Bella Figura

by Kamin Mohammadi

  “ ‘Ogni donna puo figurare al meglio se sta bene dentro la proprio pelle,’ ” recited the woman from under the humming hood. “ ‘Non c’entrano i vestiti ed il trucco, ma come si brilla.’ Ha detto la grande Sophia…”

  Antonella translated: “Every woman can appear her best if she stays well inside her own skin. Clothes and makeup don’t matter, it’s how you shine…”

  “Sante parole,” the other woman chorused in unison.

  I hugged Maria. “Listen,” she said, “forget that stronzo and listen to me. Impara a piacere a te stessa.” I looked at her blankly.

  “It’s Latin,” said Antonella. “From Seneca. It means something like ‘learn to take pleasure at yourself.’ Is the same like say La Loren.”

  “Be pleased with myself?” I asked. They nodded furiously. I embraced everyone in the salon and, walking home, I paused once or twice to gaze at my reflection in the shop windows, taking pleasure in myself.

  * * *

  —

  That night, I went to the Boboli Gardens to meet Betsy. I had tickets to see an open-air opera, which I had booked for me and Dino. I had invited Betsy instead and I found her waiting for me with blankets and mosquito repellent. I showed her my new hairstyle proudly and she complimented me as enthusiastically as an Italian. “You know who it reminds me of? Do you know Gina Lollobrigida?” I laughed.

  As we sat down and started rubbing the chemicals onto our bare ankles, I told Betsy the story of Dino’s disappearance. She paused in her ministrations and looked at me with an impish smile. “Oh, yes, I am not surprised,” she said. “Italian men don’t change. I had the exact same thing happen to me fifty years ago right here in Florence.”

  “Do you think it was his father?” I said, and we laughed our heads off.

  We swapped stories of our love affairs, howling at all the similarities, the half century stretching between them notwithstanding. “You see,” she said to me in between rapid-fire bursts of laughter, “getting your heart broken by a rogue Italian man is part of the education, my dear. Don’t let it put you off Italy. Look, I am still here fifty years later. There’s a lot more for you here in Florence than this shifty Dino.”

  Sour cherry jam

  MAKES 1 JAR

  3 cups sour cherries

  1 cup white sugar

  Wash and pit the cherries, and cut them into halves. Cover in sugar and leave to sit for as long as you can—at least a couple of hours, overnight if possible.

  Boil in a deep pan over a medium-high heat, stirring constantly. After 10 minutes, pour out some of the excess syrup, which you can keep in the fridge and dilute with water and drink with plenty of ice—a super-refreshing sharbat. Carry on cooking the cherries. Do not overcook; you can judge by the depth of the red color—not too dark, probably another 5 minutes.

  Sterilize a jam jar. Pour in the jam and, once cooled, refrigerate. Because there is no pectin, this will keep in the fridge for only 2–3 weeks, so eat within that time.

  Natural yogurt

  2 quarts whole milk

  4 tsp. live natural yogurt

  Pour the milk into a large pan and bring to a boil, stirring constantly—this way it stays at the boiling point for longer and becomes more creamy. Remove immediately—you don’t want it to burn.

  Pour into a large ceramic bowl and allow it to cool until the sides of the bowl are just comfortably warm—a little warmer than tepid. This takes time, so be patient.

  Carefully mix the yogurt into the milk, making sure the yogurt is not too cold. Take a towel and cover the bowl, wrapping it all the way around. (I first place a cloth of muslin on top, allowing the muslin to gently touch the surface of the milk.) Leave in a warm place for 6–8 hours (the longer you leave it, the tarter it will become. I prefer my yogurt relatively tart—the Iranian way—so I leave it overnight). Then unwrap your yogurt, which should be beautifully set—the muslin will have absorbed the water, but any remaining water can be spooned off (drink this, it’s super good for you!). Put in the fridge for at least a couple of hours, then it’s ready to eat. It will keep for at least a week.

