Tender at the Bone

by Ruth Reichl

  We were headed for Crete, where our favorite professor had recently moved. He said his house was a fourteenth-century stone dwelling built by the Venetians, and that it overlooked the harbor. And then he rashly added that we were welcome to stay as long as we liked.

  If he is very lucky every almost-grown person will have a Milton in his life. In my case he was an artist with the prominent nose of a Borgia that led him through the junk shops of the world; he never failed to emerge with something of astonishing beauty. When you were walking with him he would suddenly say, “Look!” and you’d find a flower or a stone or a doorknob that you had not seen, one so perfect it made you reach out and try to touch it.

  “Why is he so good to us?” Doug and I kept asking each other. In Ann Arbor Milton took us under his wing, inviting us to all his parties, introducing us to his friends. They all seemed to see more and live better, as if their senses were more acute than those of ordinary people. They dropped in from all over the world, women who had danced with Henry Miller in Paris and men who had been to Black Mountain. One was resurrecting a crumbling opera house in a hill town in Tuscany.

  But my favorite of Milton’s friends was an Englishwoman named Hilly who was beautiful, eccentric, and very, very funny. She ran Ann Arbor’s only fish and chips shop, Lucky Jim’s, which was named for a book by her first husband, Kingsley Amis. She told wicked stories about her second husband, the Latin professor, and even funnier stories about herself.

  “Tell about the baby and the apple,” Milton would urge and she’d launch into the tale of a dinner party she gave when her son was just a year old. “I put an apple in his mouth, plopped him onto a serving tray, and carried him in to dinner.”

  Milton said Hilly was just a friend, but I was convinced that he was secretly in love with her. Who wouldn’t be? It had not escaped my notice that just after she decided to leave the Latin professor Milton announced that he was giving up his tenured job. She was going back to Europe; he was moving to Crete.

  We were not far behind. We took the ferry to Xania, trudged up the hill from the port, and pushed the gate on the cobbled courtyard Milton had described in his letters. Milton was sitting in front of a pale green door with a pile of lemons in front of him. Sunlight filtered gently across his face, dappled by the leaves of a small tree. He held up a copper pot, one side black, the other gleaming. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said, stretching his arms so the pot hit the light. “I just found it down in the market. The woman said I should shine it with lemon juice and sand.”

  He jumped up to hug me and his beard tickled my face. “Put down your things,” he said. “Don’t bother to unpack.” He smelled like clean sheets and lemon juice and the rosemary that is in the air, everywhere, in Crete. “We’re going out for lunch. I’ve been in the grove, beating the olives off the trees, and I’m trading some of my oil for our food. Ephrosike is a famous cook; this is going to be the best meal you’ve ever eaten.”

  It was. But then, all the best meals of my life were with Milton. And I was about to find out why.

  MILTON’S PTÉ

  ½ small onion, minced

  ½ clove garlic, minced

  2 tablespoons olive oil

  3 anchovies, cut up

  ½ pound chicken livers, cleaned

  ¼ cup white wine (or any leftover wine)

  2 sprigs flat-leaf parsley, chopped

  Small piece lemon peel, chopped

  1 tablespoon chopped capers

  Salt

  Pepper

  1 teaspoon lemon juice

  Sauté onion and garlic in olive oil in small skillet until soft, about 10 minutes. Add anchovies and stir. Add chicken livers, mashing with fork, and cook until they lose their reddish color. Add wine, parsley, and chopped lemon peel, and keep stirring and mashing until liquid has evaporated and livers are the consistency of a coarse pâté.

  Add capers and cook 1 minute more. Add salt and pepper to taste. Stir in lemon juice. Serve on plain crackers or toasted bread that has been brushed with olive oil and garlic.

  Serves 4 to 6 as an appetizer.

  “My second wife used to tie a bandanna around her eyes and walk around like that for days at a time,” said Milton. We were walking up a mountain. His tiny Fiat, which we had left at the bottom, got smaller and smaller as we climbed. “She was practicing in case she went blind.”

