Amore and Amaretti (9 page)

Annunzio's stories all follow the same pattern: past restaurants he has owned or managed, which failed, leaving him jobless, defeated, disillusioned and desperately poor. People he had trusted who had turned their backs; countries he had lived in, whose languages he had learned, which had finally disenchanted him. The woman he should have married and whom he still loves, instead of the sick woman who is his wife. His huge yellow teeth seem to bite something – perhaps the air – as he speaks. The clicking boats with lives of their own, their rhythmic nodding, canvas clapping, are like some massive beast slumbering restlessly. That he can make me feel like this – sweet, somehow, and pure, and uncorrupted – is one of the best reasons for loving him.

On my day off, I begin with a sticky, jam-filled croissant and cappuccino at the bar near the newsstand. Then I head off on the bicycle to the beach. I feel blonde, brown, free and promiscuous, and only saved from self-loathing by the tacit forgiveness Annunzio offers me each night when he so cosily buys me ice cream.

Annunzio's blunt fingers press mixture into splayed sardines.
L'impasto
consists of bread soaked in milk, finely chopped parsley and garlic, ground mortadella, grated Parmesan, sultanas and pine nuts. He shows me how to pinch up the sides of the sardines and place them in neat rows in a baking tray, slipping a bay leaf in between each. Then he splashes white wine over the top and bakes them.

A similar mixture fills mussel shells. The mussels are steamed quickly (olive oil, garlic and parsley, a dash of wine) until they open. Half the double shell is discarded and the mussel in the remaining one packed snugly with milk-soaked breadcrumbs, garlic and parsley and grated Parmesan. These are baked until golden brown. Another batch of mussels simmers in a basic tomato sauce into which a little dried chilli is crumbled. These dishes form the basis of the antipasto table that stands at the back of the Robespierre. My favourite is the platter of fresh raw anchovies, which start out pink and plump and end up gleaming a bright white under Annunzio's emulsion of lemon juice and olive oil, and a scattering of chopped parsley. In a giant vat, Annunzio simmers a huge octopus in red wine for hours. The particular aroma of caramel remains in my nostrils long afterwards. Then Annunzio slips off the skin, chops the fat tentacles into chunks and tosses together a salad with fresh herbs and a touch of chilli.

Apart from assisting Annunzio with the antipasti, my job is, as usual, the
primi
– the pasta dishes – and the desserts. I love preparing pasta with the
scoglio
sauce, which, unlike most others, is made to order. Before me I have containers of well-scrubbed mussels, clams, pipis, date mussels and Venus clams soaking in water. There is a separate container of finely chopped garlic and parsley, which I dollop into a pan of sizzling olive oil. When the aromas rise, I throw in handfuls of shellfish and toss them around before splashing in white wine. Meanwhile the pasta is cooking; once it is al dente, it is drained quickly, added to the pan of clinking shellfish, mixed briefly, then toppled out onto plates.

Strawberry risotto is fashionable this year, and at the height of summer it remains fixed on our specials board. The strawberries are simply puréed, seasoned with salt and pepper, then stirred through towards the finish of a plain risotto, a little grated cheese and butter added at the very end. A silly sort of dish, but very popular, particularly when served alongside shiny-black squid-ink risottos, which we often do. On my boyfriend's birthday, he comes for lunch and I send out his strawberry risotto in the shape of a heart.

Annunzio is an oasis of calm and wisdom. Around him Cesare, Antonella and I flap hectically from one mistaken experiment to another, while the summer blazes on. Cesare and Antonella have spectacular rows in the middle of the restaurant while customers dine. Cesare's long legs in loose trousers stride off, contemptuously, leaving Antonella crumpled.

The pizzeria owner and I drift apart after the evening we lie side by side in his sordid caravan discussing the beauty of certain people we know. I am bold – rash enough – to ask if he thinks I am beautiful, to which, without hesitation, he replies, ‘No, you're not beautiful, but you are a character.' I am wounded, of course, especially because it has always seemed to me that people for whom you feel affection attain a kind of beauty; being a character strikes me as a very poor consolation prize. The
pizzaiolo
and I find ourselves together one late afternoon, sitting on a cliff looking out at the ocean, the luxury of being alone at last, with suddenly nothing to talk about and desire which has shrivelled.

