Un Amico Italiano

by Luca Spaghetti

  And then there is stuffed pasta, which attains its highest form of expression in tortellini, agnolotti, and, of course, ravioli. The tortellino may not be especially suited for innovative approaches: it seems to do best in a traditional setting, served in a broth or a meat sauce. With ravioli, a problem usually arises with the portion, especially when you’re dining out. Everyone loves ravioli, especially kids, but when you order ravioli in a restaurant, you generally wind up with a dispiriting little pile of three, maybe four rectangles placed in front of you. Four is the most you can expect to get here in Italy, if the chef is feeling generous that day, but there’s no hoping for a higher number. I’m serious. It’s scarcely enough individual ravioli to get the flavor. They tell the story in Rome about a guy who orders a dish of ravioli. When the waiter brings his order, he looks down with some irritation at the desolate loneliness of three little ravioli in the middle of the plate. He spears all three ravioli—lining them up on a single forkful—and gulps them down all at once. Then he turns to the waiter, who is hovering nearby, and says, in the distinctive Roman accent: “Bboni, mo’ puoi butta’ in pentola l’altri trenta!”—These were good, now how about tossing the other thirty into the pot!

  But let’s talk about the primi—the first course, which is almost always pasta—specific to Rome. In this city, pasta is serious business: spaghetti alla carbonara, alla gricia, all’aglio olio e peperoncino, al cacio e pepe, or bucatini all’amatriciana, rigatoni con la pajata, pasta e fagioli, fettuccine alla papalina, gnocchi alla romana . . . That’s not all of them, but it’s a respectable start. These are dishes that epitomize, with their simplicity and their humble ingredients, the heart and soul of Roman cooking. Some of these dishes have the added value of being supremely easy to prepare, such as pasta cacio e pepe, or else aglio olio e peperoncino—with garlic, olive oil, and chili peppers. That makes them especially beloved by us Roman men. All it takes is a pot of boiling water and the normal pasta cooking time, and you look like a master chef!

  The wonderful underlying characteristic of pasta is that nobody doesn’t like it. Disarmingly simple, easy and quick to make, it’s an ideal solution for each and every person, season, and occasion. It lends itself to every flavor combination imaginable, it satisfies vegetarians as well as carnivores, and it welcomes both fresh, cheerful sauces in the summer and substantial, warming sauces in the winter. It can even be an erotic accompaniment for lovers spending the evening in. Admittedly, there are fine points of disagreement concerning tastes and preferences, cooking times and techniques for preparation, but these are arguments that—unlike the ones we have to put up with on a daily basis—bring joy, a gleam to the eye, and lip-smacking anticipation.

  It’s the same kind of anticipation that my surname seems to arouse. I’d like to know if there is someone named Franz Kartoffeln in Germany, or a John Hamburger in America, a Nikos Souvlaki in Greece, or Brigitte Baguette in France; I also wonder if these folks would have the same effect on people’s appetites and moods. We would make a wonderful team—maybe the five of us couldn’t solve world hunger, but we’d certainly expect to be given seats on the executive board of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

  At any rate, as I grew up, my surname became increasingly likable and less and less the target of ridicule. My friends played fewer stupid pranks. Though other problems arose. Girls, to name just one!

  Competition between boys in the age range of ten to twelve can be murderous. Being rejected by a little girl that age whom you’ve asked to be your girlfriend, your fidanzatina , can throw you into the depths of preadolescent depression. Admittedly, the whole ordeal might span no more than three or four hours, but it would still leave deep marks on one’s unfortunate ego. I started to wonder, would there ever be a girl in this world willing to consider marrying a boy named Spaghetti? And even if she didn’t take his last name, would she be willing to have kids with him? A family of Spaghettini? (I should step in here and point out that spaghettini are not only the children of two spaghetti, but also a pasta format with a respectable history, similar in every way to spaghetti proper but slightly smaller in diameter, and the absolute best medium, if cooked perfectly al dente, for a fresh tomato and basil sauce.) She probably wouldn’t. Unless, of course, her surname was already Tagliatella.

