Bella Figura

by Kamin Mohammadi

  Luigo clapped his hands together when I named the old man. “Oh, I love him. Those eyes…”

  “I know, but by the time I met him, he was about a hundred.” I paused. “Okay, more like sixty-five, but anyway, old enough to sag. I went to interview him for my magazine and he rang me every time he was in London.”

  Luigo gasped with delight.

  “I know.” I nodded. “I felt like that too. But actually, he was launching a new health-food line and I guess he wanted me to promote it. I was such a fool, I actually thought he might want fat, spotty me! This man who had dated the most beautiful women in the world…”

  Luigo tutted at my description of myself, wagging a finger in my face, but I went on.

  “Well, once he turned up at the office on Valentine’s Day. I was across town on a shoot so I missed him. But everyone in the office saw him, which, let’s face it, is almost as good.”

  Luigo shrugged in agreement.

  “I was so excited when I came back—he had left me a note and a package—it was heavy too.”

  “A ring with a diamond bigger than Liz Taylor’s?” gasped Luigo.

  “No, sadly. It turned out to be a loaf of bread…”

  Luigo sat down, deflated. “Bread?”

  “I know,” I said. “And not just bread, but some prototype of a gluten-free, wheat-free, everything-free bullshit loaf of bullshit bread. The note was a recipe for goddamn cheese on toast. He called it something posh, but that was basically it.”

  “And was it delicious?” Luigo couldn’t help being Italian.

  “What do you think?”

  “No? How rude!” For Luigo—an Italian—this was the worst part.

  “And get this, that night I had to go out with my staff. They all had their husbands and boyfriends with them. I had my preternaturally heavy loaf of taste-free bread. It sat next to me on the sofa all night. That’s the nearest I got to dating. A night out with celebrity bread…”

  When I finished he declared with a flourish: “So now you see what it is to be a beautiful woman in Italy, bella?”

  “But I am not beautiful,” I protested. “And certainly no more than yesterday. Why didn’t this happen before? Is it the olive oil?”

  “Bella,” he said fondly. “Look at you, how different you are now from when you first came in here. Then you crawled in like a worm, all hunched up and looking at the floor, you said sorry a hundred times. Now…well, now you bounce in here, head up, walking tall, and you look me straight in the eyes. No more worm! And when you smile, it comes straight from your heart. You see, now you know the secret to being admired in Italy. It’s because you are making la bella figura. And let me warn you, Englishwoman, this makes you much more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”

  * * *

  —

  I got an intimation of this power every day when I went to Cibreo with groceries and Beppe took them from me at the door and ushered me in while Isidoro made my cappuccino—I felt like their queen. I sat in the corner, which commanded the best view of the café for people-watching and, more important, the bar itself, where I could see Beppe as he greeted his customers by name, bending low over the hand of an old lady as he led her to a table and conjured up a glass of water for her to sip. Beppe was charming, solicitous, and beautifully dressed—I was making a study of his suits; there was the sleek navy one with double pockets, the charcoal wool with its gorgeous pile, the pin-stripe with the wide lapels…each cut perfectly, each one an ode to the stylishness of Italian men.

  I longed for him to ask me out. Luigo urged me to ask him instead. “You are a modern woman!” he said, and, pointing out that Beppe was short for Giuseppe, Italian for Joseph, he worked himself up to his joke with a satisfied grin. “And just because there are many Josephs in your life, bella, it doesn’t mean you have to be like the Madonna, a virgin! And you know that tomorrow is San Bloody Valentino—why don’t you give Eros a hand?”

  * * *

  —

  The evening of San Bloody Valentino, I took Luigo’s advice and went to Cibreo at night for the first time. It glowed warm in the chilly night. It was still too early for courting couples; there were just a couple of regulars at the bar, drinking prosecco. I took a deep breath and went in. Beppe was looking more handsome than usual, his dark suit paired with a silk pocket handkerchief and matching tie. He bounded over to the door to lead me to the bar, pouring me a glass of prosecco and thrusting it into my hand. He then presented me with two small plates. One bore twists and turns of something pickled with strips of onions, carrot, and garlic and the other was a golden gloop. He ground some salt and black pepper, poured a little oil over the top. “Mangia,” he ordered. “They are some of our chef’s specialties.” Beppe pointed to the pickled one first and I picked up a forkful, biting into it gingerly, but the taste was enchanting. I ate it all up. The other plate was “polenta with just a little Parmigiano and seasoning,” explained Beppe. He watched me as I cleared both plates, offering me another glass of prosecco. I refused; the place was starting to fill with people, it was time to go home.