  8

  AUGUST

  ·

  Femminilità

  or HOW STYLE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MONEY

  PRODUCE IN SEASON · white peaches and mulberries

  SCENT OF THE CITY · sewers

  ITALIAN MOMENT · drinking wine on the street at twilight

  ITALIAN WORD OF THE MONTH · silenzio

  On the first day of the month, I met Antonella at a tiny café inside Sant’Ambrogio’s covered market. Cibreo was closed and this was the only place still open nearby. It was sweltering hot and I was in a pair of shorts and a spaghetti-strap top, flip-flops on my feet—I knew I had failed spectacularly to make la bella figura. Antonella was wearing a black structured sundress, accessorized with pointy pumps and red lipstick. Her hair was pulled back into a low ponytail. She was cool, elegant, and a little edgy. She looked me up and down, the customary Italian flick of assessment, bold and unashamed. I stood under her gaze, put my arms out a little, and twirled around for good measure.

  “I look like an American tourist, I know,” I preempted her. “I apologize. But it’s hot.”

  “Darling, you do,” she drawled. “But I love you, so I forgive you.”

  “I’m also penniless, and I have nothing else for this heat.”

  “No problem, cara. On Sunday, come to the Pulci with me, I introduce you to my vintage man before he goes on vacation.”

  * * *

  —

  On Sunday, I duly turned up at the Mercato dei Pulci, the flea market. Today there was also a bric-a-brac market, makeshift stalls spilling into the surrounding streets. Antonella was waiting for me on one side of the square, wearing the biggest sunglasses I’d ever seen. She was standing next to a rickety stall piled high with a jumble of clothes. Alongside there were two rails of dresses, hanging dangerously close to her burning cigarette. She gestured me over and introduced the grizzled-looking man behind the stall as Alessandro, saying he had the best vintage gear and the best prices. I looked at Alessandro dragging hungrily on a cigarette stub; he looked like he had come straight from a party.

  “Alessandro is a DJ!” said Antonella, pawing through a pile of clothes. “Darling”—she fixed me with a red-rimmed eye over the top of her humongous sunglasses—“I left the party last night at three and he was still there…”

  He really had come straight from a party. Alessandro turned a toothless grin on me—alcohol seeped from his sweat—and let loose a rapid fire of broad Tuscan. I turned to Antonella to translate but she was too busy pulling out unpromising-looking rags, which, after a vigorous shake from her, turned out to be quirky fashion items from past decades. More than an eye, Anto was possessed of a laser-guided fashion radar capable of honing in on a stray piece of rare Issey Miyake or 1980s Moschino hiding at the bottom of a pile of crap even with a hangover that rendered her practically blind. She was a marvel and she was on my side. She helped me find an armful of pieces—a soft cotton top here, a pair of pleated 1980s shorts there. I left with two tops, the shorts, a T-shirt, and a pair of pants, all for fifty euros, and felt very pleased with myself. No more cringing around town looking like a tourist; I could now waft through the piazzas in my linen palazzo pants, stay cool, and look stylish. Antonella’s last act was to take pity on my feet. “Are you on the beach?” she said pointedly, arching a brow at my flip-flops. So I let her steer me toward a pair of old Chanel ballet pumps, beige, with a half-moon of black at the tip. “Vintage, darling, not old,” she corrected me. “Sandals are not a good idea in the city for so many reasons. Florence is dirty, cara, there is dog poo everywhere, so closed shoes are best for the day. You can show off your pedicure at the beach.”

  “I’m not going to the beach.” I sighed. “I’m British, we don’t do that. We work in August.”

  “I know, I know. But anyway, wear your pretty sandals at night, when some handsome guy is driving you aro
und.”

  “I will never date again, Antonella. Especially not an Italian man! No more lifts in Audis. From now on I have to walk everywhere by myself, so I suppose the pumps are practical…”

  Walking home later, thrilled with my purchases, it struck me that Antonella had expertly nudged me out of my casual dressing habits and shared her jealously guarded vintage dealer, outfitting me for the summer at a fraction of the sum I would have spent on a pair of shoes in my former life. She had made me recall the sight of filthy feet in flip-flops on the Tube in London in the summer, giving me the gift of elegance, teaching me how to take pride in my appearance, whatever my budget or my mood. I had never seen Antonella out without her red lipstick on and I decided to try harder. I had been given a valuable lesson in la bella figura.

