The Chef's Apprentice: A Novel (5 page)

The first time I noticed Francesca in the Rialto, I thought she
was alone. Then the crowd shifted and I saw her massive Mother Superior standing at the stall of a spice merchant, picking through a sack of peppercorns, her nose twitching like a rabbit’s, her face set and ready to do battle over the price. Francesca waited nearby, swinging her market basket and smiling at passersby. That sweet smile snagged me, held me, and wouldn’t let me go. She had all her teeth and they were white, so white, and her face was clean and sunstruck.

A dog, small and wiry, sniffed the hem of her robe, and she knelt down to pet it. I heard her cooing and the dog nuzzled into her arms. She glanced around to be sure Mother Superior wasn’t watching, then quickly took a sausage from her basket and fed it to the dog. He bolted it down greedily and then looked up at her with naked adoration. She laughed, and her laughter made me think of a field of wildflowers.

Francesca pulled a square of lace from her sleeve to wipe the sausage grease from her fingers, and I had the fleeting thought that I’d never before seen a nun with such a fine lace handkerchief. But that thought vanished with the sight of Mother Superior rising up behind her.

The older nun stood over her, shouting. “Don’t you know better than to touch a stray animal? I swear, you’re hopeless, girl. Hopeless.”

The light went out of Francesca’s face. She moved off behind the older woman but looked back at the little dog and rolled her eyes. She waved good-bye and her fingers moved like butterflies.

I was dumbstruck. Struck utterly dumb. I thought with a proper job I could rescue her from that oafish woman and the dreary life of a prisoner. I could marry her, buy her a dog, and take her to the New World.

Oh, but what a long,
long
time it would take to become a seasoned sailor. Judging by the sailors we saw in port, Marco and I would have to become men with gravelly voices, stubble on our
faces, and muscles bulging in our arms before we could secure a berth on a good ship. Then we’d need two, maybe three years of experience to undertake the perilous voyage to the New World. We had both noticed some light fuzz growing above our upper lips, a hint of definition in our gangly arms, and fine hair sprouting on our bodies, but malnourishment made us appear stringy and younger than we probably were. Once, in a despondent moment, Marco said, “You know, Cabbage-Head, we might be more than twenty years old before we get to the New World.”

“Marrone.”
I said, “Already half-dead.”

He glanced at the ragged denizens of the streets and added, “But there’s nothing to stay here for.”

“I guess not.”

“It’s something to live for.”

“I guess so.”

Our visions of the New World—which included Marco and Rufina, the triumphantly reunited twins, and me and Francesca, the euphoric lovers—kept us going through long days scavenging on the street and nights spent huddling in doorways. Now and then we tried to earn honest money, but by the time we eased the ache in our bellies, there was only enough daylight remaining to carry off a pail of flyblown offal for some butcher or sweep the wilted leavings out of a grocer’s stall. Sometimes they paid a few coppers, sometimes they paid nothing, and we could not escape our hand-to-mouth existence. We were dirty and gaunt and pitiable, nothing like the hearty seamen we saw climbing in the riggings of the best ships. Neither of us wanted to say it—that would give it power—but our dream became more improbable with each passing day.

One morning, we pilfered a dry, shriveled salami from a Spaniard’s sausage cart and sat in a church doorway to enjoy our feast. Meat always put us in an optimistic mood. Marco said, “You know, Cabbage-Head, we could stay in Venice and claim that reward.”

“The reward for the book?” I wiped greasy hands on my pants.

“Why not?”

“You turnip.” I gave him an elbow in the ribs. “We can’t even read.”

“
Boh
. We can keep our eyes and ears open better than anyone.” Marco leaned back in the doorway and crossed his ankles. “I could buy Rufina a new dress. Hey, I could buy her a house. It’s nice to think about, isn’t it?”

We’d been hearing talk about that book on every street corner. We heard merchants chatting about it with customers, servants gossiping in doorways, and prostitutes whispering in the dark. Once, we saw a naked man being escorted out of a gaming house, holding his private parts and begging to have his pants back. The man dragging him by the arm said, “We’ll soon have all your pants—and your home, too.”

“I’ll get your money,” the naked man whimpered.

