“Marco is pig,” he says.
I see Tom flush red; see the corner of his mouth twitch.
Then Dante leans towards my ear. “I hold like so,” he says. “I talk very quiet,” he whispers in my ear. “and I scratch eye.”
He’s actually scratching my ear. I can see Tom is swelling red about to burst, but personally I’m having trouble seeing the funny side of being a demonstration pig. It’s just not right.
“Then, when pig is very quiet,” Dante says.
In a sudden jerky movement he swipes his hand across my throat and stands triumphantly. “Pig is kill,” Dante says. “Happy, and kill.”
A feeling of outrage starts to sweep over me. Unconsciously I raise a hand to my throat to check I’m not gushing blood, a gesture which sends Tom over the edge. He spasms with repressed laughter. His eyes are sparkling, and starting to tear.
“Form more important than…” Dante says.
I stand. “Erm, grazie mille,” I say, furiously.
Tom is puce. He opens his mouth but fails to speak and so closes it again.
“I have to go get the van ready,” I tell him.
He nods and wipes a tear from his eye. “Five minutes,” he gasps. “I’ll be over.”
“Tom, I don’t like him, and it wasn’t funny,” I insist when Tom finally arrives back at the van. I’m feeling particularly pissy about the idea – no doubt imaginary – that they may have been laughing together at my expense.
Tom is still grinning but trying his best to hide it. “I…” he shakes his head and shrugs. “I’m sorry, I can see why…” His voice peters out.
“Why what?” I whistle.
“Why you lost your sense of humour,” he says. “But you have to admit…” He bites his lip and grins broadly again.
I shake my head. “No Tom,” I say. “I don’t have to admit… And I want to leave now, okay?”
Tom screws up his face and tips his head sideways. “Look, can’t we…”
“Why Tom, I mean, what’s to do? What’s to see? It’s a farm.”
“Just one more night,” he whines. “I like it here. I think it’s interesting.”
I shake my head. “I’m not comfortable. He gives me the creeps.”
Tom shrugs. “I quite like him,” he says. “I think all that stuff about form and substance is interesting,” he says. “He’s quite deep.”
“There’s two of us on this holiday,” I point out.
Tom nods. “Exactly,” he says.
“And the rainbow flag,” I say. “That makes me uncomfortable too.”
Tom frowns at me now. “What do you mean?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know, but I’m not keen on the fact that he’s, well…”
“You don’t like him because he’s gay?” Tom asks, incredulous.
I sigh. “No, it’s not that. But for some reason…”
Tom shakes his head. “I don’t believe I’m hearing this,” he says.
I open my palms. “What?”
“That’s homophobia…”
“It’s noth…”
“It sounds like something Antonio would say,” Tom says peevishly. “It really does.”
I roll my eyes to the sky. “Look Tom, I’m not homophobic, you know that. Come on. This is me here.”
Tom shrugs. “So let’s stay another night and then leave tomorrow. He’s cooking vegetarian specially. He said there’s even an outside bathroom we can use.”
I rub a hand over my eyes. Someone is going to have to give in, and I get the feeling that there it just isn’t going to be Tom.
“Oh Tom…” I protest.
Inexplicably, Tom takes this to be capitulation on my part. He moves to my side and lays an arm across my shoulders. “Thanks,” he says. “It’ll be cool. You’ll see.”
I sigh with the realisation that, though I don’t quite understand how, I have just lost. I smile weakly.
“I’m not eating pig though,” I say.
Tom smiles. “Ve-ge-tari-an,” he says, pedantically.
“And don’t let him slit my throat again, okay?”
Tom sniggers. “Promise,” he says, adding, “Hey, did I ever tell you how gorgeous you are?”
I smile reluctantly and turn so that he can peck my cheek.
“Oh, and Tom,” I say.
He leans back far enough to focus on me. “Yeah?” he asks.
“The philosophical stuff,” I say. “All that stuff about la sostanza and la forma…”
Tom looks puzzled. “Yeah?”