  * * *

  As August set in, the city emptied in anticipation of Ferragosto—the holiday that takes place on the fifteenth, which marks the feast of the Assumption, and was also, from everything I had been told, simply the summer’s most important event. Everything closed down as people fled to il mare. I found myself stranded, alone in the city. There was a silence to the days that washed up from the very streets to engulf the apartment. People were away, windows were closed, the hum of traffic was dampened to almost nothing, there were no televisions blaring, no sounds and smells of meals being cooked, pans clattering on stoves, garlic fizzing and filling the air with the aroma of lunch. My neighbors were all away, even the old lady’s windows were shuttered—she too was undoubtedly at the beach. The courtyard was quiet.

  But the loneliness and depression that I dreaded coming with it didn’t arrive. I somehow felt anchored by the emptiness of the city. While my Florence was deserted, the real Florence was boiling with people panting in the hot streets, sunburned flesh spilling out of shorts and T-shirts. Even the market at Sant’Ambrogio had closed, so I kept to my neighborhood, circling ever closer to home, doing my thrice-weekly grocery shops at the little fruit and vegetable market in the Piazza Santo Spirito, which lay beyond the Ponte Vecchio on my side of the river. I walked there early in the mornings to buy fresh white peaches and fat juicy mulberries before the sun got too hot. I snacked on the delicious fruit from Tuscan orchards: yellow and black plums oozing juice, blushing apricots, big dark cherries, and several varieties of aromatic melon when I had the energy to carry one home.

  I made salads designed to beat the heat, my favorite the fresh and aromatic panzanella, which used that staple of Tuscan cucina povera—stale bread. I loved the act of making this dish and it kept well in the fridge, even more tasty the next day. I also spiced up my usual tricolore with dollops of cooked, cold farro—the ancient Italian grain that had fed the Roman army. Similar to spelt but more correctly called emmer, farro is a hulled wheat that predates spelt all the way back to early civilization. My adventures in the kitchen were, perhaps, a small step for mankind but, for me, a quantum leap of culinary confidence.

  Most places were shut, but there were still some locals around—the local expats. Characters whose shadows had layered the days rose up out of the background to haunt San Niccolò in August, and I found myself shuffling down the street with Old Roberto, who was talking to me again now that Dino was forgotten. I discussed the day’s headlines with a French artist who had a studio on the corner opposite the church. In the cool of the evening, he sat with his wife and baby outside the wine bar at that rose-tinted hour when we leftovers of San Niccolò drifted onto the street. Before long a mass of residents gathered, a mix of artists and layabouts. I met Tommaso, a painter who was once visited in a dream by Michelangelo’s David and now painted nothing else. There was Donald, an ancient American who spent his days in his artist’s studio outside the gate drinking, tottering over to us on unsteady legs in the gloaming. There was even a clown, Francesca from Naples, who had fiery red hair and the loudest voice I had ever heard.

  I joined this group in the evenings, drinking a glass of wine, the temperature finally bearable after the glaring heat of the day. Often a light breeze brushed past the tall saffron and mustard walls of the overhanging palazzi, bringing with it the scent of jasmine and sewers, the unique odor of Florence in deep summer.

  As it grew cooler, I moved on from the bar and headed up into the hills for my evening walk. I had joined the rank of residents of San Niccolò, was a character glanced at by tourists in envy—the girl with the laptop outside Rifrullo, the one who got to live here, drink wine on the street. I liked this feeling of camaraderie, a silent bonding over our mutual obligation to whatever kept us here: poverty, work commitments, laziness. We spent our days hidden inside our apartments, studios, or workshops, avoiding the heat, our shutters closed against the insolent sun. With its dip in the sky, we headed out and created our own living tableau on the street.

  With Luigo’s closed, Beppe gone, and Cibreo shuttered up for the month, there were no daytime distractions and I was immersed in my writing, the deep quiet adding to my mood of quiet concentration. In the silent city, my world had reduced to the view from my window, and the Iranian revolution that was unfolding on the screen of my laptop.

