Living in a Foreign Language (25 page)

So every Thursday Jill collected her art material and went off to class. And every day in between, she would practice, setting up her easel on the table under the pergola and painting away for hours at a time. Sometimes she would just draw. She was reading that book about drawing from the right side of the brain—or the left side . . . whatever. She'd draw a piece of fruit, or her own left hand, which she elegantly posed for herself on the table—over and over until her brain learned to switch off the rational side and function completely from the intuitive side. Over and over and over. Because that's the way she is.

And paintings started to come home with her. Wonderful paintings that she did in class. Her teacher, whose name was Altavilla, was a stickler for technique and each week she taught them another trick—for shading, for perspective, for color. And Jill would work on that one aspect for the week until she got it.

I went down to the
alimentari
one morning to get some
things for breakfast, and Sabrina, who owns the place with her husband and her family, asked me how Jill was doing.

“Are you in the class with her?” I had no idea. Sabrina had never seemed to me to be the artistic type.

“Si si. Lei é molta brava!”

And she made a gesture that implied how impressed she was with Jill's artwork—both hands palm up, in front of her chest, the tips of the fingers coming together, and shaking them simultaneously like she was rolling dice.

Up until then, it hadn't been easy for us to break through socially with our neighbors—which is why we hung out with the expats all the time, the Anglophones. It's not that the locals were standoffish; they're actually quite warm and welcoming—especially if you give their language a try. And it's not that we didn't want to get to know them. But our Italian wasn't good enough for us to relax with them, make a joke, be ourselves. We were working on it; we had a wonderful teacher back in Mill Valley and we worked with Paola sometimes in Umbria—although she was now pregnant with twins and it was hard to get her to focus. We had high hopes for the language intensive in Rome in February, and we managed to practice with our construction workers and Vittoria and Domenico, but social situations were different.

We had gone to a party at Bruno and Mayes' house where there were mostly Italians. Even the few expats in attendance spoke only Italian that night. People had to speak slowly to us, with hand gestures, or repeat themselves, or find another, more elementary way of saying whatever it was they were trying to say. Eventually, they gave up and
went off to find an adult conversation; I didn't blame them—we were boring.

The frustrating thing was that they were obviously really interesting, attractive, entertaining people, these friends of Bruno and Mayes'. They were artists, entrepreneurs, architects, musicians, great storytellers and personalities—and they were all there for the taking if we could just
parlar
a little bit more of the
Italiano
.

I tended to speak out more than Jill, because I didn't care whether I did it correctly or not. When I didn't know a word, I'd often as not just say the English word and put an Italian ending on it—as in “I think I need another
drinkarino.”
It was fairly offensive, but I made myself understood; I got through. Jill was appalled by this and tended to wait to speak until she could express herself perfectly, with just the right verb tense, with all the proper syntax. Which meant she almost never spoke. She was, essentially, mute. But always correct.

Also, I had more give-and-take with the locals because I shopped for all the food, did the errands. The problem with this was that the shopkeepers inevitably used me as an opportunity to practice their English, which was even worse than my Italian. Talk about inane conversations. But I also got the opportunity to talk to the people behind me in line, who, for some reason, never spoke any English. So, again, more chance for me to practice.

A couple of weeks after the art class started, we were crossing the piazza when we heard a shout from a little shop that sells lingerie across from the church on the other side of the square.

“Gille! Gille!”
(Sounds like “Jeelay!”)

“Ciao
, Mariana!” shouted back Jill like a real Italian.

“Come va
, Gille?”

They were at the top of their voices.

“Bene, bene, tu?”

“Beh”

This is my favorite Italian expression. It's a very short word, not strung out like “bey,” but quick and punched up with a little rising inflection:
“Beh.”
It means anything and everything. In this instance, it would be translated as, “Nothing's changed; my life is the same old shit; but I'd be a fool to complain about it.” It's usually matched with a gesture; you can pick from a long list. Mariana, in this case, held out both hands in front of her with the palms open and facing slightly upward—sort of like a desperate plea for God's help.

The girls both laughed loudly and waved to each other. I was standing there—unnoticed, unintroduced—taking it all in.

“A giovedí”

“Si, a giovedí!”

They were saying they'd see each other on Thursday. Jill's pace picked up as she crossed the piazza, smiling and waving to the guys on the bench.

“Where are we going?” she asked. “Ugo's?”

I nodded and tried to keep up with her. But I could tell from her body language that she was feeling good. She had broken through. She owned this fucking town.

T
HE FOLLOWING WEEK WE DROVE DOWN TO
R
OME
to pick up Caroline, who—like the last time—had completed a triathlon just the day before. We felt like the finish line. We welcomed her with the now traditional mortadella sandwich to counteract her jet lag and lift her mood. There was an awkward moment between us when she first came through customs, I think because Jill and I were spending more time away from Caroline than with her—this after seven years of being pretty much joined at the hip. She was coming to Italy for shorter and shorter visits each time—just as our stays were getting longer. She said that she didn't want to spend time in the construction chaos—which was true—and that she was busy back in California with her work and her triathlons—also true—but it was clear that her life and ours were developing different priorities. Our little orphan was spreading her wings; it was good.

I don't think she would have come at all were it not for the fact that her dad was coming down from Switzerland for a visit, and it really wouldn't have worked for her not to be
there to host him. Caroline's dad, Kurt, is a world traveler, gourmand and raconteur extraordinaire, so he would be fun to have around. We booked him at a hotel near us because—until we finished construction—we had no room at the inn, so to speak.

We also got a call from our friend Judith Auberjonois, who was in Switzerland with her husband, Rene, visiting his family. Rene, unfortunately, had to get back to L.A. for work, but Judith decided she could accept our invitation to come down and check out our new place. She ended up at the same hotel as Caroline's dad and was great about squiring him back and forth to all the activities.

