The Ice-Cream Makers (12 page)

‘What do you think will happen if we add white chocolate?'

‘Watermelon ice with white chocolate?'

‘Yes,' my brother replied. ‘Stracciatella, but different. Totally different.'

‘Don't let Beppi hear it.'

On more than one occasion we had suggested introducing new flavours: banana with caramel, orange-gingerbread, sweet and salty peanut.

‘Our customers aren't interested,' my father always said. ‘They want to eat the same ice-cream day in, day out.'

‘Surely we can try?'

‘Later,' was his answer. ‘Later, once you've taken over the ice-cream parlour.'

We swore we would make the weirdest flavours once we were in charge at Venezia.

In the evening, in the attic, in our separate beds, we would anticipate this fantastic future, this science-fiction world of flavours.

‘Honey ice-cream,' my brother said.

‘Ricotta with pine nuts.'

‘Coconut-cinnamon.'

‘Carrots and walnuts.'

‘Asparagus ice in April!'

‘Cucumber sorbet.'

‘Ice made with blood.'

‘As in blood pudding?'

‘Yes, but frozen.'

Later, when he had taken over the ice-cream parlour and I was flying around the globe like a sardine in a can, my brother, as promised, made all the flavours we had listed that night. And many more besides. My father's conservatism was no match. Like a curious child, he would take a huge bite whenever he was offered a spoonful. ‘This is amazing,' he would say with his eyes closed, like the people who had tasted his grandfather's ice. ‘But what is it?'

‘Blue cheese with apple and pear,' my brother replied.

‘Unbelievable.'

On one occasion, after I had eaten ice-cream with a couple of young poets outside Venezia and I settled the bill with my father, he said, ‘Are you expected to pay for those scroungers?'

‘They're poets.'

He gave them a disdainful look. ‘Tell them to look at Luca if they want to see a true artist.'

My brother was always the better ice-cream maker of the two of us. He could separate three hundred and sixty eggs in fifteen minutes, whereas I needed nearly forty minutes to do the same job. But Luca never mentioned it. There was no tension or rivalry. We made ice-cream together, had the same dreams, and would be overcome with longing for our parents at the same time. Before our final day in Rotterdam had even dawned.

The beginning of September marked our return to Venas. The ice-cream parlour would stay open until late October. And so we would spend two months at Grandma's, breathing her smells, feeling her hands ruffling our hair and trying to emulate her strength, but when winter finally arrived, our strong family roots would prevail. The four of us would once again be sitting in the kitchen in front of the hot stove, each in our usual chair, twisting a fork in a deep plate.

The return of the ice-cream makers galvanised the village, the way spring breathes new life into nature. But unlike the arrival of spring, everything happened within the space of a few days. The slumber in which Venas had rested for eight months was broken quite suddenly. Cars drove around with their engines roaring and horns honking, shutters were opened, heads were stuck out of windows. It was like the arrival of the Allied forces.

The pizzeria was full again, there was a queue at the bakery, and people were gossiping about turnover and who had come back in a new Mercedes. In the morning the butcher couldn't keep up with demand. The streets were no longer just the reserve of elderly people and little children. In the evening, men would head down to the pub to play cards, staggering home hours later underneath a clear, starry sky. They were blind drunk and blissfully happy — freed from the long working days in Utrecht, Arnhem, or Maastricht. On Sunday the same narrow footpaths would see a procession of families in their finery; all the pews in church would be occupied. Afterwards everybody meandered home, to roast meat served up alongside small glasses of red wine, accompanied by views of the mountains, chit-chat about other families, and finally the gurgling moka pot spreading its familiar aroma.

A wind swept through the entire valley, from San Vito to Lorenzago di Cadore. It was like Christmas — the same joy and exhilaration, except two months earlier. Everybody was free. This is what they had been working for, this is what they had sacrificed the summer for. The body came to rest, minor ailments vanished, and here and there a baby was conceived. Most children of ice-cream makers come into the world in summer. Luca and I were born on dog days.

