Tartufo

by Kira Jane Buxton

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The wisest souls say that pure mountain air makes us all go a little mad.

Hurtling toward chestnut trees spaced like the pews of a great duomo. The wind now weaves between golden leaves. Whispering quick consonants between the branches, borrowing an autumnal aura. Sweet sighs of ripe chestnuts and shed leaves. And here—where the wind steals woodland scents—hides a curiosity. Cloistered by soil, moss, stone, and leaf litter, a thing unseen—a thing quite mysterious—lies in waiting. A thing that sits buried, like old bones.

Aria pushes her head into Leon’s hand to comfort him. She knows she is very good at comforting those who need her. And she always knows who needs comforting.

A bowl of jellied cat food, partially licked by the mischievous ginger tom who was already full from hunting mice all night but just didn’t want any other cat to enjoy it.

Her tail takes on a life of its own, thumping terra-cotta. The breath of the tiny god is here. An earthy burp, a miasma of cheese and funky sweat. A sweet fizz of fermented fruit. A message. This breath of new life sets her heart racing. A rush of passion strong as gunpowder.

Bar Celebrità—a bold name for a place that has never actually hosted a celebrity. It sits tucked behind a lonely piazza where umbrellas sing longingly of gelato in loud colors. Daffodil-yellow chairs ring rickety tables. The bar itself is nestled inside a rustic limestone building. Emerald-green shutters and potted planters. Charming vintage doors. Plaster flaking like good pastry. A bar whose stone walls glitter under the sun. Whose quaint lanterns cast it in a golden glow under the stars.

A cat—best described as a cross between a crumpled tuxedo and a well-used toilet wand—sits vigilant. Seven unplanned litters of kittens have tested her patience and her personality, so that she has matured into the kind of cat that will take a crap on the carpet before she takes crap from anyone else. The kind of cat who knows where the sensitive skin of an ankle is and how it can fell a full-grown man. The kind of cat who instills bewilderment into the heart of a mastiff. The kind of cat who is sitting next to a wine barrel holding a WELCOME! sign outside the last bar of a doomed medieval village. Ready to unleash hell upon any tourist who dares to smuggle an exposed ankle in through its door. For what is a tourist, truly, but an invader with blinding white crew socks and a selfie stick?

The smell of longing is sharper than the long-gone lemons of summer. A horrible yearning hangs in this bar. That and Giuseppina’s perfume, which could deflea even the most verminous of felines.

her bosom spilling over its surface like two jellyfish in a battle for hegemony.

Duccio Berardinelli, somber and sporting a thin silver ponytail. He is a wet weekend of a man and the village’s disgraced postman. Some say Duccio has not smiled in seventy years, but most certainly not after his scandal.

Padre Francesco is a plump man of God, blessed with biblical black eyebrows like two Pekingese guarding the temples of his bald head.

Giuseppina flaps dismissively at Padre with arms so tanned she could camouflage against the coffee grounds with which she has carpeted Bar Celebrità. This particular tan was born at the Versilia seaside at the end of summer, where she faced the ocean eating a bowl of cacciucco

She manages Bar Celebrità. Took over for owner Lorenzo as he and his beloved wife traveled all over Italy for her career in veterinary medicine. And now he has returned under the saddest of circumstances. Giuseppina stepped in because she loves this village. She grew up here. Met a Boscarini man and married him at the little church. Had her daughter, Elisabetta, and raised her in this beautiful medieval village where a sunset turns the stone walls pink.

Giuseppina yanks down her singlet and bra to flash a busload of wide-eyed tourists, her answer to holding up a save us sign from the desolate island of Lazzarini Boscarino. She tosses her head and harrumphs. One might argue that she has given them an alternate vista of the Apennines.

Her husband had assured Giuseppina the kitten was a pedigreed purebred (though which breed, he never said). He said the cat would grow to be a magnificent tom. Under these false pretenses, cinephile Giuseppina named the kitten Al Pacino. But the odd cluster of fur grew less into a tomcat than a female cat who identified as a dog. Her name stuck despite an evidential number of feline pregnancies. Disburdening a little misplaced maternal instinct, Giuseppina overindulged the cat, who became accustomed to being spoiled and one might say was ultimately spoiled. And who could blame the little cat who had no firm hand to guide her while she held her own among all the village hunting dogs? Who took her guard duties so seriously she developed both stress-induced alopecia and dermatitis. Al Pacino does the best she can under the circumstances, valiantly tackling the terrorism of tourists while generously spreading her spawn over all of Tuscany in an army of cats often mistaken for weasels.