  From the bottom Milton had pointed to a pile of rocks high up, outlined against the deep sapphire sky. It looked no different from any other pile of rocks, and I was not quite certain that I was seeing what he wanted me to. But when I squinted I thought I could maybe make out a thin wisp of smoke emerging from what might have been a chimney. On one side of us was gorse and thin scrub and on the other, when I dared to look, a deep drop down to the sea. Birds wheeled and called, white against the sky, and the boat below us was so far away it looked like a duck floating on the water.

  I would never pretend to be blind, I thought, and then wondered if this demonstrated some sort of deficiency in me. I could see why a man like Milton might worry about losing his sight. “We’re almost there,” he said and now I could see the cottage at the top and smell charcoal and frying onions mingled with the scent of rosemary. A small mountain of onions sat next to the stone cottage, dwarfing it. “The government told them to grow onions,” Milton whispered as an old woman came flying out of the cottage calling “Milto! Milto!”

  Her hair was jet black, but her face was deeply lined, with little ravines running right across it. She said something in harsh, guttural Greek and Milton pulled a liter of golden olive oil out of his knapsack. Hugging it to her as if it were a precious child she led us to a small lean-to on the side of the cottage. The sea was just below us.

  She brought out small glasses and a bottle of wine that looked almost black in the light. She set a huge round loaf of bread on the table. She cut up some onions and poured a little olive oil into a dish. Then she picked up a stick and headed down the side of the mountain.

  “Where is she going?” I asked.

  “Fishing,” said Milton, pouring the wine. In his moss-colored corduroys and faded blue shirt he looked as if he had grown there. “It might take awhile.”

  We waited, eating resilient, deeply satisfying bread dipped in spicy oil that tasted exactly like fresh olives. Doug reached out and stroked my knee and I had a sudden conscious thought that I was happy.

  Ephrosike returned with a string of small parrot fish. She stirred the fire and grilled them, making a quick salad of tomatoes, cucumber, and onions as the flames snapped and crackled. She picked some oregano from the hillside and scattered it across the charred fish, sprinkled vinegar and olive oil over the vegetables, and set it all on the table. She watched, wordlessly, as we ate.

  Afterward there were dried figs and almonds and yogurt from the milk of her own sheep, with honey drizzled on top. And finally little nut cookies she had baked in a covered pan set in the fire. They crumbled gently in our fingers.

  The sun was setting. Milton sighed, started to say something, stopped. Finally he spread his arms, taking in the table, the cottage, the hills around us, and said simply, “She’s quite an artist!”

  Ephrosike came out as we were leaving, and handed me a skein of yarn. It was nubby, off-white, and very soft. “She spins the wool from her own sheep,” said Milton. “She says it is to remember her by.” Ephrosike looked at me and made big scooping knitting motions with her hands. Then she hugged Milton again and watched as we wound our way down the mountain. It was late, but it was still light and we could see her for a long time, still waving.

  Milton said wistfully that Hilly had settled in Spain but was planning to visit. Doug and I decided to stay until she arrived. We spent our days visiting the ruins at Knossos and Heraklion, leaving Milton to his work. We walked miles out into the country and sat in the fields, talking as Doug sketched and I tried to knit a pair of socks out of the yarn Ephrosike had given me; there was not enough for a sweater.

 
At night I cooked while Doug and Milton sat in the kitchen talking about art. They were an appreciative audience; Doug looked at me proudly after each meal and Milton said, almost every night, “Cook this when Hilly comes.”

  I had learned enough Greek to bargain in the market, but one day Milton decided to come with me when I shopped. As we passed Nylon, the restaurant near the port, the owner called out to us. Pantelis motioned us inside and as we walked through the kitchen with its pots of lamb stew and pans of fried eggplant, Milton explained the name: “It was the classiest word he could think of.”

  Pantelis wanted to tell us the secret of his famous moussaka. I was not surprised: people were always offering recipes to Milton and he collected them the way he collected any other object of beauty. He didn’t cook, but he was a true connoisseur.

