Bread and Murder in Aramezzo

Saturday-4

Stella’s knowledge of the Mafia was limited to installments of the Godfather playing in the background at parties. She’d sort of imagined the Mafia’s escapades as largely overdramatized or fictional. Perhaps a mistake.

Matteo retied his ponytail as he went on, “The Mafia. The morning of the shoot, the Mafia called the news station and warned they would detonate a bomb in the studio unless the station changed its coverage of some government thing or another. Antonio and Benedetta didn’t even make it onto the stage! The producers put them up in two rooms at the hotel across the street, saying maybe they could do it the next day. But of course, the next day, the news had to cover the bomb threat, so Antonio and Benedetta came home and that was that.”

“Oh, how tragic. They missed their chance.”

Domenica and Matteo exchanged glances. Domenica shook her head with a small smile as Matteo asked, “What do you mean?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean?” Stella said. “Their chance! They had this shot at glory and it disappeared!”

Domenica chuckled warmly to herself. Matteo shrugged and said, “That’s life, Stella. The world doesn’t owe us anything.”

Stella frowned in thought. Before coming to Aramezzo, she would have assumed the villagers to have a provincial, limited view of life. Like in the memes—grannies leaning out of windows, bragging about their handsome children, or arguing about whose side of the property line an apricot tree grew. Instead she discovered, time and again, the villagers’ rounded understanding of life. Like now, for instance. Stella practically heard a gear clicking into place as she realized how little the people of Aramezzo believed they were entitled to riches, literal or metaphorical. This one simple deviation from the American perspective allowed these small-town residents to be grateful in gentle moments and prosaic in challenging ones.

Every day, Stella’s interactions with her neighbors gave her fuel to rethink her assumptions. She wondered . . . was that unique to Aramezzo? Or was it simply living somewhere new that forced you to bend what you thought was straight, and flesh out unexplored parts of your understanding? Could this be why she liked her new friends? Domenica, whose travels had created a ground fertile for all manner of novel perceptions; and Matteo, so totally of Aramezzo he challenged her American opinions, but at the same time, so open, he left space for accepting her for who she was.

Yes, she’d worked in restaurant kitchens and so came into contact with people from around the world. But the focus had been solely on food. So she’d felt her knowledge and intuition about ingredients and processes growing, but hadn’t thought to wonder about herself.

She shook her head. She needed coffee if she was going to wrestle with deep thoughts before noon.

Stella rose again, ignoring the baleful glance Ravioli tossed over her shoulder. “Sounds like it’s time I further my culinary education.”

She said goodbye to Domenica, who wished her a happy day of reading, and Matteo, who added that he’d let her know if he heard more about the change of service to the bakery.

Stella nodded, distracted by her revelations, and stepped into the lightening morning air.

As Stella walked Aramezzo’s ring road to the alimentari, she remembered her last trip to the little grocery store. She’d stopped in to pick up olive oil and a packet of fresh mozzarella and ran into Antonio, buying prosciutto. It must have been Sunday, the bakery’s closed day. She remembered noticing how the red in Antonio’s hair and extravagant mustache gleamed, even in the low light of the shop.

Stella had been trying to decide if she should buy a bottle or a tin of oil when Antonio asked how she could have already run out of the supply she’d pressed from her trees. She told him she was trying to stretch her private supply—for sentimental reasons, since even with her refined palate she couldn’t detect a difference between the oil from her grove and what the frantoio took as payment from growers and combined to sell in local shops—and reminded him of how few olives she’d been able to harvest from her beleaguered trees.

He had laughed then, a booming laugh that filled the space, before saying, “That’s right. The bucket.” Stella had nodded. The bucket. Antonio had been behind her in the queue to have her olives pressed, and therefore been witness to her embarrassment as she stood in line with her single bucket of olives, while those around her pulled their three-wheeled trucks in, the beds groaning with teetering towers of crates. She’d tried not to notice more olives bouncing out of those trucks than she had filling her bucket. When she’d made a self-deprecating crack to Antonio about the American with the paltry haul, he’d launched into what a good year it was for olives and how next year was sure to be the same, and by then she’d have pruned the abandoned grove that came with her ancestral home and olives would be so plentiful they’d pull down the boughs like Christmas trees laden with ornaments.

The image had stalled her.

As Stella walked down the now familiar road that made up the lowest level of Aramezzo, which was constructed like a birthday cake with tunnels connecting the tiers, she remembered standing in the alimentari with Antonio that last time and thinking that she’d been wrong to think of him like a Muppet character. The man had depth.

Just as she’d stood, silent, her hand wrapped around a tin of olive oil, Antonio had asked her how to cook topinambur, what Italians called Jerusalem artichokes. His wife, he had added in an aside, had a cold and he wanted to make dinner for her. Stella had offered to cook for the both of them, but he’d shaken his head with a smile. “Baker’s hours mean I’m not home much,” he said. “Early to bed and early to rise. I like to dote on her when I can.”

