Summer in the Islands: An Italian Odyssey

by Matthew Fort

  I’m staying in the Hotel Gran Duca, overlooking the port. I’d assumed that the Gran Duca referred to a Gran Duca of Tuscany or Pisa or another of Livorno’s former aristocratic overlords, but I’m wrong. A plaque on the wall of the hotel is dedicated to ‘Roberto Dudley, Duca di Nortumbria, insigne nella scienza del mare e riordinatore del Porto di Livorno’ (Robert Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, eminent in the science of the sea and co-ordinator of the Port of Livorno).

  Unlikely as this seems, it’s no more unlikely than the rest of Dudley’s life. He was the bastard son of Queen Elizabeth I’s favourite, the Earl of Leicester and his lover, Douglas, Baroness Sheffield, the daughter of William Howard, First Baron of Effingham. (Douglas may seem an odd name for a woman these days, nevertheless it was hers.) Born in 1574, Dudley lived a rumbustious life, leading expeditions to capture Spanish merchantmen in the West Indies and taking part in the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.

  Although a bastard, he laid claim to the peerages of Leicester and Warwick. His claim was dismissed, and England became a bit hot for him as a result. He headed off to Italy with his consort and cousin, Elizabeth Southwell, disguised as his page. Converting to Catholicism, he married Elizabeth. He had to gain a special dispensation from the Pope to do so, as they were blood relatives, and marriage between blood relatives was generally discouraged in those days, as it is in ours. He went to work for Ferdinand, Grand Duke of Tuscany, designing an arsenal for him, harbour fortifications, a palace, galleys and the breakwater at Livorno. He died in 1649 at the age of seventy-five, his life having reflected a time when buccaneering daring and dash characterised the English.

  Livorno seems to have had a strong attraction for the English. Nelson and Emma Hamilton entertained here. Sir Joshua Reynolds and Inigo Jones both stopped off at Livorno. Byron and Percy Shelley rented houses briefly, and Shelley drowned while sailing his boat, the Don Juan, from Livorno to Lerici on the other side of the Gulf of La Spezia in 1822. Some twenty years later Robert Stephenson built the railway line from Pisa to Livorno that opened in 1844.

  The most celebrated Englishman to have ended his days in Livorno was Tobias Smollett. He died of an ‘intestinal disorder’ here in 1771. Like Dudley, he had lived a rich and varied life. He trained as a doctor, but had the good fortune and good sense to marry a rich heiress, and so became a literary gentleman rather than a medical man. Few people read The Adventures of Roderick Random, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle or The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker these days, but these early novels were best sellers in their day.

  I look on Smollett the man rather more kindly than Smollett the novelist. Too many dreary hours ploughing through the picaresque adventures of the likes of Humphrey Clinker and Fielding’s Adventures of Tom Jones during my years of education rather blunted my pleasure in his prose.

  But there’s a delightful portrait of him by an unknown artist in the National Portrait Gallery in London, that shows a wistful humour in his eyes, a certain melancholy sweetness of expression and a nose of unusual length. He was a man with a kindly and liberal disposition, by all accounts. With the help of his friend and great champion of all manner of liberties, John Wilkes, Smollett rescued Francis Barber, Samuel Johnson’s black servant, from the press gang. Curiously, Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was a distant relative of Wilkes, one of those random associations that make history so entertaining. John Wilkes (not John Wilkes Booth) outlived his friend by many years, and was buried with full honours in the Grosvenor Chapel in South Audley Street, London.

  Smollett’s grave lies in the Old Protestant Cemetery in Livorno, tucked away off the via Ingegner Guido Donegani, itself tucked away off the via Giuseppe Verdi. Guido Donegani was a prominent local businessman, an enthusiastic fascist and supporter of Mussolini. However, he obviously lacked political judgement. He managed to get himself arrested by the Germans for siding with the British, and by the British for siding with the Germans.

  Sadly, the gates to the cemetery are locked and chained to prevent any would-be visitor from wandering in. It’s an unloved, neglected spot, but neither melancholy nor desolate. Through the wrought-iron gates I make out the forms of stone chalices, columns, urns, angels, pillars and pinnacles marking the graves, the splendid monuments of former times, shimmering as if underwater. Untended, it’s become an unofficial nature reserve, shaded by that most English of shrubs, elderflower, as well as lanky oleander, cypress, and elms planted by American sailors in memory of loved ones buried here.

