4:58. Mauro passes by, pauses, and looks at me with a serious expression before speaking, slowly and deliberately: Watch out, Leo. With no thumb guard, you could very well lose a finger.
5:06. Giusy passes by: Oh my God, Leo, what the hell! You’re freaking me out with your fingers so close to the blade.
5:12. Paolo calls out from behind me. He wants to know where the bread knife is. I turn, all the while slicing, and tell him it’s over there, on the pass for the entrées…
5:12. My thumb starts to sting. I look down and see blood spurting onto the slicer and then all over the sliced aubergine. The blade continues to turn with a soft metallic hiss. My thumbnail is the shape of a crescent moon with exactly point three of an inch missing from the tip. Instinctively, before saying a word, I close my thumb inside the palm of my hand. My first thought is for all those aubergine slices, and that if I cover them in blood, I’ll be throwing away all the work I’ve done. That’s the tragedy that comes to my mind. Only after moving the aubergines out of the way with my left hand and discarding the three slices actually spattered with blood, with my right hand closed in a fist held out in front of me and with blood dripping onto the floor, do I turn around toward Michele.
“Hey, Miche, will you help me look for a piece of my thumb? I’ve fucked up.”
Paolo keeps stirring the pastry cream. Giusy has started cutting the bread. Mambo is chopping the parsley. No one has noticed a thing.
I feel a little light-headed and am aware of the pallor that is spreading over my face. Michele, as unruffled as ever, sits me down and starts searching for the tip of my thumb. Shortly afterward, he helps me into his car, holding a bag of ice. I say nothing. It’s Saturday night, damn it, every table in the restaurant is booked, and I am on my way to the hospital with a chunk of my thumb in a plastic bag.
6:15. I’m in the waiting room of the emergency department of the San Giovanni Hospital, my right thumb bandaged and my left hand clutching the bag of ice.
I am alone. After dropping me off, Michele went back to the kitchen and all the others are still at work. The thing in itself isn’t serious: I expect that my piece of thumb can be sewn back on. If Michele hadn’t found that bit of thumb, if it had gone through the meat mincer, it would have been much worse than this. More than anything, I’m fretting about my job, fuck it, my new job. I’ve only just started, I can’t be out of the picture so soon. No contract, no holiday pay, no sick pay.
I look around, read all the posters on the walls: flu shots for the elderly, HIV tests, visitors please wash your hands, health-care workers’ disputes. Then I gather my composure and breathe in the medicinal smell of the hospital. My thoughts branch out from a central core — the eggplant slices I managed to save from the blood — toward different parts of my mind, and then a question forms — What do I do now?—but remains unanswered. I know what I have to say, though: I cut myself at home. I pass the time counting the people going by. There are heaps more women than men. They’re staring into space, listening to their inner silence. A shriveled-up old lady on a gurney, her form virtually invisible under a sheet, is all alone. Someone’s taken her false teeth out and her lips have sunk in, she’s wearing one shoe, who knows where the other has ended up. I feel lost, stupid, and vulnerable. My inner silence is making a worryingly loud noise.
7:18. Finally, a doctor pokes his head through the steel doors and calls my name. As I get up from the bench and move toward him, I mentally go over the explanation I am going to give for the sliced thumb, to avoid hassles.
A big beefy male nurse holds my hand still and squirts anesthetic over the wound from a syringe a few inches away. Then, while the doctor swabs the blood and puts in the stitches, he asks me how I hurt myself.
“I was at home, putting a loaf of bread through the slicer, and I got distracted …”
“At home?” This raised an eyebrow. “And you were cutting a loaf of bread with a slicer?”
“Yes. Why? I had people over for dinner tonight and I wanted the bruschette to all be the same thickness. Only I was going too fast.”
“Yeah, sure. Relax. We don’t give a shit how you ended up cutting yourself. It’s your business. But you sure didn’t give yourself this cut with a knife, and if you say you’ve got a slicer at home, then you do. We couldn’t attach the tip back to your thumb, but you’re lucky, you came this close to the bone. The cut was straight, so it only took a few stitches. The top of your thumb will be flat for a while, then it should gradually go back to the way it was.”
