The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club Read online

  ‘Not one of the Dutch.’

  ‘Not one of the Dutch,’ I repeat inanely.

  ‘I’m … I’m trying to tell you … He’s seventy-eight years old. He’s … he’s been my cavalier since I was …’

  ‘Niccolò?’

  ‘Himself.’

  Seventy-eight. A Sean Connery seventy-eight, I say to myself; this Niccolò wants only a kilt and a burr. Miranda calls him un vecchio querce, an old oak. ‘So many males, but how few men,’ Miranda says whenever Niccolò is near.

  I’m imagining Niccolò in a kilt while Paolina is saying, ‘I understand that there’s a practical side to his offer. I do not delude myself into thinking he’s been moved by … you know, by romantic notions. Long ago he named me executrix of his estate but I think, well, perhaps he thinks that my sons and I will be more protected if he and I marry. I think that’s it. A part of it.’

  ‘Surely not the all of it. Even given the multiple and sinuous interpretations of Italian law, he can arrange things as he pleases. Why do you think it’s so strange that he wants to marry you?’

  ‘If you knew Niccolò you would not ask that. I can’t tell this to Miranda, less to Ninuccia, maybe I could to Gilda. Not to my sons.’

  To my sons. Paolina speaks often of her four sons but never of their father. If I’d thought about it at all over the years, I suppose I’d assumed she’d long been widowed or divorced. But she has just said, my first proposal …

  ‘Will you accept him?’

  ‘How archaic you are, Chou. Accept.’ She looks at me and smiles, looks away. ‘I truly don’t know. There is something of the ludicrous about the idea. Maybe of the ridiculous. But, well, if you knew about the past …’

  An auto crunching on the gravel distracts us and we look to our left.

  ‘This will be Niccolò,’ Paolina says. ‘I knew he wouldn’t resist coming to check on us.’

  ‘Dove sei? Where are you?’ It’s Fernando who calls out.

  ‘In the oliveto,’ Paolina shouts. Was it disappointment flickering her eyes?

  One of Stefania’s baskets piled in galetti riding on his arm, Fernando comes to offer us his treasure. We smell and touch and properly admire the flat-capped ochre-coloured beauties. My image of Niccolò in a kilt lingers. Back in the kitchen, it lingers while I wipe the galetti with a damp cloth, trim and slice them, then heave them into a pan with more butter than oil, the fats scented in garlic and parsley. It’s lingering still as I shake the pan, flipping the mushrooms rather than stirring them, rubbing flakes of sea salt over them, shaking and flipping with more constancy than is necessary. Now I work on hearing a voice with an Italianate burr. I add white wine, leave the galetti to their drinking. A last shake, a last fistful of gremolata – raw garlic and parsley – to refresh the soft buttery things. I cover the pan.

  I understand that Paolina, had she wished to talk more to me of private things, would find a way for us to stay apart from Fernando. Rather she seems intent on his uninterrupted presence, even asking him if he would mind working on scraping and cleaning an old wooden shutter, which has leant against a wall in the cheese hut for as long as any of us can remember.

  ‘Because of the open slats, it would make a perfect cooling rack for bread,’ she tells him, going to fetch it, setting it outside the door.

  All three of us work on the shutter and when it’s scraped and scrubbed, Paolina opens wide the kitchen window, and lays it over the sill. Later we set the breads to cool on it, the water-green brocade their frame. The washing up done, table set, sausages readied for the fire, I tell Paolina and Fernando that I will go home to bathe and change, leave what’s left to be done to them but Paolina, too, says she will go home for a bit. We both kiss Fernando, find our sacks. ‘Io raccomando,’ Paolina tells him, trying for Miranda’s goddess voice. ‘Take care of things.’

  At first I think Paolina plans to come home with me so that we can talk but she settles herself in the Mini, waits for me to drive out first. ‘A più tardi’ is all she says.

  •

  Knowing I’ll only be a few minutes, I leave the auto, illegally, just down from Bar Duomo. Is that Gilda waving from a front row table?

  ‘I’ve been waitiing for you … I, I knew, I mean, you usually come home to change before …’ Whisky-coloured eyes peering out from under the brim of her fedora, Gilda looks tired.

  ‘Yes, yes, come up with me … Are you all right?’

  ‘Fine, fine, but … Nothing really, I … Could you please lend me twenty euros? It’s my foolish car, the gas guage never tells the truth and …’

  ‘Of course, but where is your car?