  It’s full of flickering and dancing shadows and bird song. For a moment I think of scaling the gate, but come to the conclusion that I’m no longer of an age or a fitness for such activity. And I’m not certain that, having got in, I could get out again.

  As I turn away, I hear the deep cadences of bass voices coming from an impressive, neo-classical church on the other side of the road. It sounds very much like a Russian Orthodox choir. Is it possible that there’s a service of some kind at this hour of the afternoon? I wander in. Sets of icons glitter in the gloomy interior; a few elderly women, with their heads bound up in scarfs like babushkas, gossip quietly. But there’s no choir. Those splendid deep bass male voices are recorded. How churches benefit from the improvements in recording technology, I think, but I feel cheated, and irritated with myself for being such a simpleton.

  As I come out, a Muslim woman in a burqa passes by pushing a baby buggy with one hand and holding the hand of another child with the other. Within a few minutes and a few paces there’s been a conjunction of Protestantism, Russian Orthodoxy and Islam, a reminder of Livorno’s long tradition of religious tolerance. The Protestant rebels Martin Luther and John Calvin, the rabbinical scholar Samuel Uziel and the financier and philanthropist Moses Haim Montefiore all found refuge in this Catholic city. It comes as no surprise to discover that the Italian Communist Party was founded in Livorno in 1921.

  My favourite place to eat is a stand on the corner of the promenade and a bridge over a canal between two quays almost opposite the Hotel Gran Duca. The dishes of the day – ribollita, trippa alla fiorentina, fritto misto Modi (an unexpected reference to the painter, Amedeo Modigliani, a native of Livorno), stracotto di guanciale – are roughly scribbled on a board beside it. Copious helpings are ladled into baps and handed out for immediate eating. The stracotto di guanciale is a rollicking, refulgent stew of cured pig’s cheek in booming tomato sauce, that I eat leaning over the parapet of the bridge. Any bits or bobs that don’t quite make it into my mouth fall into the water below and are scooped up by waiting gulls.

  If only all the food was as unpretentious and full-hearted as this. Too many Livornese chefs have discovered oversized plates, the kind that were fashionable in Britain a few years ago, and have adopted them with ill-considered enthusiasm. The problem with big plates is that they take a lot of filling up. Having plonked the main elements of the dish on a plate with the circumference of a hot air balloon, the chefs feel compelled to occupy the rest of the space with irrelevancies. One night in an all-white wood-and-shiny-surfaces newfangled trattoria down by the harbour I order mozzarella con gamberi crudi, out of curiosity. It turns out to be a tump of layers of mozzarella and raw prawns, with a lot of pointless chopped parsley deckling the rim of the vast plate. I haven’t seen anything like it in a restaurant in the UK since about 1990. It’s as pointless as it’s horrible.

  When restaurants stick to the classic, homelier dishes – gnocchetti con scampi, fritto misto, cacciucco, the great, blockbuster Livornese fish stew, baccalà con crema di ceci, cozze ripiene – I eat as I always want to eat in Italy, marvelling at the quality of the ingredients and the absolute assurance with which they’re treated. This isn’t food for messing about with. It’s food for pleasure, pure and simple. Pasta and pulses are employed as heavy artillery, with sharply focused flavours enfilading on the back of them, and the occasional use of chilli for low-key explosive effect. It isn’t subtle or clever, but it’s mightily satisfying. And I become addicted
to ponce alla livornese (also known as torpedine or bomba), that sharp combination of coffee and digestif, combining one part espresso, one part rum and a strip of lemon peel that, according to local legend, came about as a result of a Saracen felucca arriving at the port in 1614 stacked with coffee and barrels of rum. All of which seems unlikely to me, and some authorities suggest that it’s actually a Mediterranean variant of the British punch or grog. Hmm.

  Gorgona

  It’s 8.30 a.m. On the dock outside the barracks of the Polizia Penitenziaria, four grey, high-speed boats, as sleek as greyhounds, bob along the quay in sociable unison. Ten or so other people are hanging around, like me, chatting and smoking, waiting to be told which of the boats will be taking us to Gorgona.

