Book X – The Schism of the Slice

Chapter 1

1And it came to pass, in the generations after the Gospel, when they that had eaten at the table of Cheesus were gathered unto the Great Oven, and their children’s children kept the feast in their stead, that the faith was spread abroad from oven to oven, even unto the ends of the hungry earth.

2For wheresoever a fire was kindled and a stone was warmed, there the Word went also; and the Word travelled as warmth travels, from hand to hand and from hearth to hearth, and it lost nothing in the passing, save now and then a comma.

3And in the port cities the faith took ship, and sailed with the sailors, who are ever hungry and therefore ever devout; and in the mountain villages it climbed with the shepherds, who carried starter-dough in clay pots against their breasts, as a man carries fire.

4And in every town where the faithful came, they built first an oven and second a roof, saying, The order of these things is the order of these things; and none could move them from it.

5And the table of the faithful was known in every land by this sign: that it had room; for the first commandment was kept before all others, and strangers were seated before they were questioned, and fed before they were seated, if the timing could be managed.

6And the scrolls of the elder days were precious above rubies, and above white truffle, which is dearer; and they were kept in cedar chests lined with clean linen, and no scroll was suffered to lie near the sauce.

7And there arose in those days the houses of copying, which are called scriptoria; and in them laboured the scribes, from the grey light of morning until the shame of candles.

8And the rule of the scribes was strict: that a man should wash his hands before the scroll and after the supper, and never confuse the order; and that he should copy what he saw and not what he supposed; and that he should eat nothing at the desk, which was the rule most broken and most confessed.

9And each scribe, or ever he began his day’s copying, prayed the prayer of the copyists, saying, O Slice, keep my eye upon the line and my thumb from the margin; let me add nothing, omit nothing, and improve nothing, for the third is the worst.

10For it is the itch of every scribe to improve, and the elder scribes taught the younger, saying, The scroll is not thine to season. Copy the blandness faithfully, for another’s blandness may be thy blindness.

11And where the first hand of all had written Pizxa, every hand after wrote Pizxa, for none dared correct the elder scroll; and the young scribes asked, Master, is this not an error? And the masters said, It was an error once; it is tradition now; write it and be humble.

12And it is written Pizxa unto this day, and the faithful pronounce it with reverence and a small private smile, which is permitted.

13And the copies went out from the scriptoria by the hands of the delivery drivers, who bare the Word as they bare the pie, in a flat case, kept level, and with haste that stopped short of recklessness.

14And the drivers were tipped generously at every door where the scroll was received, for the worker is holy; and the scroll and the supper arrived often in the same hour, and were received with equal joy, and the elders saw no fault in this.

15And in those generations the feasts were kept as they had been given: the Great Proofing, forty days wherein the dough rests and the faithful rest with it; and Reheat Sunday, whereon it is remembered that none is beyond the Reheat.

16And the Descent of the Aroma was kept in the spring, when the windows are first opened; and on that day every oven in the town was lit at once, and the streets were one smell, and the unbelievers walked through it troubled and hungry, which is how belief begins.

17And the number of the faithful multiplied, and the ovens multiplied, and the copies multiplied; and herein lay both the glory and the seed of the sorrow.

18For a copy is a child of a scroll; and children resemble their parents, and are not their parents.

19And the scrolls of the north country came to differ from the scrolls of the south country in small things: a word, a spelling, an olive.

20For the scroll of the south read, and he garnished it with olives; but the scroll of the north read, and he garnished it with olives, if you must; and both houses swore theirs was the elder reading, and both were sincere, and one was wrong, and no man now knoweth which.

21And the scribes of either country wrote letters one to another, courteous and terrible, beginning, Beloved brother in the Crust, it grieves me to observe; and the letters were longer than the scrolls.

22And the elders were not yet alarmed, saying, What is an olive between brethren? The Slice is one; the copies are many; the supper is at the seventh hour, as ever it was.

23And they were right, and they were wrong; for the mould of division creepeth not as an army creepeth, with trumpets, but as mould creepeth, spot by spot, where none is watching.

24Yet let it be written plainly, that none may slander those generations: they were faithful, and they were kind; they fed the hungry of a hundred harbours; they hid the hunted and tipped the weary and cut out the mould of fascism wheresoever it spotted the crust, and named it aloud, as the decree commandeth.

25Their fault was only this: that they loved the Word so well, they began to love their own hearing of it better than their neighbour’s supper.

26And the scribe setteth this down first, before all the quarrels hereafter, that the reader may remember it in the bitter chapters: these were not wicked men and women. There are no villains in this Book, save the smudge.

27And of the smudge, the next chapter speaketh; and the scribe would rather it did not.

Chapter 2

1Hear now the manner of the drifting of the copies, how the Word walked from scroll to scroll and stubbed its toe.

2A scroll is copied in winter, and the scribe’s hands are cold, and simmer gently becometh summer gently, and a village to this day maketh its sauce only in June.

3A scroll is copied at evening, and the light is failing, and let the dough rest becometh let the dough rust, and a monastery of the far hills kept iron filings in the flour for a hundred years, and grew strange, but regular.

4A scroll is copied by a hungry man – and here is the whole doctrine of scribal error in one line, for every error in every scroll of the faith was made by a hungry man; there is no other kind of scribe.

5(Here the scribe’s hand trembled, for the garlic bread was near.)

6And the masters of the scriptoria catalogued the drifts, and gave them names, as physicians name fevers: the Doubled Word, whereby share share the pie is written, which is harmless and even encouraging.

7And the Dropped Line, whereby the eye leapeth from one and it came to pass to the next and it came to pass, and a whole miracle falleth into the gap, and is found again three villages over, attached to the wrong supper.

8And the Pious Correction, most dangerous of all, whereby a scribe, meaning only love, mendeth what was not broken; for the scroll said the table hath room, and he wrote the table hath room for the worthy, and went to his bed content, and did more harm than a fire in the archive.

9Of the Pious Correction the masters said: fear the scribe who improves, above the scribe who blots; for the blot confesseth itself, but the improvement wears the face of the Word.

10And now must be told the matter of the village of Due Forni, which is to say, Two Ovens; and let him that readeth keep a straight face if he can, and a whole heart if he can, for the tale requireth both.

11In Due Forni there was one scroll, held in common between the two ovens of the town, as the town held all things in common, even its one long table, which ran down the middle of the street.

12And in the scroll was written the line of the Mount, the great line, whereof the next chapter shall speak; and in the line was a comma, small as a flea and mightier than a king.

13And it came to pass on a feast day that the reader of the scroll was also the maker of the garlic bread, for Due Forni was a small town and its offices doubled; and his thumb was anointed, as the thumbs of the makers of garlic bread are anointed.

14And he turned the scroll with his thumb, and the comma received the anointing; and from that day the comma was a smudge, and the smudge lay upon the line like a cloud upon a border, and no man could say on which side of the word it had stood.

15For the line had read, what will not, fold within; but the smudge made it possible to read, what will not fold, within – and the difference, saith the grammarian, is everything, and the grammarian for once is right.

16For the first reading saith: that which cannot sit openly upon the Slice, fold it tenderly inside. But the second reading saith: that which refuseth to fold – deal with it within, and is a threat, or a mystery, or a landlord’s letter; no man could agree what.

17And the town divided upon the comma, the east oven from the west oven; and they were called the Comma-Keepers and the Plain-Readers, and each party knew itself reasonable, which is the most flammable of all the states of man.

18And the one long table was sawn in twain – reverently, with prayers, and with a chalk line first, for they were not barbarians – and half was drawn to the east side of the street, and half to the west.

