goblets and not a drop more.”
“Now,” said Benito, as he lifted his mug and turned to face Cosimo, “you may call Benito friend.”
The smell of his new mate’s breath was horrible. The sight of his face up close—pounded nose; ruddy, pocked and abused complexion; thick lips glistening with lamb fat; slightly errant right eye—was unnerving, but his smile was broad and real and his gratitude as authentic as a child’s. Happily, Cosimo lifted his mug and toasted.
Rapide y Edili, Rapids and Eddies, wrote the renowned 15th-century Italian dramatist Pozzo Menzogna in his eloquent treatise on drama Il Trattato Definitivo sul Dramma, which from time to time informs upon our story. In a play’s second act, Menzogna’s treatise emphasized, the plot should move like a river in the midst of the springtime melt, complete with rapids and waterfalls. Yet, between the moments of fast motion, the river needs also to pool into gentle eddies of insight and introspection. A place, wrote Menzogna, where readers may come to know with greater depth and clarity the world in which they visit.
Thus, Menzogna would assuredly want the reader to understand that almost all the villagers we have come to know were at the tavern, Ebrei, priests and women excluded. Though not all women: the barmaids were there, of course. Benito, especially, was mighty thankful for that. Downstairs, the barmaids saw to the slaking of thirst and appetite, but when they escorted a man through La Porta delle Puttane— The Whores’ Door—and led him upstairs, they set about quenching an altogether different thirst. And it’s only fair to mention that no one in the village spent a larger proportion of his or her income quenching that desire than Benito.
True, Benito was mostly crude and vulgar whilst in the tavern, but once upstairs, his behavior dramatically changed. He made love sloppily, with considerable moaning and some drooling, yet there was a gentleness to his efforts that endeared him to many of the puttane. Unlike a good many of the village men, Benito was never rough or abusive with ladies, nor did he encourage them, as Vincenzo and many others did, to be rough and abusive to him. What Benito craved, but never dared admit, was tenderness. And though the puttane laughed and complained to one another of Benito’s barnyard odor and thickness of penis, they all found themselves stirred by the soft sobs and tears that accompanied his release and his transparent need to be held and petted tenderly afterward.
And though it is of little importance to our tale, Menzogna would indulge the reader with the story behind the tavern keeper’s name, which was not by birth Signore Solo Coglione. Who in their right mind would give a child such a name? He was born Adriano DelGreco, and while most in the village knew that, no one but his wife called him such. The event that precipitated Adriano DelGreco’s decades-old moniker happened in the company of Benito and Vincenzo, when, as a trio of eight-year-old boys, Vincenzo thought it would be a hilarious idea to collectively loose their bladders upon the DelGreco family’s haughty and ill-tempered goose. Well, the prideful bird had no tolerance for such antics, and with an indignant and lightning-quick extension of its neck, the goose’s sharp beak tore through the young DelGreco’s soft scrotum, snapping off and swallowing one of his prepubescent testicles before the boys even had a chance to halt their streams. From that day forth, the sweetly natured boy of Greek ancestry whose father ran the tavern and who preferred playing with his sisters, was known as Signore Solo Coglione—Mister One Testicle.
But even more than the story behind the tavern keeper’s name, Menzogna would most want his readers to understand and appreciate the exquisite beauty, craftsmanship and nostalgic significance of Bobo’s marionette, Bobolito. For had it not been for this puppet, Bobo’s life might very well have turned out quite differently. The tradition of string-manipulated, lifelike puppets called marionettes may have begun in medieval France, but history undoubtedly asserts that it was in Sicily where marionette puppetry was elevated to an exquisite art form. And nothing exemplified this mastery more than Bobolito.
Bobolito was carved from the Moro Nigro, the black mulberry tree of Sicily, whose wood was loved by artisans for its density, strength, distinct grain and durability. The marionette was about twenty-four inches high with large brown eyes, pronounced cheekbones and eyebrows that turned up in a slightly devilish fashion. However, what made the Sicilian marionettes so extraordinary