I flip in and out of one-night stands, and the night Gianfranco comes over to visit we both drink a lot, then go down to the midnight beach together. Our clothes come off quickly and we make love in wet sand. I feel a brief, gloating victory over the absent Marie-Claire, but mostly a sense of familiar disappointment with myself. Down at Bar Roma over drinks and ice cream, I describe my life to Annunzio in veiled vague terms I will him to see through, and he always does, which afterwards comes to me as a sort of blessing.
‘È una vacanza,'
he often reassures me – it is a holiday – excusing my promiscuity on the grounds that it is not real life.

A lanky boy from Brescia arrives to do our washing-up. As I cycle away to the beach at three o'clock, I leave him sitting in my chair at the little table opposite Annunzio. When another Australian friend comes over to the island to visit, she and the new dishwasher sit on the seawall long after the rest of us have left the pizzeria. They sit there all night and talk – or at least that is my friend's version. At any rate, they fall in love. Yet another friend flies back for a visit, and over Travel Scrabble in her pensione room she tells me how her new affair is progressing. Bells toll across the piazza on the half-hour and I am conscious of being frozen in one of my pointless limbo periods with no idea what to do next, while all around me others are radiant with self-definition or love. Sometimes I visit a trattoria for solitary dinners, leaving the dishwasher and Annunzio to explore the meaning of the universe while the owner flirts with me and I respond politely.

Toward the end of the season Gianfranco pays another visit. He is businesslike: the three partners of his restaurant would like me to join the partnership, returning to my old stomping ground and running the kitchen there. Our mutual friend Signore Lorenzo has offered to put up the money for my part. Gianfranco and Marie-Claire plan to leave on a holiday to Chile in October and it would suit him enormously if I could be back in Florence by then. I have never been able to deny him anything, and I find nothing has changed. Besides, it is time to move on, away from the illusory nature of island life and its encircling waters that shimmer like a mirage.

L'amore domina senza regole

Love rules without rules

The Florentine restaurant still serves endless busloads of tourists (‘group food' is my somewhat disparaging term for the meals we send out to them), and still has its eclectic international menu. An interesting addition is the baked
provola
served in various ways. Ramekins, lined with thick slices of this soft smoky cheese, are topped with anchovies, pancetta, raw eggs or porcini mushroom sauce and then slid into the oven until melted and bubbling.

But the hamburgers remain as popular as ever. I am reminded of a car trip to the coast, those early days with Gianfranco and three other men I did not know. We were off to see an exciting new hamburger joint, and as we drove one of the men was describing the wall panel behind the counter, which consisted of colour photographs of the range of hamburgers available. When we finally arrived I was the only one not leaping about with enthusiasm; privately I was feeling a sense of disenchantment that a country whose culinary traditions I venerated so highly could so easily be seduced by the trashy culture of the disposable.

I am surprised at how effortlessly I slip back in, despite mostly new staff. Raimondo is still there entertaining customers with his Frankie Banana persona, muttering darkly about the witch Marie-Claire to me, wheeling me away to Yellow pizzeria after work for sausage calzoni and too many bottles of white Corvo. And then there is Ignazio.

I am lying in my old bed in Gianfranco's flat, which he has asked me to mind for him the week he and Marie-Claire are away. I am in my old bed, in my old flat, but I am too thick with cold to feel bitter or wistful. On my ‘Back to Florence' diet, which consists of eating diet biscuits for breakfast, lunch and dinner for as long as I can stand it, I have also doped myself up with cough and cold tablets. On the television set is a programme of video clips, and as I watch I suddenly see a beautiful, familiar face on the screen. The group is Duran Duran and the face belonging to the lead singer bears an uncanny resemblance to the young waiter Ignazio.