Read Online The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese by Michael Paterniti - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Michael Paterniti
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that “the sons of a priest could even inherit his property.”
b Am-
bro
-zee-
oh
. The tongue not so much tripping or tapping, but the mouth starting with intimations of
ham
, then making itself bigger, wider, in order to birth the
bro
, a reflexive smile on the third syllable—
zee
—then open again to appease the exclamation of that primordial
oh!
c The Castilian takes his or her pig as seriously as his religion—and most Castilian kitchens harbor at least one rather large pig leg, often set on a stand, the pig’s elegant hoof held aloft, to offer an easier means of slicing from the plump shank. Here where vegetables are scarce—or, it seems, scarcely eaten—there are times when ham (gorgeous, fantastic ham!) is the starter, the vegetable, and the main dish, all in one. The names of the best pig farms are known in the same way that the French know certain vineyards, the Japanese grades of sushi. In shopwindows all over Spain hang hog legs, each with a little plastic receptacle, like a little white umbrella, there to catch leaking grease. At holidays these legs are given as gifts of the highest order and can cost up to $500 apiece. One of the most famous hams—Joselito brand, from near Salamanca—comes from pigs that scrounge through the mountains for acorns, truffles, and grass. And like the inevitability of red wine among friends, the offering of some porcine product is also one of the most basic acts of hospitality in Spain.
4
PÁRAMO DE GUZMÁN
“I shit in the milk of God.”
A FTER SPENDING HIS YOUTH IN C ATHOLIC SCHOOLS , A MBROSIO had come to despise priests and organized religion almost as much as he did ham in a can and city life. * And yet he believed in a spirit, or Creator, to whom he spoke almost daily—and who sometimes spoke back to him. He listened to the howl of the wind and the groan of the earth, the bleat of sheep and the call of the wheat. If he was patient, the voices sometimes told him what to do next. So he’d waited years to make good on the offering he’d promised that voice from the ether—had it been Death itself?—in exchange for his father’s life.
In the meantime, the gearwheels of the universe worked in mysteriousways. During his father’s illness, Ambrosio had girded himself for the unimaginable, and when the son went to the fields alone without his father, he declared himself a farmer, accepting the weight that comes with the cycle of life on the Meseta. For better or worse, he’d been consecrated into the ranks of a history that connected him to the first Castilian farmer and the tacit code of his people: chivalry, faith, honor. He’d stepped into the absence left by the senior Ambrosio—and his father had consequently, against all odds, lived. Had risen from beneath wool blankets, body untwisting to life. And then
los Ambrosios
resumed their lives, though eventually in reversed roles, the son in charge where his father once had been.
As much as Ambrosio saw himself carrying forward the old traditions—even as a young man he possessed a certain grandiosity—he was walking into a relatively new world on the Meseta. Not ten yearsearlier, in the 1960s, the mechanization of Spanish agriculture had finally, if glacially, reached Guzmán, too, with the arrival of the first tractors. † Meanwhile, the once-robust Molinos empire was now a lesser collection of broken-up parcels, some of them miles apart. There was a vineyard below the village on an L-shaped tract of land, another by the road to Quintanamanvirgo, a third tucked in near the hills. Their wheat- and hayfields could be found in every direction from town,
arriba
, on the high plain above, or on the
coterro
, the lands below.
Like the other farmers in town, Ambrosio rose early each morning, scuttling between fields, visiting his grapes, soybeans, and wheat. He collected water at the
fuente
, irrigated, spread manure. His brothers were off, ascending into their successful careers in the big cities, and here
b Am-
bro
-zee-
oh
. The tongue not so much tripping or tapping, but the mouth starting with intimations of
ham
, then making itself bigger, wider, in order to birth the
bro
, a reflexive smile on the third syllable—
zee
—then open again to appease the exclamation of that primordial
oh!
c The Castilian takes his or her pig as seriously as his religion—and most Castilian kitchens harbor at least one rather large pig leg, often set on a stand, the pig’s elegant hoof held aloft, to offer an easier means of slicing from the plump shank. Here where vegetables are scarce—or, it seems, scarcely eaten—there are times when ham (gorgeous, fantastic ham!) is the starter, the vegetable, and the main dish, all in one. The names of the best pig farms are known in the same way that the French know certain vineyards, the Japanese grades of sushi. In shopwindows all over Spain hang hog legs, each with a little plastic receptacle, like a little white umbrella, there to catch leaking grease. At holidays these legs are given as gifts of the highest order and can cost up to $500 apiece. One of the most famous hams—Joselito brand, from near Salamanca—comes from pigs that scrounge through the mountains for acorns, truffles, and grass. And like the inevitability of red wine among friends, the offering of some porcine product is also one of the most basic acts of hospitality in Spain.
4
PÁRAMO DE GUZMÁN
“I shit in the milk of God.”
A FTER SPENDING HIS YOUTH IN C ATHOLIC SCHOOLS , A MBROSIO had come to despise priests and organized religion almost as much as he did ham in a can and city life. * And yet he believed in a spirit, or Creator, to whom he spoke almost daily—and who sometimes spoke back to him. He listened to the howl of the wind and the groan of the earth, the bleat of sheep and the call of the wheat. If he was patient, the voices sometimes told him what to do next. So he’d waited years to make good on the offering he’d promised that voice from the ether—had it been Death itself?—in exchange for his father’s life.
In the meantime, the gearwheels of the universe worked in mysteriousways. During his father’s illness, Ambrosio had girded himself for the unimaginable, and when the son went to the fields alone without his father, he declared himself a farmer, accepting the weight that comes with the cycle of life on the Meseta. For better or worse, he’d been consecrated into the ranks of a history that connected him to the first Castilian farmer and the tacit code of his people: chivalry, faith, honor. He’d stepped into the absence left by the senior Ambrosio—and his father had consequently, against all odds, lived. Had risen from beneath wool blankets, body untwisting to life. And then
los Ambrosios
resumed their lives, though eventually in reversed roles, the son in charge where his father once had been.
As much as Ambrosio saw himself carrying forward the old traditions—even as a young man he possessed a certain grandiosity—he was walking into a relatively new world on the Meseta. Not ten yearsearlier, in the 1960s, the mechanization of Spanish agriculture had finally, if glacially, reached Guzmán, too, with the arrival of the first tractors. † Meanwhile, the once-robust Molinos empire was now a lesser collection of broken-up parcels, some of them miles apart. There was a vineyard below the village on an L-shaped tract of land, another by the road to Quintanamanvirgo, a third tucked in near the hills. Their wheat- and hayfields could be found in every direction from town,
arriba
, on the high plain above, or on the
coterro
, the lands below.
Like the other farmers in town, Ambrosio rose early each morning, scuttling between fields, visiting his grapes, soybeans, and wheat. He collected water at the
fuente
, irrigated, spread manure. His brothers were off, ascending into their successful careers in the big cities, and here
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