  He accompanied me to the door. “Tell me,” I asked him, “what was the other dish that I tried?”

  “The most typical dish of Florence,” he said with a grin. “Trippa Fiorentina. Tripe!”

  I had been a vegetarian for the past fifteen years, only recently starting to eat meat again. I screwed up my face. And that’s when he kissed me. His lips landed gently on mine and, for the long seconds that it lasted, it took my breath away.

  I walked away stunned. He returned to the bar, gold sparkles from my lip gloss twinkling around his mouth. As I walked past Dante’s statue, I found myself licking my lips.

  * * *

  —

  A whole week after the kiss, Beppe finally asked me to dinner. In a move suggested by Luigo, I had invested in some tight trousers to show off the new firmness of my thighs, toned by my walks and the never-ending stairs. Every day at Cibreo, I took off my coat and handed it to Beppe to make sure he noticed. Eventually he must have, as he suggested pizza and we fixed a date for Sunday night.

  On the appointed day I was dressed, made up, and ready in the kitchen early, tapping my fingers nervously on the table. There were fresh sheets on the double sofa bed, which I had unfolded, and, for the first time in weeks, I had shaved my legs. In London I had spent a small fortune on going to the woman known for inventing the Brazilian. In a reversal of fortune told through depilation, I had bought wax strips after losing my job, but now, with no income in sight, I had resorted to shaving.

  When the doorbell rang, I practically ran downstairs to find Beppe slapping his hands together on the doorstep, devastating in a black leather jacket with a black cashmere scarf knotted loosely around his neck. He took my hand and we walked down the street to the local pizzeria, where we slid into a booth and barely noticed the delicious pizza. Afterward, he led me back to my apartment, and kissed me the moment we were inside, and didn’t stop.

  Sometime near dawn he left and I fell into a long and satisfied sleep.

  * * *

  —

  “I can see from that glow, bella, that celebrations are in order!” Luigo said when he got to work the next evening to find me waiting for him. He poured us both prosecco and clinked his flute to mine. “Good, I am guessing?”

  “Oh my God! Put it this way, afterward I asked him if he went to circus school…”

  “Cirque du Soleil?” quipped Luigo.

  “More like Sex du Soleil!” I said, and we threw our heads back and laughed, high-fiving over the bar.

  “You are living la dolce vita!”

  “I am?” I looked around for paparazzi. “But I haven’t been to any glamorous parties and I haven’t swam in a single fountain!”

  “La dolce vita has nothing to do with Fellini or that Swedish bird with her big tits.” Luigo’s mouth curled with distaste. From the sounds of it, Luigo’s time in London must have been largely spent with some unreconstructe
d barrow boys. “Once we had the might of the Roman Empire, once we were great artists, but now”—Luigo spread his hands and shrugged—“all we have left is our lifestyle, bella. But is a lot! Is the best in the world! And why? Because of la dolce vita, which you are living—tasting every day the sweetness of life. This is not about parties or paparazzi…although”—he winked—“it is a bit about Marcello Mastroianni…” We both sighed dreamily, leaning on the bar.

  “Is it about Sex du Soleil?” I asked.

  “Yes, but not just. It’s about tasting the tomato, tasting the kiss, tasting the Venus, tasting the olive oil…”

  “Singing in Pegna?”

  “Yes! Singing in Pegna, singing in the rain, singing…Madonna!” As his idol came on the stereo, Luigo segued expertly into “Holiiiddaaaaaaay…” jabbing his fingers in the air to the rhythm.

  “Celebraaaaaate!” I jabbed my fingers back at him, wiggling to the beat.

  Luigo skipped over from behind the counter in a kicky eighties move and we danced around the bar, serenading each other, and collapsed, laughing, when the song ended.

