The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club Read online

  As we drive home, I wonder if the boy with the violin will pass through Orvieto again. I am happy that Gilda has so gracefully snitched the black velvet hat. Will Paolina marry Niccolò?

  Late on Friday morning, Paolina calls: ‘The rustico wants a good cleaning. We were all so tired last night, I don’t even remember if we scrubbed the pots. Shall we take care of things together? Maybe tomorrow? Niccolò and his mates from San Severo are going to Rome on the 11:05. Did Fernando tell you that he’d invited him to go along? Pierangelo as well. Armando al Pantheon for lunch, a walk in the Villa Borghese, back to the train. They’ll be home in time to take you and Ninuccia and I for aperitivi and then to la Palomba for supper.’

  ‘Fernando is, at this moment, upstairs trying on jackets he hasn’t worn since Venice. He’s so pleased …’

  ‘You know he’d asked Niccolò if you and I and Ninuccia might go along but Niccolò wouldn’t have it. Just as well. Tomorrow, at about eleven.’

  •

  On Saturday I leave Fernando at the train station, arrive at the rustico just before eleven-thirty to find Paolina on her knees scrubbing the floor.

  ‘It was a ruse. Asking you to help me. All of it done in less than an hour. I haven’t lit the stove or the hearth fire. It’s so warm today …’

  ‘Come with me then, we’ll finish that later. I didn’t bring anything for breakfast. Or lunch. Emergency Venchi 85 per cent cacao, three bars in the glove box.’

  ‘We may need it.’

  We take up our places prone among the weeds on the edge of Miranda’s oliveto and smoke Paolina’s hand-rolled cigarettes.

  ‘Do you want to know if I’ve accepted him?’

  ‘I suppose I do. Yes, I do.’

  ‘I’ll wait to tell you. I’ll wait until I’ve told you other things.’

  •

  Why can’t she just say, I did or I didn’t? Yes or no? I wonder as I look at Paolina who seems concentrated on her cigarette, taking it out of her mouth after each inhalation, holding it first close up, then farther away, pondering it as though the ‘other things’ she wishes to tell me were written on its thin white paper. It’s only after she bashes the last millimetre of it on a stone and drops the spent end of it in her metal box that Paolina begins.

  ‘Like a keening wraith, I roved about the rooms of the house where I was born, opening and slapping shut the doors, thinking if I opened them once again, he would be there. She would.’

  As she lifts her gaze from a place somewhere in the weeds a streak of sunlight flickers across her eyes, illuminating the tears she’d thought to hide. She sits up, fiddles with a boot buckle. I sit up, caress her arm sooner than speak. After a while, it’s she who does.

  ‘Sto bene. I’m fine. Only, only a moment. I’m fine.’

  Paolina tells me that she, an only child of only children, was not quite eighteen when the young black-bearded man who was her father died while ploughing the dark red earth of a tobacco field. On a Saturday it was when Paolina’s father died, a week to the day after her mother – ill and choosing not to linger – had hurried herself away.

  ‘Until almost the end of her days, my mother still ran my bath in the evening, woke me in the morning with a buongiorno principessa in falsetto, setting down on my bedside table a tray with a china pot of caffé latte and two croissants fat with marzipan, crusted with roasted almonds and still warm from the pasticceria. Amore mio, come hai dormito? My love, how did you sleep?

  ‘Though my father’s was a more reticent love, together their devotion commanded me, their authority so congenial I was breathless to resist. Mine had been a life measured out in the melodious two-note chime of meekness and reward. I was their good girl. And then they were gone. No matter how many times I opened and shut the doors, I was alone. Save for ‘uncle’ Niccolò.

  ‘Tall, broad, mercurial as a god was Niccolò back then. Like chunks of sky were his eyes and I loved the smell of his tweeds, smoked as they were in the burley ash of the Brebbia he held between his teeth even as he spoke. Even as he sucked and chewed on the little red pastilles flavoured with ratanhia root which he’d pinch from a silver matchbox tucked in the pocket of his vest. As though a companion shade swung a thurible in his wake, when Niccolò went away, the smell of him faded slow as incense. My father’s patron, my mother’s paladin, our personal banker, oftentimes our chef, Niccolò had been – for as long as I could remember – the perpetrator of small ecstacies, mostly gastronomic. And as my parents commanded me, just as benignly and consummately did Niccolò command them.

