The Food Of Love
By
Anthony Capella.

Laura Patterson is an American exchange student in Rome who, fed up with being inexpertly groped by her young Italian beaus, decides there's only one sure-fire
way to find a sensual man: date a chef. Then she meets Tomasso, who's handsome, young - and cooks in the exclusive Templi restaurant. Perfect. Except,
unbeknownst to Laura, Tomasso is in fact only a waiter at Templi - it's his shy friend Bruno who is the chef. But Tomasso is the one who knows how to get
the girls, and when Laura comes to dinner he persuades Bruno to help him with the charade. It works: the meal is a sensual feast, Laura is utterly seduced
and Tomasso falls in lust. But it is Bruno, the real chef who has secretly prepared every dish Laura has eaten, who falls deeply and unrequitedly in love.
A delicious tale of Cyrano de Bergerac-style culinary seduction, but with sensual recipes instead of love poems.  

TIME WARNER BOOKS

First published in Great Britain in 2004 by Time Warner Books
This edition published by Time Warner Books in June 2005
Reprinted 2005
Copyright © Anthony Capella 2004
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any
resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.

Grateful thanks to Macmillan, London, UK for permission
to quote from The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
by Marcella Hazan.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, without the prior permission in
writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any
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published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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is available from the British Library.

ISBN 0 7515 3569 9

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www.thefoodoflove.com

'An Italian meal is a lively sequence of sensations in which the
crisp alternates with the soft and yielding, the pungent with
the bland, the variable with the staple, the elaborate with the
simple . . .'
Marcella Hazan, The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

In a little side street off the Viale Glorioso, in Rome's Trastevere,
there is a bar known to those who frequent it simply as Gennaro's.
It is, to look at, not much of a bar, being the approximate size and
shape of a small one-car garage, but the passing tourist would
note that there is room outside for two small tables and an assortment
of non-identical plastic chairs that catch the sun in the
morning, while the passing coffee lover would note that there is
room inside on the stained zinc counter for a vast, gleaming
Gaggia 6000, the Harley-Davidson of espresso machines. There is
also room, just, behind the stained zinc counter for Gennaro,
widely regarded by his friends as the best barista in all Rome and
a very sound fellow to boot.
Which was why, one fine spring morning, twenty-eight-year-old
Tommaso Massi and his friends Vincent and Sisto were standing at
the bar, drinking ristretti, arguing about love, waiting for the cornetti
to arrive from the bakery, and generally passing the time
with Gennaro before jumping on their Vespas to go off to the various
restaurants around the city that employed them. A ristretto is
made with the same amount of ground coffee as an ordinary
espresso but half the amount of water, and since Gennaro's espressos
were themselves not ordinary at all but pure liquid adrenaline,
and since the three young men were in any case all of an excitable
temperament, the conversation was an animated one. More than
once Gennaro had to remind them not to all argue at once - or, as
the Roman vernacular has it, parlare }nu strunzo Ja vota; to only
speak one piece of shit at a time.
The unusual strength of Gennaro's ristretti was the result of his
honing the Gaggia's twin grinding burrs to razor sharpness, packing
the basket with the resulting powder until it was as hard as
cement, then building up a head of pressure in the huge machine
and waiting until the dial showed eighty pounds per square inch
before finally allowing the water to blast into the packed coffee.
What came from the spout after that was barely a liquid at all, a
red-brown ooze with a hanging quality like honey dripping off the
end of a butter knife, with a chestnut-coloured crema and a sweet
oily tang that required no sugar, only a gulp of acqua miner ale and a bite of a sugar-dusted cornetto, if only the bakery had delivered
them. Gennaro loved that machine like a soldier loves his
gun, and he spent even more time stripping it down and cleaning
it than he did making coffee. His goal was to get it up to a hundred
PSI, wray off the gauge, and make a ristretto so thick you
could spread it like jam. Tommaso was privately convinced that
even to attempt this feat was to run the risk of the Gaggia exploding
and taking them all with it, but he respected his friend's
commitment and ambition and said nothing. It was, after all, self
evident that you couldn't be a great barista without taking risks.
The conversation that morning was about love, but it was also
about football. Vincent, who had recently become engaged, was
being scolded by Sisto, to whom the idea of restricting yourself to
just one woman seemed crazy.
'You might think today that you have found the best woman in
the world, but tomorrow -' Sisto flicked his fingers under his
chin - 'who knows?'
'Look,' Vincent explained patiently, or as patiently as he was
capable of, 'how long have you been a Lazio supporter?'
'All my life, idiot.'
'But Roma are . . .' Vincent hesitated. He wanted to say 'a
better team', but there was no point in turning a friendly discussion
about women into a deadly fight. 'Doing better,' he said
diplomatically.
'This season. So far. What of it?'
'Yet you don't start supporting Roma.'
'Ah un altropaio di maniche, cazzo* That's another thing altogether,
you dick. You can't switch teams.'
'Exactly. And why not? Because you have made your choice,
and you are loyal to it.'
Sisto was silent for a moment, during which Vincent turned to
Gennaro triumphantly and ordered another ristretto. Then Sisto
said craftily, 'But being a Laziale isn't like being faithful to one
woman. It's like having dozens of women, because the team is
made up of different people every year. So you're talking shit, as
usual.'
Tommaso, who until now had taken no part in the argument,
murmured, 'The real reason Vincent and Lucia got engaged is
that she said she'd stop sleeping with him if they didn't.'
His friends' reactions to this piece of intelligence were interestingly
different. Vincent, who had after all told Tommaso this in
strict confidence, looked angry, then shamefaced, and then - when
he realised that Sisto was looking distinctly envious - pleased with
himself.
'It's true,' he shrugged. 'Lucia wants to be a virgin when we
marry, just like her mother. So we had to stop sleeping together
until we got engaged.'
Vincent's statement, apparently illogical, drew no comment

