heart was bursting with so much love and sadness for the tomato boy that she had no choice but to weep. Cosimo sobbed for his dead courtesan, Luigi for his parents killed by the plague, and Bobo for the secret that lay buried in his heart. The Good Padre sobbed because the spirit that moved him was moved to sob. Mucca sobbed for her own dead child, who, if he’d lived past infancy, would have been about the Ebreo boy’s age. The Cheese Maker sobbed for his favorite cow, dead and gone, whose teats produced the sweetest cream he’d ever tasted. Vincenzo sobbed for all the pigs he’d slaughtered and how sad and terrified they always looked as he slid the knife across their throats, and for how much he hated his task. Signore Coglione sobbed for his long-lost testicle and the fact that he loved men more than women and that his whole life felt like a lie. Even Augusto Po sobbed, suddenly mourning his recently deceased uncle, the old padre, who despite being nasty and cold-hearted was the only family he’d had. Only Giuseppe didn’t cry, his heart alone among the villagers too calcified to crack.
The assembled crowd sobbed for mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and spouses and friends and lovers and courtesans and horses and mules and goats and sheep and donkeys and cows and cats and dogs and dreams and desires that had died in flesh or spirit. They sobbed for things said and unsaid and for love and efforts unrequited. They sobbed because life is nothing if not a constant reconciliation with death and sadness and loss that leaves one no choice but to sob—sob or lose one’s mind. They sobbed because in sobbing even the vile and villainous, the most closed-hearted and closed-minded may come, even for an instant, to find their humanity. They sobbed for the holy and cathartic sake of sobbing itself. Even the children sobbed, and not just because their parents were doing so, but because even children can sense that life can be cruel and unfair and an ordeal entirely worth sobbing over.
And then, after who knows how long, the sobbing began to miraculously transform into laughter. It began subtly, with a chuckle, perhaps from Davido or Nonno—a chuckle tucked between sighs and moans, but a chuckle nonetheless. And the chuckle spread like a contagion that brought with it the realization that while life was indeed cruel and sad and burdened with anguish, it was also absurd and joyous and a thing worth laughing over—a thing that must be laughed over!
At first people chuckled because the Good Padre chuckled and because they remembered what began all the sobbing. A donkey had died, yes, and that was sad, but it was also absurd. With a hee and haw and a huge cazzone dangling ‘tween its thighs, a donkey had died, which proved to one and all that God was not without humor. A donkey named after the Duke of Tuscany had died, which allowed the lowly to mock the mighty (this was what made Cosimo laugh most), and showed to all that Ebrei too are not without humor.
And the chuckle grew to a laugh. The gathering of festival-goers laughed at first for reasons outside themselves, but rather quickly the laughing opened in each and every one that wellspring of laughter that all humans share; for who has not a pain that craves the balm of laughter? And the laughter spread into something that could not be controlled: a plague of laughter. They laughed for mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and husbands and wives and friends and lovers and courtesans and animals and dreams and desires that had died in flesh or in spirit. They laughed for things said and for things unsaid, and for loves and efforts unrequited. They laughed because life is nothing if not a constant reconciliation with death and sadness and loss that leaves one no choice but to laugh or to lose one’s mind. Even the children began to laugh and not solely on account of their parents’ laughter, but because even children know that life is cruel and unfair and an ordeal worth laughing over. Adult and child alike laughed because in laughter even the vile and villainous, the most closed-hearted and closed-minded may come, even for an instant, to find their humanity. They laughed for the holy and cathartic sake of laughter itself.