“Thanks. So there was no point looking for the bit.”
“No, but you did the right thing to bring it along. Listen, you have to go home now. And I mean home. You stay off work for at least two weeks, okay? Are you working someplace, do you need a doctor’s note to take time off?”
“No, thanks. I’m unemployed, so I don’t need a note. Thanks.”
“No problem. The doctor will write you out one just the same, for the minimum days you should take off. People usually ask us for more. You make sure you stay home for a while. The slightest bump to your thumb will set off the bleeding, and if your stitches burst, it’s a pain in the ass. That friend of yours, the tall one in the chef’s jacket? he said to call him as soon as you leave. Make sure you tell him he’ll be in the kitchen on his own tonight, understood?”
7:41. I leave the hospital. The shriveled-up old lady is still on her gurney, her eyes closed. My bandaged thumb is huge and round like a Mickey Mouse cartoon, the pain’s bearable. I start thinking about tonight: The restaurant is fully booked, not a single empty table. I’m thinking that Michele will have finished slicing and grilling the eggplant, they’ll be in the gastronorm with the dressing, all ready to go, like the meat — sliced, seasoned, and waiting in the lowboy fridge.
Everyone must be wondering where I am and when I’ll be back. With a latex glove on my right hand I could still work, maybe if the bandage was less bulky. The job’s illegal, for crying out loud. If I go back to work right now, I’ll be a hero in everyone’s eyes. I’ll save the service — they probably think I won’t be back for days. My coworkers will heave a collective sigh of relief. In stoic silence, I’ll accept their proffered respect and trust. I take my cell phone out of my pocket to call Michele and see who can come pick me up. I go out onto the street, turn the ringer back on, and see there is a text message. It’s from Michele: “Sorry you hurt yourself, but everyone has to take responsibility for their actions. Try to remember to say it happened at home. Call me when they let you go. Longo.”
7:43. I’m really upset. Still holding my phone, I reread the message. Why on earth did Michele send me that message? Yeah, I know he’s the chef, but I might have expected something like that from Mauro, not him. No, the truth is that I wasn’t expecting it from anyone. And what hurts the most is that I’m reading it now, after already saying that I cut myself at home, slicing the bread. Because I know full well how things work. You don’t have a job, so you can only hurt yourself at home. And yes, I am taking responsibility for my actions in this game I’ve decided to play. But I was hoping for a hero’s medal, or a pat on the back, or even a mumbled “Thank you.” Instead, nothing. Worse than nothing, it’s all taken for granted. And the excuse I just gave to that churlish male nurse isn’t even my own. All that matters is that I said I cut myself at home because that’s what I was asked to say, what I had to say, and what else could I have said? So we all have to take responsibility for our actions? Why doesn’t that go for the employers? They get invisible people to work in their kitchens, and if they hurt themselves it’s a hassle. A hassle for the employers but not the workers who slice off their fingers. Fuck the rules and responsibilities. I very nearly go back inside and tell that giant nurse that yes, it’s true, I work cash in hand in a shit hole where, if you injure yourself, they dump you at the emergency department and all they care about is that you don’t squeal on them. You know what, maybe I’ll report them to the police.
And then I remember the c
hunk of thumb I lost and Michele picking it up, and my rage dissolves into a flicker of affection.
I call Michele and don’t say a word about any of this, only that my thumb has been bandaged and if I wear a rubber glove I can go back to work. If he comes right now, I’ll be ready and raring to go, in my uniform, at the grill in time for the evening onslaught, and not to worry, everything’s okay. In the end, I guess what upsets me the most is that it was Michele himself who sent me the message.
11:58. I open the bottle of aspirin and pop another tablet. The grill is smoking because of the burned fat, but the last steak has just left for table 46, the one with the lady who is so fat that we had to get one of the armchairs from the lounge bar for her to sit on. It feels like there’s another heart stuck to the tip of my thumb, it’s throbbing so hard. I leave the outdoor kiosk I’ve been working in for the last few days and head for Patrizio’s bar.