'Literally: 'That's another pair of sleeves'.

from his friends. In a country where literal, fervent Catholicism
was only a generation away, everyone knew there were as many
grades of virginity in girls as there were in olive oil - which, of
course, is divided into extra-virgin (first cold pressing), extra-virgin
(second pressing), superfine virgin, extrafine virgin, and so on,
down through a dozen or more layers of virginity and near
virginity, before finally reaching a level of promiscuity so
unthinkable that it is labelled merely as 'pure', and is thus fit only
for export and lighting fires.
'But at least I'm getting it now,' he added. 'I'm sleeping with
the most beautiful girl in Rome, who adores me, and we're going
to be married and have our own place. What could be better than
that?'
'Tommaso gets it too,' Sisto pointed out. 'And he isn't getting
married.'
'Tommaso sleeps with tourists.'
Tommaso shrugged modestly. 'Hey, can I help it if beautiful
foreign girls throw themselves at me?'
This amiable conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the cornetti, a tray of tiny sugared croissants, which in turn called for
a final caffe before work. While Gennaro flushed the pipes of his
beloved Gaggia in readiness, Tommaso received a sharp nudge in
the ribs from Sisto, who nodded significantly towards the window.
Coming down the street was a girl. Her sunglasses were tucked
up on the top of her head amid a bohemian swirl of blonde hair
which, together with her calf-length jeans, single-strap backpack
and simple T-shirt, marked her out immediately as a foreigner
even before one took in the guidebook entitled Forty Significant
Frescoes of the High Renaissance that she was holding open in one
hand.
'A tourist?' Sisto said hopefully.
Tommaso shook his head. 'A student.'
'And how do you know that, maestro?'
'Her backpack is full of books.'
'Psst! Biondina! Bona? Sisto called. 'Hey! Blondie! Gorgeous!'
Tommaso cuffed him. 'That isn't the way, idiot. Just act
friendly.'
It seemed puzzling to Sisto that any girl fortunate enough to
be blonde and attractive would not be impressed by having the
fact pointed out to her, but he allowed himself to be guided by his
more experienced friend and closed his mouth.
'She's coming over,' Vincent noted.
The girl crossed the street and paused next to the bar, apparently
oblivious to the admiring stares of the three young men.
Then she pulled out a chair, put her backpack on the table and sat
down, arranging her slim legs over the next chair along.
'Definitely a foreigner,' Vincent said sadly. Because every Italian
knows that to sit down to drink coffee is bad for the digestion and
will therefore be penalised by a surcharge costing three times as
much as you'd pay at the bar. 'You wait. She'll ask for a cappuccino.'
Gennaro,
watching the pressure gauge of the Gaggia intently,
snorted dismissively. No proper barista would dream of serving
cappuccino after ten a.m, any more than a chef would offer cornflakes
for lunch.
'Buongiornol the girl called through the open door. She had a
nice voice, Tommaso thought. He smiled at her encouragingly.
Beside him, Vincent and Sisto were doing exactly the same. Only
Gennaro, behind the zinc counter, maintained a suspicious frown.
"giorno^ he muttered darkly.
''Latte macchiato, per favore, lungo e ben caldo?
There was a pause while the barista thought about this.
Although the young woman had spoken in Italian, she had
revealed her origins as much by what she had ordered as by her
accent. Latte macchiato - milk with just a splash of coffee, but
served in a lungo or large cup, and ben caldo, hot, so that it could
be drunk slowly instead of being thrown down the throat in a
couple of quick gulps in the proper manner. She was indisputably
American. However, nothing she had ordered actually offended
propriety - she had not asked for espresso with cream, or de-caf,
or hazelnut syrup, or skimmed milk - so he shrugged and reached
for the twin baskets of the Gaggia, while the three young men
tried to look as handsome as possible.
The girl ignored them. She pulled a map out and compared it,
with a somewhat perplexed expression, to a page in her guidebook.
A telefonino rang in her backpack: she took that out, too,
and proceeded to have a conversation which those inside could
not overhear. When Gennaro finally judged his macchiato worthy
of being served, there was a scuffle to be the one to deliver it to
the girl's table, which Tommaso won easily. He took one of
Gennaro's little cornetti as well, placing it on the saucer and presenting
it to the girl with a smile and a muttered, 'On the house'.
But the girl was engrossed in her call, and her smile of thanks was
all too brief. He had time to notice her eyes, though - grey eyes,
clear and untroubled, the colour of a sea bass's scales.

