Tartufo

by Kira Jane Buxton

“People have figured out how to grow the black truffle—the precious black—a bit unreliably. The white truffle is secretive and very tricky to grow. Isn’t that beautiful? Nature has all the power. The day they tame the white truffle will be a dark day. The white truffle will become commonplace. And we will once again be suffocating on our self-admiration while we mourn the enchantment of mystery.” “Truffles seem a bit scary to me.” “Some people focus on the dark side of truffles, the competition, jealousy, the thieving, dark deeds. But the truffles themselves don’t do this. They are a gift offered to the world with no expectation of reward, only hope. The truffle is the good example with which the fungi show us how to live. Grounded, rooted, they exemplify the power of community and vibrant connection. Truffles are all about trust. Trust that starts at the beginning between fungi and the oak, beechnut, or chestnut tree. Trust between the dog and his human. Trust between a middleman and a hunter over money. Trust all along a complex web of relationships as it journeys from the dirt to a plate. Trust that is popped into the mouth and swallowed. Maybe that is why so many souls go wild for these tubers. Truffles are the taste of trust.”

Tell me the truth. What is going on, Farfallina?” “Nothing.” Nonna looks at Vittoria. “I know you will tell me what is weighing on you whenever you are ready. But whatever it is, it is going to be okay. Your nonna says so.”

Nature has all the power. It is what her nonna said about the truffles. It is true for the mountains too.

We plant hope in seeds. And we are gifted for our faith with a good garden.”

Time is terrifying because, much like nature, it is a power too great.

The rules of child logic may not read rationally, but once established, they are ironclad.

Should she have let it out of her sight? she wonders. It is as though she had left a baby locked up alone in secret. Even from a distance she is tethered to the thing, the unbearable burden a cold metal around her wrists. Handcuffed to a fortune of fungus.

Delizia wants to ask Tommaso what on earth he is wearing, but the words won’t escape her clenched jaw. She stares at Tommaso in his homemade head-to-toe suit, lumpy and bulbous. “I spent all night making it, in my medium of choice—papier-mâché.” His voice is muffled because his head is mostly obscured by a beige lump of dried newspaper and glue. “He has come dressed as a testicle!” complains Duccio. Twins Valentina and Rosa arrive, their arms full of an old doll collection. “Are you supposed to be a testicle?” they chant. The small amount of Tommaso’s exposed face burns bright red at the medically insensitive accusation. “I’m obviously a truffle!” “You are obviously an imbecile!” shouts Duccio.

But the scorching summers are changing the nature of his oil, and it threatens to drive the mayor to madness. Worry gnaws at him from the inside out. The heat is causing some of his fruit to fall prematurely from the trees.

nostrils—“I will need your promise. You must never tell a soul about where I keep my oil. And once I show you, you must never come back to it. Where I hide my legacy must always remain secret.”

Bawdy puffs of cheese and semen and socks and wet grass and garlic and musk and madness and despair and dreams hit his nostrils.

It is not long before he realizes he has been followed. It is his anger, still wrapped around his throat. Being back in the church after so many years—those sanctimonious smells, a robe of guilt wrapped around him as a young boy—has brought back feelings of inadequacy. Belittlement by his father. Abandonment by his mother. Shame for being born to love the best person he ever met.

surely the closest sartorial relative to the wedding dress is the straitjacket.

“Mi hai rotto i coglioni!”

“I wish the wedding were somewhere else.” Sofia hands her a tissue. The farmer’s wife looks out at stone farmhouses stitched into a green quilt of hills. “Mayor Benigno does not deserve such a lovely daughter. You must put him out of your mind. Everyone in Lazzarini Boscarino loves you. We are proud of our Delizia, who is about to marry the most wonderful man.” Delizia smiles at the thought of Lorenzo. Love foams through her, lemon bright. Sofia hands her another tissue. “I know you want to run away from this village, and you will. Your life is just starting. Everything ahead of you. The whole world just waiting.” Sofia loses herself in the middle distance. Suppressed dreams dance behind her eyes. “But today, be here in your village. Enjoy the moments. Take in how much everyone loves you, because the moments fly fast and will be gone before you know it. Now, what do you think? Shall we get you to Lorenzo?”

She is exhausted with the hunt for a key to unlock him.

He is the home she thought she’d never have. One look at those smiling eyes and she feels the delicious swell of her heart. Her future lies before her, an illegible forest. But she found gold in this village. She and Lorenzo will build a beautiful life away from here, and one day, she will come back and show them that she is a success.

