April
18, 1984
Maundy
Thursday
Alfredo Covazzi cycled away from the church. Its
Baroque Bishops were swaying in the wind between flamboyant oriflammes of stone
in marble braziers balanced on the roof’s lintel. His wife and daughters were
inside, being administered the Eucharist by Polish priests. It was hard to get
Italians to commit to the priesthood these days, and a great black flock of
priests had swarmed down on Ravenna from Warsaw
Like many Romagnols, especially men, Alfredo
had very little use for the church; he had inherited a long-standing grudge
against Catholicism and especially priests. Alfredo ensured his family knew the
historical reasons for his stance, stories faithfully passed down from father
to son, while priests told their womenfolk that their sins and sacrifices could
be transformed into faith and they would indeed, be welcomed into the arms of
Paradise one day. Alfredo already thought his family was as happy as it could
reasonably be, but apparently his opinion did not hold the same weight a
parasite from Eastern Europe did.
Alfredo never tried to stop Teresa and the girls
from going to church. Better for them to have this set of myths and lies than
something far worse: ruthless self-interest in politics or money or drugs.
Better for them to eat a small round wafer and think that it had turned into
the body of Christ than shoot up a little heroin or try to arrange jobs for
their friends and family through myriad networks of dirty favors. Alfredo had
seen it all as an acolyte in the church and as a businessman, and he knew to
leave well enough alone. During the lengthy Mass this evening, there was time for
him to nip over to the Osteria for a couple of glasses of red wine.
He turned right after passing through the city’s
South Gate and headed straight for the Osteria I Mulnêr – the Miller’s Tavern.
Few people remembered the mill that had stood on the canal nearby that led to
the sea, but that was 1910. Mussolini had come along and filled in the
surrounding marshes and swamps, and the city’s canal system along with it. This
kept the mosquito population down and had prevented a great deal of malaria. Although
it put an end to the mill that no longer had water to turn the millstone, the
landfill did not put an end to the osteria, which was founded and run by
anarchists.
You might wonder how something worked that was run
by people who believed in anarchy. Well, it worked pretty well. Although the
osteria was actually a private “society,” a loosely organized club with
memberships and meetings, but anyone who wanted to buy or drink wine could come
into the osteria. There was a wooden box where you put what you thought you
should pay for the wine you drank. There was always a man there who filled the
carafes, but he was a volunteer and never touched the money. Indeed, no one
ever told him what to do: the customers asked him for wine and he gave it to
them.
It worked like a charm. When the wine started to get
low, two members took it upon themselves to go and pick up new demijohns. The
volunteers simply went to the little wooden box, took out what they thought was
needed for the wine and the gas, and then replaced what was left over if they
took out too much. If you were hungry, you could bring your own food to the
osteria and cook it yourself, even for twenty people, as long as you did the
cooking and cleaned up afterwards. The place was always busy but rarely full,
since the Osteria I Mulnêr was not a place to meet women or to cut a fine
figure. Instead, it was a refuge from the constraints of society at large, a
place to talk and play cards and have a little glass of wine. It was a Romagnol
farmer’s version of a men’s club, the kind without strippers.
Alfredo walked through its small foyer and right
into the main room, with its three long tables and six long benches. Old men in
groups of four were seated at the tables, playing cards. They were all wearing
hats and ancient but sturdy business jackets or suits. A boar’s head protruded
above the dark wainscoting between portraits of Che Guevara and Lenin. The
biggest item in the room after the tables was a carefully hand painted sign
that ran the whole length of the front wall. In black block letters someone had
written: “Behave and you will be respected.”
Alfredo saw several people that he knew but none of
them were really more than acquaintances. A housewife wearing a shawl up over
her head was there filling up her bottle to take home, so he waited before he
went over and asked for a quarter of a liter of wine. The hostler said:
“Your friend Italo is out back; you’ll never believe
what he’s doing.”
“Cooking, I suppose.”
