“Ah,” Giuseppe smiled, patting his underling upon the shoulder, “excellent hire.”
And with that, not even Giuseppe objected to Cosimo’s presence. The sole person who seemed to object to Cosimo’s newfound life, only most recently and only a little, was Cosimo himself. When he first ran off, Cosimo believed that his life as the Duke of Tuscany was over and that he would simply disappear from that world entirely. All the anguish and pain and sadness that had beset him since the murder of his beloved courtesan had been a ceaseless murmur in his mind, pleading with him to escape, to run away from it all.
Only a simple life as a farmer could cleanse his mind and heart of all the sorrow that plagued him. At least, that was what Cosimo had hoped. And amazingly, it was proving true. As he lay in bed, dirty and bone-tired, after a full and exuberant day preparing the piazza for tomorrow’s feast, Cosimo found that the myriad regrets and miseries that for years had churned his sleep into a nightmarish mess had almost entirely receded. There was only one longing that interrupted his fatigue as he drifted toward sleep: Cosimo longed for his child, Gian. Of all the revelations and realizations of the past two weeks none had been as profound or shocking to Cosimo as the fact that he had come to miss his boy. This was odd, because while Cosimo was decent and kind to his son, he loved him only with half his heart, the way one loves an ugly, embarrassing little dog.
Oh, Cosimo had tried to love his child in the manner he imagined a proper father should, but to him the child was a living affirmation of his own inadequacy. Every time he looked upon his son he saw the boy not for who Gian was, but for what he, Cosimo, was. And that was a fraud and a weakling and a coward. The kind of man who bore a child with a woman for whom he had not an inkling of love (nor she for him). The kind of man who could not even father a proper and manly child at that, and through whom the distinctly Meducci disease of spawning queers and sodomites had come to such spectacular fruition.
But that was yesterday, the past. For even Cosimo’s understanding of his own child and the very nature of love was now reborn. It had happened the other day, on the afternoon of L’Iniziazione dei Bambini 14, as he worked an olive tree free of its green fruits alongside the Good Padre, Bertolli the altar boy and Bertolli’s grandmother. Cosimo could not help but notice that Bertolli was not a good boy—not a good boy at all—but that he was a perfect boy, full of life and vigor, mischief and curiosity. Cosimo could also not help but notice that Bertolli seemed to have initiated a covert war of olive-throwing amongst the children and that every so often a ripe green olive bounced off the back of his head. While the Good Padre, in all his infinite grace, seemed to pay no mind to the mischief going on about him, the same could not be said for Bertolli’s grandmother. The old woman appeared to be growing so angered by the boy’s antics that Cosimo felt she might spontaneously cure the olives with the acid of her frustration. Finally, the plump and feisty nonna could take no more and, with a cat-like agility that belied her age, she took hold of Bertolli’s ear and bent it to debilitating effect.
“Mio Dio!” the old woman exclaimed as the boy howled. “Why in heaven would the Lord make a child so useless and unruly?”
With hardly a hitch in the workings of his hands as he too picked olives, the Good Padre said, “So we may learn to love without condition.”
“Gian,” sighed Cosimo. Every hair of his body stood on end. He turned his head and caught the eyes of the Good Padre. They seemed to be waiting for him—massive, brown, preternaturally radiant. Cosimo felt a ray of light explode inside his chest. He thought he was dying. A death without pain. It felt like an orgasm, not of the loins, but of the heart. As if his heart were exploding! His body went weak. His knees buckled. He crumpled to the ground. No, he crumpled into the ground, like he and the earth and the olive tree