Cooking With Fernet Branca

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  ‘I love the way you live, Marta,’ Piero said loyally, looking around at the cobwebs & laundry (well, I’m not about to clean the house & mend my sluttish ways just because a world-famous film director might drop in). ‘I really like it that you foreigners come here & rescue our old houses by leaving them as they are. Well, sometimes you do. But an Italian would have ripped out everything & put in marble bathrooms with gold taps. That’s the way we are. Bella figura. But this is exactly how I remember my grandparents’ house. They were just peasants, you know. I love it: the same smell, the shallow sink hacked out of a block of stone, that rough old chest to keep the bread in. And I notice you’ve kept the original stone roof too. Almost nobody these days knows how to repair them so they get replaced with conventional tiles. And – you must excuse a film director talking – dare I guess at one of those old iron matrimoniale bedsteads upstairs with a painted tin headboard probably figuring the Virgin?’

  He was so enthusiastic – how could I have not led the way upstairs to show them my delightfully natural unmade bed strewn with the usual books & hairbrushes & knickers which has exactly the tin headboard he meant except mine has hearts & roses all over it, which I suppose stand in for the Virgin iconographically.

  ‘Perfect,’ he said as we all trooped downstairs again. ‘It would cost a fortune to build a set as faithful as this. Faithful to the old Italy, I mean. It’s hard these days to find a casa colonica up here in the north that isn’t a shell or hasn’t been tarted up. The first thing they always do is enlarge the windows because peasants didn’t need a view or fresh air. They were out working in those all day. Nor did they read at night, so interior gloom was traded for making the place warmer in winter. What I’m wondering is whether we mightn’t write in a scene set in this house – with your permission, of course. It’s a crime to waste the place & it would certainly contrast well with the ghosts of all those telefoni bianchi … Perfect for the scene with Franco the fisherman and his wife. Make a note of that would you, Filo?’

  We talked in that mixture of English & Italian I’m beginning to get the hang of – those lessons in Voynograd with Signora Santoliquido were really useful. Then Pacini asked me to play what music I’d written so far for the film, which was mostly the atmospheric stuff inspired by my visit to Pisorno Studios. So I obliged on the piano & I must say he was very flattering, said it was absolutely right for what he’d got in mind, & could I think about inventing a suitable ‘sound’for each of the main characters? It’s the Peter & the Wolf approach to film scoring. Apparently Italian directors of his generation are famous for doing everything post-production. They shoot a zillion metres of film & then spend months in editing suites & dubbing sessions because they don’t like doing voices live. That’s when the music usually gets written, to fit the cuts. But Pacini’s different. He’s like Leone: he likes to get the music written upfront & recorded so he can play it while they’re shooting to establish the mood of each scene for the actors. I think it’s a brilliant approach & I wish Vasily had done that with Vauli M. & made an even better film.

  Now I’ve got a script to work from & Pacini has sent all sorts of computer gear to help me record it as soon as I write it & send it off to him for his reaction. I told him I couldn’t understand the equipment so he’s promised to send me a tame geek or nerd to teach me. I can’t remember if I’ve already told you that Gerry, my dudi neighbour, has unwittingly provided me with one of the film’s defining sounds? He compulsively – & repulsively – sings as he works – sort of pastichey, bogus, all-purpose sub-Rossini ramblings with a characteristic yodelling effect that is absolutely perfect for my score. Pretentious, vapid & amateurishly earnest. Piero said it was a brilliant inspiration. Unfortunately I couldn’t tell him I’d stolen it from the Englishman next door: I want to keep Gerry very much at arm’s length & certainly well away from Pacini. I just know he’s one of those showbiz groupies who, once he gets wind of what I’m working on, will never leave me alone for a minute. Just let him learn that Piero Pacini has dropped by & he’ll be over here every other hour trying to borrow a cup of Fernet Branca (his preferred tipple) or else bringing me some inedible example of British cuisine. Story follows, incidentally, after I’ve had a shower & a break.

  But to round off, the Pacinis stayed late & were excellent company. As I said, Filippo may be a bit figlio di papà but he’s growing on me. He’s certainly a very handsome creature even if the dash he cuts in that ludicrous car is over the top. He really does look like a celebrated film director’s spoiled brat, but there’s more to him than that, I think. He has nice manners & pretty ears. He & Dad roared off together in the small hours leaving a strange silence behind them in the house, although less so outside. Long after they’d gone I could hear that burping snarly noise Filippo likes to make on the corners dying away further & further below. I bet they woke everyone in Casoli as they passed through.

  Later

  I now smell of rosemary, having used that shower gel you gave me. It made me all nostalgic. I really do miss you & am determined you shall come here as soon as possible.