  So, as you can see, life for a Spaghetti starts out with its challenges.

  2

  Places in My Past

  There’s no point in concealing the fact: I’m a Roman and proud of it. Even though being a Spaghetti is probably worse in Rome than it would be anywhere else in Italy.

  That’s because the inhabitants of Rome have a very particular sense of humor. The fact is that the Roman sense of humor is unrivaled, and we Romans grow up with the unshakable belief that irony is a crucial part of living well. A purebred Roman knows not to take people or situations too seriously, and whenever possible, he tries to make fun of them, in the wonderfully exaggerated and jocular manner that we Romans are famous for. I don’t know many people in Rome who really get worked up about trivial problems. Of course, the world is full of touchy people—unquestionably—but if you had to rank the places in Italy according to uptightness, you might find Rome near the bottom of the list. You wouldn’t survive long here otherwise. Maybe you weren’t born with this particular gift of jocularity, but if you’re paying attention, you figure it out at a pretty young age. It’s a bit like having to figure out which side you’re on in terms of your soccer team—are you rooting for S.S. Lazio or A.S. Roma? Otherwise, life becomes too difficult, so it’s better to come to terms with it early.

  In fact, the mocking, humorous tone prevails in Rome. You can find it everywhere. Even in the signs on the shops and cafés: Grazie a Dio È Venerdì and Qua Nun Se More Mai are both restaurants proclaiming, respectively, Thank God It’s Friday and Here, You Never Die; Mai di Lunedì, Diamoci un Taglio, Doppie Punte—Never on Monday, Cut It Out, and Split Ends are hairdressers; Da 0 a 4 Zampe is a pet store offering From Zero to Four Legs; Che Te Ce Metto?, meaning What Do You Want on It?, is a paninoteca, or sandwich shop. The idea there may be to encourage people to be ready with their order before even coming inside.

  We try not to take things too seriously on the job, either. There’s that old saying: Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. We Romans, on the other hand, find Mark Twain’s version more persuasive: “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” First of all, though, let me make one thing clear. Some people think that Romans aren’t very interested in work—that’s just one of the many stereotypes about the capital of Italy. But the reality is actually quite different. In Rome, in fact, we work hard, but the good thing is that we know how to distribute in a very strategic manner the time we spend working and the time we spend relaxing. For instance, we tend to take it easy in the morning, building up in a relaxed manner to the grueling day that lies ahead of us . . . There are various approaches: for example, we’ll read the newspaper because it’s a good thing to be well informed, or else we’ll have a second cup of coffee, either out at a café or from the office coffee machine. Later, we might take advantage of our lunch break for a long workout at the gym, without giving up a hot meal, either at the gym’s cafeteria or at a lunch place along the way—completely nullifying the effects of the exercise, so you start over from scratch the next day. And if you’re not particularly athletic, then the most popular destination is any restaurant, for lunch complete with primo, secondo, side dish, dessert, espresso, and—of course—ammazzacaffè, the exquisitely dubbed “coffee-killer,” a liqueur to end the meal on a glorious note. And in fact there are restaurants and trattorias in certain quarters of Rome, such as Prati or Parioli, that are busier at lunch than dinner. So we Romans like to distribute our time the way it suits us best, in part because you can always catch up in the evening. We tend to work late, making up for the morning’s or afternoon’s “distractions.” The secret is to remain calm, dealing with problems one at a time
, taking care to keep the stress at bay.

  But it is the beauty of Rome that most distracts us from our work: this city possesses an unrivaled artistic patrimony, and even though we often overlook it as we zip past on our scooters or walk down into the underground stations of our Metropolitana transit system, every so often we stop, breathless, astonished at the city’s beauty. One day there might be an unusual shade of sunlight on the Forum, or we might happen to glance over at the unruffled waters of the Tiber as it flows past, or we’ll notice how the change of seasons makes the Eternal City change with them: the winter, aromatic with chestnuts roasting over open fires, makes way for spring evenings in the cafés of Trastevere; the grattachecche—grated ice and fruit juices—made in kiosks are the flavor of summer holidays, and September sunsets, arriving a little earlier each day, alert us that autumn is at the city gates.

