Living in a Foreign Language (17 page)

The work in Umbria would proceed in two stages. First, before we went back in the spring, we would have the contractor prepare the old Rustico for its eventual merging with the new part of the house. This would entail knocking three large holes through its three-foot-thick walls—one in the living room / dining room, which would connect to the new entryway and
salotto;
one in our bedroom directly above,
making what was a window into French doors that would open onto the new terrace; and a third in the kitchen, which would create a pantry that I thought we needed to make the old kitchen work.

This work would proceed immediately and be finished by spring so that we could live in the old house while the work on the new section got under way. We booked our flight for the first of May and made a plan for Alison, our daughter, to fly over and join us there.

W
E RETURNED TO THE
R
USTICO IN
M
AY
and experienced early spring in Umbria for the first time. It was a dazzler. The mountains above the house were still in winter, snowcapped and majestic, but at our level—about 1,200 feet—it was all wildflowers and trees in bud. The Rustico had survived its onslaught, although Martin later confided that when they opened up the hole for the door in the living room, they discovered a less than adequate foundation under the old wall. For a nervous day and a half, while the masons frantically jacked up the house and poured cement in under the old foundation, we were in real danger of losing the entire north wall of the house. We were grateful not to have heard about it until well after the situation had been taken care of.

I had worried that we were crazy to tamper with this picture-perfect cottage, but now that we saw it opened up a bit, we realized it hadn't been perfect at all. Now the little house had light streaming in from every direction. With the window in the new pantry we could finally see what we
were doing in the kitchen; our bedroom was now a sun-filled, gracious room with French doors opening out onto what would eventually be a terrace (until that was built, however, had we opened the doors too quickly we would have plunged twenty feet to the yard below). And the living / dining room, which had been the darkest room in the house, now had beautiful glass and chestnut doors that would connect to our new entrance foyer and multiwindowed living room.

In medieval times, when the house was built, people didn't want light streaming in. They wanted to sit by the fire, in the dark, and eat their gruel. They wanted a house to protect them—from the elements and from their enemies—not to be open and light and airy. But we weren't living in the Middle Ages. We were Californians—free in mind and spirit—and we rarely, if ever, ate gruel.

The first day back is always a marathon. After flying all night—and gaining nine hours against the clock—we forced ourselves to stay awake and try to make it through to a reasonable bedtime hour. So we planned a party for ourselves at the Palazzaccio, rounding up all the usual suspects for an Umbrian feast before we put ourselves to bed, our tummies full and happy. It was a warm enough night to eat out in the back garden of the restaurant, and we all gathered around one of the big picnic tables—Bruce and JoJo, Martin and Karen, Bruno and Mayes, George and Mariane—and listened to Danila chant her traditional opening number.

“Acqua—naturale e frizzante. Vino rosso, vino bianco.”

We all turned our glasses over as the pitchers of wine and water arrived and were passed around. George, of course, insisted on bottles of Prosecco as well. There was a
new batch of kittens that were climbing up the pergola poles to escape the attention of the family kids, who pursued them relentlessly; platters of bruschetta appeared, the toasted, oiled bread covered variously with truffles and mushrooms, liver paste or tomatoes and basil; JoJo and Martin continued their argument over Fidelio, even though he was long out of the picture; Bruce showed me a brochure for the high-speed Internet connection that had just become available; Bruno had just bought a new pile of rocks that he was developing high up in Campello Alto; Karen, Mayes and Jill made a date to go to the gym together. Plates of pasta arrived—
ravioli Letizia, strengozzi al tartufo, spaghetti Benedettina
. We were home.

Jill and I woke up the next morning and tiptoed through the house, planning what we would do when it was done—furnishings and lamps, a piano, a chair by the fire. We sat out under the pergola and had our breakfast, listening to the seemingly endless variety of birds. The birds ate the bugs, the bugs ate us, we ate our breakfast, and all was right with the world.

Martin and JoJo came by for a meeting that afternoon and we went over the plans and the schedule. They had finally agreed on a contractor for the second phase of construction, which would start on the day we left—a fellow named Nicola from Naples, who worked with his two brothers, Enzo and Ivano. Neither JoJo nor Martin had worked with them before, but they had come highly recommended. We were delighted just to see the two of them agree with each other.

Alison was due in a few days for a two-week visit. This was momentous, as we hadn't spent that much time together—just the three of us—since Max was born twenty
years earlier. She was twelve at the time and we had—stupidly, patronizingly—asked her if she wanted a baby brother. She'd leveled a look at us and blurted an adamant and resounding “No!” Max, who had already been conceived at that point, couldn't be sent back for another model, and although the two kids have grown quite close over the years, our daughter has never again fully trusted her parents.

Alison is a singular girl. She's had an independent spirit since she was a kid, and growing up has just served to strengthen it. After she had been living on her own for four years of college, she came out to stay with us in L.A., and it didn't take us long to realize that we couldn't go back to the old parent / child relationship; that toothpaste was out of the tube and there was no putting it back in. On her second night in town, she and some friends took off to Vegas for three days without bothering to mention it to us. A week later—after some spirited family meetings—we helped her move into her own place, where she's been ever since. So this visit would be a test—the three of us together in a tiny cottage for twelve days.

Alison's a cook—a chef. She tried the acting business for a few years and finally got fed up with the rejection. She went back to school, got her chef's license, went into business for herself and is doing quite well. Both our kids have gone into professions that are manifestations of their parents' fantasies: Max is the professional musician that Jill always dreamed of being; Alison is the professional chef I fancied I'd like to be.