  As Pantelis explained the secret—chicken stock instead of milk in the béchamel—Milton nodded. Then he asked where Pantelis bought his lamb, which grove had the best olive oil, and whose cheese he preferred. Pantelis talked for a long time with great animation. He made a few rude gestures, drew a diagram, and poked Milton in the ribs as he handed it over.

  “What was that about?” I asked.

  “Wait,” said Milton. When we got to the market he pointed out the cheesemaker, who was a woman, beautiful in that severe Greek way, and dressed entirely in black. “Pantelis says her yogurt is the best because she puts the bowl under her bed at night,” he said. I thought of the rude gestures and bought some.

  Pantelis had also recommended the one-eyed butcher. The man charged a flat price for his Argentine beef, no matter which part of the steer he happened to be carving, but he was very particular about his lamb. What was it going to be used for, he wanted to know, before he chose the cut.

  When Milton said the magic words “Pantelis” and “moussaka” the man chopped the meat by hand, with care and concentration. Then we went home and while I constructed the dish Milton and Doug played chess. When Doug took too long making a move Milton would get up to peer into the pots or stick his finger into the sauce.

  “I shouldn’t have bothered doing all those projects for your class,” I teased. “I should have just cooked.”

  He didn’t laugh. “I should have encouraged you to do that,” he said seriously.

  “Oh, food can’t be art,” I said.

  “Can’t it?” asked Milton, giving me a long look.

  The next day he had a letter from Hilly. Milton carried it up the narrow stairs to his third-floor bedroom. When he came down his face was somber. “She’s not coming,” he said. “I was afraid she wouldn’t.” I wondered if she had perhaps met a man, but he didn’t say and I didn’t ask. “She says she will try to come to Rome at Christmas,” he said. “Why don’t we all meet there?”

  Clearly it was time to go.

  “When you get to Rome,” he promised, “I’m going to buy you the best cup of coffee in the world.”

  It was cold that year and we kept going south, trying to get warm. This was a mistake; the rooms we rented in Spain and Portugal did not have heat and one morning we woke up in Seville to find that the water in the basin by the bed had frozen.

  “How much?” we demanded in every little pensione, shaking our heads and going back out into the cold, convinced that we could find something cheaper. We had to make the money last until Christmas. We drank a lot of thin, cheap wine, talked about art, and snuggled into bed early at night, cuddling together for the warmth. We were happy. Once, in Madrid, I went to American Express and found a letter Doug had written me from Portugal. “Hello, wonderful Ruth,” it said, “lying here asleep next to me.”

  We had no word from Milton, but he was always with us. We collected things for him as we traveled. Doug took pictures of fountains and sinks and telephone wires and I wrote down little stories about the people that we met and the food that we ate. We tried to see everything as he would, and by the time we got to Rome we were bursting with things to tell him.

  I wondered if Hilly would be there, but when we got to the fifth-floor apartment where Milton was staying, he was alone. When he kissed me his nose was an icicle against my cheek. “It’s got a wonderful view,” he said, “but there’s no heat. Let’s go have coffee.”

  We went back down the stairs and around the corner. The scent of beans was so powerful we could smell it from two blocks away, the aroma growing stronger as we got closer to the café. It was a rich and appealing scent, and it pulled us onward and through the door. Inside, burlap sacks of coffee beans were stacked everywhere and the smell of coffee was so intense it made me giddy. Thin men lounged against a long bar, drinking tiny cups of espresso. The coffee was smooth and satisfying, a single gulp of pure caffeine that lingered on the palate and reverberated behind the eyes. I felt lightheaded.

  “Okay,” I said, “you win. It is the best cup of coffee in the world.”

  We left the café and started walking. We walked for days. Milton knew every inch of Rome and he offered it to us as if it were his to give away. “Come,” he would say, leading us to the back of a small, dark church. “There is a single Caravaggio …” And there it would be, The Madonna of the Pilgrims, hung among the other paintings, unlit and overlooked. He knew gardens and twisting streets and odd collections of art. He knew what time the bells rang at each of the churches and which cafés had the best panini.

  “If only Milton didn’t seem so sad,” I said at night to Doug when we were back at our pensione. “I wish we could make him happy.”

