Carrying the frothy concoction over, Isidoro declared proudly: “I make best cappuccino in Firenze! Try, you see!”
He was right. Not too hot, but not lukewarm either, the cappuccino was rich and creamy. “We use best milk in Tuscany. Good cows!” he said, lingering, asking me where I was from. He clapped his hands excitedly when I told him. “Ah! Londra, che bella! I was once, was beauuutiful!” Then his expression changed to one of pity. “But vegetables—no taste!” he had commiserated, hanging his head. Then, cheering up as he saw my bag of produce: “But now you taste REAL vegetables!” How amazing could vegetables be? I thought. After all, surely a tomato is just a tomato.
To his continuing inquiries I told him I was trying to write a book, and he let out a low whistle. “Brava!” he said, clapping his hands. “Not just beautiful, but also intelligent!” he exclaimed. “You stay and you become Fiorentina! You become part of our family!”
I looked out the window at the tumult of bodies and mopeds on the corner. In the melee a woman with the look of a young Gina Lollobrigida stopped by the moped she was passing and, leaning down, checked her lipstick in its wing mirror, running a finger along her eyebrows. She looked up and spotted me looking at her, and gave me a wink as she sashayed on. I smiled back at her. Maybe I could stay and become part of this funny family of shameless, elegant Florentines.
* * *
—
I raced home excited to taste the produce after Antonio’s performance and Isidoro’s enthusiasm about Italian vegetables, my depression of the early morning forgotten. I couldn’t wait to make lunch. My only other stop was at the bakery opposite: the forno, a family concern run by multiple generations, according to Christobel. A cheery girl stood behind the counter, blond curls bursting free from a white cap. Behind her, shelves were filled with freshly baked bread—small oval loaves, large round loaves, long loaves, brown loaves with seeds cracking their crusts, little round rolls, and square rolls dusted with flour. In the vitrine there were large square pizzas that were cut into slices, and sheets of thick flat bread shiny with oil and crusted with salt—schiacciata, a sort of Tuscan focaccia which, I discovered, tasting a small corner, was delicious, crispy, and doughy, and just oily and salty enough. I struggled through ordering, but she somehow managed to find out my name and where I came from and I somehow managed to learn that she was the baker’s youngest daughter and called Monica. All of this without either of us speaking the other’s language: I’d never given so much information about myself to so many people in one day without speaking an actual sentence. Monica gave me a small loaf and I carried it upstairs in a paper bag, pausing a couple of times to catch my breath on the way up.
I couldn’t remember the last time my vegetables and bread hadn’t come packed in polystyrene and plastic. I unloaded my produce into the sink and washed it all thoroughly. Never having been a great cook—or indeed any kind of a cook—all I made was a simple open toasted sandwich, the bruschetta that Antonio had suggested in an entertaining mime. I was so intoxicated by the smell of the tomatoes that I quickly cut them up into round slices and placed them on the toast. I drizzled on some olive oil, tore up some leaves of basil, and scrunched up a few flakes of sea salt.
With the first bite, sunshine exploded in my mouth, sweet tomato flesh made ambrosial by the salt. The oil was peppery and the basil tangy. Each bite was so full of flavor that I actually sighed. Out loud. I made my way through four slices of bread, olive oil running down my chin.
I thought of Iran when we were given deep red tomatoes to eat as snacks after school, holding them in one hand with a salt shaker in the other, biting into them greedily, the taste of that sweetness. Those Italian tomatoes took me back thirty years and they made me happy. A tomato, after all, is not just a tomato, I thought.
* * *
—
Days passed. I was back at the kitchen table, which doubled as my desk. I stared at the document on the screen of my laptop, taunting me with its blankness. I fidgeted in my seat, picking at my nails, chewing at the skin. There was no Internet in the apartment and it was a rude awakening. The shock of not being able to surf the net was seismic. There was no email to check, no Facebook to click on to, no pictures of babies of old school friends to check out, no political debates on which to comment.