  ‘As Niccolò’s fattore di fiducia – trusted foreman – it was my father who kept in efficient production the small empire that composed his friend’s legacy: wheat fields and sheepfolds, plantations of tobacco and sunflowers, groves of olives and vineyards. With my father taking care of things for him, Niccolò was free to indulge his passions for the markets and the caffés and the trattorie. For his paramours. Back then, though, I’d known nothing of paramours.

  ‘Unexpected, unannounced, Niccolò was wont to tramp through the front hall and into our dining room of an evening just as we were sitting down to supper. He being our Elijah, my mother would set a place for him at every meal. Sometimes he’d just pull up his chair and make himself at home, grinning and rubbing together his hands as my mother helped him to the food, my father to the wine. But on other evenings he’d march in and begin snatching up plates and glasses, corking wine, wrapping the bread in a napkin. “Andiamo. Let’s go.”

  ‘“Let’s go? Where?” My mother would shout, throwing up her hands, while my father – his acquiesence to Niccolò a matter of routine – simply rose from his chair, went to turn off the oven and then to find his jacket.

  ‘Once I remember Niccolò pulling a corked, dark glass bottle from his coat pocket, ‘Ecco, behold, oil just pressed, just robbed from my own mill. Tomorrow is soon enough for pastasciutta. I booked Roncalli. Forza, forza, I’ve left the auto running …

  ‘“It’s an hour to Foligno, Niccolò,” my mother whined.

  ‘“What do you care? I’ve salame in the other pocket and wine in the boot.”

  ‘“But why? Everything is here and …”

  ‘“Because there will never be another Friday evening at eight o’clock on November 29, 1959. That’s why. Forza.”

  ‘My mother would strip off her pinafore, run to get her good shoes, lean over the sideboard checking herself in the mirror above it while she kicked off her slippers and slid into the suede pumps she wore to church. The points of her cheeks gone red like rosehips, she’d press her hands to her hair, deepening the already deep blonde waves of it while Niccolò stood there holding out her coat, telling her she would have made Botticelli crazy. Cinderella wrenched from her hearth was my mother, tantalised by a fleshly prince bent on a 10-centimetre Chianina beef steak barely warmed over an olivewood fire. I remember wishing Niccolò would hold out my coat for me. Wishing my own cheeks would go red as rosehips. And wishing my mother was like other mothers.

  ‘Niccolò would bury Norcia truffles in a sack of rice and place it, like an icon, on a shelf in the kitchen. He’d turn back to us, to my mother and me, and say, ‘The rice will be properly perfumed by Tuesday. I’ll bring everything else. Everything. Your job is to set the table and to be beautiful. Basta.’

  ‘He always looked at my mother when he said the part about being beautiful.

  ‘In the post basket hung on the front door, he’d leave a branch of peach blossom or one of tiny pomegranates, their broken skins bleeding juice the colour of Spanish wine. A just-slaughtered and dressed suckling lamb hung around his neck like a scarf, a haunch of deer in a sack slung over his shoulder, under his arm, a brown satin box with glacéed chestnuts nestling in the folds of its black velvet lining, it was Niccolò’s doing that by the time I was ten or so – and he was twenty-something – it was already difficult for me to separate one appetite from another. One hunger from another. I loved to eat. I loved zio Niccolò.

  ‘As
I’ve said, I was just shy of eighteen when my parents died and in the early days of grieving, Niccolò was my refuge. Burrowing my face into the man-smelling tweed of his coat, his great brown hands caressing my hair, I waited for him to tilt my chin up to him, to press his lips to my forehead. When he moved his hands from my hair to my breasts, I looked straight at him, into his eyes like chunks of sky. I wept and I smiled. I remember looking behind him, as though to make sure she wasn’t there. My mother with the rosehip cheeks and the Botticelli face, a strap of her sundress slipping down over the white marble of her shoulder, little beads of sweat glossing her upper lip as she rolled the umbricelli – one by one – across the wooden board while Niccolò sat watching her. No, she wasn’t there. My rival was no more. Thin solace for the loss of a mother was my victory. Bitter recompense, I thought, pushing my face deeper into Niccolò’s chest, trying not to ask myself if losing her was precisely what I’d longed for.