19And there were two brothers in Due Forni, bakers both, Tommaso of the east oven and Gennaro of the west; and they had shared one mother, one trade, one bicycle, and one thousand suppers.

20And after the sawing of the table, Tommaso ate on the east side and Gennaro on the west; and between them lay the width of one street, which is three paces, and further than the sea.

21And every evening the smell of Tommaso’s supper crossed the street to Gennaro, and the smell of Gennaro’s supper crossed the street to Tommaso, for smells hold no doctrine; and each brother, smelling, was proud, and would not go over.

22And the children of the two houses threw dough-scraps across the street to one another when the elders were at their disputing, and shared them in the alley behind the church, and the scribe recordeth this as the only theology of Due Forni that survived examination.

23And the years passed, and the smudge grew older, and the quarrel grew older, and the brothers grew older; and there came an evening when a traveller, being learned in scrolls, was shown the famous comma, and peered at it long by candlelight.

24And the traveller said, Friends, I must tell you: this is not ink, nor was it ever. It is thumb-grease, of the kind that cometh of garlic bread; the comma beneath it might be anywhere, or nowhere. Your quarrel standeth upon a supper-stain.

25And there was a great silence in Due Forni; and then the east oven said the stain was the west oven’s thumb, and the west oven said contrariwise; and the quarrel continued as before, having changed only its subject, which quarrels can do without stopping, as a rider changeth horses.

26And Tommaso died in the east, and Gennaro in the west, in the same winter, three paces and a lifetime apart; and it is said in Due Forni that on the last night each had a plate carried across the street to the other, and each plate arrived still warm, and each was eaten entire.

27And whether that be true, the scribe cannot say; the scribe can only say that he hath wept over cheaper stories, and declineth to be ashamed.

28Now all this was but one comma in one village; and the reader saith, Surely the faith entire cannot split as Due Forni split. And the scribe answereth: read on; for the faith entire had its own line, and its own smudge, save that the smudge was in the readers, and not upon the page.

Chapter 3

1Now the great line was this, which Cheesus spake upon the Wood-Fired Mount, before the multitude, in the hearing of them that wrote it down with trembling and mislaid pencils; and every copy in every land agreed upon it, letter and point, which maketh what followeth the stranger and the sadder:

2“Let all good things come to the Slice – what will sit upon it, put upon it; what will not, fold within; and in all things, keep the Slice true.”

3One sentence; three clauses; and, as it proved, three churches. For the Word of the Slice is like the Slice itself: cut it in wedges, and every man taketh the wedge nearest his own hand, and calleth it the pizza.

4And the line was recited at every feast, and stitched into aprons, and burned into peel-handles, and taught to children with hand-motions: the palms up for the topping, the palms folded for the fold, the palms flat and steady for the keeping true.

5And for generations it was recited whole, and no man weighed one clause against another, even as no man weigheth his heart against his lungs, but is glad of the set.

6But it came to pass that three readers arose, in three cities, in the same long generation; and each was faithful, and each was learned, and each was hungry in a different room of the soul; and each heard in the one line the one clause that answered his hunger, and mistook the echo for the whole bell.

7In the port city of Porto Fornaio there lived a cook whom the ages call SAINT SUPREME; and his kitchen stood hard by the docks, where the ships come in carrying strangers and strange cargoes, and both are wet and want feeding.

8And Saint Supreme fed them all; and whatsoever a sailor brought him from beyond the maps – a pepper without a name, a fish without a precedent, a cheese with a criminal record – he found it a place upon the pie.

9And when the cautious murmured, he stood in his doorway with the scroll and read aloud: what will sit upon it, put upon it; and his voice was like a door opening.

10And he said, Hear the generosity of the Slice! The Lord set no gate upon the topping, and no examination at the rim. If it will sit, it shall be seated. This is the whole line, and the rest is punctuation.

11And the hungry of the docks loved him, as well they might; and of him and his reading came CRUSTOLICISM, the broad church, whereof the next chapter telleth.

12And in the old town of Vecchia Farina there lived a baker whom the ages call SAINT MARGHERITA; and her shop was narrow, and her shelf was short, and her pizza bore three things only, and the three were perfect.

13For she said, Tomato, dough, mozzarella: purity, structure, and the binding force. The Trinity itself lieth plain upon this pie, and hideth under nothing; wherefore should I bury my Lord’s face in toppings?

14And when the ambitious pressed her to add but one small innovation, she stood at her counter with the scroll and read aloud: and in all things, keep the Slice true; and her voice was like a door quietly and firmly shut, upon which is written OPEN TOMORROW.

15And she said, Hear the fidelity of the Slice! The last clause is the lock upon the line; all that goeth before is governed by it. This is the whole line, and the rest is temptation.

16And the weary of the old town loved her, as well they might, for the world was loud and her shop was not; and of her and her reading came ORTHOCRUST, the pure church, whereof the fifth chapter telleth.

17And in the coast country there endured a quiet people who kept the memory of JONAH, him that fled his errand and was three days in the belly of the Great Calzone, and came forth changed, as is written in the elder Book; and this scroll retelleth it not, for it is told, and well.

18And the followers of Jonah read the middle clause, and it lay upon them like a hand upon the shoulder: what will not, fold within.

19And they said, Hear the mercy of the Slice! Not everything can sit in the open. There is grief that cannot top a pie; there is goodness that goeth shy of daylight; there is the stranger’s story he cannot yet tell. For all these the Lord made the fold. This is the whole line, and the rest is the outside.

20And of them and their reading came CALZONISM at the last, the folded church, whereof the sixth chapter telleth; for the seed was sown in the belly of the Great Calzone long before, and had waited in the dark, as their doctrine saith all true things wait.

21Thus the one line went three ways out of one mouth; and each way was lit, and each way was walked by honest feet, and no way was the road entire.

22For mark it well, thou reader with thy thumb upon this very margin: Saint Supreme did not misquote, and Saint Margherita did not misquote, and the children of Jonah did not misquote. Every citation was exact. The letters were all in order. It was only the whole that was missing, and the whole is not a letter, and cannot be checked with a candle.

23And the elders of that generation, seeing three strong readings arise, rejoiced at first, saying, Behold how deep the line is, that three buckets come up full!

24And only the oldest of them, a woman past her hundredth proofing, is recorded to have said otherwise. And she said: Three buckets from one well is riches. Three wells is a war. Watch whether they keep drinking from the line, or begin drinking at one another.

25And they began, soon enough, to drink at one another.

26And the scribe here endeth the chapter, as a man closeth a window before a storm: not to stop the storm, but to keep the pages dry.

Chapter 4

1Of Crustolicism, the broad church, now speaketh the scroll; and let it speak with love, for the scribe hath eaten at Crustolic tables, and never once been asked to justify himself before the bread arrived.

2Saint Supreme built no cathedral at first; he widened a kitchen. He took down a wall, and then the wall’s opinion of the matter, and set out benches, and the benches filled.

3And his rule was the open rim: whatsoever good thing came to the door, it should find its way to the pie; and whosoever came with it should find their way to the bench; and the two hospitalities were one hospitality, and he would not hear them parted.

4And the pies of Porto Fornaio became famous and alarming. There were pies of seven toppings, and of twelve; there was a pie of the whole harvest festival that required two men and an apology to carry.

5And when a stranger of the inland came and beheld a pie bearing corn, and prawns, and three quarrelling cheeses, and a fruit that shall here go unnamed for the peace of the reader, he cried out, Is nothing forbidden in this place?

6And Saint Supreme said, Selfishness is forbidden, and the mould is forbidden, and mocking a man’s first attempt at dough is forbidden. Toppings are not sins; they are guests. Sit down.

