The balcony on the other side of the house is just big enough for a couple of chairs. Opening the double doors and sitting on the balcony has a twofold significance: you can see what happens in the street, and you can be seen. Anyone who passes, or indeed anyone on the facing balconies, presumes that you are ready for a chat. It is a wonderful combination – you’re in your house, but still able to partake of the public life outside. Many Italians without balconies sit at their front door to obtain the same effect. Balconies figure largely in Neapolitan love songs, since young girls were not allowed out of the house at night, but could still see and be seen by admirers on the balcony. Shakespeare had it right when he put Juliet on a balcony. This is naturally where we go to watch the processions that form an integral part of the feste. I have become used to seeing the top of San Gerardo’s head, as the saint is carried from his sanctuary down the hill up to the main church for mass and then down again. This is accompanied by a wailing tune with the refrain ‘E viva San Gerardo prottetore’ – ‘Long live St Gerard, our protector’. I have endless videos of these processions, of interest to no one but myself, and most of them have a sea of heads passing below the balcony, among them plenty of upturned smiling faces and accompanying waves to the video camera.
The dining-room in Italian houses is important, often purpose-built. Given their love of food and dining in company, this is not surprising. Our dining-room in Gallinaro is the largest room in the house, its windows and balcony opening on to the same wonderful view of the valley. As a young man, my father found an old cabinet-maker in Fiuggi, aged eighty and nearing retirement. He persuaded him to take on one last commission. The resulting furniture dominates the room – a table that seats up to twelve, a sideboard and a piece for which I know no name; it looks like a sideboard but has cupboards mounted above, integral with it. These three pieces and the chairs are walnut and are heavily and intricately carved. I’ve always liked them and last summer was upset to find that polecats had got into the house during our absence and had decided to have polecat parties in the dining-room. This seemed to involve shredding anything that could be shredded and ripping the stuffing out of all the chairs. More recently they broke into the linen room, where we found the Christmas decorations scattered around the floor as though they had had their Christmas party there. They are not currently my favourite animals, although the Gallinarese smile indulgently whenever they are mentioned. Whatever destruction they cause is excused on the grounds that they are belle.
My father was a large, expansive man who loved food, wine, women and Cuban cigars. When he returned to Italy in 1970 he set about reconstructing the house in earnest. Apart from adding bathrooms and redecorating, his major work was the cantina. A cantina in Italy is a cellar or storeroom for produce and wine. It should be dark, cool and airy. Because our house is built into the side of a hill, the part of the cantina that is under the front of the house was quarried into the tufo, the volcanic rock upon which Gallinaro is built. It is a grey, porous rock that is prone to weep after heavy rains, keeping the cantina humid and cool. The cantina runs the length and width of the house and my father enlarged it further, taking it out under the dining-room to the edge of the garden. It is a monument to his life-style – he created for himself and his friends a place designed for and devoted to parties.
It looks almost like a restaurant. At one end there is a bar, and tables and chairs stand around the sides. At the other end there is a small kitchen with a wood-burning range and an enormous spit and griddle, built from local stone. Two stone-arched doorways lead out into the garden, with the same view as from the terrazza two storeys above. It is a formal garden, paved with marble, with purpose-built jardinières around the sides. Off it is the games room; a sign on the door Reads ‘Siate prudenti, l’importuno è sempre in aguato’ – ‘Beware, ill-fortune is always lurking’.
Because the cantina is such a perfect place for a party, we are forever finding excuses to have one. One of the most memorable was at carnevale, or Mardi Gras, in 1986. It started when some friends called to the house on a Friday afternoon.
‘Come and see the pig,’ they commanded.
I walked with them down to the piazza where a man had a hessian sack. Outraged oinks issued from the sack. A pig in a poke.
‘Feel that,’ said the man, offering the sack to no one in particular.
‘That’s a good 40 kilos, that is,’ he continued, still holding out the sack. No one took hold of it.
