A Moveable Feast (25 page)

The epicentre of the crush comes slowly towards us as our anticipation rises, but the Shinotoko takes two more hours to get as far as the temple gates where I stand. The pressure becomes overpowering, and the mass of flesh sways and writhes, taking me along with it. I get trapped against a post, crushing my kidneys for what seems like ages until an enormously fat man yanks me free and shoves me back into the fray. I feel like I am part of a single huge, drunken, desperate fleshy beast, stinking of alcohol and filled with a toxic mixture of anxiety and anticipation.

The Shinotoko finally looms near and I am overcome by a desperate, primal urge to touch him. As I catch sight of his bloodied scalp, I lunge forward with all my might, at the same time as a surge from the men behind me. We shove through the crowd towards him, and I get within a metre when a bucket of freezing water hits me and a counter-surge from the opposite side stops me short, and I can only flail wildly at him. His guards shove him through the gates and, like a cork from a bottle, they propel him to the temple entrance where the priests and paramedics await him. He’s raced through the crowd, and a priest crowd-dives into the melee, attached to the temple by a
rope of rolled-up cotton strips. He grabs the Shinotoko by the head, and the other priests yank at the end of his rope and pull the two of them into the temple to ecstatic cries and wild cheering from the crowd. It’s like a birth in reverse. Most of us are in tears at the wonderful, insane emotional outpouring of it all.

The crowd eventually stops cheering and people begin to leave, which is when I catch sight of my reflection and have a sudden moment of confused introspection, followed by a deepening sense of shame and indignity at everything I’ve done. I have been transported to a different place, felt a bizarre and unknowable connection to ten thousand strangers – but by what? By drunkenness and a primal propensity to violence as part of a baying mob? What was it all for?

I am bleeding from scratches all over my torso, I have bruises on my arms and legs, and my feet are bare and ragged. I’m shivering from cold and exhaustion and I’ve lost Kosaki-san and all of my new friends. After taking a moment to catch my breath, I head off in the direction of my host’s house. It takes another hour for me to find my way there, and I walk in, desperate to get back into my clothes and go to a hotel. But I enter to a roar of welcome from my fellow Naked Men and their families.

A cascade of joy courses through me as they cheer me in, and they then help bathe and dress me with an extraordinary tenderness. I have never in my life felt so in need of this care and attention. They get me warm and safe, and then we sit down to share our experiences of the festival over a feast of the finest sushi and sake.

Kosaki-san assures me that getting close to the Shinotoko was enough: bad luck and guilt is transferred by my touching the men in front of me, and it travels like an electrical circuit to the Shinotoko. I try to believe him.

Meanwhile, back at the temple, the Shinotoko has the core of the four-tonne communal rice cake strapped to his back alongside
some fireworks, then he races around the central temple and the bad luck is spiritually transferred to the cake, which is then unstrapped and buried in a secret location (I’m really not making any of this up), along with the bad luck and bad deeds of ten thousand men.

Back at Kosaki-san’s, we feast on his hospitality, and I experience a revelation: I have made a deep, enigmatic, unspoken, barely explainable connection to Japan by sharing this bizarre experience. We all hug and carouse in a way that I never have before. I have experienced an intimacy with Kosaki-san and his crazy friends that I don’t have with my closest friends. Okay, it’s had a fair amount to do with the booze, the nakedness and the shared experience, but there is also an intense and palpable sense of hope and relief that’s all packed into the bizarre cake at the centre of it all – a cake that no-one ever ate, but that ends up meaning so much.

As I drink even more sake, I luxuriate in the warmth of this new-found friendship, but I’m also aware that it will be but a memory tomorrow. I’ve had an extraordinary insight into how my Japanese friends’ minds work, but come tomorrow they will return to their formal, less-expressive selves and the strictures and responsibilities of this tight-lipped society will throw its web over all these people again. But for tonight, they are free.

Outside in the hallway, I catch sight of Mrs Kosaki touching Kosaki-san’s shoulder and giving him a light kiss on the lips. He smiles at her, then brings in more sushi.

Jeff Greenwald is a resident of Oakland, California, and the author of several travel books, including
Shopping for Buddhas
and
The Size of the World
. He also serves as Executive Director of Ethical Traveler (
www.ethicaltraveler.org
), a global alliance of politically active travellers. Jeff’s latest book,
Snake Lake,
was published in 2010.

