Gian-Luca stared about him in amazement and awe, he had never known before this moment how truly great Nonno was, but he saw now that Nonno distributed like God, and that what he distributed was good. From the ceiling were suspended innumerable coils of what looked like preserved intestines. They may possibly have been intestines at one time, but when Fabio sold them they had beautiful names: “Bondiola,” “Salsiccie,” “Salami di Milano,” in other words they were sausages. The sausages varied as much in figure as they did, presumably, in taste; there were short stumpy sausages; fat, bulging sausages; sly, thin sausages; anatomical sausages. There were regal sausages attired in silver paper, there were patriotic sausages in red, white and green, and endless little humble fellows hanging on a string, who looked rather self-conscious and shy.
And the pasta! There were plates of it, cases of it, drawers of it, and all the drawers had neat glass fronts. The glass-fronted drawers were entirely set apart for the aristocracy of pasta. One saw at a glance that social etiquette was very rigidly observed, each family of pasta kept strictly to itself, there were no newfangled ideas.
There were paste from Naples, marked: “Super Fine.”—Tagliatelle, Gnocchi, Zita, Mezzani, Bavettine, and the learned Alfabeto. There were paste from Bologna—cestini, farfalle tonde; and from Genoa, the conch-like decorative bicorni and the pious capelli di angelo. There were paste shaped like thimbles and others shaped like cushions and yet others like celestial bodies; there were rings and tubes and skeins and ribbons, all made of pasta; there were leaves and flowers and frills and ruchings, all made of pasta; there were yards of slim white paste that suggested vermifuge, and many leagues of common macaroni. The common macaroni had to fend as best it could—it lay about in heaps on the floor.
But not alone did Fabio deal in sausages and pasta, he dealt in many other things. Providing as he did a smell for every nose, he also provided a taste for every palate. Huge jars of plump, green olives, floating in turgid juices, stood ready to be fished for with the squat, round wooden spoons; a galaxy of cheeses, all approaching adolescence, rolled or sprawled or oozed about the counter. Tomatoes, in every form most alien to their nature, huddled in cans along a shelf; there were endless sauces, endless pickles, endless pots of mustard, endless bins of split and dried and powdered peas. There were also endless bottles containing ornate liquids—Menta, Arancio, Framboise, Grenadine, Limone—beautiful, gem-like liquids, that when a sunbeam touched them glowed with a kind of rapture—came alive. Chianti in straw petticoats, blinked through its thinnecked bottles, suspended from large hooks along the walls, while beneath it, in the shadowy bins, lurked yellow Orvieto, full-blooded, hot Barolo and the golden Tears of Christ. Apples, nutmegs, soups and jellies, herring-roes and tinned crustacea, rubbed shoulders with the honey of Bormio. A kind of garden this, a Garden of Eden, with a tree of life on whose long-suffering sides had been grafted all the strange stomachic lusts of modern Adam. And as God once walked conversing with His offspring in the garden, so now, the worthy Fabio moved among his customers; a mild-faced, placid Deity, himself grown plump with feeding—smelling of food and wine and perspiration.
In the little wooden cash-desk sat Teresa at her knitting, with a pen-holder stuck behind her ear. A black-browed, imperturbably austere, regenerate Eve, completely indifferent to apples. From time to time she laid aside her knitting, found her pen, and proceeded to make entries in the ledger. Gian-Luca, looking at her, felt that Nonno might be God, but that Nonna was the source from which he sprang. Nonna controlled a drawer from which flowed gold and silver; enormous wealth, the kind of wealth that no amount of saving could ever hope to find in money-boxes.
Gian-Luca had suspected the omnipotence of Nonna, and now his suspicions were confirmed. He knew, had always known, that Nonna must be worshipped, that moreover, she was worthy of his worship. For one thing she was beautiful, she had small, black, shining eyes, and hair that reminded him of coal. He often longed to rub his cheek against her glossy hair, only somehow that would not go with worship. He adored her bushy eyebrows—one eyebrow when she frowned—not unlike Nerone’s moustache—and the downy, dusky look just above her upper lip, and the tallness and the gauntness of her. He admired her long, brown fingers with their close-pared, oval nails, and her heavy ears that held the filigree gold earrings. He admired her blue felt slippers and her flannel dressing-gown, and most of all the queerness and the coldness that was Nonna in relation to Gian-Luca himself. It would be:
“Nonna, Nonna!”
“Yes, Gian-Luca, what is it?”
“See my horse! Look, I will make him run!”
And the horse would run, would gallop, on his little wooden wheels, but Nonna would go on with her knitting. Or:
“Nonna!”
“Yes, Gian-Luca?”
“I want to kiss your finger.”
“Do not be foolish, fingers are for work.”
“Then may I touch your earrings?”
“No.”
“Then may I see your knitting?”
“Gian-Luca—run upstairs and play with Rosa.”
She was conscientious, quiet and she never lost her temper; Nerone had large rages, even Fabio had small rages, but Nonna very seldom raised her voice. And he loved her. With the strange perversity of childhood, he found her a creature meet for love. Her aloofness did but add to the ardor of his loving, to the wonder and fascination of her. From the room that had been Olga’s, he would often hear her footsteps passing and repassing on the landing; now surely she was coming—she was coming in at last; but she never came—Gian-Luca wondered why. It was Rosa
