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Overview
Primo Verona is born with a gift of clairvoyance so strong that he is able to predict his own mother's death while still in her womb. Brought up on a rich diet of astronomy, philosophy, and storytelling, Primo accurately reads the futures of the local community who pay him in honey cake, tiramisu, and other delicacies. Pasquale Benvenuto is the owner of a beloved wine bar and delicatessen whose culinary reputation rests on recipes for the fruited breads and salamis his father taught him to make.
Together Primo and Pasquale form an easy friendship triangle with the beautiful Beatrice, Primo's wife and Pasquale's former girlfriend. But when Beatrice leaves her husband for her old love, Primo is devastated. He casts spells to spoil Pasquale's creations and to win back Beatrice -- but inadvertently conjures up an unexpected visitor.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780062031426 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 09/14/2010 |
| Sold by: | HARPERCOLLINS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Patricia Schonstein is the author of the novels The Apothecary's Daughter and Skyline, which won the Percy FitzPatrick Prize in 2002 and was long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She has a master's degree in creative writing from the University of Cape Town. Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Schonstein now lives in South Africa.
Read an Excerpt
A Time of Angels
A NovelBy Patricia Schonstein
HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2005 Patricia SchonsteinAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0060562439
Chapter One
When Primo Verona's wife, Beatrice, left him for Pasquale Benvenuto, their close friend who ran the delicatessen on the corner of Long and Bloem Streets, Primo cast a spell on Pasquale's shoes so that ever afterwards their laces would spring undone as he walked out of his front door. It was an easy enough spell to sidestep. Pasquale, unaware that it was magic he was dealing with, merely cursed the quality of modern laces and thereafter wore shoes that did not need them.
Primo also prepared two spells designed to harm Pasquale's reputation as the best baker and salami maker in Cape Town. One of these would bring sourness to his renowned salami, his salame Fiorentino in particular. The other was to impart the bitterness of aloes to his extraordinary fruited bread and so undermine his culinary confidence.
However, Primo did not activate the two damaging spells; he merely composed them and put them on hold. He withheld them because he was not a malicious magician and had no real wish to harm Pasquale Benvenuto. He wanted only to remind him, often, that Beatrice was a married woman and that she did not belong in another man's bed. This message Primo hoped the shoelaces would convey.
Creating the spells gave him a certain satisfaction, but the truth was, they did nothing to relieve the feelings of betrayal that he harboured in his heart, for he and Pasquale had been good friends for many years. He could not live without Beatrice and slid into a depression.
Pasqasquale Benvenuto made such delicious meals that he had driven many competing chefs to hang up their aprons and break wooden spoons in despair. (The suicide of the Montebello's sous-chef, Riaan Kotze, was attributed to the acrimonious and protracted legal battle fought between him and Pasquale over the origination and proprietorship of the recipe for polenta alla Madiba.)
For Pasquale, the preparation of food was not unlike the creation of a fresco or a painting. His kitchen was his canvas; his pigments were the reds, greens and golds of tomatoes, peperoni, fresh meats, herbs, eggs and cheeses. So accomplished were his culinary compositions, so utterly delicious -- to the eye and to the palate -- were his baroque combinations of ingredients, that even atheists, when eating at his tables, might be driven to believe that a God did indeed exist -- a God of the kitchen -- and that his name was Pasquale. One might have a sense too, at Pasquale's restaurant, that minor gods and benign spirits attended him, for even a bowl of fruit well past its best (pomegranates, black grapes and figs), when served with slices of mild fontina or a sweet provolone, was enough to convert the most Presbyterian of taste buds.
He worked with great confidence and passion, often calling out to his ingredients, urging them, encouraging them towards the masterpiece they were destined to be a part of. He listened to opera or recited poetry as he worked, delivering from memory Shakespearian sonnets as he carved meats and cut up vegetables. His waiters adored him, loved his volatility, were in awe of his skills, never argued about measures or weights when helping in the kitchen, and never, ever, spoke with any favour of other cooks and eateries while in his presence.
Most other cooks, Pasquale believed, worked in only one dimension. They threw ingredients together, without thought of perspective, simply to arrive at a plateful that merely satisfied hunger. Cooks who were artists of the culinary -- and he considered himself master of them all -- took into account the essentials of depth and balance with every meal prepared. Importantly, they chose their ingredients with great care and combined them with respect and not a little homage.
'The English cuisine must be the worst in the world,' he once told Primo when they were discussing the merits of Mediterranean cuisine. 'Followed shortly by the Russian and then the German. Their offerings are a mere confusion of ingredients.'
They were picnicking in Van Riebeeck Park, the two of them and Beatrice. Pasquale had spread a square of bleached calico over one of the cement tables near the river and laid out a feast of breads (focaccia, filone and schiacciatina), sun-dried tomatoes, roasted brinjals and courgettes, marinated peppers, olive and potato pie, mozzarella and pecorino, wines and mineral water.
'Just look at the English roast and Yorkshire pudding as an example of gustatory paucity -- and don't raise your eyebrows at my words -- or the English sponge cake, for that matter. It's dry, spiritless food -- completely lacking in delicacy. English sponge can never be compared to such as panforte Senese with its moist content of fruits and spices. Or bostrengo, a rice cake full of fruits with rum and coffee and cocoa and honey. Actually, now that we're talking about it, I think I'll bake one when we get back. We'll eat it at midnight tonight. With espresso. And Anisetta.'
He took a mouthful of wine, and continued: 'A tomato served without garlic, without basilico or parsley, has potential, yes. I can't deny that, because it's a glorious vegetable. But, we must ask ourselves, does it have character on its own? Yes, indeed, if organically grown and picked when sun-ripened. And can it be rendered tasteless? Certainly -- by the many cooks in this city who are guilty, daily, of destroying the very spirit of the poor tomato and then giving its pulped carcass a deceptive Italian name. If there were kitchen justice they would hang for such a crime.
'Meat not fragranced with rosemary and origanum, not studded with garlic, not marinated in wine, has no character either -- it has no innerness. You might as well dry your meat on a campfire. Or roast a cat. Actually, that Devonshire in Constantia serves cat, I'm sure of it. People think they're eating hare. And they pay for it. God! The world is full of fools.'
Continues...
Excerpted from A Time of Angels by Patricia Schonstein Copyright © 2005 by Patricia Schonstein. Excerpted by permission.
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