  “Yes,” he said, “yes, I know.”

  The woman who ran our pensione loved Milton. The first morning she brought him a cup of coffee when he came to get us. The next morning she brought coffee and cake. The following morning there was brioche with the cake, and some homemade jam. The offerings became more elaborate each day; I thought she had a crush on him, but he said she just felt sorry for him because he had no woman.

  He had not mentioned Hilly; I wondered if she were coming later, or maybe not at all, but I did not quite know how to ask. Then one day at lunch I drank so much I finally broached the subject.

  It was at a restaurant called Marco’s, on the edge of a small square. We went down a few steps and found antipasti winking and glistening on a table in the front, as beautiful as jewelry. There were eggplants the color of amethysts and plates of sliced salami and bresaola that looked like stacks of rose petals left to dry. Roasted tomatoes burst invitingly apart and red peppers were plump and slicked with oil. Great gnarled porcini sat next to tiny stewed artichokes and a whole prosciutto was on a stand, the black hoof and white fur still clinging to the leg. The proprietor was cooking over an open hearth but when he looked up and saw us his face erupted into a smile. He ran over to throw his arms around Milton and kiss him on both cheeks.

  We drank endless liters of wine with the antipasti, and more with the food that came afterward: plates of pasta were followed by whole chickens and platters of fish, shrimp, mussels, and crabs. Finally, when we were eating chunks of parmigiana, I took a deep breath and asked, “Is Hilly coming?”

  Milton didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he pulled a letter from his pocket and began to read. It was a tale of a madcap journey from Spain to England in a broken-down car. It was hilarious and, of course, she was not alone.

  “The man sounds quite mad,” said Milton. He laughed sadly, as if such madness were a wonderful thing.

  “I have an idea,” said Doug that night. “Let’s fill a Christmas stocking for Milton and leave it on his door in the middle of the night.”

  “It is the middle of the night. And it is Christmas Eve. Where are we going to find anything? Nothing’s open.”

  “We’ll find something,” said Doug with maddening assurance.

  “We don’t have a stocking.”

  “Don’t we?” asked Doug. And he made big scooping motions with his arms, like Ephrosike on the hill.

  The proprietress beamed as we left; I think she thought we were going to midnight ma
ss. In a way, I guess, we were. “Buon Natale,” she shouted as we left. The night was very black and filled with stars and the air was so brittle it felt as if it might shatter into icy shards around us. The street was deserted.

  “I feel like Mary and Joseph wandering around Bethlehem,” I said.

  Doug took my hand. “You’ve seen too much religious art.” We trudged on, looking for something to buy. Nothing was open.

  “You were right, it was a stupid idea,” Doug finally admitted, “we’ll never find anything.”

  “There must be something, somewhere,” I said. “Let’s try the train station.”

  Even on Christmas Eve, even in Rome, the train station was bustling. In the waiting room a little girl was sitting on her mother’s lap, a huge basket of food next to her, moaning, “Digestivo, Mama, digestivo.” Her mother went to the kiosk and bought a bottle of Cinar. We were right behind her; we put a bottle of the deep red liquor into our bag, along with newspapers in four languages and some oranges and chocolate bars.

  “It’s mostly food,” said Doug dispiritedly.

  “Milton likes food,” I said.

  But we were certain that if we looked hard enough we would find the perfect present. We roamed the station. Suddenly Doug stopped, stock-still, staring. I looked at what he was focused on: a sterling Saint Christopher medal.

  “It’s perfect,” I agreed.

  “It’s very expensive,” said Doug. I took out our last two traveler’s checks.

  “Almost all we have left,” I agreed.

  “We can’t stay forever,” said Doug, and I handed the checks to the man behind the counter.

  He smiled and his big mustache twitched. “The perfect gift,” he said, “for a lonely traveler.”

  Milton woke us early the next morning. “Get up, get up,” he said, “I have borrowed a car. Now that I’m under the protection of Saint Christopher I’m taking you to the mountains for Christmas.” He was dressed in his usual corduroy pants, with a wool jacket and a cap.