The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club (19 page)

‘“Drink this
,”
Carolina said. “I put more sugar than usual in it this week. And cinnamon, too.
Sapevo io
. I knew.
Siamo ancora in Italia, no?
We're still in Italy, no? If a man and a woman are alone together for more than twenty minutes, it has always been assumed that they have made love.
Sapevo
. I knew.”

‘Luigia hissed, “
Scema
… Fool …”

‘Eyes closed, I silently willed Carolina not to proceed with another indelicacy, not to be her haughty, disparaging self.
A half moment of truce, Carolina, I beg you
. Then I heard her words again.
If a man and a woman are alone together for more than twenty minutes, it has always been assumed that they have made love
. I couldn't tell if she repeated them or if I heard them from inside of me, from far away. Her words were a caption to images that began to slice fast as a guillotine across the back of my eyes. I saw my mother and Niccolò working in the kitchen when I'd return from school, their unpacking wine or oil or bushels of fruit from the boot of Niccolò's auto, my waking from a nightmare and, still half asleep, wandering downstairs to find Niccolò alone in the
salone
. “
Dove sono mamma e papà
. Where are my mother and my father?” I asked Niccolò.

‘“Your father went to help cover the vines against the frost. The men telephoned … Your mother, I think, I think … she's, yes, she's bathing. Yes. Bathing. Twenty minutes. Of course.”

‘“
Amore mio, bevi
. Drink, my love,” Carolina was saying to me. Already convulsed, the smell of raw egg and sweet wine brought shivers. I sipped daintily. Carolina goaded. I sipped again.

‘Through all of this Umberto had kept his silence. He rose then, came to his place at table. Carolina sat next to me. All the cutting and pouring and passing made a reassuring noise.

‘“There's so much to talk about, isn't there?” said Carolina.

‘Adjusting her slipped shoulder pads back to their proper geometric formation, she asked, “Who would have thought we'd be having a baby in September?”

Over time I was able to calm, somewhat, Carolina's possessiveness of me and my “condition”. I managed to convince her – and Luigia, too – that I could nicely manage my days, that I ate and slept properly, walked briskly for several kilometres twice a day, that I never raised my hands above my head (so as not to stretch the umbilical cord, which could then wrap about the baby's neck), that I kept nothing of the baby's layette in the house after sunset. This last meant that, as I'd finish knitting a cap or sewing tabs on some miniscule undershirt or cutting up sheets into diapers, I'd go dutifully to put the things in an old maroon leather trunk, which Carolina had especially provided and placed in the woodshed. Over it, she'd hung a print of a Botticelli Madonna in a wide gold frame.
Coincidenza
, coincidence, I thought … willing away images of my mother. Every time I went to open or close the trunk, I would carefully avert my gaze from her.

‘I dined at the parish house once a week and our Mondays at my place were observed, sacred as mass. Though we spoke always about the baby, the subject of Niccolò we forsook, the moat too wide and deep around him. Umberto, however, I saw only by chance, he neither accompanying the women to me on Mondays nor being present when I dined at the parish house. “You know how it is, Paolina. He's always taking on more than …” When we did meet in the town, Umberto was remote but not uncharitable. My status with him had shifted from protégée to parishioner. I was reconciled to this.

‘Niccolò continued to spend part of every day with me. And, as I'd earlier announced that I would, I began to cook for him, in my fashion. Boiling and roasting things to their wreckage. He was patient. I think his grand defence must have been to stop at one of his haunts before coming to me each day, to slurp down a plate of pasta or ravage the
bruschette
and
crostini
served in the bars with
aperitivi
. His single obstinacy about our cooking and dining arrangement was that he continue to gather up the provisions.

‘Even before I was bathed and dressed in the morning, I would hear him trilling ‘
funiculi, funicula
' in the kitchen as he thumped down the morning's goods on the table. He'd fill the Bialetti, put it on a quiet flame, shout
buongiorno, tesoro
, and leave me, unencumbered, to my acts of destruction. Sometimes I'd find a scribbled suggestion, a few lines of method, a caveat. One day he wrote: “
Lascia il cibo essere se stesso. Non mascherare. Esalta
. Let the food be itself. Don't mask. Exult.” I thought the words provocative. Almost like a dare. I remember tucking the scrap of paper in my pocket, pushing it deep into the bottom like a love letter. A charm. It was the only cooking lesson Niccolò ever gave to me. I'd recite the words over and over again every time I took up my knife or set a pot on the flame. It wanted time, though, before I began to act out the words. The first time I did, it was on a morning in July.

