Tomato Rhapsody: A Fable of Love, Lust and Forbidden Fruit - By Adam Schell Page 0,32

they’re likely to fall off. You’ll attempt to do the shelling with a small knife to relieve the ache, only to have the head chef chastise you, denouncing your work as slow and sloppy and performed with the dexterity of a hoofed animal. Your feet, knees and legs will throb and cramp from standing in the same position for hours. You will recall the swollen ankles, gnarled knees and varicose veins of an old cook you once worked with and wonder if one day your legs will also look as ravaged. Out of boredom you will begin to snack on any food item that crosses your path until you are disgustingly bloated, and food and flavor have been rendered tasteless and meaningless. You will begin to resent the monks you are preparing to feed, as you know between their vows of silence and severe ideas of humility they will offer you no praise. You will begrudge your low wages and lack of respect, and deem the people for whom you labor as slothful, sanctimonious, overindulged and unworthy of their lofty positions. Your mind will meander through every subject imaginable, but always return to the torturous thought that the pile of fava beans seems to be multiplying. You will begin to hate each and every bean. You will begin to cook with anger.

This concept of Cucinare con Collera could very well have evolved naturally over the course of young Luigi’s difficult apprenticeship, but in his case, it was most definitely a lesson he tacitly gleaned from his kitchen mentor at the monastery. Luigi’s mentor of ten years had been a rather salty and disagreeable Sicilian chef, forever embittered by the traveling monks who’d tempted him off his small island three decades earlier with tales of Florence’s beautiful seaside location, assurances of good pay and promises that he’d rarely have to cook for more than a handful of monks. Not surprisingly, by the time young Luigi was introduced to his mentor, the man boiled with indignation over having to feed one hundred thirteen monks three times a day, with neither a squid nor shrimp to be found in less than a day’s journey. Nonetheless, Luigi’s mentor was a skilled chef and knew better than to seek revenge upon the food he prepared and risk unemployment. So what the old Sicilian did to offset the rage and iniquity that ate through his daily routine was to steal.

It was a sophisticated and therapeutic form of thievery that the old chef practiced, closer to bartering, and it had no effect upon the quality of the meals that the kitchen turned out. The only catch was the old chef bartered items that were never his to begin with. As chef for the monastery, he was allocated a budget in gold and silver coins to keep the kitchen supplied, and as long as the meals were good and tasty no one paid any mind as to how the money was spent. In fact, the monks had such regard for the Sicilian brother and his rich and spicy southern cooking that they never even suspected it might be their chef who was behind the random disappearances of artifacts, ancient books and other property that seemed to plague the monastery. But indeed it was, for rather than use the majority of gold and silver coins he was budgeted, the Sicilian brother often chose to pay his suppliers in small, highly valuable gold-laid crucifixes, ancient religious texts, artifacts, even the occasional painting.

It was this lesson, though never directly taught, that Luigi learned from his mentor as well as any recipe and had taken to practicing in his own professional life. And while it has only a peripheral effect upon our story, it certainly explains how a relatively petty landowner such as Giuseppe could have come into possession of a lovely three-segmented telescope that originally belonged to Cosimo di Pucci de’ Meducci the Third, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in exchange for two absolutely splendid early-season truffles.

The cool morning air stung Giuseppe’s lungs as he drew a breath and stepped onto the balcony of his stepdaughter’s room. The bedroom’s balcony was situated at such an angle that he could see both the town’s entrance archway and a significant portion of the piazza. The only problem with the balcony was that his stepdaughter’s room was attached to it and he had to wait until the obstinate bitch left the house before he could use it. He would have married her off years ago