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 oval porcelain portrait of a pretty woman with large dark eyes and dark hair. The other is a blurred snapshot he found at the back of Nonno Mario’s bedroom cupboard and now keeps in the drawer of his own bedside table. A woman sunning herself under a tree and looking only a little like the face on the tombstone.
Nor does Nonno Mario talk about his father. Pistola knows nothing about him and doesn’t ever think about him.
He grabs the pastry wheel and runs it gently up Teresa’s bare beautiful arm. ‘I want to have some of your zucca.’
‘Funny kid!’ she says. ‘What goes on in that head?’
‘I was always the only boy in Campino without a mother or father,’ he says. ‘I don’t even know how to think about my parents.’
‘Does Nonno Mario never tell you about them?’ She frowns. ‘Why are men so peculiar?’
He shrugs. ‘I don’t even know why she died.’
‘I once heard my parents say it was some kind of work your mother was doing in Brescia in the war and there was an air raid.’
‘And my father?’
‘No. They never mention him.’
He doesn’t want to think about it. It will make him sad.
‘Tomorrow, Teresina, please?’
‘Tomorrow you’re pressing the grapes. I’ll do it after the wedding. When we get back from Venice.’
Venice? Where does that testa di cazzo get the money to take her on honeymoon in Venice? He feels sick.
‘Will you be happy married?’ he blurts out. ‘Will you leave Campino?
Her smile looks slightly irritated.
‘What’s wrong, you silly boy? Why are you carrying on like—’
In answer he grabs her and pulls her towards him, aware again of how delicious she smells. As she stares at him, puzzled, her lips parted slightly, he can’t resist bending down to kiss them. It’s a light touch of lips to tender lips. Yet it sends what feels like an electric spark pulsating through his body. As he tries to kiss her again, harder,