Of course there was the never-ending competition. Which ice-cream maker created the most delicious flavours? Who could churn the perfect frozen yogurt? The rivalry tended to be confined to the Netherlands, but some would carry it back to the mountains and insist that their ice-cream was smoother, creamier, or tastier. Sometimes things got out of hand, as the infamous street brawl between the owners of two ice-cream parlours in Zwolle testifies.

‘Your strawberry ice-cream tastes of raspberries,' one ice-cream producer yelled at his rival across the street.

‘Your banana ice-cream tastes like pear,' the retort came.

‘Your vanilla ice-cream is indistinguishable from snot!'

‘Your chocolate ice-cream is cow shit.'

And then came the ultimate insult, which nobody could have anticipated and which was not universally understood, either.

‘My apricot ice-cream tastes of your wife!'

The ice-cream makers squared up in the middle of the road and clenched their fists. They fought like teenagers in the schoolyard until they were separated by Guido Zardus, who was as strong as his coin-bending grandfather.

The following day, several ice-cream makers joked about the incident in Bar Posta.

‘My blackcurrant ice-cream is as black as Gregori's right eye.'

‘My cherry ice-cream is as dark as Belfi's blood!'

Then there was another controversy. Not as bloody, but almost as fierce. Most of the villages in Cadore — Venas, Vodo, Pieve, Valle, Calalzo, Cibiana — boasted an ice-cream maker who claimed that his grandfather or great-grandfather was the one who had invented ice-cream. Some ice-cream makers joined the debate because it was simply a way to pass the time, but others were dead serious. In our attempt to unravel the mystery together, Luca and I went to visit wrinkly men whose children now ran ice-cream parlours in Austria, Hungary, Germany, or the Netherlands.

Sometimes we were done in less than a minute because the ice-cream maker in question was deaf. Then there were the elderly men we could barely understand. The word ‘gelato' we could just about make out, but the rest was gobbledygook to us.

Signor Zampieri tried to bribe us.

‘We heard your grandfather invented ice-cream,' we said the first time we appeared on his doorstep. ‘Do you have proof?'

‘Come in, boys,' Signor Zampieri said. ‘I've got delicious chocolate biscuits.'

In the living room he presented us with a plate of biscuits. We were allowed to take as many as we wanted.

‘My grandfather started out on the market in Dresden,' Signor Zampieri told us. ‘He churned ice-cream by hand, but nobody was buying it. The people had never had it, had never even heard of it. When it started melting, he began to hand it out to passers-by. “Free ice-cream!” he yelled. My grandmother thought he'd lost his mind, just giving it all away. But once the people had tried it, their ice-cream started selling quite well.'

‘When was this?' Luca asked.

‘Let me think,' said Signor Zampieri. ‘Have another biscuit, boys.'

A couple of minutes later he told us another story. ‘Oh, times were hard. My father cycled back to Italy in winter to save money. All the way from the Netherlands. When he arrived in Venas, my mother was furious. He'd worn out three pairs of trousers! They came to about as much as a train ticket.'

‘Mr Zampieri,' I cut in, ‘my brother asked if you happen to remember when your grandfather sold ice-cream in Dresden.'

‘A long time ago,' he answered. ‘Before you were born, before I was born.' He pointed to the view outside, to the Dolomites. ‘Nobody knows exactly when the mountains came into existence.'

I looked at my brother. He snatched another biscuit off the plate.

‘Did you know we're living on top of gold? We just can't reach it. It's too deep down.'

‘Would you mind sticking to the subject?'

‘Oh yes, ice-cream. We used to work with Italian hawkers,' Signor Zampieri told us. ‘I'd give them bed and board and pay for their return journey. On top of that, they were paid six hundred lira per month plus ten Turmac cigarettes a day.' He pondered this for a while, perhaps adding things up in his mind. Then he said, ‘If you two were smart, you'd dig a hole. Maybe you'd manage to retrieve that gold.'

