The Food of Love (20 page)

Alain had said. ‘The only reason he wants you out of Rome is

because he doesn’t want II Cuoco stealing his customers.’

‘Tell me honestly, Tommaso,’ Laura said as she got dressed one

morning, ‘am I getting fat?’

‘Of course not,’ he said; which was true, because although

Laura had certainly put on weight, she was also a long way from

being fat. Tommaso sighed. Laura’s need for reassurance, not to

mention the fact that she had a very slow fuse in bed, was making him a little weary

There is not a great abundance of gyms in Rome. The average

Italian male, when faced with the evidence of his increasing stomach in the mirror, will tend either to invest in a more generously

cut pair of trousers or to buy a new mirror, while his female counterpart seems to be genetically programmed to slenderness, at

least until her wedding day. It was perhaps not surprising, therefore, that when Laura went along for her first session at the

grandly named Gymnasia de San Giovanni, she found several

other Americans of her acquaintance among the clientele, including Kim Fellowes. Dressed in faded sweats emblazoned with the

logo of his East Coast alma mater, he was pulling a steady stroke rate of twenty-eight on the ergometer.

‘Hi, Dr Fellowes,’ she called as she mounted a treadmill.

‘Good morning,’ he called back. He was nearing the end of his

daily thousand metres but he was only a little out of breath. “I haven’t seen you here before.’

“I just joined today,’ she explained.

He watched Laura as she began to run. Her skin was soon

flushed with perspiration, and a sweet, almost imperceptible odour began to suffuse the air around her. It was the smell of summer

herbs, and honey, and olive oil, and salt - the tastes of Bruno’s cooking, released into the air for a second time, mingled now

with the delicate scent of her skin.

According to the rowing machine’s readout, Kim had reached

the thousand-metre mark, but he kept on rowing for the pleasure

of watching Laura. She had tied her hair back in a ponytail and the fine hairs on the back of her neck were now beaded with sweat,

like the beads of moisture on a glass of cold white wine. There was something undeniably fine about her, he thought to himself.

Usually the students were little better than brats, the indulged offspring of rich parents. Laura was different. In his art history classes she seemed to devour knowledge like someone who had been

starved of it all her life, eagerly replacing the spoonfed pap of her school classes with the real thing.

One could almost fall in love with a girl like that. Of course, relationships between staff and faculty were, strictly speaking, against the rules, but they were in Italy, and rules were a little more flexible here. And the age difference was only a few years - less than

between Dante and Beatrice, for example, or Petrarch and his

Laura.

After Laura had showered, she came out of the changing room

to find Dr Fellowes waiting by the notice board, a sweater draped elegantly over his shoulders. “I thought you might like to come

with me on a little tour,’ he said diffidently.

‘What sort of tour?’

‘A tour of my own personal Rome. There are some wonderful

collections that aren’t open to the public. And after that -‘ he shrugged - ‘perhaps we could have a little lunch somewhere?’

‘That sounds wonderful,’ she said.

He took her to places she didn’t even know existed - to tiny palazzi, where archivists and curators unlocked dark rooms containing priceless masterpieces. He ushered her past the security

guards into the Farnese palace, now the French embassy, its fabulous Carracci ceilings long since closed to the vulgar hordes. At

the Palazzo Doria-Pamphili he took her into the family’s private apartments, where they chatted with someone who bore the same

features as the Titian portraits on the walls. They visited tiny, jewel-like chapels, grand salons with majestic ceilings, dimly lit churches where at the flick of a switch vast frescoes of unimaginable beauty leaped out of the darkness.

‘Enough,’ he said at last. ‘We mustn’t cram you too full of art

on an empty stomach.’ He escorted her to a restaurant in a little square where the owner greeted him by name. A bottle of cold

Orvieto and some long, irregular grissini arrived on the table a few moments after they sat down.

‘I’m afraid my diet doesn’t allow me much in the way of carbohydrate,’

he said apologetically. “I’m just going to have a salad.