  Once Gorgona had been a refuge for monks and anchorites. Now it houses a prison. Is there a natural empathy between the asceticism of a religious calling and the enforced austerity of prison life? Italian authorities have used the islands as convenient dumping grounds for the country’s criminals and political undesirables for millennia. The Roman emperors moved any unwanted figures, including members of their own families, to various islands. Mussolini deported his political enemies to them. And more recent Italian governments have turned some of the islands into fortresses – super-maxi prisons – to house the most dangerous Mafia bosses and terrorists. Gorgona doesn’t have that kind of elite these days. Now it’s more run-of-the-mill murderers, minor league drug barons and dealers, con men and armed robbers. One boat a week brings the curious tourists to the island, but I’ve managed to wangle a ride on the Polizia Penitenziaria ferry.

  Promptly at 9 a.m. we ease away from the quay, wake bubbling, out under the towering cliff of a cruise liner, past the protective arm of the outer breakwater, into clear water, the engines opening up, planing the crests, rocking from side to side. Almost immediately one of the ladies is sick and spends most of the journey with her eyes shut and her mouth pressed to a bag, with laughing sympathy from her friends. It turns out that they’re all relatives of the warders.

  Suddenly there’s Gorgona, a smudge, a shape, a 3-D isosceles triangle rising abruptly from the sea. The precision of its shape is blurred by trees around the slopes. Little by little it takes on greater definition: the seventeenth-century Medici castle keep jutting out from a cliff; the silhouette of the old abbey on the apex of the triangle; the village of Gorgona shovelled up a V-shaped incline from the small harbour; the sides of the hills around crowding in, groups of drab, utilitarian prison buildings sprawling over them. We swing within the arc of the port, slow, subside to a halt. Shouting, ropes thrown and caught and whipped smartly around bollards to hold us steady while we disembark.

  ‘Would you like a coffee?’ asks Commissario Mario Salzano as we walk up the steep, winding lane running from the tiny harbour to the Terrazza Belvedere. The commissario is wearing a natty blue uniform, baggy with pouches and pockets, a pale blue beret and impenetrable dark glasses. He leads me into a cavernous room that serves as a bar, shop and recreation area for the warders.

  I explain that I’m curious how this multi-functional island – prison, farm, nature and marine reserve – works.

  ‘There’re about eighty prisoners here, serious criminals,’ explains the commissario. ‘Murderers, gangsters, drug barons. They come here towards the end of their sentences, and if they’ve behaved well. The great problem in prison is boredom. Prisons are boring places to be. And if prisoners are bored, they make trouble. The more active the prisoners, the better. Here on Gorgona we’re unique in Italy. Here they’re active. They look after the animals, grow the vegetables, prepare the food, bake the bread. It gives them some experience of normality. They even learn a skill they can use when they go back into society.’

  He takes me to the bakery first, where two well-floured prisoners are sorting out the day’s batch ready for the oven. That comforting, homely smell of fresh-baked bread is the same on Gorgona as it is anywhere. It’s difficult to remember that this is a prison.

  Accompanied by a small posse of colleagues we make our way up the hill to a building that houses a kitchen with good quality domestic equipment. A prisoner is preparing lunch for twenty people – slices of mortadella and cheese; pasta with freshly made pesto; and then hamburgers from freshly minced veal. It looks pretty appetising; plain perhaps, but good and fresh, and largely made from ingredients produced by the farm.

  The cook’s a chatty fellow from Naples, small-framed, sinuous, charming, bright-eyed as a ferret. It seems rude to ask what he’s inside for. Instead, I ask him if he’d been interested in cooking before?

  No, he says, he’d never cooked before coming to Gorgona. Other people always cooked for him. His granny, his mother, his aunts. His mother was a very good cook. But now he’s happy cooking for others. He laughs.

  It’s difficult to resist his energy and charm. Manipulating people is part of his armoury. He crinkles his eyes, but their quick, wary expression never changes.

  Some years ago I spent several illuminating days in the kitchens of Pentonville Prison. It was clear that preparing and serving food was more than simply an activity. It was a form of communication and an instrument of power. Whether a prisoner had a choice of dishes and whether his food was warm depended on which floor and which wing was served first.

