Amore and Amaretti (14 page)

I watch furtively as he teaches her how to tuck wine-glass stems into the webs of her fingers, to load the dishwasher, to carry hot plates all the way down the soft inner part of her arm. I see myself all those years ago, that pathetic desire to please him and to get it exactly right – and the impossibility of achieving either. He roars and bellows, or else subjects her to his famous ostracism while being warm and good-humoured to the rest of us. Much later on, when trust is established, Cinzia and I are able to build solidarity on this shared suffering.

Tempo, marito e figli vengono come pigli

Weather, husbands and sons come as you take them

In our hideous communal bathroom – hideous and largely left uncleaned – there is a tumbling pile of comics beside the lavatory, an ashtray on a stand, and a bath from which one's nakedness is framed (if one is not careful) by the window overlooking the upper dining level. The washing machine belongs to Gianfranco and Cinzia, and so, once a week, after lunchtime service, I catch a blue SITA bus into Greve with my bag of laundry. In the early months I sit in the café in the central piazza in a shaft of watery sunlight with Amerigo Vespucci's statue straight ahead and colonnades all around, writing endless postcards over a beer. I collect my previous week's laundry from the laundrette and unfailingly feel pleasure at the way a carrier bag of crumpled malodorous sheets, towels and garments is transformed into a parcel resembling a stylish gift.

Down some undistinguished steps in the main piazza one enters the most exquisite bakery, a hole in the wall. There are always queues for the different loaves, rolls and cakes, but I often go in merely to absorb the aromas and visions. Sometimes I return from Greve with a wedge of fresh pecorino wrapped in wax-lined paper as beautifully as my laundry, to share with the others at dinner. A stuffed wild boar grins wickedly at the entrance of Falorni, considered one of the best butchers in Tuscany. German tourists clump around the racks of postcards; I move past them in the direction of the bus stop, clutching my parcel of laundry with the indifference of a local.

Up till the point Gianfranco decides to institute staff meals
before
instead of
after
service – a short-lived experiment – we eat together. The table is set in one of the rarely used end dining rooms until it becomes warm enough outside. We arrive in dribs and drabs, depending on any remaining customers. Gianfranco sits at the head, where his place is marked by a giant beer glass, from which he drinks his equal measures of wine and mineral water. We eat different things, although Cinzia tends to dine on whatever little delicacy Gianfranco has prepared. I slip effortlessly back into the soothing habit of eating the same thing nearly every night – an enormous salad to accompany the bread I love. It saves me thinking.

Occasionally, when he is at his most exuberant and magnanimous, Gianfranco suggests whipping up something for us all, and I eat one of Gianfranco's specials. These are always exquisite, taking the form of his version of beef carpaccio, or pizza dough stretched thin onto a baking tray and then strewn with rosemary, garlic and coarse salt before being cooked quickly, or pasta with eggplant sauce. Or sometimes it is a steak tartare, for which he bends earnestly over the chopping board with his big knife breaking down a piece of the leanest meat into fine mince.

His mood dictates the mood of the table. At his most cheerful, he sweeps us all up into the beam of his humour with witty stories, jokes and comments about customers. But his ill temper sharpens the air with tension, which discourages conversation and hastens the meal to a joyless finish. The main reason why he decides to try out the notion of eating before service – I loathe it from the very beginning, finding that the meal and the two glasses of wine slow me down and dull me at a time when I most want to feel light, alert and empty – is because our late-night meals often tip over into the early hours of the morning, and generally we all drink too much. Grappa somehow finds its way onto our table amongst the debris of napery and breadcrumbs, and the smoking begins in earnest.

One night after service, I come across Vera on the landing that separates the stairs leading down to the restaurant and up to our bedrooms. She has a jacket slung over her arm and holds her handbag. Calmly she tells me about the phone call from the hospital bearing the news that her husband has died. Her daughter is coming to collect her. Gianfranco later describes how she crumpled against him when the phone call came; now she just seems like her sweet and practical self. We all understand that she is to be absent for several days only.

When ten days have passed, Cinzia reluctantly installed in front of the dishwasher, Vera's daughter rings to say that she will no longer be available to work for us. About six weeks later, she and her daughter return to collect her possessions – and this is the last we see of Vera.

We are now in June, with summer gloriously in train, and beginning to be extremely busy. Two enormous Sunday functions – one a communion, the other a wedding – have already taken place, and there are more booked to come. On these days we work through to the night, with maybe half an hour to sit down in the evening before hurling ourselves back into it.

Gianfranco tries out several surly Moroccan travellers, who are unsuccessful dishwashers. He snaps at Cinzia, argues with Ignazio, and is sarcastic towards me. One day I look at Cinzia and see how thin she has become, her face permanently anxious. She loads and unloads the dishwasher in her dreamy, graceful, inefficient way. We are already tired of the heavy hot days that are only just beginning. Privately, I am happy with my apple lattice pies and the tarts. I curl creamy custard into them, and then pile up an abundance of glazed berries.

Gianfranco returns from the Sant'Ambrogio markets in Florence with wooden boxes containing punnets of more types of berries than I ever knew existed. Deeper into the season I will use blackberries gathered from the bushes lining Via Chiantigiana.