I must have looked bewildered, because my friend Graziano took me aside and explained that this was the pig for the party at Carnevale that was to be held in my cantina – they would supply the pig, and I would supply the venue. This was the first I’d heard of it, but it sounded like a good idea, since from Graziano’s description I had to do nothing for this party other than have fun and get drunk. The deal for the pig was done. It would be delivered to me on Tuesday morning, ready for cooking. I was glad I had not established piggy eye-contact with the beast in the bag, since I rarely enjoy looking food in the eye.
True to their word, a gang turned up on Sunday to prepare the cantina for the party. All I had to do was light the fire on Tuesday morning and we would cook the pig on the spit. I had once before cooked a large lamb on a spit, so I felt confident enough about this. The trouble was, I remembered, it had been at a New Year’s Eve party in County Offaly in Ireland, where I had spent the day helping my old friend Vincent Slevin keep the fire going and turning the lamb by hand on a crude spit. It took about eight hours to cook and at eleven o’clock at night the drunken revellers descended like vultures on the roast. By the time the scrum cleared Vincent and myself were left looking at a sheep’s head and skeleton hanging from the spit. Of our labour not a scrap remained. I promised myself that this would not happen again.
Tuesday morning came and I got up early to start the fire. The woodpile included the remains of a lot of old oak barrels, beautifully seasoned and still smelling of wine. I chose these in the hope that the smell of wine would somehow come through the smoke and flavour the meat, the way apple wood does on a barbecue. Taking wood from the woodpile is something to be done with care and in daylight. Apart from all the normal creepy-crawlies that inhabit woodpiles, it is also home to a large number of scorpions – not the vicious 8-centimetre African variety, just the vicious 4-centimetre Italian variety. Try to sweep them up and they charge the brush like battle-crazed commandos, tails stabbing forward. Their sting isn’t fatal, but it does need a doctor.
The spit in the cantina is ingeniously designed and overcomes many of the problems of cooking on an open flame. The fire box is not underneath, but at the back of the hearth, held in place by vertical bars. The spit itself is driven by an electric motor and a home-made collection of bicycle gears and chains, and turns in front of the fire rather than above it. To speed up the cooking you can pull embers out from the fire underneath whatever is turning on the spit. The common problem of dripping fat turning the fire into an inferno is avoided by this arrangement and I would recommend it to anyone.
Manœuvring 27 kilos of pig – it weighed less now it was gutted – on to the crossbar of the spit was no simple task. It is important that the weight should be as well balanced as possible or it turns unevenly, making one part over-cooked and leaving another raw. By eleven o’clock the fire was blazing, the burning oak smelt of wine, and the pig was revolving steadily on the spit. Antonio Trionfo arrived. Trionfo is not his surname but his sobriquet. It is common here for everyone to have a nickname, since it helps distinguish one Antonio from another. I know that the surname would serve equally well, but somehow it is never used. Antonio il Biondo, Anthony the Blond, is a typical example, even though anyone used to northern colouring will see nothing blond about him. Anyway, Antonio Trionfo brought bay leaves, seasoning and olive oil. He also showed me a nifty basting technique. As the pig turned he used a sharp knife to cut the skin diagonally all around the roast. He did this in both directions, so that when he’d finished the
skin appeared to be tiled with diamonds, about three inches square. When he poured the olive oil on to baste the pig, instead of running straight off it followed the diagonal cuts around and around. He stuffed the inside with bay leaves, wild thyme and mountain oregano. We watched mesmerized as our handiwork turned to the accompanying hum of the electric motor.
It is a feature of any party in Italy that the men will help prepare the food, often more than the women. Italian men love to cook, and the ones I know are very good at it. Even those that aren’t are never shy about expressing an opinion. Both the men and the women are critical, not in the sense that they are rude, only that they will comment: ‘Mmm, yes, good, but perhaps a little more salt,’ or, ‘This is an interesting recipe, very tasty, only I’ve always had it with lemons/capers/red peppers before, never like this.’ If you thought you could get away with missing out an ingredient that the local supermarket had run out of, forget it. They’ll spot it at once.