The Arun Valley, slicing through eastern Nepal, is the world’s deepest river gorge. Back in the 1980s, not many travellers bothered with that remote and undeveloped place. Trekking in Nepal was all about Everest, Annapurna and the Langtang Himal: places where the mountains had celebrity status, and a hungry hiker could find a good buckwheat pancake.

In the spring of 1984, I was living in Kathmandu on a Rotary fellowship. Having learned a bit of Nepali, and eager to test my mettle, I flew from Kathmandu to Tumlingtar, where our twin-engine plane shimmied to a stop on the grassy runway. From
there I set off north, on foot, intent on tracing the Arun along the length of its gorge – all the way to the Tibetan border.

This was in April, and it had been a wet winter. Conditions could change in an instant, and my backpack was heavy with gear. After a few hours alone on the muddy, slippery trail, I realised I needed help.

Stopping in a wayside town, I was able to hire a porter: a friendly teenager named Norbu, which in Tibetan means ‘wish-fulfilling gem’. Norbu was a Sherpa Spiderman: fleet of foot and incredibly fit. He shouldered my huge pack with ease, and we set off together towards the mountain snows.

The trail became drier, higher, and more beautiful, carpeted with brilliant red rhododendron petals. Norbu and I trekked up ridges and down verdant valleys, sharing tales. One brilliant morning, over breakfast, he shyly expressed a wish to visit a nearby village called Bala. His grandparents were the headman and headwoman of the hamlet. He hadn’t seen them for several years. It would delight them, Norbu said, if we stopped in for a night.

I readily agreed, with one caveat: we couldn’t allow ourselves to be a burden. Eastern Nepal has scant resources, and the long winter was just ending. Food would be scarce. We’d brought rations of noodles and dried meat, and would cook for ourselves.

‘But they’ll insist,’ Norbu replied. ‘You’ll be an honoured guest, the first American to visit the village.’

‘Well … Please make sure they don’t overdo it.’

We arrived mid-afternoon. Bala was an oasis of tidy, mud-walled homes, nestled between terraced hills. Corn and chilli peppers hung from rafters. As predicted, Norbu was greeted like a returning moonwalker. I was the exotic alien he’d brought home. Kids ran over to stare at my nose, tug my beard, and pinch the strange fabric of my high-end expedition parka.

Despite my earnest and sincere protests, Norbu’s grandparents – a wizened couple who lived in Bala’s biggest house – insisted on preparing dinner. Norbu suggested, diplomatically, that I stay out of their way.

Supplied with a flask of the local millet
rakshi,
I climbed a nearby hill and watched the sun fall behind the foothills. The more I drank, the better I felt; soon I was feeling very good indeed. It was incredible that I should find myself in this remote Himalayan village, a guest of honour among the local tribespeople. Sometimes, on rare occasions, a traveller feels this way: that your entire life has conspired to bring you to this moment.

Time passed. I finished the
rakshi.
As the last rays of light scraped the clouds and faded from the sky, I heard the rhythmic ringing of a cowbell: the signal that dinner was ready. I picked my way down the hillside, followed a narrow lane between stone walls, and found the house.

There was no electricity. The large single room of Norbu’s grandparents’ home was illuminated with yak-butter lamps. Villagers filled the low wooden benches placed along the mud-plastered walls. In the centre of the swept dirt floor, facing the open-pit kitchen, was a single wooden chair, cushioned with a hand-loomed carpet: my place of honour.

I sat down, and the room fell silent. Norbu’s grandmother, wearing her finest Tibetan
chuba,
turned from the hearth and approached me. She carried a large copper tray, a traditional Nepali wedding gift. Upon the tray was a mountain of rice, served with fragrant lentil stew. She’d prepared a side dish of
tarkari
– boiled greens and potatoes – as well as a small bowl of spicy
achaar
pickle. I detected hints of cumin and
timur,
the tongue-numbing Sichuan pepper. Atop this already bountiful offering was a fried egg, a rare treat in these subsistence villages. But my heart nearly broke when I saw the crowning touch: a
drumstick and thigh. The family had killed and roasted one of their few, precious chickens in our honour.

