Of Boars, Baskets and Brotherhood
DAVID DOWNIE
David Downie is an American author and journalist based in Paris. For the last twenty-five years he has been writing about European travel, culture and food for magazines, newspapers and websites worldwide. David’s writing has appeared in a dozen anthologies. His nonfiction books include Enchanted Liguria: A Celebration of the Culture, Lifestyle and Food of the Italian Riviera; Cooking the Roman Way: Authentic Recipes from the Home Cooks and Trattorias of Rome; The Irreverent Guide to Amsterdam and Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light. David’s latest books are Paris City of Night, a political thriller; and three critically acclaimed regional travel, food and wine books: Food Wine the Italian Riviera & Genoa, Food Wine Rome and Food Wine Burgundy. He is married to photographer Alison Harris (www.alisonharris.com). His website is www.davidddownie.com.
Alison rolled me on my side. But I wasn’t snoring. The grunts and squeals came from the garden, and they had awakened me long before dawn.
Lifting the flaps of the dark green shutters, we peered down, blinking. The sky was clear, the air already too hot for May, even on the Italian Riviera. Below us, olive trees and spiky artichoke plants were silhouetted against the spreading pinkness of the Gulf of Genoa. We could hear waves lapping at a promontory, and the spluttering of a solitary fishing boat. Then the ruckus started up again, followed by the crack of a breaking branch, the scurrying of cloven hoofs, a cacophony of terrified oinks, and a series of half-suffocated human imprecations. Porca was the only word we made out, delivered by a gruff voice. The rest was easy to guess.
Safe behind our shutters, we watched a shadowy figure untangle itself and slide down the trunk of a tree beyond the terraced garden. Muttering, it swished open a path between the artichoke fronds, stooped under a vine-draped trellis and crossed a creek to a nearby cluster of pastel-hued village houses. A light went on in one of them, and the figure reappeared on a top-floor balcony. The scene looked suspiciously picturesque, lifted from an operetta set.
‘Boars,’ Alison whispered. I nodded, wondering how much damage they’d done. The vegetable patch was the pride and passion of a reclusive man whose name we knew to be Oreste. His wife shouted it several times daily across the olive groves.
Though we had glimpsed Oreste planting and weeding in the bright light of day, he – like most craggy residents of the rocky Riviera – had remained in chiaroscuro, unknowable among the high-colour masses of day-trippers, long-term sojourners and sometime-residents. Outnumbered ten-to-one, the locals rarely mixed with outsiders.
Our coffee cups in hand, the sun now scorching, we stood in the pocket-sized garden above Oreste’s vegetables. The Mediterranean lolled a thousand feet below, its jagged shore covered by fantasyland villas and hotels. The moment you climbed away from them onto the steep, terraced hillsides, things changed. Many mountain hamlets were abandoned, others depopulated, and armies of wild boars descended from the Apennines to feast in gardens and orchards like Oreste’s.
A clump of calla lilies lay toppled at our feet. I hoped the owner of the house did not blame us. Immediately below, at the base of a stone wall, luxuriant zucchini plants had been mangled. A tree limb dangled.
‘It broke under my weight,’ said a baritone voice. Oreste loomed up, carrying a wicker basket and shears. ‘I wanted to scare them,’ he added, approaching with caution. ‘I hope you were not awakened?’
‘No,’ Alison lied. ‘But what a shame about your vegetables. They’re so lovely, and you work so hard.’
Oreste waved the shears. I noticed his white teeth under a white moustache, and his blue eyes, rare in this part of Italy. They flashed. ‘One moment,’ he commanded. I realised he had been speaking English, his apparent caution evaporating like the dew. With a deft gesture he snipped off a zucchini, its flower attached, then another and another. He rummaged among the artichokes, snipping and yanking, before turning to a lemon tree hung with yellow orbs. Soon the basket was bursting, its contents carefully arranged. He handed it up to us.
‘How gorgeous,’ Alison said. ‘May I take a photo of it?’
‘Please,’ he replied. ‘Take the vegetables. They’re for you.’
‘But we couldn’t deprive you,’ I protested unconvincingly.
‘You will be doing us a favour,’ Oreste insisted.