A wedding night filled with music and laughter under whispers of bat wings and a spectacle of stars.

in the Tuscan hills just outside the village of Lazzarini Boscarino, a tawny tapestry of wheat fields rolling from the horizon. The foothills have settled into the quiet sepia colors of an old photograph. Chestnuts, mushrooms, and grapes ripen wordlessly all around. Birdsong visible in the air. The old farmer drags rough fingers down the length of his great white beard. He speaks the language of this land. Morning mist lifting from the backs of his horses is subtle poetry. Cypress trees flank his house, propped-up quills awaiting an artist. Chickens confetti the garden, while three Jack Russell terriers digest breakfast on the paved courtyard. All is quiet save the gentle grunting of pigs in their pen, the clanging of goat bells, and the song a creek sings, mountain spring water purring over stone.

But he is a man built for pulling a plow with a tractor, for pushing large-boned livestock and hauling grain bins. He is not equipped to wade through the waters of grief. To herd human emotion.

He can barely breathe over all the things that aren’t being said. Everyone is in his house, slipping on the sadness. Awkwardness saddled to their backs. What to say in the face of a tragedy? Tongues are tied, everyone tiptoeing on eggshells.

She is holding the village together with her heart, loving everyone out loud.

The truffle hunter spends several minutes prodding the hazelnut chocolates and cheese platter he carried here among a field of flowers on the kitchen table, all while thwarting Fagiolo’s multiple attempts at grand theft pecorino.

Finally, he thinks. Normalcy. Life, messy and ungainly and real as the dirt, grit, and guts of a farm. He can breathe the air of his close cucina again. Everyone in the room has been so afraid to say the wrong thing, they’ve said nothing at all. The silence was suffocating him. Leon doesn’t want to be treated like an ornament. He wants the mess and mud of everyday life.

With grief there are no perfect words waiting to be plucked from the sky, just a sea of sad feelings, everyone bobbing in the same boat.

“Good tomato,” she stutters. Her Italian is very poor. “I’ve just been on the phone with my genitals.” A pause. “Do you mean your parents?” “Yes.” “I speak English, so let’s stick to it, shall we? And good tomato to you too, Marilyn.”

“You are so young to give yourself to someone. Let Italy hold your heart for a while. First you will fall in love with life, and in time, with yourself. Live your life for you first.”

Between you and me, that boy has lived many lives, and he is terrifying in all of them.”

She reaches under her desk, then places a mysterious object swaddled in thick velvet cloth onto the desk. Whipping off the violet cloth with a flourish, she unveils a crystal ball. Giuseppina is mesmerized. “The velvet cloth—to shroud its powers?” “No”—Mamma Fortuna points to the light streaming in through her windows—“the ball keeps setting fire to my curtains.” Giuseppina notes that the curtains are indeed singed to half their length, black at their bases.

The future is not fixed. It flutters and shivers and morphs with your every thought and action, dancing ahead of you like a hologram. The insight I share is to empower you and summon your success. The power to evolve and sculpt your future all lies within you.”

You must go fast, Giuseppina. Get back to the village. Be prepared for the battle with the ghost. Stop the one who will seek vengeance. Drive that Lamborghini like a stallion with an unbroken spirit.”

He thought he was immune to the tantra of Tuber magnatum Pico. But he carries a secret—he is inextricably tied to this truffle. It grabbed him by the nostrils and never let go. He can’t stop smelling it at an impossible distance, worrying about where in that castle it sits right now. Pulling that monstrous white whale from the soil resuscitated him like some holistic miracle drug. An oasis in a sea of sadness. Its powerful pheromones awoke something in him. It has brought him back his Paolo with a clarity he’d lost to the numbing agent of grief. Because of that truffle, he has begun to feel again.

he was more suited to haute couture than horticulture.

Giovanni’s heart swells thinking of the designer shoes and the ridiculous hats Paolo would wear to water the tree. It is easy to make martyrs from memories. But Paolo was perfect as he was. A loud chewer, afraid of all bugs, and a terrifying driver. So gloriously, messily, gorgeously human.

Delizia looks into Nonna’s blueing eyes. This is who the truffle will save. Absurd that an edible spore might be able to give her back her home, a thing that no one human has been able to do.

“Quando scorregiarci, possiamo pregare.” His New York colleagues are dazzled by David’s commitment to learning la bella lingua. Delizia stares at him. She believes he meant to say, “When we are discouraged, we can pray.” Only he has not used scoraggiati, the word for discouraged, and has instead boldly proclaimed, “When we fart, we can pray.”

Six pounds, fourteen ounces of hulking beige matter. An unearthed treasure. A colossal secret freed from the soil. Looking for all the world like a mummified organ. It dwarfs the apples around it, there to show its size. Hideous in juxtaposition with all the beauty glorifying the castle but holding every ounce of power. A grotesque wart to be worshipped. Deafening applause. The global media are on their feet. Even those in the screens standing. The smell of the god hits hard. Waves of pheromones dilate every pupil in the great hall. Gamey, damp forest funk. A musk that summons saliva to pool in mouths. Everyone thirsty for its erotic exclusivity. The hall tight with unspeakable longing. Hearts thumping. Parting of lips. Nipples stabbing through silk. Penises stiffening against Armani trousers.