With great ceremony, Norbu’s grandmother set the heavy tray on my lap. All eyes were upon me. I looked around, giddy from the
rakshi
and the altitude. A hundred thoughts raced through my head: self-consciousness, fascination, a childlike astonishment.

Norbu, seated beside his grandfather, grinned at me. I grinned back. My head felt large and warm. What a place to be. And what were my friends in California up to right now? Eating breakfast? Sleeping? Watching
Hill Street Blues
? That world seemed so far away … Distracted, without thinking, I crossed my legs.

The copper tray overturned, and crashed to the dirt floor.

For an infinite moment, time stood still. The room was a tableau of shocked faces – none more shocked than my own. Had this unspeakable thing actually happened? Had my entire life conspired to bring me to
this
moment? I leaped to my feet, incredulous, overcome with shame.
‘Naraamro!’
I cried, staring down at the steaming mess.
‘Maaph garnus!
This is terrible! I’m sorry!’

Norbu’s grandfather stood up calmly, and walked towards me. He placed a firm hand on my shoulder, and turned towards his stunned guests.
‘Ramro chaa,’
he stated calmly. ‘It’s fine. It’s good. In fact … it’s
wonderful.
Isn’t it?’ He scanned the room.
‘Isn’t it?’
Tentatively, heads nodded. The guests began to breathe again.

Suddenly, I understood. Here I was: a fabulously wealthy Westerner, an emissary from the most powerful country on earth. I had blundered into Bala, and been greeted with reverence – even awe. But in truth I was merely a pale-faced
kuhire:
a foreign klutz who couldn’t hold his
rakshi.

The Joan Osborne song echoed in my ears:

What if God was one of us / Just a slob like one of us …

With my oafish faux pas, I’d shattered the mystique. We were all equals now – no matter how much my Gore-Tex parka had cost.

I left the house, and found Norbu. ‘What should I do? Do we leave now?’

‘Are you crazy? Don’t even think of leaving. Go to your tent,’ he commanded. ‘And wait. They’re going to do it all over again.’

And they did – with one enormous difference. This time, we all ate together.

Laura Fraser is a San Francisco–based writer whose latest book, a travel memoir, is
All Over the Map
. Her last book,
An Italian Affair,
was a
New York Times
bestseller and translated into seven languages. She frequently writes about food, travel and culture, and maintains a blog at
laurafraser.com/blog
. Her work has appeared in such publications as the
New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, Afar,
Salon.com
,
Gourmet, Tricycle, More
and many others.

Aperitivi
- Stuzzichini, olives

It is August in Sardinia, where Italian vacationers sleep late, down an espresso, then take off to the beaches, packing themselves together like slippery fish in a tin. I’ve been travelling for weeks in the less-touristed interior of the island, but today, like everyone else, I am splashing around and getting
abbronzata
at the beach. Historically, beach property was considered so worthless
that only the girls inherited the spectacular cliffs and wide expanses of sand, for Sardinians – invaded frequently and from all sides – tended to cosy into the interior.

In the evening, the beachgoers gather at bars, laughing and teasing each other as only Sards can, with increasing drunkenness and daring, until nearly dawn. I’m visiting my friend Beppe, who brings me along to meet his friends, who seem to include everyone between eighteen and forty-five from Sassari to Sorso. He introduces me to Giovanna and Giuliano, a couple in their twenties with dark curls, and tells me they are getting married on Saturday. They kiss me on the cheeks and ask where I’m from. I say San Francisco, where Beppe is currently living, where friends called me in a panic several years ago because they needed someone to come speak Italian to this guy who had arrived to stay on their couch and cook spaghetti with seafood. Beppe explains that we became friends even though I am the most
napoletana
American he’s ever met, by which he means conniving and ball-busting, but which I explain is because I make such good pizza.

Giovanna and Giuliano invite me to their wedding.

I’m startled. At home in the United States, people agonise over the guest list, counting every head at $120, cutting cousins and former colleagues, wondering who will be insulted and who will send a present anyway. They meet weeks in advance with caterers who will dole out four ounces of salmon for every guest, next to three baby rosemary potatoes, a dollop of spinach and one white roll. There is no inviting strangers to a wedding at the last minute. Brides, pocket-conscious parents, wedding planners, placecard-letterers – everyone would freak out.