Leaving us to talk about the garden, the unseasonable heat and the pestiferous boars – Oreste said they symbolised the death of local traditions – Alison rushed upstairs, returning with a brace of cameras. She moved the basket and shot it, pulling it to the left and the right, raising a zucchini flower here, a sprig of herbs or chard there, then changing cameras, lenses or both.
‘What will she do with all those pictures?’ Oreste asked, lifting his hat.
‘You’ll see.’
We reached down and he reached up to shake hands.
It was several days later when we heard Oreste digging in his orchard again as dawn broke over Genoa. Alison darted into the garden with the basket, now empty, and a large manila envelope. I watched through the half-shuttered window as she handed them down. Oreste slipped on a pair of reading glasses, which opened like scissors. Perched on the bridge of his broad nose, they instantly transformed him from rustic peasant to unlikely yuppie.
‘Bello,’ he exclaimed. ‘Bellissimo!’ He turned to face his house. ‘E-o! Maria-Antonietta!’ he shouted. ‘Come and see!’
On the balcony across the creek, a neatly dressed woman of middle age appeared. She yelled back, stared for a few seconds into the rising sun and then vanished through a beaded curtain. A minute later, Maria-Antonietta was beaming as she held the photograph at arm’s length. She plucked the glasses off Oreste’s nose.
‘Il cestino di Orestino,’ I heard her remark. Her powerful voice pierced the stillness, rising to where I stood two storeys above. ‘I call him Orestino, because we’ve known each other since we were children.’ She wiggled her palm a yard above the ground. ‘How beautiful you’ve made Orestino’s basket and zucchini look,’ she continued. ‘Oreste, why not fill another? How about some field greens? I’ll teach them to make a vegetarian meatloaf …’
When next we heard the boars of dawn and glanced down at the garden wall, atop it sat the basket. This time it contained cherries and a jar of Maria-Antonietta’s pesto, made, Oreste told us later, with olive oil pressed from the fruit of these trees, and basil grown here, in the half-shade of the vegetable garden. ‘Basil grows best like this,’ he insisted, mopping his brow. ‘In full sun it is too strong and tastes of mint.’ Vegetables and pesto were an obsession of seafaring folk, he added, rattling off a recipe. People who eat fish every day and stare at the waves crave greenery, and Oreste was no exception.
He lifted the basket and offered it up. From a plastic bag I pulled out a book and handed it down. Oreste seemed surprised. He thanked us lavishly, flipping through the pages, admiring the photos and reading our names aloud not once but twice. He remarked, as if in an after-thought, that he had worked in the port of Genoa for something like thirty years. Now he was preparing to retire. It was the end of an epoch, and he would like to immortalise it in some way. Since we appeared to enjoy the dawn, and food and photography, he wondered if we would consider joining him on the docks one day soon, followed by lunch at a trattoria we surely did not know.
‘I think you might enjoy yourselves,’ he concluded in fluent, euphonically accented English.
We accepted with pleasure. Between exchanges of the basket, we had learned a few things. Oreste had been born and brought up in a humble house in this tiny hamlet on the hillside, but he was no village hayseed. As his Homeric name suggested, he was a distinguished captain, the head pilot of the harbour pilots who shepherded the giant container ships and ferries into one of Europe’s busiest ports. He had lived most of his life on ships, but his true love was growing vegetables and cooking.
‘The guards will let you in. Look for the tall, glassy tower.’ He pointed. ‘You c
an see it from here. Everyone knows where the piloti are found.’
At precisely 4.45am we left the house, pausing on the path to watch as three white-striped baby boars trotted south into the underbrush. We walked in the opposite direction, counting the 1057 steps of the zigzag staircase that lowered us through olive groves to a sleepy resort town by the sea. The moon illuminated an inky blue sky, dotted with stars veiled by wispy high clouds. The songbirds kicked in at 5am. Panting, we clambered onto a battered commuter train. The station’s dusty clock showed 5.17am.
We got off at Genova Brignole, a handsome hulk from the nineteenth century, apparently unmolested by modernity. Stoplights flashed as a pair of Fiats raced each other along the six-lane boulevard to the harbour. Cranes and funnels rose in the distance. After twenty minutes we had passed through the security gate and were shaking hands with Oreste. In his sporty uniform, he seemed taller, younger. From nowhere, thimbles of espresso appeared, and focaccia still warm from the oven, glistening with olive oil.
