Living in a Foreign Language (13 page)

Meanwhile, I was building a good fire in our fireplace, which, like any good Italian
camino
, is built for cooking—plenty of space on either side of the fire so that when something's finished you can rest it there to keep it warm. It's
also equipped with a grill with an adjustable rack—which we'd use later for the ribs.

Paola called to me from the kitchen to plunge the iron spit into the hottest part of the fire to make sure it was free of any contamination. Then, when it cooled a bit, we speared the chicken, secured it on the
girarrosto
and got it turning in front of the flames. Two hours. Basted with rosemary sprigs dipped in oil.

Now it was time to marinate the cooks. We opened a bottle of Montefalco Rosso, the first of many to flow that night. Montefalco is a hill town a few miles north of us on the Flaminia and is the wine capital of the central part of Umbria. Their most famous wine is Montefalco Sangrantino, which can easily command fifty bucks a bottle back home, but the Rosso, which is a blend, less sophisticated and costs around eight euros a bottle, was more than fine. We toasted to new friends, to fresh starts—and to our chicken, which was slowly releasing its mélange of aromas as it browned over the coals.

The pasta for the evening was a version of spaghetti carbonara—made without the usual eggs, so it was less heavy, more fitting for a late summer evening. Caroline put the water on to boil and cut the strips of pancetta into a quarter-inch dice—the smaller the better. Then she finely diced one small onion and a clove—not a head—of garlic and grated a hefty mound of
parmigiano
. She would wait until the last minute to finish it.

Freddy and Jane, our English buddies, arrived with more bottles of wine for the feast. They had spent the day in Perugia and were filled with stories of what they'd seen. Jane's in public relations and Freddy's a sportswriter who covers boxing matches for a London newspaper. Their dry English wit is an asset to any dinner party. Then Ken, Paola's husband, pulled up and we were under way. Ken is as diffident as Paola is exuberant—a perfect match. But he loosened up considerably with the wine and was soon regaling us, in his distinctive Melbourne accent, with stories of how they met and courted.

Jane, Caroline, Paola, and Jill in the kitchen

Jill and Jane took charge of the setting of the table which, with seven people around it, filled our little kitchen to the limit. Caroline and Paola finished making the salad and the dressing. And the men kept company with the chicken in the other room. When we all agreed it was done perfectly, we put it to rest on a platter and placed the ribs on the grill over the coals.

At that point, Caroline put the spaghetti into the salted
water and started the carbonara. Under Paola's direction, she poured quite a bit more olive oil into the pan than any cookbook has ever authorized—covering the bottom to a depth of a quarter inch. When this got hot, in went the diced onion, then the garlic, then the pancetta—almost a pound of it, finely diced. She browned this all together and stirred the spaghetti, tasting it to see when it was done. When the pasta was just a chew short of al dente she drained it and finished it in the hot oil and bacon. Then the grated
parmigiano
was incorporated; and then a healthy grind or three of fresh pepper over the top—which is, by the way, how carbonara got its name—and it was on the table.

I finished the ribs, cut up the chicken and put all the meat on a platter by the fire to warm for our
secondo
. Then I sat down to join the merry throng around the table, inhaling the carbonara, the wine, the aroma of the meats, the brew of accents and languages that flew around the table and the laughter that somehow made them all comprehensible.

T
HERE'S A STRING
—probably a monofilament of some kind because it can't be seen by the human eye; yet it's durable enough to maintain its strength for a lifetime, and it's long enough to reach across oceans. One end connects to the most delicate and vulnerable part of my reproductive organs and the other end rests comfortably in Jill's hand. And whenever she feels the need, she gives it a smart little tug and gets me to do whatever she wants.

The issue, it seems, was that I had been accelerating my food and wine intake from the day we arrived in Umbria and Jill felt it was her job to hose me down somehow. The food was so seductive, the wines so drinkable, the grappa so stimulating, that any sense of moderation—not a big word in my vocabulary anyway—had vanished into an ever-spreading fog of indulgence. Long lunches—always with a bottle or two of wine—flowed into even longer dinners that ended with a seemingly bottomless jug of grappa. The amazing thing about grappa is that the first whiff of it is quite off-putting. It starts out tasting not unlike a cheap brand of
lighter fluid. But with each succeeding sip the taste improves, until, by the fourth or fifth glass, it's like mother's milk to me.

Often mornings were tinged with regret and remorse, but my memory of pleasure far outweighed the fleeting moments of pain, and I was usually my old, indulgent self by the time I finished my second cup of coffee. And by lunchtime I was up and ready to get the old ball rolling again. Shall it be Fontanelle, with its grilled meats brought to the table on your very own portable hibachi? Or II Pescatore, with its shellfish antipasto of the freshest clams, oysters, mussels, cockles and whelks—some raw, some delicately poached in an herb-scented seafood broth? Fontanelle would be red wine, of course—to go with the meat; and perhaps an Orvieto Classico would slide down perfectly with the seafood at Pescatore. Or should we drive up the mountain to Pettino for the pasta with wild boar sauce?

And then I felt the little tug. Well, not so little, actually. It came in the form of a seemingly innocent inquiry one day after breakfast.

“Do you need the car this morning?” asked Jill.

“No. Why? Where are you going?”

“To the gym.”

“The . . .?”

“The gym. Want to go?”

An icy claw gripped my spine. I faintly remembered hearing this word before. It had a bad connotation, a sinister ring.

“Jimm?” I struggled to place it. “Jimm?” Surely not an Italian word.

“It'll be good. Get your blood flowing again.”

