It's just as the waiter has brought us
a single buttery dumpling
stuffed with pecorino, parmigiano and ricotta
that arrives after the porcini mushrooms
and the seafood risotto
and before the snapper with tomato and black olives
and the duck in balsamic vinegar reduction
that I touch my napkin
to my lips and say, "There are no words to describe this"
and then feel the sting of tears as I remember
where I'd read these words,
in that book about the trial of the English pedophile
and child murderer who delighted in recording
the final moments
of her victims' lives, the screaming, the promises not to tell,
her own tapes used in evidence against her yet thought so horrific
by the judge that
he ordered them played in a sealed courtroom
and then, in the public interest,
to a single journalist
who would only say, "There are no words to describe this."
*
And even though the waiter arrives at that moment
to clear away plates and pour more wine
and ask if everything is good, if it's all to our satisfaction,
still, Barbara bends close to me and asks if everything's okay,
says I seem a little upset,
and I cover by telling her the story that Mark's cousin Antonio
had told me about this prosciutto he'd bought
and had put in his basement
for curing so it would turn salty and sweet and delicate all at once,
but something went wrong, and one day
he went down to check
on his prosciutto, and it was maggot-ridden and moldy,
and here Antonio shakes his head and looks at me
with a sad smile and says,
"I cry my heart, David," and only later do I realize
I've used this story as a ha-ha, which is not a joke but a landscape trick
from 18th-century England,
a sunken fence used to keep cows at a picturesque distance
from the manor house so they can be seen grazing on the greensward,
kept by the ha-ha
from trampling the lawn and mooing at the guests.
*
Copyright © 2003 David Kirby
