Palm Sunday

April 14, 1957

“And don’t forget to throw the old olive branch into the river!”

             Giordano hopped on his bicycle, the olive branch clenched between his teeth. His stepmother! Whew, what a piece of work! All her silly superstitions, like setting a small fire in a corner of the room when it started to hail, as if that would somehow save “her” peach tree from harm! Now it was the olive branch that she kept over her bed to bring peace to their home. Fat chance! His half-brother was a perfect little prick and his father was only home long enough to eat or sleep and then he was off to work or down to the café to play cards. What good was some dried up old stick going to do them? 
          It sure as Hell was not going to bring them enough money to get him a new pair of long pants before the next school year. No, he would have to be satisfied with the worn-out pair of his father’s slacks that his stepmother had cut down to “zouave trousers” his size. Only, you could tell they were cut-down, hand-me-downs at five hundred paces, and the girls giggled about how his butt looked. “Oh, one day that’ll sit perfectly on a tractor as he ploughs his way down the sugar beet field.”

Giordano was tired of being under someone else’s rule. He was tired of living out in the country and taking the provincial bus into town to go to school. He was tired of his father’s pointless rages, his baby brother’s never ending questions, and his stepmother’s trying to do everything possible to make him happy. She was such a hypocrite; she wanted that olive branch but wasn’t about to take the time to pedal to the church herself and pick it up.

“But Giordano, I had to go to Mass yesterday evening if you want to eat today. You know, somebody has to do the cooking and washing up every time you lift your fork full of food. Now, be a good boy, and get me a nice big olive branch to hang over my bed. I don’t think it’s too much to ask in exchange for a steaming plate of gnocchi alla romana when you get back.”

She would never understand him. She wasn’t from their village, she wasn’t even from Romagna. She was a perfect Tuscan with her aspirated “c’s” and her hair piled up in a chignon morning, noon, and night. “Such a great lady!” That’s what everyone said. He still couldn’t imagine what it was she saw in his father, although it was bound to have something to do with that bed.

Yuck! Giordano shifted the olive branch from his mouth to the handlebar, clenching it between his fingers and the brake. Off against the horizon, rows of peach trees, their barren  upraised branches reaching for the sky in hieratic dance,  stretched out perpendicular to the road in lines so straight you could make out the banks of the river at the end of them. The Peaches of Romagna. Ahh, what a bunch of baloney. They were only more trouble than they were worth and the peaches went bad so quickly when they were ripe you couldn’t harvest the last ones because they would never make it to market. 
                             
             The road took a turn and rose slightly, onto a bridge that crossed the Bevano River. Giordano kept pedaling and then sat straight up, releasing the handlebars to cycle without his hands. What a feeling of balance and grace he experienced: cycling without holding the handlebars, moving the absolute center of gravity in your crotch to the left or right so you could check the equilibrium of the bicycle. Up he went over the bridge and saw the Church of Saint Apollinaire in Classe off in the distance. He hoped Rachele would be there; indeed, it was the only reason he had half-heartedly volunteered to go and get an olive branch for his stepmother.

Rachele was one year behind him in high school, and she lived in the small clump of houses behind the church. She was always pestering the priest, feeding his chickens or cycling into town for him to get the hosts from the cloistered nuns who would sit her down while they finished cutting out the white circles and give her the scraps to eat. Rachele had lost her mother too, and wanted nothing better than to marry as soon as possible and live in town, which is why she was always going back and forth from country to town. It seemed that she was a devout little thing, but Giordano knew better.

He had spied her one day, squatting in the bulrushes to pee. Her skirt was hiked up over her back, her undies were down around his knees, and he got a good look at everything from her shiny butt to the dark mass of hair between her legs that stood out like Garibaldi’s beard. Whew! Was she a nice piece of girl or was she a nice piece? He’d get his hands in her knickers one day, that was for sure!

