(vignette 13) Mortadella

Mortadella!  . . .

Mortadella; Mitchell heard the word correctly as the scent of the fresh cut meat tore him from his sleep.  His Italian was awful, but there was no mistaking the scent of Italian sausage.  Mitchell’s mouth began to water.

Mor • ta • del • la!   David Croeso spoke the word as if frolicking across a dale.  Its syllables rose then fell, and rose then fell again.  Mitchell could be forgiven if he initially thought that David might have been turning them in his mouth, as if morsels of the meat that he was cutting.  The word had a simple poetry about it.  A music, Mitchell thought.  Mortadella.  Mortadella, men have named you.  He hummed the tune of Nat King Cole’s Mona Lisa to himself.

The scents of toast and cornichons were also on the air when David began reciting a second verse with the staccato of the first.  Mot • za • rel • la.  — Mozzarella!  Mozzarella.  Mozzarella!  David sang in time to the sound of his knife landing on the cutting board as if to say Cutting!  Cutting.  Cutting!  — Perhaps a bit too staccato, Mitchell said to himself of his translation from the Italian, mozzarella, to the English, cutting.  He wondered if David was thinking the same thing.  The two of them often did.  Think the same thing, that is.  At the moment, Mitchell had begun to think that David might soon give him his own sampling of mozzarella con mortadella.  Anticipation was over-spilling his gums. 

The scents of fresh cut basil and sundried tomatoes crept up as well.  They, like characters from a tragic opera.  The young royal and the upstart commoner.  The latter wise beyond her years.  Drawn together.  Yet, meant to be kept apart.  Mitchell’s olfactory acuity, bordering on hyperosmia, usually expressed itself as euphoria, . . . with a great deal of fanciful visualization.  Even so, Mitchell was wise to the fact that David was happy, possibly ecstatic, about something.  Something, other than a lunch of mozzarella con mortadella.  These were symptoms of his happiness, not of its cause.  It would be a bit odd, . . .  David, to be feared, if his Italian gave away the cause of his happiness.  Mitchell was translating the word mozzarella using an archaic meaning, cutting.  And, presuming meaning hidden behind similar archaic use, Mitchell translated the word mortadella a bit too, … well, too literally to be certain, but also a bit too sinisterly.

Mortadella?  Mitchell lingered over the word.  Morta — della!  The two Italian words rolled around like rueful imps inside his brain.  Egli è morto della malattia profonda.  They repeated.  Morto — della — malattia — profonda.  “He has died of a major illness.”  Surely, David was not among the living dead.  The living dead didn’t make themselves cheese and meat platters.  They preferred living brain matter and blood-thumping human flesh.  But, who was dead, then?  And, how had they died?  These were the questions that Mitchell was left with.  Perhaps the answers lay in David’s choice of condiments.  Why ruin a quintessentially Italian platter with something as English as toast and as French as cornichons?  David couldn’t be pregnant?  Could he?  A croque-monsieur and a Monte Cristo sandwich also suggested themselves to Mitchell.  These might possibly involve the use of toast and cornichons.  But, the more he thought about these, the more he considered death and revenge as the motives for David’s happiness.  Mitchell’s French was worse than his Italian — virtually non-existent, in fact.  Had David next barked the words Eh, viola. Croak monsieur!, Mitchell would have to have considered that a stitch of Voodoo was being preformed.  It wasn’t in David’s character to wish someone dead, particularly not through the medium of a cheese and meat sandwich with pickles.  Revenge — the thought that sprung from a Monte Cristo — something to do with the movie perhaps — wasn’t in David’s character either.

As I’ve said, Mitchell was translating too literally.  We can forgive him.  He is only a dog, after all.  A truer etymology is unimportant here.  Unless.  —  No.  That would be preposterous.  Indeed.  Besides, in a strange way, David Croeso was happy just because there had been a kind of death.  The President’s.  A kind of political and fiscal suicide that left David Croeso, as the next highest ranking official not involved in the “well-intentioned” plot to misappropriate funds, as acting-University President.