As the day went on the spit’s repetitive sound became a kind of chant that was driving me mad: ‘I’m turning, now I’m turning – I’m turning, now I’m turning,’ over and over again. The only interruptions I had were male visitors, each with a culinary opinion or a herb. By six o’clock the pig had started to look and smell very delicious indeed.
We were expecting about thirty people to show up, but numbers are only the vaguest of guesses in Italy. It could easily have been more, but in the event was less. By eight o’clock there were twenty-five people in the cantina, almost all of whom had brought several litres of wine. The tremendous rivalry between the producers of wine in Gallinaro often finds expression at parties, when they all bring their finest creation to impress the others. One guest, Antonio Little Fish, had brought a 10-litre demijohn of his cabernet sauvignon. I counted 34 litres in all. I looked at the pig, still turning. 27 kilos of pork for twenty-five people. For a moment I had visions of cold pork sandwiches stretching into the weeks ahead. Someone tried a pig’s ear. Being on the outside, they are the first part to cook. It was pronounced excellent. By now the skin of the pig was a golden brown. Encouraged by the success of the ear, we started eating the perfect diamonds of crackling, that had separated slightly, exposing the white fat underneath. Apart from being good to eat, removing these diamonds meant the pork would cook more quickly.
Suddenly there was a commotion. It seemed that no one had thought of bringing bread. Why this should have been a problem given the sheer volume of food on offer was puzzling, but there it was. Someone was dispatched to the bakery and returned with four 2-kilo loaves. It looked to me like waste – surely it would never be eaten? Of course, now I know better. The bread was all eaten, the wine was finished, plus some more that arrived later in the evening, and, as for the pig, it vanished. Only the skull remained, picked clean as though by termites. I have an abiding image of that night of people walking about with huge lumps of pork in their hands. I ate more than I’ve ever eaten in my life, but was still no match for the trenchermen of Gallinaro.
When it is not in use for parties – that is, most of the time – the cantina is a place to go to escape the heat. Because it is almost always kept shut, the air is cool. Sitting there on a summer’s afternoon can be bliss. Sunlight streams in through the cracks around the door frames and between the shutters on the windows. The sun is so strong that even these paper-thin shafts of sun are sufficient to light the cantina. The contrast between the incoming brightness and the cool of the cellar air is remarkable.
Coming to terms with the heat is part of the acclimatization process. It is not just a question of getting your body used to something it never experiences in Ireland’s cool climate, but of learning practical habits that help make the heat bearable. The bedroom windows are only opened in the morning when there is no direct sunlight on them, to air the room. After this they must be shut and the shutters closed. The door, too, must be kept closed so that the hot afternoon air cannot get in. If these habits are not observed, you can end up trying to sleep in a temperature of 30 degrees or more. I find this hard, since once I have cast off the sheet from the bed, there is nothing left to remove. Only a cold shower helps at this point.
Parking the car also needs thought. It’s no use leaving it in shade if in twenty minutes it will be in full sun once more. If no shade is available I cover the gear stick and the steering wheel, so I can at least handle them when I return. A car left in the sun can become amazingly hot. I have kept a cassette tape that was left on the passenger seat as a memento. Both the cassette and its case are hideously warped, as though they had been in an oven.
It is important to organize the day with the heat in mind. This means starting car journeys of any length early in the morning, so that you can arrive before eleven o’clock and find some shade. To be stuck on the ring road around Rome at midday in August must be one of the most distressing things that can happen to anyone. How those Romans who remain there in August handle it is a constant source of wonder to me. The heat structures the day for Italians. This is one of the reasons that shops shut between one o’clock and five o’clock; it is uncomfortable to go about one’s business in the afternoon heat. The other reason is sleep.