It started to drizzle slightly and Giordano pulled his jacket closer around his small torso. Although extremely well proportioned, he was unfortunately on the runty side. He compensated for his diminutive stature by being a somewhat obvious know-it-all, which came to him quite naturally, since indeed he did generally know more than his classmates and on occasion, the teachers themselves. They all recognized that his was a superior intelligence and marveled at some of his piercing insights, which he seemed to grasp from the thin air above him. His teachers also knew that Giordano’s father put little store by his son’s education, and only wanted his son to start earning his keep as soon as possible. That would be Giordano’s main difficulty in the next three years. He was lucky his father had married that Tuscan lady; she was the person who would make sure Giordano went to university.

He crossed the railroad tracks and the dirt road led him past a couple of old farmhouses to the back of the church. The priest’s candid white chickens were scratching around the bright green, ankle high grass behind the ancient brick apse. The priest’s housekeeper Mafalda was hanging up the laundry out to dry. Giordano hoped that he would get by her today but that was not about to happen.

“Giordano! Oh Giordano! Come over here! Let me see you! You’re looking more and more like your mother every day. Although you’ve got your father’s good hair. How’ve you been?”

“Oh, not so bad.”

“How’re things going with Sgnôra Tosca? She really is quite a lady, you know. You’re lucky your father picked such a nice wife to have around.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. She’s always got a million things for me to do.”

“Like coming to get an olive branch on Palm Sunday? Now, Giordano, how difficult can that be? I mean, Sgnôra Tosca probably knows that Rachele will be coming to church about the same time, don’t you think?”

“Rachele? Rachele Foschi? Where is she?”

“Oh, I saw her go around the corner about five minutes ago. If you hurry, you might still find her in the church. But I wouldn’t dawdle.”

Giordano barely said good-bye before he peeled off on his bicycle, passing the twelve huge alabaster paned windows to the enormous façade of this, one of the most ancient churches in Christendom.

He propped his bicycle up against the spreading base of the bell tower and ran inside the porch where he took his cap off and pushed open the door to the church.

The interior of the church was not bright, though but it was filled with light and you could easily read a newspaper inside without having to light a candle. Far off in the distance, a grandiose wave of stone steps mounted regally to the altar, one horizon after another. Above it, a veritable sky of mosaics hung in the apse, a masterpiece of the surreal. Jesus’s face peered down from a jeweled cross that was floating in an oval firmament of turquoise with gold stars. To the sides, enormous bearded men’s torsos arose from pink and blue clouds, imploring the cross to do who knows what, hovering in its mandorla of sanctity. Below, an earthly paradise of well-clipped lawn with small stunted bushes and daintily drooping flowers and flitting doves formed the backdrop for twelve white and grey sheep in a procession towards a man standing there with outstretched arms just below the floating cross. The sheep then reappeared above the garden and the sky but below the heavens and ascended in an orderly file from the glittering walls of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, climbing a sacred mound above two elegant palm trees to a more heavenly paradise suspended over the hand of God. It was truly a dream of eternal peace.

Giordano was not however, looking at the apse. He was looking for Rachele. She would undoubtedly be lighting a candle to the Madonna, and that altar was off to the side, behind bars. As Giordano advanced, the church enveloped him in its gelid air. It had somehow enchambered all the coldness of the winter and kept it insulated from outside where spring was threatening to rain on the palms of Palm Sunday. Giordano stepped at the table to pick up an olive branch for his stepmother and then proceeded past enormous marble sarcophagi up to the altar where a young girl was praying to the Madonna. Yep. It was Rachele.

Giordano felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Well my son, have you come in a moment of peace?”

“Yes Father, my father’s wife wanted me to get an olive branch to put over her bed.”

“Well, you could have gotten a larger one. That one’s pretty small, and Signora Zavoli will definitely need as much help as she can get if she wants to keep peace in your father’s house. Here, take this one. It’s more likely to have a certain effect.”

