Amore and Amaretti (31 page)

Non si può cavar sangue da una rapa

You can't get blood out of a stone

The days of my unstructured holiday fill quickly, most of them involving reunions. But I miss those I can no longer meet, the friends whose deaths I heard about over the years (the magnificent Emba and her son Maurizio, Vincenzo Sabatini, Ignazio's mother, and Annamaria, most tragically, of a heart attack, far too young) and those whose lives have led them elsewhere. I meet with Ignazio's sister Pamela, and over coffee in an Irish pub I tell her about my life in a fashionable seaside town, my job at the newspaper, the man I love and the cooking classes I teach. She tells me about Ignazio, about the woman he hooked up with and never married, but with whom he attempted an ordinary family life when the baby girl was born; about the restaurant he set up with a friend, the financial struggles, the gambling, his open-heartedness, which resulted in hordes of friends turning up most evenings to eat and drink away the profits, and the ultimate betrayal by the so-called friend leading to the final fizzing failure. Now Ignazio is alone in a farmhouse at Figline with weekly access to the daughter he loves more than anything else in the world.

We marvel at the shame and the waste of it all, then head off to the markets to browse through stalls where I find the pink floral jacket I have been searching for all week – every woman, it seems, is wearing a floral jacket – and to end up drinking wine together at a little bar near the station before my bus back home. I wrap my arms around her, this sweet lively girl, my somehow sister-in-law, and before I step onto the bus we promise to send each other emails.

Another morning, Leo, one of Gianfranco's friends, picks me up from outside the villa to whisk me off for lunch. His Mexican wife Maria has been so long in Italy now that she seems more Italian than Mexican. She serves us home-made tagliatelle in a creamy smoked salmon sauce, then large bowls of
seppie in inzimino
, fleshy rings of tender calamari in garlicky spinach, into which we dip crunchy oily
fettunta
. Leo brings a cut-glass decanter of amber liquid, which he splashes into tiny glasses. ‘Just sip it slowly,' he says, twinkling at me. I do, and my mouth nearly explodes with the heat of a hundred hot chillies, while he and Maria look on, laugh, and proceed to relate stories about the various guests they have shocked with Leo's home-made chilli-infused grappa.

Cinzia, who seemed so keen that we spend at least one evening together that first day she picked me up from the airport, has already changed our appointment several times. It appears that, not only is she the world's busiest woman, but that there may also be a man involved. We finally arrange that I catch the bus to Spedaluzzo several days before leaving Tuscany; she will drive me back to San Casciano afterwards. I am eager to revisit La Cantinetta – firstly for nostalgia, and secondly to see how she has changed it.

All the conversations since arriving have presented different versions of what happened between Cinzia and Gianfranco, the downfall of their partnership, the demise of a once-successful and popular restaurant, so I am unable to believe any one. Each version seems more a reflection of loyalty to one party or the other; knowing both Cinzia and Gianfranco, I find it impossible to see guiltlessness at all and instead feel, privately, that they both may have got what they deserved.

The bus trip past the lush Ugolino golf course and threading through the little villages is all so well-worn that the sharp stabs of nostalgia I expect do not come; then I get off outside the big old building at Spedaluzzo with a move as slick as instinct and my heart lurches in recognition.

From outside all appears as before, and then I move through the heavy wrought-iron gates and crunch across the gravelly forecourt that leads to the outdoor dining areas and turn left into the kitchen.

There is Cinzia, grinning at me from a table of customers she is serving, her arms clutching big menus, and then wobbling to greet me on high wedge heels. She assures me lunch is nearly over and she will be able to sit with me soon – meanwhile, I must meet her kitchen staff.

And so I am ushered into the building and through to a kitchen so much smaller and darker than I remembered that I am briefly thrown out. Did we really manage all those communions and weddings and boisterous summer groups from that tiny space? Cinzia had told me, breathlessly, how well they work together now that it is just women (
‘solo donne!'
). And yet I am remembering the dynamic there used to be between Gianfranco and me, then Alvaro and me, between the three of us, and recognise retrospectively a uniqueness we possessed as a kitchen team, in spite of all the tensions, tempers and the tantrums, the heavy drinking and the private dramas – or even because of all of these.

Back outside is the little covered area like a greenhouse that I always loved, although a brick fireplace has replaced what used to be Ignazio's bar, sealing off the ghosts of swirling wide-hipped Brazilian girls, that joyous music and molten energy. The upper area is as lovely as ever; there are only two tables in the sun, occupied by late lunchers. Then there is the cabana-style section further up where we used to park the trolley mid-centre, the showpiece for our artistically arranged prosciuttos and whole pecorinos and breads and baked ricottas studded with rocket and my beautiful desserts and straw-wrapped flasks of Chianti. The area next to that, however – which all summer used to pulsate with buzzy crowds of bronzed partying customers – now has an air of neglect, the paint peeling off the wooden tables, the chairs upturned.

