Tomato Rhapsody: A Fable of Love, Lust and Forbidden Fruit - By Adam Schell Page 0,82

useless and unruly?”

With hardly a hitch in the workings of his hands as he too picked olives, the Good Padre said, “So we may learn to love without condition.”

“Gian,” sighed Cosimo. Every hair of his body stood on end. He turned his head and caught the eyes of the Good Padre. They seemed to be waiting for him—massive, brown, preternaturally radiant. Cosimo felt a ray of light explode inside his chest. He thought he was dying. A death without pain. It felt like an orgasm, not of the loins, but of the heart. As if his heart were exploding! His body went weak. His knees buckled. He crumpled to the ground. No, he crumpled into the ground, like he and the earth and the olive tree and the sky and the old woman and the boy and the priest were all one. He began to sob. Sobs that seemed to undo all the anger and sadness that bound his heart. He felt an overwhelming sensation of being loved and of loving, and that everything in life was somehow perfect and existed to be loved without condition. “It’s beautiful,” Cosimo mumbled as he sobbed, “so beautiful.”

As he now lay in bed, listening to the nearby humping and panting of whores and men—very likely his friend Benito— Cosimo reconciled himself to the fact that it would all be over soon, his foray into peasant life. No good thing goes on forever. Indeed, it would no longer be good if it did. He would give himself a bit more time, maybe a week. No question, he was learning a great deal about himself, the land and the common folk. His soft flesh was at last beginning to firm from all the hard work and it was nice to be around his long-lost cousin Bobo, even though they had yet to share anything but an occasional quizzical glance. But Cosimo missed his son, odd as the boy might be; he was excited for the second chance he knew he’d been given—a chance to love his son properly.

14 The Initiation of the Children: so sacred were olives and grapes to Tuscan village life that it was tradition for a village priest to gather all the children and lead them in a day of work upon the village’s primary orchards and vineyards at the beginning of the harvest season and to perform a series of blessings over the vines and trees.

In Which We Learn

the Best Way to Rob

a Donkey of His Vigor

It was early, several hours before the village would arise and begin to gather in the piazza for the Festa, yet nearly everything was set—Giuseppe’s plans included. It had always been the custom to put the piazza in order on Saturday, hold the feast on Sunday and leave the cleaning of the piazza until Monday. This was done to allow the men of the village a rare morning of leisure and the women more time to cook up their dishes for the evening feast—an extravagant communal affair.

It was commonly thought that the one-armed Drunken Saint arrived in the village in the late afternoon. Accordingly, the donkey race, which commenced the Festa, would not begin until the sundial’s shadow touched five. After the race, tables would be arranged, the women of the village would bring forth their dishes and a great meal would be shared among the entire village, with special attention lavished upon the winner of the donkey race. As night arrived, torches would be lit, minstrels would take up their instruments and the dancing would commence. The wine, however, followed no timetable. It would flow from morning well into the night, as it was both tradition and expectation that each vineyard and winemaker would provide a fair share of their best juice and that every villager would get spectacularly drunk.

The absurdity of twelve riders racing twelve donkeys and gulping twelve wine goblets for twelve laps around a makeshift track with their right arms tied behind their backs whilst pummeling one another with their left hand was not lost on the villagers. But it was also a serious matter in which not only pride and bragging rights were at stake, but a good deal of coin. In actuality, it was common for each Capitano dei Quadranti to wager a great deal on the success of their rider.

Capitano dei Quadranti? Ah, yes, this tradition was believed to have been started by children playing in the piazza. The piazza was the geographic center of the village and