Rachele had now turned around and saw the priest talking to Giordano. She crossed herself twice and quickly genuflected before she exited the chapel, keeping her eyes to the ground. Giordano pretended not to notice her but even the priest could feel the warmth between the two teenagers in the freezing air of the church.

“Well, I need to run along. You tell your stepmother I said hello and I will be around this week to bless the house and collect rags for the poor. “

“Yes, I will. Thank you Father.”

Giordano all but ran out of the church and bumped right into Rachele as he came out the door, almost knocking her over. She dropped her olive branches.

“Well, there you are Giordano. What a strange coincidence to bump into you here! Happy Palm Sunday!”

“Happy Palm Sunday to you, too.”

“I see you got a nice big olive branch. Fiat Pax!

I don’t know what Fiat has to do with the olive branch. They make cars don’t they?”

“No Giordano, it’s . . .

Rachele realized that Giordano was pulling her leg and she blushed and looked down at her bright patent leather shoes. Oh good heavens! She could see her underwear reflected in them. Blue and white polka dots. So she pulled her skirt tight around her knees and tried to keep Giordano’s eyes locked in hers.

“You’re just teasing me! You know very well what Fiat Pax means! Puer terribilis!”

“Puella pulcherrima!”

“You should know better than to use your Latin like that. But it is very flattering. Won’t you walk me back to my uncle’s house? It’s right behind the church, near the priest’s house.”

“Of course I will. We really should get together and study sometime. You could help me with mathematics and I could turn you into a Latin genius!”

“Oh, I’d like that very much, but I doubt my father would let me study with a boy alone, unless he came to my house. And I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon, do you?”

“You mean my father wouldn’t let me? He wouldn’t have to know, now would he? Unless you want to tell him.”

“Oh I can keep a secret.”

“Well then, why don’t we start on Tuesday after school? I don’t have soccer practice then, and your aunt should be home so we wouldn’t be alone.”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to ask, but I’ll let you know at school on Monday. How does that sound?”

“It sounds like worth waiting until tomorrow to find out. Is this where your uncle lives?”

“Yes, he lives over the café. He owns it you know, but he doesn’t work in it. He just rents it out. Business is never very good except with the hunters in the winter. And the two or three German tourists who come here once a day in the summer. But it is quiet. Well, Happy Palm Sunday!”

“Happy Palm Sunday to you, as well!”

Rachele turned the doorknob and walked into the house. Giordano caught a quick glimpse of her underwear reflected in her shiny patent leather shoes. Blue and white polka dots! You had to admit she was cheerful when it came to skivvies!

          The priest’s housekeeper had been watching the whole scene from the kitchen window where she was washing dishes. Poor Antavleva! Giordano’s mother had been such a sweet girl, so kind, demure, and anxious to please her husband, who was as good-looking as the devil and twice as harsh. Mafalda had seen a split lip on Antavleva more than once, and winced, looking the other way. 
          The way Antavleva died, just before the end of the war was so senselessly tragic. As the Canadians advanced and the Germans retreated, Antavleva had suddenly remembered the fine hemp bed linens that her grandmother embroidered for her and had been left in town. So she lit off from their house in Savio pedaling thirty miles on her bike to reach Forli’. The house had been intact, and she piled the linens into a bag and pedaled back to the country. Just about the time she reached Coccolia halfway home, a low flying German plane had wantonly strafed her and those damn pillowcases. She might have survived if it hadn‘t happened to be crossing the bridge over the Ronco: she, the bicycle, and her wedding trousseau toppled into the stream below. Although the bullets had wounded her, Antavleva actually drowned to death, trapped in her billowing white monogrammed sheets.