In fact, Laura Patterson was deeply troubled, or as troubled as it is
possible for a twenty-two-year-old American girl to be in Rome on
a fine spring morning, which was why she was glad to discover
that it was her Italian friend Carlotta who was calling. Carlotta
worked for a magazine called Stozzi in Milan. She was also part of
the reason that Laura had come to Italy, having been a very good
college friend back home.
''Pronto.'' In Italy it is customary to answer the phone by snapping
'Ready!', for reasons which are now obscure.
'Laura. It's me. What are you up to?'
'Oh - hi, Carlotta. Well, I was looking for Santa Cecilia, as it
happens. She's in possession of some rather fine frescoes by
Cavallini. But it seems Santa Cecilia doesn't want to be found, so
I'm having coffee instead.'
Carlotta ignored this nonsense and cut straight to the reason
for her call. 'And last night? How was your date?'

'Ah. Well, it was fine,' Laura said in a voice that made clear that
it hadn't really been fine at all. She had to tread a little carefully,
because the date in question had been a friend of a friend of
Carlotta's own brother. 'He, Paolo, was perfectly nice, and he
knew a lot about architecture -' at the other end of the phone,
Carlotta snorted derisively - 'and he took me to a really interesting
restaurant near the Villa Borghese.'
'What were you wearing?'
'Urn - the red top and the black trousers.'
'Jacket?'
'No jacket. It's warm down here.'
There was an audible sigh at the other end. Carlotta, like all
Italian women, thought that anyone who committed offences
against fashion had only themselves to blame for whatever calamities
subsequently befell them. 'Did you wear sneakers?' she
demanded suspiciously.
'Of course I didn't wear sneakers. Carlotta, you're missing the
point. Anyway, as I was saying, the meal was good. I had squid
pasta and a really nice lamb thing.'
'And?'
'Nothing else. Just coffee.'
'And afterwards?' Carlotta said impatiently. 'What happened
afterwards?'
'Ah. Afterwards, we went for a walk around the Giardino di
Lago, and that's when he jumped me. Literally, because unfortunately
there was a slight discrepancy in our respective heights,
which meant he had to actually propel himself off the ground in
order to stick his tongue where he wanted to. Then after that, of
course, he was trying to get me into bed - well, not bed exactly,
since he still lives with his parents, so an actual bed was not part of
the offer, but he was certainly trying to get me into the bushes.
And before you say anything, I really don't think wearing a jacket
would have made much difference.'
Another sigh. 'Are you going to see him again?'
'No. Honestly, Carlotta, thanks for the introduction and everything,
but I think I've had it with Italian men. They're all so
ridiculously over-sexed and, well, just clumsy. That's my fourth
disaster in a row. I think I'm going to have to go back to dating
Americans for a while.'
Carlotta was horrified. 'C#ra, coming to Rome and dating
Americans would be like going to the Piazza di Spagna and eating
at McDonald's.'
'Actually, a few of us did that the other day,' Laura admitted. 'It
was kind of fun.'
There was an exasperated tut at the other end. 'Imagine what
a waste your year in Italy will have been if the only men you've
dated are people you could have met back home.'
'Imagine what a waste it'll have been if the only people I've
dated are frustrated Italian rapists who still live with their mothers,'
Laura retorted.
'You're just meeting the wrong people. Look at my last
boyfriend. Filippo was a sensational lover. Considerate, inventive,
slow, passionate--'
'And currently, I think you said, working in a restaurant in a ski
resort, precise whereabouts unknown.'
'True, but it was great while it lasted. That's the thing about
chefs. They know how to use their hands. It's all that chopping
and slicing they do. It makes them dextrous.'