“Well, that’d be no surprise, but he’s cooking . . .
piadina!”
“He hasn’t done that in years, now has he?”
“Nope, he always said it was women’s work, but he’s
out back flipping them on that terracotta plate. If you want some, you should
probably go out there now. Once it comes inside, it pretty much disappears.”
Piadina is the living bread of Romagna .
Made from an unleavened mixture of flour and water, it is rolled out into disks
as big and thick as a breakfast plate, and then it is cooked on an earthenware disk
placed over embers. When cooked, piadina turns golden yellow and crispy brown.
This primitive pizza is even depicted in Byzantine mosaics illustrating Old
Testament hospitality towards angels. It could easily substitute matzoth if it
were not for one fact: what holds the piadina together is lard of the finest
quality, the silky fat that builds up around a pig’s kidneys.
Alfredo picked up his carafe and two glasses and
went out the back door to find Italo standing with one hand on his hip and the
other holding a fork that he was using to nudge the piadina around the pan. He
had placed his earthenware plate on a small tripod over some burning embers on
the knee level fireplace.
“May you get a tumor, and soon Alfredo! What are you
doing here?”
“Oh, Teresa and the girls are at Mass and I told
them I would pick them up afterwards, so I have an hour to kill. What on earth
has ever possessed you to cook piadina? I thought you said it was women’s
work.”
Italo flipped the piadina over. It was toasted
golden brown on both sides, so he picked it up, broke it, and gave half to Alfredo.
“Here take this and eat it. You’ll understand why
I’m cooking it.”
Alfredo took a bite out of the piece of broken
piadina. Damn! It was the best piadina he had ever had.
“Porco Giuda
that’s good, Italo. In fact, that’s the best I have ever had. You should do
this more often.”
“That’s why I tell people it’s women’s work. If I
started to cook it regularly, I wouldn’t ever cook anything else, and I hardly
feel like setting up one of those little sarcophagus stands by the side of the
road.”
“Yes, but think of the money you’d make.”
“I don’t cook for the money: I cook because I enjoy
cooking and I definitely don’t want to spend all day flipping piadina. How
about something to drink? I can’t really go inside because I have to keep these
things moving while the embers are hot.”
Alfredo filled the glasses he had brought with wine
from the carafe.
“Here you go, drink this.”
They both uttered Santé as they clinked their
glasses and then took a big gulp of the Sangiovese. Gosh it was good too, and
perfect with the piadina. Alfredo pulled up a chair and chatted with Italo
while he cooked the piadina and cut it into wedges. Eventually Italo had cooked
a small breadbasket full of them, which Alfredo took into the main room. It was
emptied in about 90 seconds.
“Is that all there is?” one of the card players
asked.
“Well, we’ll see.” Alfredo walked back out the door
to see Italo scraping the earthenware disk before he put it back in its place
on the shelf.
“Vox populi: more piadina!”
“With my dick, I’ll make some more. That’s enough
for me. Aren’t you going to be late for Mass?”
“Oh Porca Eva!
Look at the time! I’ve got to run. Thanks for the piadina. It’s my turn next
time.”
“To cook piadina? You can’t hardly boil water.”
“Oh, I’ll think of something. That really was good.”
“Don’t you tell a soul, do you hear me?”
“Don’t believe in souls, anyway. See you around.”
As Alfredo walked out he dropped some money in the
box for his wine. Then he thought he would go ahead and get another quarter
liter for Italo, so he dropped a little more money in the box and asked the
hostler to draw a quarter liter for Italo when he came out of the kitchen.
Night had descended and Alfredo pedaled back to the
wildly over decorated church. The first congregants were coming out into the
night air and he picked out Teresa and Giovanna and Annamaria standing on a
corner of the porch, chatting with each other.
“Alfredo, here you are! Let’s go girls. I’m starving
but I don’t feel like cooking. Why don’t you take us out, honey?”
A young priest came up behind them. “Signora Teresa?