‘In a large green basket with a broken handle, Niccolò left the first tomatoes he'd harvested from his own vines. Big and sun-split and smelling of heat and of the basil planted between the rows, these tomatoes. I fondled the warm satin skin of the misshapen things, turned them over and over, marvelling at them as though I'd never before seen a tomato. Carrying the basket on my upturned arms over to the sink, I began to rinse them, laying them on a nice white towel to dry and, as I washed the last one, I put it to my nose, and then to my mouth. Ravenous for that tomato, I bit deep into its pulp, gasping on its flesh as though I'd been starved and it was the last food in the world. Standing there over the sink, devouring the thing, careless of the juices running down my neck and into the bosom of my dress, all I could think was:
This is how I want our lunch to taste
.

‘At first I meant to simply break open the fruits and serve them as they were – with knife and fork and a dish of salt. But then I took up a small, sharp knife and set to roughly chopping the tomatoes into the wide shallow bowl we used for pasta. I rubbed sea salt over and, holding my thumb over the olive oil flask, poured on thin threads of oil. Stirring it all together I was tempted to tear in leaves of basil and marjoram then, to cover the bowl and place it over a pot of simmering water as I'd seen my mother and Niccolò do when fixing
sugo crudo
, raw sauce. No. I would chase, further yet, this idea of revealing a food's own goodness. Better that these beauties be warmed under the sun that birthed them than over a gas flame. With the white towel I'd used to dry the tomatoes, I covered the bowl, carried it out to the garden and left it on a table where no shade would reach it.
Let the food be itself
.
Don't mask. Exult
.

‘Moving in an epiphanous daze, wiping my hands down the length of my apron, stopping them to caress the place where my child was growing, I walked back to the kitchen. I was a mother. I was a cook. I was
becoming
a cook.

‘I surveyed the other good things Niccolò had left for me and began tasting them, this way and that, in my mind. Out in the rustico – the summer kitchen – I built an olivewood fire in the hearth, the first one I'd ever made without my mother or Niccolò helping to tease the flames to their dance. The tomatoes out there in the garden and the good fire I'd set raised up in me a strange blend of conceit and awe so that, once back in the house, I set to my own sort of makeshift dance. Slicing finger-sized zucchini whisper-thin on the
mandolino
, I dressed them with oil warmed with a branch of
mentuccia –
wild mint – and left the bowl handy so I could give them a stir every time I passed by. As the fire began to smoulder, I laid tiny, fat, whole fennel bulbs on the grate and, when the stringy, sweet-licorice flesh of them had gone soft, I slipped the bulbs into a pan and set it down in the ash. As I'd seen my father do, I threaded the sausages that Niccolò had brought that morning from Mocetti onto vine twigs soaked in water. The sausages cooked and dripped juices onto the fennel resting below. I opened the wine.

‘Niccolò arrived. Seeing that I'd left nothing much for him to do, he washed his hands, sat at his place. An elbow resting on the table, his hand supporting his chin, he watched me. Another Paolina, freshly pirouetted from her cocoon.

‘A morning's sojourn in the sun had caused the tomatoes to give up their juices and, like soup, I ladled them into bowls. Beside each bowl I set down a long flat, crusty
ciabatta
, split and barely toasted over the embers. Dipping a branch of rosemary into a saucer of oil, I rubbed the charred crevices of the bread, dipping the branch again and again into the oil and painting the bread with it, pushing hard on the rosemary, bruising its leaves against the hot bread until the rosemary gave up its scent. Half a
ciabatta
for Niccolò and half for me. I brought in the sausages then, laid them over the fennel, wetting both with the pan drippings. More bread. The little salad of raw zucchini refreshed us and, as an end to the meal, we finished the wine and sat there plucking leaves from the bouquet of
mentuccia
, wild mint, that I'd set in a pewter jug on the table, chewing them like candy.

