“Actually, I came because my friend Aldo wanted to come, and there’s not much else to do around here. I’m stationed in the garrison at Torre del Greco.”
“So you’re a fascist?” she said disapprovingly.
He shook his head. “Just a soldier. I want to see the world. All my life I’ve lived in Naples, and I’m bored with it.”
“Well,” she said, “you can start by seeing the world outside that door. I don’t have time to chat to you.” As she spoke she was putting balls of burrata inside the asphodel leaves, weaving the leaves through each other so that they formed a natural basket for the cheese.
The handsome soldier was unperturbed. “You’re very rude,” he said conversationally.
“No, just very busy.”
“But you can be busy and talk to me at the same time,” he objected. “Look, you’ve done a dozen of those already. And I can take away the plates you’ve filled and bring you new ones.” He fitted his actions to his words. “See? I’m making myself useful.”
“Actually, you’re in the way. And those plates need to go on the other table.”
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll go away if you give me a kiss.”
She glared at him. “Quanne piscia ’a gallina,*1 cazzo. Not in a million years, dickhead. Now get out of here.”
“But my intentions are completely honorable,” he assured her. “You see, I’ve fallen in love with you. And what’s wrong with kissing someone you’re in love with?”
She couldn’t help it. She smiled slightly, then put her stern expression back on. “Don’t be ridiculous. We don’t know each other from Adam.”
“Well, that obstacle is easily removed. I’m Enzo. And you are—?”
“Busy,” she snapped.
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Busy. Would you like to kiss me now?”
“No.” She had finished the antipasto, and began to chop lemons to accompany the friarielli, a kind of bitter broccoli.
“Then I shall just have to use my imagination instead.” He leant back and closed his eyes. A smile played across his face. “Mmmm,” he said thoughtfully. “Do you know, Busy, you’re a very good kisser. Mmmmmm…Let’s do that again.”
“I hope that hurt,” she said pointedly.
“What?”
“I just imagined kneeing you in the coglioni.”
Enzo clutched his privates and fell to the floor. “Ow! Ow! What have you done? Now we’ll never have those twenty adorable bambini I was planning.”
“Get up,” she said, laughing. “And get out of the way. I have to drain this pasta.”
He jumped up. “Tell me one thing, Busy. Do you have a boyfriend? Am I wasting my time here?”
“The answer to one of those questions is no,” she said, “and to the other one, yes.”
For a moment his brow furrowed as he worked it out. “Impossible,” he said firmly. “Anyway, one good answer is sufficient to be going on with. Aaargh!” He leapt back. “What in God’s name is that?”
Hearing an unfamiliar voice in the kitchen, Pupetta had put her head through the window to see what was going on. Her head was rather large, and was topped by two massive horns, backswept like bicycle handlebars. The horns were considerably wider than the window, but she had long ago worked out how to ease one in before the other. It was this horn which had just claimed Enzo’s hat. The soldier turned and regarded the beast with horror.
“That’s Pupetta,” Livia said, reaching across to give the buffalo’s massive forehead a friendly scratch, retrieving the hat at the same time. “Haven’t you seen a buffalo before?”
Enzo shook his head. “Not this close. I’m from Naples, remember? We don’t have buffalo in the city.” He took the hat and arranged it on Pupetta’s head, where it looked almost comically small, then saluted the animal ironically.
“Then we certainly couldn’t get married and have those twenty bambini you wanted. I could never leave Pupetta.”
“Hmm.” Enzo scratched his head. “In that case,” he said to Pupetta, “you’d better be the first buffalo to come and live in Naples.”
Suddenly serious, Livia said, “Anyway, we shouldn’t be talking like this. You’re a soldier, you’re going to go off and see the world.”
“Only for a little while. Then I’ll come back and have bambini. And bufale, of course,” he added quickly.
“What if you have to fight?”
“Oh, we never fight,” he said casually. “We just march around and look fierce.”
There was the sound of a clock striking, and Livia rushed over to the stove. “Now look what you’ve done. It’s almost lunchtime, and I’ve stopped cooking. My father will kill me.”
“You still haven’t kissed me,” he pointed out.
“And I’m not going to,” she said, pulling saucepans out of the cupboard. “But if you like, you can come back later, and we’ll have a coffee together.”
He snapped his fingers with delight. “I knew it!”
“And don’t get any funny ideas,” she warned him, “or I really will knee you in the coglioni. I’ve had plenty of practice.”
“Of course. What do you take me for?” He finished his drink and set the glass down by the sink. “It’s excellent limoncello, by the way.”
“Of course it is. Everything is good here.”
“I can see that,” he said. He kissed his fingertips and blew the kiss at her as he walked backward out of the door. After a moment she noticed that Pupetta was still wearing his hat.
Soon after midday Don Bernardo and her father broke off from their separate deliberations, and a great crowd of people surged across the dusty piazza toward the osteria. Within moments every place was filled, and Livia began to serve the food.
Most of the ingredients she cooked with came from the tiny farm immediately behind the restaurant. It was so small that the Pertinis could shout from one end of it to another, but the richness of the soil meant that it supported a wealth of vegetables, including tomatoes, zucchini, black cabbage, eggplant and several species that were unique to the region, including bitter friarielli and fragrant asfodelo. There was also a small black boar called Garibaldi, who despite his diminutive size impregnated his harem of four larger wives with extraordinary diligence; an ancient olive tree through which a couple of vines meandered; a chicken or two; and the Pertinis’ pride and joy, Priscilla and Pupetta, the two water buffalo, who grazed on a patch of terraced pasture no bigger than a tennis court. The milk they produced was porcelain white, and after hours of work each day it produced just two or three mozzarelle, each one weighing around two pounds—but what mozzarelle: soft and faintly grassy, like the sweet steamy breath of the bufale themselves.
As well as mozzarella, the buffalo milk was crafted into various other specialities. Ciliègine were small cherry-shaped balls for salads, while bocconcini were droplet-shaped, for wrapping in slices of soft prosciutto ham. Trecce, tresses, were woven into plaits, served with Amalfi lemons and tender sprouting broccoli. Mozzarella affumicata was lightly smoked and brown in color, while scamorza was smoked over a smoldering layer of pecan shells until it was as dark and rich as a cup of strong espresso. When there was surplus milk they even made a hard cheese, ricotta salata di bufala, which was salted and slightly fruity, perfect for grating over roasted vegetables. But the cheese the Pertinis were best known for was their burrata, a tiny sack of the finest, freshest mozzarella, filled with thick buffalo cream and wrapped in asphodel leaves. People came all the way from Naples just to experience its unique taste. Sometimes they would even buy a few to take back to the city but, as Nino always told them, it was a futile exercise: By the time the asfodelo started to turn brown, which was after just a few hours, the cheese was already starting to lose its flavor.