'Hmm,' Laura said, a little wistfully, "I have to admit, dextrous
would be a nice change.'
'Then, cara, you simply have to make sure your dates can cook
before you agree to go out with them,' Carlotta said decisively.
She lowered her voice. 'I'll tell you something else about Filippo.
He liked to taste everything as he cooked it, if you know what I
mean.'
Laura laughed. She had a remarkably dirty laugh, and the
sound permeated into the interior of Gennaro's bar, causing the
young men inside to glance up appreciatively from their cornetti.
'And I suppose, being a chef, he had a great sense of timing?'
'Exactly. And he never rushed. You know how we Italians like
to eat - at least a dozen courses.'
'But all of them very small ones,' Laura teased.
'Yes, but believe me, by the end you can't eat another thing.'
Even as Laura continued to joke, a part of her couldn't help
admitting her friend might have a point. Someone creative, who
understood taste, and texture, who knew how to combine ingredients
for the purpose of sensual pleasure ... if only she'd met
someone like that during her time in Italy.
'Well, there you are then,' Carlotta was saying. 'It shouldn't be
hard. Rome's full of restaurants. It stands to reason it must be full
of chefs as well.'
'Maybe,' Laura said.
'Listen, I'll tell you something else Filippo did . . .'
By the time Laura rang off she had half-jokingly, half-seriously
promised her friend that from now on she was definitely only
going to date men who knew their Bearnaise from their Bechamel.

Tommaso had made up his mind he was going to speak to the
American girl. Who could resist a laugh like that? As Vincent had
said, he had an excellent track record with female tourists, who
seemed to melt when they saw his big-featured, handsome head
with its shock of corkscrew ringlets. Not that Roman girls didn't
melt as well, but Roman girls had a tendency to want him to meet
their parents afterwards. Foreigners were altogether less complicated.
He
waited for the right moment. The American girl stayed on
the phone, occasionally sipping slowly at her macchiato - no
wonder she'd wanted it hot - until Tommaso realised with a sigh
that he was going to have to go. He would already be late getting
to the restaurant. He slapped a few coins on the counter and
waved a farewell to Gennaro. His motorino was parked outside,
next to the girl's table, and he lingered for a last moment as he
crouched down to unlock it, savouring one more glance at the
slim honey-brown calves stretched over the chair opposite.
'No more Italians, then. Not unless they can cook,' she was
saying. 'From now on, I don't date anyone who isn't in the Good
Food Guide.''
Tommaso's ears pricked up.
She reached into her cup for the final frothy globs of latte,
scooping them out and licking them off her finger. 'My God, this
coffee is fantastic. Hold on. Yes?'
Unable to stop himself, Tommaso had tapped her on her
shoulder.
'I'm sorry to interrupt your call,' he began in his best English.
"I just wanted to tell you that your beauty has broken my heart.'
She smiled appreciatively, if a little warily. Nevertheless, she
tried to sound polite as she replied, ''Vatte a fa3 'u giro, afessa 'e
mammata' using the words that her first Italian date had told her
to employ whenever she was paid a compliment. Tommaso's face
fell. 'OK, OK,' he said, backing off and throwing his leg across the
scooter.
Laura watched him go, then turned her attention back to
Carlotta. 'Who was that?' her friend wanted to know.
'Just some guy.'
'Laura,' her friend said carefully, 'what do you think you said to
him?'
Which was how Laura discovered that she had actually been
telling the young men of Rome in perfect idiomatic Italian to piss
off back up the orifices of their mothers from which they were
delivered.
'Oh,' Laura said. 'Oh dear. That's a shame. He was quite cute,
too. But it doesn't really matter, does it? Because from now on
I'm holding out for someone who can cook.'