Can I with you minute to speak? This man, he husband is?”
Alfredo shook the priest’s hand and introduced
himself.
“And my name Tadeusz Kovalciz is. I to hope one day you will to Mass come.”
Alfredo had heard this several times too many. “You
are very kind to ask, but the church doesn’t want me.”
“Oh no, church open to everyone is.”
“Oh yes, except for card carrying Communists, now
isn’t it? Pius XII had no difficulty turning a blind eye to the Nazis murdering
women and children, but he lost no time in excommunicating Partisans like my
father, now did he?”
Teresa turned and shot Alfredo a fierce glance. She
had heard this before and usually kept her mouth shut. But this time . . .
Alfredo changed his demeanor when he saw the
startled look on Father Tadeusz’s face. “But I’m sure, you wouldn’t have a
problem with me, now would you? Why don’t you join us for a pizza? That long
Mass has worn Teresa out and I’m not very good at cooking. If we let the girls
cook for us, we’d only get thin broth made from old bouillon cubes. What do you
say?”
“Signore very kind is. But my brothers and me, we
always in evening together eat and now me they wait. So, I you thank, and I to
see you at Mass one day hope. Pope, I will not tell you host take.”
“Well, if you want to turn down a free pizza, I can
hardly insist.” Alfredo smiled broadly at the young man in black and turned to
escort his daughters down the steps while Teresa spoke with Father Tadeusz. As Alfredo
was discussing the merits of the three different pizzerias with Annamaria and
Giovanna, Teresa walked up behind them
“Alfredo, that was rude.”
“Since when is an invitation to dinner rude?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Saying that you’re
not welcome in the Church.”
“Well, I’m not, now am I? Nor was my father in his
coffin. The truth has a scratched face. But your little Polish priest seems to
be nice enough. What did he want?”
“Oh, he was asking me to read the scripture on
Easter morning. You will come to that, won’t you?”
Alfredo looked at his daughters and smiled. Father
Tadeusz walked up behind them.
“Pizza, still good your invitation is? I to come very
much like.”
“Of course it is, Tad. Okay girls, which pizzeria
shall we go to?”
They settled on Il Passatore, mainly because it was
quite close by for the priest, who needed to be back in the church before ten. Alfredo
struck up a candid conversation with Tadeusz about the living conditions in
Poland under the Soviets as the five of them walked in the dark. Tadeusz
reminded Alfredo of someone. When they sat down to order, Alfredo asked which
pizza Tadeusz wanted. Tadeusz had never eaten a pizza in Italy
“Oh, but that too much for me is. I not usually
whole pizza eat.”
“Well, then, why don’t you pick the one you want and
I’ll split it with you. I had a lot of piadina while everyone was in church.”
“Where were you Alfredo? I Mulnêr?” Teresa queried.
“Oh yes, and Italo was there. He said to tell you all
hello. Let’s get the special pizza; it has everything on it, what do you say?
And would you like some red wine?”
Tadeusz accepted and when the pizzas arrived, Alfredo
took the pizza and split it and slid the larger half onto Tadeusz’s plate.
“Here, eat some of this. You’ll like it, I’m sure.
And here’s a little wine. Drink up.”
Father Tadeusz had only been in Italy for two weeks
now, and like most Eastern Europeans he was picking up Italian easily, although
he had a great deal to learn about Italian culture and history. He knew nothing
about the political excommunications the Church had imposed on the Italian population and how Napoleon had swept through and liberated
Romagna from the nets stretched between
the Church and landowners. When Father Kovalciz asked in his syntactically
Latinate Italian, Alfredo explained the situations to him clearly, patiently,
and without resentment. The girls had heard it all before and so they started
talking with their mother about going shopping the next day.
“And finally, you’ll soon learn a new word: mangiaprete.”
“Mangiaprete? Eat priest? What does “eat
priest” mean?”