“I worked out the translation.”
Tom raises an eyebrow.
“It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it,” I say.
Tom frowns.
“That’s the English equivalent … It’s not the substance but the form that counts… It means, it ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.”
Tom squints at me. “Oh yeah,” he says thoughtfully. “I suppose it does.”
I nod. “Deep huh?”
*
Dinner with Dante is a surprising affair, a contradictory mixture of understated sophistication and rural minimalism. We eat at a scrubbed kitchen table that could equally be at home in an 1890’s inn or a 2006 edition of Homes and Gardens. The lighting is low – from a single oil lamp suspended above the table – apparently for aesthetic rather than practical reasons – the house seems otherwise normally wired.
Dante himself has scrubbed up beautifully and in a crisp white shirt he looks stunningly tanned. Only his big calloused hands give away the truth of his earthy lifestyle.
The first course, “Pomodori all’italiano,” as Dante describes it, is either the ultimate in less-is-more sophistication, or a minimalist offering from someone who doesn’t know how to cook.
He places unmatched white plates in front of us and then serves us each with a single, large, tomato. In a final flourish he adds a sprig of fresh basil to each plate.
As Dante crosses the room to recover his glass, Tom catches my eye, glances down at his plate, and raises an eyebrow.
It’s as much as I can do not to laugh – he was telling me only minutes ago how starving he is and a tomato clearly isn’t going to do the job.
But once Dante is seated and our glasses have been filled with some very earthy Chianti, what a tomato it turns out to be – a perfumed skin stretched over incredibly succulent flesh.
“Wow!” Tom comments. He’s apparently as shocked as myself by just how much taste a tomato can have. “Molto bene!”
Dante nods and grins broadly. “I not say what I feed plants…” he laughs. “You not like.”
I nod. I’m guessing pig-shit or pig-blood and I have neither the need, nor the desire to know more. “Amazing though,” I say, forking a thick slice towards my mouth. “They taste like tomatoes we had when I was small.”
Tom catches my eye and makes a subtle, slow-down gesture with the flat of his hand. I glance at Dante’s plate and see that he is eating very slowly, so I nibble at my slice and try and make it last.
Dante catches something of our secret communication and grins revealing a mouthful of tomato. His eyes sparkle in the lamplight. “Don’t worry,” he says. “Is more after.”
“Good,” I say. “Very nice… But very hungry.”
Dante smiles back as if this is a good thing to have said, but something about his smile makes me wonder… Something about it strikes me as just a tiny bit forced. I wonder if I am pushing the Pidgin English a little too far.
An awkward silence follows as we try to think of something to say to fill the space while Dante finishes his tomato.
Eventually Tom says, “Oh! Dante, Mark thought of the translation…”
I roll my eyes, embarrassed now at my reduction of Dante’s philosophy to a single song-line.
“La sostanza? La forma…” Tom explains to Dante, whose brow has furrowed.
“In English,” Tom explains, “We say it ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it.�
�
Dante nods thoughtfully, and I sigh in relief that he doesn’t seem to know the song.
“It is not what you do, it is the way that you do it,” Tom expands.
“That what get results,” Dante says.
I grit my teeth.
Tom grins broadly. “Hey, you know it!” he exclaims. He turns to me. “He knows it,” he repeats.
Dante nods, then points vaguely behind him. “I have radio,” he says. “Even in country.”
Tom smiles at me contentedly, and I wonder briefly how on earth he can be here with me, in this moment and yet still be so out of touch.
“But it’s not the result,” Dante says. “Result not importante…” He holds his hands parallel in front of him and wrinkles his face as he tries to think how best to explain himself.
Tom and I smile reassuringly and wait.
“Agh!” Dante gasps. “Frustrante!”
“En Italiano?” Tom prompts.
Dante rattles off a round of Italian and Tom frowns and nods and generally looks engrossed until Dante visibly remembers my presence, and turns to me. “But Mark hungry,” he says, standing. “You eat fast,” he adds. “Bad for…” He rubs his stomach.