Caroline had put this idea in her head, I'm sure. Caroline, who was off—as she was every morning—riding hundreds of miles up and down hills on her bicycle, staying in top triathlon shape. She tacitly shamed Jill, and now Jill was trying to pass the guilt on to me.

I had no idea there was such a thing as a gym in Italy. It's not really in the Italian character, which was one of the reasons I wanted to emigrate. But apparently Martin and Karen had told Jill about a place up the road from us toward Trevi that had the requisite treadmills, StairMasters and other medieval instruments of torture that make up a gym.
“Palestra”
is the Italian word. I was surprised to hear that they actually had a term for it. There is, for example, no word in the Italian language for hangover.

Jill changed into her exercise outfit, laced up her sneakers and kissed me good-bye.

“I'll see you in an hour or so.” And off she went.

This is the way she works: small, intermittent injections of guilt that slowly work their way into my system to undermine my resolve. But I have fought these battles before and—tug on my testicles or no—I wasn't going down without a fight. This was another of her insidious plots to undermine my fun—like her pasta-only-once-a-day campaign. Can you imagine?

I watched the car bump up the dirt road and turn south toward the Flaminia, and then ran into the kitchen and put on another pot of coffee. Ha! Take that. I would flood my system with caffeine. There's more than one way to get the blood moving.

When she came back, she was all rosy and buff, flaunting her endorphins, trying to make me feel inferior and fat. But I didn't bite. I just said I was glad she had a good time. She smiled. I smiled.

No blood—a Mexican standoff.

After a few futile days of trying to shame me into the gym, she stepped up the game with a two-pronged attack—the old carrot-and-stick routine. On the one hand she implied that our sex life would be better if I worked out, on the other that I would die of a massive heart attack if I didn't. She was closing in for the kill, and I decided I'd better go on the offensive before all was lost.

“This is your problem, honey, not mine, “I told her. “You're going to the gym out of guilt. Life in Italy is just too pleasurable for you and you feel you have to inject some pain into it.”

“Excuse me?”

“It's a gentile thing—that Calvinist, Lutheran crap you guys have foisted on the world. Let's all dedicate ourselves to pain and suffering and if God forbid a little pleasure, a little indulgent fun comes our way, we'll run and hide and pray that the devil won't get us.”

“Are you saying I don't like pleasure?”

I shrugged.

“Didn't I just tell you how good it makes me feel? Is it possible there are other kinds of pleasure than just cramming food and drink down your gullet?”

I decided to stay mute and mope for a while. This can be a very effective form of argument—especially when you have nothing intelligent to say.

Then she went really low—she said she was being serious. Up to this point I'd been enjoying our little fencing match, but now she wanted to get real, to get actual.

“You'll feel better, baby. And you'll live longer.” And a little moisture started to well up in the corners of her beautiful baby blues.

“Aw,” I whined. “Don't do that.”

“Just try it. For me.”

Jesus Christ.

The next day, like a condemned man, I donned my traditional workout uniform that I had worn to the gym in Mill Valley—khaki pants, a golf shirt and an old cashmere sweater with the sleeves rolled up. Going to a gym in California is somehow different. It's a law. Everyone in California is fit and toned and healthy and bronzed, and if you don't buy into that you can get in trouble with the authorities. If you're pasty and fat in California, they take away your driver's license.

Jill in the orto

But Italy's a whole other kind of civilization, an older, wiser culture where the dogged pursuit of perspiration is not mankind's highest goal. It's a philosophical country. One sits at table—yes, there may be a bit of food and drink at hand—and one discourses with colleagues on the many thorny questions of life. Like, perhaps, what one is going to eat at one's next meal, which will be coming up in a few hours.

Like most other businesses in Umbria, the
palestra
in Trevi is a family operation. Marco and his wife, Paola, are the proprietors—both cut like bodybuilders, their faces flashing that expression that says they know they're healthier and more disciplined than you. Their daughter could be seen sitting in the office doing her homework and practicing her smug expression so that one day she could take over.

Jill introduced me to everybody and right away Marco asked me if I wanted to buy a ten-day pass which, he urged, could save me a lot of money in the long run. I tried to explain that I wasn't interested in the long run, that I liked to live for the moment, but Jill jumped right in with the credit card. I felt like my idyllic life in Italy was being hijacked right before my eyes.

In the corner was a spin class in full operation. The teacher, Daniele, was another ridiculously toned guy in a tank top, pedaling away and calling out instructions to his adoring class of housewives.

“Salire!”
he boomed out, and they all shifted their gears to start the climb. Then he got off his bike and walked around giving intimate, individual instructions to the women, who, I must say, were not minding his attention one bit. I'm sure
this kind of flirting takes place in American gyms, but it all seemed so much more obvious in Italy.

Jill drifted over to an elliptical trainer, a seriously dangerous-looking contraption, and I got myself going on a treadmill that was parked in front of the TV. If there's anything more painful than physical exercise, it's Italian TV. Especially daytime TV. As my thighs slowly roused themselves from their weeks of lethargy, I watched a woman, made up like a cheap hooker, constantly bending over for no other reason than to flaunt her rather extraordinary breasts to the camera. It seems she had to choose between three loutish young men to see which one would get to go behind the curtain and have his way with her during the commercial break. She questioned each one in turn, asking them to imagine themselves in situations that were dripping with sexual innuendo, and they outdid one another, leering and preening like peacocks and all but exposing themselves, each trying to prove that he was the most sexually desirable man in the world. Fortunately, I couldn't understand anything.