Lynn Veach Sadler
I never told my wife.
The girl in Istria, Croatia, wore red leggings.
She was not pretty like my wife,
was much too flat and thin.
We Italians were occupying Istria.
It was those red leggings.
Red leggings in war time.
I thought they said something.
And she was so pleased to please.
When the occupying forces were to be sent home,
she fed me a special juha --soup--
to make me remember and come back.
As if I could forget her red leggings.
(I never let her take them off.)
She meant her juha for an aphrodisiac.
I knew the taste. But how did she--?
I knew the taste. Was I not a native son
of Albi, Italy's truffle capital?
I knew the smell, realized
those red leggings had been among that fungus.
She would not tell the source.
"When you return to me,
I will take you to the magic nut-shaped mushroom.
When you return. . . ."
A fig for what Red Leggings knew!
A truffle is no mushroom!
After the war, I did return--
with team of dogs, true truffle-trackers.
We found the precious tubers
in Istria's Motovun and Labin regions,
the slopes of one secret mountain.
My truffles surpass Spain's,
are every bit as good as France's.
I let them sell as a product of Old Italy.
I am keen on the smuggling business,
the truffle trade.
Am I, too, not a product of Old Italy?
I never saw again Red Leggings.
They said she ran mad when I was gone
and took her life in the waters off Red Island,
but I named my business for her.
The world's best truffles are "Red Leggings,"
but it must remain a whispered name.
I hired members of her family
to train the local dogs--Breks.
They start the training at two months,
but the dogs don't live long.
They die from many kinds of cancer.
Red Leggings died from Love's Cancer.
Now I eat only Red Leggings Truffles,
and when I do,
I first close my eyes and smell them
to smell again the odor of Red Leggings,
to feel again, as I felt then,
when I was with Red Leggings.
Copyright (c) 2001 by Lynn Veach Sadler