8 Quotes by Philip Kazan

Though we were still half a room apart, I felt her: the tiny, coppery hairs on her arm that rose to attention when she was cold or aroused; the beautiful landscape of gooseflesh that was shivering across her skin beneath her robe; the flowery, powdery scent of that skin, as complicated as music. The faint freckles scattered across her cheeks and nose: I was falling into them, as though they were the starry summer sky.

She had brought me more of the ricotta, which I ate, slurping at the spoon like a child while my companion watched, beaming. My mind showed me the bees working high in the chestnut trees, swarming through the polished, ridged leaves and over the long white brushes of flowers. I saw the dark heart of the nest, dripping gold. Goats clattered over rocks and tore at cushions of herbs.

The flesh was sweet, not fishy at all, and the texture was a little like young rabbit. The tartness of verjuice fitted into the earthy richness of cinnamon like a sword into a scabbard.

Try the cheese," said Leonardo. He was standing to one side, watching me.I shrugged and nodded at the man, who shaved off a sliver of the ivory-colored stuff and gave it to me. Again, nothing special: a pecorino, aged, but a good one. I could taste the sheep's teats, buttery caramel, earth..."Are you from up past Pistoia?" I asked. The man beamed."Yes! From San Marcello," he said."Thought so. This is pecorino di Cutigliano, yes?""Of course! The best cheese in Italy!

There were the subtle malts and brans of the crust and the pallid no-taste of good old Florentine bread. The snaking sour-sweet of the beef, like a slab of porphyry shot through with crystalline onion sugars, salt and soil-rolled toffee carrots; sparks of bitter thyme and mint oils; the velvet honeycomb of fat;

The flavors settle across my tongue in shapes and colors. Sweetness pools, smug and tarry, like pitch seeping from a sun-warmed beam. Quicksilver balls of sourness skitter for a moment, then freeze into shards and fall like icicles brushed from a window sill. Tiny pricks of vinegar mark out the footprints of the wasp. I let it all dissolve into golden light.

So Tessina had become a woman, with cornflower-blue eyes, brighter than Filippo's best paint; and thick, wavy hair that had darkened a little to the color of old amber or perhaps chestnut honey, shaved back in the fashionable way from her smooth forehead. She still had freckles, the tiny upward curve to the end of her nose, but her face had changed. It had become itself.

I had been rolling the cherry around in my mouth, letting it slip across my tongue. There was the flicker of salt from Tessina's fingers, and her own flavor: saffron, violets, the liquor of oysters.