Amore and Amaretti Page 5
The circle of cross-cultural visitors widens: Danish, American, German and Irish friends; Amanda and her sculptor husband, Rex; occasionally Raimondo, who has become my anti-Marie-Claire crusader – or, more accurately, the great Vicky-and-Gianfranco supporter, despite my protestations of never again, never again. Raimondo, who loved us as a couple, loves to reminisce about the summer night the three of us – he, Gianfranco and I – headed off from the restaurant as drunk as lords and drove to Viarreggio singing ‘Maremmo maremma mare’ the entire way, fell asleep on the beach upon arrival, and awakened mid-morning, as fiercely sunburnt as we were hung over.
An Australian friend visits and we play endless rounds of Travel Scrabble, dreading the moment we hear the metallic clank of the ancient lift as it reaches our top floor and the grilled door grinds open, releasing an interruption in the form of visitors.
One Sunday night the lift cage bears unexpected visitors. I know Antonella vaguely – she is the sister of a friend – but I had only heard about her Sicilian boyfriend. Cesare towers over everyone. His thick hair, as black as his eyes, cascades past his shoulders. They interrupt each other to tell me about the restaurant they have bought at Portoferraio, on the Isle of Elba; it is to be called Robespierre and will focus on seafood. They are currently interviewing, and am I interested in coming over for the summer as assistant chef? There is an apartment organised for us all to share, right in the heart of Portoferraio, a five-minute walk from the restaurant.
I have been to Elba once, for several days of sunshiny holiday in the early stages of Gianfranco. I remember the ferry across from the mainland, a little island you can drive around in three hours, yachts bobbing lazily in the port, an ocean transparently blue. I consider the cosy eventlessness of my life. I am conscious, mostly, of bovine contentment. Wherever I end up, in whatever city or country, I am always soaking clothes in a bucket in the bathroom, spraying on tester perfumes in department stores, planning a new diet and keeping gloomy diaries. Each morning I buy La Nazione from the same news-stand and gulp down a tepid cappuccino from the corner bar; lately at night, standing in front of the refrigerator as the rest of the apartment sleeps, I have found myself eating mascarpone straight out of its tub as if to feed some bottomless pocket of emptiness. Because I never seem free of that little pocket, I say yes.
Per non litigare occorre rimanere celibi
In order not to have arguments you should remain single
The view out of my bedroom window is of the faded, peeling yellow buildings with wooden green shutters and the squat boxy entrance to the panificio where we buy bread rolls and loaves for the restaurant. There is a plaque to Victor Hugo on the wall of the town hall, and a pizzeria called Garibaldino.
Robespierre has three-cornered hats for lampshades and a wooden guillotine at the entrance, built by Cesare. It has clothed tables inside and out. For the opening Gianfranco catches the ferry over and spends the day creating culinary art. A whole baked fish with potato scales reposes on a platter; overlapping curls of crimson prosciutto spiral into a tower crowned by a basket of parsley sculpted out of an orange; prawns, shrimps and scampi tumble amongst radish rosettes. We await the arrival of our new chef, Annunzio.
Annunzio, a widower, comes from Cecina on the mainland, where he lives with his only daughter. He looks like a villain from an old-fashioned melodrama, with his slicked-back hair and his bloodshot eyes and his huge nicotine-stained teeth; spittle glistens and sprays when he speaks. Elastic braces stretch around his great belly and he wears long-sleeved undergarments and sad, iron-creased jeans with open-toed sandals and socks. Struck by his ugliness and his oddness, I am briefly daunted by the prospect of sharing a flat with him. Annunzio is nearly ready for retirement, but he has decided that Robespierre shall be his swan song. We are a strange quartet: Antonella and Cesare prickly with sexual tension and drug-induced mood swings, la Veeky on a yoghurt diet grimly determined to put Gianfranco behind her, and gentle, humming, yarn-spinning, eccentric Annunzio.
