The Shoemaker's Wife Read Free Page A

“I’m sorry, Sister.”
    “Are you hungry too?”
    Eduardo shook his head that he wasn’t.
    “Did your mother tell you that you shouldn’t be any trouble?” Sister asked.
    He nodded that she had.
    Sister Teresa reached back into the metal bin and took a wedge of bread and buttered it. She gave it to Eduardo, who ate it hungrily.
    “My brother won’t ask for anything ,” Ciro explained. “Can he have an egg and cream with sugar too?” He turned to his brother. “You’ll like it.”
    Sister smiled and took a fresh egg, sugar, and some more cream and whipped it with a whisk. She gave it to Eduardo, who slowly sipped the egg cream, savoring every drop until the cup was empty.
    “Thank you, Sister,” Eduardo said.
    “We thought the convent would be horrible.” Ciro placed his own and Eduardo’s cup in the sink.
    “If you behave and say your prayers, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble.”
    Sister Domenica stood in the doorway of the kitchen with Caterina. Eduardo gasped when he saw them and quickly bowed to the old nun. Ciro couldn’t understand why his brother was afraid of everyone and everything. Couldn’t he see that Sister Domenica was harmless? With her starched coutil bib and black skirts, she resembled the black-and-white-checked globe made from Carrara marble that Mama used as a paperweight. Ciro wasn’t afraid of any nun, and besides this one was just an old lady with a wooden cross hanging from her waist like a giant key.
    “I have found two capable young men to help me in the kitchen,” Sister Teresa said.
    “Eduardo is going to help me in the office,” Sister Domenica said to Sister Teresa. “And Ciro will work in the chapel. I need a strong boy who can do heavy lifting.”
    “I need a strong boy who can make cheese.” Sister Teresa winked at Sister Domenica.
    “I can do both,” Ciro said proudly.
    Caterina put her hands on Ciro’s shoulders. “My boys will do whatever you need, Sister.”
    Just a few miles up the mountain, above Vilminore di Scalve, the village of Schilpario clung to the mountainside like a gray icicle. Even the dead were buried on a slope, in sepulchers protected by a high granite retaining wall covered in vines.
    There was no formal piazza or grand colonnade in Schilpario, no fountains or statuaries as in Vilminore di Scalve, just sturdy, plain alpine structures of wood and stucco that could endure the harsh winters. The stucco was painted in candy colors of lemon yellow, cherry red, and plum. The bright colors were set into the gray mountain like whimsical tiles.
    Schilpario was a mining town where rich veins of iron ore and barite were carved out of the earth and carted down to Milan for sale. Every job in the village was in service to the towns below, including the building and maintenance of the chutes that harnessed the rushing water of Stream Vò that was piped down the cliffs.
    The farms provided fresh meat for the butchers in the city. Every family had a smokehouse where sausage, salami, prosciutto, and sleeves of ham were cured. The mountain people were sustained through the long winters by the contents of their root cellars filled with bins of plentiful chestnuts, which carpeted the mountain paths like glassy brown stones. They also survived on eggs from their chicken coops, and milk and cream from their cows. They churned their own butter and made their own cheese, and what they could not sell, they ate.
    The mountain forests high above the village were loaded with porcini and other mushrooms of all kinds, as well as coveted truffles, gathered in late summer and sold at a premium to middlemen from France, who in turn sold them to the great chefs in the elegant cities of Europe. The family pig was used to locate the truffles growing in the ground. Even the smallest children were taught how to hunt for truffles from a very early age, combing the woods on their hands and knees, a linen sack tied loosely around their waists, searching for the fragrant