He scoops up a swiping Al Pacino and rushes her to the front castle entrance. Shoos her down the steps. “Get out of here, filthy cat! No!” Al Pacino hisses. She aims a green-eyed death glare at the human. Outrage! Insubordination! No? Who dares tell a cat no! She has never once been denied in such a way. It is an affront to her feline pride. She glares at the man who threw her out, a man who smells like desperation and the little turds in the bowl she tried to bury. Enraged, she turns her backside toward Rico Valentino and waddles away, contrails of contempt lifting from her tail. A feline scorned.

“Admit it, Duccio, you are trying to sabotage the auction!” “I’ve been honest all along about not wanting the auction to happen! But all I’ve done is speak sense to a reporter or two. I’m not out for murder, ma dai! I hate this parade, this superficial delusion of what our village is, of what Italy is! A fever dream of Armani, Ferrari, and Aperol, when, in reality, none of us can afford those things. We struggle and suffocate under a corrupt parliament and politics, sky-high taxation, population implosion, unemployment and poverty, and I’m tired of the poetic lie that we are solely a land of art and cuisine and culture. We are more complex than a villa-with-a-view-and-a-pool holiday! The truffle is who we are—not sitting on a velvet pillow in a castle, but a force of nature finding its way out of the dirt.”

“I hid the mail because…” Silence falls across the torture chamber like first snow. Duccio the disgraced postman has never spoken about his motive for hoarding three years of mail. Towering piles of mostly unopened letters he selected and stuffed into his shed. Their discovery that led to his arrest.

“Fine. The real reason I hid the mail is because I wasn’t getting paid enough. Stupid, certo. But it was invigorating to make the reckless choices of a younger man. Hiding it became a habit. You know why I hate that truffle? Because I worked hard for a lifetime and made peanuts. And here comes this hideous stumbled-upon tumor that will fetch a fortune. How is it fair?” A sigh. “But… what I did was wrong, and I know I’ve never apologized, and… I’m sorry for keeping your mail from you. It was wrong.”

Rino Ricco is staring at Elyse Zhang as though there is no one else in the castle. No magnates, no world media, celebrities, or world-class chefs. He tears his eyes from her to take in the truffle one last time. The fungal crown jewel puppeteering some of the most powerful humans on earth. He smiles at Elyse Zhang—a white flag of a smile. Later, there will be op-eds, articles, poems, and memes—oh so many memes—made of the way he looks at her. He sees a paralyzing force of nature. Her magnetism strong enough to collapse a star. The moons of her eyes commanding the tides and tethering him to earth.

“Sold!” bellows Giacomo Volterra, “For three million euros—a world record for the largest white truffle ever found.” The applause is riotous.

The driver yells out. Driving straight toward the cat. This cat has gumption, this cat has a grudge, hissing and holding its ground. A Vespa’s high-pitched whine as it roars down the driveway, veering a sharp left to avoid the pregnant cat. A scream as the Vespa spills, throwing the driver. Black leather and helmet, body of the driver rolling into a series of fast tumbles across the gravel. A dull smash. Vespa on its side. Wheels spinning. Vespa driver face down. Unmoving. And a once-giant truffle shattered into pieces all across the ground.

“Vittoria, you are alright, you are alright.” Vittoria looks up at her with red eyes. “It’s all my fault the truffle is ruined—I—stole Ugo’s Vespa from Nonna’s shed, I was driving it when I shouldn’t have been—I was selling things to make money for Nonna’s house—and yesterday I parked the Vespa in Borghese and someone stole it—”

“My darling, Farfallina. You must not worry about that. Fears don’t prevent death, they prevent life. My love for you is so strong that I will always be with you. And that’s a thing that will never, ever change.”

And just a few yards from it all, a pregnant black-and-white cat watches. She feels better about the disrespectful banishment from the castle she suffered when all she’d wanted was a little lick of the truffle. Get out of here, filthy cat! Puah. Vengeance is delicious. It’s cream and catnip and a warm sunspot. She slowly saunters away. For there is other mayhem to make.

Almost twenty-two years of their beloved Maurizio, a donkey that stole the heart of every human he has ever met.

Ludovica hands her a tissue. “Is this my stepmother come to tell me I’m a failure?” “A failure? You’ve only just got the job and you’ve already given the village so much. Your father would be very proud. And it might not mean anything to you, but I am very proud. I’ve known you most of your life, and you have never, ever been a failure.”

“This village meant the world to your father, even if he wasn’t very good at being its mayor. I found out what he did with the money.” “What?” “Bad investments, some gambling. Tried to double it and lost it all. He was reckless. And a fool.”