We settle in. Quickly I acquire a boyfriend, part-owner of the Garibaldino pizzeria. He takes me to open-air discotheques around the island, then back to a parked caravan, where he efficiently makes love to me. I am also flattered by the attentions of his pizzaiolo, who is ten years younger than me and who, despite his Dutch girlfriend, comes to park himself on his Vespa outside the back door of Robespierre to flirt with me. He is dazzlingly beautiful. After a while, when the four of us – the pizza boys and their foreign girlfriends – take to frequenting a wine bar after work, I find myself not minding the younger one’s hand on my thigh beneath the table; my animated conversation with his girlfriend does not falter. I have gone a little crazy – a combination of a languidly hot summer, the sense that nothing taking place on the island is real, and a pathetic need to be loved.
I buy a second-hand pushbike, and each afternoon at the end of service pedal along the streets that lead to my favourite beach. I step out of my sticky, sweaty, oily work clothes and plunge into the crisp ocean, where, after swimming vigorously for some time, I float on my back, weightless, deaf, eternal. When I return to my neatly folded pile of clothes, I stretch out on the towel and promptly fall asleep, for precisely one hour. Then it is time to bicycle back to the apartment, to shower and dress and prepare for the evening’s work.
Mangia che ti passa
Eat and you will feel better
Annunzio soaks his underwear in Omino Bianco bleach; returning to our apartment, I see the line of large, blindingly white, square underpants and billowing singlets that marks his bedroom window. Each evening before work, he and I pause briefly for a spumantino at the same bar.
At night, after Annunzio and I have scrubbed the kitchen down, we set up a small table and two chairs out the back of the kitchen and have our dinners. I only ever eat two things, which I alternate: char-grilled swordfish with Annunzio’s lemon-olive oil emulsion drizzled over the top, or bulgy buffalo mozzarella sliced with ovals of sweet San Marzano tomatoes and spicy basil. This, too, is Annunzio’s favourite meal, the tomatoes at their peak of ripeness, their glossy egg shapes sliced vertically and arranged over the cheese.
All Annunzio’s movements are ponderous. He rotates his thick fingers slowly over the plate, salt and pepper scattering. The basil leaves, the new green olive oil and, then, the slow messy business of eating – teeth clicking, oil spraying, bread sopping up the juices and gumming his conversation. We both eat too much bread and drink too much wine, and then wander, two unlikely friends, down to Bar Roma at the water’s edge to sit watching the boats. Annunzio tells me stories from his life over his baby whisky; I spoon pistachio-green gelato into my mouth from a silver dish and feel safe and very young.
Annunzio’s stories all follow the same pattern: past restaurants he has owned or managed, which failed, leaving him jobless, defeated, disillusioned and desperately poor. People he had trusted who had turned their backs; countries he had lived in, whose languages he had learned, which had finally disenchanted him. The woman he should have married and whom he still loves, instead of the sick woman who is his wife. His huge yellow teeth seem to bite something – perhaps the air – as he speaks. The clicking boats with lives of their own, their rhythmic nodding, canvas clapping, are like some massive beast slumbering restlessly. That he can make me feel like this – sweet, somehow, and pure, and uncorrupted – is one of the best reasons for loving him.
On my day off, I begin with a sticky, jam-filled croissant and cappuccino at the bar near the newsstand. Then I head off on the bicycle to the beach. I feel blonde, brown, free and promiscuous, and only saved from self-loathing by the tacit forgiveness Annunzio offers me each night when he so cosily buys me ice cream.
Annunzio’s blunt fingers press mixture into splayed sardines. L’impasto consists of bread soaked in milk, finely chopped parsley and garlic, ground mortadella, grated Parmesan, sultanas and pine nuts. He shows me how to pinch up the sides of the sar
dines and place them in neat rows in a baking tray, slipping a bay leaf in between each. Then he splashes white wine over the top and bakes them.
Sarde al beccafico
(Baked stuffed sardines)
2 slices day-old rustic bread
Milk
2 tablespoons sultanas
2 tablespoons pine nuts
80–100 g mortadella, as finely chopped as possible
2 tablespoons Grana or Parmesan, freshly grated
Grated rind 1 lemon
2 fat cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2/3 bunch parsley, finely chopped
Salt and pepper
750 g fresh sardines, filleted and butterflied
Bay leaves
White wine
Olive oil
Preheat oven to 200°C (400°F, Gas mark 6). Soak bread in milk briefly, then squeeze dry. Place in a bowl together with sultanas, pine nuts, mortadella, cheese, lemon rind, garlic and parsley, season with salt and pepper and combine well. Place about a teaspoon of mixture in the middle of each sardine and arrange on baking tray with a bay leaf either side. Sprinkle wine over the top and drizzle with olive oil. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes. Serve as part of an antipasto.