  ‘He would cook for me every day, Niccolò would. I remember most a soup he’d make. He’d sit me down at the kitchen table, slide a small glass of white wine across the oilcloth to me.

  ‘“Allora. Guardami bene. Watch me carefully.” He’d skin and slice a pair of onions faster than the butter could melt in the sauté pan he’d placed on the burner behind him.

  ‘“Sempre una fiamma bassa per la minestra. Always a low flame for soup.” He’d leave the onions to melt into the butter while he gathered up the rest of what he needed: yesterday’s bread, some milk, a few branches of dried wild thyme, the bottle of white wine. When the onions were soft and gold, he’d rub some rough salt between his hands and then sprinkle the onions with flour; he’d slip the thyme leaves off their branches and crush them between his fingertips over the pan. The stems in his shirt pocket to use later in the hearth. He’d give the mass a good stir, letting the flour and the butter bubble away for a minute; some milk, then some wine. I think about a cup of each. Maybe more wine than milk. When the soup had just begun to thicken, he’d take it from the flame, cover it, let the thyme do its work while he toasted thin slices of the old bread, brushed them with butter, laid them in two wide shallow bowls. He’d sit with me then and we’d drink another glass of wine. He would never set our places directly on the oilcloth even if we were sitting down only to soup or cheese and bread. He’d take out one of the fine embroidered cloths from the armoire, spread it smooth, knot the napkins on one end and, flicking his wrist, shake each one before laying it down, aligning the knot perfectly with the silverware. He’d light a candle even at noon. I think he made the wild thyme soup for me nearly every day for the first month or so. “Curativo,” he would say. “Healing.”

  •

  He must have known before I did that I was with child because when, all breathless and bridal, I ran to open the door to him one morning after I’d seen Dottoressa Ottaviano, Niccolò sat me down at the kitchen table and immediately began speaking of the aspetto practico, the practical aspect, of our situation.

  ‘“But Niccolò, there’s time for all of that. Now we must celebrate, think about the wedding, about our child, about …”

  ‘“Tesoro mio, ti voglio tanto bene ma io non mi sposarò mai. Mai. My darling, I love you but I will never marry. Never. Oh, it’s not that I don’t like weddings. I would have been a bridegroom a hundred times over by now as long as I could have avoided being a husband. I will hold financial responsibility, be a figure in the child’s life, sustain both of you in every way save that of living together as a family. We can even have a wedding if you want. But no marriage.”

  ‘He rose then, washed his hands at the kitchen sink. Pontius Pilate with a pipe. Taking a clean towel from the drawer in the cupboard, he slowly dried his hands. He began looking through the onions in the basket on the work table.

  ‘“I’ll do the shopping,” he said, buttoning his jacket.

  ‘Heeding the old impulse to meekness, I sat quietly. When he returned sometime later, his market bag full, he found me where he’d left me. As though the news might be balm, he said he’d been to consult his attorney. Across the shiny red and yellow cloth on the table, Niccolò spread bank books, lists of goods and chattels, a copy of his testament. The pipe tight between his teeth, he droned out numbers while I unpacked the market bag, moving his papers to make room for white-skinned potatoes and tight little heads of red lettuce, two of purple garlic, the dried stems of them knotted together like castanets. I kept picking up each thing as though weighing it, then putting it down. I never said a word. He relit his pipe, signifying that his presentation was complete.

  ‘“Ma, l’amore? But what about love?” I wanted to know, my voice cracking as though I’d just awakened from a long sleep. As though I’d been weeping in my dreams.

  ‘Drying my face with the back of his hand, the stem of his pipe still between his teeth, he’d whispered, “Povera cocca, poor little one, it’s duty that counts in life. Amore. Amore. Love. Love. Bread lasts longer than love. I want to offer you something better.”

  ‘The meekness in me thawed and boiled up like rage. Ripping his hands from my face, sending the documents and the onions flying from the table with a single sweep of my arm, I beat him about the chest that had been my refuge, clawed his cheeks, wrenched the grizzled black and brown pomp of his hair, tore the Brebbia from his mouth and smote it on the tiles. I bent to retrieve one of the bank books and, heaving it into the ashes of the hearth, I stood straight, laid a back-handed slap across his face and ran for the door. Flinging it wide and letting it bang against the wall, I remembered my coat, which he’d already gone to fetch. As he held it out for me, I snatched it from him, thinking of how many times I’d longed for that, for Niccolò to hold out my coat as he did for her. I walked away, shutting the door hard on his last words: “Lunch will be ready in an hour.”