Stella had smiled as the flavor profile of Jerusalem artichokes, the root of a kind of sunflower, flashed through her. Nutty, sweet . . . it would be lovely in risotto, especially with a few threads of saffron. Stella used to assume saffron came from some dusty country in Central Asia or the Middle East, but the villagers had been quick to educate her—saffron grew right here in Umbria, and even Marta with her sheep farm grew enough to sell a bit at local markets.

Stella had walked Antonio through how to make a simple risotto with Jerusalem artichokes, not mentioning that part of the reason for her suggestion was her long-seated, probably very American, belief in the power of chicken broth. Risotto, with its long cooking in ladle after ladle of hot broth, would both soothe his wife’s symptoms and make her feel warm and cared for.

Antonio had taken a little pad of paper out of his pocket and borrowed a pen from Cristiana to write down the instructions in careful script while Cristiana’s father sliced the prosciutto. It had been one of those little Aramezzo moments that plucked a chord of tenderness Stella had never known to seek.

Almost at the alimentari now, Stella remembered the end of that conversation with Antonio, the last she’d had before seeing him so altered today. Cristiana had been ringing up his basket of prosciutto and Jerusalem artichokes and arborio rice for the risotto when he tossed in a roll of black licorice candies.

Smiling, Stella had said she didn’t peg him for a lover of black licorice and Cristiana had answered before he could, “They’re for Celeste. He always brings her a roll when he does the shopping.”

Antonio had shrugged. “They’re her favorite.”

Stella had offered, “It’s funny, I love anise flavors in drinks and desserts, but can’t stand the candies.”

He’d chuckled and patted her arm before stepping outside, whistling as he walked away.

Stella remembered that she’d almost stopped him to ask about getting a bread lesson right then. She baked a great sourdough loaf, even a worthy country loaf, but there was something about Antonio’s Umbrian bread that made her want to understand it better. She suspected it had something to do with his yeast, which she knew came from wild strains. When toasted in her fireplace and drizzled with olive oil then sprinkled with sea salt, the bread developed a crisp exterior yielding to a succulent interior that reminded her of a sourdough donut she’d had once at a bakery around NYU. She wasn’t a huge fan of Umbrian bread for ordinary uses, but for bruschetta, she’d never had better.

But he’d walked away before she could work up the courage, and anyway, she needed to get back with the olive oil if she was going to have dinner prepared in time for her guests. In the moment, she’d consoled herself with remembering how often she met Antonio walking to work, his daily fresh white apron tucked under his arm. There’d be plenty of chances to catch him.

Little had she known that what seemed like Antonio’s boundless cheer did, in fact, know bounds.

Stella pushed open the door of the alimentari, the bell over her head ringing merrily to announce her presence. Cristiana called out from behind the counter as she restocked the display case with tubs of marinated anchovies and red peppers sott’olio, soaking in olive oil, “Stella!”

Stella smiled as she took a red plastic basket from the stack by the door. “Ciao, Cristiana. Long time no see.”

“I was just telling Orietta about the scene at the forno this morning,” Cristiana said, gesturing to the pharmacist who had no groceries. She’d probably popped in for chat rather than food.

Orietta said, “I’d assume Cristiana was pulling my leg, no way Antonio would yell at anyone, but I’d already heard about it from Flavia.”

Softly, Cristiana said, “He was so mad. I’ve never . . . I never would have thought it of him.”

Orietta checked her phone. “Madonna mia, where is the morning going? I have to open up the pharmacy. I’ll see you later.”

Stella and Cristiana waved goodbye, and then Cristiana turned to Stella with a grin. “Torta al testo time?”

Stella nodded, “Torta al testo time.”

Cristiana’s face wreathed in smiles. “Finally! Mortadella or prosciutto?”

Stella c****d her head. Which went better with dry bread? “What do you suggest?”

Cristiana frowned in thought. “Mortadella. But only by a hair.”

“Mortadella for the win!”

As Cristiana laughed and opened the case to remove a log-size roll of mortadella onto the gleaming meat slicer, Stella reflected on the absurdities of language across time and space. Mortadella came from Bologna, and so when it arrived in America (losing the pistachios and spices that made it such a treat in Italy), it became known as bologna.

Stella watched as Cristiana cut a triangle from a round of flatbread and then sliced it open before heating it momentarily on a hot grate while she simultaneously sliced the mortadella. When the bread had toasted to her liking, Cristiana carefully piled on layers of the mortadella and topped the sandwich with the remaining triangle of bread. Wrapping the sandwich in a waxy napkin, Cristiana handed it to Stella, who put on her game face. “Looks great!” She hoped she sounded more convinced than she felt.

She bit into the sandwich, and the look of determination left her eyes. She chewed, stunned. The bread, it practically melted away on wings of mortadella. Unlike Umbrian bread, which lacked salt, the flatbread had enough salinity to bring out the yeasty tones of the dough, and the fat of the meat melded into the crumb of the bread for one resonant, triumphant chorus. “Wow.”