Giordano was hardly three years old. Antavleva’s husband, Giordano’s father Arturo had been out on a Partisan reconnaissance mission and did not come back for at least another week, so no one would go out and look for her. A farmer had seen a white mass floating in the water under the bridge the next day and went to investigate. He got a farmhand to help him haul Antavleva’s body out of the water, wrapped her up in the wet sheets and threw her across a donkey. He could find no documents or money so he took her to the closest house: the ruins of a villa that had belonged to the Donati Family before they gladly invited the Germans to use it as a base for field operations. When the Germans retreated and fled, they repaid the Donatis’ patriotic hospitality by setting off a bomb in the home’s dining room to remove any trace of their stay in the villa. The house and its famed collection of Oriental art had become charred remnants of Fascist refinement, while the rustic agrarian outbuildings had all remained intact.

The farmer knew where the Donati’s big bread oven was and pushed the body in there. He covered it with rubble from the courtyard so the animals wouldn’t get to it and then piled bricks and rocks over both its flue and its mouth.

The next time he went past the bombed out church, the farmer went up to the parish priest and told him what he had found, where he had found it and what he done with it. The priest in turn told the mayor of the little village of San Pietro In Vincoli what he had learned, and the mayor called the nearby towns of Ravenna and Forli’. Antavleva was hardly the only young woman to go missing, and she was fortunate enough not to have been taken forcibly. Arturo returned and found no wife, only the half-witted nurse who told him his wife she had gone to get sheets, that was all she could remember. Arturo went to the mayor’s office in Savio who had the police lists from Ravenna and Forli’. Arturo had asked Mafalda to help him locate the priest and the farmer and he went to the Donatis’ ruined farm.

With handkerchiefs over their noses, the farmer and the policeman dislodged bricks and the rubble and pulled the dirty grey bundle to the ground where they unwrapped it. Arturo saw Antavleva’s hand and wrist; they bore her wedding ring and the small gold bracelet made of laurel leaves he had given her when Giordano was born. He asked them to stop and told them her friend Mafalda could positively identify the body at the morgue. Arturo did not want to remember his wife as a corpse.

When they called Mafalda to the morgue, it had not been easy to identify Antavleva from her face, so she asked them to raise her arm and see if there was a scar under her left arm. Antavleva had not wanted her smallpox vaccination to be visible on her shoulder and had learned they could scratch the skin inside her upper arm. Sure enough, there was a scar. It was Antavleva.

Mafalda never heard from Arturo again. He never thanked her; he did not even come up to speak to her at the funeral. However, Mafalda remembered Giordano, remembered when he was born, and remembered going to visit to see him as a newborn. Antavleva had adored her child and her husband had seemed slightly jealous. Mafalda was a simple country girl much like Antavleva, and she could hardly expect someone like Counselor Zavoli to really pay her much mind.
However, the towns were small and information travelled quickly. Mafalda had found work, keeping house for the priest of Sant'Apollinare in Classe, which gave her an ideal vantage point for all the gossip between town and country. The city dwellers would come out for big weddings or even bigger funerals, since no church was as big as this one. The country folk came in to light candles and have their smaller weddings and funerals as well. Mafalda soon knew everyone, and knew what everyone wanted and what everyone was like.

She had been keeping her eye on Giordano ever since he lost his mother. She heard how his father left Giordano mainly to the care of the simple-minded nurse so he could go out and play cards and talk politics with his friends and enemies. Then Tosca had arrived. Tosca was a very refined, down-to-earth lady from the Tuscan hills where Arturo had met her during a political rally. She was educated and attractive and just about all a man could want. Arturo might not have been much of a father, but he was a talker and a looker and before you knew it, they had married and she had given birth to another little boy.

          During all of this, Giordano was a tiny boy who had been welcomed and participated fully in his “new” family. He had grown up believing that Tosca was his mother and Tristano was his full brother. Then Arturo told Giordano the whole truth one day, while Arturo whipped Giordano with his belt for knocking over a glass of red wine on a white tablecloth. Things were never the same after that. Over the years Giordano’s resentment became visible and palpable and though it was certainly unearned by Tosca, she bore the brunt of it as well. Tosca was mature, she knew what was going on, and that she would have to wait for his adolescence to pass. Then maybe, they could become a family again. She hardly thought that Arturo would change, and never entertained the thought of speaking with him about it.