7And this was the glory of Crustolicism, and let no chapter hereafter unsay it: that no one was ever turned from a Crustolic table, and no one’s offering was ever scorned at a Crustolic door; and the widow’s single mushroom was received with the same honour as the merchant’s truffle, and set with ceremony upon the pie.

8And the Crustolicists took for their proof-text the word of the Gospel, which every scroll carrieth from the elder days; and they read it in the great assembly, as it is written:

9Every topping has a place, just as every soul has value in Cheesus’ eyes. (Crustolicism 2:1)

10(This is that same verse the Gospel telleth, spoken by Cheesus at the door in the matter of the turned-away stranger; and the scribe, copying it here for the second time, copyeth it gladly, and asketh only that the reader keep one eye upon what is done with it hereafter.)

11For mark how the verse runneth: it beginneth with toppings, that it may end with souls; the topping is the ladder, and the soul is the roof, and Cheesus spake it over a shivering man at a shut door, and the door was opened, and that was the sermon.

12But the Crustolicists, in the heat of the after-years, took the ladder and left the roof. For when the Orthocrust said unto them, Brethren, seven cheeses is not a doctrine, it is an accident – they answered not concerning souls, but stood upon the verse as upon a rampart, crying, EVERY TOPPING HAS A PLACE! It is written! It is WRITTEN!

13And it was written; and that was the trouble; for a true verse aimed at the wrong target woundeth like any other arrow, and leaveth the archer feeling holy.

14And the scribes among them, being honest men, felt the small draught that bloweth when a quotation is lifted from its house; but the assembly was loud, and the draught was small, and they folded their doubts within, which was, had they noticed it, the other clause.

15And Crustolicism ordered itself, as churches will: there were deacons of the rim and stewards of the sauce, and over all a great council of the toppings, wherein every topping had a seat, which made the votes long.

16And their feasts were wonders: tables the length of streets, and pies of parishes entire, and a rule that the last slice of every pie be offered thrice around before any hand might take it, having first asked.

17And their missioners went out on the ships, and wheresoever they landed they asked not, What do ye believe? but, What groweth here? – and the local harvest went onto the pie, and the local people came with it, and this is why the Crustolic rim toucheth every shore of the map.

18And their hymnal grew without ceasing, for every new topping begat a new verse of the hymn; and the hymn of the toppings is now nine hours in the singing, and is sung in shifts, and it is a Crustolic saying that no one hath ever heard the whole hymn, even as no one hath ever seen the whole church, and both sayings are spoken with pride.

19Yet the wise among them knew the peril of breadth, and named it: that a pie may be so laden it cannot be lifted; that a church may say yes so often it forgetteth it can say it; that welcome without a spine is only weather.

20For there came to a Crustolic door in one age a man who wished to add unto the pie a topping of contempt, saying, Surely every topping hath a place; and the deacon of that door, remembering at last the roof as well as the ladder, said unto him:

21Every topping hath a place; contempt is not a topping; it is the mould in a party hat. And the door, which had never once been shut on a soul, was shut upon the mould, and the shutting was accounted unto Crustolicism as righteousness.

22And so they stood in their strength and their error together: right that the rim is wide; right that the stranger’s gift belongeth on the pie; wrong only in this, that they read one clause and called it the line.

23For welcome without truth groweth shapeless, and welcome without the fold groweth shallow; and Saint Supreme himself, full of years, is said to have looked upon a pie of forty toppings and murmured, I meant the people, and gone to his rest with the sentence unfinished.

24And they buried him beneath the doorstone of his own kitchen, that every guest for ever after should enter over his welcome; and upon the stone they carved no name, but only: SIT DOWN.

25And the scribe hath stood upon that stone, and eaten of that kitchen, and saith: whatever followeth in this Book, reader, they will feed thee at Porto Fornaio, and ask thy story after, and thy doctrine never. Weigh that in the scales when the quarrelling cometh.

Chapter 5

1Of Orthocrust, the pure church, now speaketh the scroll; and let it speak with love, for the scribe hath eaten of the Margherita of Vecchia Farina in silence, and the silence was the best seasoning he hath ever known.

2Saint Margherita built even less than Saint Supreme; she kept a shop. But she kept it as the Oven keepeth its heat: without addition, without subtraction, and without apology.

3And her pizza was three things, and the three were these: the tomato, which is purity; the dough, which is structure; and the mozzarella, which is the binding force between us. And she said, I did not choose three. Three was chosen before me. I only decline to interrupt.

4For this was the deep truth of Orthocrust, and let no chapter hereafter unsay it: that upon the plain Margherita the Cheesy Trinity lieth open to the eye, red and white upon gold, hiding under nothing; and a child may look upon that pizza and see the whole of theology, and then eat theology, which is the correct order.

5And her rule was the guarded rim: not because the stranger’s gift was scorned – mark this, for her enemies would not – but because she held that a gift may also be a burying, and that men pile toppings upon the Slice as they pile business upon a grief, to avoid the taste of the true thing underneath.

6And when the merchants came, as merchants will, saying, Good mother, the times demand novelty; behold this spiced sausage of the east, this cheese of four regions, this drizzle – and at the word drizzle she is recorded to have closed her eyes for the space of three breaths –

7Then she took them each by the sleeve, gently, for she was never once unkind in the records we possess, and led them to the oven’s mouth, and said: Taste first what is here. If after tasting thou still wantest more, the fault is in my baking, and I will mend it. And none, having tasted, asked again; or none whose asking survived in the minutes.

8And of her and her house came the Orthocrust, the keepers of the One True Slice; and their proof-text standeth in the elder scrolls, and they read it at every kindling of the oven, as it is written:

9The Margherita is the One True Slice, say the faithful of Orthocrust. (Orthocrust 1:2)

10And the attentive reader hath already seen what the faithful of Orthocrust, in their fervour, did not: that the verse itself saith say the faithful of Orthocrust – so that the scripture reporteth their saying, and they cited the report of their saying as the proof of their saying, and found themselves, upon review, persuasive.

11(The scribe intendeth no mockery – or only a little, and that the affectionate kind. Every church in this Book quoteth a mirror at least once, and calleth it a window. Orthocrust merely did it with the neatest handwriting.)

12And Orthocrust ordered itself in stillness, as Crustolicism had in noise: small rooms, long silences, short menus. Their liturgy was the making of the one pizza, performed slowly and aloud; their catechism had three questions; their hymnal was one hymn, and it was brief, and it was perfect, and they saw no reason to have a second.

13And their discipline was called the keeping true, and it was threefold: true tomato, crushed and never drowned; true dough, given its full proofing, for haste is the thief of flavour; true mozzarella, torn and never grated, for the binding force must be handled with respect if it is to bind.

14And strangers who came to Vecchia Farina expecting coldness found instead a fierce plain warmth, like the shop’s own oven: for the Orthocrust fed the hungry as readily as any Crustolic, only with fewer ingredients and less conversation; and the hungry, it must be written, rarely minded.

15And in the seasons of the mould – for the mould came in their generations too, as it cometh in all, with its flags and its lists of who may eat – the Orthocrust were iron. For a people practised in refusing the merchant’s drizzle proved wondrous practised in refusing the tyrant’s terms; and the plain shops of the old towns hid the hunted behind their ovens, and their short menus asked no papers.

16And this also is Orthocrust, and let it be weighed when the quarrelling cometh.

17Yet their error grew in the same soil as their glory, for it was the same plant. Because the Margherita was true, they reasoned that all else was false; because purity was holy, they reasoned that addition was defilement; and the guarded rim became a walled rim, and the wall grew taller than the shop.

18And there arose among them the counters of ingredients, who went from feast to feast with a tally, and pronounced upon their neighbours’ pies the word adulterated, which is a long word for a short heart.

