A GRAIN OF SUGAR

A GRAIN OF SUGAR

Rosy was still crouched under the Christmas tree she had just finished to decorate.  The comet on the top of the spruce was yellow, of a bright, but also soft yellow, like that….just like that yellow. Suddenly she seemed she was seeing them, as if they were there, under her eyes…..they, the cookies which her grandmother Adele made once every year, the cookies named DUCK TAIL , which she and her sisters, and the all family, could eat from Christmas Eve to Epiphany. Those very special cookies were reserved only for those days of celebration, of joy, of warmth. When they melted fragrant in your mouth, they transmitted a good warmth , like the fragrant smelling fire crackling in the hearth.

They required a long time to prepare the dough and a lot of attention for cooking, since the temperature was not the same for the entire cooking time, it had to be adjusted , during the cooking. It had to be lower at the beginning, when you put them into the oven, it had to be raised at half cooking, and lowered for the last minutes of cooking-

Those very special cookies were yellow, as they were made with corn flour, but they were called

Duck tail  also for their soft, vaguely triangular shape, with a slightly hollow little area under…the tail. Her grandmother, to obtain that tiny round shaped depression, a kind of dimple, pressed the tip of her index finger,  on the dough of the cookies before they were put to bake into the oven.

Twenty years had passed since Rosy had eaten them for the last time, in the Christmas holiday of that year, it was 1988  , which would have been the last they had spent together with grandmother Adele, who had disappeared in the January of the following year, No, she wasn’t dead, she was just gone, vanished into thin air.                                                                                                               

Rosy, who was still a child at the time of the truly unexpected and inexplicable disappearance of her grandmother, in the meantime had grown up, she had become a young woman, now  she had two children. For that upcoming Christmas Rosy had decided she would try to make those delicious Duck tail. She had even been overwhelmed by the desire, by the impatience to taste again their savor, their fragrance…..She remembered how they crumbled in her mouth, how they had given her, every time, the feeling to be able to taste them grain by grain. Of course she would also like her children could taste the little Duck tail, which already made your mouth water when you saw them, not only for their inviting appearance, but also for the smell they emanated, a fragrance which smelling very good.

How strange, Rosy came to think, while she tried to remember all the ingredients , and the processing with which her grandmother prepared them, how strange that in all these years no one had thought to still prepare the Duck  tail cookies. Might be they all had preferred to forget those exquisite biscuits, just as they, she couldn’t help thinking, had ended (up) to forget the grandmother Adele. Of course, at first she had been looked for, she had been even appealed on

(through) television, to ask her to come back home or, at least, to let them know if she was alive, if she was fine, that everyone at home was waiting for her, they all wanted her to come back…….but after some time, since she had not been found either alive or dead, not only had they stopped looking for her, they had even stopped to think about her. This had happened also since everyone, after some time she had disappeared, ____everyone except the grandfather___had thought that she had to be certainly dead. The grandfather instead, he didn’t want to believe that she was dead. He remained irremovably sure that Adele had gone by her choice, perhaps together with another man. Everyone shook their heads when they heard him claim (repeat) that his wife had gone away with another man______Grandmother Adele was almost seventy years old when she disappeared______But the grandfather had felt abandoned, she had suffered very much for her leaving. In fact he died shortly after she had gone away.

It was the day before Christmas Eve, and by Christmas Eve the fabulous, unforgettable pastries of the mysteriously disappeared grandmother had to be ready to eat. The day of the Eve they could have been tasted fresh from the oven, still hot. But they could have been tasty even in the following days. Rosy had to get to work immediately, without delay. Even if she couldn’t follow a recipe with written instructions, she had seen her grandmother prepare the Duck tail so many times  that she would be able to bake them in time. First she had to think about the ingredients : corn flour, which was the base ingredient, then sugar, honey, milk, eggs, and almonds, walnuts, , raisins…then lemon juice and orange peel. It was a simple recipe.  But there was something which worried Rosy: it was the decoration of the Duck tail, which took place after cooking. Not that it was a very complicated decoration, which required the skills of an expert pastry chef, as it consisted of sticking, or gluing, with a glaze, sugar grains on the cookies, covering them with sugar grains. The grains of sugar could be white or colored, but they were always sugar grains. Obviously the grains of sugar had to be attached close to each other, but not stuck together, so that the yellow of the cookies could remain visible between one grain and another. Undoubtedly this kind of finishing of the Duck tail, which was the decoration, required time and precision and patience, but it was not impossible to perform, even for those who put themselves in it for the first time. Rosy wouldn’t have had to worry if it hadn’t been for..that one grain of sugar. The decoration required that only one of the grains of sugar attached to the cookies should be different from all the others. The grain , which had to be visibly different from the others, which had to be unique, was the one which had to be placed in that kind of dimple at the base of…the tail. The grain of sugar which had to stand out from all the others had not only to be bigger than the others, even if remaining very small, as it was a grain of sugar too, but it also had to have a different shape from all the other grains. Here, Rosy did not know how her grandma had obtained grains of sugar like that, of a shape that resembled, or suggested, the shape of a star, and yet it was not a star shape. And Rosy did not know it not since she did not remember it, she did not know (it) because, even if she had observed her grandmother carefully also when she was decorating the Duck tail, she had never been able to understand how grandma Adele managed (could) to get out of a pinch of sugar, in which she had just stuck the tips of two fingers, of thumb and index finger, that vaguely, roughly star shaped grain ( of sugar!). Whenever she had been watching her in that operation, it had seemed to Rosy that her grandmother was doing a magic, which she too would have liked to be able to do. But at the same time she felt that she would never have been able to do it.   And in fact, even now, after so many years, when she had decided to prepare the Duck tail, which had to be ready to be eaten on Christmas Eve, she had no idea how to obtain a grain of sugar like the one that was to be put in the dimple at the base of the….tail. However she promised herself not to lose heart, so she started to work.    She began by kneading the ingredients, making them amalgamate. Lastly the chopped walnuts, almonds and raisins were added, and then Rosy stirred the dough again, as she had seen her grandmother do many times, so that also these ingredients were incorporated into the base dough. Then she arranged the dough in the pan, turned the oven on, and she put the cookies to bale into the oven, taking care to adjust the temperature during the cooking time.

