The Art of Killing Well (2 page)

A cookery book. Poor Italy.

Walking slowly at a safe distance from the two ladies and their chatter, his feet on the lawn and his mind just back from Parnassus, Signorino Gaddo was reflecting despite himself on the supposed merits of the awaited guest. In this atmosphere, there was no point even mentioning poetry.

You're going to be pleased, his father had said to him. A first-rate man of letters will be coming here for the boar hunt, so for
once you'll have someone of your own level and may even deign to open your mouth a little.

Gaddo had greeted the news with apparent equanimity, but things had started to boil up inside him.

Some time earlier he had gathered together his best poems, tied them with a red ribbon, and put them in an elegant cardboard cylinder. Not many, because genius is a question of detail, of phrasing, not of weight: it is the spark that lights the fire, not the log. It had been a difficult choice, of course, and hard-won. It had cost him a great deal to exclude some of his favourite verses, such as “Impetuous Heart”, and, even today, he was haunted by the possibility that he had made a mistake and had been too drastic. But so be it. The selection had been made, the cylinder had been sealed and stamped and sent off, with the most elegant of letters of presentation, to the Great Poet, to whom his own region, the Maremma, had given birth, a fact that the rest of Italy could only envy.

Giosue Carducci.

After which he had waited feverishly for the result of that fit of enthusiasm. Many was the time he had fantasised about the form of the message – a note, a letter, even an invitation to the Great Poet's house in Bolgheri – through which his art would begin to be recognised and at last take flight.

Never once, not even when he was filled with vermouth, had he dared hope for a visit.

But when his father had spoken those words, his heart had begun to beat faster, as befitted a sensitive soul, and his brain had told him that the great moment had arrived.

A man of letters coming to Roccapendente. He had not even asked the name, so certain was he. Who else could it be but the Great Poet?

In the course of the evening, he had toyed with the image of the Great Poet, seated behind his chestnut desk (all poets must have chestnut desks, on pain of disqualification), absorbed in reading one of his, Gaddo's, poems and nodding with approval, happy at last to have found an heir worthy of his fame.

And now it turned out that Gaddo had been mistaken.

The famous man of letters who would be visiting the castle was not Giosue Carducci at all.

As if that were not bad enough, he wasn't even a poet.

A novelist, he had thought.

Worse still.

The man of letters about to enjoy the tranquillity and hospitality of Roccapendente was someone who had written a
cookery book
.

It was enough to make one beat one's head against the wall.

All at once, the baron saw Teodoro rise to his full height and his eyes turn in a westerly direction. This was not a chance movement: from the bend in the road beyond the chestnut tree came a swirling cloud of dust, followed after a moment by a small trap driven by a bare-headed man and drawn by a horse that had seen better days.

Sitting in the trap, looking about him, was a man with a large pair of mutton-chop whiskers. From this distance it was impossible
to say more, given that the only things so far distinguishable were those beautiful white whiskers, which stood out in spite of the dust and the distance.

As the trap approached, the residents gathered on the patio in front of the veranda, ready to greet the newcomer, and the baron watched as Teodoro walked to the spot where the trap would stop, in order to take the guest's luggage.

The trap came to a halt.

The coachman got down, adjusted his jacket, opened the door with a somewhat coarse gesture, and a robust foot pressed heavily on the step. In one hand the guest held a book, the cover of which bore an English title, and in the other a wicker basket containing two of the fattest cats ever seen. He was wearing a frock coat and a top hat. Between his whiskers, a broad, good-natured smile could be made out.

No sooner had he got off than Teodoro cleared his throat and, in a distinct voice, recited his greeting:

“Signor Pellegrino Artusi, welcome to Roccapendente.”

It was dinner time at the castle. And this evening, as always when there were visitors, dinner was served in the so-called Olympus Room.

If the baron and his dinner guests had raised their eyes, they would have had the opportunity to admire the wonderful frescoes of Jacopuccio da Campiglia, a painter known to posterity for having frescoed the entire castle of Roccapendente and even better known to his contemporaries for the incredible number of debts incurred in the taverns and wine shops of the Val di Cornia. It was on this ceiling, where the gods of Olympus chased one another in an eternal, motionless race, that Jacopuccio had given the best of himself, and while Heracles crushed the lion, Orpheus moved the stones to tears and Zeus seduced Aphrodite (pictorial licence, of course: good old Jacopuccio could barely read), they all watched tirelessly over the master of Roccapendente and his family – who, for their part, heads down and jaws going at full tilt, were tearing apart a fish pie of colossal dimensions and completely ignoring all that beauty.