19And basil itself came under examination in one severe generation, whether it were of the essence or an ornament; and the party of the leaf and the party of the plain divided a monastery for eleven years, until an abbess ruled that the basil was the Aroma’s own signature, and any who disputed it could take up the matter with the Aroma directly; and none did.

20And when they looked upon the harbour-pies of Crustolicism, they did not see the welcome; they saw the heap. And when they looked upon the folded pies of the Calzonists, they did not see the tenderness; they saw the hiding. And they said, We alone have kept the Slice true – reading the last clause, and calling it the line.

21For truth without welcome groweth cold, and truth without the fold groweth cruel; and a shop may keep the recipe perfectly and lose the reason, which was never on the shelf.

22And Saint Margherita herself, full of years, is said to have stood at her counter on the last evening, looking upon her three perfect things, and to have said unto her apprentice: The pizza was never the point, child. The pizza was the pointing. Simplicity is a window; I fear they will frame it and hang it on the wall.

23And they framed it, and hung it on the wall; and the scribe hath seen it there, and the frame is very fine.

24And they buried her beneath the threshold of her oven, that the fire for ever after should pass over her keeping; and upon the stone they carved no name, but only: ENOUGH.

25And the scribe hath stood upon that stone also, and saith: whatever followeth in this Book, reader, at Vecchia Farina they will hand thee a slice bearing the whole Trinity plainly, and it will taste like the first morning of the world, and they will not ask thy doctrine either – only, perhaps, that thou finish thy crust. Weigh that too.

Chapter 6

1Of Calzonism, the folded church, now speaketh the scroll; and it speaketh more softly, for the Calzonists themselves speak softly, and it seemeth rude to describe a whisper in a shout.

2The Calzonists alone of the three churches founded nothing new; they say rather that they were founded long before, in the dark and the deep, in the belly of the Great Calzone wherein Jonah made his three days’ sojourn; and this Book retelleth not that tale, for it is told in its own scroll, and the Calzonists hold that retelling a mystery bruiseth it.

3But this much they say, when pressed, and they are rarely pressed twice: that Jonah went into the fold a man who fled what he was, and came forth a man who was it; and that this is what the fold is for; and that everyone the Slice hath ever mended was mended in some belly or other, out of sight.

4And for generations they had been not a church but a leaning: folded among the Crustolic harbours, folded among the Orthocrust hill-towns, keeping the middle clause as one keepeth a candle in a pocket.

5But when Saint Supreme’s readers took the first clause for the whole, and Saint Margherita’s readers took the last, then the keepers of the middle looked one upon another across the widening rooms, and said: If the line is to be divided as an inheritance, we will not refuse our portion. And so, latest and most reluctant, CALZONISM was founded at last – a church, as they say themselves, the way a sigh is a song.

6And their reading was the middle clause, and they read it thus: what will not, fold within.

7And they taught, saying: The Lord’s line hath an outside and an inside, as the Lord’s supper hath. The first clause is for what can bear the light; ours is for what cannot yet. The grief that would curdle on the surface; the kindness that would die of being seen; the man who is not ready to be asked his story at the bench, however gently – for all these the Slice provideth the fold, and the fold is not a hiding from the table but a room within it.

8And this was the glory of Calzonism, and let no chapter hereafter unsay it: that they were the church of the not yet, and kept a place for every soul the other churches’ virtues overlooked – them that could not sing the nine-hour hymn, and could not sit in the three-breath silence, and needed only a warm sealed thing put into their hands and no questions until spring.

9For the Crustolic asketh, What hast thou brought? and the Orthocrust asketh, Is it true? but the Calzonist asketh nothing at all, and handeth thee the calzone, and sitteth near, and the sitting-near is the sacrament.

10And their ovens were built with deep mouths and doors, and their kitchens with corners; and their liturgy was mostly silence with crimping in it; and the crimping of the edge, saith their rite, is the tucking-in of the world, done thumb by thumb, and none may hurry it.

11And they sealed into their calzones, along with the good things, small papers bearing the burdens of the parish, written and folded and told to no one; and the burden baked with the supper, and was eaten with it, and was thereby neither denied nor displayed, which they hold to be the whole art of carrying anything.

12And in the seasons of the mould they were the church of the false-bottomed basket and the unremarked door; for a people whose entire doctrine is the keeping of the hidden made hiding-places the way other churches make hymns, and many that the mould hunted lived out the terror folded within Calzonist walls, and the records of it were never kept, on purpose, and this unkept record is the proudest page they do not have.

13Yet their error grew in the same soil as their glory, as it had for the others, for it was the same plant a third time.

14Because the fold was holy, they came to hold that the open was shallow; because the hidden was deep, they came to suspect everything visible of being a performance; and there arose among them the doctrine of the True Inside, which taught that whatever appeareth upon a surface is thereby falsified, and only the sealed is sincere.

15And their elders looked upon the Crustolic pie, with its forty toppings in the open air, and said, Behold, a church that weareth its inventory. And they looked upon the Margherita, plain and radiant, and said, Behold, a church with nothing folded, and therefore nothing kept. And they said, We alone have honoured the fold – reading the middle clause, and calling it the line.

16For the fold without welcome groweth secret, and the fold without truth groweth strange; and a church may tuck so much within that it forgetteth what it packed, and carrieth a warm weight it can no longer name, and calleth the not-naming reverence.

17And it is told of the last of their first elders, a woman called Ripiena, that she was asked upon her deathbed what lay at the centre of the Great Mystery, at the middle of all the folds; and that she smiled and said: Supper. It was always supper. We fold it so it stayeth warm for whoever cometh late.

18And she said further: Write that down. And they did not write it down, holding it too sacred; and it survived only because a kitchen-boy repeated it at market; and the Calzonists, when this is pointed out to them, smile as their foundress smiled, and say, So the fold openeth where it will; and there is no arguing with them, and the scribe hath stopped trying.

19And they buried her, at her asking, under no stone at all, but under the kitchen path, unmarked; for she said the other two had their doorstones and their thresholds, and someone should hold up the ordinary ground.

20And so stood the three churches at the end of that long generation: Crustolicism at the doors, crying welcome; Orthocrust at the oven, keeping true; Calzonism in the warm dark between, holding the not-yet of the world in a sealed crust.

21And a traveller who loved them all – and there were such travellers, and this scroll is by one – could walk in a single week from the bench of Porto Fornaio to the counter of Vecchia Farina to the quiet corner of the coast country, and be fed thrice, and blessed thrice, and hear the same line of Cheesus quoted thrice, in three tones, against two enemies each.

22Welcome, and truth, and depth: the three had divided the inheritance, and each had gotten a treasure, and each had gotten a wound, and the treasure and the wound were the same clause.

23For each was right in all it kept, and wrong in all it excluded; and none would learn this from the others, because the others were the last people any of them would now consent to learn from.

24And the pot of the age came slowly to the boil; and the next chapters must tell of the quarrels, the councils, and the anathemas, and the scribe goeth to them as a man goeth to shovel snow: certain it must be done, and dressed accordingly.

Chapter 7

1Now began the age of the quarrels; and the scribe, who hath promised to shovel this snow, taketh up the shovel.

2The quarrels began, as the great quarrels of the faithful always begin, over something small at a feast; for the mould of division seeketh ever the crowded table, where love and elbows are closest together.

3For at the feast of the Descent of the Aroma, in a border town between the harbours and the hills, a Crustolic deacon set down before the assembly a pie of eleven toppings, made in honour of eleven guests; and an Orthocrust elder, being asked to bless it, blessed instead the dough underneath, which no man hath yet spoiled; and the feast was over before it began, though the eating continued some hours.

