Tomato Rhapsody: A Fable of Love, Lust and Forbidden Fruit - By Adam Schell Page 0,39
Good Padre used to do was place his left hand against the outhouse’s rear wall and lean at the most acute angle possible to reduce the degree to which he’d have to force his obstinate bastone downward. Alas, such a posture was strenuous to the point of undermining all the pleasure to be had as the bladder emptied. There was little choice, though, and over the course of his first weeks at the new parish, he withstood this morning ordeal until the day his support hand, in mid-release, broke through the outhouse’s old wood boards. Instantly, his arm sunk to the hilt of his shoulder and his barrel chest crashed against the wall. His personal mass was far too great and sudden a weight for such a flimsy structure to endure and, before the Good Padre realized what was happening, he was lying on the ground, the outhouse toppled over and broken to pieces, warm urine spouting up his nightshirt.
Now, peacefully, in accord with his new routine, the Good Padre rose from his bed, shuffled to his window, slightly parted the curtains, lifted his nightshirt, perched his ba-stone on the windowsill and relaxed his body’s floodgates. Though his window was not entirely private, the release was guilt-free as he usually woke at an early hour, well before sunrise, and knew that the chamomile patch he’d planted below the window benefited from the properties inherent in horse and human urine. This morning, however, just as he reached that delicious halfway point in his urination, a glimmer of sunlight suddenly illuminated more than just his yellowish water. He looked up to assess the angle of the mid-morning sun. “Bless’d Virgin!” the Good Padre gasped as the panic of oversleeping pinched his stream to a dribble. “Gli Ebrei!”
Bertolli and the other altar boys had hardly slept a wink all night. Supper’s euphoria, come midnight, had regressed to fear and shame. Surely, if they closed their eyes to sleep, the Love Apple’s poison would take hold and they would wake to find themselves roasting in the fires of hell. Spontaneously, with the dawn’s first light, Bertolli and the boys found one another gathered and hiding outside the church’s garden, all gripped by the same paranoia. Filled with awful thoughts the old padre had planted deep inside their heads, they had come to see if their Good Padre survived the night. But when he appeared in the window, Bertolli and the boys did not sigh with relief that he was alive and well. Neither did they think of hell or transgression, Original Sin, serpents or forbidden fruit. They had no thought but one: that maybe, one day, if they were as pious and kindly and good as their Good Padre, their bare and diminutive cazzoni would also grow to such staggering proportions.
In Which We Learn
the Meaning of
Il Tuono dell’ Amore
Davido felt strangely good, better than he dared admit as he busied himself in the construction of a tomato pyramid upon his stand. He was terrified, of course—he really had believed the priest would be there to greet him and Nonno as they rolled into market—but Davido found the terror oddly exhilarating. He’d been raised with the stories of Nonno’s travels and, in comparison, his life had been an utter bore thus far. He had heartache and heartbreak, but none of the excitement. Now, however, as Nonno must have felt aboard the deck of Cristoforo Colombo’s ship as it sailed into uncharted territory, Davido felt his bodily senses adrenalized and heightened. The tomato in his palm had never felt so soothing, so varied in tones of crimson and red, nor so piquant to his nose. To his ear, the readying market squawked and flapped like a flock of geese breakfasting on a riverbank at dawn. He could hear the fracturing of crust as a peasant tore a chunk from the bread she’d purchased, the clinking of wine bottles, the crowing of roosters and the chatter of bartering. Clove bud being sold down the market row tickled his left sinus. He could smell the deliciously unkosher aroma of roasted pork through one nostril, while catching the floral perfume of late-summer lavender in the other. Exuberantly, his nose deciphered patchouli, frankincense, myrrh, cedar wood, cinnamon, oak moss, bergamot and all the sacred oils wafting through the market’s air. And though he could not encase such thoughts in language, he felt engaged in the world, as if the adventure before him was finally his!