Nelide was making ciccimmaritati. It was Rosa’s belief that if a woman of Cilento had any pride in her birthplace, that dish had to form part of her repertoire, and she intended to put her niece to the test. No one could ever have guessed that there was satisfaction in the way Rosa watched her, because she resembled nothing so much as a pillar of salt. In fact, truth be told, her expression was more of a frown than anything else.
For that matter, Rosa had no particular reason to be cheerful. Alongside the usual worries provoked by her young master, who seemed unwilling to settle down and start a family of his own, now there was a new problem on the horizon.
Her own state of health.
Rosa had no fear of dying. She was a pragmatic person, a farmer’s daughter, raised in a sunbaked, hostile land. She knew that death was part of life, that in fact it’s as necessary as the seasons; it comes so that the new can take the place of the old. But could anyone really take Rosa’s place?
Nelide hesitated as she ran her rough hand over the formica counter, so smooth in comparison with the coarse wood to which she was accustomed. Rosa appreciated that mistrust in the presence of such a highly unnatural material, and she was pleased when she saw that her niece immediately found her footing and returned to the gestures of that ancient ritual, arranging the ingredients on the table: dark durum wheat, corn, fava beans, grass peas, round white scarlet runner beans, tabaccuogni beans, small and brown, chickpeas and mimiccola beans, and finally lentils. Each heaped in a separate pile, to make sure the quantities were correct. A bowl held the janga chestnuts, previously dried and peeled, which would serve to give the soup its sweetness, an essential function.
Nelide worked neatly and methodically. She might perhaps have moved a little faster, but that would have been at the expense of precision; speed would come in time. After all, the girl was just seventeen, though at first glance you’d say she was anywhere between sixteen and thirty. A solid, healthy Cilento woman, from Rosa’s point of view.
Ricciardi’s elderly governess had eleven brothers and sisters, and more than seventy nieces and nephews. And though every one of her siblings had baptized one of their daughters Rosa—in honor of the one sister who hadn’t produced children, and who had always helped out by sending small sums of cash, gifts her young master permitted with a disinterested smile—when the time came the niece that Rosa picked was Nelide, the third-born child of the seventh-youngest sibling, her brother Andrea.
Alongside the small piles of beans and grains, the girl arrayed spices and condiments: garlic, olive oil, salt, the absolutely necessary papaulo—the fiery-hot dried chili pepper—as well as the tomato purée spooned out of the buatta, the metal can that stood, covered with a rag, on the highest shelf in the pantry. Now I want to see what you can do, thought Rosa from the chair pushed against the wall in which she sat, her fingers knit over her ample belly. Up till now, the girl had remained safely within the bounds of strict orthodoxy, but the time had come for a personal touch. Either you have it or you don’t.
Nelide had been to the city other times to visit her aunt. Ever since she was a little girl she had proven to be much more similar to Rosa than were those female cousins who bore their aunt’s name. Almost as wide across as she was tall, extremely strong, she was stubborn, resolute, and taciturn, with a perennially scowling face; she was neither a model of attractiveness nor particularly good company. She could barely read and wrote only with great difficulty, though she did have an extraordinary, instinctive familiarity with numbers. To make up for whatever qualities she may have lacked, she possessed others that Rosa considered absolutely essential. She was loyal and obedient: when she took on a task she gave herself no peace until she had completed it. She was tireless, indifferent to the time of day, incapable of distraction. She was honest and hard on herself, clean and a homebody. Rosa had tested her, setting small traps every time Nelide visited, visits she encouraged using as an excuse events for which she would need the girl’s help. And meanwhile, she had introduced her niece in all the shops and the market stalls where she did her shopping. The young woman had proven herself alert, quick to learn, with a sharp, precise memory. Even Ricciardi had gotten used to having her around, and was happy that, thanks to Nelide, his old tata was having an easier time of it.
Toward the young master, Nelide felt a mixture of fear and veneration: precisely what Rosa wanted. On her niece’s rugged, square face, marked by narrow lips under a faint mustache, she could see the germ of the same protective sentiment she felt toward that melancholy, unhappy man, whom she had looked after for a lifetime with a missionary zeal.
Now, therefore, yet another of the countless examinations to which Rosa subjected her unsuspecting niece was underway: the Cilento cooking test. Rosa was convinced that tradition was crucial to a healthy stability, and she stubbornly continued to cook according to the rules she’d learned from her mother and grandmother, and that she had absorbed from the very air she’d breathed as a child and as a young woman.
Nelide wiped her palms on her apron. She stared grimly at the piles on the tabletop: everything was there, but she still wasn’t satisfied.
Good, thought Rosa. Her left hand, fingers knit, sensed the tremor in her right hand. It was as if, every so often, it went to sleep. She knew what this was. She knew because this was how her father had died, growing weaker day by day and then falling asleep, until he finally just stopped breathing. She hoped that it would be as gentle for her, but that’s not what scared her.
Her biggest worries were for Ricciardi. What fate awaited him? Who would look after him? Nelide was certainly fine when it came to immediate necessities: seeing that he ate regularly, pressing his clothes. But relations with the sharecroppers, making sure that payments were collected as they came due, managing the family’s estate? The young master had never taken any interest in such matters, and if it were left up to him, the entire estate to which he was sole heir would dwindle away.
Her thoughts went to the Baroness Marta di Malomonte, Ricciardi’s mother. Ah, Baroness, she thought, you too spoke so little. Why didn’t you explain to me what your son is like? Why didn’t you tell me how I ought to act with him?
Nelide scratched her cheek. Perhaps, Rosa thought to herself, she ought to place her trust in this young woman. Perhaps Nelide could take over from her. After all it was a simple matter of sticking to certain deadlines and picking up the threads of what she had done month after month for many years. She had more confidence in that grim-faced seventeen-year-old than in all the men she’d met in her lifetime.
Of course, it would have been preferable to hand over her responsibilities to a woman who had entered the family by the front door, not the service entrance. She had hoped, she had insisted, she had begged her young master to open himself up to the natural evolution of a man, to an engagement followed by a wedding.
That Enrica, the daughter of the Colombos, had struck her as the perfect one. She had a kind heart, she was gentle and sweet but also, and Rosa had sensed this intuitively, determined and strong. What’s more, she was in love.
The absurd thing, to Rosa’s uncomplicated mind, lay in the fact that Ricciardi, too, beyond the shadow of a doubt, was in love with Enrica. And yet he hadn’t lifted a finger since the day he realized he was losing her, that she was distancing herself from him. For that matter, how could she blame Enrica? The years pass and a girl has a right to a future.
One thing was certain: if he wished to set up housekeeping and start a family, that woman from the north, the one with a car and a driver, wasn’t right for him. She was fine if you wanted a good time, perfect for going out to the theater or the movies, but not as the mother of his children.
Who could say, perhaps they’d find each other again, Enrica and her young master. Only then it would be too late for Rosa to pass along her knowledge.
Nelide nodded vigorously, as if someone inside her head had just given her a peremptory order. She headed to the pantry, grapped a jar, and added to the concoction a tablespoon of pork lard. Yes, now all the indispensable ingredients for making ciccimmaritati were present, and she could proceed to cooking. She glanced at her aunt for her approval, then grabbed a cookpot.
After all, Rosa decided, Nelide deserved a chance. She was a reliable young woman.
And there wasn’t time to come up with any other solutions.