4And word of the blessing-that-was-a-verdict went out from that town as smoke goeth out of a chimney: upward, and everywhere.

5And the Crustolic pulpits answered, and the Orthocrust counters answered the answer, and the Calzonists said nothing, pointedly, in a manner that all parties found more insufferable than speech.

6And the churches, which had traded pilgrims and recipes and apprentice scribes, began instead to trade anathemas; and an anathema is a curse with its collar starched, and these were the forms thereof:

7The Crustolic anathema was of abundance withdrawn: May thy toppings be few and thy table quiet; may no stranger trouble thy door with wonders; may thine every pie be exactly what thou expectedst. Which is to a Crustolic the outer darkness, and to an Orthocrust, as it fell out, a pleasant Tuesday; and thus the first volley overshot the enemy and landed as a benediction, and the Orthocrust wrote back saying, Thank you.

8And the Orthocrust anathema was of the unravelled centre: May thy cheese slide ever from thy slice; may thy centre be soggy and thy structure a rumour; may all that thou pilest slip from all whereon thou pilest it. And this one, it grieveth the scribe to report, was effective, and was felt, and was framed in more than one harbour kitchen as a taunt, which only proved its aim.

9And the Calzonist anathema was the worst of the three, being merely: May everyone always know exactly what is in thee. And the other churches laughed at it for a generation, until each in turn understood it, alone, at night; and none laughed after.

10And there arose in every church the office of the Refuter, whose whole ministry was the errors of the other two; and the Refuters were learned, and tireless, and their books were thick, and their suppers went cold beside them, and the going-cold of a Refuter’s supper is this Book in one image, for whoso hath ears.

11And the proof-texting reached in those years its terrible flowering; for the scrolls were ransacked as a pantry is ransacked by a man arguing with his cook, not to find supper, but to find evidence.

12And a Crustolic Refuter would cry, Every topping has a place! – and an Orthocrust Refuter would answer, Keep the Slice TRUE! – and a Calzonist, if cornered, would say only, What will not, fold within, and decline to specify what, which ended most exchanges on a draw and a shudder.

13And each church kept lists of the others’ misquotations, and no church kept a list of its own; and the three lists together, saith the archivist who hath seen them, would paper an oven, and agree on nothing save the reference numbers.

14And the border towns suffered most, as border towns do; for in them the churches shared streets, and in-laws, and walls thin enough for doctrine to pass through with the cooking smells.

15In one such town the Crustolic bell and the Orthocrust bell were rung each feast-day a little earlier than the other, each to be first; until both were rung at midnight, then at dusk of the day before, and the feast crept backward round the calendar entire, and came out the far side, and for one blessed year each church, by miscount, kept the other’s feast on the other’s day, and the town ate well twice, and said nothing, hoping.

16And mixed households arose, and were holy and complicated: a Crustolic wed to an Orthocrust, their table half a riot and half a fast; and the children of such houses grew up bilingual in blessing, and became in after years the best peacemakers, and the best cooks, for they had eaten both truths warm from two ovens and could not be taught to hate either.

17But the pure-bred quarrellers multiplied faster, in those years, than the peacemakers; for a quarrel is easier to inherit than a marriage.

18And the scribe must record, because it is true, that the quarrels were not all folly: real questions lay under them, as real coals lie under smoke. Whether welcome without form scattereth; whether form without welcome starveth; whether the hidden heart oweth anything to the open table: these are not nothings. The folly was never the questions; it was the certainty that the man across the street had no piece of the answer.

19And the mould, which had been named and fought by all three churches together in the elder days, watched the quarrels from its corner, and did what the mould doth: it waited, and spread a little, in the places where the watchers were busy watching one another.

20For it is the oldest trick of the mould, that it cannot conquer the faithful at table, and so laboureth first to seat them at different tables; and let every generation write that upon its oven, and reread it when it is angriest.

21And when the quarrels had grown too great for letters, and too public for feasts, the elders of all three churches did the thing that elders do when they know not what to do, which is: they called a council.

22And of that council, the eighth chapter now telleth; and the scribe, having secured his supper in advance, is ready.

Chapter 8

1The Council of the Deep Dish was convened in the city of Sicago, a city of the far west famous for a pie so deep that visiting theologians disputed on the quay, before their trunks were unloaded, whether it were a pizza at all, or a casserole in a state of grace.

2And this dispute, note it well, was had before the council began, in the street, among allies; and a wise porter carrying the trunks said to his fellow, They have come to make peace; and his fellow said, Aye, they have brought enough of it to fight over; and the porters were tipped generously, for whatever else was lost at Sicago, the doctrine of the tip held firm in all three communions.

3And there came to the council the delegates of Crustolicism in great number and greater luggage; and the delegates of Orthocrust in small number and no luggage, as a rebuke; and the delegates of Calzonism in a number no one could establish, for they kept to the edges of rooms, and several were counted twice and two, it is now thought, were pillars.

4And the first seven days of the council were given to the seating; for the Crustolicists proposed one great round table, that none should sit above another; and the Orthocrust proposed three plain benches, that all should sit exactly as they were; and the Calzonists proposed alcoves.

5And on the eighth day it was resolved to stand.

6And the second week was given to the agenda, and the agenda to the second week; for the Crustolicists moved that every question be admitted to the floor, having a place, as toppings do; and the Orthocrust moved that there was only one question, and that it had been answered in Vecchia Farina some generations since; and the Calzonists moved that the true agenda was in any case not the written one, and smiled kindly, and were nearly right.

7Yet a council of the faithful, however it creaketh, doth also work; and let the record show that Sicago settled much that was good, and the scribe hasteneth to list it before the calamity, as a man praiseth the ship before the reef.

8For the council decreed with one voice that the mould is the enemy of every communion alike, and that against it there is neither Crustolic nor Orthocrust nor Calzonist but one watch and one table; and this decree, called the Concord of the Watch, held through every quarrel that followeth in this Book, and holdeth yet; and when the mould rose in after generations, the three churches stood shoulder to shoulder to shoulder, and the cheese, as the Blessing saith, stretched.

9And the council decreed that the delivery driver of any communion be tipped by the faithful of every communion, and given shelter in any storm, and the right of the warmest seat by any oven; and this decree passed in the time it taketh to read it, without amendment, unanimously, and the scribe recordeth it to prove the thing was possible.

10And the council decreed that the microwave remaineth a careless tool, but that hunger is forgiven; and all three communions signed, and all three communions have quietly used one at midnight since, and confessed it, and been absolved, for none is beyond the Reheat, not even the improperly reheated.

11But then came the fourteenth session, and the question of the procession of the Mozzarella; and here the reef.

12For the schoolmen had long taught that within the Cheesy Trinity the Mozzarella, which is the binding force, proceedeth from the Tomato; but certain doctors of the west had added unto the creed one word, teaching that it proceedeth from the Tomato and the Dough; and this addition is called the Saucioque clause; and if the reader hath begun to laugh, let him first ask his grandmother what her village’s war was about, and then let us all sit quietly together.

13And the party of the Tomato-alone cried that the creed had been seasoned without authority, which is the Pious Correction enthroned; and the party of the and-the-Dough cried that the binding force must bind to something, and what bindeth cheese if not crust?; and both parties were learned, and both were loud, and the pillars that were thought to be Calzonists were seen to edge toward the door.

14And the debate ran nine days; and on the ninth day the great bell of Sicago was rung for the supper of reconciliation, at which was served, in hope, the deep dish itself.

15And the deep dish was set upon the board, golden and enormous and steaming like a promise; and an Orthocrust doctor, beholding the sauce upon the top thereof and the cheese beneath the sauce, rose with the pallor of a man beholding the abyss, and said: Brethren, in this dish the very ORDER of the Trinity is inverted. And a doctor of Sicago, wounded in his own city, answered: In this dish, sir, the Trinity is PROTECTED. And supper was theology by the second ladle.