A similar mixture fills mussel shells. The mussels are steamed quickly (olive oil, garlic and parsley, a dash of wine) until they open. Half the double shell is discarded and the mussel in the remaining one packed snugly with milk-soaked breadcrumbs, garlic and parsley and grated Parmesan. These are baked until golden brown. Another batch of mussels simmers in a basic tomato sauce into which a little dried chilli is crumbled. These dishes form the basis of the antipasto table that stands at the back of the Robespierre. My favourite is the platter of fresh raw anchovies, which start out pink and plump and end up gleaming a bright white under Annunzio’s emulsion of lemon juice and olive oil, and a scattering of chopped parsley. In a giant vat, Annunzio simmers a huge octopus in red wine for hours. The particular aroma of caramel remains in my nostrils long afterwards. Then Annunzio slips off the skin, chops the fat tentacles into chunks and tosses together a salad with fresh herbs and a touch of chilli.
Apart from assisting Annunzio with the antipasti, my job is, as usual, the primi – the pasta dishes – and the desserts. I love preparing pasta with the scoglio sauce, which, unlike most others, is made to order. Before me I have containers of well-scrubbed mussels, clams, pipis, date mussels and Venus clams soaking in water. There is a separate container of finely chopped garlic and parsley, which I dollop into a pan of sizzling olive oil. When the aromas rise, I throw in handfuls of shellfish and toss them around before splashing in white wine. Meanwhile the pasta is cooking; once it is al dente, it is drained quickly, added to the pan of clinking shellfish, mixed briefly, then toppled out onto plates.
Strawberry risotto is fashionable this year, and at the height of summer it remains fixed on our specials board. The strawberries are simply puréed, seasoned with salt and pepper, then stirred through towards the finish of a plain risotto, a little grated cheese and butter added at the very end. A silly sort of dish, but very popular, particularly when served alongside shiny-black squid-ink risottos, which we often do. On my boyfriend’s birthday, he comes for lunch and I send out his strawberry risotto in the shape of a heart.
Annunzio is an oasis of calm and wisdom. Around him Cesare, Antonella and I flap hectically from one mistaken experiment to another, while the summer blazes on. Cesare and Antonella have spectacular rows in the middle of the restaurant while customers dine. Cesare’s long legs in loose trousers stride off, contemptuously, leaving Antonella crumpled.
The pizzeria owner and I drift apart after the evening we lie side by side in his sordid caravan discussing the beauty of certain people we know. I am bold – rash enough – to ask if he thinks I am beautiful, to which, without hesitation, he replies, ‘No, you’re not beautiful, but you are a character.’ I am wounded, of course, especially because it has always seemed to me that people for whom you feel affection attain a kind of beauty; being a character strikes me as a very poor consolation prize. The pizzaiolo and I find ourselves together one late afternoon, sitting on a cliff looking out at the ocean, the luxury of being alone at last, with suddenly nothing to talk about and desire which has shrivelled.
I flip in and out of one-night stands, and the night Gianfranco comes over to visit we both drink a lot, then go down to the midnight beach together. Our clothes come off quickly and we make love in wet sand. I feel a brief, gloating victory over the absent Marie-Claire, but mostly a sense of familiar disappointment with myself. Down at Bar Roma over drinks and ice cream, I describe my life to Annunzio in veiled vague terms I will him to see through, and he always does, which afterwards comes to me as a sort of blessing. ‘È una vacanza,’ he often reassures me – it is a holiday – excusing my promiscuity on the grounds that it is not real life.
A lanky boy from Brescia arrives to do our washing-up. As I cycle away to the beach at three o’clock, I leave him sitting in my chair at the little table opposite Annunzio. When another Australian friend comes over to the island to visit, she and the new dishwasher sit on the seawall long after the rest of us have left the pizzeria. They sit there all night and talk – or at least that is my friend’s version. At any rate, they fall in love. Yet another friend flies back for a visit, and over Travel Scrabble in her pensione room she tells me how her new affair is progressing. Bells toll across the piazza on the half-hour and I am conscious of being frozen in one of my pointless limbo periods with no idea what to do next, while all around me others are radiant with self-definition or love. Sometimes I visit a trattoria for solitary dinners, leaving the dishwasher and Annunzio to explore the meaning of the universe while the owner flirts with me and I respond politely.