But please, order anything you want.’

“I’ll have a salad too,’ she said. ‘I’ve been eating way too much, and I don’t want to undo all that running at the gym.’

‘Is Laura coming to the opening night?’ Bruno asked Tommaso.

Tommaso screwed up his face. ‘To be honest, I hadn’t thought

about it.’

‘She should,’ Bruno said emphatically. “I’m planning something

special for her. An authentic Renaissance menu, in honour of

her studies.’

‘You don’t have to do that,’ Tommaso said. ‘Let’s face it, on

the opening night the place will be full of important customers maybe even some reviewers. We should be concentrating on them,

not Laura. Why create more dishes just for her?’

For a moment Bruno felt a terrible compulsion to tell

Tommaso everything. Because to me she’s the only person who matters, he wanted to say. Because I’d swop all the good reviews in the world for a smile from her. Because I love her in a way that I don’t think you, Tommaso, fine and noble friend that you are, are actually capable of.

But he swallowed those words before he spoke them. He said,

‘But think how it will look to the reviewers and all those important people to know that certain dishes have been created in

honour of one particular woman. People will talk about it, and

perhaps they’ll bring their own girlfriends and wives to try it out.’

‘Hmm,’ Tommaso said. ‘Yes, I like that. The grand passion of

the chef, reflected in his creation of a dish of love. That’s a great idea. I wish I’d thought of it myself.’

For inspiration, Bruno went to art galleries and studied the paintings, making sketches of the meals they showed. There were many

paintings of fruit, of course, and pictures of Bacchus surrounded by grapes, but he was more interested in discovering what ordinary people would have eaten in the restaurants and taverns of the

day. Luckily there were plenty of portraits that showed people

eating. Even more useful were the studies of the Last Supper, for which the artists had clearly used as models the food that they

themselves were served.

He was in the Galleria Borghese one afternoon, studying the

paintings, when he suddenly heard a familiar voice calling his

name. He turned around. It was Laura.

‘Hello,’ she said, clearly surprised to see him. ‘What brings you here, Bruno?’

Putting away his notebook, he mumbled something about

looking at a new display.

‘Well, since you’re here, let me show you my favourite painter,’

she said, slipping an arm through his and guiding him towards the next room.

‘Caravaggio, you mean?’

‘How did you know that?’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘Tommaso must have told me.’

They stopped in front of Caravaggio’s Boy with a Basket of Fruit.

‘You like the light,’ Bruno said. ‘The way it falls from one side, putting half the face in shadow.’

‘That’s right. I do like that.’

‘Whereas Tommaso,’ he gestured at the paintings, ‘sees all of

these in terms of food.’

‘He does?’

‘Oh yes. He told me so. He told me that you could see what

each painter ate, by the way he painted. So Michelangelo there ‘

he nodded - ‘could only have been a Florentine. He would have

liked simple grills, the plainer the better.’ He pointed across the room. ‘Raffaelo, on the other hand - he’s all grace and lightness, like the cooking of his native Urbino. But Caravaggio was a Roman, with a Roman’s hearty’ appetite. When he paints a Last Supper, it’s simply that - a painting of a proper Roman dinner, with a real roast bird just out of the oven and a plate of contorni beside it, just as he himself would have been served at the osteria he was lodging at.’

‘Tommaso said all that?’

He glanced at her, wondering if she was teasing him, but she

seemed entirely serious.

‘Actually, I think he may be right,’ she said, slipping her arm

through his as they continued through the gallery. ‘Raphael fell in love with a baker’s daughter, and started putting little pastries into his paintings in her honour. And Caravaggio was broke most

of the time, so he was probably thinking about his next meal while he painted. I’ll have to tell my teacher what Tommaso said. I

think he’ll be really interested.’

That afternoon, Bruno paid a fortune for an old cookery book in

the Porta Portese flea market and started trying out ideas.

Eventually he decided on a recipe for roast chicken stuffed with peppers that in turn were stuffed with figs, and set about fine

tuning it so that it would be a creation worthy of its intended

recipient.