  ‘Just down the hill, in Sferracavallo. Outside the village. It gave out in a safe place, almost safe. I don’t know anyone down there, and, well, I thought I had a bill tucked away, actually I knew I didn’t have anything tucked away but …’

  ‘Gilli, it’s nothing, everybody runs out of gas. Come up with me. Relax while I get ready. There’s a gas can in the boot of my car, we’ll get it filled and …’

  ‘Would you mind paying for my espresso? I felt uncomfortable just sitting there without ordering anything.’

  I call to Yari who is standing at the door to the bar, ‘Ciao bellissimo. Stai bene? Are you well? Gilli’s caffé is on my bill. A domani. Until tomorrow.’

  Gilda and I race up the twenty-eight stairs to our apartment and, once inside, up the other two flights from the salone to the bedroom. I pull Fernando’s favourite of my winter dresses from the armoire and nudge Gilda aside from where she stands in front of my dresser mirror trying on hats. I take fresh lingerie, tell her it’s cognac in the tiny perfume bottle on the table near my bed, should she like a sip. She’s talking to me while I’m in the shower but her voice is only noise. I dress, turn my head upside down, comb my hair with my fingers. I can’t find the boots I want and then notice that Gilda is wearing them.

  ‘Look, they fit me perfectly. As I was saying before, don’t, please don’t tell Miranda about any of this.’

  I find other boots, pull a grey wool basque down to my eyebrows. ‘Ready?’

  ‘You do promise, don’t you? About Miranda.’

  ‘Gilda, it’s hardly criminal to run out of gas, it’s … Why are you always so cautious of Miranda’s …’

  Sitting on my bed, she takes off her fedora, sets my small black velvet hat with a veil in its place, this one revealing more of her hair. Of the palest ash brown lit with thick chunks of blonde and shorn just below her jaw, it caresses the sharp bones of her cheeks and chin. Her whisky gaze is almost always bemused, already engaged, as though all that Gilda can see lies on the other side of a window pane. She gets up, looks at herself in the mirror, adjusts the hat, pulls at the veil until it touches her cheeks, turns to me and says, ‘It’s only to deflect her angst. For Miranda, I have never grown up from the fifteen-year-old stray I was when she first saw me. I am the daughter she never had. And maybe she is the only mother I have ever really known. Perforce our connection is byzantine, made of entangled complications.’

  ‘That’s an oxymoron.’

  ‘Which is also byzantine.’

  ‘I see.’ I don’t see at all. ‘But still, running out of gas …’

  ‘But I’ve run out of money as well, I mean, not exactly run out of it but … There was this man, a boy really, maybe eighteen, maybe less. It was a market day, a Saturday. A few weeks ago. It was raining, that soft-hearted autumn rain, light but enduring. Well, he was standing on the corner of via del Duomo and the corso, you know, right in front of the bank. Paganini. Number Five. Of course he would be playing Number Five. A child-sized umbrella he’d rigged upon one shoulder to protect the violin and the side of his face, which caressed it while the rain fell freely on the other side. How he played, Chou. I couldn’t move, stood in the doorway to the pharmacy. No hat on the stones in front of him, no open violin case, he just played. As I said, it was a Saturday, the first one of the month. The day when Bernandino pays me, usually in five one-hun
dred-euro bills. That morning he’d given me one of those purple ones. At first I didn’t know what it was. A five-hundred-euro note, I’d never seen one before. It was there in my jacket pocket. Without taking it out, I folded it twice, made it very small, walked over to the boy, and slipped it into his pocket, on the dry side of his jacket. I kissed the wet side of his face and then I ran. I’ve managed wonderfully through the month. I mean, what do I need of money when you really think about it? I have no rent to pay, I lunch with the other staff at Bernandino every day, I have my garden, my faithful Miranda and her baskets. Iacovo brings me wood, he’s always brought me wood …’

  I don’t tell her that it’s been years since Fernando has consented to my carrying about our money for the day since, no matter how much or how little the sum, it would always be gone before the day was. So many musicians, singers, Nigerian boys selling socks. And what about the kids who work in the caffés and are never tipped save by strangers, mostly American. I don’t tell her any of that, though I envy her having had that five-hundred-euro note to give away. There is something I can tell her, though.