  Apart from anything else you would get a big laugh from Gerry, who nearly came to grief terminally the other day. It was lucky for him I happened to catch sight of him in ‘off to work’ mode, yodelling away in the campest outfit you ever saw: yellow construction worker’s hat, thick leather toolbelt holding up his shorts & toting a crowbar he could barely lift. He could have strolled unnoticed onto the set of any gay porno movie. I happened to know he also had most of a bottle of Fernet Branca inside him. So there he is in the distance warbling & striding off to work like Disney’s eighth dwarf – call him Doody, what else? – & he disappears around the corner of his house. Stage wait. Then a wail like Callas being goosed followed by a distant crash. Well, you know me: we’re none of us exactly neighbourly by instinct but I can’t resist a laugh, so I grabbed a bottle of medicinal brandy & hurried over. At first I couldn’t see anyone but then I made out his yellow hat. He was lying right down below on an overgrown terrace in a heap of mouldy planking. He looked quite dead, actually, & I wasn’t too keen to go down, but then I saw him twitching so felt obliged. When I got there he had his hat over his face & seemed to be knocked out but when I removed the hat he came to. I knew he’d be all right then because the first thing he did was blaspheme quite inventively (I think) & reach for the bottle I’d brought – not good Voynovian slivovitz, I’m afraid, but more to his taste.

  Eventually I got him back up to his house & into bed. Remind me to tell you some day about this house of his. For the moment it’s enough to say that I glimpsed a teddy bear wearing a blue waistcoat sitting on the cistern in the downstairs lavatory. That will tell you all you need to know. The next morning I called around with home-made kasha to aid recovery. You can’t say I shan’t be going to heaven. He was a bit stiff but there was nothing wrong with his appetite. He said he’d been demolishing an old lavatory that had collapsed with him inside it. ‘Of course, Gerry,’ I said soothingly. A likely tale. You don’t wear a tool belt to knock down a flimsy old hut. No, I think he was going to mess about with the fussy little balustrade he’s put up along the edge of his terrace, lost his footing in his alcoholic stupor, crashed down onto the hut & took the whole lot with him to the bottom. He’s lucky to be alive. One of his eyes was slightly black & he looked so pathetic sitting there woozily eating kasha like an obedient small boy in a nursery I suddenly couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. Stranded up here in mid-life, blundering around in DIY outfits in a daze of alcohol while singing fake arias, I mean excuse me. He really is none of my business and quite awful. As a matter of fact his singing was so obtrusive the other day my lineage asserted itself & I wrote that little rodent Benedetti a good strong letter. I told him bluntly he had shamelessly lied & that the neighbour who was ‘only ever here one month of the year’ was in fact a permanent & highly irritating fixture. Still, after Gerry’s accident I’ve repented somewhat & now feel sorry I sent the letter. I think Gerr
y is disturbed in some way. Perhaps it’s this that manages to press a maternal button deeply hidden inside me. But it’s a very small button & only connected to some extremely basic circuitry.

  On that note I shall stop. Keep me in touch, Mari darling. I want to know about Timi & how you’re going to induce Father to let you come here soonest.

  Heaps of love

  Marta

  16

  I can at least admit to myself what I can’t even to Marja – viz., that the script for Piero’s film has come as quite a shock. The basic story as he originally gave it me in his letters is still there after a fashion, I suppose; but what in my naïve former socialist way I had taken for a biting political satire on the eco-cant of the times seems to have slewed off sideways into something altogether more urban and an excuse for orgies and violence. The working title has changed significantly, too. Originally it was something harmless – Mare Verde, I think Filippo said. Now, though, it is Arrazzato. That meant nothing until I asked Simone, the boy they sent up to help me install and use the computer equipment. He blushed prettily and prevaricated but I persevered until he explained it was dialect or slang for sexually aroused, apparently formed from razzo, which means rocket. You live and learn. It’s true the film is going to end with a huge display of distress rockets sent up by some Albanians trapped on a beach by crazed racist Greens, but even so, Simone said it’s not a commonly used expression and not everyone knows it, so perhaps the film will intentionally sound enigmatic.

  That I should feel obscurely let down is an unwelcome reminder of the earnest bore I suppose I am at heart: the middle-European hayseed whom no doubt Gerry spotted at once and has been laughing at ever since. Still, I cling to my confidence in Piero Pacini that he knows what he’s doing. I believe he has yet to direct a bad film, although they have not necessarily all been winners at the box office. Given that in the last twenty years the Italian cinema has become more and more dependent on American money it may be that even Piero is obliged to compromise his artistic scruples in order to earn his crust. As I said before, we’ll see, even as I dread anew to think what would happen if Father could see too. A glance at virtually any page of this script would confirm his worst suspicions. Opening it at random to prove to myself that I’m not just being rhetorical I find on page 63 that Carla, one of the young girls in the Green commune, is victimized by the others for being ‘saintly’. They force her – good God! I must have missed this the first time around – to put a cigarette in her, well, private part and learn muscular control in order to smoke it. Such are the bored games of spoiled youth in postmodern Europe, apparently. Father would simply not believe his own precious elder daughter was setting that little scene to music for a living.