  There are lots of places in Rome that conceal mysterious histories, and I like to tell those backstories to my foreign friends when they come to visit me, or even to friends who don’t happen to know them even though they’ve lived their whole lives in Rome.

  The hospital of Santo Spirito, on the banks of the Tiber near the Castel Sant’Angelo, with all the history that it boasts, is certainly one of these places. First of all, it’s one of the oldest hospitals in Europe, which is enough to give you goose bumps, if you stop to think about it. But the most interesting thing about it is that, according to legend, what drove Pope Innocent III to build a hospital on the banks of the Tiber, to shelter the sick and the elderly as well as abandoned children, was a dream he’d had. In his dream, an angel denounced the crimes of mothers who threw their unwanted newborn infants into the waters of Rome’s river. This is the origin of the rota—or wheel—still visible to the left of the monumental Baroque portal in the Borgo Santo Spirito. It harks back to the age-old tradition of the “wheel of the foundlings.” From the exterior, in order to ensure the anonymity of those abandoning their little ones, illegitimate children could be submitted to the care of the prioress. The left foot of each foundling was marked with a double cross. Later they could be once again set out in the wheel for potential adoption. Each foundling was registered as filius m. ignotae—in Latin, “son of unknown mother,” with the m standing for matris. In time, the common folk of Rome, overlooking the period following the letter m, began to condense the phrase in everyday speech into filius mignotae, hence the pejorative term mignotta, used fairly frequently in the city. So if you happen to attend a soccer match in Rome, more often than not you’ll hear that phrase used, usually to describe the female parent of the referee.

  And how could I ever resist telling the story of one of my favorite Roman monuments: the Trevi Fountain, a destination for tourists but also for any teenage Roman out on an unsupervised excursion. The fountain itself dates back to ancient times, as it was the terminus of the Aqua Virgo, the aqueduct that Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa built in Rome in 19 BC to supply water for the city’s baths. The name of the spring, Aqua Virgo, derives from the legend according to which a young girl, or virgo in Latin, showed Agrippa the location of the spring. And so, Agrippa set up one of the lesser fountains of the aqueduct, with three collection basins, in what we now call the Piazza di Trevi. Through a succession of construction projects and restorations, those humble collection basins became the magnificent fountain that now fills the piazza. It was in the first half of the seventeenth century, under Pope Urban VIII, that the fountain began to take its current shape. The pope had decided to make it a magnificent monument, and to that end he hired the sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Bernini presented a series of plans, all of them very expensive, to the point that the pope had to raise taxes in order to finance them—specifically, the tax on wine, for which the Barberini pope would go down in history:In order to ensure the Roman water supply

  Pope Urban did a wine tax apply.

  Urban VIII and Bernini both died before the fountain could be completed; Niccolò Salvi finished the job in the eighteenth century.

  Among the legends that circulate about this famous fountain, the best-known one claims that by turning your back on the fountain and then tossing in a coin, you are sure to return to Rome. Less well known but certainly more intriguing is the story about the large vase on the right side of the fountain, nicknamed the “Ace of Cups” because of its resemblance to the ace of the Italian deck of cards. It is said that it was placed there to thwart the heckling of a barber whose shop was on that side of the fountain. The barber had been very critical of Bernini’s project, and the vase was erected in order to block his view of construction. Maybe that shut him up once and for all. Of course, if he had ever imagined that one day a statuesque beauty like Anita Ekberg might go for a wade in the fountain by the light of the moon, maybe he would have been more accepting . . .

