“Well, haven’t you got some earrings? Or lip gloss with you?”
“Er, yes, but—”
“No buts, bella,” he said sternly. “Waiting for a party or a man to make you take care of yourself is bullshit. Make la bella figura and make it for yourself. Is not hard. You’re a clever girl, look around, work it out for yourself.”
With that he gave me a kiss on the cheek and went back to rubbing glasses. I slunk home to start cleaning.
* * *
—
The apartment was sparkling. Books no longer exploded out of corners but lined up neatly on dusted shelves. The kitchen surfaces were so clean they shined. The windows twinkled. I had spent days since Luigo’s chat scrubbing and wiping, polishing and vacuuming, ordering and folding. The apartment felt more spacious, harmonious, the plates, cups, and glasses back in their rightful places. During this endeavor I found some pretty white handmade china, and a set of white embroidered napkins. There were woven straw placemats and a large cornflower-blue linen cloth, which I spread on the table. I picked out a pretty crocheted doily that I found screwed up in the back of a cupboard and ironed it out. It looked charming placed on the blue tablecloth. I washed the cotton-and-lace curtains that hung over the kitchen windows and they emerged so clean that I could finally appreciate the traditional cutwork embroidery. As I rehung them, I saw the old lady opposite at her window, smiling at me approvingly. I smiled back—one house-proud woman to another—and surveyed the last few days’ activity with deep satisfaction. If I wasn’t on the top floor, I would even now be rushing out with a bucket to scrub my doorstep.
Next, I laid out all my earrings, of which I had a large collection, on top of the chest in the bedroom. During my years of weight gain, I couldn’t bear to go clothes shopping, so I had poured my energy into costume jewelry. And impractically beautiful shoes.
I now used the relics of my old life to dress up my scant wardrobe. On the wall in the back sitting room I found a rogue hook and on it I hung a pair of beautiful high-heeled, strappy sandals in silver and metallic turquoise, the only pair from my collection I had brought with me. The sun bounced off them and they sent spots of light around the room. I fished out my favorite lip gloss—clear and shot through with tiny gold flakes—and put it by the bathroom mirror, ready to slick on every morning before leaving the apartment. I thought about the two old ladies and their perfectly groomed appearance on the street every day. I would now face the day with the same spirit, if with less solid hair.
* * *
—
One luminous day, my neighbor Giuseppe appeared by my side as I was setting off for my morning walk. I was surprised. In spite of our physical proximity, we had never actually acknowledged each other. Now he introduced himself and, finding we were both going toward the Ponte Vecchio, Giuseppe suggested we walk together.
We were on the Lungarno, the road that ran alongside the river. I was a fast walker, my London pace designed to cut through anyone who stood between me and my desk. Giuseppe’s walking pace, though, was hesitant and so reflective of his thoughts that our walk from San Niccolò to the Ponte Vecchio—which normally took marching me ten minutes—took us over twenty. Giuseppe stopped dead every few steps to wave his arms around and ponder, to scratch his chin and ruminate on his thoughts. And I, trotting by his side, half his height, bumped into him or stumbled on the paving stones, surprised by the change in his gait. As we made our awkward progress down the Lungarno, we passed various red-faced girls jogging, iPods strapped to upper arms, earphones plugged in, sweat dripping. Giuseppe paused again with each jogger and sighed, contemplating them. Finally, as the last Lycra-clad blonde panted past, he said: “Ah, American students…always jogging. What are they running from?”
He stopped completely then, and I stood helplessly by his side, waiting. “Festina lente,” he said. I looked up at him blankly. He explained: “It’s Latin. It’s a phrase I have been thinking about for a while. It means something like: in haste, slowness. Probably you will want to think about that too.”
I chewed this over as we arrived at his bank and said goodbye. “In haste, slowness.” It sounded like a Zen koan. I had noticed that no one here rushed about as I did. I consciously slowed down my pace, learning to look up around me as I walked.
