Amore and Amaretti

by Victoria Cosford

  Glass of wine in hand, I am studying the menu while Cinzia bustles around gathering empty bottles. The menu is mostly how I remember it, retaining many of Gianfranco’s signature dishes. There are now, however, English translations and Cinzia’s are highly amusing.

  ‘Do you want me to correct this?’ I call out at one point, referring to ‘in the house-made virgin olive oil, pickles, and Antishocks’. Gianfranco’s tagliate are still featured: simply grilled, sublimely flavoured Chianina beef served sliced on the diagonal and adorned with assorted toppings – but there was never a tagliata esotica described as ‘Sliced Deboned Steak with Avocado and Goat’s Cheese’. Here is Cinzia at my elbow telling me how popular with the stranieri the restaurant has become, when I would have thought that success with Florentines would have been preferable.

  She has brought me a slice of ‘cannamon cake’ made by a woman she knows. When I look blank, she says it is made with ‘cannella’. ‘Oh! It’s a cinnamon cake,’ I correct her, then am surprised by how lovely it is, moist and cinnamony with thick cream on the top and in the middle, but I only eat a little of it, because I am being taken out to dinner later by Ignazio.

  Cinzia never manages to settle down with me, being the super mamma she is; running a restaurant and looking after her son means that she is constantly moving. We are to go to pick up Tonino now from school. She is stepping out of one pair of trousers and into another and telling me about the man she is seeing. I wonder if she is making too much about the timing here, ensuring that I am aware that her affair began respectably beyond the break-up with Gianfranco. I am beset with a sense of not knowing what is truth, or whom to believe. I just listen, and respond sympathetically, and then we drive off in her unwieldy four-wheel drive.

  Seeing Tonino brings a blend of shock and sadness. No one has prepared me for how fat he is. He is hanging around an emptied classroom when we arrive, and then flops against his mother, resentfully. I am overly bright to him when introduced, but he seems bored, restless, unimpressed by my exotic Australian-ness and I stifle my dislike. This is Gianfranco’s baby! This is the fruit of his union with Cinzia, and I am vainly, surreptitiously, trying to find his father in all that fleshiness, those flinty narrow eyes. I sit back in the car and allow the conversation to flow around me, Cinzia softening Tonino’s petulance with her musical voice, as caressing as a lover’s.

  When we reach San Casciano, she has caved in to his insistence that they go and visit papa. We park the car and proceed on foot, stopping at a greengrocer to buy cherries. I suddenly want to have a photo of Tonino holding the cherries and ask him to pose for me. He stands stiffly at attention, obedient and trusting, yellow T-shirt taut over his chubbiness, his smile a joyless, obliging curve. I feel such a rush of love and sadness I can hardly bear it – I want to run over to him and crush him to me and tell him what a magnificent father he has and how everything will be alright. Cinzia is bustling us on.

  When we arrive at Gianfranco’s apartment, I have a moment of fear. He is not expecting this visit – how will he react? I imagine him asleep, mid-afternoon television turned low in his bedroom. Then we are in the cool building and he is standing at the front door in his dressing gown ushering in Tonino with exclamations of pleasure. Cinzia hovers uncertainly. I step inside, feeling obscurely embarrassed. And then there is Nadia stepping out of Gianfranco’s bedroom clutching her cigarettes and lighter and looking shy and sheepish. In the sanctuary of my room I hear Gianfranco introduce her to his son and, later, on my way out, I glimpse the three of them on his bed with the television on too loudly.

  Mangiare senza bere è come il tuono senza pioggia

  Eating without drinking is like thunder without rain

  My days are running out. I feel I have barely seen, rarely spoken properly, with Gianfranco. The very expensive bottle of Chianti he showed me the day I arrived, with the promise that we would get gloriously drunk on it together, is still on its shelf in the kitchen of his apartment, alongside the white wine I brought him from Australia. We had that drive into the Metro and the conversation about the Italian dinner parties that I should start holding upon my return to Australia to rescue me from debt, but we have not stood side by side in the restaurant’s cavernous kitchen while he has cooked and explained, and I have learned.

  There were times I was reminded of the precious quality of the man. Gushing to him about how beautifully everything is done in Italy, I became aware that he was smiling at me.