Inside the control room, high above the port, we stood spellbound as the sun spilled around the Portofino peninsula, a sudden, blinding beam. The air-conditioning kicked on. A radar antenna spun, humming and throbbing. Oreste introduced us to his colleagues, their eyes glued to screens, or the horizon. They joked about il capitano retiring, and wondered how the port would survive.
‘At least we will have photographs to remember him by,’ laughed one radar man, watching Alison at work.
More coffee and focaccia arrived. The sun raked around, striking the thousand-year-old black-and-white tower of a church, then a series of frescoed townhouses, and the medieval, castellated walls that ran like a roller coaster around old Genoa. I had never seen the city from this angle, or at so early an hour. The tall stone buildings merged with the light and seemed unnaturally white, bleached by centuries of sun. They stood out against the gentle green of the hills, hills that cupped Genoa, a fortress city within the bastions of the boulder-strewn Apennines.
Amid the container ships, cruise boats and cranes on the opposite side of the harbour rose La Lanterna, Genoa’s symbol, a lighthouse built nearly 700 years ago. Giant oil tanks marched up the grade behind it. Hovering on a ridge above stood the sanctuary of the Madonna della Guardia, protector of sailors.
‘That is where the best basil comes from.’ Oreste pointed. ‘Not from the Madonna, but from Prà, at her feet. Of course, my basil is better, but Prà’s is more famous, with protection. Over the hills, in Piedmont, where my wife is from, my real kitchen garden and vineyard grow.’ Oreste smiled. ‘But the boars, Mother of God, the boars are even worse there. No-one is left. The villages are empty.’
He excused himself to consult with a colleague, then spoke in French over a crackly radio. A Belgian ship wanted to dock but the port was full. ‘Try Savona,’ Oreste continued, ‘repeat, try Savona.’
All communications were repeated in a clear voice, Oreste told us, just like in the movies.
‘Capitano!’ the radar operator barked. ‘La Superba is arriving.’
Oreste peered through binoculars then put them down. ‘They will insist I have breakfast. All this eating makes me fat.’
It was an age-old tradition. Each time a harbour pilot boarded, he was not only in command, he was also an honoured guest. Oreste crossed into another room. ‘We sleep there on night duty, and we eat together here, and that is why we get along, the great brotherhood of piloti.’ He opened a cupboard. ‘Saffron, pickled fish, one curry, another curry, and another and another curry, from Pakistan, from India, from Indonesia, and herbs and chocolates and spices …’ He pointed at the jars and packages. ‘Always a gift of food. La Superba will feed me sfogliatelle pastries and cappuccino. With the Thais this afternoon, it will be steaming rice and spicy cuttlefish, and later, the Japanese, I foresee sushi with seaweed, and before I leave this evening, a Moroccan tagine, perhaps of lamb.’
‘It is very dangerous work,’ quipped the radar man as we returned to the control room.
Oreste chuckled, checking the roster. He counted aloud the twenty ships due that day. It was surreal poetry. ‘The Chinese are a challenge,’ he observed. ‘When a ship comes in, it must make voice contact, identify itself and get clearance. But the Chinese don’t speak Italian or much English. They shout, “Wait, wait,” and play a cassette we cannot understand. Then comes rice and shark fin or a century-old egg.’ Oreste patted his belly. ‘When I was young, I sailed the globe,’ he said, sounding Homeric. ‘But there’s no need now, the globe comes to me.’ He checked his watch. ‘Let’s go.’
Long and sleek, the harbour pilot’s craft bobbed at the dock. We slipped on life jackets as the boat tore away, skiing out along the breakwater. Ranged along our route, bright orange tugboats belched out black smoke, blowing their horns. In minutes we were alongside La Superba. ‘The name,’ shouted Oreste over the engine noise, ‘is the name of the Republic. La Superba was Genoa before it became part of Italy. It means “the proud one”.’
A rope ladder fell between La Superba and us. With startling agility, Oreste leapt onto it, scurried up, and disappeared into a hatch on the hull. Before we could think, the speedboat was tearing off again, giving the mammoth ship room to manoeuvre. Soon the tugs nudged in, and the ship was lashed to the wharf. Oreste reappeared, dangling a paper bag. ‘Pastries,’ he announced, ‘for all of us.’