‘Though I don't recall what I cooked or ate for lunch four days ago, I remember every morsel of that one in a July of more than forty years ago. I will always. It would have been enough, that lunch. Had the Fates never allowed me the peace and plenty in which to cook and eat that way again, I could have lived off that one. I was safe.

‘Niccolò never said much about the food I set before him that day nor about the food I set before him on the days that followed. He knew and I knew that, by saying little, he was saying everything.

•

‘Soon after the tomato lunch Niccolò began stopping by to fetch me at seven in the morning. “
Faremo le spese insieme
. We'll shop together,” he'd said.

‘Primped, lustrous, scented in neroli, Niccolò – already feverish over the glories that might be waiting in the markets – would appear while I'd still be pinning up my hair, looking for a sweater or my boots, the sleep just rinsed from my eyes.

‘“Tonino should have figs today. Taste the borlotti before you buy them. Crisp and juicy they should be but not bitter. Take two kilos. And we'll need to put
baccalà
to soak today if you want to cook it on Friday. Walnuts from the Lazio truck, don't forget those.”

‘On Saturdays we'd go to both our own market and then to Orvieto, where we'd mostly just meander in the way one does when what's desired has already been found. We'd go to the wagon that dispensed
porchetta
, thick slices of wood-roasted suckling pig, boned and stuffed with a mash of its innards and wild herbs and I'd ask for one with crackling skin for Nicò, one without for me. Sitting on the steps of the Palazzo del Capitano, we'd eat and talk about food.

‘“Before you cook a dish, you must be able to taste it. Go through the process first in your mind. Imagine yourself choosing the ingredients. Be sure of how you want them to look and smell and feel. Think about your pan or pot, your knife, get to work. Pour in the oil and begin warming it over a gentle flame; throw in a fine mince of pancetta or lard, wild thyme or rosemary or, better, both. Turn up the flame just a little; now the garlic, then the onions. When the pancetta is crisp, the onions and garlic are golden and transparent and the herbs are fragrant, spoon it all out into a large deep dish. Dry the pieces of meat and lay them in the pan, leaving them to crust in the perfumed fat over a modest flame. Leave them longer than you think you should.
Tanta patienza ci vuole
. You'll want great patience. When all the flesh is crusted, add it to the dish with the aromatics. Turn up the flame and pour the wine into the hot, very hot pan, stirring and scraping until the bottom of the pan is clean. Now tip the dish of aromatics and crusted flesh back into the pan. The wine in the pan should be enough to wet the flesh but not to drown it. When the wine begins to shimmer, lower the heat, cover the pot almost all the way. Leave the flesh to braise in the barely shuddering wine. Never should there be a more violent movement than that shudder. Every hour, add a few tablespoons more wine. After a time, that tiny aperture between the pot and its lid will have sent up sufficient winey vapours to scent the house. Your hair will smell of wine and rosemary. Go out for a short walk so that you can come back inside to take in the full effect of that winey steam. Now. Go through this exercise a few times and then you'll be ready to cook.”

‘I listened to Nicò's recipes as I would a fable, the words transporting me to a mythical kitchen where I could see the wine shuddering in that pan and smell the thyme and the onions. I went to bed that night and cooked myself to sleep, starving for that butter-soft flesh crusted in the fat and the wine and the herbs in which it had lolled for days and nights over a barely lit flame. I dragged a crust of imaginary bread into the imaginary sauce and then slept the angels' sleep.

‘“Where did you learn those recipes?” I asked him one day.

‘“In my grandmother's
salottino
.” Niccolò told me that during the war he and his cousins lived with her, their parents having been otherwise occupied with the Resistance. He was the eldest of the grandchildren, a kind of surrogate uncle to seven younger children. From time to time he would defy his father's orders to stay and manage things for them and instead set off to join one
branco
or another up in the hills, mostly in Toscana. “But I never stayed away for more than a few days, time enough to enact some lesser violence against the
Krauti
before getting back to safeguarding my own,” Nicò told me.