Well, it’s that time of year when the fruiti vendolo becomes the most important person in your culinary life. This is why, for a non-Italian, it is important to find one that doesn’t talk too much. For this estimable quality, our fruiti vendolo, affectionately known to us as Beelzebub, gets the prize of Best Fruiti Vendolo in Salerno and also the coveted grand prize of Best Shop Keeper.
Though most of the other fruiti vendoli sell quality produce and are themselves all decent folk – including their wives, sons, daughters, nonni, cugini and various other family members stretching back to the Cretaceous period of Earth’s history, all of whom help out and generally provide the chit-chat when the main, boss fruiti vendolo is momentarily occupied and unable to banter – Beelzebub has the added distinction of being thoroughly uninterested in your life, and only bothers to check, vaguely, whether or not he knows you. If he remembers that he knows you, then you are dealt with swiftly and above all silently, since his memory of you seems to trigger an infinite database containing information on precisely which and in what quantities you require in the way of fruit and vegetables.
Moreover, he rarely weighs anything with the precision required to keep a trader out of prison, but nevertheless his prices are the best and unfailingly rounded off to reflect not profit but expediency. It is in fact clear that he wishes to be rid of you as quickly as you do of him.
God bless you Beelzebub, and may you grunt and snort and remain unshaven and quite grotesquely present for ever and ever, and for always.