-Etruscan they spoke made them appear like bumpkins. As far as Davido understood it, all public and formal speech was meant to rhyme, and all intimate conversation—well, Davido had never had one so he couldn’t say and didn’t much care. The truth was, Davido liked rhyming; it was just one more thing about country living that set it apart from life in the ghetto.
“How much is it these days to buy a bride?”
“Plenty,” chuckled Nonno. “Her father charged a hefty prezzo della sposa.”
Davido frowned as he turned his head to gaze over the land. The idea of having to buy something he did not want in the first place was beyond absurd to him.
“Tsst,” Nonno clucked, “the problem with youth is that you think of love and marriage like a lucky fool who goes for a stroll and happens upon a delicious fruit hanging ripe on a vine and prime for the plucking. All the sweetness with none of the sacrifice.”
Davido opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. What difference would it make? The die was cast, the bride’s price to be paid this weekend and the Chituba already drawn up. Nonno would never understand his aversion to marrying that skinny-ankled little girl.
“Good God,” said Nonno, breaking the silence, “do you think I am so old that I cannot hear what the young think?”
Davido couldn’t take it anymore. “But what of love?” he blurted.
“Love?” Nonno raised an eyebrow sardonically. “Look at me, I have had two wives in my life and I couldn’t stand either one.”
This time Davido could not help but laugh.
“Davido,” said Nonno, adopting a more thoughtful tone, “one does not love a seed, one plants a seed and tends to it. A plant grows, the plant bears fruit and we come to depend on the fruit for sustenance. God willing, after much effort and sacrifice you will at least come to acquire a taste for the fruit. And if you are truly blessed, like I was twice, the fruit will taste sweet and you will come to love it.”
Davido sat in silence as they trotted along the road that led to Florence. He had met this girl already and the only taste he could ever imagine was bland—bland with a bitter aftertaste.
1 Chituba (key-two-ba): an Ebreo marriage contract.
In which We Are
Introduced to the Theories of
Pozzo Menzogna & Learn of Apoplexia
“Make heavy their hearts and burden their minds,” wrote the renowned 14th-century Italian dramatist Pozzo Menzogna 2, whose eloquent treatise on drama, Il Trattato Definitivo sul Dramma, we will from time to time refer to. Menzogna was speaking, of course, about the importance of layering the lives of a story’s heroes—lovers, in our case—with encumbrances and heartaches. Make it so, Menzogna would surely have encouraged, that when Davido and Mari finally do meet, they see in each other the remedy to all that heavies their hearts and burdens their minds.
And it was indeed with a heavy heart and an agitated mind that Mari carried the two wooden buckets filled with water toward the room her mother shared with her stepfather. She arrived before her mother’s door, took a deep breath and lowered onto her knees. She pulled the cross out from underneath her blouse, clasped her hands and lowered her head for prayer. Her private moment with La Virgine Benedetta. True, part of her thought it