  Luigo turned to me: “You see, bella? La vita e dolce…”

  “Yes, Luigo, yes, it is.”

  Pasta con pomodoro

  SERVES 1 (can easily be doubled or tripled or quadrupled)

  1 clove garlic

  Best-quality extra-virgin olive oil

  1 14-oz. can chopped Italian plum tomatoes

  Sea salt, to taste

  1 large handful spaghetti or other pasta of your choice

  Fresh basil

  Parmesan, to serve

  Peel the garlic and smash it, using the base of your hand to press down on the flat of a large kitchen knife. Pour a glug of olive oil into a pan and drop the smashed garlic into it. Cook a little—don’t let the garlic burn—and open the can of tomatoes and pour it in. Let it simmer, stirring as it reduces. With canned tomatoes you need to cook for only about 10 minutes.

  Fill a large pasta pot with water and put on the stove top. Once the water is boiling, add some salt and pasta of your choice (spaghetti is a classic, fusilli and penne are also favorites). Stir the pasta when first in the boiling water to stop it from sticking together. When the pasta is al dente (usually 10 minutes, but taste earlier to make sure it is not overcooked), drain, saving a spoonful or two of pasta water to add to the sauce. Tear up some leaves of basil and throw into the sauce. Take out the clove of garlic and discard. Then add the pasta to the pan of tomato sauce and mix it until the pasta is well covered with sauce, adding a bit of the pasta water if you need to thin the sauce. Grate on a little Parmesan if you wish, then serve.

  (Any extra sauce can be kept in the fridge for another day.)

  Fennel and blood orange salad

  SERVES 1, WITH LEFTOVERS

  1 big fat bulb fennel, cleaned

  2 blood oranges

  Best-quality extra-virgin olive oil

  Best-quality balsamic vinegar

  Chop off the top and bottom of the fennel bulb so you are left with the body of the fennel. Stand it on its bottom and slice in half. Then cut each half into slices and throw into a bowl. Peel and slice the oranges—I find it easier to slice the whole fruit into 6–8 segments, then cut away the peel. Mix the orange slices with the fennel, add plenty of olive oil, and drizzle on a bit of balsamic vinegar—not too much. Mix it all together and serve.

  3

  MARCH

  ·

  La Festa delle Donne

  or HOW TO CELEBRATE BEING A WOMAN

  PRODUCE IN SEASON · peas

  SCENT OF THE CITY · mimosa

  ITALIAN MOMENT · riding over the Arno on a Vespa at sunset

  ITALIAN WORD OF THE MONTH · giaggiolo

  The phone was ringing in the apartment as I walked in from the market. I answered, expecting it to be Italian telemarketers, on whom I had been practicing my pigeon Italian. “Pronto?” I said.

  “Have you fallen in love with Giuseppe yet?” chirped a playful, staccato voice on the other end. I laughed. Christobel, in her official role as my fairy godmother, rang once a week to check up on me.

  “No, but I think we may be becoming friends,” I said, “which might be even better.”

  Christobel admitted that Giuseppe, with his strange habits and intense privacy, was probably not ideal lover material but would make a loyal friend.

  “I was thinking,” Christobel trilled, “why don’t you stay?” In her inimitable way, she had intuited my desire to remain in Florence. I could imagine Christobel sitting at her dressing table, in a black Miu Miu shift and Prada stilettos, her old-fashioned receiver held near her ear so as not to disturb her stripy coiffure. “I will be coming out now and then, but otherwise you can be there. So we were wondering whether you want to? I mean, if you haven’t got anything else planned?”

  The way I had been living in London now made no sense at all. Work hard during the week and at weekends have your real life, shopping in a soulless supermarket where fruit and vegetables lay on little paper coffins wrapped in plastic shrouds. Now the idea that my work and personal life should be separate was anathema. Office life made no sense anymore; even as I had been gripped in its hold, in the affirmation of money and status, the idea that I was spending so many hours every day, the majority of my life, in neon light, sitting on my bottom—gathering new fat cells—had been growing distasteful, but I was too busy to think of alternatives and my imagination had been slaughtered by the daily grind. Now that I was living without all the relics of my former identity, there was a glimmer of something new. The heady possibility of freedom.