Instead, I was confronted by the book I had spent years talking about. Not just any book, but the story of my country, of my childhood, of my Iran, which I had fled as a small child with my parents in the violent days of the revolution. After nearly twenty years away, once I had started to travel back to Iran in my twenties, I had regaled my friends with so many tales of my relatives and the history of my country that they had begged me to get it all down on paper instead of making their heads spin with the cast of thousands that makes up my extended family.
But after years of being too busy to think, the shock of having nothing to do but write was astonishing. I gazed out of the window but there was nothing to see: an old lady was at her television in the window opposite mine, the courtyard was quiet, there was just a smell of woodsmoke which floated to me across the city. Inside me, I felt the familiar pull of my old bedfellows, fatigue and depression. So persistent were they in their devotion that nothing I had tried could shake them, not even after nights of sleep so long I felt like Sleeping Beauty’s somnambulant sister. What was I doing here, in this country, a stranger who didn’t speak the language and was loved by no one? Another mistake, I thought, tears welling up, my mother had been right when she had called me irresponsible.
I forced myself to get up, away from the blank document, and step outside the door, into the streets of Florence, tangible and real. I went out without a map, preferring to wander and discover where I had been afterward. I paid attention to what was around me instead of peering into a screen all day. My mobile phone couldn’t access a network in Florence, so I had no digital way to track my movements. Soon this felt liberating: the ever-present tower of Palazzo Vecchio anchored me—wherever I was in town, I knew that the river and my neighborhood lay just beyond it, the terraced hills above the Oltrarno the backdrop to my home. And then at a certain juncture in the town, my tower swam into view. It was easy to lose myself knowing that these markers would bring me home.
To my surprise—notwithstanding my British reserve and Londoner’s habit of catching no one in the eye—it proved impossible to stay anonymous in San Niccolò. Within days of my arrival, people had started calling out “ciao” and giving me a cheery wave when I walked by. And I had returned their greetings—only the horror of being rude beat the horror of being engaged in conversation in the street—and before long I knew my San Niccolò neighbors by name. There was red-haired Cristy. She owned a tiny electrical shop on the street, a middle-aged lady usually surrounded by a tangle of fairy lights, lightbulbs, and boxes of tiny fuses. Every time I walked past her shop, she professed, in stumbling English, to find me charming. “Bella!” she would exclaim, sweeping her hands around my face. “So nice, so kind, your smile! Oh yes, brava!” and she bobbed up and down, almost bowing in her enthusiasm for my very being.
Opposite Cristy’s shop there was a small jewelry shop occupied by another Giuseppe, this one the polar opposite of my neighbor, a gnarled hippie of indeterminate age with long, fuzzy, colorless hair loosely pulled back into a ponytail. Very short and very rotund, he wore black and smoked roll-up cigarettes, the mongrel at his feet barking as I went by. He introduced his partner, a small woman with dirty-blond hair who reminded me of a used-up Tilda Swinton, if Swinton had been a foot shorter, smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for thirty years, and not taken care of her teeth.
There were the two sprightly old ladies who I had seen on my first day. They patrolled the street, arms linked, walking the length of San Niccolò, visiting the forno, then the greengrocer, then the butcher, until they arrived at Rifrullo for their cappuccinos. They made their stately progress every day, nodding to me, their hairstyles carefully teased into shape, their cheeks al
ways powdered, and their lipstick always on.
I had not been able to escape the old man who had joined me in the church that first day. I saw him often on the street and he always smiled at me so hopefully that one day I had paused and let him engage me in conversation. Wheezing, he had spoken to me in surprisingly good English and I had taken pity. He was called Roberto and, after commiserations on the tastelessness of English vegetables, he had placed a hand on my arm and regarded me intently. “And who was it who made you so sad?” he asked, catching me by surprise. I reached for the English hauteur I had used all my adult life like a protective cloak, when, looking down at the arthritic fingers clawed around my sleeve, my heart softened. Tears filled my eyes and all my defenses fell away.