“An ‘Eat priest’ as you say, is someone who is
rabidly anti-clerical and would eat a priest alive in an argument.”
“But why? What we priests do, nothing bad is. We
people, poor and hungry, to help.”
“Well Tadeusz (Alfredo refused to call him
‘Father’), it seems to me that you personally would try to help people, but
that is not always the way it has been here in Italy
“So, Pope you loved and protected.”
“No, Pope us loathed and prostituted. Romagna didn’t use to be a wealthy region: we were all or
just about all of us, very poor farmers, descended from retired Roman
legionnaires and invading barbarians from the North. Since there was not much
the Pope could get from us in the way of taxes, he expropriated our land and
set up convents and monasteries.”
“So he did love and protect, he nuns and monks to
help you sent.”
“No, Tadeusz, he sent the younger sons and daughters
of the nobility here to live cloistered lives so the aristocracy’s money and
power could be concentrated on the eldest son and the most promising daughter.
This also bound the aristocracy’s allegiance to the pope. The nuns and monks
who lived here were spoiled rotten and unhappy to be in a convent or a
monastery, where they were literally held by the church for lifelong ransom.
Their families didn’t want them to be lords and ladies at home, so these
unhappy monks and nuns had to content themselves with being lords and ladies over
the farmers here, after the church had taken the farmers’ land. The monks and
nuns and the pope almost ate us alive.”
“But this is . . .”
“Oh, Tad, the church’s presence has done some good,
I will admit. See that plate of pasta they are bringing out?”
Heaped high on a white plate were rustic noodles steaming
under a tomato and mushroom sauce. Tadeusz’s mouth watered when he noticed them
and even though he was still hungry, he kept his proclivity to gluttony to
himself, although he did say: “Delicious. They delicious seem. And church? Did
nuns pasta cook?”
“Not exactly. Those big fat noodles are called
‘Strozzapreti’ and I’m sure you’ll enjoy them when someone serves them to you.”
Tadeusz’s eyes wandered back to the plate of pasta.
He would eat it right now but he did not want to betray his own personal, deadly
sin of gluttony so early in his relationship with his parishioners. These
Italians, they had no idea how well off they were when it just came to the food
they had waiting on their tables and going rancid in their stores. Tadeusz
really felt very lucky he had been sent here.
“’Strozzapreti’? I preti understand, is
priests, but what strozza means?”
Alfredo raised both fists above the table and
twisted them over his plate as if he were wringing out a dishcloth.
“Strozza” he said, “means to strangle!”
At this, Tadeusz burst into laughter, looking Alfredo
right in the eyes. Alfredo laughed back.
“But is impossible, is impossible, you strozzapreti
take, you priest strangling pasta wrap around priest’s neck, and noodles
break. You no can person with pasta strangle. Is impossible. Pasta break!”
Alfredo turned to Teresa and winked. Teresa smiled
back at him, and spoke to Tadeusz:
“Father, strangulation does not necessarily occur
from the outside of the neck. It can take place from the inside the throat,
can’t it? Well, this pasta is called strozzapreti because some people here think that if you feed them to a priest, and they
really are delicious, he’ll be so gluttonous when he starts to eat them that he
will put too much in his mouth and choke on them as they go down. You do see
they are a little bigger than the usual noodles, don’t you?”
Tadeusz gulped at this and a slight shiver ran
across his shoulders. He wasn’t sure he entirely understood.
“So we the church have to thank for this delicious
kind of pasta. Necessity the mother of invention is.” Alfredo took a long look
at Tadeusz. Tadeusz was unusually fresh and clean for a priest, and very
obviously well intentioned. Alfredo also saw Tad was a little taken aback.
“Now, I hope you don’t think any of us here want to
choke you. I imagine it can’t have been easy going into the priesthood in a
Communist country like Poland
Tadeusz looked Alfredo straight in the eye to
understand whom he had in front of him. There was something familiar about Alfredo,
there was an obvious goodness mixed with ironic shrewdness. He saw it in Alfredo’s
eyes and smiled.
