The Bottom of Your Heart by Maurizio de Giovanni, Antony Shugaar Page A

own, now there was a new problem on the horizon.
    Her own state of health.
    Rosa had no fear of dying. She was a pragmatic person, a farmer’s daughter, raised in a sunbaked, hostile land. She knew that death was part of life, that in fact it’s as necessary as the seasons; it comes so that the new can take the place of the old. But could anyone really take Rosa’s place?
    Nelide hesitated as she ran her rough hand over the formica counter, so smooth in comparison with the coarse wood to which she was accustomed. Rosa appreciated that mistrust in the presence of such a highly unnatural material, and she was pleased when she saw that her niece immediately found her footing and returned to the gestures of that ancient ritual, arranging the ingredients on the table: dark durum wheat, corn, fava beans, grass peas, round white scarlet runner beans,
tabaccuogni
beans, small and brown, chickpeas and
mimiccola
beans, and finally lentils. Each heaped in a separate pile, to make sure the quantities were correct. A bowl held the
janga
chestnuts, previously dried and peeled, which would serve to give the soup its sweetness, an essential function.
    Nelide worked neatly and methodically. She might perhaps have moved a little faster, but that would have been at the expense of precision; speed would come in time. After all, the girl was just seventeen, though at first glance you’d say she was anywhere between sixteen and thirty. A solid, healthy Cilento woman, from Rosa’s point of view.
    Ricciardi’s elderly governess had eleven brothers and sisters, and more than seventy nieces and nephews. And though every one of her siblings had baptized one of their daughters Rosa—in honor of the one sister who hadn’t produced children, and who had always helped out by sending small sums of cash, gifts her young master permitted with a disinterested smile—when the time came the niece that Rosa picked was Nelide, the third-born child of the seventh-youngest sibling, her brother Andrea.
    Alongside the small piles of beans and grains, the girl arrayed spices and condiments: garlic, olive oil, salt, the absolutely necessary
papaulo
—the fiery-hot dried chili pepper—as well as the tomato purée spooned out of the
buatta
, the metal can that stood, covered with a rag, on the highest shelf in the pantry. Now I want to see what you can do, thought Rosa from the chair pushed against the wall in which she sat, her fingers knit over her ample belly. Up till now, the girl had remained safely within the bounds of strict orthodoxy, but the time had come for a personal touch. Either you have it or you don’t.
    Nelide had been to the city other times to visit her aunt. Ever since she was a little girl she had proven to be much more similar to Rosa than were those female cousins who bore their aunt’s name. Almost as wide across as she was tall, extremely strong, she was stubborn, resolute, and taciturn, with a perennially scowling face; she was neither a model of attractiveness nor particularly good company. She could barely read and wrote only with great difficulty, though she did have an extraordinary, instinctive familiarity with numbers. To make up for whatever qualities she may have lacked, she possessed others that Rosa considered absolutely essential. She was loyal and obedient: when she took on a task she gave herself no peace until she had completed it. She was tireless, indifferent to the time of day, incapable of distraction. She was honest and hard on herself, clean and a homebody. Rosa had tested her, setting small traps every time Nelide visited, visits she encouraged using as an excuse events for which she would need the girl’s help. And meanwhile, she had introduced her niece in all the shops and the market stalls where she did her shopping. The young woman had proven herself alert, quick to learn, with a sharp, precise memory. Even Ricciardi had gotten used to having her around, and was