Tosca stood up for Giordano. When his father decided to send him to agrarian school so he could be a farmer like his mother, Tosca put her foot down right in the middle of dinner literally standing up from her plate. “No. We are going to send him to the Classical Lyceum: he has the brains and the ambition. I swear to you Arturo, if you dare to enroll him at the Farmer’s School, I will enroll as well and you will have to find someone else to prepare your meals.”

Since Tosca had never opposed her husband and he really did not care, he merely grunted and told her it was all her business from now on. And he wanted another piece of roast.

Giordano could not bring himself to thank Tosca. Boys are like that, Tosca knew. Mafalda knew Giordano was doing well in school, too. She also knew that what a boy his age wanted more than anything else at this point in his life: a pair of long trousers that simply could not be cut out of the family budget.

          When Giordano had finished accompanying Rachele to her uncle’s house, Mafalda was out in the yard, slinging corn at the chickens. “Giordano!” she cried. “Come over here! I’ve got something for you.”

Giordano peddled over in a slight daze, still warm and fuzzy from speaking to Rachele. Mafalda had disappeared inside the house and now she came out with a package wrapped in brown paper.

This whole event caught Rachele’s eye. She was sitting in the front window of her uncle’s apartment, nonchalantly flipping through a magazine in his library. She had been keeping her eye on Giordano as he cycled away.

“What is it, Mafalda?”

“Open it and you’ll see.

 Giordano’s jaw dropped when he saw the contents: a pair of dark blue serge trousers, cuffed and pleated, with black mother of pearl buttons on the fly.

“Are these trousers for me?”

“Well, they sure ain’t for the chickens. I’ve been holding onto them until you came around. I had to pull in the waist and shorten the legs a little bit, but I think they’ll fit. So why don’t you try them on?”

“Here in the middle of the road?”

“Well, I shouldn’t let you in the house, but if you walk around behind the chicken coop, no one will see you. Go on! You don’t think I’m interested in what your skinny little fanny looks like, do you? Go ahead! I want to see how they fit.”

While the chickens clucked, Giordano shed his zouave trousers and pulled on the blue serge, full length pair of trousers. They were even lined with silk from waist to knee. He buttoned up the fly, put his shoes back on and walked around the corner to where Mafalda was hanging up the priest’s socks under the eaves.

“Well, I must say they make you look a good fourteen inches less like a little child. Come here!”

Mafalda grabbed his trousers by the waistband, stuck her index finger all the way in, and ran it around the front and back. Rachele was giggling behind the curtains in her uncle’s library.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to see if it needs to be taken in or let out any more.”

“They’re perfect, they’re perfect!”

Mafalda now grabbed the seam running right down his seat in the back, pulling at it to see how much room was in there. Rachele clapped her hands over her mouth lest they hear her across the road.

“Will you stop that!”

“Listen Giordano, I’ve got to see how it fits. Now stand still.”

“No no no no no no! They’re perfect and you’re making me look like a fool out here in the middle of the priests’ yard running your hands all over my butt. Now stop!”

Mafalda laughed. “Men! They all think we can’t wait to get our hands on them when all we’re doing is trying not to make them look foolish. Very well, if you don’t want me to finish them off for you, I am sure Signora Zavoli can do it. They need to be taken in a little bit in the seat; otherwise they’ll get baggy and wrinkled when you sit on them for more than an hour, and that’s just what you usually do in good trousers. Be sure and tell her to take them in. The waistline is fine, and the length is fine too. And by the way, I left the fabric in when I sewed up the cuffs up, so that next year, and the year after that too probably, you can just let the hems down, and you can still use them. “

“Thank you. You don’t know how much I wanted a pair of long trousers. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mafalda.”