  Another place I like to visit, and especially enjoy taking visitors, is the Church of Sant’Ignazio di Loyola—or St. Ignatius Loyola. Every time I do, I enjoy waiting to see how long it takes my guests to notice that the dome of the church is a fake—and many never notice at all. In fact, the interior of the dome is a magnificent trompe l’oeil painting by Andrea Pozzo positioned over the vault of the church, designed in such a way that it creates an optical illusion: the eye sees the canvas as an actual dome. There’s a mark on the floor near the altar indicating the best place to stand to view the fake dome. Apparently it was a genius alternative devised by the painter when a shortage of funds made it impossible to build the majestic masonry cupola called for in his initial plans. Andrea Pozzo was a past master of the art of perspectival illusion. It is wonderful to stand before his works, such as the hallway in the Stanze di Sant’Ignazio in the Chiesa del Gesù, and see how long it takes to see that they are actually much smaller than they appear at first sight.

  St. Peter’s Square, too, has a number of tricks it plays on the eye of the visitor. Among them, the two “centers of the colonnade” are especially popular with children. The piazza is oval in shape, but it’s an oval actually made up of two semicircles, each lined by a colonnade consisting of four rows of columns. It’s possible to distinguish the separate rows of columns from any point in the piazza, except when you stand in either of the two centers of the colonnade. For each semicircle, there is one point—the center of the colonnade—from which the rows of columns line up perfectly, the four columns collapsing into just one. For us kids who grew up in the neighborhood around St. Peter’s, the centers of the colonnade were the principal attraction of the city, and we loved to show them off to tourists or friends visiting Rome. More than once, I have to confess, we used them as landmarks for an improvised soccer field in St. Peter’s Square. Before the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981, in fact, there were no barriers or security systems in place in St. Peter’s Square. So when a group of small boys showed up equipped with the requisite soccer ball, it was difficult to resist the allure of such a wide-open public space. And when the guards on duty suggested we might want to go back to play in the courtyard of our local parish church, they seemed to be particularly concerned that we might disturb the afternoon nap of His Holiness and less worried that we were using one of the most sacred and touristed places on earth as if it were our own personal Maracanã Stadium.

  Another place with more than a few surprises in store is the Aventino, one of the seven hills of ancient Rome and very arguably the loveliest. It looms over the Circus Maximus and its slopes are graced by Rome’s magnificent municipal rose garden, the Roseto Comunale. Atop the hill are perched the beautiful and charming medieval churches of Sant’Anselmo, Sant’Alessio, and Santa Sabina. It is hard to count the number of weddings that have been celebrated up here—there’s a wedding every day of the year! Moreover, this is one of the best places in Rome for courtship and wooing, especially if you sneak off to the wonderful Giardino degli Aranci, or Orange Garden, another charming and romantic spot on my favorite Roman hill.

  But the main reason I loved the Aventino when I wa
s a child was the Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta—the Piazza of the Knights of Malta—where the military order of that name had its headquarters, in a building with a majestic entrance that was always locked tight. But the massive doors have a keyhole, and it’s always a surprise and a delight to look through it. If you happen to be passing by, it’s irresistible to take a peek. The doorway—bolted and locked— seems to be there for that sole purpose: just so that anyone who wishes can peer through the keyhole, without embarrassment, without feeling you’re engaging in something illicit, and without anyone saying a thing to you about it. And there’s nothing frightening or unseemly on the other side of that door—just one of the most magnificent views Rome has to offer. A long tree-lined drive, with branches reaching out to intertwine overhead, creates a magnificent perspective of arches and depth, leading directly to the dome of St. Peter’s, visible in the distant background.

  I still remember my astonishment when I was taken to see it for the first time as a child. I was terrified to peep through the keyhole because my parents had always told me that’s something you shouldn’t do, and I was frightened at the idea of what I might see. But when I glimpsed this marvelous sight, my youthful eye was glued to that keyhole and the extraordinary spectacle that lay beyond. Since that day, this view holds a special place in my heart, and I try to make sure that if a friend hasn’t seen it before, I take him or her there. I love to watch my friends’ reactions: at first timid, and then gradually ecstatic. It’s an unforgettable gift. In return, I have the image of their overjoyed faces filled with astonishment and wonder.