Loves & Miracles of Pistola. Hilary Prendini Toffoli
match. Italy has never been an essay in peace and quiet, and life in Campino is affirmed as much by heckling and controversy as it was in Roman times. For volume and passion, the squabbling is equalled only by Caruso at full operatic throttle. So here they are, the pig-farmers and the pasta-makers, slapping the counter and making the glasses jump as they dispute with Giacinto and one another the chances of Juventus’s next game with Milan.
‘In the morning you must always screw before you piss. Otherwise you lose your hard-on!’ Eros announces with authority as he drains the last drops of his espresso, and deals the cards for their fifth game.
‘Are we having a sex lecture or playing rummy?’ Valetti snaps. He glances up, gives Pistola a filthy look over his bifocals which makes Pistola wonder if he’s seen him and Fiorenzo in his maize fields, and calls loudly for a grappa. With a look of contempt for the table in general, he tosses it into his coffee. Silence descends, tight with tension, and blue with the muttered curses of the players and the acrid smoke of their Nazionalis.
Pistola stands at the bar licking his gelato and watching as the occasional interested new party arrives and strolls to the back of the bar. One of them causes an instant commotion. It’s the hunchback Gobbetto. He has been busy gluing Communist Party fête posters on the wall outside and comes in only because he’s thirsty. At the sight of the card players, he lets off a stream of socialist steam loudly in their direction.
‘Beh, filthy industrialists! Sitting here playing cards when other people are working!’
The barman, twice his size and equally cantankerous, looks up from his copy of La Gazzetta dello Sport, in whose pink pages he’s relishing the details of Juventus’s last resounding victory against Napoli, and interrupts with a thunderous, ‘Do me a favour! Some of us have lives to get on with! More than just gluing a couple of posters on the wall!’
Gobbetto stands his ground. ‘Exploiters of the working class! Vermin!’
‘Did you come to drink or talk politics?’ Giacinto asks, leaning over the bar and sticking his finger in Gobbetto’s chest. A church-going member of the Christian Democrat party, he has no truck with the Communists. ‘We don’t need that Russian propaganda drivel here! It would do you more good to go make your confessions to Don Bernardo.’
As Pistola moves down the bar to hear more of this interesting interchange, Eros spots him and shouts, ‘Eh, Pistolin! We got Esther Williams in Million Dollar Mermaid next week! Listen, Bepi has another load of grapes he wants to get done before the wedding and he’s looking for you.’
Eros and Teresa’s father, Bepi Faccincani, are friends, like-minded men of many parts who, along with their daily money-making pursuits, are both wine brokers. No written contracts, no banks. Deals done with a handshake, and the broker always comes back with a fat roll of notes in his pocket. In Bepi’s case, it’s often also several crates of grapes. He gets Pistola and his friends to stamp on them in the yard so he can make wine. Pistola’s size-ten feet can crush a lot of grapes. Afterwards, Teresa’s mother makes a thick purple custard the villagers call ‘sugol’ from some of the freshly pressed cloudy juice boiled with flour and sugar. The grape treaders stuff themselves with sugol till they’re sick.
So Pistola finishes his gelato and instead races home to put brillantina on his hair before making his way to the Faccincani house.
Bepi is not at home and nor is his wife. But Teresa is there making tortelli di zucca in the kitchen. Her cheeks are smeared with flour. Her thick dark hair is tightly scraped back from her face. Her generous curves are concealed by a vast spot-spattered apron. Yet in his eyes nothing can diminish the beauty of the girl who in another week will move into a universe away from him and become Signora Bersella.
She greets him affectionately. He’s aware of how delicious she smells. A mix of lavender and salsa di pomodoro.
‘Sugol time again? Papà has the biggest load of grapes ever. He’s gone to collect more barrels.’ Her laser-beam eyes focus on him with such radiant intensity he breaks out in gooseflesh. ‘You boys will be busy. He’s starting tomorrow.’
He nods, desperately searching for a reason to stay and talk.
‘Teresina, can you teach me to make tortelli di zucca? You’re such an expert.’ Nonno Mario has taught him how to make pasta, but his grandfather doesn’t have the patience to make tortelli di zucca – pasta squares with a spicy pumpkin filling – because this sixteenth century recipe from old Mantova includes a delicious sweet and spicy condiment called Mostarda Mantovana, which takes four days to make and involves marinating quince strips in sugar and mustard.
She laughs. ‘Is that what you want to do now you’ve finished school? Pasta is women’s work, Pistola. Or would you like to have your own trattoria one day like Nonna Rina?’
Teresa’s grandmother ran her husband’s trattoria from the day he was killed in World War I. She always wore black, even her aprons.
‘No, just a long thin rolling pin like yours.’
‘This is Nonna Rina’s. They don’t make them like this any more.’ Her tiny hands continue rolling the pasta sheet, stretching it and making it bigger. ‘I always make the family pasta. Finally got it right. Sticks to the rolling pin if it’s too soft. Breaks if it gets too dry.’
She takes from the drawer the cookery tool every Italian housewife has in her kitchen, the little pastry wheel that looks like a toy, and with it begins cutting the pasta into squares.
‘Madonna!’ he says with feeling. ‘Aguinaldo is getting himself a pasta champion.’
‘See!’ She holds up a tiny square. ‘This way it comes out thinner and firmer.’
He swallows hard, then steels himself and comes out with it. Now or never, ‘Teresa, is he really good enough for you? Shouldn’t you be marrying someone who—’
She turns her megawatt gaze on him again, looking so astonished he breaks off and just wants to curl up and creep away.
‘What an idiota you are! You don’t know him. He’s marvellous. Clever and funny. A brilliant lawyer one day. There’s no one else like him. You just don’t understand.’
‘You know he’s been to those places where they have those women?’
‘Vero?’ She gives him a challenging look. Eyes narrowed.
‘Doesn’t it bother you?’
‘I suppose some men believe they need to get experience in these matters. One day you might too. It doesn’t make him a bad person.’
He wants to take her and shout, You’re making the biggest mistake of your life, Teresa! Listen to me! Instead he asks, ‘What do you add to the pumpkin to make the filling? Nonno Mario says you need a kitchen full of women to stuff tortelli di zucca.’
She laughs. ‘Nonsense. You simply mix the cooked zucca with some amaretti biscuits crushed, some mostarda, some Parmigiano and breadcrumbs.’
She carries on cutting squares of pasta. There’s something about the cute little gadget she’s using that seems suddenly familiar to him. A pastry wheel is something Nonno Mario never uses, but it triggers a distant memory. A hazy recollection from a time when he must have been very little, of himself in a kitchen with a woman he somehow knows was his mother. She was using a pastry wheel to cut big ragged squares of pasta that he remembers her deep-frying and sprinkling with sugar. He can even remember the name. Sfrappole. They ate them at Easter. There’s something bittersweet about the image. It hurts.
‘What’s wrong?’ Teresa is staring at him.
He tells her and her face immediately goes sad. ‘Madonna! I’ll never forget your lovely mother. She came to our house after my little brother died and gave me a fabric doll she’d made. She was so kind. I was still small then.’
He knows very little about his mother. Nonno Mario never talks about her. Says it’s too painful. Pistola has seen only two photos. One is on her tombstone, an