“Oh no, I had a pretty good idea of how much you wanted them. Now go take them off and I’ll wrap them up for you. You don’t want to wear them and ride your bicycle because the cuffs’ll get caught in the chain. Now scat!” Mafalda gave him a vigorous slap on the hiney back toward the chicken coop. She followed.

“Oh no, I don’t want you looking at me!”

“I promise not to look; just hand me the trousers when you’re taken them off.”

Mafalda turned around and soon enough she saw Giordano’s hand with the trousers hanging from them. She took them and very carefully smoothed and folded them and placed them back in the brown paper. Then she found an old marketing basket that was falling apart and put them in there and stuck the bicycle’s handlebar through the handles of the basket.

“That should do you until you get home. That basket won’t carry much more than that and I don’t know if it will carry them that far, but at least they’ll be protected.”

“Thank you Mafalda. Thanks again.”

Mafalda smiled and Giordano smiled back. Mafalda could see his mother’s smile again, Antavleva's expression back when she was sixteen, working in the fields gathering grapes and singing. The church bell rang.

“Oh, don’t mention it. Antavleva would have loved to see you in them, but I suppose she is doing that from on high. Now, you scoot! It’s getting late and I know your father doesn’t want to wait for you so he can eat his gnocchi today!”

“Fiat Pax!”

“And Pax vobis. Tell your father I said hello.”

Giordano pedaled off as fast as he could. What an auspicious day! Rachele and long trousers!

          Rachele pulled the curtains closed lest anyone think she had been peeking out of them. Giordano! What an exciting boy he was! This would be a Palm Sunday to remember.

When Giordano got to the house, he realized he had not tossed the old olive branch into the river; it had probably fallen off his bicycle under the bell tower. Well, he just would not tell his stepmother. He had the new branch and that was what was important. He walked in the door and for the first time in months, he was actually glad to be home. He smelled the sweet gnocchi from the kitchen and actually smiled at his brother. His stepmother came into the room and started to make a big fuss over the olive branch.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you! What a lovely, large branch! Well, I suppose you’ve earned your favorite dish: gnocchi alla romana!” With that, she gave him a big kiss. “Now what’s in the basket? Not sweets I hope; we still have a week of Lent to go.”

“No, no; nothing like that. Mafalda gave me these.”

As Giordano unwrapped the package, his father walked into the room, smoking a stubby Tuscan cigar. He looked at the pants and said: “What? Long trousers! From a woman!”

“Arturo, Mafalda might as well be his aunt, she and Giordano’s mother were so close. That was awfully sweet of her to make you a pair of trousers.”

“But she said to be sure to tell you they need to be altered. I think the seat needs to come in a little bit so they don’t wrinkle and bag up when I’m sitting down.”

Arturo had snatched the trousers from Giordano and held them up to fell length. Inside the waistband, he noticed a label that said “Gabriele Foschi.” Arturo exploded into shouts.

“Taken in at the seat, I’ll take you in at the seat” and gave Giordano a hard swift kick in the ass. It knocked Giordano over and his brother scampered to get out of the way.

“Arturo!”

“Shut up Tosca! That little hussy who pretends to be the priest’s scullery maid has given this little turd here a pair of charity trousers, clothing that was once worn by our beloved regional hero, the craven Fascist Gabriele Foschi who just happens to live right behind the church! Do you think I’m going to let my son parade around town and countryside in his old trousers? You’ve got another thing coming.” With the veins pulsing blue on his temples, he grabbed pants by the fly and violently ripped the blue serge trousers in two.

Giordano lunged to stop his father whose reflexes were quick, and with the back of his hand, Arturo slapped Giordano so hard that he flew back across the room onto the couch.

“Arturo! Stop this right now! Apart from everything else, this is Sunday, this is Palm Sunday!”

“I don’t give a damn what day it is!”

“If you keep talking like that, I will walk right out the door and walk to church and pray for peace in this household.”