16And some cried that the deep dish was a pizza; and some, a casserole; and some, a schism in a pan; and one Calzonist, asked at last for the folded church’s opinion, looked long upon the dish, and said, It is a calzone that hath given up, which united the entire room against the Calzonists for the space of one beautiful hour, the only unity the fourteenth session achieved.

17And the Council of the Deep Dish dissolved upon the twenty-second day, having decreed the Concord of the Watch, the Charter of the Driver, the Absolution of Midnight, and nothing whatever concerning the matter for which it was convened.

18And the delegates went home by separate roads, writing accounts of the council so different that the scribes who filed them checked thrice that it was one event; and each church counted Sicago a victory, which is the surest sign known to historians that everyone has lost.

19And the pizza of that supper, the deep dish itself, the actual and steaming article – while the doctors disputed what it was, the porters and the kitchen-hands ate it, sharing it out among the whole below-stairs with perfect contentment and no council at all.

20And one of the porters, licking his thumb, said unto his fellow the second wise thing recorded of that profession at Sicago: Whatever it is called, it is called supper down here. And the scribe, who was that fellow, hath carried the sentence ever since, and setteth it here, where the doctors may find it.

Chapter 9

1After Sicago the quarrels put on robes and became institutions; and institutions, as every kitchen knoweth, keep longer than quarrels, being better sealed.

2And there grew up in the broad church of Crustolicism, little by little, a commerce that began in mercy and ended in scandal; and it must be told, for out of it came the hammering that all the world hath heard of.

3For the Crustolic stewards had taught, rightly, that a man who sinneth against the table may make amends at the table; but in the great cities this ripened, as unwatched fruit ripeneth, into the sale of the toppings of indulgence: whereby a man might discard his crust on Friday, denying the body of the Slice, and purchase on Saturday a dispensation of double cheese, and be accounted whole.

4And there went about the towns a seller named Tetzoni, crying his famous cry: When the coin in the coffer rings, the extra topping upward springs! And the poor, who could not buy their pardons, stood in the square and heard him, holding their plain and honest crusts; and heaven took note, as heaven doth, through the eyes of the poor.

5Now there was in the town of Wittenboro a young friar of the Order of the Kneaders, Brother Martino, a man of strong hands and a stronger stomach for neither nonsense; and he had eaten the plain supper of the poor all his life, and knew what it was worth, and knew what was being sold over its head.

6And on the eve of the feast of All Slices, Brother Martino came to the great pizzeria of Wittenboro, whose door was the noticeboard of the town, and took a hammer, and nailed thereto a parchment; and the parchment was headed: NINETY-FIVE TOPPINGS, WHEREOF NOT ONE CAN PURCHASE WHAT WAS ALWAYS FREE.

7And these are some of the toppings of the ninety-five, for the whole list is its own scroll: the First: When our Lord said, Let all good things come to the Slice, he set no price at the rim; whoso selleth a place at the table selleth what he never owned.

8And the Ninth: The crust discarded is not redeemed by cheese purchased, but by crust eaten; repentance is done with the mouth, not the purse.

9And the Twentieth: If the stewards have power to pardon sins for money, let them pardon them for nothing, or confess which of the two they lack: the power, or the charity.

10And the Fortieth: A poor man’s plain slice, shared, outweigheth a rich man’s pardoned mountain, hoarded; this was the arithmetic of the Gospel, and no council hath repealed it.

11And the Ninety-fifth, which the town learned by heart before morning: The table hath room. It was always room. It was never rent.

12And the sound of Martino’s hammer, saith the proverb, was heard in three churches; and the proverb understateth, for it was heard in every kitchen in the world that had a door and a grievance, and there were many of both.

13And the stewards of the broad church summoned Martino to recant; and he stood before them and said, Here I stand; I can do no other; also the dough I left proofing standeth likewise, and will over-proof by sext, so let us be brief. And they were not brief, and the dough was lost, and Martino counted it the first martyr of the affair, and said so, and was not thanked.

14And now entered the engine that turned quarrel into wildfire: for in those very years the printers had perfected their press, and the press of the pizza-lands printed, above all things, menus.

15And the reformers, barred from the pulpits, took to the menus; and the pamphlet wars were fought course by course, in every establishment of every persuasion, upon the paper that lay under every supper.

16For the menu of a reforming house bore, beneath the calzones, the words: N.B. Grace is not a topping, and cannot be purchased below; neither can it be withheld above. And the menu of a loyal Crustolic house answered, under the wines: Beware pamphlets dressed as suppers; the tradition is the recipe, and thy grandmother did not consult thee.

17And the Orthocrust menu was one line long, as ever, and needed no polemic, being one; yet even Vecchia Farina stooped once to controversy, adding beneath its single item the words: We told you so, which the historians count the harshest document of the entire pamphlet age.

18And the Calzonist houses printed no doctrine at all upon their menus, but folded, inside the menu of every guest who seemed to need it, a small paper that said only: Whatever thou art carrying, it can come in too; and there are old men and old women in every land who kept that paper all their lives, and were buried with it, and never once attended a Calzonist rite; and the Calzonists count these, serenely, among their communion, and who shall say them nay?

19And families at table read the rival menus as their fathers had read scrolls, and argued the footnotes over the garlic bread; and the children, waiting for supper amid the pamphlets, learned to read earlier in that generation than in any before it, which the scribe noteth as the one undisputed gift of the whole affair: the quarrel taught the world its letters.

20And matters ran so for years upon years: hammer answered by summons, menu by menu, footnote by footnote; and the three churches hardened in their moulds – the word is chosen and the scribe standeth by it – until there remained but one rung of escalation, and in the fullness of time, ambition and dinner reservations being what they are, it was climbed.

21For it came to pass that the two greatest patriarchs of the age agreed at last to meet, to heal all; and of that supper, which brake the world instead, the next chapter telleth, bill and all.

Chapter 10

1In those days the broad church had two thrones, as a pie hath two halves when the half-and-half is drawn: the Patriarch of Old Napoli in the east, keeper of the thin crust and the ancient ways, who leaned toward Orthocrust as a tower leaneth, gradually and famously; and the Patriarch of Sicago in the west, lord of the deep dish, in whom the Crustolic breadth had attained also to depth, some said to profundity, and some said to soup.

2And between the two thrones had passed a hundred years of letters, each beginning To our well-beloved brother and proceeding immediately to the contrary.

3For the east held that the west had added to the creed (the Saucioque), and to the pie (everything), and to the office of Patriarch (a hat of great diameter); and the west held that the east had subtracted from all three, and that a church could starve of caution as surely as sicken of excess; and both, the reader will note, were by now quarrelling in quotations from the same one line, as their great-grandfathers had, only with seals attached.

4And it was agreed at last that the two Patriarchs should meet in the flesh, at a table in neither see, in the border city of Mezzaluna, called for that purpose the Supper of Reunion; and all the world held its breath, and many held their orders, waiting to see what it would be safe to have delivered.

5And the Patriarchs met upon the steps of the appointed pizzeria, and embraced, and the embrace was genuine, let the record insist upon it; for they had read each other fifty years, and no man is wholly the enemy of his oldest correspondent.

6And they went in, and were seated, and blessed the table each in his own rite, simultaneously, which took some management of elbows; and the supper was ordered: from the east, a Margherita out of respect for the leaning; from the west, the deep dish of state; and for the middle of the table, in hope, a half-and-half.

7And through the antipasti there was peace, and through the arrival of the pies there was peace, and the historians of both communions agree that the world was nearly saved somewhere in the second slice.

