The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club (3 page)

‘No need to date a bird, Miranda. Once it's putrid, it speaks for itself.'

‘You're just about reaching the putrid stage yourself, Iacovo,' Miranda assures a handsome man in a hand-knitted black sweater, navy basque and grey canvas trousers tucked into knee-high boots – the same hand-knitted black sweater, navy basque and grey canvas trousers tucked into the same knee-high boots he's been wearing summer and winter, it's been observed, since the day his wife passed away half a decade before.

‘For the last years of his life, Michelangelo never took his boots off, my darling girl,' Iacovo tells her. ‘It's in deference to him that keeps me night and day in mine.'

‘Bah. Where was I? Yes, the wine and the oil will be here, wood for the fire, for the bread oven.'

‘And the pecorino,' Filiberto says. ‘There'll always be cheese.'

Miranda looks at Filiberto, blows him a kiss.

‘
Certo, certo
, you've done more than your share and now we'll … we'll take over. Take turns.' As usual, it's Ninuccia who decides for all of us.

Once again, everyone speaks at the same time, all of them agreeing that Miranda should indeed retire from her stance in front of the old iron stove. ‘Yes, yes, of course,
è giusto, giustissimo
, it's right, very right,' they repeat again and again though their voices and the pace of their words wane, their conviction a diminishing chord. A tentative whistle in the dark. They are bewildered babes who've lost their piper.

A soft but unshy voice makes a small rip in the silence.

‘I'll cook.'

The voice is mine.

I have just offered to prepare supper for as many as fourteen people once a week in a place with no electricity or gas. I shall cook over the three holes of a wood-and-coal-fired stove and a length of chicken wire stretched between the andirons of a Lilliputian hearth. The people who will come to eat what I cook – some of them of a certain age – are culinary traditionalists, old-school Umbrians who work the land, shepherd flocks, raise courtyard animals, hunt birds and wild boar, and have never in their impressively long existences eaten an egg plucked from a carton but always from under the warm derrière of a hen. Rigid are their gastronomic formulas: a rabbit is either tugged through a small hill of flour and fried in bubbling lard or wrapped in pancetta, roasted with rosemary and splashed stintingly with white wine once it's been carried to the table; this last ceremony giving up luscious vapours, which settle back to rest deep in the beast's soft, hot flesh. Chicken is chopped into small pieces, roasted with crushed tomatoes, olive oil and handfuls of wild herbs. It gets its white-wine sousing halfway through the cooking. A Sunday chicken can be pan-sautéed with yellow capsicums and fat black olives. Oregano is the prescribed herb to scent it. Lamb, a leg or a shoulder, is roasted with potatoes. Its tiny ribs are charred fast over a wood fire. The only sauce is olive oil – green as sun-struck jade – splashed in small, lustrous puddles through which one skates the flesh, the fat, the bones, the potatoes, the bread. In the last best drops, one skates a finger. Pig, suckling or mature, is roasted with sage and rosemary and often, but not always, with wild fennel, or, yet more ubiquitously, it is boned, stuffed with a poultice of its innards, run through with a metal rod and rotated over a slow fire until its skin, glistening like rubbed mahagony, is brittle as caramel gone cold.

The rural folks' bible is long, its codes chiselled in Umbrian stone. I am not Umbrian. My own bible is a crucible, a composite of riches gathered from all the places where I've lived and worked and cooked. Even for these canonical Umbrians, I know I shall be wilfully tempted to blasphemy. I might sauté a rabbit with wild thyme and shallots in the rich, salty fat rendered from wild herb-perfumed lard, splash it with good black beer, braise it until its plump flesh goes bronze as August wheat and, if barely prodded with a single tine of a fork, falls from its bones in succulent heaps. Worse than this, I will likely serve the same black beer to drink as the one in which the rabbit was drowned. In other words, I shall cook for these Umbrians in the way that is natural for me. This feels right. In fact, it feels wonderful.

It must feel right to Miranda as well, her broad smile making glittering blue-black slits of her eyes. She's laughing now, her kitchen-towel turban – singed in some earlier combat with the flames – sits askew and wilting in the smoky mists of the dying fire. I notice that it's only Miranda who laughs.