“Go ahead! Just leave!”

Tosca was pulling on her scarf and her coat and got her pocket book to go out the door, when Arturo said: “But not until you put lunch on the table.”

“Lunch! Put it on the table yourself!

Arturo raised his hand to slap Tosca who slowly put both arms down at her sides and said in calm, even voice: “If you strike me, I will pack my bags, Arturo, and our children’s bags and take the next train to Arezzo. You can do a lot of things, but you cannot keep house for yourself. That’s probably more important to you than my dignity, so make up your mind.”

Arturo dropped his hand, gritted his teeth and Tosca turned to open the door.

“Fine, Tosca, go ahead and pray. I'll tell you what. We don't need you anyway. I’ll take the boys to the bordello for lunch! No one ever complains there.”

Without turning around or missing a beat, Tosca replied: “And will your mother, or your sister, be on duty there this afternoon? Or both of them?” She walked out the door

Arturo roared. Tosca pulled the door behind her, and quietly closed it. Arturo ran into the kitchen, gulped down a big glass of red wine and stormed back into the living room.

“You boys stay here, both of you. I’ll be back and we’ll have lunch. All together.”

Giordano was at the mirror looking at the large red hand mark on his cheek while his brother pretended to play with his toy cars. Arturo put his hat and coat on and stalked out the door. Giordano then went to get his torn trousers. They were hopelessly ripped across the seat. There was no way they could be repaired. They were only good for rags now. He cried. He hated his life. He threw himself face down on the sofa and agonized for ten minutes.

          The door opened. Arturo and Tosca entered together. Tosca was smiling gently and Arturo was glowering. As she took off her coat, she asked Tristano to go to the bathroom and wash his hands before lunch. As soon as Tristano left, Tosca turned to Giordano.

“You have a choice. I can either cut down a pair of your father’s good trousers and I will make you a pair of long trousers out of them or we can see about getting a pair of readymade, long trousers. If we have to buy them, and we really don’t have much money Giordano, you will come to church with me every Saturday for the next three months. If we cut down a pair of your father’s trousers, he will come to church with me every Saturday for the next three months. Your father agrees with this. The only thing that I really want from both of you, is peace in our home. I don’t care about the trousers or going to church. So, why don’t we let you think about this and you can tell us what you’ve decided after our dinner? This decision is yours, Giordano and yours alone.”

Giordano could hardly believe his ears. This woman really had balls. For the first time, he admitted to himself that he admired her, and he realized that she was on nobody’s side but her own. That side had only one concern: having a family.

Giordano looked at his father, who was seething with wounded pride, he could tell that. Giordano looked at Tosca and saw that not only she was far from acting victorious, and she was also far from happy about the situation. For the first time Giordano saw Tosca for what she was. She was just a tired woman who had been trying to have a nice Sunday meal with her family, none of whom had done anything to help her.

“I’ve already got my answer.”

“Let me guess you little runny-nosed, lazy bum; you’d put up with Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the Eternal Father Himself just for a pair of new trousers,” his father sneered.

“No, that’s not my choice. I want Tosca to decide for me.”

This took everyone aback. Even Giordano did not think he had actually said it; it was if some divine voice had come down out of the clouds of the heavens and taken possession of his tongue. Once he said it though, he knew it was the right answer. Tosca bent over and picked up the olive branch, which had fallen to the carpet during the altercation, patted Giordano on the shoulder, and turned to her husband. She handed him the olive branch and walked back to the kitchen. Arturo walked into the dining room and placed the olive branch in the middle of the light that hung down low over the table.

The four of them ate in silence that Palm Sunday; no one really wanted to talk. There was no love left between Giordano and his father, nor had there been much for years. Giordano ended up courting and eventually marrying Gabriele Foschi’s niece, Rachele, so there would be no love between the men in the future. But from that day on, Arturo and Giordano at least lived in peace, for Tosca’s sake.