  My only ambition now was to live as well as the Italians.

  * * *

  —

  To my frustration, Beppe was proving hard to pin down. He’d flirt with me at the café, but when we’d set up an assignation at my apartment he’d fail to turn up. At best he’d text an excuse and at worst not even do that. After the grand high of feeling desirable, it was especially deflating.

  “He’s scared of you!” pronounced Luigo. He had listened patiently to my nightly reports on the non-progress of our affair, and this was his favorite explanation for Beppe’s ambivalence—alongside “Could he be gay?” (Luigo was apt to ask this about any handsome man who came into the bar, the presence of girlfriends notwithstanding.) “He knows you are leaving and he is scared to get involved.”

  “But it can’t be that, Luigo. I’m going back to London for only two weeks and then I will be back,” I whined. “Oh God, I forgot to put on a robe when I went to make us some tea. Maybe he saw the size of my bottom and now he will never touch me again…”

  Luigo sighed, exasperated: “Oh bella, have I taught you nothing about being a woman?”

  * * *

  —

  One Thursday morning early in March, I stumbled upon a flower market in the loggia of the Piazza della Repubblica, the nineteenth-century square built on the site of the city’s Roman forum and its old ghetto. Lined by glamorous cafés with large terraces, there was a brightly painted carousel in the middle and a long loggia down one side, a large victory arch connecting the piazza with some of Florence’s most expensive shopping streets.

  My destination was the city’s main post office, and I was anticipating a long morning—this was not my first experience of how hours are lost in an Italian post office, a sort of Bermuda Triangle in which both time and the will to live vanish regardless of the simplicity of the tasks you have to perform. But I forgot about my errand as soon as I stepped in through the columns: there were flowers, blooms and blossoms everywhere. In my single-minded pursuit of more sex with Beppe, I had failed to notice spring’s approach, but here the new season positively assaulted me. Fragrance burst around me—heady hyacinths, small narcissi full of sweet perfume, and everywhere, thin branches bearing fluffy clusters of yellow mimosa, each one a tiny bomb of delicate scent. Every stall had mimosa covering it, tall branches bowing over the tables or fat bouquets wrapped in yel
low ribbon laid out in a row. I paused to take a deep breath, and, quick as a flash, the stallholder put a slim bouquet in my hand. I buried my face in the downy petals, smiling at him broadly as he said: “For you. A gift! Happy Women’s Day.”

  That’s how I discovered that in Italy on March 8, women were celebrated with offerings of mimosa. As I walked through the center back to San Niccolò, I was stopped on the bridge by Old Roberto, who pushed on me several small branches of mimosa plucked from his own tree. Giuseppe the Gnarled Jeweler appeared at his door to present me with a small bunch, Cristy put a garland in my hair. The Rifrullo Pavarotti greeted me with a posy and a snatch of song, and Guido the Dramatic Idraulico pressed on me a corsage so pretty I gave him a kiss on the cheek, leaving some gold sparkles on his beaming face. In the forno the baker himself appeared and slipped a spray of mimosa into the paper bag containing my loaf, and even Giuseppe met me outside our shared front door with a lone stalk of little yellow balls. I was so laden down by the fuzzy yellow flowers that he had to open the door for me. I walked upstairs, wrapped in my own cloud of mimosa scent.

  Later the same afternoon, Beppe showed up unexpectedly. “Auguri, bella.” His voice crackled over the intercom. “Ti ho portato la mimosa…”

  I let him in and he walked into the fragrance-filled apartment carrying the biggest bunch of mimosa yet. As I placed them in a vase next to the corner sofa, I wondered how many of my celebratory flowers would survive our antics.

  Hours later, having been left in no doubt as to the desirability of my soft, squelchy body, and somehow with not a single vase of mimosa knocked over, I mounted Beppe’s Vespa behind him, circling my arms around his leather-clad waist. He had persuaded me to accompany him to work, “to stand where I can look at you.” I agreed—I couldn’t resist the prospect of a ride through Florence on a Vespa, and of existing for an evening solely to be gazed at.