‘I thought you would, Chou,' she says. ‘In fact, it's you I've had in mind to … ever since Rai Uno showed that old film,
La Festa di Babette
. Since then, well, I've been thinking that we're like those locals who'd lived on salt cod and water and that you could be her, that Babette woman, sitting us down to some strange supper on a Thursday.
La Festa di Babette
.'

‘You've hardly fared on fish and water all these years,' I say, raising my glass. Everyone follows suit and we drink to the health and joy of the goddess of Buonrespiro.

‘
Brava, Miranda, bravissima, bravissima.
' Everyone's on their feet, coming to surround her, kissing, embracing, placing their hands on her sweat-shined cheeks. Miranda has ruled her tribe justly and so merits their love. But the brio quietens perhaps too quickly and, once back at their places, they resume a collective sulk, one fidgeting with his ring, one flicking a middle finger and thumb against errant crumbs. Some fix a perplexed gaze in my direction, as though I was someone else, someone new. Which, in a way, is what I am. Being
someone new
is who an expatriate is always.

Though I've known these souls who compose Miranda's famous Thursday suppers for all the years I've lived in Orvieto – at least to greet in the markets or wherever our paths cross – it was only last spring that she first invited Fernando and I to join the ranks of her inner circle. But more than the longevity I lack, it's my
straniera
, my stranger, status that worries them. How, oh how, can
l'Americana
slip into the old white clogs of their beloved Miranda?

I know better than they that I can't. But what I know that they don't is that I have no wish to. It's not Miranda's shoes I'll try to fill; I've got shoes of my own. I like that Miranda sensed I would offer to cook. So often I have made her privy to this longing of mine for a large family around my table. I suspect she, too, knows the others would make a muddle of taking turns. ‘A good hearth has only one
Vesta
,' she always says when, unbidden, someone dares insist upon her territory.

The fire's gone cold and the little room is nearly dark save the last flames hurled up by the guttering candles. One of the Thursday night rules says:
When the candles are spent, the evening is over
. No one moves to leave.

The deeper the dark, the looser their tongues. A triangular dialogue prevails among Ninuccia, the woman called Paolina, and the one called Gilda. We listen.

‘I don't know this film.
Come si chiama?
' asks Ninuccia.

‘
La Festa di Babette;
it's a pretty film, pretty enough but …' says Gilda.

‘I saw it, too. This cook killed a turtle; after I saw that scene – enough,' says Paolina.

‘Did she cook it over the ashes?' asks Ninuccia.

‘I think she made a broth,' Gilda tells her.

‘I'll tell you right off, I don't eat such things,' says Paolina.

‘Nor do I,' Ninuccia agrees. ‘But what else did she serve?'

‘Maybe it would please you to eat a quail suffocated inside a thousand-layer pastry coffin,' Paolina says.

‘
Davvero schifoso
. Truly disgusting,' Ninuccia says. ‘The lowest circle in hell should be reserved for people who play with food.'

Truly disgusting – they are all in agreement and as I listen to them I am sympathetic. Braised quail tucked inside buttery pastry caskets seem a trumpery to them, as it seemed a trumpery to me not so many years ago as I sat at El Bulli wondering why I wasn't in front of some small tottering table in the ancient village of Sarrià hung high in the hills above Barcelona, dragging charred baby leeks, thin as my finger, into a little pot of romesco, rather than staring at a menu that promised Kellogg's paella – Rice Krispies, shrimp heads and vanilla-scented mashed potatoes – or sizzled embryonic eels afloat in espresso foam. The world is rife with the hungry and yet big-boy chefs must play with food. I think about what Ninuccia has just said:
The lowest circle in hell should be reserved for people who play with food
. I would add: especially those who play with food and get paid for it. But is that what these Umbrians are supposing I shall do?

My reverie is broken by Ninuccia, herself, who is asking me, ‘So will Thursdays be like in the film? Is that what we can expect?'