'Once the general and commonsense principles of menu
planning become clear, the choices remaining before us are
an infinite number of agreeable and workable combinations . . .'
Marcella Hazan, The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

It was a week before Tommaso saw the girl again. He had gone to
Gigliemi, the great food shop near the Piazza Venezia, to pick up
some supplies for the restaurant. Earlier there had been a phone
call to say that a hunter, one of dozens in the Castelli Romani who
supplied Gigliemi with specialities, had driven in from the countryside
that very morning, with his Fiat full offender young lepre; baby hares, the first of the season. Tommaso had been instructed
to be quick, so he walked straight through to the back, shouldered
the box which Adriano gave him with only the briefest of pauses
to discuss Adriano's family, his uncle's marriage, his second
cousin's business and his brother's new girlfriend, and was hurrying
out again when a movement in the corner of his eye caught his
attention. It was a girl. She was reaching up to the top shelf for a
packet of pasta, exposing a band of taut stomach. Tommaso
caught a glimpse of a tiny whorl of belly button, as intricate and
perfect as the knot of a balloon. A keen aficionado of female
beauty, he muttered, I Fosse ya Madonna!' under his breath.
Quickly he swung the box down again. cMo?nento^ he called to
her; wait up. He reached up, got the packet for her, and handed it
to her with a smile. 'Prego.'' Then he realised he'd seen her somewhere
before.
She smiled. 'Grazie, faccia di culo."1 Thank you, assface.
Of course - he remembered now. The girl from Gennaro's. He
also remembered her saying that she was only going to sleep
with - well, date, but it was famously the same thing with
American girls - someone who could cook, and if she was buying
her own pasta, the chances were that she hadn't yet found that
someone. Which was remarkable because Rome was absolutely full
of cooks, while blonde American girls were somewhat scarcer.
It was his opportunity, and he took it.
'Spaghetti,'' he said, glancing at the packet in her hand. 'How
nice.' Even to him, this sounded a little flat.
'Well, I hope so.'
'And what are you cooking it with? What sauce?'
'Well - I thought perhaps Bolognese.'
His look of bewilderment was not feigned. 'But you can't,' he
objected.
'Why not?'
'First, because you're not in Bologna,' he pointed out reasonably.
'And secondly, because what you have in your hand is spaghetti.''
'Yes. Spaghetti Bolognese.' She saw his expression. 'That's not
a good idea, is it?'
'It's just impossible,' he explained. 'Ragu Bolognese is a sauce
for tagliatelle or gnocchi, or possibly tortellini.' He pointed to
Gigliemi's glass-fronted display case. 'These are tortellini.'' He
snapped his fingers at the assistant, who handed him one of the
soft, doughy parcels on a piece of tissue paper. He held it out to
Laura to show her. 'The shape is based on the shape of a
woman's - what do you call it?'
She peered anxiously at the tortellini. 'I'm not sure.'
He pointed to his own stomach. 'Tummy popper?'
'Button. Of course,' she said, relieved.
He remembered that glimpse of midriff and the tiny little whorl
of her navel. It had not, in fact, looked very like the thing he was
holding in his hand at all, which resembled nothing so much as a
big fat oyster of ricotta cheese, or possibly a woman's fica. 'Anyway,' he said dismissively, 'we are in Rome, and Roman sauces
are better. Well, strictly speaking we are in Lazio, but it's the same
thing. We eat spaghetti alVamatriciana, with a sauce of'guanciale, which is the pig's -' he ran his finger down her cheek, briefly, a
touch so fleeting she was hardly aware it had happened - 'this part
of the pig's face. We fry it in olive oil with a little chilli, some
tomatoes and of course some grated pecorino romano, hard cheese.
Or if you don't want spaghetti you could have bucatoni, or calscioni, or fettuccinie, or pappardelle, or tagliolini, or rigatoni, or linguine, or garganeHi, or tonnarelli, or fusilli, or conchiglie, or vermicelli, or maccheroni, but,' he held up a warning finger, 'each
of them demands a different kind of sauce. For example, an oily
sauce goes with dried pasta, but a butter sauce goes better with
fresh. Take fusilli.'' He held up a packet to show her. 'People say
this pasta was designed by Leonardo da Vinci himself. The spiral
fins carry the biggest amount of sauce relative to the surface area,
you see? But it only works with a thick, heavy sauce that can cling
to the grooves. Conchiglie, on the other hand, is like a shell, so it
holds a thin, liquid sauce inside it perfectly.'
'Are you a cook?' she asked, understanding dawning in her eyes.
'I am a chef, yes, at one of Rome's best restaurants,' Tommaso
said proudly.
She hesitated. 'Can I ask you - what would you make if you
were me? I don't do a lot of cooking, but my father's flown in for
a few days and I stupidly said I'd make something for him. I'd love
to cook him something Roman.'
If I were you . . .' Tommaso thought hard. Then his eyes fell
on the box of baby hares. "I would cook pasta con sugo di lepre; pappardelle with hare sauce,' he said triumphantly. 'The hares are
never better than when they're young and tender.'
Is it easy?'
'It's fantastically simple. You cook the hare in onion and garlic
for a little while, then you add some red wine, some cloves, some
cinnamon, and that's it.'
'And I can buy the meat here?' she asked, looking around her
doubtfully.
'No,' he said. 'They only supply delicacies like hare to those
they know well. But for you -' He went over to his box, took out
a hare and presented it to her proudly on the flat of his hand. 'It's
a gift. So that you will never make Bolognese sauce again.'
She seemed to recoil a little. 'Don't they sell them skinned?'
'Ah, skinning it is easy,' he said happily. 'It will take you two
minutes.' He called to the assistant for a paper bag.
'And is it - gutted?' she asked doubtfully.
'Of course not,' he said, sounding a little offended. 'Gigliemi
wouldn't sell a hare with the best bits removed.' He dropped it in
the bag and swung it round to close it. 'Here,' he said, pressing it
into her hand. 'And - here.' He took out a pencil with a flourish
and wrote his mobile phone number on the bag. 'If you need any
help with the recipe, any help at all, just call me. My name is
Tommaso Massi and I will be delighted to assist you.' He swept
the box of hares up on to his shoulder before she could ask him
about the recipe in any more detail.
'You mean that? I can really call you if I have a problem?'
He almost laughed out loud. The American girl was actually
asking if she could phone himl 'But of course. You can call me any
time.'