Then one day I found myself standing in a beam of diffuse winter sunlight, and my patient eyes focused in on motes of dust dancing in the air, in front of the serene face of a carved Madonna on top of a doorway. I noticed the way the light spilt down in a steep angle over the tall buildings, illuminating half the street, and I stood and did nothing but drink it in. It slowed down the beat of my heart, calming me. There was no need to hurry.
Bruschetta con pomodori
SERVES 1 (but can easily be doubled or tripled, or quadrupled for friends, lovers, or parties)
1 slice fresh sourdough bread, made in the traditional way
1 tomato
Best-quality extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling
Flaky sea salt
Torn fresh basil leaves, for garnish
Toast the sourdough bread. Cut the tomato into fat slices and lay them on top, drizzle with olive oil and scrunch some flakes of sea salt on top. Garnish with basil and serve.
Pinzimonio
Best-quality extra-virgin olive oil
Best-quality balsamic vinegar
Sea salt and black pepper, to taste
Assorted raw vegetables: peppers, carrots, celery, etc., cut in long slices
Pour the olive oil into a small bowl. Add the balsamic vinegar—a proportion of 1 tablespoon of vinegar to 4–5 tablespoons of oil. Sprinkle some sea salt, grind in some black pepper, and whisk with a fork. Serve with the raw vegetables.
Note Instead of balsamic vinegar, you can use red wine vinegar, or squeeze in lots and lots of lemon.
2
FEBRUARY
·
La dolce vita
or HOW TO TASTE THE SWEETNESS OF LIFE
PRODUCE IN SEASON · fennel
SCENT OF THE CITY · damp and mossy
ITALIAN MOMENT · shopping at the market
ITALIAN WORD OF THE MONTH · nostrale
One of the world’s most famous museums was fifteen minutes from my apartment. The Uffizi was between my bridge and the Ponte Vecchio on the other side of the Arno. At the end of the Ponte Vecchio a long loggia of open arches crawled along the river, its stone legs duplicated in the water. Above the arches was another story, punctured with small windows, an unbroken line that ran from the Uffizi all the way across the river and into the Oltrarno to the massive complex of the Palazzo Pitti. The Vasari Corridor had been constructed to allow the Medici to walk from their palaces on one side of the river to the other. Giuseppe told me that there had originally been butchers along the Ponte Vecchio but the smell of flesh had disturbed the Medici on their promenades along the Vasari Corridor, and so the edict that the Ponte Vecchio should house only jewelers had been issued—this is how it has remained to this day.
The Uffizi palace, unlike the buildings flanking it, jutted out toward the river, displaying three splendid arches set with statues and held upright by classical Doric columns—Vasari’s ode to Etruscan classicism. I could see people pouring through the loggia like an army of busy ants.
I was convinced that Florence was not really a city at all, but a village. The population was less than half a million, and while there were some tourists around now, I knew that the hordes would arrive in the warmer months, when each Florentine would be outnumbered seven to one by foreigners.
Florence might be a village, but a glorious Renaissance village that just happened to produce some of the world’s greatest art and architecture, and invent banking and money in the form of the florin, Europe’s first coin. It invented fashion too—an inevitable product of the Florentine love of both art and commerce. Cloth produced from Tuscan sheep had been so brilliantly washed and dyed in the soft waters of the Arno that Renaissance Florence had become the largest
cloth-manufacturing center in Italy. Style and fashion still flow in Florentine veins: Fashion Week was born here in the 1950s, before Milan stole her crown in the 1970s. So a village then, but one that just happened to have people buried in its churches whose names are instantly recognizable: Michelangelo, Galileo, Lorenzo di Medici, Machiavelli, even Lisa Gherardini—the Mona Lisa herself.
Soon after arriving, I had applied for a “Friend of the Uffizi” card, which for an annual fee would give me unlimited entrance to all the state museums without having to book or stand in line. It took me a few days of poking around the Uffizi’s large crowded courtyard and colonnaded outer halls to locate the Friends office. The lady in the office gave me an appointment for three weeks later. I asked why I couldn’t simply make my application then. She looked at me as if I had asked her to resurrect Michelangelo so I could meet him.