Toward the end of the season Gianfranco pays another visit. He is businesslike: the three partners of his restaurant would like me to join the partnership, returning to my old stomping ground and running the kitchen there. Our mutual friend Signore Lorenzo has offered to put up the money for my part. Gianfranco and Marie-Claire plan to leave on a holiday to Chile in October and it would suit him enormously if I could be back in Florence by then. I have never been able to deny him anything, and I find nothing has changed. Besides, it is time to move on, away from the illusory nature of island life and its encircling waters that shimmer like a mirage.
L’amore domina senza regole
Love rules without rules
The Florentine restaurant still serves endless busloads of tourists (‘group food’ is my somewhat disparaging term for the meals we send out to them), and still has its eclectic international menu. An interesting addition is the baked provola served in various ways. Ramekins, lined with thick slices of this soft smoky cheese, are topped with anchovies, pancetta, raw eggs or porcini mushroom sauce and then slid into the oven until melted and bubbling.
But the hamburgers remain as popular as ever. I am reminded of a car trip to the coast, those early days with Gianfranco and three other men I did not know. We were off to see an exciting new hamburger joint, and as we drove one of the men was describing the wall panel behind the counter, which consisted of colour photographs of the range of hamburgers available. When we finally arrived I was the only one not leaping about with enthusiasm; privately I was feeling a sense of disenchantment that a country whose culinary traditions I venerated so highly could so easily be seduced by the trashy culture of the disposable.
I am surprised at how effortlessly I slip back in, despite mostly new staff. Raimondo is still there entertaining customers with his Frankie Banana persona, muttering darkly about the witch Marie-Claire to me, wheeling me away to Yellow pizzeria after work for sausage calzoni and too many bottles of white Corvo. And then there is Ignazio.
I am lying in my old bed in Gianfranco’s flat, which he has asked me to mind for him the week he and Marie-Claire are away. I am in
my old bed, in my old flat, but I am too thick with cold to feel bitter or wistful. On my ‘Back to Florence’ diet, which consists of eating diet biscuits for breakfast, lunch and dinner for as long as I can stand it, I have also doped myself up with cough and cold tablets. On the television set is a programme of video clips, and as I watch I suddenly see a beautiful, familiar face on the screen. The group is Duran Duran and the face belonging to the lead singer bears an uncanny resemblance to the young waiter Ignazio.
In this state of buzzy hyperreality I find myself floating into a fantasy in which I am seducing this waiter to whom I have barely spoken. The following evening at work, after my ten o’clock beer (I slip so easily back into routines), I hear myself saying to Ignazio, who has come up to the kitchen window bearing empty plates, how much I would love to seduce him. He smiles his exquisite cherubic smile and departs, leaving me both terrified and excited by my impulse. I clear up the kitchen in a sort of trance, barely conscious of my actions, pondering consequences of crazy notions. When he returns a little later, I say, as calmly as I can manage, ‘So, what do you think?’ and he tells me he had not heard what I had said. Now I am in a position of great embarrassment; the only recourse is to plough on, and so I repeat my original sentence, and am gratified by a blush that suffuses his entire face and down his neck. ‘All right,’ is what he says, as if I had suggested we go for a gelato! He is seventeen years old to my thirty-one.
Two years living in Italy have, in a sense, merely perpetuated the pattern of my entire life, a reactive progression from one set of circumstances or opportunities to the next. No five-year plans, no long-term projects, no real ambitions unless you counted the cloudy, inchoate one of writing – for which a full, colourful and even accidental life has always seemed imperative. Ours was not an ambitious family. Ambition was never a particular value, unlike season tickets to the opera and ballet and book vouchers when we excelled at school. Nor were we a family to whom property and things mattered, doubtless explaining the ease with which all my adult life I had moved from one rental accommodation to another, from city to city, my one asset a superior stereo system. I had first come to this country to study the language, and then I fell in love. When that ended I found myself somehow engaged with the community and people around me; jobs were offered and the minutiae of ordinary, diurnal life distracted me from the larger questions. Now love had struck again.