'Well, thank you. I'll do that. If I need help, that is.'
'Ciao, then.'
' Ciao. For now.'

Ciao for now! He liked that, it had a good sound. And the
way she was looking at him - he had definitely made an
impression.

He had, indeed, made an impression.
He's nice, Laura thought. Like a character from a Michelangelo
drawing, with his big extravagant features and his hands waving in
the air all the time like that. And, ah, undeniably easy on the eye.
But he didn't hit on me, which is refreshing. Refreshing, and a little
bit annoying. Because if he doesn't hit on me, how am I supposed to
say no? Or, as the case may be, yes? Which it isn't, of course. The case
is definitely no. Because you don't just bump into people like that, do
you? Not people you're going to go out with.
Mind you. A chef. How weird is that? Carlotta and I had that
joke about me going out with a chef, and then here one is. A good one
too, he says. A beautiful one, says I.
Serendipity?
It was only much later, when this internal reverie had finally
played itself out, that she realised she was walking along the Via
Aracceli with a smile on her face and a paper bag in her hand containing
a dead baby hare.

Tommaso strapped the box of hares on to the back of his Piaggio
and sped off through the traffic. Uanema, he was late. He had
been told to be quick, and here he was wasting time yet again with
girls. He wondered if anyone would notice that one of the animals
was missing.
He took the Via Aurelia past the Vatican, his little scooter chugging
up the hill towards Montespaccato, weaving expertly through
the endless traffic jams and hold-ups. Finally he came to a part of
the city that was higher, cooler, and calmer, where the buildings
were larger, and where even the cars drove past each other in
unnatural silence, with barely an insult or a gesticulation to
smooth their interaction.
He parked the Piaggio around the back of a large white building,
making sure that it was precisely in line with all the other
scooters, then carried the box of hares shoulder-high through a
Pair of double doors into a vast room full of steam and heat.