  ‘It is vanity,’ he explained. ‘It’s because Italians are so vain that they seek to do everything as perfectly as possible – it is impelled by vanity.’

  During our regular lunches at Nello, I have had more time and conversation with Paolo and Silvana. I recognise how busy Gianfranco is and how much he has on his mind, but I see, too, that it is because of Nadia that there has been no time for me. He stands impatiently in the hallway in the mornings waiting for her to emerge from a bathroom she has strewn with a surprisingly large assortment of cosmetics and creams. I think, ‘How brave of you, Nadia,’ remembering how conscious I was, years ago, to intrude as little as possible on Gianfranco’s life, to behave irreproachably, neatly, beautifully. Her tiny G-strings flutter from the clothesline on the balcony, her footwear lines up alongside her lover’s. One day I notice that the bathroom has been scoured, scrubbed and disinfected, and I recognise the work of a woman.

  Silvana and I discuss how long it will be before he tires of her. There is a rare evening when we are at a table together and I am struck by a look of such sullen, peasant poutishness on Nadia’s face that a headscarf materialising suddenly would not have surprised me. Yet presumably something is working, despite Gianfranco’s look of customary ill humour.

  The night when Giorgio drops me off after dinner at Artimino, I let myself into the apartment and come face to face with Nadia, looking wretched.

  ‘How are you?’ I ask gently.

  ‘He’s not speaking to me!’ she whispers, and my nastiness drops away at once. I feel like saying to her, ‘Leave this man; he will never make you happy – this is what he does, this unspeakable ostracism. Leave before you become even more attached.’ Instead, I smile soothingly and tell her not to worry, that he is a moody man and will snap out of it soon. I could not save her, even if I were a better person.

  Aiutati che Dio ti aiuta

  God helps those that help themselves

  Ignazio meets me at Beppe’s bar, clicking briskly across the cobbled square in a wide-legged suit shot with silk. He looks beautiful, miniature, and I am feeling gorgeous in tight white flares and my new pink floral jacket. My last night in Tuscany and we are going to dinner together at La Tenda Rossa. We have spent a little more time together, perhaps, than have Gianfranco and I, but this is our first ‘date’, an attempt the previous week by Ignazio for me to meet his five-year-old daughter having failed when we both decided the arrangement was too logistically complicated.

  The entrance is disappointing – it is a low building like a motel. We enter a hushed room filled with palms and vast vases of flowers and a Korean waiter glides out of the shadows to conduct us to our table in the dining room; each immaculately set table has a piece of sculpture laid across it. There are only two other couples dining, but I am noticing the Liberty print stool between our chairs, the exquisite napkin holder and the silver under-plates. The waiter brings us tall, stiff menus (mine, naturally, without the prices) and returns to splash out translucent prosecco into our glasses. A gracious footnote on the menu begs the extremely valuable guest to bear with the possibility of a delay, which may seem long but is because ‘noi cuciniamo solo per Lei’ – we are cooking for you personally.

  I order cream of asparagus with scallops and Ignazio the duck pâté. Six seared molluscs arrive in a puddle of bright green, their faint smokiness bleeding into the delicacy of the asparagus. Ignazio’s rich and buttery pâté arrives accompanied by a neat prism of berry-flavoure
d jelly and a tiny glass of Sauternes. Classical piano ripples through the room and the three waiters flit soundlessly, administering to the six diners.

  Ignazio and I are arguing about Florence in undertones, and then moving onto the subject of his daughter. I bring up my abortion, willing him to tell me that I was the love of his life, but instead he is restrained, as stuffy as this formal setting, as if dictated by it. I feel like shouting, drinking too much, snapping my fingers, but behave beautifully. This is, after all, his treat.