Meanwhile, when the cookies were still into the oven, she kept on thinking how she could get that tiny grain of sugar which looked like a star, but nevertheless it was not a star, which also could have looked like a tiny cross, and yet it was not even a cross. But Rosy remembered it clearly, as if she had that grain of sugar under her eyes.

When she took the cookies out of the oven, and they smelled of roasted corn ,of honey and walnuts, she couldn’t help but eat one, still very hot, indeed even steaming, before setting out to decorate them. The operation of sticking the sugar grains all over the surface of the cookies , with the icing, was not difficult, even if it took some time. But soon after Rosy found herself faced with that problem to be solved ( which she couldn’t know how to solve): how succeeding in getting a grain of sugar like the one to be put in the dimple at the base of….the tail of the cookie (had to be.) She even resorted to a magnifying glass to try to glue a few grain of sugar to get that particular, special grain , which grandma Adele could pull out of a little pile of sugar with such ease , as if by magic. Rosy as a child had asked her grandmother how she managed to made the grain (of sugar) with that shape from a little pile of sugar, and, every time, grandmother Adele, smiling, told her : “ Oh, it is easy….look : just do this” Then she had, every time, slipped her thumb and the tip of her forefinger into the little pile of sugar, pressing the index finger against the thumb  for a moment, soon after making a very rapid circular motion with the thumb and the forefinger inside the pile of sugar. And behold: when she pulled her fingers out of the little pile of sugar, that grain appeared on her forefinger, which that incredible shape, which looked a bit like a star, a bit like a cross, but it was neither a star nor a cross.

Rosy tried and tried again , tirelessly to get the grain of sugar in that incredible, even wonderful shape, out of a simple little pile of sugar, but in vain. She too did the movements ( motions) she had seen her grandmother do dozens of times. She too slipped her two fingers___the thumb and the forefinger__into the pile of sugar, and then spun them….ah, nothing to do. The best she could get (it) was a grain of sugar bigger than the others, yes, but with the shape of a ball, not with the shape it should have. Exhausted, after she had tried in vain for hours to get the grain of sugar with that special, unforgettable shape, Rosy decided to go to bed, however without losing heart, since she hoped, indeed she felt that sleep would have brought her advice.

She was vey tired, so she felt asleep immediately. But she was only when she was about to wake up that her grandmother Adele appeared  to her in a dream. Grandma was walking in a green valley on the centre of which there was a lake whose surface looked like a crystal mirror. The sun was setting and the peaks of the mountains, inflamed by the colors of the sunset, were reflected on the surface of the lake. As soon as Rosy saw her grandmother, she would want to ask: “ Oh; grandma, why did you go away? Why are you gone? Where are you now?”Rosy felt the questions urgently pressing inside her, but she was not able to say a word. However her grandmother seemed to understand what she would want to ask her and she, smiling, spread her arms to indicate the valley, the lake, the mountains, the sky, as if to say: “ Don’t you see what a wonderful place I am in?” Then grandmother Adele approached the lake , she seemed to admire the sunset reflected in the clear, crystalline mirror of water.

“ Oh, I have to ask her about that grain of sugar….how to do to get it..” Rosy remembered at sudden, with a leap of her heart. And here that, reflected in the mirror of the lake, next to the smiling face of her grandmother, her forefinger appeared : a little mark, engraved in the skin ,sharply stood out on the tip of the index. The little mark a bit looked like a star, a bit looked like a cross, which could be a scar or, perhaps a sign that had have been on grandma’s forefinger since her birth.