“Digestion,” I fill in. “I know.”
“Dante’s saying that it’s not the results that count,” Tom explains, “but the things that happen around it, you know, while you’re moving towards the result.”
“It’s not the destination that counts but the voyage?” I ask, again regretting my one-line reduction.
Tom squints and considers my statement. “Maybe,” he says. “Something like that anyway.”
The next course is as simple as the first – steamed leeks. Or rather steamed leek – one each. Dante drops them onto our plates and then sprinkles them with chopped boiled egg. He hands us a bottle of cloudy olive oil.
Simple food, except that, again, no leek has ever tasted quite like it. “I shake my head in wonder. “This is beautiful Dante,” I tell him. “Truly incredible.”
He nods. “My garden,” he says, pointing at the leeks. “My chicken,” he says pointing at the egg. Then he taps the bottle of olive oil and points vaguely over his shoulder. “Old lady,” he explains.
“Low mileage food,” I say, then realising that there’s no way Dante will understand that, I add, “There’s a movement, a lot of people, who try to buy local food.”
Dante blinks slowly.
“Instead of leeks from Spain, tomatoes from Israel,” Tom explains. “People try and buy local food.”
Dante nods thoughtfully and contemplates this. “So it ain’t what you do,” he says, breaking into a broad grin at his own cleverness. “Is the way you do it.”
I grin and sip at the wine. Suddenly it seems that the evening has loosened up.
“Modern food,” Dante says. “Is like city life.”
I peer at him over my glass and then glance at Tom.
“Everything now,” Dante says. “Modern food is everything on one plate – city life is everything now.” He points at the table. “But one thing, one good thing, and then next good thing,” he says, making a chopping motion with his hand. “Is better. You see?”
Tom and I meander back towards the van. The wind has gone and it’s a balmy summer evening.
“Amazing veg,” I say. “And the wine grew on me too…”
“Wasn’t so keen on the cheese,” Tom says.
I snort at the memory – watching Tom trying to force down Dante’s smelly version of cottage cheese was the funniest part of the evening.
“But he’s right,” I say. “It is great to eat one thing at a time like that.”
“Yeah, he’s incredible really,” Tom says.
I glance at him sideways and frown suspiciously.
“Don’t you think?” he adds.
I raise an eyebrow comically.
“His ideas I mean!” Tom laughs.
I nod exaggeratedly. “He’s cute too though,” I say. “Don’t you think?”
Tom looks away and kicks randomly at the grass. “He’s okay I guess,” he says, “but you have to admit, ideas-wise, he’s kind of a one-off.”
I shrug. “He’s interesting for a country boy,” I say. “But you know, none of it’s exactly earth shattering, not as far as I could understand anyway.”
“That’s my fault really,” Tom says. “I couldn’t always keep up, what with listening and translating and everything.”
“I got most of it,” I say.
“Yeah, I suppose,” Tom says. “I thought it was really interesting when he was saying all that stuff about, you know, how when something bad happens… And you never really know whether it’s good or bad because of all the causes and effects…”
“The ricochets,” I say. “The ripples.”
Tom nods. “Yeah.” He pauses unexpectedly in front of the van. “Stay up with me a bit?” he asks. “I’m really buzzing tonight.”
I nod. “Sure,” I say, pulling the two deck chairs together. “It’s the coffee I guess. That and the full moon.”
Tom looks up at the clear night sky. “It is nearly full too,” he says.
“It’s so dark here,” I comment, sitting down and looking up at the sky. “No streetlights, so you can see all the stars.”
Tom flops into the chair beside me. “So he was saying,” he tells me, “that suppose the car won’t start, and you think that’s a bad thing, because, say, you need to go somewhere urgently.”
I turn sideways and lay my legs across his lap. “But maybe you were going to crash,” I say. “So really it’s a good thing.”
Tom nods gently.
“See, I did understand. It’s like that kids’ game – Good Thing Bad Thing,” I say. “Did you never play that?”
