In the Jewish neighborhoods he was known as the master of vegetables. The orthodox women hardly talked to him, except to call out their orders in Yiddish, enough of which he understood, or to haggle about his prices or the accuracy of the weight on his scale that hung from the side of his wagon. To them he was Morris, the fruit man, the maven of tomatoes. And even though his name wasn’t Morris, he always answered to it. And he used the Yiddish he had learned to sweet talk the women who complained the most. “I will never get rich if all my customers are like you,” he said with a smile, always throwing a little extra into the bags to keep them happy.
On the Spanish blocks he was to produce what El Exigenté, the demanding one, was to coffee. The kids chased along beside the peddler on the sidewalk pacing his tired horse, Bianca, an old swaybacked mare that was more mottled gray than white. Some urged the horse to giddyap, while others shouted for her to whoa. Most times the old mare just ignored them. Sometimes she raised her tail and dropped “road apples” on the pavement while the little kids laughed and pointed. The older boys on their bikes circling the wagon like the cowboy and Indian movies they’d seen at the Loew’s Oriental on 86th Street at the Saturday matinees, picked them up and threw them at one another. They called to Roberto, el rey de frutas y verdures, the undisputed king of the fruits and the vegetables, to toss them some of the bruised fruit the over ripe bananas he pulled from the bins on his wagon to keep his stock fresh. And he always did. He prided himself on the widest selection of items, from succulent summer peaches to the most exotic melons, from string beans to eggplants, never too young, never too ripe and never bruised.
Bianca knew the daily routine, weaving her way slowly up and down the one way streets, stopping in front of the same houses whether he was on board holding the reins or walking beside her on the sidewalk calling, “Fruit man! Fruit Man!” She knew to turn just one block before the black neighborhood began where the people wanted everything for nothing, and she headed back toward the Italians in Bensonhurst. That was where they lived and where she knew he would put on her feedbag.
One late afternoon of a particularly long day, she was especially restless and exceptionally hungry, despite the occasional apples he had fed her along the route. She had complained all morning until well after noon, while he negotiated prices with the customers. That was when she snorted, clumped her metal shoes on the warm asphalt, neighed and pulled the reins free from where they were loosely tied to the wooden brake next to the empty seat. Without warning she began to move and soon she was trotting away. He called at her to stop and cursed, shaking his fists at the horse as he chased after her on his old legs, but when she turned at the corner he watched her disappear into the traffic, pulling wagon and spilling fruits and vegetables on the street behind her.
A long hour later, perspired and hot, wiping his face with the bandanna he always carried folded neatly in his back pocket and used as a cloth when he ate his lunch, he found her standing docilely at the curb 57th Street waiting for him on in front of the Mrs. Mascucci’s house, where they ate lunch every day. The peddler had known her husband from the old country, and after the man died he made it a point to stop there each day and look after her.
“What happened to you, Fonz?” she called to him with easy familiarity in Italian, using the shortened form of Alfonso that was his real name. “We thought maybe you fell off. Or maybe the gypsies on Second Avenue took you.”
The other women laughed. They had already picked through the fruits and vegetables and filled their own orders and weighed them before Fonz arrived. They used the assorted paper bags he carried on the wagon, making change and leaving their payment in the cash box that was in the driver’s seat.
“We watered the horse with the hose and gave her a bucket to drink, but it looks like she wants to eat.”
“Ah, signora,” he answered in the same Neapolitan dialect, “I knew she would be here.” He smacked the horse on her haunch and the sound made Bianca lift her head and turn back her ears. “This horse knows the route better than I do, and she is quick to remind me where to stop and when to move on. But today she made me take a long, hot walk in the sun. You are a bad horse,” he said in a scolding tone, “and should be made into glue.” But then he rubbed her spotted coat lovingly.
He found the old leather feedbag in the seat on top of the wagon and filled it with oats. Then he slipped the bag over her muzzle and set the strap behind her ears. When he saw that she was quietly munching he retrieved his own lunch, a sandwich made by his wife on Italian bread and wrapped in waxed paper, along with pieces of fruit that were bundled in a brown cloth sack. “I tell my wife, signora, I don’t need the fruit,” he said on more than one occasion. “That I have more fruit on the wagon than I could ever eat. But she insists. You know how women are. And she packs it anyway, fresh figs from the tree.” He showed her. “And sometimes maybe a home grown tomato or two from the garden.”