“Ha!” His tormentor regarded him with contempt. “You’d have to claim the reward for that book to pay what you owe.”

The book’s legend had resurfaced when a Turkish seaman, in port only long enough to stir the pot, had bragged his way up and down the docks. We saw him one night outside a tavern, addressing a bunch of sailors and toughs. He was tall and swarthy, with a heavy mustache and wild black hair. His chest was bare, and he wore a wide leather belt to hold up his ballooning pants. “My ancestor brought it here,” said the Turk. “He was one of those who smuggled St. Mark’s bones into Venice from Alexandria.” He slapped his bare chest with a flat hand. ”
My
ancestor!” Then his voice turned wily. “The bones and the book were hidden in a shipment of pork. Pork, eh? The Muslims would never search that. The bones and the book came here together.”

As proof of his story, the Turk pointed to the Lion of Venice, a gilded and winged creature holding an open book over the doors of St. Mark’s Basilica, where the saint’s bones were interred. The Turkish sailor asked, “Why is the lion reading a book?” His eyes
bulged as he searched the crowd for an answer. He spread his arms wide and shouted, “It’s a clue, of course!”

After the Turk went back to sea, talk of the book made its inevitable way from the sailors’ bars to the shops of the Rialto. From the shopkeepers, the rumor jumped sideways to the servant class and slipped into the homes of the gentry via service doors. It climbed up back stairways and entered the drawing rooms of the aristocracy. Eventually, it fell at the feet of the doge, who immediately ordered St. Mark’s bones disinterred and the grave site searched.

No book was found, but given that no other city enjoyed more traffic with Byzantium than Venice, the doge and everyone else remained convinced that the legendary book must indeed be hidden somewhere in our Most Serene Republic. The doge offered a small fortune to anyone who brought it to him, and criers walked the streets ringing bells and announcing the lavish reward. Stories spread, and lusts grew.

For us, the lowest of the low, the book and the reward were topics for idle chatter. We didn’t know how to read and wouldn’t have known the scriptures from a grocer’s list. The book was an unlikely quest for Marco and me, especially because we were already well occupied with staying alive from one day to the next. Still, we amused ourselves with gossip about the book and musings about the New World. One evening, after a dinner of orange peels and fish tails, we sat with our naked feet dangling in a quiet canal and shared fantasies of our future lives as men of wealth.

Marco said, “After I get the reward money, I’ll buy a grand palazzo in the New World, and Rufina will be a respectable lady. My servants will dress her in silk gowns and me in red robes, like a senator. I’ll have a big stable of horses, and a cellar full of fine wine, and a pantry stuffed with more food than I can eat.”

I said, “When I get to the New World, I’ll send for a Nubian woman to sing to me. They sing well, you know. But she won’t be a servant. She’ll eat breakfast with Francesca and me and have her
own room. Someday, I’ll come back to Venice and give the Sisters of Charity a purse of gold to tell me who my parents are.”

Marco stiffened. “Parents?
Boh
. What a cabbage-head.”

“Well, I don’t mean your mother—”

“The whore.”

“But wouldn’t you like to find your father?”

“Why should I?” The anger in his eyes startled me. “My father cared nothing for me. Yours, too.”

“You’re right.” Marco’s sudden intensity frightened me. “I don’t care.”

“We don’t need parents.”

“Right.”

“We don’t need anyone.”

“I need you, Marco.” I blurted it and then held my breath. It was important to beware of that soft place inside. What if I had spoken too hastily?

Marco sat back and considered me, his long brown eyes calculating. “That’s true,” he said. “Tell you what, we’ll be brothers.”

Marrone
. I’d never imagined anything so extravagant as a brother.

Marco said, “
D’accordo
, spit in your hand.”

We both spat and shared a slippery handshake. Marco said, “I’m older, so that means you do what I say.
Bene?
”

I gazed up at my older brother.
“Bene.”

“Parents.
Boh
.”

“Boh.”