I had been fighting for so long—the deadlines, the stress, the debacle of my career, and finally, the fight to try to keep Nader’s love—and I was exhausted. I gave in, I allowed Old Roberto to squeeze my arm, allowed him to comfort me in his creepy way. “Ah well,” he said quietly. “No matter, forget him. Now you are in Florence!” He smiled at me kindly, revealing stained teeth. I gave him a watery smile back. “You are a beautiful woman and you should be in a beautiful place. Stay here and you see, the beauty will make you better!”
I found this encounter oddly moving.
* * *
—
One evening, I went out looking for an Internet café—though a free Wi-Fi line had unexpectedly appeared one day, it switched off promptly at 6 p.m. I tried Rifrullo first, but after dark, it morphed from lively neighborhood café into one of Florence’s trendiest bars. The Rifrullo Pavarotti was replaced by boys with hair gelled into fins, the lights were low, and the music was thumping. A crowd of young and beautiful Florentines thronged, both inside and out, regardless of the inclement weather—all Italians, it seemed, smoke—girls with long hair running down their backs like waterfalls, nubile bodies poured into tight jeans; boys with Hoxton Mohawks and thick eyebrows in leather jackets and skinny jeans. They were a cross between hipsters and Fellini characters, gorgeous, luscious, and voluble. It was no place for me and my laptop.
I walked on to the Piazza Demidoff opposite the river, a wide square with a garden in the center where smartly dressed locals walked their dogs. At the far end of the square I spotted a small bar with a large sign advertising free Internet. Called the High Bar, it was small and cozy, with wooden booths in the back room. I stepped in. There was no thumping music, only songs that I instantly started to quietly sing along to. The bartender was a small, slight man with dark-blond hair and green eyes, his apron tied tight around skinny hips. He smiled.
“Salve,” he said, and I copied him, using the age-old greeting, the politest way to address a stranger. As a veteran of all of Asterix’s adventures, I had to stop myself from raising my arm in a Roman salute.
The High Bar was filled with old-fashioned bar signs and stained antique mirrors and it was empty of other people. Squeezed into a booth with the rain falling outside, I lingered over a mineral water while I Skyped with friends to a 1980s soundtrack.
I went there most evenings. One evening, the barman and I found ourselves both singing along to “Last Christmas.”
“I think we must be around the same sort of age,” I ventured afterward. “You play all the music I grew up with.”
“Yes, bella,” said the bartender. “We are. You were born on the eighteenth of September just two weeks after me…”
I looked at him with alarm. “How do you know that?”
“Because, Kamin Mohammadi, born in Iran, British citizen, every time you come in here to use the Internet, I have to fill out this book”—he pulled out an A4 notebook filled with dates and times. “Anti-terrorism laws. So when you come I have to copy out the details of your passport which you gave me first time, and when you came in and how long you stayed online.”
“Good God, poor you!” I cried. “I do apologize, that must be boring.”
“Well, at least it’s something to do,” he said wryly, indicating the empty bar.
“So we are twins?” I smiled, warming to him.
“Bella, obviously I am MUCH younger than you!” he threw back with a twinkle.
“By how much?” I demanded.
“A whole year. And you know very well, cara, that at our age every day—every second—counts!”
I decided I loved this man.
This was Luigo. He told me his real name was Luigi but the nickname he had acquired from ten years of living in London had stuck. He regaled me with tales of his adventures in London, the dives he had lived in, the fun he had had in the gay clubs, the restaurants he had worked in, how he never got over the awfulness of English food, how when his non–English-speaking mother came to visit him and got lost she would go into an Italian restaurant brandishing a piece of paper with his address on it and say to the waiters in Italian: “I am the mother of one of you. This is where I have to go,” and invariably the Italian boys would embrace her and put her in a taxi home.
“She thought London was the friendliest place on earth!” Luigo said with an arched eyebrow. We laughed our heads off.
I looked forward to my nightly visits to the High Bar, not least of all because Luigo introduced me to the concept of aperitivo. He forced so many plates of his homemade bar bites on me that I never needed to eat supper when I visited his bar.