  Despite all this, I’m working well. Evidently my creative unconscious is relatively unaffected by my innate moralism. I have composed little tunes for three of the main characters and special sounds for the other two. I still hear it all in my head, of course, and write it down as a score in the traditional way. How else is an orchestra to perform it? But now I can play it on a keyboard connected to this computer they’ve sent me, thanks to something called MIDI. Simone tells me in heavily accented English that this stands for ‘Musical Instrument Digital Interface’. The information leaves me strangely unmoved, as do the various opaque phrases that litter the immense and unreadable user’s manual: ‘layer mode’, ‘split mode’, ‘voice selector’, ‘velocity curve’, ‘panel voice’ and the rest. They haunt the pages but not me. I simply told Simone I wanted to produce a disc of synthesized sounds that I could e-mail to Piero from time to time. But what about playback? he asked. What about experimenting with various combinations of sound, bringing out particular instruments, etc? I said I could do all that in my head, but I don’t think he believed me and loaded a computer program called Sibelius which he claims is what most professionals use. I learned what to press and wrote it all down so even I can understand it. This method has worked fine so far but I’m under strict orders to call him day or night if I get stuck. We’re both servants of the great Pacini and must allow nothing to stand in the way of my drafting the bulk of the score in the next three weeks. If Schumann could compose and short-score his substantial Mass in C minor in only nine days, I think I can manage some repetitious film music in twenty-one.

  The kitchen now presents an odd sight. It offers a bizarre juxtaposition of ancient and modern – or poet and peasant, come to that. I had to buy another table for the new electronic keyboard, which incidentally has a horrid spongy feel not a bit like the positive, alive feel of a real piano like my beloved Petrof. The two massive speakers have gradually concealed themselves shyly beneath laundry like hunted fauns trying to blend into a landscape. One can listen to this system through headphones, of course, but now and then I take pleasure in playing things aloud and must admit it’s quite fun experimenting with combinations of sound. The imagination is not infallible and welcomes an occasional rest, and even I was unprepared for the effect of playing the gigue from Bach’s G major French Suite on bagpipes and bongos. It’s a tribute to the world’s greatest composer that although it sounded frightful it still made musical sense. In some ways it’s a remarkable machine; and while I can see it will never supplant the way I have always worked, I should be sad never again to have one in the house. In the meantime poor Petrof is getting less of my attention. I’ve had him since childhood and he’s the only stick of furniture I bothered to bring with me from home, so I can’t believe he’s feeling seriously upstaged. He’s the sweetest-toned little instrument I’ve ever played and I swear he and I shall never be parted. I don’t know if all Czech pianos of his vintage were as good but I feel sure my Petrof is unique.

  I’ve certainly had huge pleasure working on Gerry’s bogus Italian opera motif with the electronic keyboard. I spent most of a happy morning trying to reproduce the plangent querulousness of his voice, the yodelling effect he gets when he crosses registers into falsetto. (I had never really taken in before that this word is simply the diminutive of ‘false’. ‘The little fake’ or ‘Il Falsetto’ is how I shall think of him from now on.) I’m afraid I reduced myself to helpless giggles the more nearly I approached the sound I wanted. Two can play the pastiche game and I’m a rather better musician than poor Gerry, so I soon had some most convincing faux Rossini-Bellini roulades laid down. I then monkeyed about with the scales, putting in split notes, missing out others, sharpening gruesomely here and flattening horribly there, until I was left with a short parody of an untalented amateur singing Rossi-,Belli- and all the other -inis of nineteenth-century Italian opera. As yet I had no words but found I could make this spoof voice sing it all on a single vowel or else with any vowel combination in turn. This was hilarious. I’m pretty sure a talented geek like Simone knows how to synthesize the sound of real words to go with the voice but it’s way beyond me. In any case, as far as I can tell Il Falsetto mostly pulls his fragments of text off tins and cartons and notice boards for some mad reason of his own, so textual fidelity is no problem. But for the film we won’t need any more than a wordless braying somewhere in the distance from time to time. A shame, really.

  Undoubtedly this computer setup does offer some fine satirical possibilities. Perhaps when I’ve finished Piero’s score and have some spare time on my hands I may try writing a scena from an imaginary Italian opera with several strident voices and a thoroughly overwrought orchestra. One of those obligatory mad scenes, perhaps, but one in which everybody is barking, not just the prima donna. We’re deep in Ossian territory in a gloomy Scottish castle belonging to a mad baron, a near neighbour of Macbeth’s. He’s a bass. For a year now he has been keeping his younger brother – whom he suspects of trying to kill him in order to succeed to the barony – locked in the dungeons, a vile confinement that has driven the boy insane. That one’s a cracked tenor. Then there’s a demented soprano, the younger brother’s erstwhile lover, who is beside herself with anguish and is visiting the castle with her mother (cont
ralto) to demand yet again what has become of her boyfriend. The scena takes place at midnight in the hall of the castle. Gothic traceries, oak panelling, a fireplace the size of a garage, guttering candles. The baron can’t sleep because of his conscience and has had the gaoler, McTavish, bring his brother to him. Their demented duet wakes the household. The visiting mother comes down in her nightdress, crazed with worry about her daughter and her own lack of sleep and the duet becomes a trio. Finally the daughter herself appears and loses it completely when she realizes the decrepit creature hunched in gyves and shackles is her once-handsome lover … I see (and hear) it all, and am confident that with this malevolently star-crossed tartan quartet I shall be able to shatter all existing Italian records for over-the-top opera.