“Signor Alfredo, you very kind are history to tell
me. Especially I strozzapreti story like. Now I know what I ask our cook,
Perpetua, to make Saturday, I very good joke on priest brothers play.”
* * * * * *
As Alfredo lay in bed later, reading the paper,
Teresa asked him from the bathroom: “Why did you fill poor Father Tadeusz’s
head with all those dead stories from the past? I mean . . .”
“Well Teresa, partly because he asked me, and partly
because he needs to know all about all of this since he’s going to live here.
And you can bet the next time he gets a chance, he’s going to order a big old
plate of steaming strozzapreti. He was dying to eat them, I could tell, until
you told him what strozzapreti meant. His idea of playing a trick on those
other black crows in the church shows his heart and his brain and his stomach
are all in the right places. He’s quite a pleasant young man. Molto
simpatico!”
“We all think so, too. So Alfredo, why don’t you
come to Mass on Sunday? It would mean so much to Giovanna and Annamaria.”
Alfredo lifted the covers as Teresa slid into bed.
He took her in his arms and whispered in her ear: “No. You know how much I hate
those droning voices and I certainly don’t believe in magic.”
“This is not magic. It’s my faith, and I wish you
wouldn’t criticize it.”
“Then, perhaps you shouldn’t criticize what I
believe: bald, tangible truth. And don’t finagle me into going to church, which
you know I hate. But why don’t you invite Tad to lunch with us on Easter? I’m
sure he’s never had cappelletti in broth. Or would you like to fix him
strozzapreti?”
“Alfredo, you’re too much sometimes. But I will
invite him. I think he’ll come too, because he obviously likes you, even if you
are a priest eater.”
“Priest eater? I just like to eat, period. I don’t
like to eat alone. You know what? Tad reminds me of Uncle Enzo.”
Back in the vast darkness of the church, Tadeusz was
saying his vesper prayers. He looked up and saw the somber opulence of this
church: a richly carved choir in inlaid wood, symmetrical side altars decorated
with paintings and almost every imaginable kind of capital and cornice. He had
served Mass three times today in the enormous apse of the poorly heated nave,
though he had not felt the cold. As he elevated the host, he glimpsed at his
congregation, not even half filling the church this evening, all of them
shivering in their overcoats. He thought of the Midnight Masses he attended in Warsaw
After his pizza and all the activities on this holy
day, Father Tadeusz was warm with the Holy Spirit. Alfredo’s history lesson had
not minimally disturbed or surprised Tadeusz, for Tad knew full well the Church
or any large organization with power did not always tell the whole truth. All
you had to do was look at the sumptuous architecture and money the church had
spent on art and furnishings. “The poor are always with us,” Jesus had said.
Tadeusz had seen that power, in whatever form men grasped it, was usually
employed to keep the poor as poor as possible and just this side of starvation.
He stood up and walked past a massive porphyry vase.
A small sign explained that it was said to have been at the wedding in Cana. It
was the amphora they had filled with drinking water which Jesus changed to
wine. Two feet tall and one foot in diameter, made of one piece of lavender rock,
it was probably heavier than most tombstones. Tadeusz thought it unlikely
anyone could use it as a pitcher or a ewer. He also doubted Jesus’s people in
social circle could ever have afforded such a luxurious, useless item.
Tadeusz knew it was not his place to decide what was
true and what was false for other people. In Poland under the regime, he
quickly learned that telling people what he thought was true never really got
him very far. The Poles simply liked to argue about things. Tadeusz knew there
was much more to be gained if he listened to people, rather than expound his own
ideas, which no one would ever entirely agree with. Tadeusz kept his truth to
himself and he cherished it.
Tad thought of Jesus almost two thousand years ago;
about this time of the night He would have been in the Garden speaking to his
Father and asking Him to take the cup away from Him, after He had dined with
His disciples in the Upper Room. “Do this in remembrance of me,” Jesus had
said.