‘No. Not at all like in the film. I'm not like her. Not so much like Babette. (I was not telling the whole truth here … hence, the hesitation, almost the admittance that I am very much like Babette in that I have and I would again spend my last lire to feed you … and more … one good supper taken together is a symbol of everything that matters in life.) I promise you a good supper. We'll be together. Every week on the same night. Something to count on. Ritual. Ceremony. Continuance. The idea is pure Umbrian. But the food … well, the food can't be if I'm cooking it. I don't have your history, your
hand
. But I have
another
history, my own
hand
… will you give me a chance?'

The stillness is brief, electric. It's Gilda who interrupts it. ‘Why not? It would be, well, it might be
interesting
.'

‘Why not? Because things should remain
as they are
.' This is Ninuccia.

‘But there is no more
as they are – as they are
has become
as they were
. Weren't you listening to Miranda?' Gilda wants to know.

No one speaks. Gilda continues, ‘Doesn't anyone recall Tancredi's words to Don Fabrizio?
If you want things to stay the same, everything must change
.'

‘And that signifies?' Ninuccia rises, brushes absent crumbs from the table with the side of her hand.

‘That the present can't be preserved like a bushel of apricots tumbled into jars and drowned in rum, Ninuccia. That's what it signifies. There's no defending the present against change. Tonight is already part of the past. It's …'

‘
Calma, calma
, it's not the
Risorgimento
at stake here – it's supper we're talking about.' This is Iacovo, the widower.

‘I say Chou should cook. Miranda says Chou should cook.' This from Gilda.

Disarmed, Ninuccia speaks quietly, ‘
Forse
, perhaps …'

‘Certainly, she's clever, but …' Paolina remains unconvinced.

Arms resting on the shelf of her bosom, her gaze serene, Miranda is an indulgent mother observing her children in fraternal combat. When she speaks, it's to Filiberto. ‘
Cosa dici?
What do you say?'

As she knew he would, Filiberto has a solution. ‘Perhaps Chou could take on a
collaboratrice
each week. A different partner every Thursday. A rotation of the local talent working alongside her. A joining of ways and means. Of histories. A little like Ravel played with four hands instead of two.'

Lanterns along the Montefiascone road spill tarnished yellow light through the single window of the darkened room and we are a tribe in shadow. In a state of Umbrian impasse.

At last, it's Ninuccia who speaks. ‘I wonder, Miranda, if you would consider just one more Thursday night before … before we begin this … this new
regime
. This variation on Ravel.'

Ninuccia stands as she asks this, goes to Miranda, adjusts her towel turban. Filiberto is on his feet, too, gone to rummage the drawers in the armoire. Breaking the candle rule, he lights two more and goes to stir up the fire.

‘
One
more?' Miranda's voice seems made of both laughter and tears.

Enlivened by the new light and as much by Ninuccia's apppeal for clemency, everyone's talking again, shouting out dishes like bingo numbers, foods Miranda hasn't lately cooked or ones she's somehow never cooked at all.

‘I've yet to say I will. That I will cook for one more Thursday.' Miranda knows the only way to capture their attention is to whisper. The talk ceases. Barely raising her volume, Miranda says, ‘Bring me a haunch of young boar by Sunday evening, a litre of decent brandy and a package of syringes.'

‘Syringes?' Half seconds separate each one saying the same word.

‘You heard me.' Her wistfulness spent, Miranda begins to play with us. The boar season officially underway, she looks first to Pierangelo, then to Iacovo, both fervent hunters. Their assignment is clear and each mumbles
va bene, va bene
.

‘
Sarà fatto
, it shall be done,' Iacovo confirms. ‘But why the syringes?'

There is neither a repeat of the question nor one who answers it. No one seems to know.

‘Tell them, my little American.' The blue-black eyes hold mine in silent trust that I will understand what she has in mind. Miranda's challenge is waged not to demonstrate my comfort with the most obscure local culinary patrimony but to spur the others' nostalgia for it. The troupe turns to me, still as a Bruegel vignette.

Very quietly, I take up the gauntlet that Miranda has thrown to me.

‘To inject the boar with the brandy. Syringe after syringe of brandy until the flesh is drenched, saturated. Rub the haunch with crushed juniper and let it sit for a few days. Some salt. Nothing else. Roasted over olive and grape woods, the natural sugars from the brandy seep out to form a brittle crust, which keeps the flesh lush. Pan juices. No sauce. The French roast
sanglier
in the same way.'