They climbed up the front steps to the little table and four wooden chairs she prepared for him every day with a carafe of home made red wine and two glass tumblers. He first pulled out her chair and then his own before he opened his bandanna, placed it carefully on the table and laid down the sack of food. She turned over the tumblers and poured some wine for the both of them, half a glass for her and a full one for him. It was their ritual, one they had practiced for years.
“Giuseppe,” she called to her grandson who standing on the sidewalk watching the horse shoo flies with her flicking tail, twitching her leg when the landed there, “you go get the jar of cold water from the ice box for Fonz,” she said in accented English. “And some glasses. But don’t drop them.”
When the screen door slammed behind the boy she reached into her pocketbook and pulled out a brown bag that she handed over to him. It was another of their rituals, one started more recently after her grandson, a finicky eater at best, discovered the fruit peddler’s lunch one afternoon and the man offered part of his sandwich to the boy. Every day after that he looked forward to Fonz’s arrival and lunchtime, relishing whatever the man unwrapped, eating things he would never consider even trying when his mother cooked it. Over the weeks he had devoured yellow squash flowers egg-battered and fried golden brown with onions, cold zucchini circles sliced thin and sauteed in olive oil, marinated in vinegar and garlic with fresh mint leaves that added flavor, green peppers over-stuffed with seasoned breadcrumbs, steamed artichokes that looked strange and tasted delicious, and even fried calamari that made his throat close whenever he smelled it cooking in his mother’s kitchen.
Soon the boy returned with the water, balancing three fragile glasses that he set down carefully on the table.
“So, Giuseppe, shall we see what Mrs. Fonz packed for us to eat today?” he asked, winking at the woman. He unwrapped his sandwich and nodded. “It looks like una bella frittata of potatoes and eggs and some peppers and onions too. And for you?” He handed over the other bag that the boy opened, peeling aside the aluminum foil to show him. “Eggplant parmesan,” he said, looking at the little hero sandwich, the heel of the Italian bread overflowed with eggplant in tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese. ”Better than what she made for me, I think. Maybe we can trade,” he joked, but the boy bit into the sandwich and chewed contentedly.
“Your mother made eggplant last night,” his grandmother said, “and you wouldn’t even taste it.”
“That’s because her eggplant isn’t as good as the kind Mrs. Fonz makes,” he said with his mouth full.
And for a few minutes they both sat in silence eating their lunches. Fonz finished his wine and she went to pour him a second glass.
“No, grazie, signora,” he said. “Bianca and I still have miles to go before the day is over.” He reached into his pocket and removed a folding knife that he opened and wiped carefully on his bandanna. “But maybe some of this.” He picked up the large red tomato his wife had packed for him. He cut through the skin with the sharp blade, creating perfect precision slices uniformly thick without damaging the fruit. He handed over one of the slices to each of them.
“Good luck with that,” she said biting into hers. “This boy never eats tomatoes. He even has butter on his macaronis.”
“What?” Fonz asked. “You don’t like tomatoes? What kind of Italian are you? Sicilian?” he joked.
His grandmother laughed and shrugged her shoulders. “Ah, what can you do? His father’s family is from Sicily,” she said with a tone that was lost on Giuseppe.
“Well,” he said, turning his attention back on to boy, “I am a tomato expert, you know. Not only do I sell them, all kinds, plum tomatoes your grandmother makes into her delicious sauce, big red tomatoes for salads and for slicing with olive oil and oregano. But I grow them too. And I have eaten them cooked, raw, red, yellow and green, for more than sixty years. Even in my breakfast cereal! So I am quite the expert. Maybe you just think you don’t like them because you haven’t tasted these special tomatoes from my garden the way I like to eat them.” He pulled two slices of fried potato from his lunch, large almost perfect circles, and he put them on each side of the tomato. “It’s a very special potato-tomato sandwich,” he said and handed it over to Giuseppe.
The boy held it between his fingers like a cookie, examined it, and after the slightest hesitation he took a bite. A smile spread across his face. “Delicious!” he said. “I love potato-tomatoes,” and he gobbled it down in three bites, looking for more.
His grandmother laughed again and she shook her head. “Only from you, Fonz,” she said. “Only from you.”
Fonz nodded and patted the woman’s hand. “As with so many things in life, signora, it is all in the presentation,” he said.