‘It would be a pleasure,’ says Giovanna, with a smile that says she means it, and would even be sad if I were still in the country and didn’t attend on Saturday.

‘Un gran piacere,’
I say, not only because they are such a charming couple, but because (being a little
napoletana
) I know
a wedding meal in Sardinia – perhaps my most favourite destination among hundreds of favourite food destinations in Italy – will be the ultimate culinary pleasure.

The day of the wedding, I shop, because the only nice dress I brought is purple, and Beppe’s mother informs me that purple brings bad luck to a wedding. She explains that today we’ll have a light lunch, and a nap.

In the late afternoon, everyone drives from the beach up to the town of Sennori, high above the sea and overlooking the north-west part of the island, where the gathering cars begin to wind up the streets, honking. The procession stops first at the bride’s house, where relatives serve finger sandwiches, and the small crowd waits for the bride to appear in her huge frothy dress to snap photos and accompany her to the church. Then Beppe asks me to come along to the groom’s house to collect him. At the door, someone hands me a plate and Beppe tells me to smash it hard, or it’ll bring bad fortune. I break it into smithereens, everyone claps, the parents offer us drinks and more snacks, and eventually we take the groom to the church, careening up narrow cobbled roads to the top of the hill.

The wedding is a traditional Mass, where all the men stand outside the church on the piazza smoking, taking turns scouting the ceremony so they can all rush in at the moment to hear the vows. The couple departs in a hail of confetti, and the guests make their way back, honking, down to a restaurant near the sea, to drink aperitifs while watching a Campari-coloured sunset. Waiters pass around olives and
stuzzichini
– Sardinian antipasti (‘to pick’) – with seafood, mozzarella and tomatoes, bruschetta, everything irresistible that almost everyone seems to be resisting.

Antipasti
- Prosciutto crudo
- Antipasti di terra alla Sarda (salsiccia, olives, formaggio dolce)
- Antipasti di mare (insalata di mare, polpetti in agrodolce, cozze gratinate, capesante gratinate)

We sit down to long rows of tables, maybe 300 guests, with the sea breeze wafting in from the terraces. There’s a sense of giddy anticipation at the table, and I’m excited to be at my first Italian wedding feast.

The firstness of this meal reminds me of my first proper meal ever in Italy, twenty-five years before, when I was travelling the Mediterranean at age twenty-two, and landed in Florence to visit my cousin Tim. I would have been happy with any meal; I had just arrived from the Sinai desert, where I’d picked bugs out of pita bread to eat with tinned sardines. Previous to that, I’d spent four years eating college food, and had emerged from the suburbs of Colorado, where no-one was a good cook, and food was suspect anyway because it might make you fat. My mother doled out strips of flank steak with green bean casserole made with cream of mushroom soup and warned us against the bread. I took over the cooking in high school, turning out such delicacies as a Weight Watchers’ recipe called ‘Fish Delish’, which involved catfish, canned red cabbage and mandarins in artificially sweetened syrup. Italian food where I come from meant Spaghetti-Os or big plates of soft pasta with bland tomato sauce and dusty parmesan cheese shaken from a green can.

My cousin Tim, on an academic semester in Italy, was staying with a modest family outside of Florence. I spoke no Italian, but the parents and two teenaged kids smiled when I said things in high school Spanish, and replied in musical chatter, which Tim tried to translate. We sat down at a simple wooden table with short drinking glasses of wine.

The mother brought out an appetiser dish: fried baby artichokes. I didn’t touch them because not only is fried food fattening, but I’d tried vinegary artichokes from a can: no thank
you. My cousin shot me a warning glance. I put an artichoke on my plate and tried a tiny bite. The crispy coating was as delicate and transparent as dragonfly wings. The artichokes tasted like green, like spring, completely tender. I took another bite, and another, finishing everything on my plate. The mama beamed when I said
‘delicioso’,
which sounded Italian but was actually Spanish. Then she did something that neither Tim’s parents, WASPy sticklers for table manners, nor my parents, WASPy guilty eaters, would ever have done: she took more artichokes off her plate with her fingers and insisted I eat them too. I did, to her relish, and mine.

