The New Year’s Eve dinner, as it was understood in that city, refused to penetrate into Nelide’s mind.
During the far-too-short period in which her aunt, Zi’ Rosa, had instructed her, bestowing lessons from the elevated perch of her many years as a native of Cilento in the big city, the matter of the Christmas festivities had never yet been addressed. And so the young woman had been forced to integrate the limited knowledge she had learned directly from her aunt with what she’d been able to pick up by observing local customs. And that hadn’t been a simple matter, because she was wary by nature and really not well disposed toward change, especially when that meant varying the traditions of which she considered herself an intransigent guardian.
She took one last look at the apartment, sternly gauging its cleanliness and tidiness, which could only be described as absolute; then she picked up her shopping bag and keys.
On her way out of the apartment, she passed by the mirror near the front door, but she didn’t deign to give her reflected image so much as a glance. And in fact, there was nothing to admire: Nelide was ugly. She had a stout, muscular body, her shoulders were powerful and her pelvis was broad, her hands were large, rough, and strong, her face was square. The perennially furrowed brow was crossed from one side to the other by a single eyebrow, dense and thick, beneath which darted small, mistrustful eyes; her nose was large and her lips were narrow. Her hair was coarse, kinky, and bristly, of a vague and unidentifiable color, pulled back with considerable effort beneath the lashings of an immaculately clean bonnet. Her figure attracted the curiosity and derision of the neighborhood women, but she was supremely indifferent to the fact, and her pride was by no means offended thereby.
She shut and locked the door behind her, double-checking more than once to ensure that it was tightly closed. She didn’t trust the building’s doorman and she feared that some evildoer might venture downstairs from the upper stories and slip into the apartment while she was out; she considered herself to be in charge of security.
Nelide knew the mission with which she’d been entrusted: see to the well-being and safety of the young master, the Baron of Malomonte. That was the task for which she’d been raised by her family, chosen from amongst all her sisters and female cousinage, and trained by Zi’ Rosa. And she had dedicated herself to that task, and that task alone.
This was by no means a minor responsibility for a young woman who had just turned eighteen, in silence and without any celebration. Aside from her household tasks, it was her responsibility to tend to the care and safety of a man who would otherwise neglect the well-being of his person. Aside from these daily matters, there was a more complicated aspect: it was up to her to keep a watchful eye lest sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and assorted peasants take advantage of the Ricciardi family’s vast fortune and estates, since this immense wealth was a concern to which the young master devoted interest and attention roughly comparable to the zeal he lavished on his own self-care, that is to say, practically zero.
Rosa had devoted her entire life to these duties, and when she had sensed the end drawing near, she had summoned her niece to her side to begin to impart the necessary instruction and training. It hadn’t taken all that long, the only topic not yet covered had been city life: all the rest was material Nelide had studied practically from the day of her birth, and her aunt, so similar to Nelide that they easily could have been taken for mother and daughter, knew it very well because she’d been monitoring her growth all through the years.
But assimilating the customs of that irrational metropolis had proved to be far more complex than she’d imagined. The young woman simply couldn’t make heads nor tails of the place. Everyone was constantly laughing or singing or crying or dancing or screaming. You’d hear all manners of noise, even at night. No one ever seemed to shut up. No one ever minded their own business. No one ever stopped eavesdropping, gossiping, and chattering away about other people. The diametric opposite of her country home, where no one confided a thing, not even with parents or siblings, and it was common practice to go for days on end without uttering a word. Where she came from, they were hard workers.
But the Baron of Malomonte’s housekeeper needed to know how to adapt. And also how to understand what might not be obvious to the untrained eye. That meant poking her nose into her fellow human beings’ business, and to an even greater extent, the private affairs of the man she was caring for. First of all, of course, to anticipate his needs; but also, when warranted, to give fate a gentle, indispensable shove forward, steering it toward the Good and the Better.
Rosa had told her in great detail about the haberdasher’s daughter, a young woman who lived in the building across the street; as well as the danger posed by the Other Woman, the Roman interloper too beautiful to inspire trust and to be a wife and mother. Rosa had expressed her decided preference for that young woman, perhaps not notably comely but certainly trustworthy, endowed with broad hips and a gracious bosom beneath her modest garments; most important of all, she was deeply and sincerely in love with the baron.
She had also told Nelide that Ricciardi returned the young woman’s sentiment but that, due to who knows what benighted enchantment, he couldn’t seem to bring himself to take the proper steps: the propagation of the Ricciardi di Malomonte family line was at risk, and that threat must be neutralized. Rosa had tried to establish an acquaintance with Enrica and had almost turned it into a friendship. But then, too soon, she had died.
The new development of recent days was that the two of them had begun to see each other again. Nelide, who missed not a single detail, had noticed it, discreetly spying on the messages and gestures that they exchanged through the windows, convinced that she hadn’t noticed a thing. Everything’s fine, then, Zi’ Ro’: we need only wait for matters to take their course.
But now she had to solve the problem of New Year’s Eve. Nelide didn’t want Ricciardi to feel different among the other denizens of the city, but she also cared deeply about ensuring that the traditions of Cilento were observed. Her aunt had been clear and peremptory on this point.
In Cilento, New Year’s wasn’t a time of great festivities: the countryside allowed for no break in work, no frivolous distractions, because everyone knew they’d be going back to work the next day. There were a few customs, however, that distinguished the day. Children would venture out in a group, armed with the piroccola, a heather-wood cane, and knock at the doors of the village. They would dutifully be given white figs to eat that evening around the fire; there were doggerel rhymes equally dutifully memorized and recited in recognition of the gift; the Holy Mass and the fòcara, a dance in the piazza around a bonfire kindled with ciòppari, large logs harvested in the woods during the week before Christmas.