Luca's interest seemed piqued, but then he asked, ‘Why do you think your grandfather invented ice-cream?'

‘He was trying to sell it at the market in Dresden,' he said again. ‘But nobody was buying it, because they didn't know what it was. Nobody knew what it was! He'd only just invented ice-cream, you see.'

My brother shook his head.

‘Mr Marinello from Pieve claims his grandfather invented ice-cream,' I said.

‘Marinello is in his nineties. His memory's like Swiss cheese, full of holes.'

The day before, we had gone to visit the ancient ice-cream maker from Pieve. He had fallen asleep after sitting down in the armchair opposite us. We had been afraid to wake him.

‘If you asked him whether his family invented the hamburger, he'd say yes, too.' Signor Zampieri got up and pulled a photo album out of the cabinet. ‘This is me,' he said. ‘Back when I was young and handsome.' The photo showed a man with a hat in his hand. ‘Do you see that station? It's in Zuel, close to Cortina. The station doesn't exist anymore, but it used to be right opposite the place where the ski jump is now.'

‘Do you have a photo of your grandfather, by any chance?' I asked, but my question was ignored.

‘If you asked Marinello whether he went down the ski jump at the 1956 Olympic Games, he'd say yes, too.'

Then something sprang to mind. ‘The invention of ice-cream came before the invention of photography.'

‘So you can't prove that your grandfather invented ice-cream,' Luca noted.

‘Nobody can prove that,' Signor Zampieri exclaimed, a tad exasperated. ‘Just like nobody can prove that his grandmother invented spaghetti carbonara.'

He showed us his calloused thumb, the same calloused thumb my father had, the thumb my brother would one day have but that would never be mine. No hard skin forms on my thumb, however many poems I read, however many pages of poetry I turn over. It remains sleek and smooth in the light of my reading lamp.

‘Here's the proof,' Mr Zampieri said. ‘This rough, rusty thumb and the stories, my father's three pairs of trousers and the free ice-cream at Dresden market. My grandmother thinking my granddad had gone mad.'

The biscuits were finished, but there was no end to Signor Zampieri's stories.

‘Will you stop by again soon?' he asked.

We said goodbye and promised to be back soon. A little later we walked hand-in-hand through the valley of the ice-cream makers. It was something we continued to do, even when our parents were in Venas. Sometimes people would stare at us, thinking we looked funny.

It was a dazzling winter's day, the air clear and cold, the outlines of the mountains razor-sharp. We hadn't had any snow yet. It would be another nine days before the first flakes fell, delicate ones, as though made up of only a single ice crystal. They blew through the valley like goose down and struggled to land on the ground. They didn't melt as they touched the earth — they sublimated, seemingly swallowed up by the roads and the fields. This was in the morning; by noon the snow was as thick as a swarm of locusts. The mountains were invisible.

There was always something magical about the first snow of the season, while at the same time it was quite earthy for the people in the mountains. They had known it, sensed it; some had even smelled the snow. It had been in the air. Three days before the first flakes, they talked about nothing else. It will come soon, the people said. It will come tomorrow or the day after. They all agreed.

And then it came.

We retrieved the sledge from the attic and whizzed down the white sloping meadow. Right through the fresh snow. Me in the front, Luca at the back, our legs stretched out before us, my back on his stomach. We pretended to be on a bobsleigh and tried not to brake. In the Sixties, the brothers Enrico and Italo De Lorenzo from Pieve had become bobsleigh world champions. Now they owned an ice-cream parlour in Utrecht. In our dreams, a similar fate awaited us.

We asked Beppi to make us a sledge with shorter blades, which would enable us to dart across the snow even faster. He retreated into the basement and emerged a couple of days later with a sledge you could actually sit in. It was a kind of cocoon you had to push and then jump into one after the other.