Glass of wine in hand, I am studying the menu while Cinzia bustles around
gathering empty bottles. The menu is mostly how I remember it, retaining many of Gianfranco's signature dishes. There are now, however, English translations and Cinzia's are highly amusing.

‘Do you want me to correct this?' I call out at one point, referring to ‘in the house-made virgin olive oil, pickles, and Antishocks'. Gianfranco's
tagliate
are still featured: simply grilled, sublimely flavoured
Chianina
beef served sliced on the diagonal and adorned with assorted toppings – but there was never a
tagliata esotica
described as ‘Sliced Deboned Steak with Avocado and Goat's Cheese'. Here is Cinzia at my elbow telling me how popular with the
stranieri
the restaurant has become, when I would have thought that success with Florentines would have been preferable.

She has brought me a slice of ‘cannamon cake' made by a woman she knows. When I look blank, she says it is made with
‘cannella'
. ‘Oh! It's a cinnamon cake,' I correct her, then am surprised by how lovely it is, moist and cinnamony with thick cream on the top and in the middle, but I only eat a little of it, because I am being taken out to dinner later by Ignazio.

Cinzia never manages to settle down with me, being the super mamma she is; running a restaurant and looking after her son means that she is constantly moving. We are to go to pick up Tonino now from school. She is stepping out of one pair of trousers and into another and telling me about the man she is seeing. I wonder if she is making too much about the timing here, ensuring that I am aware that her affair began respectably beyond the break-up with Gianfranco. I am beset with a sense of not knowing what is truth, or whom to believe. I just listen, and respond sympathetically, and then we drive off in her unwieldy four-wheel drive.

Seeing Tonino brings a blend of shock and sadness. No one has prepared me for how fat he is. He is hanging around an emptied classroom when we arrive, and then flops against his mother, resentfully. I am overly bright to him when introduced, but he seems bored, restless, unimpressed by my exotic Australian-ness and I stifle my dislike. This is Gianfranco's baby! This is the fruit of his union with Cinzia, and I am vainly, surreptitiously, trying to find his father in all that fleshiness, those flinty narrow eyes. I sit back in the car and allow the conversation to flow around me, Cinzia softening Tonino's petulance with her musical voice, as caressing as a lover's.

When we reach San Casciano, she has caved in to his insistence that they go and visit papa. We park the car and proceed on foot, stopping at a greengrocer to buy cherries. I suddenly want to have a photo of Tonino holding the cherries and ask him to pose for me. He stands stiffly at attention, obedient and trusting, yellow T-shirt taut over his chubbiness, his smile a joyless, obliging curve. I feel such a rush of love and sadness I can hardly bear it – I want to run over to him and crush him to me and tell him what a magnificent father he has and how everything will be alright. Cinzia is bustling us on.

When we arrive at Gianfranco's apartment, I have a moment of fear. He is not expecting this visit – how will he react? I imagine him asleep, mid-afternoon television turned low in his bedroom. Then we are in the cool building and he is standing at the front door in his dressing gown ushering in Tonino with exclamations of pleasure. Cinzia hovers uncertainly. I step inside, feeling obscurely embarrassed. And then there is Nadia stepping out of Gianfranco's bedroom clutching her cigarettes and lighter and looking shy and sheepish. In the sanctuary of my room I hear Gianfranco introduce her to his son and, later, on my way out, I glimpse the three of them on his bed with the television on too loudly.

Mangiare senza bere è come il tuono senza pioggia

Eating without drinking is like thunder without rain

My days are running out. I feel I have barely seen, rarely spoken properly, with Gianfranco. The very expensive bottle of Chianti he showed me the day I arrived, with the promise that we would get gloriously drunk on it together, is still on its shelf in the kitchen of his apartment, alongside the white wine I brought him from Australia. We had that drive into the Metro and the conversation about the Italian dinner parties that I should start holding upon my return to Australia to rescue me from debt, but we have not stood side by side in the restaurant's cavernous kitchen while he has cooked and explained, and I have learned.

There were times I was reminded of the precious quality of the man. Gushing to him about how beautifully everything is done in Italy, I became aware that he was smiling at me.

‘It is vanity,' he explained. ‘It's because Italians are so vain that they seek to do everything as perfectly as possible – it is impelled by vanity.'

During our regular lunches at Nello, I have had more time and conversation with Paolo and Silvana. I recognise how busy Gianfranco is and how much he has on his mind, but I see, too, that it is because of Nadia that there has been no time for me. He stands impatiently in the hallway in the mornings waiting for her to emerge from a bathroom she has strewn with a surprisingly large assortment of cosmetics and creams. I think, ‘How brave of you, Nadia,' remembering how conscious I was, years ago, to intrude as little as possible on Gianfranco's life, to behave irreproachably, neatly, beautifully. Her tiny G-strings flutter from the clothesline on the balcony, her footwear lines up alongside her lover's. One day I notice that the bathroom has been scoured, scrubbed and disinfected, and I recognise the work of a woman.