Then, on the first day of the new year, they would pay calls on the old people, deferentially kissing their hands, and receiving as a reward for that show of respect a dollop of sheep’s milk ricotta or perhaps a sweet, hard biscotto or two.
In short, Nelide recalled only the customs that affected youngsters.
Concerning adults, on the other hand, there wasn’t much to say: the good tablecloth, the aged olive oil, the driest firewood for the fried foods: the kind of things simple people knew about. There was no special ceremony to usher in the new year.
But there were a few items that no self-respecting Cilento table could lack. Alongside the broccoli, the cinguli cu’ l’alici (anchovy fritters), the baccalà fritto (fried salt cod filets), the zeppulelle salate (savory zeppole), and the nocche dolci (sugary bow tie cookies) which Nelide had already prepared for the young master, there was no getting around the New Year’s Eve mainstay, the nine fruits and nuts to hit the right note for the meal, a must in terms of ensuring good fortune in the coming year.
After replying to the concierge’s hostile nod with a murderous glare, the young woman found herself walking down the main street. The fog, which bewildered the other pedestrians, only comforted her: she was used to fog, she didn’t find it to be an unusual phenomenon, and there was no danger that she might get lost. She walked past the line of shops, without bothering to reply to the calls of the shopkeepers from their front doors trying to attract customers, terrified as they were of being left with too much merchandise in their shops at the end of the holidays, and then having to sell everything at a sharp discount in order to make back their initial investment, at least. She reached the small neighborhood street market, with the stands all arranged in a circle in the little piazza. She slowed down, narrowing her eyes to identify the fruit and vegetable stand.
She spotted one stand surrounded by a sizable crowd of women laughing and elbowing each other in the ribs. That stand belonged to Tanino, known as ’o Sarracino—the Saracen—for his amber complexion. Tanino seemed to have stepped right out of the silver screen: curly black locks framed a perfect face, his eyes so dark they seemed carved from sparkling onyx, and his broad smile displayed two rows of teeth as white as an angel’s wings. Cheerful and witty, endowed with a wonderful voice, he warbled love songs to satisfy his female customers’ requests: he inhabited their dreams, whether married or unwed. He was the idol of that city quarter.
As usual, Nelide steered clear. She thought it pointless to stand in line to purchase products that she could find, identical, at the stand of Peppeniello, the elderly vendor who’d had the bad luck to find himself working side by side with this fearsome competitor. What’s more, who knows why, every time she’d purchased her grocery needs from the handsome vegetable vendor, he’d immediately ignored all his other customers and devoted himself solely to her with such adoration that he triggered the laughter of all the women present, convinced that this must be a refined mode of mockery, aimed at making Nelide an object of fun. This behavior didn’t offend or bother Nelide in and of itself. After all, to her mind both Tanino and the women shoppers of the market were as dust beneath her feet, or even less than that. The real point was that it was a waste of her time: and that was something she wasn’t willing to accept. She had work to do.
And so, taking advantage of the fog and her own diminutive stature, she ventured over to Peppeniello’s stand, while Tanino entertained his audience by declaiming the usefulness of the unaccustomed atmospheric phenomenon thanks to which he would be able to slip, unseen, into the secret boudoirs of his grateful female lovers.
Without deigning to offer the elderly street vendor a greeting and after evaluating the fruit on display with a glance, the young woman decisively announced her order, partly in dialect: “Oranges, three. Tangerines, four. Walnuts and nucelle, almonds, ficusecche, chestnuts, pine nuts, and two cachisse.”
Peppeniello began to lay out all the items requested on his scale, but suddenly he stopped, mortified.
“Signori’, forgive me, I have no pine nuts. I ran out of them at Christmas.”
This was no minor issue. There were nine types of fruit to propitiate the new year. Nine, not eight. And the pine nuts, which symbolized incense, the gift brought by Balthasar, one of the Three Kings, to Baby Jesus in his manger, were the last to be consumed.
The young woman furrowed her unibrow. In that useless little market that seemed to stock all sorts of nonsense, actual necessities were not to be had. A voice rang out, emanating its message, in a sweet but stentorian tone, through the dense fog: “Lovely Signorina, why do you always take your trade to my competition? Come shop at Tanino and you’ll find everything you need. And when I say everything, I mean everything, you follow me?”
The women within earshot all laughed at the salty wisecrack, tilting their heads in Nelide’s direction. And the young woman turned and retorted, flatly: “Non te fa’ caca’ da i mosche. So you have pine nuts, do you?”
The proverb in dialect meant, “Don’t think you’re such hot stuff,” but the words—literally, “Don’t let the flies shit on you”—sounded like a slap in the face, dampening the smile of the prince of street vendors.
“I . . . pine nuts? No, Signorina, I’m afraid I don’t . . .”
The young woman shrugged her shoulders.
“La votte raje lu vino ca tene,” she murmured under her breath. This basically meant: the barrel can only give the wine it contains; and you have nothing.
Tanino blushed, and shot back, addressing the young woman’s back as she turned to go: “Let it never be said, Signorina, that ’o Sarracino has left a customer wanting for more! I know where you live! I’ll bring them to your doorstep, the pine nuts you’ve asked for!”
An attractive brunette weighed in: “Oooh, Tani’, bring some for me, too. I guarantee I’ll give you a New Year’s Eve with a bang, forget about the ordinary fireworks.”
There was a general burst of laughter, but Tanino continued to stare seriously at the stout back that was just then vanishing into the fog.
Suddenly he had lost any desire to joke around.