Laura lies in Tommaso’s bed and stretches luxuriously. Tommaso

himself has already left to supervise last-minute preparations at II Cuoco. Today, finally, is the grand opening, and there are a million and one things he still hasn’t done.

She gets out of bed and starts to dress. Last night they ate

baby artichokes, flattened into stars and deep-fried in oil, and she sees to her consternation that there’s a streak of olive oil on her shirt. She opens Tommaso’s cupboard to find a clean one, and

takes a step back.

The inside of the cupboard is covered with photographs.

Photographs of girls. There are brunettes, redheads, a few black haired Italians, but overwhelmingly the cupboard is filled with

blondes. There’s a picture of herself, and she remembers now the occasion when Tommaso took it, in this very room, right after

they had slept together for the first time.

Oh, she says out loud, as the implications of that sink in.

She looks again at the other girls. There are dozens of them.

Now that she examines them more closely, she sees that most of

the photos were also taken here, just as hers was.

At the thought of all those women sharing a bed with Tommaso the same bed that she now shares - the tears spring to her eyes.

‘Fuck,” she says, like someone who has cut themselves and who sees the blood a second or so before they feel the pain.

And then she does feel it.

As the restaurant filled up with customers, Bruno kept a careful eye on the table in the corner that had been reserved for Laura

and her roommate. But it stayed empty.

By one-thirty the orders were coming in thick and fast. They

had done well to attract so many people to their opening.

Carlotta’s contacts in the magazine world had helped: the little dining room was full of people who would certainly never have

visited the restaurant under its previous ownership. This included the mysterious business contacts of Dr Ferrara’s, a group of

rough-looking men in very expensive suits whom the other customers treated with careful deference.

For Bruno it was a new experience to be running an entire

kitchen, and he had his work cut out making sure all the food was absolutely perfect. Eventually, though, during a brief lull, he had time to pause. Tommaso was looking as miserable as a dog that

had lost its bone.

‘Where’s Laura?’ Bruno asked, suddenly fearful.

‘Not coming,’ his friend said tersely. ‘We had a row.’

Bruno stopped in the middle of taking a pan out of the oven.

‘What about?’

‘Nothing. Well, something, obviously. But nothing I could

make any sense of. What do women ever pick fights about?’

Tommaso looked so crestfallen that Bruno put his arm around

him. ‘Tommaso, I’m so sorry. I can guess how you must feel.’

‘It’s just a row,’ Tommaso muttered.

“I can tell how upset you are,’ Bruno said gently.

‘What are you talking about? Laura will be fine. I’m upset

because I’m stuck in here,” he indicated the kitchen, ‘while it’s all happening out there.” As he spoke, Marie whirled in with another fistful of orders, slapped them into Bruno’s hands and picked up half a dozen plates from the pass before rushing out again. “I can feel it! It’s alive out there. Whereas in here -‘ he looked around and shrugged - ‘you’re just cooking.’

‘This is the bit that really matters,’ Bruno pointed out gently.

‘But it’s your bit. I’m just hanging about. Can’t you give me

something to do?’

‘Sure. We need some fish filleted for table four.’

‘Great. And where’s the fun in filleting a fish if there’s no one to see you do it?’ Tommaso demanded miserably as he moved off.

Bruno had no answer. It occurred to him that if this venture was going to be a success, he’d need to find Tommaso some proper

work to do.

He got back to his cooking, but a part of his mind was still

coming to terms with the fact that Laura wouldn’t be eating his

creations. Suddenly, dishes that had flown from his fingers like sparks just a few minutes before seemed impossible. Marie came in with another fistful of orders, and he was distracted further by trying to call them to his sous chefs, as well as cooking other dishes himself. Within moments the smooth production line was backing

up. People were colliding with each other, boiling water was being slopped from pans on to bare skin, orders were being double

cooked or missed altogether.

‘What are you doing?’ Tommaso hissed as he brought back