At the gates awaited Maria-Antonietta. She wore a silk blouse and colourful skirt, and pecked our cheeks in greeting. Oreste walked us through the dry docks, where migrant workers were rebuilding cruise ships under the now merciless sun. ‘Italians won’t do the dirty work any more,’ he explained. From being an exporter of emigrants, Genoa had become an importer of immigrants. ‘We’re all educated, we disdain the soil, and the boars have taken over our villages.’
After the blinding light of the port, the tangled alleys of medieval Genoa seemed as dark as caves. So narrow were some that the slate roofs on both sides almost touched, eight or nine storeys above. Sails of laundry fluttered between pavement and sky. On a windowsill, weedy basil plants grew. Oreste and Maria-Antonietta pointed them out. We passed hole-in-the-wall shops selling nuts and bolts, candied fruit, shoelaces and buttons, or vegetables preserved in olive oil. Between them, other shops offered ethnic foods, reflecting the influx of African, Asian and South American immigrants. At a produce stand the basil vied for space with plantains.
The shopfront of Da Ugo dated to the 1970s, the kind of façade a visitor walks by without entering. ‘They keep it that way on purpose,’ Oreste said, holding open the door.
Inside were butcher-paper placemats on wooden tables, and copper pots on white walls. The decibel level flirted with danger. Ugo and his children clearly knew Oreste and Maria-Antonietta. They shook hands, shouting to be heard. The tables were packed. White- and blue-collar workers sat by men Oreste described as ‘captains of industry’. Everyone spoke rough-edged Genoese dialect. A few turned to glance as we settled in.
We let Oreste order; it was his territory. Out came plump tortelli stuffed with the kind of field greens Oreste grew, dressed with black pepper and herbs. The classic trenette pasta with pesto was excellent but not as good as our hosts’. Then came meltingly tender boiled octopus and potato salad, tiny squid in spicy tomato sauce, and golden fried, firm-fleshed anchovies stuffed with herbed parmigiano and breadcrumbs.
Oreste leaned over and cupped his hands. ‘Next week the piloti are meeting in the hills near Santa Margherita,’ he said. ‘Do you know what we will eat?’ He winked conspiratorially. ‘Wild boar. Would you care to join us?’
As we crossed the cool, dark alleys heading towards our train, Oreste and Maria-Antonietta asserted that roughshod Genoa could not and did not want to become like Venice, Florence or Rome. Genoa still belonged to the Genoese, they agreed, though hard-working immigrants and intrepid individual travellers like us were also welcome. ‘We no longer fear Barbarians,’ he quipped cryptically. ‘When the boars come into town, we’ll worr
y.’
‘Why?’ teased Maria-Antonietta. ‘We can raise them. Ugo will put boar on the menu.’
Seasoning Jerusalem
ELISABETH EAVES
Elisabeth Eaves is the author of two nonfiction books, Bare and Wanderlust. Her travel writing has been anthologised in The Best American Travel Writing 2009 and The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010. She has worked for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes magazine, and her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Harper’s, the New York Times, Slate and WorldHum. Elisabeth was born in Vancouver, lives in New York City, and is still not entirely sure if she wants to settle down.
Khan al-Zeit, the street of the oil merchants, was where I stayed the first time I went to Jerusalem, in 1992. It was a souq, a covered passageway lined with small stores, open to the street. I could tell when the owners put out their wares in the morning because the fragrances rose up to my third-storey room. The vats of olives gave off a salty tang, and every bag of spice had its own scent. I smelled turmeric, cumin, cardamom, and more flavours I didn’t recognise. Among the food stores there were shops selling cheap sneakers, bras and polyester Leonardo DiCaprio carpets.
Later that year, I went back to Jerusalem and got a job in a hostel on the same street. The building was of ancient stone and I shared a room with whatever guests came along. In exchange for room and board, and a few shekels a week, I cleaned the hostel and fetched guests from the bus station. I led them down the stone steps in front of Damascus Gate, through the long portal, around the donkey carts, and back into the Old City. Damascus Gate was the commercial heart of the Muslim quarter, and the plaza just inside the gate was thronged with vendors and shoppers. My charges were always from the most neutral places: Switzerland, Canada, New Zealand. I led them up Khan al-Zeit and inhaled as we passed the spices.
A Moveable Feast Page 3