During the summer Gallinaro’s social life is like a big party. Everyone knows everyone else and we’re all on holiday. The bar stays open to two or three o’clock in the morning and Smeralda’s, the night club, blares its music till the early hours. Even when they eventually close, revellers still walk the street, laughing and joking noisily. Because Gallinaro is so small, all this revelry happens under the windows of bedrooms, mine included. On those few nights when we are not ourselves in the street contributing to the racket, going to bed early does not result in sleep. Neither does staying in bed in the morning. By seven o’clock Rafaele is starting his tractor, travelling market-traders drive backwards and forwards through the town, their noisy diesels drowned by the nasty squawk of their roof-mounted loud speakers which inform you of what wares they have on offer. I have never yet felt tempted to leap out of bed at seven o’clock in the morning to buy some salted cod.
By half past seven we are privy to all manner of loud conversations taking place under the bedroom window. Long ago I became convinced that most of Gallinaro’s inhabitants were stone deaf, since most conversations are held at the decibel level of a Saturn V take-off and still you hear plenty of ‘Eh?’s sprinkling the dialogue. So if you can’t sleep at night or in the morning, the afternoon becomes the only time. It works because everyone does it. At one o’clock on the dot the bar empties and the only sound in the alleys of Gallinaro is cutlery on crockery. By two o’clock all you can hear is the song of the cicadas. Traditionally this is also the time to make love to your wife or mistress, although one of the problems of living in a town where the streets are so narrow is that other people’s bedrooms are sometimes only a few metres from yours. The last thing you need is someone shouting encouragement to the rhythm of creaking bed-springs.
You can set your watch in Gallinaro either by the church clock, in which case it is always half past ten, or by the movements in the street. After the siesta there is always some movement, but by six o’clock the street is buzzing. The working week for most Italian office workers, including civil servants, is from eight in the morning to two o’clock, six days a week. So, for many people, the time after the siesta is already play-time. Six o’clock is traditionally when the passeggiata starts. There is no English equivalent of this, although promenade comes close. The purpose is not to go anywhere or do anything, it is simply to walk round the piazza seeing and being seen. When society was stricter, this was the only time young people got to talk to one another, under the watchful gaze of a chaperone, of course. The morals may have changed, but the patterns of behaviour haven’t. The hour between six and seven is for the passeggiata. Its purpose is not only for young lovers to meet, but for men to talk business and for women to exchange news. Like the Bar Sinella after Sunday mass, it is a focal point for the day’s social exchange, an
d you can set your watch by its ending. Suddenly at seven o’clock the place is deserted; everyone has gone home to eat. On Sunday the bar is full at quarter to one, the entire village is there, shouting and gesticulating. At one o’clock Sinella clears his tables and gets a chance to sit down and look at the papers. After living in Ireland, where time and space seem to flow seamlessly into one another, this regulation by the clock seems odd. My wife’s reaction is always to defy this timetable, but supermarkets, like time and tide, wait for no one. It’s pointless to go out to buy food after one o’clock. The shops will be shut and that’s the end of it. The only way to survive is to follow the advice of the good Saint Ambrose: when in Rome, follow the Roman rule.
4
Families and Favours
It is only in the past few decades that a semblance of stability has come into Italian life. All through the history of the state apparent order has been overturned on seeming caprices of fate. Italians have always known the importance of bending in the wind, of finding a niche where some kind of order can be established. This is the raison d’être behind the strength of the family unit. This unit, at least, is in the hands of its members. It can be a bastion against antagonistic influences, whether social or economic. It is axiomatic in Italy that you can trust your family, but you can rarely trust anyone else. This, too, has its effect on the fabric of daily life. Until fairly recently Italians always addressed one another as lei, a formal use of the third person singular. We have friends in Rome who, after twenty years in an apartment block, still use lei when addressing their neighbour. It is a means of saying, ‘We are not close.’ For many Italians the step from lei to tu is still a big one. Although only a verbal convention, moving from one to the other expresses a degree of trust which, although outside the family, is hopefully not misplaced.
North of Naples, South of Rome Page 5
