minor act of vengeance had been foiled by that ogre. Dear God, she thought, if Giuseppe learns of this there’ll be hell to pay. Terror turned quickly to fury, a gurgling, roiling volcano aimed at Benito. That vulgar beast, thought Mari, as she lowered herself onto her hands and knees and, hidden from sight, crawled out the mill’s western door, the one opposite Benito. Outside and hidden from view, she picked up a wooden bucket by its iron handle and walked down the slight knoll to where Benito kept his truffle sows penned up. She stepped into the pen and filled the bucket with an altogether vile combination of pig manure, rotting food slop and the putrid, muddy muck in which the pigs liked to roll around to cool their bodies.
Mari set her jaw in a determined clench as she walked past the large olive-curing vessels sitting alongside the south side of the mill. She did not care that her footsteps were not especially quiet or that the bucket full of slop was splashing about and soiling her hand. She was going to carry out this deed like a proud and charging knight who looks not for cover as he storms into battle. She quickened her pace as she neared the barn’s edge. The sun was setting and the light was poor on the eastern side of the barn. She turned the corner, and, just as she suspected, he was ten paces off, his back to her, hiding in the shadows and peering into the barn.
“Vaffanculo!” Mari yelled as she let fly with the bucket’s contents. “Faccia di merda!”
Run! his instincts urged. Surely, she had heard the barn door squeak. Run, you fool! It would not look good to be found spying. But he could not bring himself to leave before getting one more chance to gaze upon her. His eyes beheld her beauty for only an instant before she slipped into shadow. But, my God, even sweaty and soiled from a hard day’s labor, she was more beautiful than any girl he’d ever seen. Run, his instincts commanded again, yet his body disobeyed. He could not bear to leave such beauty in the shadows.
And then it was too late. First came the footsteps from behind him. Then the onslaught of curses. So he turned, as anyone would, in absolute panic to face his attacker. He did not know what came toward him, but he did see her, ever so briefly, before his survival instincts closed his eyes, sealed his mouth and raised his arm to shield his face. He’d seen Mari, and it was wonderful.
Mio Dio! Mari gasped as the bucket of pig slop exploded across her target’s throat and chest. It was not Benito, definitely not Benito.
Davido felt something cool and foul crash over his chest and drip down his neck. Thank God the monk’s frock came nearly up to his chin and that he still had the hood up and that his instincts were fast enough to raise his forearm defensively. Quickly, he wiped his sleeve across his face to clear it of the splatter. Then he opened his eyes. There, standing along the east side of the barn, next to its open, squeaky door, Mari and Davido beheld each other for the second time in six days. For an instant, they knew intimately of their shame. Davido for being dressed as a monk and furtively spying upon Mari, and Mari for acting rashly, for cursing him and then dousing him with a bucket of slop.
For a moment, a brief moment, these were the prevalent emotions and they crippled both speech and movement. But then, a new emotion took over, one far more powerful than shame. For the very thing in life that both Mari and Davido desired more than anything else was suddenly before them. And it was enormous and overwhelming. A feeling so great as to obliterate all other feelings, so that no thing needed explaining, no apology or excuse needed to be given. Not even their skin and noses could perceive offense in the smell and feel of muck. It was as if Davido and Mari were not themselves, or maybe for the first time ever they were entirely themselves—raw and honest and fearless.
There was a shared breath—a quick inhalation. A critical launching-off point, and then, without a word spoken, Mari and Davido rushed into each other’s arms—desperate to eradicate any distance between their lips. Though they had never kissed before, not each other