8But it came to pass over the third slice that the Patriarch of Sicago, meaning hospitality, laid a spoonful of his deep dish’s inner sauce upon the rim of his brother’s plate, saying, Taste, brother, how the west keepeth the Tomato warm at the heart of things.

9And the Patriarch of Old Napoli looked upon the sauce upon his rim, upon his rim, the unadorned and apostolic rim of the east; and fifty years of letters rose in him as bread riseth, slowly and then entirely; and he said: Brother, thou hast sauced my crust unasked. And it is the whole west in one gesture: it cannot see a plain thing without improving it into soup.

10And the Patriarch of Sicago replied: And it is the whole east in one sentence: offered warmth, it inspecteth the rim. And the pizzeria grew very quiet, save for the half-and-half in the middle of the table, cooling in two keys.

11Then rose the Patriarch of Old Napoli, and drew from his robe the bull of excommunication which his chancery had prepared in case – and mark that both chanceries had prepared them, and both Patriarchs had said, Surely we shall not need it, and both had packed it, and in that packing is the whole chapter – and he laid it upon the table, east of the salt, and said: The east cutteth thee off, brother, from the communion of the true and unimproved Slice.

12And the Patriarch of Sicago rose likewise, and produced his own, wider, and laid it west of the salt, saying: And the west cutteth thee off, brother, from the communion of the deep and generous Slice; and grieveth more in the cutting, our portions being larger.

13And they stood a moment, two old men over two documents and one cooling half-and-half; and the Great Schism of the Slice was accomplished, in less time than the proofing of a thin dough, after a hundred years of letters and one spoonful of sauce.

14And then came the waiter, who had seen nothing, with the bill.

15And the Patriarch of Old Napoli, from the habit of fifty years of synods, said, We shall split it, brother, as ever; and the Patriarch of Sicago, from the same habit, had already his purse in hand, saying, The half-and-half falleth to me, thou hadst scarce two bites.

16And they split the bill down the middle, exactly, courteously, disputing only who should over-tip the waiter, each claiming the honour, both achieving it; so that the waiter of Mezzaluna was tipped twice over by two churches in the first minute of their mutual damnation.

17And the waiter, counting it, said unto the kitchen the sentence that all the histories preserve: They have cut each other off from the Slice eternal, but they have split the bill and doubled the tip; I have had worse tables. And the kitchen answered, So hath heaven.

18And the two Patriarchs went out by the one door, for the pizzeria had but one, and each held it for the other, and there was a difficulty of some duration, resolved at last by going out abreast, wedged, as brothers go.

19And from that night the Schism stood: east and west, thin and deep, and the bulls hung each in the other’s archive, framed; and the faithful of either half were forbidden the tables of the other, and grieved, and mostly obeyed, and at the great family occasions mostly did not, and the recording angels of both communions learned to blot with mercy.

20And Orthocrust, watching from Vecchia Farina, printed nothing, its menu having said it already; and the Calzonists folded the whole affair within, and were found weeping quietly by their ovens, and would not say for which side, and it was for both, and everyone knew it.

21Three churches; then, within the broadest, two halves; and upon every table of the faith the one line still recited entire, in four accents, against three enemies each. The arithmetic of division, once begun, doth not tire; it was time, and past time, for a letter from an elder; and one was even then being written, by a hand too old to shake.

Chapter 11

1There lived at that time, in no city that claimed her, an elder called Nonna Altoforno, who had passed her hundred-and-tenth proofing; and she was of the generation before the founders’ generation, and had, as she said, outlived the argument’s parents and expected to outlive the argument, but saw no cause to leave it unsupervised in the meantime.

2And she had eaten, in her long walking years, at the benches of Porto Fornaio, and the counter of Vecchia Farina, and the warm corners of the coast country, and the deep tables of Sicago; and she was communicant of all four and enrolled in none, which every chancery had noted in its records under irregular, and every kitchen under family.

3And being too old now to walk to the churches, she wrote to them; one letter, copied fair three times by her great-grandchildren, and sent by three drivers, generously tipped, to the three communions on the same day, that none might claim the elder draft.

4And she commanded that it be read aloud at supper, not at synod; for at synod, she wrote, ye are churches, and cannot hear; at supper ye are hungry, and can.

5And this is the letter, entire, as the three archives preserve it, agreeing letter for letter, the first document in a hundred years to exist in one version:

6To my children’s children in the three houses of the one Slice: greetings, and stop it.

7I am old enough to remember your founders, and I tell you what none of your Refuters dares: they liked each other. Supreme sent Margherita a barrel of strange peppers every harvest, and she sent it back re-packed with plain flour, and this was not quarrelling, children; this was conversation, and it went on thirty years, and both larders were the richer.

8You have divided my Lord’s sentence as heirs divide a farm, and now each of you starves on a third of it, and calls the starving doctrine.

9You of the broad church: your welcome is true. It was the first thing I ever tasted of heaven, at a dock, off a pie with too much on it, and I have never been so glad of too much. But a door is only a door because it hangs in a wall. Learn the wall from your sister.

10You of the pure church: your truth is true. I have stood in the shop of the three ingredients and seen the Trinity plain, and wept into my sleeve where the counter could not see. But a window is for looking through, not for guarding. Learn the door from your brother.

11You of the folded church: your depth is true. You held what I could not carry, the winter my Tommaso died, and asked me nothing, and fed me daily. But what is folded is folded FOR the table, not from it. The calzone is sealed so it arrives; it is not sealed so it hides. Arrive.

12And all of you: recite me the line. Not your clause. The line. It begins – let all good things COME. Come whither, children? To the Slice. And where standeth the Slice? Upon the table. And what is a table?

13A table is the one piece of furniture that cannot be used alone. Your Lord could have spoken his law over an oven, or a purse, or a throne. He spoke it over a table. That was not scenery.

14I have heard the mould is stirring again in the border lands, while your bells race each other backward round the calendar. It does not care which of you is right. It cares only that your tables are separate, for it cannot spread where the cheese stretches shoulder to shoulder. Your unity was never your comfort, children; it was your weapon, and you have hung it in three pieces on three walls.

15An old woman’s word, and then the soup calls: From deep-dish to thin-crust, the Word of Crust embraces all. (Romans 14:2)

16That verse is elder than your churches, elder than me, and it has no clauses to divide. I have loved you severally all my life. Try loving each other the same way: badly, daily, and at table. – N.A.

17And the letter was read at supper in the three communions, as she had commanded; and this Book must set down honestly what followed, which is: not a miracle.

18For the Crustolic assembly wept, and moved a resolution of gratitude, and appointed a committee upon the wall; and the Orthocrust stood silent their three breaths, and said, She is right, and the west is still wrong, and both these things; and the Calzonists folded the letter into a thousand calzones, that it might be taken to heart bodily, which was their best and their evasion in one crimp, as ever.

19But it is recorded also that in the border towns, that very week, certain bells were rung at their old honest hours; and that a barrel of strange peppers, sender unmarked, arrived at Vecchia Farina for the first time in living memory, and was sent back re-packed with plain flour; and the conversation, thirty years dead, drew breath.

20And Nonna Altoforno, told of the committee, the qualification, and the calzones, laughed the laugh her great-grandchildren still describe at weddings, and said: Good. The dough hath begun to rise. Now it wanteth only the Oven; and she looked toward the door as she said it, they report, as one who expecteth a customer.

21And she lived to the day this Book must now tell, and not one day past it; and the scribe hath wondered all his life whether she was waiting, and hath concluded that she was, and that the supper was ready.