At the wedding, waiters in short black jackets appear from all sides, carrying trays with overflowing plates. Here comes the traditional food from Sardinia’s interior, the cured prosciutto and sausage,
salume,
that tastes of herbs and chestnuts, that has nothing to do with any deli cuts I’ve ever known, even in Italy. There are platters of olives and the world’s best pecorino cheeses, delicately seasoned meatballs with a hint of sweetness, and some thin
carta da musica
– ‘music paper’ bread. I am content with this perfect feast before me. Then platters of antipasti arrive as if straight from the ocean: scallops in their shells
a gratin,
seafood salad, mussels. The table of food is like a map of Sardinia. Everything is here: the woods, the hills, the chestnut trees, the olive groves, the beaches, the stone villages, the wide Sardinian sea.

Primi
- Lasagne al ragù
- Gnocchetti alla Sarda
- Risotto alla pescatora

The waiters clear the appetiser plates and I realise that my perfect feast was just a prelude to the meal. It occurs to me that perhaps I’ve overdone it on the antipasti, the best-tasting little morsels in the world, but I’m not worried. I’m no longer someone who is neurotic about eating, as I was when I first went to Italy, someone who thought of food only in terms of ‘good’ or ‘bad’, with good meaning low-calorie – not fresh and prepared with centuries of heart and skill – and bad meaning fattening, like pasta. I’d starve on boring good food and binge on sugary bad food, then suffer heaped servings of guilt. Now, after fifteen years of frequent trips to Italy, I’m a different person, someone who may not have Italian blood, but at least has an Italian stomach.

This transformation began at that dinner in Florence. After the artichokes came the pasta, penne or rigatoni, who knows, with a simple tomato sauce. I was prepared for a canned Chef Boyardee taste. The pasta came into the room on wings of garlic, riding a waft of basil. The noodles weren’t mushy, but chewy, a stand-up vehicle for the sauce, which was made from those rare tomatoes of summer that you grew in your own garden, the ones that had nothing to do with the square, watery variety in the supermarket; tomatoes of summer that tasted like the sun.

I savoured my plate of pasta and gave such dreamy looks around the table that everyone laughed. The mama tried to insist I have more, but I didn’t want to spoil the perfection of the little plate I’d eaten. I was completely satisfied. I decided, right then, that I was going to have to forget everything I knew about eating and start over. I was going to have to learn to eat and speak Italian. ‘How do you say delicious?’ I asked my cousin.

‘Buono,’
he said.

‘Buonissimo!’

The waiters arrive at the tables, choreographed on time, with several platters of wide, homemade noodles layered in a red sauce with creamy ricotta cheese. I think this is perhaps the perfect
primo
in the world, until I realise that the waiters are bringing two other dishes to the table. I put down a forkful of lasagne with regret. Can I skip the seafood risotto, with its calamari tendrils, rich saffron seafood broth, and little shellfish I can’t even name? I cannot. Nor can I pass over the Sardinian
gnocchetti
in its red meat sauce; someone’s
nonna
spent all day on those, and I’m never going to be here again. Just a bite. Or two.

Vini
- Rosso e bianco della casa

Everyone at the long banquet tables is starting to sigh, pausing to chat, taking a little break to light a cigarette on the terrace. The waiter refills my glass of red wine. I swirl, taking in the rich ruby colour, and sniff its blackberry aroma. It tastes like roses just past their peak, with still-soft petals, and a little bitter aftertaste, like fall is coming. It’s undoubtedly a Cannonau, probably bottled within a mile of here.

The wine takes me off on another reverie, to a couple of days after my first meal in Florence, when I decided that I would have to learn something about Italian wine along with the food. All I knew then was that there was a wine called Chianti, which came in bottles with little baskets, so I found a bus to the town called Chianti.

When the bus dropped me off, I followed one of the lanes through the hilly vineyards to a stone winery and knocked on the tall wooden front door. An elderly man answered, and I made a gesture of tasting wine. He looked confused, then smiled and led me to a cool, dark cantina filled with thousands of bottles of dark red wine. I wondered how you knew where to start.

He pointed at me and asked something that sounded like the date I was born.

I shrugged, got out a notebook, and wrote down ‘1961’.