It was shaping up to be a perfect time to finally fire up the
forno
for a pizza party. I called Bruce and he was game, so we planned it for the following weekend.

We ended up making pizza for eighteen of our nearest and dearest. We figured if we were going to the trouble of firing up the oven, we might as well feed as many people as we could find plates for. Bruce was the master
pizzaiolo
, and I stood behind him and learned some things.

We started the day before, making the dough. Bruce decided to do a little taste testing, so we made some dough from “00” flour, some from “0,” some with whole wheat flour mixed in and some with a combination of “0” and “00.” These designations of Italian flour indicate how finely ground it is and how much germ and bran have been removed. The “0” is used mostly for bread and pasta, “00” more for pastry. Then we labeled each one and put them in the fridge to rise overnight. I made a tomato sauce from the San Marzanos that were left in the garden and roasted a few heads of garlic in olive oil. We shopped for the mozzarella, sausages,
rucola
, basil, anchovies, olives, potatoes and rosemary, pears and Gorgonzola—all the
toppings we needed to make the pizzas to the various tastes of our friends.

On Sunday, Bruce and JoJo showed up around one, we all had a little lunch to tide ourselves over and then Bruce and I went out to start the fire while JoJo organized Jill and Caroline, making the toppings in the kitchen. Bruce had brought along all the tools of the trade from his oven at home: pizza peels, two wooden and one long stainless steel; a long-handled iron rod with a curved prong on the end—almost like a hockey stick—which proved invaluable for moving the burning logs around; and an old bamboo window shade—rolled up—that served as the basic kindling.

He crumpled up some newspaper—quite a bit of it—and made a big, messy pile of it in the middle of the oven. On top of that he randomly threw the smallest sticks we had, and on top of that the bamboo window shade. Then he piled larger sticks—about two inches in diameter—on top of the bamboo, until he had quite a large pyre built up. Then he lit the paper and we watched as the fire fairly filled the center of the oven, which was a beautiful, vaulted chamber made of four-hundred-year-old bricks.

Without much pause, Bruce kept throwing in more wood, slowly extending the fire to the rear and to the sides while feeding the center as well. He just kept tossing in more wood and then used his hockey stick to move it around and make sure there was always enough air between things to feed the flames. My first mental note was that I had been way too timid in terms of the amount of wood I piled on when making fires. This was the beginning of a real inferno.

“When it really gets going, the flames slow down—almost like slow motion. That's when you know it's really getting hot,” he told me.

He kept widening out the fire, adding wood to the rear and to the sides, until the fire was five or six feet in diameter. The idea was to get it hot enough so that all the vaulted bricks turned white: then it would be ready for pizza. Bruce estimated that it would get to about 800 or 900 degrees.

The guests were due around three, so I went into the kitchen and punched the dough down and kneaded it for the last time. It felt perfect—smooth and satiny, slightly springy to the touch. And it smelled like I hope heaven will smell. We'd start with a couple of pizzas made with the “00” flour, which Bruce said would be a bit less glutenous. Meanwhile, he was spreading out the fire so that it completely encircled the center of the oven—all except for the opening at the oven door. The pizzas would get intense heat from all sides at once. The flames had slowed down now, which meant we had achieved the intense heat we needed. Watching them dance and lick the ceiling of the oven in super slow motion was the eeriest, most surreal of sights. I went into the kitchen and pulled Jill and Caroline out to see it. We stood there in front of the flames, not quite believing what we were watching.

As people showed up, the corks started popping out of the wine bottles and a little keg of good German beer was tapped—compliments of Sal and Rosemary, a couple we had just met through Bruno and Mayes. They live in Connecticut mostly, but just finished renovating a beautiful old church in Trevi that they get to four or five times a year.

Bruce asked me if we had an old rag or dish towel that we could part with. I found him one and he told me to get it dripping wet and not to wring it out at all. Then he attached it to the end of his hockey stick and swabbed the bricks on the center of the oven floor. Steam filled the oven for a second or two.

“Ready for number one!” he told me.

With great excitement, I ran into the kitchen and grabbed the first ball of dough. I flattened it with the heel of my hand and stretched it out. Then I picked it up by the rim and turned it slowly, letting gravity stretch it out even more. I flipped it up in the air a few times, just to show off (actually, if you do it right, spinning it in the air serves to centrifugally send some dough out to the edge to make a natural rim). Then I sprinkled a tiny bit of cornmeal on the wooden peel—to keep the dough from sticking—and laid out the first, thin circle. I covered it with a bit of tomato sauce, broke some mozzarella onto it—not too much; toppings have to be light—and made a Margherita, the classic pizza named after a queen of Italy (the basil, which completes the three colors of the Italian flag, is added after the pizza comes out of the oven). Then I carried it out and handed the peel to Bruce, who demonstrated the gentle, shuffleboard flick that deposited our treasure right in the middle of the oven.

The pizza responded immediately—almost violently—puffing up and blistering in the intense heat. Bruce, now using the long metal peel, artfully turned the pizza so that it cooked evenly. In seconds—no more than a half a minute—he declared it done. He gently insinuated the peel underneath it and withdrew it from the heat. Then he put it onto a metal pizza pan and told me to start making the next one, which would be a marinara—tomato sauce, no cheese, some roasted garlic and anchovies.

Everybody started to get into the act, slicing up the finished pizzas, flattening dough for the next one, choosing the toppings, eating. Everybody was eating. It became a frenzy. I carried out slices for Bruce and kept his wineglass full. He said that the
pizzaiolo
never leaves his oven until the last pizza is done.