  Of course food is important, says the cook, in the outside world, and here. In Naples food’s a religion. Ah, taralli! And sfogliatelle! And coffee’s a cult.

  He shows me the menu for the season – sgombro alla fiorentina, spaghetti alla campagnola, scaloppine di bovino, trenette al pesto, frittata alle erbette. The dishes on Gorgona are a far cry from the carb-heavy meals at Pentonville, although I suspect the part they play in prison politics isn’t much different.

  As we make our way further up the incline of the natural amphitheatre over which the prison sprawls, the commissario points out various sections of the farm. The place has an air of normality, and yet, beneath the placid outward appearance lie all the disciplines, restrictions and tensions of a penal institution.

  ‘What about the wine you produce here?’ I ask. I’d read that the prison had recently extended its rehabilitation activities to include vine growing and wine production in conjunction with the well-respected brand, Marchesi di Frescobaldi. This intrigued me because the Pentonville warders used to dread the disappearance of sugar more than anything else. If sugar disappeared in any quantity, it meant that someone was brewing hooch, and hooch meant trouble. ‘Are the prisoners allowed to taste their own produce?’

  He laughs. It’s the same as in England. Alcohol spells trouble. Anyway, he adds, you don’t need grapes or even sugar to make wine. All you need is pasta. Keep cooked pasta in warm water for a few days, and it ferments. This comes as something of a revelation to me. It adds a whole new range of gastronomic possibilities to that staple of the modern kitchen.

  We come to a cluster of pens where pigs lie stretched out on the dusty earth in the sun. Chickens scratch in the dirt nearby. It looks bare and spartan, but these are lucky animals compared to the vast majority in Italy. They’re not exactly free-range, but at least they have fresh air and space to move and lie in. I was once told there were a million pigs in the countryside around Mantua, but I never saw one. They were all indoors. Smelt them, though.

  Beyond the pig and chicken pens is the kitchen garden where two prisoners are tying up tomato plants. One’s Chinese, the other Nigerian, says the commissario.

  I ask him how many nationalities they have at the prison.

  ‘Seven or eight,’ he says. ‘Italians, the Spaniard, Nigerians, Moroccans, Jamaicans, Chinese, a Dutchman.’

  ‘Any English?’ I ask.

  There had been one once, he thinks, but there’re none now.

  Around them are rows of zucchini, artichokes, onions, garlic and lettuce, all in neat ranks. The vegetables are grown from seed, all organic, says the commissario. They work closely with Slow Food, an organisation dedicated to preserving biodiversit
y, the traditional ways of agriculture and old varieties of fruit, vegetables and farm animals. The prisoners responsible for growing food are allowed to sell their produce to each other or to the groups of visitors who come to the island each Sunday in summer.

  Around the corner we come across a man in beekeeping gear. The commissario explains that he’s a repeat offender, a con man. The man takes off his protective veil. He has a serious, intense face beneath a cap of white curls. He breaks off his work to let us taste the products of his charges in his tidy, spotless shed. The rosemary honey – there are seven varieties of rosemary on Gorgona, he says – is pale as a primrose, light and elegant, with the penetrating flavour of the herb. The other honey from cistus, broom and clover is darker, richer and rounder, with a touch of caramel.

  The beekeeper asks the commissario and the other warders if he could have permission to grow extra vegetables on the earth he’s in the process of reclaiming. They’re dubious.

  ‘That’s tricky,’ says the commissario in a reasonable voice. ‘It would upset the other gardeners.’

  The bee-keeper pleads his case. The commissario becomes more intransigent. The beekeeper’s face takes on a mask of stoic resignation. He knows the situation. He’s seen it all before, been through it all before. He understands the power structures better than anyone. He shrugs his shoulders.

  ‘In that case…’

  ‘We’ll ask, of course,’ says one of the warders. They’re decent men. They appreciate his needs, but they know they can’t help him. In the end they’re bound by the tacit collaboration between prisoners and warders that governs life in all prisons, and without which they would be hard to control. Beneath the worthy ambitions of the prison farm, there’s a delicate balance of power and interests, in which the warders are trapped as much as the prisoners.