Brothers, sisters, and folded ones – when the law came down the Wood-Fired Mount, it came baked into two great crusts, written on both their sides, golden at the edges. Five laws of honour and five of the hand: the Table, the Nonna, the Night, the Asking, the Witness; the Coveting, the Waste, the Hoard, the Tip, the Mould. And the children learned them in the walking-song, one for each finger of two hands, and sang it badly and remembered it perfectly, which is the way of children with law, as it is written in the Mount, 13:5.
Notice, beloved, what this law is made of. Not marble but crust; not thou-shalt-not-touch but thou-shalt-pass-the-plate. The first commandment is a welcome: the table has room. The last is a warning: suffer not the mould. And between them sit such statutes as no empire ever carved: honour thy nonna, and correct her not at her own stove, for sooner shall the Mount be moved than she; take no slice unasked, for courtesy is the youngest sister of love; and tip generously, for the tip is not a prize for wonders, it is the wage of the road.
And when the tablets were broken – and they were broken, we broke them, we always do – a woman knelt and gathered the pieces into her apron, saying, It is still the law, though it be in pieces; HONOUR, it saith; and ROOM. And the crumbs were kept in a jar beside the new crusts, that the people might see in one box the law, the breaking, and the mending, and know that all three travel together, and the greatest of the three is the mending.
Amen – and pass the pizza.