Lorenzo falls silent. Giuseppina sees storm clouds gather behind his eyes. She did not want to mention the autumn music festival of Borghese, the neighboring village. A village with waves of tourists crashing against its shores year-round, a veritable tsunami of them in the summer. A village heralded for its colorful pastel buildings, castles, upscale eateries, and rich history of culture, music, and art. And a music festival that siphons glorious guests from all over the world. Not to mention their professional bartenders who don’t give away drinks, eat all the chocolate, and expose themselves to busloads of tourists. But Borghese’s Festival Del’Arte and its flagrant success is more of an affront to some. For Lorenzo Micucci, it is personal. Giuseppina hates to see his hopes crushed. He does not need this stress. Lately, he is looking more and more like the last asparagus spear of the season. It matters to Giuseppina. She cares about this man far more than about her husband.

“She told me that the fortunes of our village are about to change.”

mezzaluna

what did the psychic say?” “She told me that we have a very special visitor coming to the village. She said that then, there would be a death. And then our village would come into untold riches.”

The original source of the revolting glass he just sipped from. He takes a sip and then adds a splash to his sauce, finding it to be delicious. Why did the wine in the glass smell like dead ants? he wonders. Mamma mia! For Lorenzo, this is further confirmation that, cosmically, nothing makes sense anymore. He has been reading about chaos theory and the butterfly effect, and the more he reads, the more it seems feasible to him that every insect of the Amazon rainforest is bending a leg, licking its own eyeballs, or eating its spouse to set off an endless string of catastrophes that, one after another, sabotage his life.

Desperation has the scent of dying lilies. Dying lilies for a dying village.

Giuseppina gasps, clutching imaginary pearls. “My coffee is the fuel of this village! The elixir of life! It is why everyone here lives into their late nineties!” “Yes, it’s essentially formaldehyde; you are preserving them all. Taxidermy works in much the same way.”

Between them—a bright citrusy burst of hope.

Giuseppina’s hands find her hips. Her lips find the monologue she prepared for occasions like these. “No, we are not Borghese, but we are a very beautiful medieval village. Filled with the most passionate and generous people in all of Tuscany, and if you give us a chance, we will lift your spirits and you will leave a piece of your heart here in Lazzarini Boscarino; and even if you leave, we will treasure it always.”

“Youth! Beautiful youth! This is what this village needs—a little passion, young love! A little life!” Duccio shouts to the tourists over the milk frothing. “Keep an eye out, she might try to drink your blood.” “Thanks, a thousand thanks,” says the tourist, not having understood a word of what was just said.

Giovanni, Leon, and Duccio give them a nod of respect. These kids have developed intestinal fortitude on their travels.

“Ah, you are vegetarians!” roars Giuseppina. “How ridiculous! No wonder you are so skinny. I bet when you have sex, it’s like sticks rubbing together—you could catch fire!”

Giuseppina is devastated. All she wants is what they have in Borghese—beautiful people from every beautiful place she could only ever dream of, sharing good food, wine, words.

Smells of the old ristorante rise up to torture her. Animalic leather of empty seats. Splatters of grease from years of dishes served with love and laughter. Melancholic musk from long-closed curtains. Perhaps even the pungent perfume of dead dreams.

They are here. As the first female mayor, she cannot afford to show weakness. She hurls her soiled shoe out of the window with great fortitude.

I would like to implement a spay-and-neuter program—” “Barbaric!” yells Duccio. “All of them will die little virgins. Why deprive them of the greatest pleasure of life? Even our village cats deserve to make love!”

Delizia is a veterinarian. Or at least, she was, having graduated from veterinary school at the University of Pisa, worked at several veterinary practices across northern Italy over the years, running away before ever laying roots in any one place. Anchoring roots leaves you vulnerable to blight, to pests. Better to pack your bags after being passed over time and time again for promotion to partner by the men running these veterinary practices and the rest of the world. Each time, holding herself together until she got home to Lorenzo and shattered into pieces. She takes a deep breath and thinks of Lorenzo. A wonderful man who unburdens her of old hurts. He diffuses kindness, generous as a great oak tree to those around him. Her husband wants her to take her time here, to heal in the village, but oh, did she protest when he called it her home.

“What will you do with all these cat balls?” “We don’t keep the testicles as trophies, Benedetto.” Duccio growls. “Cat balls now and then who will be next? Stefano, Benedetto, Lorenzo, Padre Francesco? Castrate all the males of the village, why don’t you?” Valentina leans toward Duccio, earrings like wrecking balls. “At least it would be an easy job in your case, since they are dragging along the ground behind you.” This earns her an uncoordinated high five from her twin. “Like two chestnuts in a wet sock,” adds her sister.