Tad knew the bald truth. Jesus had dined with his
disciples, and since it was Jesus’s last meal, the food connected them one last
time, physically. By dividing and consuming the same wine and the same piece of
bread, Jesus and his disciples were all made of the same wine and same bread,
so they were in fact, all the same body. What was the purpose of making
communion so complicated? Raising the host and the moment of transubstantiation
was one of the greatest mysteries in the Church, but in his heart of hearts,
Tadeusz believed Communion was merely a symbol. He knew all the theologies of
differences between transformation and transubstantiation, but he also knew the
wine he drank during Mass did not turn into salty blood, much less Jesus’s salty
blood. Tad would never tell that to a congregant or a superior in the church,
because he realized his single voice of dissent was not worth raising. Martin
Luther had already done that and it had not helped the Church in the least.
Tad knew that most people didn’t listen to anyone
except themselves. People certainly didn’t really listen to him. Even when they
did, they almost always denied hard evidence. The major difference between
Communion and Communism were the two final letters. Both Communion and
Communism were based on the same concept: you share your food. They had the
same etymology: commūnis, for everybody. The fact that
Communists, or those who had sinned and not confessed could not take Communion
did not make sense to Tadeusz either. Jesus himself had offered to share bread
and wine to Judas, unquestionably the biggest sinner of them all. Who was
Tadeusz, or anyone else, to judge who should and shouldn’t take communion?
Tadeusz stood up and walked toward his cell in the
darkness. Communion. Tad achieved real communion every time he sat down with
someone at a table and shared his food. Tad had grasped his mission with
clarity in this first year out of the seminary when he had the time and space
to think for himself: repeat to the members of his congregation what the church
wanted them to hear and listen to his flock. His vocation was neither to
convert nor convince. His task was to help everyone around him, in spirit or in
body.
Father Tadeusz Kovalciz entered his cell, and he
switched on the light to illuminate a small wardrobe, a made-up bed, a cross,
and a framed picture of his father’s family at a picnic. There was a small line
of books on a shelf but it was just about impossible to read by the feeble
light of the 40-watt bulb, the sole source of illumination. As he undid his
collar and disrobed, he focused on the family picture on the night table. Under
the Communist regime, his father and mother had both very much used the Church
to voice their own dissent. Though they were freethinkers of severely limited
faith, they had great spirit, and they rejoiced when Woytyla was crowned Pope,
for they knew it was the beginning of the end of Communism in Poland. They had
both encouraged Tadeusz to take up the cloth since the church unquestionably
promoted the vanguard of thought in Poland. It was not only the safest way to
oppose the regime; the church was one of the more capacious repositories of
intelligence. His mother and father had reared Tadeusz to be a freethinker with
his own ideas and Tad chose to keep those ideas closed to his chest. Although
the authorities did not foster any warmth with the church, they were wise
enough not to try to crush it or the intellectual discourse it promoted. His
parents were very glad when they heard Tadeusz would be sent to Italy. His
mother had taken him aside just before he left.
“Tadeusz, I want you to do something for me when you
are in Italy.”
“Is it books? Or music?”
“I want you to send me a box full of old clothes,
rags.”
“Rags? We’ve got rags plenty here.”
“I want you to put something in the rags. Don’t even
bother to wash the rags. I want you to buy me as many tampons as you can. Take
them out of the boxes, hide them inside the rags, and mail the box to me. You
can put a piece of rancid cheese in the box too, so nobody will want to rummage
through it.”
Seven hundred tampons were going to be Tad’s first
purchase in Italy. He was nothing if not loyal. He knew exactly what his mother
would do with the tampons: keep a fistful for herself, give 100 to her sisters
and sisters-in-law, and sell the rest, one at a time.