“Hi, Patri, how’s it going? Are you hungry, do you want something to eat before I clean the grill?”
“Ah, Leo, I should be asking you the same thing! Don’t worry, I’ll have an ice cream later on. You must be feeling like crap.”
“Nah, who’s going to miss a piece of meat? From the grill, I mean, not from my thumb. Come on, seriously, what can I make for you?”
“I dunno, you decide. As soon as the concert finishes, all hell will break loose in here. Make something I can get down fast.”
“Fine. How about a kebab and some grilled vegetables?”
“And how about I make you the usual, a mojito? Or are you on medication?”
“Only aspirin.”
“So, no mojito.”
“Says who? The only side effect is that you get drunk quicker! Actually, if you want a cheap way to get drunk, just take a couple of aspirin before you go out, that’s what a Sri Lankan dishwasher used to tell me.”
“You’re terrible. Go on, I’ll bring it to you.”
This symbiotic relationship between bar and restaurant is a classic. The bar serves free booze to the cooks, and the kitchen gives the best food to the bar staff.
What’s more, Patrizio and I feel an admiration for each other that eventually evolves into camaraderie. He manages to cope with two hundred hands waving dockets in his face without misplacing a bar spoon or a slice of lime, without ever getting caught off guard. I never leave my station without first scrubbing the grill to the same high gleam as when it came out of the factory. Not even when I’ve sweated over it for five straight hours of nonstop cooking, and before, at least three hours of prepping. This is what impresses your colleagues. If you work your butt off, you’re a good guy. That’s not all, of course. At the end of the day, everyone is equal in a restaurant, except that a good barman and the head chef are a bit more equal than everyone else. Or the sous chef, who’s usually the one carrying most of the work on his shoulders. The food runners are on the fringes, the waiters are the skivvies, but the chef and the barman are the artists, the organizers, the ones who really matter.
Something really terrible has to happen — more serious than an underage sister left pregnant at the altar — for a cook and a bartender to fall out. They are far too useful to each other.
Patrizio is the quintessential barman. Reserved, polite, a lover of first-class spirits, and a teller of tall tales and legends that add body to the drinks he mixes without a shred of tetchiness. He blends ingredients as formidably as he intuits moods. It takes him no time at all to size up the clients, and he always knows how to deal with them.
I’ve never once seen him even the least bit tipsy. He’s a rock, a pillar of strength, and sooner or later everyone falls into his trap. People forget he’s neither a priest nor a lawyer and that he is not bound to secrecy. We come, we drink, we relax, and out pours our shit. Like the odd bottle swiped here, tips falling into pockets there, and contempt for the crazy demands of a professional kitchen. It’s no different at the Verve, it’s just how life is for a barman. Who usually ends up munching on a fillet of prime marbled beef so rare it’s still mooing, while filling in the chef, who’s sipping a cocktail, on all the latest gossip. That’s how I find out that our two bosses have a weakness for highstakes poker, which they play in their office late into the night.
Patrizio has done the rounds of dozens of places all over Rome and is used to enjoying the same status as the chef. He controls the cash register at the bar, the stockroom, and the orders. It’s standard practice for him to offer a free drink every now and again to his favorite customers. The business doesn’t suffer; rather the opposite, since those customers usually leave sizable tips.
In theory, the chef is one step above the bartender in the pecking order. The chef defines a restaurant’s identity, his wage is higher, and he controls the food costs, beverages included. But usually, there’s a tacit agreement whereby a good chef turns a blind eye to the cocktails that a bartender offers and to whom, and in general, to how relationships with customers at the bar are conducted. Partly because there is a very good chance that the chef is also a customer at some other bar. And most times, the bars that chefs frequent after closing are the ones where former colleagues work. So this is our grubby little world, in which owners are merely a necessary appendage. Because we can’t afford a place of our own and, if we could, we would be paying our staff cash in hand and they would be pilfering eye fillets and drinks while trading gossip about our vices and weaknesses. That’s the way the cookie crumbles and that is fine with everyone. You cut your finger, it pisses you off, it shouldn’t happen but it does, so be it. And I’m here, cleaning the grill and drinking. Michele ambles in, already in his street clothes. I’m still in my sweat-stained undershirt, my glove is greasy and blackened, amid the fumes from the degreaser. I’m mellow, the alcohol is doing its job.