The one eating slowly was the baron, who must have gazed admiringly at that ceiling a thousand times, without ever tiring
of it – but when there was something to eat, you ate.

The one eating listlessly was Gaddo, who might have the sensitivity of spirit to appreciate beauty but was now busy casting sidelong glances at the self-styled man of letters as the latter stuffed himself with pie, his white whiskers moving up and down in time to the rhythm of his jaws.

The one eating briskly and noisily was Lapo, who preferred beautiful things of flesh and blood rather than on walls, and was now watching his sister and thinking that if she didn't dress like a penitent she might almost look like a woman, and then it might actually be possible to find her a husband and get her out of his hair – with that female arrogance of hers, she was always finding fault with him.

The one eating with small bites was Cecilia, who was looking curiously at the bewhiskered guest and completely ignoring Lapo's bovine gaze and his all too obvious thoughts (if you could call them that). Men never understood that women were able to guess what they were thinking from their behaviour, the look in their eyes, the way they were sitting, and so on. This was true of all men, let alone Lapo, who had all the intelligence of a fruit bowl. Signor Artusi, on the other hand, was eating away in silence, completely engrossed, clearly savouring every mouthful. He seemed like someone who thought about what he was doing, and Cecilia liked that.

The one who would have been eating Parisina's excellent pie was Nonna Speranza, if age and illness had not taken away her appetite and this family of good-for-nothings had not taken away the high spirits we all begin to lose even when we are young. Horses, women, poetry! The only one of her grandchildren with a modicum of brains was unfortunate enough to have been born a woman. As unfortunate as she herself was, confined by a body she had not chosen within a family she would never have chosen if she had had any choice in the matter.

The one eating without thinking anything at all was Signor Ciceri, his jaw rotating slowly without in any way modifying his smile. In fact, Fabrizio Ciceri rarely lost his smile, and never his appetite.

And last but not least, the one eating with gusto was the bewhiskered guest, sometimes with his eyes closed. Partly to savour that divine pie, and partly not to feel the eyes of the other dinner guests on him: he had no desire to be overcome once again by that shyness which had always afflicted him in the houses of strangers, a shyness which nobody would ever have guessed at, looking at his hair as rigid as King Umberto's and his military whiskers.

“So, Dottore Artusi, what do you think of my food?”

Sitting at the head of the table, the baron was visibly satisfied. At first, he had seen Artusi serve himself parsimoniously and eat
slowly, in small bites, chewing a lot, even though fish pie by its very nature is easy to swallow: the typical demeanour of someone who eats out of duty.

By the third portion, he had changed his mind. Clearly, Artusi was a long-distance runner, not a sprinter: slow, methodical, steady, relentless. When Teodoro had asked him, “Would the signore like some?” for the third time, he had almost drawn the tray to himself. One never serves oneself three times from the same dish. It is bad manners. It gives the impression that one is only there to eat. But the gleam in the guest's eyes had told him that they might have to use a shovel.

Now, Artusi had the placid expression of someone who has removed the wrinkles from his stomach, and the satisfied expression of someone who has eaten really well, and he had no need to be tactful in answering the baron's question.

“Excellent, Barone, excellent,” he said, as Teodoro carried away the dish. “I know very little about pies, but this, if you'll allow me, was superb. And exceedingly well prepared. In fact, I have a favour to ask you.”

“I think I know what it is. But I'm not the one you should ask. If you like, I can send for the cook immediately.”

“I'm most grateful. I should be even more so if I were allowed to go to the kitchen in person.”

The baron was rendered speechless for a moment.

“You see,” Artusi continued, blushing, “the dish we have just tasted is actually quite complex. As you will have gathered, I should like to include it in my little treatise on the art of good
food. But in order to reproduce this delicacy correctly, and make sure that my twenty readers can do the same, I need, I fear, to have things explained to me in the greatest detail.”

“So you personally tell your cook what to do?” asked Lapo.

“Not exactly,” replied Artusi. “The first time I get ready to make a dish, I try it out myself. Then, when I am sure of the quantities and the procedure, I pass it to my cook.”

“So your wife never cooks.”

“Alas, I'm not married, Signorino Lapo.”

From the corner where the old maids sat came a brief, breathless little laugh.

“As I was saying, I need to have everything explained in great detail, and I fear that for others the conversation would be somewhat tedious.”

You can bet your whiskers on that, said Lapo's facial expression.

The baron, though, smiled. “I thank you for that thought. If you would like to stay with us for dessert and coffee, Teodoro will then show you to the kitchen.”