Tadeusz sat down on his cot and picked up the
picture and looked at it carefully. Next to his mother was his Father’s younger
brother Marek, smiling and holding half a sandwich and a tankard of beer. When
Tadeusz looked closer, it came to him. Tadeusz put his finger over Uncle
Marek’s big mustache and looked at his eyes. Marek looked just like Alfredo;
they even had the same full head of raven black hair.
Tadeusz got into bed with his sweater and long
underwear and socks on. He pulled the sheet and thin woolen blanket over his
body and decided he would show Signora Covazzi the picture of his family. He
could feign ignorance about what tampons were, and explain to Signora Covazzi
his mother’s request. He knew she would buy them for him and help him mail the
box off. But he knew it was better for her not to really know who he was, or
what an iconoclast he was. He wasn't interested in people knowing him: he was
interested in knowing people and helping them from under the austere mantle of
his black soutane. Tadeusz turned out the light, rolled over, and fell asleep.
Father Tadeusz Kovalciz’s great humility,
pliability, and discretion were much appreciated by the proudly conservative
church hierarchy. The Romagnols he met thrived on his willingness to listen to
anyone who wanted to discuss God and man and Jesus and the Holy Spirit without
forcing Catholic theology on them. If people asked him a pointed question about
anything, he just repeated the dogma and carefully explained the Church’s
position on different subjects.
Father Kovalciz never asked people to follow them
or believe them. Instead, his readiness to socialize and pitch in a hand
whenever it was needed, ensured his popularity with everyone else, from the boy
scout troop he led, to the old ladies dressed in black who came to early
morning Mass every day and cyclically died year after year after year. After 21
years of service to the diocese, Father Tadeusz was ordained Monsignor on
Maundy Thursday. Alfredo called up to congratulate him and offer him dinner.
Tadeusz was supposed to dine alone with the archbishop
that evening. But Tadeusz knew the bishop didn’t want to miss the beginning of
the Wheel of Fortune, so Tad accepted both invitations. Tad was through with
the bishop by a quarter past eight and at a quarter to nine, in plainclothes
trousers and a sweater, he was cycling outside the gates of the city. He was of
course, still hungry.
After locking his bicycle to a no parking sign, he
walked through the small foyer and into the main room, with three long tables
and six long benches. Old men in groups of four were seated at the tables,
playing cards. They were all wearing hats and ancient but sturdy business
jackets or suits. A boar’s head protruded above the dark wainscoting between
portraits of Che Guevara and Lenin. The biggest item in the room after the
tables was a carefully hand painted sign that ran the whole length of the front
wall. In black block letters, someone had written: “Behave and you will be
respected.”
Father Kovalciz saw several people that he knew and
he smiled and waved at all of them. A housewife wearing a shawl was there
filling up her bottle to take home. Behind her stood Alfredo, wearing an apron.
“Monsignor!” Alfredo boomed.
Tadeusz’s glance shot darts at Alfredo and the room
fell dead silent, for about three seconds. Then everybody burst into laughter
and applause. Teresa and a few other women came out of the kitchen and walked
up to Tadeusz and he bent over to kiss their hands. Then Teresa turned to Alfredo
and inveighed: “Now you get back to the embers and finish cooking that piadina.
Nobody cooks it like you, Thank God (and Jesus and the Holy Spirit as well, and
why not, Holy Mary, Mother of God); Italo conferred his piadina legacy and recipe
on you before he left us.”
Alfredo shook Tad’s hand and asked leave of Monsignor Kovalciz despite the fact Alfredo
had never called him “Father.” Before turning to walk off and cook the
piadina, Alfredo gave himself the sign of the hammer and sickle, which ended
with a sort of chest-thumping mea culpa to indicate the head of the
hammer. The ladies sat down with Tadeusz and the hostler pulled them a liter of
red Sangiovese Superiore. Before Tad had a chance to stand up and retrieve it,
the hostler had put it on the table in front of them. “Tonight, we might should
hang a black cloth over Lenin’s eyes. He wouldn’t want to see us serving a
member of the church hiney-archy.”