“But no, is not possible now,” she said, as if the reasons were obvious. “You must come back on February first. Opening hours from ten until five, but the office is closed between twelve and four for lunch…”
The appointed day arrived and the lady grudgingly handed over the card with my name on it. The Uffizi seemed to want to actively discourage people from having easy access, and I couldn’t really blame it. Outnumbered as they are by tourists, perhaps this was just one of the ways in which Florentines fought back against the mass invasion of their city.
Elated by this victory, I popped into the great gallery, skipping happily past the line and presenting my card with a flourish, entering the venerable halls with the same thrill as when blagging my way into London nightclubs when I was seventeen. I wandered the famous corridors, walking into rooms arbitrarily, until I was stopped in my tracks by Botticelli’s enormous painting of the Birth of Venus, shining down golden from the wall. I sank down on the seat in front of it. I had no desire to go anywhere, just to take in every detail, letting the colors, her expression, the light emanating from the painting seep into every bit of me. The healing power of beauty. Wasn’t that what Old Roberto had said—stay and let the beauty heal you?
* * *
—
February had arrived with an extra-cold blast and one day early in the month, I noticed with a shiver that the heating had stopped working. When I met Giuseppe on the street outside the forno that morning, he promised to send me Guido, the old plumber who had one of the workshops on the street—San Niccolò was lined by workshops and artists’ studios, old-fashioned even for Florence. I knew Guido by sight; I saw him every day in Rifrullo talking at the top of his voice to Pavarotti, or on the street shouting out instructions with much gesticulating to his young sidekick. A large round man with white hair and a worn-in face, Guido was a deeply embedded part of San Niccolò life, and now at seven o’clock in the evening he puffed up my stairs tailed by his handsome assistant.
When they rang my doorbell, I was talking to Kicca in London on Skype, the free Wi-Fi having mysteriously failed to switch off as usual. Kicca has been my closest friend since we met in London more than fifteen years ago. Nearly every memory of the past two decades of my life included her—the parties, the boyfriends, the happiness, the tears, the wardrobe crises—she had been there through them all.
Kicca was from Rome, beautiful, black-haired and black-eyed, slim, with an athletic figure and a natural six-pack that never ceased to impress me. She had impeccable taste in everything: her dress sense was artistic, colorful, and elegant, she cooked beautifully and her homes were always gorgeously eclectic shrines to her travels. Kicca displayed the best example I knew of bella figura; way before I had come across the concept, she embodied it.
She had lately discovered another passion: tango. And, irrespective of the fact that she was in her late thirties and had never had any dance training, Kicca had, of course, in her typical way, started dancing professionally on the London stage within months of starting to take lessons. It wasn’t long before her passion drew her to visit Argentina, and on her return she told me she had decided to move to Buenos Aires as soon as she could sell her aparment in London. When she announced her decision to leave, I cried for a month. I could not imagine life without her.
And then I too was suddenly on the move. To Kicca’s home country, no less. Perhaps I rushed off to Florence so quickly because I couldn’t face seeing Kicca leave. In the end, I left London before she did—Kicca was still busy preparing her move when I arrived in Florence.
Now, as Guido knocked on the door, I kept the video on; she could help me communicate with him. I invited him in, showed him to the kitchen, and pointed him to my laptop, where Kicca’s face filled the screen. His eyebrows shot up when she started to talk to him in Italian and he chuckled. “Ma dai!” he exclaimed. “Guarda Gabriele”—indicating the sidekick—“vieni a guardare…”
Gabriele’s dark curly hair was worn a little long, there was an earring in his left ear and muscles rippling under the wintery layers of clothes. He too peered at Kicca and they all started talking at once in the Italian way. Finally, Guido held up an authoritative hand, and Gabriele fell silent while Kicca explained the problem. Off they went to the bathroom to examine the boiler, Guido reappearing after a few minutes. Looking at me, with a wrench in his hand, he explained something to Kicca while Gabriele walked through the kitchen and out of the apartment. Kicca translated for me: Gabriele had been dispatched to the studio to get a spare part that would fix it. In the meantime, Guido was in the mood to chat. I offered him a coffee and a chair. He declined the coffee but sat down gladly in front of Kicca on the computer, leaning into the screen.