  ‘My son was born to Paganini’s Fifth. On my little tape player. Itzhak Perlman. I wish I’d been with you that day in the rain. I wish you’d been with me when Erich was born.’

  Sitting on the bed in the little black hat, she stays quiet for a long time. Until the memory that plays behind the whisky eyes is finished.

  ‘Never tell this to Miranda. Never,’ she says.

  ‘Never.’

  ‘I’ll be paid on Saturday and so …’

  ‘You might tell Bernandino that you prefer smaller bills. Just in case.’

  In less than twenty minutes of our racing here and there, Gilda’s auto roars to life.

  ‘Will you wait here, let me get a head start? If we arrive at the same time, she’ll know something’s amiss. Please.’ Still wearing the hat with the veil, though I don’t think she is aware of it, she hugs me. And while I wait on the curve of Sferracavallo, I think of my son who was born to Paganini, his great dark eyes wide open as though he’d been listening.

  I arrive at the rustico just before nine to find some of the tribe standing near or sitting on the sheepfold wall, tumblers of wine in hand, Miranda castigating Gilda’s hat, Paolina insisting it suits her perfectly. Heedless of both, Gilda’s gone dreamy about the gibbous moon and the first of the stars tangled in the tresses of the pines, while Niccolò, Fernando, Iacovo and Filiberto smoke the Toscanelli Miranda has passed among them. Fernando comes to kiss me as does Gilda, as though she and I haven’t seen one another since last week. Gilda whispers, ‘How I wish you could have heard him, Chou.’ I take the wine Paolina pours for me and look hard first at her, then at Niccolò, searching for some evidence of the Dulcinea effect, a sign that she has thrown him a rose. I ask after Ninuccia and Pierangelo.

  ‘They finished the harvest this morning and so stayed on the farm to celebrate with the others. I wanted all of them here but Ninuccia, being more rational than impetuous, muttered about loaves and fishes and tucked me into the ape,’ Miranda tells me.

  Hungry but loath to go indoors, we drink our wine. Miranda comes closer to where Gilda and I stand, sniffs the air.

  ‘Chou, have you given up Opium for eau di benzina, the scent of gasoline? Gilli seems to be wearing the same. I shall not ask what the two of you have lately undertaken. Gilli, would you please go inside to turn the sausages?’

  I go inside, too. Behind the bedsheet curtain, I begin spooning the galetti into small bowls or cups, whatever I can find. Gilda comes to help, placing the galetti on a tray with forks and three of the flatbreads. We all sit, take one another’s hand, thank the gods for another harvest. Miranda picks up one of the breads, tears a piece – pushing an extra fig onto it – passes it about and we begin this candlelit Thursday night at the oil-clothed table under the grape leaves, the rustico window open to the moon still rising above the Montefiascone road.

  Her hat still in place, Gilda and I serve the supper while Miranda frets over Paolina, saying she looks feverish.

  ‘Fernando, change places with Paolina, will you? Her back should be to the fire.’

  As we carry out the dishes, Gilda tells me she, too, notices something is amiss with Paolina.

  ‘Not fever, though, is it?’

  ‘Not fever,’ I say without looking at her.

  ‘Probably those damn Dutch torturing her twice a week with those endless gnocchi.’

  ‘Could be the damn Dutch.’

  The tribe goes quiet over the pears, sheening ruby red from the wine. Just right with Filiberto’s new pecorino, they say. Chatter ceases again when Gilda puts down the sausages in Miranda’s old metal pan. I go around the table with the bowl of mashed wine-cooked potatoes and the colour of them raises suspicion until the taste of them pleases. Crumbs are the only evidence of the kilo round of vendemmia bread, still warm from the oven when we tore into its crust, hard and nearly black from rye and buckwheat flours. It’s Niccolò who suggests that we return outdoors for a breath of air, rest a bit before the dolce.

  ‘Rest? I think we should dance,’ Miranda says, all of us rising, she leading us out into the darkness. ‘It’s been so long since we’ve danced … How long has it been?’