  ‘My pace fast as my heartbeat, I traversed the few metres to the piazza. I turned back to see if he’d followed me, but there was only a small band of children from the kindergarten approaching in the bleak March light, harassing the pigeons while their teachers walked behind them, smoking hungrily. I sat down on the iron bench by the fountain, my grand revolt already on the wane, having exhausted itself on the truth that I had been Niccolò’s seductress. If ever a woman offered herself to a man, I’d offered myself to him. A revelation. A plain truth. I wrapped my arms about my chest as if trying to find the repentance in me but there was none. I let one hand drop to lie on my stomach. On my womb. Big as a bean and not yet meat, a creature was ripening inside me and, while I’d been pining over a wedding dress, it had already shaken the kaleidoscope, rethrown the stones and the pattern they made was my future.

  ‘Would I go back to the house now and take up my submissiveness? Invite Niccolò to the role of loving tyrant only just vacated by my parents? Would I surrender my child, too, to Niccolò’s dominion? I will hold financial responsibility, be a figure in the child’s life, sustain both of you in every way save that of living together as a family. No. Thank you, but, no. No, to every part of your offer, Niccolò. No.

  ‘His back to me, he was slicing bread when I walked into the kitchen. Before he turned, I knew what I would see in those eyes and I longed to comfort him. I’d become someone more, someone less than who I’d been a scant hour before. Leaps of comprehension and self-trust, a capacity for empathy, if these deem to come in life, they come like lightning, in un colpo, in a flash. Unlike the sort of change that happens over time. Unlike change that is won by faithful pummelling – of one’s self or of another. Nothing fresh about that kind of change. While I’d been sitting there by the fountain in the piazza in that bleak March light I’d vaulted the wall of the sanctuary. On my own, I was.

  ‘“Also I, Nicò. I will never marry. I will be a bride a hundred times over but I will never be a wife.” I’d meant him to laugh but as he turned, the bread knife poised, there was only desolation in his eyes. He looked at me. Studied me.

  ‘“Hai fame? Are you hungry?”

  ‘“Si.”r />
  ‘“Brava.”

  ‘We sat and he poured wine. Not waiting for him to serve me as he always did, I took up the white fluted bowl of tiny purple artichokes and pushed some onto his plate. I took a few for myself.

  ‘“Ma, domani, cucinerò io,” I told him. “But tomorrow, I will cook.”

  ‘He stayed quiet. After a long time, he began a mild sort of protest but let it fall away.

  ‘“Va bene.” His voice was a whisper. He raised his glass to me. “Your eyes are black in this light. They’re purple in the sun. Your eyes make a man think, Paolina. Only poetic men will love you. The others will try to change you. The others won’t be able to look in your eyes. I wish I were a poet, Paolina.”

  •

  ‘It was a Monday morning, a fews day after our joint “proclamations”: Niccolò’s to me, mine to him. And my own to myself. I was sitting, dreaming, by the salone window when I saw them walking across the piazza on their way to me: the parish priest, his mother and his aunt. Don Umberto, Carolina and Luigia. Though the trio had been visiting me every Monday morning since my parents’ death, I’d somehow not remembered on that particular Monday that it was their day. But there they were, the women in sedate frocks and elastic hose almost pink against their black lace-up shoes. Shawls, hats with veils and white cotton gloves, cloth-covered baskets hung from their wrists. As she was wont to do, Carolina minced ahead of the others, her head pitched slightly forward of her body, insistent as a lead goose. Apart from my parents and Niccolò, these three were as close to kin as I’d ever had. I went to put the kettle on, take off my apron.

  ‘“Buongiorno, bella,” they said in unison, commencing with the ritual unpacking of their gifts: torte, biscotti, pane. Jars of jam and little pots of savoury things to spread on bread. As though there’d been a flood or a war or some devastation that had emptied the shops which sat all along the piazza outside my door, they would replenish my supplies. The one constant provision was a thick green litre bottle of Marsala beaten with eggs and sugar. Simpatia, Carolina called it. Sympathy.