For her first night in Umbria, we had Bruno and Mayes over and Alison made some biscotti for dessert. They are a specialty of hers—double-baked with chocolate, hazelnut and dried cherries. Bruno couldn't get over them. He said
they were the best biscotti he had ever tasted and took all the leftovers home with him. Mayes reported that they were gone the next day and put in an order for more. Alison beamed.

I had grilled some steaks that night that got her attention, and she asked the next day if she could take a field trip with me to my butcher. I told her this was complicated because I now had three butchers, none of whom knew about the others. This poly-amorous situation started with my relationship with Lauro, my first love, the butcher on the road to the station in Spoleto. Then I heard about Ugo, who's right in our little town of Campello. Ugo is an artisan, a maker of prosciutto in the old manner, whom I had heard about from Karen. He speaks in the Umbrian dialect and is as shy as I am, so our relationship was still tentative. Then there's Corrado, the pork specialist in Pissignano, who's like a new hottie, tempting me to stray.

We started our tour with Lauro, who, we learned upon arrival, had retired after forty years in the same location and handed over the business to his son, Fabio. Alison was immediately enchanted. Not only is Fabio a good-looking guy, but he also has his dad's charm. A visit to Lauro was always a cooking lesson, a flirtation and a therapy session all rolled up together. And Fabio, young though he is, can deliver like his pop. Alison asked about cuts of beef, which are very different in Italy, and Fabio gave her an anatomy lesson. Then—again like his dad—he tempted us with a taste of mortadella, which we bought; then a taste of
coralina
, which we bought; then a taste of
porchetta
, which was irresistible as well.

On the way home, our packages of goodies stowed in the car, we decided to stop at Ugo's place. His shop is modest, old-fashioned compared with Lauro's sparkling emporium.
When we walked in, through the beads that hang over the door to keep out the flies, there was no one around. From the ceiling, thirty or so prosciuttos hung like Christmas decorations.

“Buongiorno?”
I called out.

After a moment, Ugo appeared. He was in a leather apron and his face was flushed with exertion. He looked a little embarrassed, as always.

“Queste la figlia,”
I told him, introducing Alison.

He flushed again and wiped his hands very carefully on a towel.

“Ugo,” he said.
“Piacere”
And he took her hand in both of his and bowed.

“Tu sei occupato?”
I asked if he was too busy for us.

“No, no. Sono dentro. Con I prosciutti, facendo un massaggio.”

When I frowned with confusion, he smiled and waved us to the door that led to the back of his shop. He was suddenly courtly—clearly because Alison was there. It seems that all butchers like to flirt with the girls. I whispered to her that I thought he had just told us that he was in the back massaging his prosciutto, but that maybe I hadn't gotten it quite right.

The back of his shop is immense—four or five times the area of the part in front. It has three rooms: one has a great fireplace that takes up the whole wall, and another is a walk-in, refrigerated space.

“Is this where you make the prosciutto?” Alison asked in English.

“Si, si, tutto qui.”
He seemed to understand her perfectly.

He took us into the refrigerated room and opened a drawer that was about twelve feet long and three feet deep. It was filled with salt.

“Prima si mettono i prosciutti in un bagno di sale.”

Ugo slicing prosciutto

“First,” I translated, “he puts the ham in a bath of salt.”

“For how long?” asked Alison.

I started to translate, but Ugo somehow understood. I decided to shut up and let them work it out on their own. She spoke in English; he spoke in his thick Umbrian dialect; and they did just fine.

“
Per un mese.”
A month in the salt. And then he explained that every few days he massages the salt into the hams, so that it permeates the skin. That's what he was doing when we arrived.

Then, after the month passes, he washes off the salt and rubs on a mixture of wine, herbs and a lot of pepper and hangs the hams from the ceiling for three more months. This allows them to slowly release their excess moisture. Then he “closes them up,” which means he coats them with rendered pork fat—taken from under the ribs, the tastiest
part—and encloses them completely. The covered hams are then hung in the fireplace to slowly smoke—for four more months.

At this point, Alison's eyes were as wide as saucers and Ugo was gaining confidence with each step he was describing.

Next, he cleans the fat off and attaches a wooden tag on each ham inscribed with the date it was finished and then hangs them up from the ceiling again for at least two years. After that they graduate to the front of the shop, where they're ready to be sliced for the customers. He explained with pride that the prosciutto we get in the States—all of it—is produced with machines and that the process takes less than three months, start to finish. So, in essence, we have never tasted real prosciutto. Which is exactly what we did next.

Back in the front room, Ugo carved a slice for Alison. He uses a thin carving knife that looks like it's been around for generations. After a few quick strokes on the honing steel, he began to slowly saw the prosciutto, starting away from his body, cutting in the direction of his heart, so that he looks very much like a cellist—playing Brahms, perhaps. He handed Alison the perfect slice and waited.

“Oh. My. God,” she said in Californian cadence.

Then Ugo moved to another, smaller ham on the slicing counter. He explained that this one is from the
spalla
, or shoulder, whereas the classic prosciutto is from the upper leg. This ham was darker, purplish in color and looked to have been aged much longer. We both tasted a slice. It was stronger, saltier and much more potent.

“Sarebbe buono in una pasta,”
I ventured. Ugo lit up.

“Si! In una pasta sciutta, si!”