  ‘A week. Last Thursday up near the orto,’ Filiberto reminds her, but she’s rooting about in her sweater pocket among the herbs and weeds for The Gypsy Kings. She can’t see the buttons on her tiny machine and so hands it to me to put into action. A shepherd, a Venetian, Iacovo the farmer and Sean Connery assemble and, as is the rural Umbrian way for men to dance, they stand in a circle, hold one another’s elbows and, as though they hear another kind of music, stamp their feet and kick their legs, move in some aboriginal tarantella, as much Russian and Greek as Italian. We women pair off and trot about on the gravel, our arms moving like the blades of a windmill and I see the scene as from a distance and I think how lovely this is, how unbearably lovely. Long before the tape ends, we stop, gather closer together and I am certain this is the moment when Niccolò will make his announcement. Rather it’s he who rounds up the tribe and guides us back to the table.

  La torta al mosto is rich, properly underbaked so it’s as much pudding as cake. Slicing skinny pieces, I am named a miser and so I cut again. I try to count up the litres of wine with which we have made this supper and those we’ve drunk with it. I stop counting, let my thoughts wander back to the boy with the violin. To my son and Paganini. To Niccolò in the kilt. Neither he nor Paolina, save her flush, has exhibited any but the most usual behaviour. It’s Miranda who insists that Paolina leave her auto at the rustico, allow Niccolò to drive her home.

  ‘Stay abed tomorrow. I’ll stop by and …’

  ‘Mirandina, I’m quite well and …’

  Paolina never uses the tender diminutive of Miranda’s name as do we others. Miranda takes note, says nothing more. Gilda begins to gather the last of the dishes from the table but Miranda waves her back into her chair, scans the table, pausing to stare at each of us until she turns back to Gilda whose hand she has taken into hers. Laughing, Miranda makes glittering slits of her blue-black eyes.

  ‘In the first half of your life, you have the face with which you were born; in the second half you have the face you’ve merited. I think that’s it. It occurs to me, maybe not often enough, that you are a fine-looking tribe. How many things do I save to tell you? Things I’ve always wanted you to know. Why do I count on your already knowing them? I should remember to say the words. Those words. Quanto vi voglio bene, ragazzi. How much I love you.’

  We stay quiet until I – mostly because my throat’s too tight to let out a word – softly, slowly pound my hands upon the table. One by one, two by two, the others take up the ritual demonstration of honour.

  Still plaintive, Miranda speaks over the commotion, ‘So you think it’s Athropos who decides? I mean, about when our time’s up? When to cut the thread?’ Her gaze far away, her voice is very small.

 
‘Amore mio, please, enough for tonight.’ Filiberto beseeches her with not quite feigned dismay.

  ‘Oh, I don’t intend to get back to God and the sublime ethics of Jesus or witchcraft, though I will say that over these past few days I’ve wondered about old Giuseppe and what became of him while Mary was off ascending and being assumed. History’s made mostly of empty spaces. In any case, I’ve had to rethink my image of Death after being reminded of those three women who sit somewhere spinning and snipping and … I’ve always thought of death as The Horseman. My father used to call him that: quel Cavaliere Nero, that black Horseman. Intimately and often, my father spoke of him. A long-time nemesis who lived just over the hill. I have always feared a man on a black horse.’

  ‘In Il Gattopardo, Don Fabrizio saw Death as a handsome woman in a brown travelling suit. She came to sit by his bed in the hotel, do you remember?’ I say this but do not say that I fear a woman in a brown suit.

  ‘With her sitting beside him, Fabrizio told himself he’d lived the sum of three happy weeks in his life. By which, I suppose, he meant he was tranquil about leaving with her.’ Paolina says this with spare conviction.

  ‘A few perfect days. I’ve had a whole handful of them, more than most, I think. No one has a right to more. Most days are made of something less than and something more than happiness.’ Miranda’s voice is a whisper.

  ‘Già, indeed.’ The tribe is in harmony.

  A pair of candles he’d taken earlier from the armoire and tucked in his jacket pocket for just this moment, Fernando lights them now as the others burn away. Filiberto takes up his mandolin and tonight his hoarse whispery voice lulls Miranda. Her snoring a whistle, faint, steady, she sleeps as we do the washing up, smother the ashes, gather our things. Buonanotte.

  Filiberto helps Miranda into his truck and I watch them, wonder about them. Does he stay with her in her house in Castelpietro? Does she stay with him in his house, which sits beyond the farthest meadow off the Montefiescone road? Once a fenile, a stone hay barn, it’s where he makes cheese, births lambs and tends the ailing ones, where he shears sheep, where he cooks and washes and eats and sleeps. Maybe the goddess of Buonrespiro is right: maybe the good half of a love is enough.