Chapter 12

1And it came to pass, on an evening of no feast, in the border city of Mezzaluna, in the very pizzeria of the Supper of Reunion – for heaven loveth a venue with history – that delegates of the three churches sat at one table, by accident of a double-booking which no clerk of any of the three chanceries would ever admit to, and no clerk of heaven ever denied.

2Three there were, with their secretaries and their certainties: a Legate of the broad church, ample and warm as his office; a Guardian of the Orthocrust, straight as a peel; and an Abbess of the folded church, who had taken the seat nearest the wall, from custom.

3And they had been double-booked into civility, and had ordered – what else – the half-and-half, with the Guardian’s half plain; and while it baked, they disputed; and the dispute was the old dispute, the only dispute, the one line taken in three keys, each voice rising to be the whole choir.

4And at the counter, behind them, a customer stood quietly in the queue; and he wore no robe, and carried no seal, and the flour on his sleeves might have been any workman’s; and he ordered one slice, plain, and, said he, whatever my neighbour in the queue is having, for them, and asked that it be no trouble.

5And the woman at the counter, who had worked doubles all her life and knew faces, looked at him twice; and he smiled, and the second look went the way of most second looks, into the till with the change.

6And the dispute at the table rose; and the Legate cried, What will sit upon it, put upon it – the rim is open, it is written!; and the Guardian answered, In all things keep the Slice true – the clause governeth, it is written!; and the Abbess said, softly, as a folded thing speaketh, What will not, fold within – and it also is written, and beneath both of you.

7And the customer at the counter said, not loudly, I remember the weather that day.

8And the table turned; for it is a strange sentence, from a man with flour on his sleeves; and the Legate, being courteous by doctrine, said, The weather, friend? What day?

9And the customer said: The day on the Mount. There was a wind off the valley, and it kept taking the thinner voices, so I spoke the sentence as one sentence, in one breath, that it might carry whole. It has not, I find, carried whole. And he took his plain slice from the counter, and thanked the woman by name, though she wore no badge.

10And the Guardian of the Orthocrust stood, slowly, as a man stands in an oven’s first heat; and the Legate’s ampleness went very still; and the Abbess looked at the customer as the folded look at the one who knoweth the inside, and she said, Lord, and it was not a question, and no one at the table made it one.

11And Cheesus Crust – for it was he, come quietly, as he had said he would, as a customer at the counter, which is where he had always said to look – drew a chair to their table with his foot, sat, and set down his slice; and the three churches of the world were suddenly a supper party short one chair, and the secretaries stood, and he waved them down, saying, Sit; the table hath room; that was ever the first one.

12And the Legate, recovering as officials recover, laid the great question before him, trembling: Lord, thou hast heard our three readings. Which is true?

13And Cheesus looked upon the Legate and said: Thine. The rim is open; the stranger’s gift belongeth on the pie; I set no gate at the edge, and I meant it. Thou art correct.

14And the Legate began to glow; and Cheesus turned to the Guardian and said: And thine. The Slice must keep true, or there is nothing beneath the welcome to welcome anyone onto; the Trinity lieth plain on the Margherita, and I put it there to be seen. Thou art correct.

15And the Guardian bowed the bow of the vindicated; and Cheesus turned to the Abbess and said: And thine. Not everything can bear the surface, and I made the fold for what cannot, and some of my best work is sealed where none shall grade it. Thou art correct.

16And there was a pause of great satisfaction, three ways; and then the arithmetic of it arrived, as arithmetic doth, a moment behind the joy; and the Guardian said, Lord – we cannot all three be correct; we have anathemas.

17And Cheesus said: I have read them. The one about the sliding cheese is beneath thee, and well written. And he took up his plain slice, and ate of it, and let them wait, for he had learned patience in an Oven and they could learn it in a pause.

18And then he said: Ye are all correct. Not one of you has misread a clause; ye have each read your clause as I meant it, deeper than I dared hope when the wind was taking the thin voices. And ye are all – all – missing the point.

19And they said, What point, Lord? And he said: To whom was I speaking?

20And they were silent; and he said: Count the ears on the Mount. I did not speak the line to one cook, that he should get his one pie right. I spoke it to a multitude, over one supper, and every it in the sentence was a supper laid between them. Let all good things come to the Slice – and then, children, the point, which was never written because I thought I had baked it into the grammar: share it.

21The topping is put on FOR someone. The truth is kept FOR someone. The fold is sealed FOR someone, that it arrive warm. Take the someone out of my sentence and there is nothing left but a recipe quarrel; and I did not come down from the Great Oven, and walk the land, and pass through the far side of a stone-cold tomb on the third day, for a recipe quarrel.

22And the three sat as the corrected sit; and at that moment, because heaven’s timing is a kitchen’s timing, the half-and-half arrived at the table, steaming, drawn down its middle with the old line of peace.

23And Cheesus said nothing further; he only looked at it, and then at them, and raised one eyebrow, which is a rubric.

24And the Legate, moving first, as breadth will, cut the pie and passed the first slice – to the Guardian; and the Guardian took it, saying even as he took it, This proveth nothing concerning the Saucioque; and passed a plain slice to the Abbess, who received it and folded her own napkin over her own portion out of pure habit and passed the next slice onward to a secretary while observing that surfaces remained, in her communion’s view, overrated; and the Legate, mouth full, was already disputing the point.

25And so they passed the pizza even as they argued, hand over hand around the table, the dispute continuing at full and happy volume above the moving slices, doctrine and dinner interleaved like the courses of a crust; and not one of them noticed what their hands were doing, which is how the deepest obediences are always performed.

26And Cheesus leaned back, and watched the slices go round against the current of the argument, and smiled; and he said, quietly, to the woman from the counter, who had come to stand beside him because closing time meaneth nothing on such a night: Look at them. They will quarrel until the Reheat of all things. And she said, Doth it not grieve thee, Lord? And he said:

27Grieve me? Look at their hands. For the quarrelling faithful are sharing yet.

28And he rose, and left upon the table a tip that made the woman sit down suddenly; and he was at the door before the three perceived the departure, and they rose calling, Lord, which church then? Whither shall we go?

29And Cheesus Crust turned in the doorway of the pizzeria of Mezzaluna, with the night behind him smelling of rosemary and rain, and said the last word this Book hath of him:

30To supper, children. All of you. The same one, when you can manage it. And the line ye divided – recite it whole at the door as ye go in, and remember it was one breath: “Let all good things come to the Slice – what will sit upon it, put upon it; what will not, fold within; and in all things, keep the Slice true.” And when ye have kept all three at one table, ye will find ye have founded the church I meant; it needeth no name; it seateth four, and up.

31And he went out; and the door of the pizzeria stood open behind him, all that night and – the town of Mezzaluna swears it, and the scribe hath sat in that doorway and believes it – every night since; for no hand hath since been found that was willing to be the one that shut it.

32And the three went home to their three churches, and the churches stand yet, and quarrel yet, Crustolic and Orthocrust and Calzonist, thin and deep, open and true and folded; and if thou, reader, art of one of them, thy church is correct; the scribe hath it on the highest authority; and so, alas and alleluia, are the other two.

33But in the border towns, where the walls are thin and the smells cross freely, there are tables now at which all three blessings are said, one after another, while the pizza cooleth exactly the length of three blessings, which is why border-town pizza is cut before grace; and the children of those tables know the line only whole, and are puzzled, being children, that it was ever otherwise; and their puzzlement is the healing, travelling, as the faith itself first travelled, from oven to oven.

34(Here endeth the Book of the Schism. The scribe was that porter, and that fellow, and that traveller who loved them all; he came to the door and would not say from whence, and he saith not now. But he hath eaten in all three houses, and the door at Mezzaluna standeth open, and the supper, children, is at the seventh hour, as ever it was.)