There was no sign outside the big white building to announce it,
but this was the kitchen of Templi, one of the most famous gourmet
restaurants in the world.
Tommaso took the box of hares over to the head chef, Karl,
who wordlessly picked up one of the dead animals to inspect it,
sniffing its mouth and anus for decay before pronouncing himself
satisfied with a nod. Only then did he say, 'You're late.'
'Traffic. An overturned lorry on the Ponte Garibaldi.'
'And one of the hares is missing. I ordered a dozen.'
'That's right. There was one that wasn't quite dead. Suddenly
it jumped out and ran back to its mother. Through the traffic. Do
you know the extraordinary thing? It was just as we were going
past the Vatican. And they say the Holy Father is in residence.
Perhaps it was a miracle. Yes, a miracle, that's it.' He was just
warming to his theme when Karl, with a faint sigh, said, 'Go and
help with the glasses, Tommaso.' He nodded towards the sink,
where the bottle-washer, Amelie, was working her way through a
mountain of glass.
Tommaso reached for a pair of polishing gloves. The glassware
at Templi was all lead crystal, and there was never a single speck of
lint or dust on it, let alone a smear of dirt or detergent. Every
single one was polished by hand.

There are three kinds of restaurant in Rome. There are the local trattorie and osterie, most of which serve only cucina Romana, Roman cooking. It is a tradition firmly rooted in the ingredients
available from the markets and slaughterhouses, with no part of
the animal wasted. From the ears to the tail, there is a proper and
correct recipe for everything, handed down from generation to
generation. Then there is cucina creativa, the cuisine which takes
that tradition and experiments with it. Many ordinary Romans
remain deeply suspicious of experimentation, not to mention the
increased prices that go with it, believing firmly that piu se spenne,
peggio se mangia - the more you spend, the worse you eat.
And thirdly there is cucina gourmet - the awkward collision of
French and Italian indicating that this is a concept that doesn't
quite fit comfortably in this region. The ordinary Roman loves his
food with a passion but, however wealthy he is, he will probably
pass his entire life without ever setting foot inside one of the
handful of Michelin-starred establishments dotted around the
Eternal City. The presence of major American and European corporations,
however, many of whom have their local headquarters
nearby, not to mention the stream of wealthy gastro-tourists doing
the modern equivalent of the Grand Tour, means there is a small
but steady demand for an international style of cooking the equal
of that found anywhere else in the world.
Standing at the very apex of these restaurants is Templi, the
three-star establishment of Alain Dufrais, the great Swiss chef and
internationally acknowledged master of nouvelle cuisine.

Polishing glasses is boring work, particularly when you are in love.
Tommaso relieved the tedium by whistling to get the attention of
his friend Bruno, who was making zabaione nearby.
'Ueh, Bruno. Psst. I'm in love.'
'That's good,' Bruno said. He was concentrating on his
zabaglione, which he was making in a traditional, round
bottomed copper pot, directly over a flame. 'But nothing new.
You were in love yesterday as well.'
'This is someone else. An American girl. Blonde and very cute.'
Bruno grunted.
' Ueh, Bruno. How do you make sugo di lepreV
This question, being about food rather than about women,
did make Bruno glance up briefly. He was not good-looking like
his friend Tommaso, being thick-set, heavy, and slightly awkward.
His eyes, which tended to shy away from direct contact with
others, only really settled when he was visualising something to do
with cooking, as he did now. 'Well, you fry the hare with some pancetta; he began.
'PancettaV Tommaso clasped his forehead. T knew I'd forgotten
something.'
'Then you remove the hare and pancetta and you soften
some onions and garlic, very gently. Add a bottle of red
Sangiovese, some cinammon, cloves, rosemary and plenty of
thyme--'
'Thyme! Damn!'
'--and then you put the hare back and simmer it for at least
two hours, until the hare starts to collapse into the sauce, which
becomes so sticky it coats the pasta like glue.'
'Two hours!' Tommaso couldn't remember if he'd actually told
the girl to cook it for that long.
'And, of course, just before serving you remove all the bones.'
'Shit!'
'Why do you ask?'
'Damn!'
'Tell me what happened,' Bruno said gently. He spooned the
zabaglione into ramekins and slid them into the fridge. They were
to form part of a complex assemblage of warm and cold, consisting
of a fresh peach gelato, just starting to thaw; then zabaglione
made with Barolo wine, slightly chilled; then a warm froth of
more zabaglione, a thicker one this time, made with the yolks
of goose eggs and rich, sherry-like Marsala; and finally a topping
of crisp, fried mint leaves and freshly roasted espresso beans,
arranged like the petals and seeds of a flower on top of the other
ingredients.