He pointed to Kicca’s dance partner, who was busy preparing dinner in the kitchen behind her, and asked if that was her husband and what he was doing. Kicca was laughing too by now, saying to Guido that no, this was not her husband, but Guido would not stop.
“Allora, fidanzato?” I recognized the word for boyfriend, but as she was trying to explain he interrupted her, quizzing her on what he was preparing for dinner, and for a few moments they chatted about food, Guido lamenting Kicca’s misfortune at being stuck in “the land of tasteless vegetables.” Eventually, she told me that he had finally approved her dinner and wanted to know what I was eating tonight.
“He says he is worried you don’t eat properly, darling,” she said, still laughing, as he interjected with dramatic gestures from his seat. “He says you only eat a slice of pizza for lunch—he’s discussed it with Pierguidi the baker…” At my protestations, Guido himself addressed me in Italian. “He wants to know what you are going to cook for dinner,” Kicca translated.
“Tell him I can’t cook. I will probably just go to Luigo’s and have some bits and pieces. Or open a can of tuna…”
At this Guido grew agitated. He approached my fridge, and, opening it, he pulled out all the salad leaves I had there. Filling the sink with water, he threw in handfuls of different leaves and left them to soak. Then he asked me if I had pasta and a can of tomatoes.
I pointed him to the cupboard, asking Kicca: “What’s he doing?”
“Well, it looks like he is going to cook for you…”
“Are you serious?”
Guido turned toward us and told me, through Kicca: “I am going to teach you how to make the most simple and delicious dish of pasta. A beautiful woman like you cannot waste away on cans of tuna! Mamma mia, che peccato!”
I wanted to say that I was hardly in danger of wasting away, but instead I watched him get busy: he smashed cloves of garlic with one big hand clenched into a fist, telling me to open the can of tomatoes, talking all the while as Kicca furiously translated. I asked why he didn’t use the garlic crusher I had found at the back of a drawer—there was no need for Kicca to translate his reaction of horror. When Gabriele returned, I watched them both season and taste the tomato sauce as it simmered, discussing whether it needed more salt or perhaps a pinch more black pepper. The apartment was filled with noise and laughter and fizzing smells, suddenly, atmospherically, Italian. Guido instructed me to
toast some pieces of bread, and, pulling them out of the toaster, he cut a clove of garlic in half and rubbed the fat end over the toast, smearing it with a pungent layer of paste. He then cut up a tomato, crushed it onto the toast, leaving traces of pulp, poured on some oil, and sprinkled on some salt.
“Eccolo,” he said, kneeling on the floor, holding out the plate toward me with a flourish with one hand while the other hand clutched his heart. We were all laughing so much that only Guido’s repeated protestations made me eventually reach for a piece of toast. “Yum,” said Kicca across the ether, her face distorting as she came closer to her camera. “Crostini! Typically Tuscan, darling, and oh God, I wish you could give me one.”
I understood Kicca’s envy as soon as I took a bite. Toast had never tasted so good, so sweet, so garlicky, so delicious. I turned to the grinning Guido and offered him the dish. He delicately picked up a small piece with his rough hand. Gabriele too took a slice, and for the first time since they arrived, there was silence as we all crunched and “aahhed” our way through the crostini.
At some point, Gabriele went to the bathroom and fixed the boiler while I filled what looked to me like an unnecessarily large pan full of water at Guido’s insistence.
“Pasta,” Guido explained, leaning over me, “needs a lot of water and space to turn in. This is not too big, even for one portion.”
He saw me reach for the oil to pour into the water and gasped dramatically, holding my arm. “No no no no!” he admonished. He told me that if the pan was large enough for the pasta to move freely in the water, there was no need for oil to stop it from sticking together, just a quick stir when the pasta was first thrown in. He added salt only when the water was boiling. By now Gabriele had joined us in the kitchen, and as Guido and I bent over the stove, I noticed him talking urgently to Kicca, having taken off his jacket, flexing his muscles, striking pose after pose.
Bella Figura Page 4