the process further. She discovered that fresh-picked green olives were best left unwashed so that their naturally occurring yeasts could promote and enhance the fermentation. Here was how the process worked: the fresh-picked green olives were set into an enormous, chest-high earthen vessel and then mixed with sea salt, water and a few handfuls of leaves from a bay laurel tree. The vessel was then sealed with a heavy clay top with a small hole so the gases could escape and prevent the curing vessels from exploding (a phenomenon that had occurred on more than one occasion when Mari’s father was first experimenting with the process). The vessel was then left to ferment for upward of ten days.

And so it was that on this Sunday afternoon of early September (six days since we left Mari at the piazza and Benito at the tavern, and one week to the day of the Feast of the Drunken Saint), Mari was busy at work inside the olive mill, bent over the large salt bin filling buckets in preparation for the fermentation of the season’s first green olives. Outside the mill, Benito too was supposed to be busy working. Certainly, his body was where it was expected to be, standing before one of the enormous green olive-curing vessels with an equally enormous wood spoon in his hands as he mixed its briny contents of olives, water, salt and bay leaves. But as Benito looked up through the small window into the mill and saw Mari, other things began to stir in him.

With all the awareness of a six-year-old child, Benito pressed his pelvis into the olive vessel’s curve to more fully experience the swelling inside his trousers. These were the delicious first moments of spying, the innocent, boy-like moments when Benito would disappear inside the world of his desire and before the swelling got so great that it would bring on the arrival of La Piccola Voce and its abusive mocking. Mari was, after all, so beautiful.

“Mark her well.”

“Huh!” Benito’s heart jumped.

Standing behind Benito, Giuseppe leaned his chest against Benito’s back and brought his mouth close to Benito’s ear. The added weight further pressed Benito’s mezzo bastone against the vessel and made him very uncomfortable.

“Mark her well,” Giuseppe repeated, paying no heed to Benito’s shock. He’d been conjuring this idea for the better part of a week. “Mark her nose, her eyes and her pretty little face, for therein, Benito, lies our ace.”

Benito was annoyed. “What is it you wish Benito to know?”

“The theme with which we’ll play the Ebreo.”

Benito grunted. It was all he could think to do.

“Ten years past when my life took hold,” Giuseppe continued in a near-whisper, “I made the moves that were quite bold, and through those moves this mill and that daughter I did inherit, she who thinks no more of me than a ferret. But by the village Mari’s adored, and it’s for them my plan’s in store. Now, are you positive of what you saw that market day?”

“Ay, the young Ebreo and Mari shared romantic play.”

“And after market, forbidden fruit she did find and so quickly lose her mind that she bit into it, letting its juice ooze down her chin?”

“By my life, Giuseppe, ‘twas the very sin.”

“Oh, then we have the finest Italian theme with which to lay our cunning scheme. ’Tis epic, age-old, even biblical in style, an illicit love ‘tween Ebreo and gentile. For what better way to make our case than to lay the shame upon my daughter’s face? As we play the fear that in this town runs thick, that a Cristiana daughter has met with an Ebreo pri—”

“Ha!” Benito blurted. He could not stand to hear Giuseppe say the word. “’Tis a fine plan,” he lied.

“And thanks to our good and noble stupid priest, the thing’s to commence at our coming feast. Now, at the feast we’ll deepen our ploy by making a hero of this Ebreo boy. Then, soon after, once we’ve come to trust, all will be undone by a most unholy lust. And the gravest of fears shall be proved so, that we’ve been deceived by the serpent Ebreo. And the love we did lend both true and free, the Ebreo will defile by eating the Cristiana Mari.”

“But how,” said Benito faintly, “how do you know she’ll love him?”

“Oh, Benito,” Giuseppe chortled, “you know much of whores, but nothing of girls. Like Venus locked in a cage, I know the turnings of a youthful rage. How anguish