The canal blushed in the sunset, then deepened to lustrous black. We leaned back on our elbows and kicked lazy patterns in the water. I felt something akin to peace that night as I sat beside my big brother, but my contentment was disturbed by questions I dared not ask aloud: Had my mother comforted me and kissed my toes as I’d seen other mothers do with their babies? Had my father held me with the clumsy tenderness I’d seen in other fathers? Had
I been taken from them, or had they given me away? Had my birth caused my mother’s death, or was she alive and looking for me? Was my mother comely or ugly? Was my father charming or crude? Had they wanted a better life for me than they could give, or had they been superstitious people, frightened by the dark birthmark on my forehead?

The treacherous soft place inside me opened and deepened and would not close up. It worried me. If I wasn’t careful, if I let myself feel too much, I’d begin to feel the ache that was always lurking. I wasn’t as tough as Marco. I did care. I cared
molto
.

CHAPTER V
T
HE
B
OOK OF
H
EIRS

I
stood over Chef Ferrero as he sat at the floury table with his elbows in the dough, and I begged for an answer. “Why did the doge kill the peasant?” I held my hands in an attitude of prayer and rocked them under my chin. “Please, Maestro. What has begun?”

The chef sighed, then stood and brushed past me waving his wooden spoon, the scepter of his culinary monarchy. “Those are no concerns for a youngster.”

A youngster? My childhood ended with La Canterina’s death. Some would say I had a brief, unhappy childhood, but a happy childhood is overrated. I had a useful childhood. And now,
marrone
, now I had soft hair sprouting on my upper lip. I followed the chef around the kitchen, pestering him like a gnat. “Was the peasant a criminal? Was it an experiment? Was the amber fluid an antidote? A potion?”

Chef Ferrero threw up his hands. “
Madonna!
Luciano, have mercy.” His outburst silenced me. He straightened his toque and then, in a conciliatory tone, said, “How would you like a lesson in cooking?” He only meant to distract me, but the chef always did
things in the kindest manner. For an apprentice, a cooking lesson from the chef is a great opportunity.

An apprentice must earn the right to move up in the kitchen hierarchy, and I was not yet permitted to learn the tricks of the trade. The cooks turned their backs or sent me away when it came time to select the herbs for a stew or add the deciding splash of wine to a sauce. Those were well-kept secrets learned only after serving a proper apprenticeship and moving, station by station, up the ranks. In that kitchen, only drunken Giuseppe was lower than me because he was not on a path to better things.

I was willing, even eager, to work hard because I needed the stature and respectability of a tradesman to win Francesca. Also, I was grateful to the chef for taking me off the street; I didn’t want to disappoint him. Even the business of cooking was beginning to grow on me. The transformation of bloody flesh into toothsome dishes seemed an appealing skill. Plants yanked raw from the earth and turned into appetizing concoctions suggested a fascinating alchemy. I began to see that there was more to cooking than met the eye.

So I served my time. I stayed in the kitchen long after everyone else left, washing pots in a tub so large I had to stand on a stool and take care not to fall into the soapy water. I arranged the clean pots on a wooden rack and trudged back and forth, lugging pails of heated water to rinse them. After that I swept up vegetable peelings and spilled salt—all that careless Giuseppe had missed—cleared off work tables, swabbed chopping blocks, burned sugar and vinegar to dispel any lingering odors, and lastly, checked on the slow night-simmer of the stockpots. If the fire was too high, the stock might boil over, but if the fire went out, the stock would sour. I became very good at finding the perfect simmer and banking the fire to maintain it.

My most arduous chore was making sure there was no standing
water left in the kitchen overnight. One of the chef’s eccentricities was a horror of stale water; no one understood why, but it was one of his most stringently enforced rules. Every night I had to pull the plug at the bottom of the cistern and allow it to drain into a trough used only for watering the garden—never for drinking or cooking. The chef even insisted that I wipe the water buckets with clean rags after I emptied them and leave them to steam dry near the fire. All of this meant that I had to refill the cistern every morning. It seemed pointless, but it was a strict rule. By the time all my chores were finished, I was the last to fall into bed at night, and the first one back in the empty kitchen before dawn.

But a cooking lesson! I said, “
Grazie
, Maestro.” I bobbed my head with humble enthusiasm but, privately, I maintained the opinion that I could still wheedle out some information about the doge and the peasant. In those days I suffered from an inflated opinion of my own opinions.