  My pigeon arrives in a sticky pool of port, ineffably tender meat falling apart on a pillow of cloudy polenta. Ignazio’s lamb medallions are scented with chestnut honey, and we are sipping a mellow Percarlo red in our candle-lit corner. When he slips outside for a cigarette, I jot in my notebook about the stuffy and overblown nature of the restaurant and decide that, despite the gorgeous flavours on our plates, such modern, clever food in a contemporary setting is what Italian restaurateurs manage less well than they do peasant and traditional. It lacks the sublime old character I love so much. When Ignazio returns, we share a delicate soufflé of Brie in a swirl of honey chunked with caramelised apple and crunchy walnuts, and I agree we need more alcohol. So after he has paid the formidable bill (discreetly out the front as I finish my dessert wine), we head off in his car looking for an open bar.

  The only one we find is in the Piazza Beccaria and we sit with margaritas at a dim, sticky table and, finally, we begin to talk. We talk about the couple we once were, and the relationship we once had, and I see Ignazio’s eyes glitter with tears. He is telling me the loveliest things I only ever dared to dream he might, and in doing so he seems somehow to be validating that period in our lives and making it sacred. In the car afterwards, he turns to me suddenly, halted at traffic lights, and covers my mouth with his perfectly formed Cupid’s lips, then whispers in my ear what a shame it was we had not stayed together, what a shame we did not last. The sweet ease of closure I feel spring up inside me has finally come – eighteen years later, but it is there.

  Silvana, whose birthday it is, is gloomy about her weight, so in the cool interior of Nello, on my last day, orders crostini with prosciutto followed by meat simmered in broth and spinach. I feel appalling. I have barely slept, my head faintly ringing and stomach uneasy. At Silvana’s insistence, I order panzanella and grilled porcini; Paolo chooses a veal chop.

  At Gianfranco’s flat that morning, I had discovered to my horror a complete absence of water. I washed myself ineptly with three bottles of mineral water but still feel, sitting beside gleaming, glowing Silvana and neat, elegant Paolo, as if the previous evening’s rich food, dessert wines and cocktails are somehow seeping through my flesh.

  My panzanella (bread salad) strewn with fresh basil leaves is like eating mouthfuls of summer, but halfway through the porcini, charred and a little smoky on the outside, I am struck by nausea. Our conversation lacks its usual gossipy, trivial exuberance. Paolo eats quickly and seems less expansive than usual, and I have begun to worry about missing my Florence to Perugia train.

  Outside the restaurant we hug each other affectionately, and then with long strides I am covering the downhill streets that lead to the villa. It is as if summer has begun. In the big kitchen, one chef is stuffing suckling pig, while the other is showing Nadia how to clean artichokes. I sit out in the little courtyard on the stone wall looking in, waiting for Ignazio, who has offered to drive me to the station in Florence. Nadia has a long white apron bound around her slender waist and seems quite comfortable at the chopping board, her fingers snapping outer layers of artichoke with confidence. I wryly muse if her love affair and resulting culinary apprenticeship will transform her life the way it did mine. I wish her luck, first silently and then into her ear when I say goodbye.

  Back at Gianfranco’s apartment, Ignazio and I are loading my luggage into his car – my too-much luggage; how could it have expanded so much? – when a four-wheel drive squeals to a halt beside us. Gianfranco has driven back to say farewell to me and, in spite of Nadia’s face through the darkened windscreen, I lean closely into him, firmly encircle him with my arms, thank him for his hospitality and friendship, murmur regrets about how little I saw of him.

  ‘Ring me from Perugia,’ he urges, and I promise to do so. Then Ignazio and I drive away through the curves and loops of the Chianti countryside, heading to Florence.

  Bacco, tabacco e Venere riducono l’uomo in cenere

  Wine, women and tobacco can ruin a man

  If it had been fifty years separating our last encounter, I still would have recognised Raimondo. I know only one person who walks in this particular way – quickly, with short steps and solid purpose, heeled boots tapping – and only one person who, impervious to seasons and fashions, wears a suit and a tie. Today the cravat is bright-red silk with a matching pocket handkerchief, a jacket and the signature moustache even more cartoon-like than ever. We fly towards each other at the entrance to the station, exclaiming over each other’s youth and beauty. In fact, sitting beside Raimondo in his little Fiat I can see that he has aged, though handsomely. He is thicker-waisted and grey-haired, and I calculate that he must be over sixty now.