  * * *

  —

  My summertime reverie came to an abrupt end when an email crashed into my day. My past life had come back to get me. It was from a former colleague now working for a rival publisher—no August by the sea for London’s workers—and she wrote brightly of a new magazine launch, of all the market research and optimistic forecasts for its success, of ABCs and profit projections. It was an ill-disguised job offer. Would I, she wanted to know, be interested in having a meeting to find out more?

  Would I? I wondered. My first instinct was to protect this creative space that I was in. But I could not avoid the fact that I had not earned a proper salary all year and would at some point have to address my need for an income. I wasn’t ready to leave yet, but it felt irresponsible not even to look into potential job options. At least I had something to look forward to before I left.

  I had a commission to review a hotel in the countryside deep in the south of Tuscany, half an hour away from the beach, in the Maremma. After so much promise of il mare, I decided that I would hire a car and take myself to the beach on my way back to London.

  A couple of hours of gliding along the motorway and I was on the beach. It was windswept, scattered with driftwood; the air was soft with sea spray. At last I felt the sand under my feet. I floated on the warm sea, thinking of all the men who had promised to take me to il mare—that mythical place in the Italian imagination—and how they had all failed me. The peacock Beppe was not to be counted on, the Pizza Boy had been too stingy, and the biggest liar of all, Dino, I no longer cared enough about to speculate.

  The Italian summer had not quite lived up to my expectations, but here I was, on the shimmering Tuscan coast, on a wild stretch of hidden beach with no umbrellas or sun loungers in sight, and I was content to be alone. I felt entirely self-contained.

  At the end of the afternoon, salty and relaxed, I drove through fields of sunflowers, their faces turned up to the sun, across the south of Tuscany to find the medieval castle-turned-hotel that I was to write about. Its stone ramparts rose up from a garden dotted with thick bushes of lavender and rosemary, terraces built into the hills, canopied by vines. Birdsong filled the air. A receptionist came out of the stone castle and greeted me, taking my bag and leading me to my suite across a courtyard scattered with metal tables and flower-embroidered canopies.

  I was back in the world I had known so well, of high-octane luxury and opulence.

  The grounds roamed over the dramatic slopes of the Maremman hillscape. There was an infinity pool perched on a cliff overlooking the valley, full of bursts of yellow Mediterranean broom with their attendant scent, and, after dropping my bags into a suite the same size as the whole of my apartment in Florence, I jumped into the water for a sunset swim, watching the huge sky turn orange around me. I breathed it all in, the grand Tuscan sky, the humming valleys below, the scent of
lavender, broom, and jasmine on the breeze, wishing I could take it back to London with me.

  A voice interrupted me. I turned around to see a short man in tweeds, his gray hair curling back from his forehead. He introduced himself as Carlo, the owner of the castle, and he invited me to join him and his wife for dinner on the terrace. An hour later, I peeled myself off the canopied four-poster bed where I lay sprawled and went into the courtyard, which was now lit by flaming torches, a table set under an awning of vines, where Carlo sat waiting. “Ah,” he said as I approached. “Come and try this.” He plucked a tiny grape from an overhanging bunch. “Is called the uva fragola—the strawberry grape.” He offered it to me. I bit into the grape, which did indeed have a hint of strawberry, and as Carlo chatted, something about his manner niggled me. He reminded me of someone. Then his wife, Aurelia, appeared. Small and with bones as fine as a bird’s, Aurelia was every inch the elegant chatelaine in an understated linen suit, a steel-gray bob, and generous smile. She was bearing a silver tray with three long flutes of champagne, greeting me warmly in excellent English. We sat down to eat, the table laden with produce from their garden, their vineyards, their herd of Chianina cows.

  Throughout dinner, I was taken again by the way Carlo spoke, the things he said, his turns of phrase—so much about him seemed familiar. As the evening progressed, I racked my brain until it hit me: it was Dino. Other than physically, they were almost exactly the same. I was fascinated: the way Carlo delivered a line, his outlandish pronouncements, his humor, the toss of the head. As Aurelia talked, I was silently grappling with the possibility that so much of what I had found charming in Dino—the characteristics that I thought uniquely his—had been merely a Florentine archetype, and I had been too innocent to spot it. I was a foreigner here, and without understanding Florence and the language I had been fair game.