Tom frowns. “Good Thing Bad Thing?” he says.
“Yeah,” I say. “You take it in turns to tell a story. Say I start with, Mr B was walking down the street and a bad thing happened – he tripped over.” Tom frowns so I continue, “And then you say, but a good thing happened because lying there on the floor he saw a ten pound note someone had dropped, and then I say…”
Tom nods in comprehension. “Right,” he interrupts. “Exactly. But what Dante was saying is that that’s why the process, the way you do things is so important … Because all the ricochets, the ripples, come not from what you do but from the way you do it.”
I lay my head against the canvas of the deck chair. It is cool and slightly damp. I look at Tom’s excited face. It’s a while since I saw him this animated, in fact, I’m not sure I have ever seen him like this.
“Wine, full moon, coffee…” I think.
“It’s like the local food thing,” Tom continues. “You can eat a leek from the garden, or a leek from, say, Spain, and one will destroy the environment with transport and pollution…”
I smile and close my eyes, but the image of Tom’s face remains in my mind’s eye. He looks about twenty years old. His voice bubbles on like a brook in springtime. I wonder if he’ll get to sleep at all tonight. I wonder if I’ll get a cuddle.
“And so some things are intrinsically better,” he’s saying. “and without reasoning, or even counting air miles, Dante was saying that we have a built in ability to just know what’s good and what’s bad. That’s why the garden leeks taste better… It’s you tasting that they are better…”
I try to say, “That’s why I try and buy local veg,” but I realise that the comment isn’t pitched at the right level, so in my half-sleep I merely make a mumbling noise instead.
Tom doesn’t pause for a second. “And that, really,” he says, “is the main point Dante was trying to make …”
*
Tom is first up in the morning, and I lie with a pillow over my head, trying to block out the noise of him going through the cupboards. He returns to the bed a little later with Alka-Seltzer and two glasses of water.
“You too then?” I murmur peering up at him.
He winces and nods, an
d hands me a glass. “That wine was well rough,” he says holding out a blue sachet.
I shake my head. “You mix it for me?”
We swallow the bitter mixture and cuddle up, front to back. I rub my nose against his shoulders and drift back to sleep.
It’s nearly twelve when we wake up again, and though I’m still feeling a bit worse for wear, my headache at least has gone.
I snuggle against Tom, and again, almost expectedly this time, he prises himself free and sits on the side of the bed where he begins to dress.
I move across the bed, and reach out to stroke his back. “Tom?” I say. “What’s wrong?”
He yawns theatrically and looks at me with exaggerated bleariness. “Wrong?” he asks.
I nod. “Yeah,” I say, deciding to go straight to the point. “Why aren’t we having any sex?”
“I’ve got a hangover,” Tom says. “I thought you had too.”
He stands and pulls a sweatshirt over his head, then reaches for the door handle. “I’m going to brave the cold shower I think,” he tells me.
“Tom, can you just… Tom!”
He glances back at me. “What?”
“I’m talking to you,” I say.
Tom shakes his head. “You sound like my mother,” he says, pushing out into the daylight.
I roll onto my back and sigh unhappily. Now I feel angry as well as hung-over.
I wait miserably for him to return, until eventually, driven by hunger and the desire for coffee, I give up and fold the bed away. Tom is nowhere to be seen, so I set the table for breakfast at the edge of the trees. I save half of the coffee in the pot for Tom, but when it is merely lukewarm I give up and drink it myself.
The day is almost identical to yesterday – clear blue sky, bright white sunlight that seems to bleach the colour out of everything, and a gentle breeze rustling the tall dry grasses.
I eat dry toast from the packet with some marmalade – the butter has been left out and looks rancid – and open a copy of Gay Times Tom brought with him.
I flick through until I get to a quiz – “How faithful is your lover?” I stare at it and sigh. It would be stupid to deny that there is some attraction between Tom and Dante, it’s plain to see. Hell, even I think Dante is cute, physically… But surely I’m being paranoid?
Good Thing Bad Thing Page 3