This Italian tradition was new to me. Luigo explained that aperitivo was dishes of food that were put on the bar and given free to customers to accompany their drinks. “We Italians never drink without eating,” Luigo said airily. Not for them the pursuit of inebriation as a self-contained leisure activity—“like in England, bella!” He pulled a face. “Where do you put all that beer? And at lunchtime too! No wonder all those middle-aged men are so fat. Have you seen a man with that belly in Florence?” I had to admit that I had not.
“For us,” said Luigo proudly, “drinking is always with food and you know we don’t count wine as alcohol. For us Tuscans, red wine is food!”
Aperitivo is an early-evening tradition where an after-work or predinner cocktail is taken with plenty of nibbles to stave off any drunkenness. But nibbles did not mean a bowl of stale dry-roasted peanuts. There were full trays of dishes on offer, often a variety of cold pastas and, in Luigo’s case, panini cut into tiny squares with different fillings: mozzarella, tomato and basil, prosciutto and arugula, thick slices of mortadella, tuna, and cucumber. There were cut vegetables placed next to a bowl of a dressing so delicious I asked him what was in it. “Pinzimonio,” he told me proudly. “It couldn’t be easier. You take olive oil—the good stuff of course—and you mix it with either balsamic vinegar and salt or, as I have done tonight, with lots of lemon juice, some very fine pieces of garlic, and sea salt. Delicious, no? That way you can eat your celery every day—you know celery is a food of the gods?” I had never been particularly fond of celery but, dipped in copious amounts of pinzimonio, I thought I could probably bear to eat it every day.
Every evening I watched him go through the ritual of putting out the aperitivo, placing the trays diligently on the counter, and then meticulously cleaning and polishing behind the bar, whizz around lighting candles on each table. One night I wondered aloud why he bothered with all these extra touches when so few people came in. He cried out in protest.
“But, bella, I do this for me!” he said in mock indignation. “You see, in Italy, it’s important for us to make la bella figura at all times in all things.”
“La bella figura?” I echoed. “The beautiful figure? What, like being in shape?”
“Er, well, no,” he said, pausing in rearranging the bottles on the shelves behind him, lining up all the labels. “It’s the principle of making everything look as nice as possible.”
“What, keeping up appearances? Like the Brits do?”
He poured himself a small beer and crossed over to my side of the counter, guiding me to a table, where we both sat.
“Maybe a little,” he demurred
. “But really, la bella figura is about beauty. You have noticed all the beauty, si?” He swept his hand toward the door, outside which Florence sat lit up in all her dazzling glory. I nodded. “Well, beauty is important to us Italians, we revere it. So la bella figura is about being the most beautiful you can be, all the time, in every way.”
“Blimey,” I said. “Sounds exhausting.”
“Well, yes, it can be if you’re not used to it. But you know it’s not just what you wear, or how you look, or keeping your figure slim.” Luigo took a sip of his beer. “I mean, is also. But it’s more about taking care, of speaking beautiful words, being beautiful to yourself, even in private.”
I must have looked puzzled as he rushed on.
“Look, for example, at home I eat before I come here. I set myself a nice table, put a napkin, maybe a flower, on the table, a glass of wine. I cook a good meal, even if is just a quick pasta, salad, contorni. Is not because there is someone there to keep up appearance. But for me. I make la bella figura for me, because it makes me happy inside. It makes me beautiful.” He framed his face with his hands. “Is sort of self-respect.”
I thought about the dirt on the windows of the apartment, which annoyed me on sunny days. I pictured the piles of books shoved into corners behind the sofas in Christobel’s apartment, which I ignored with an effort. I thought of the soap scum calcified on the sides of the sink. I recalled how in London I had gobbled sandwiches mindlessly in front of my computer, days of stepping out of my front door without even looking in the mirror, let alone brushing my hair or putting on lipstick. As if reading my mind, Luigo looked me up and down.
“You, bella, well, look, I love you…” he started.
“Aha, but…?” I chipped in.
Bella Figura Page 3