  Negotiating the vehicle up the curling hill road that leads to town, he is talking about his restaurant, his ever-increasing popularity, and finally his problematic adolescent son. We have too much to tell each other, and each bend we turn through a medieval town is almost as conducive to nostalgia as Florence. I am now hearing about Natasha, Raimondo’s Ukrainian girlfriend. He is treating the subject with caution because, even though it is eight years since our beloved Annamaria died, he is aware of the depth of our friendship. Raimondo punctuates our conversation with bursts of song and toots of horn and invective against every inept driver on the road, and miraculously finds a spot to park within minutes of narrow Via Ulisse Rocchi and his restaurant.

  Vecchia Perusia is unchanged. There is still the gracious antipasto table forming the centrepiece of one small room, still the pale prettiness of Franca, the chef, through the kitchen pass. A giant woman greets us – the famous Natasha – her eyes flicking swiftly over me and her handshake restrained, then Raimondo is drawing me into the tiny washing-up space behind the kitchen and slopping white wine into two glasses. We toast each other and drink. Raimondo is doing the same thing with his eyes that he always did around Annamaria, a her-against-us look like some naughty schoolboy, and we laugh together in cosy complicity.

  I had never lived or stayed long enough in Perugia to cultivate friends; Raimondo is the only person I know. With so little time here, I am content just to roam and drift in the same unstructured semi-purposeless way I did in Florence. I am staying at Annamaria’s apartment in town, sharing space with Natasha and Lidia, a surly Latvian teenager who is the restaurant dishwasher. Raimondo commutes between town and the casa colonica on the outskirts where he lives with his difficult son. Natasha sits at the kitchen table swathed in a masculine dressing gown, sipping tea and explaining to me how the washing machine works – almost palpably, I feel the memory of Annamaria and me drinking and talking and laughing at the same table. I miss her shockingly.

  Later on that first day I shower and dress and walk to the restaurant. Raimondo seats me at a table near the entrance, brings me wine, urges me to help myself to anything off the menu, sits with me and drinks. There are not many customers and Natasha is orchestrating everything smoothly, with occasional darting glances towards our table.

  I love Raimondo’s restaurant. If ever I were mad enough to consider a return to the ruthless, unforgiving world of restaurants, I could do it in this one. Its intimate smallness, the radio audible from the kitchen where glamorous, plump Franca reigns, Franca whose lips are carefully outlined with dark lipliner. Eight green-clothed tables, each with little vases of fresh flowers. There are the photographs in frames around the walls of Raimondo: Raimondo and his boxer friend Gian Carlo, Raimondo on national television, Raimondo
arms around smiling customers. And the refrigerated cabinet with its little pots of tiramisu and glass bowl of fresh strawberries in a glaze of sugar and lemon. The antipasto table with vegetables prepared ten different ways, half a sweet pecorino cheese, fresh fruit salad. The prosciutto stand with its haunch of moist rosy ham, the bread board, a litter of crumbs and chunks of irresistible chewy breads.

  Raimondo tells me about the ulcer he has nursed for much of his adult life with periodic abstention from alcohol and drinking lots of milk. He had doubled the dose of his tablets for my visit in order that he and I can be as excessive as we generally are together. At six o’clock every morning, he is saying, he is prowling around his vegetable garden with a beer, gathering the produce to bring to the restaurant. Tough peasant stock has produced this extraordinary man who, well into his sixties, is now discussing the inexhaustible sex that he and Natasha enjoy; privately, I worry for him.

  I walk, eat and drink. Lunchtimes, I am usually in the restaurant eating salad from Raimondo’s garden, well dressed and accompanied by springy, crunchy bread and several glasses of house white wine diluted with sparkling mineral water, and then it’s back out into the sunshine, the shops and piazzas and people-watching, the cafés and steep-stepped streets leading to cool cul-de-sacs, Etruscan ruins, the sudden dizzy panorama of fields folding and falling away below. Back, eventually, ordering dinner. Franca sends out bowls of eggy tagliatelle with fat creamy broad beans and pancetta; or thick tubular stringozzi glistening with butter and black truffles; or a plate of garlicky artichoke hearts swimming in oil. I am not caring any more about weight and greed. This sort of gorgeous, big-flavoured food will only ever taste this way here, and I want to trap the memory of it somehow.