2:04. I return home, worn-out. William saunters up the street to meet me and jumps into my arms, purring, to hitch a ride upstairs. I scratch his head and enjoy this rare display of feline affection. I don’t turn on the stereo or the TV. I crumble some weed into the palm of my hand, roll myself a good-night joint, lie on the sofa, and stare up at the ceiling with William spread-eagled across my chest and ask myself which part of the slicer I touched by mistake, at what precise moment. The pain finally starts to subside and I trace letters with my finger over the dark canvas of my thoughts. I look, and see that I’ve written my own name. At last there is silence within me, and it’s reassuring.
17.
July rolled around and the concert season reached its peak. One day, Mauro, fired the previous week, came in to visit as if nothing had happened, dressed like a teen in cargo shorts and a Billabong T-shirt. No tie, no suit. He said that if they wanted to work with dumb-ass kids, he knew how to be a dumb-ass kid, and wore a suit and tie only to look more professional. Something that had obviously been neither recognized nor appreciated. It was early, but he seemed hammered, or maybe high. He asked for a drink at the bar, and Patrizio insisted he pay for it. I felt sorry for him, but he reeked of failure, and the stench of failure is contagious so I kept a low profile. He poured out a sob story: They had robbed him of his position and left him jobless. I wondered if he expected us to chain ourselves to the gate as a sign of solidarity with our guru, because all he did by coming in was discover that the place was humming along just fine without a sommelier or even a manager. We didn’t need him at all, and that was a bitter pill for him to swallow.
It was really quite simple. The owners needed a front man and they chose Mauro, a sommelier who fancied himself a floor manager because compared to everyone else, he had a smidgeon more experience in the restaurant trade. He’d been lucky enough to come across two willing and able chefs but not smart enough to earn his position by becoming indispensable for the day-to-day running of the business. He gave us free rein, we got better, and he made himself redundant. Mauro’s big mistake was letting the owners realize it. Without intending to, Michele and I became the cause of his being fired, and now we held absolute power over the restaurant.
We added new dishes to the menu and removed some that for him were set in stone. On weekends an old friend of Michele’s came in to give Paolo a hand in the pastry station. We went berserk, recklessly concocting insane desserts the likes of which the world had never known, like chocolate-and-eggplant strudel, prepared with such guileless passion and optimism that when Joe Zawinul, the Austrian jazz musician, tasted it at his birthday party, he exclaimed that it was better than the best Sacher Torte in the whole of Vienna. Conquering uncharted territory makes you bold and arrogant and pumps up your energy levels. We weren’t out to wage wars, but it became clear that life in the restaurant business was a constant battle. There is always a loser, and it must not be you. When success happens, you’ve got to have deserved it.
The umpteenth dinner service finished uneventfully, not without effort, of course, but uneventfully nonetheless. I was on my way home on the bicycle Paolo had lent me and I was sober. When I got to Via Prenestina, Michele’s Opel overtook me. I raised a hand to wave and then saw it pull over. Seated next to him was Vanessa, a girl who worked in the dining room with Giusy and the others. A few days after she arrived, she hooked up with Michele and moved into his pad in the elegant Balduina quarter. Before that she’d been with Patrizio, which is how she ended up working at the Verve. But Patrizio told her he wasn’t in love with her, and she wasn’t the type to hang around and lick her wounds. For Michele — and this is what he confessed to me — it was the first relationship he’d been in where he was untrammeled by plans and promises and heartache; she, on the other hand, had much more experience in such matters. She was an art history student with a passion for jazz. She’d lived in Rome for many years and knew loads of people in the city’s theater and music scenes. Since getting together, Michele had let his hair grow into a curly unkempt mess. Vanessa and Michele were in love, and there was no need to make a big deal about it, just as they didn’t need to confess it to each other.
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