“Oh Evaristo, I’m not worried about Lenin. Who I’m
worried about is Archbishop finding out,” said Monsignor Kovalciz.
“And just who in Hell, which according to some
people we know, is right here around you in the Mulnêr, who in Hell do you
think would bother to talk to him, except for the ladies? Then they would have
to tell the Bishop that they were here in this den of iniquity too. No one here
tonight is going to tell the Archbishop something that is none of his Goddamn,
oops, sorry Monsignor; I mean none of his fucking business.”
“And Monsignor,” Teresa added, “if he never got wind
of all those mysterious packages we sent your mother twenty years ago, he’ll
never find out you were here tonight. There are some things our bishop would
really rather not know. Or maybe he just pretends he doesn’t know them.”
Alfredo came through the door, bearing two baskets
filled with steaming piadina. He took a piece out, broke it in half, and said
to Tadeusz, “Take this and eat it. This is my legacy.”
Tadeusz smiled and took a bite out of the piadina.
He thought: “Godamn, oops, I mean fuck, this is good.”
Tadeusz filled the glasses and handed them to the
ladies and then to Alfredo and passed the carafe on down the table. “Take this
and drink it. This is my acquired heritage that I share with you all.”
“Well, I suppose,” said Alfredo, “since you are a
Monsignor now, we could make you an honorary Romagnol. You’ve put up with us
pretty well these past twenty years. I’ve got a special reason for making you
an honorary Romagnol, apart from the fact that we all admire the work you’ve
done for everybody, especially the way you keep your trap shut about religion
unless somebody asks you. I’ve just discovered something. Covazzi is not really
a Romagnol surname.”
“Oh Alfredo, everyone would still claim you as a
full blooded Romagnol even if you came from Urbino.”
“But that’s not where my people come from. Do you
know what the origin of Covazzi is? I just found out myself. It comes from
“Kovalciz” and that means somebody up the line migrated here from Poland, most
likely during the Napoleonic wars. I have the odd feeling that we are indeed of
one blood, Monsignor Kovalciz.”
Tadeusz thought of the picture of Uncle Marek.
Though Kovalciz was about as common a Polish surname as Casadei was a common Romagnol
surname, it seemed to Tadeusz entirely likely that he and Alfredo were indeed
distant cousins. Even if they weren’t cousins, this was an unproven truth
Tadeusz would gladly take the leap of faith to believe in.
“Alfredo, my brother.”
“Well, you can call me that now and I won’t get
upset. Let’s formally recognize the possible link by drinking a toast. Here,
here!” Alfredo pounded the table with his empty glass and everyone stared at
him with his arm around Ravenna’s latest, youngest, and first non Italian
Monsignor. They filled their glasses and waited.
“One blood, one brotherhood of men, united here
tonight for one reason!”
Teresa came through the door backwards, bearing an
enormous pot steaming with food. She placed it before Tadeusz who peered inside
and smiled. Tadeusz stood up to finish the toast.
“To bear witness to the original purpose of
strozzapreti!”
As the glasses clinked, the other ladies filed into
the room bearing plates and cutlery for everyone who happened to be in the
osteria that night. Teresa had spent the whole afternoon rolling out the
strozzapreti. The other three ladies had spent their afternoons slicing up
salami and raw vegetables to eat afterwards, and Alfredo had been there since
seven cooking piadina. Everyone knew that Tad or Tadeusz or Father Kovalciz or
the new Monsignor would insist on sharing his plate with anyone who had nothing
to eat. They wanted to make sure that everyone left the Osteria I Mulnêr with
full stomachs this particular evening and especially the Monsignor.
Tadeusz looked up from his plate and saw that
everyone in the osteria was talking and eating and drinking. He closed his eyes
for a split second to say a silent grace that no one noticed or heard:
“Oh Father, do not take this cup from me.”
Then he downed his glass, took a bite of the
strozzapreti and pretended, quite theatrically, to choke.
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