And a quiet calamity occurs. A truth pops up in front of her, as if plucked from a patch of soil. She is realizing, standing here in front of matching cardigans and a wheelchair hosting bright-yellow trousers and even Duccio’s bitter aperitivo of a scowl, that she is in love with these humans. Twins Valentina and Rosa, who braided her hair and bought her gelato every summer she spent here, a lost little slip of a thing. Stefano, who has traded the wheels of an automobile for those of a chair, who used to ferry her around in his Fiat Panda. Even disgraced Duccio, when he was trusted to be the village postman and he would bring her cherished horse magazines on his postal rounds, going out of his way and adding an extra hour to his route so that she had something to read and a break from pretending Nonna Amara’s tree-planting shovel was a stallion. Benedetto, the gentle grocer, a green bean of a man who turned a blind eye to her rebellious phase, teenage fingers foxily plucking contraband from his shelves like fat figs. She thinks of Giuseppina, who brought her tiny floral dresses, danced with her in the piazza on warm summer nights, fireflies strobing across the hillside like fairies. Giuseppina, who channeled the most ferocious of Leon’s guard geese when Delizia—younger, wilder—met that oily man at the village. When young Delizia had attempted to inoculate herself with shots of vodka, and that man—a sly-eyed stoat who smelled of cherry tobacco and trout—had tried to take he...

Tuscan towns and villages scooped out to mere shells. No souls, and therefore, no soul.

It’s as she’s always seen it: the cruelest people have the comfort of money and the good-hearted have none.

We must evolve and be like… Borghese.” Silence swills around the room like good wine in a glass. Borghese is not often mentioned in the village of Lazzarini Boscarino, akin to whispering the name of a fascist dictator or a villainous Venetian ghost who might be summoned by his name. It is especially not expected to be mentioned by Delizia, whose dear husband Lorenzo has a very personal reason to never want the name Borghese to be uttered again. For Lorenzo, the word Borghese means betrayal.

“‘Come to our beautiful medieval village and bring home a cat!” adds Rosa. “No one wants these cats; they are all insane and inbred. It is the mountain air. Makes everyone a little crazy,” Duccio grumbles.

Delizia feels a warmth watching the villagers brainstorm. Or maybe that is just what it feels like when your heart is breaking, when you feel hopeless. A great crack in your chest, an egg spilling hot yolk over your lungs.

Grief is a sea. At times placid, still, and gray as glass. And others, squalling and savage. The chaos of a muscular undertow and wicked winds. Delizia finds herself bobbing in a boat on that sea of grief. At the will of the waves.

And late one night, in the dark and dank—she found his ledgers. Breathless, she discovered the truth. The sums of money applied for and allocated to the village for the government are missing. Five hundred thousand euros approved of and received, and not a euro accounted for. All the additional personal donations and saving by the villagers, funds for Nonna Amara, the village sign, to fix its road and buildings, any chance at reopening the ristorante. All the money to save Lazzarini Boscarino, missing. What did he do with the money?

The crypt smells like decay, like a haunting. An oppression of olive oil bottles encircling her. Her father loved the olive oil more than he ever loved her.

The donkey might well have been the better choice, she thinks. She couldn’t even shepherd Glis glis, never mind the entire village. How has she just allowed herself to lie, to cover for her estranged father? She should not still be hunting his approval.

He has little life experience but enough to know that every moment is his best one yet.

Chiudi il becco! Vai a quel paese!”

Wise Aria waits in the trunk. She lifts her nose to Giovanni. Rising from the skin of her person is a volatile scent. The chili-and-vinegar tang of his fury has fermented into a sulfuric miasma. Frustration is as sharp on her nose as the galvanic brew of an incoming storm, the kind of smell that calls on a crack of thunder. She reads the puckered lines above the gentle gray eyes of her owner. A tightness in the brow tells Aria that her person needs calming.

When a dog chooses to love a human, it is a timeless affair of the soul and spirit, a meeting far beyond the mortal body. An eternal entanglement is this mingling of the souls. A loyalty beyond language and all of life’s earthly matter.

Truth be told, the bond between Giovanni and Aria is the truest treasure either of them has ever found. Aria decided long ago that her own happiness is dependent on Giovanni. To see him chafed and bristling like this is a torment. A torture her earnest brown eyes and sideways smile of a tail are eager to fix.

An inhale invites the autumnal grubbiness of the woods, that damp, rich brew. Mineral and microbe spin gold below the soil, where the mortal dance with dead things. These woods smell to him like so many old books, libraries made of leaves. Perhaps what pleases Giovanni most is all the untamed energy rippling around him. A bright, living language, the never-ending painting and poetry of nature.