When Tommaso had finished explaining, Bruno said neutrally,
'So you gave her a hare.'
'Yes. One of Gigliemi's finest.'
'That was romantic of you.'
'It was, wasn't it?'
'Other men give flowers. But you, Tommaso, give dead animals.
Dead baby animals. To an American.'
A thoughtful expression passed across Tommaso's face.
'Still,' Bruno continued, 'at least she wasn't a vegetarian. Many
of them are.'
'You think the hare might have been a mistake?'
Bruno shrugged.
'She did ask me how to gut it,' Tommaso said, remembering. "I
thought that was strange. I mean, most women know how to gut
game, don't they?'
'Maybe not Americans.'
Tommaso smacked his fist into his palm. 'Don't their motners
teach them anything? What do they learn at school, for Christ's
sake?'
'How to give great blow-jobs, apparently,' Bruno said dryly. "I
wouldn't know.'
'Shit! Shit! Shit! The hare was a mistake. I should have given
her some tortellini. Even an idiot can cook tortellini. Even / can
cook tortellini. If only I'd been picking up something different,
this would never have happened.'
lSi nonnema teneva 'o cazzo, 'a chiammavamo nonno*,'' Bruno
agreed calmly. 'Too many ifs. Why don't you call her and give her
the right recipe?'
'I don't have her number. I gave her mine and told her to ring
me if she had any problems.'
'Well, if she does call you, at least it'll prove she isn't in the
mortuary with a hare bone stuck in her throat.'
A faint pinging sound came from beyond the swing doors that
led to the restaurant. Someone had just struck a glass, softly, with
a knife.
'You'd better go,' Bruno said gently.
'Shit!'
Tommaso raced to get into his uniform. Black trousers, white

Literally: 'If my grandmother had a dick, we would have called her
grandpa.'
shirt, black tie, black jacket. Franciscus, the maitre d', didn't like
to be kept waiting.
When Tommaso told Laura he was a chef, he wasn't exactly telling the truth, or indeed anything close to it. Tommaso wasn't
a chef, or a sous chef, or even a commis chef. Tommaso was a waiter,
a very junior waiter - a waiter so lowly that even Amelie the bottle
washer was allowed to give him orders.

The ritual about to take place in the restaurant was the same one
that took place on the first day of every month. It was time to fill
Templi's libro prenotazioni, the reservations book.
While the waiting staff stood round in a semi-circle, three or
four vast bags of post were emptied on to a round table. One by
one each letter was opened and handed to Franciscus, who
perused the contents, gave a curt nod or shake of his head, and
passed it to one of the two waiters to his left. One of these put
the rejections into a rubbish sack while the other carefully wrote
the names of those accepted into the reservations book, a leather
bound volume as weighty as a church ledger. Tommaso's job
was to take the full sacks and replace them with empty ones,
thus ensuring that the ritual, like everything else at Templi,
proceeded with the smooth, uninterrupted solemnity of a state
occasion.
It is not enough, of course, to telephone Templi and simply ask
for a reservation. Even if you could find the number, which is ex
directory, the waiter who answers the phone would explain to
you very politely that, due to excessive demand, reservations are
only accepted in writing, on the first day of each month, for the
period three months in advance. Even so, there are more applicants
than places, and thus a great deal of care has to be taken
when writing your letter to make sure you are one of the lucky
ones.
It is rumoured, for example, that it helps to give some indication
when you write that you are the sort of person by whom the
legendary cooking of Alain Dufrais will be truly appreciated; a sort of brief resume, detailing other restaurants you have eaten at though
you will wrant to acknowledge that they cannot be as good
as Templi - or perhaps your appreciation of the philosophy outlined
in one of Monsieur Dufrais's many books. Do not be
tempted to go on at length, however, because this may indicate
that you are a chatterbox - and if there is one thing Alain Dufrais
does not appreciate, it is a chatterbox. Talking is not actually forbidden
at Templi, but excessive conversation is certainly
discouraged, it being assumed that you are there to concentrate on
the flavours in your mouth, not to adulterate them with unnecessary
verbiage. Mobile phones, cigarettes and children are forbidden - the latter not in so many words, but you will have
been sent a discreet note well in advance of your meal which
clearly states that Monsieur Dufrais cooks only for well
developed, sensitive palates.
It is also important not to let yourself down with your choice of
paper or writing implement. To write in ballpoint, for example,
rather than with a fountain pen, suggests that you are not really
treating your application seriously. To use machine-cut paper
might be all right - Monsieur Dufrais is not averse to simplicity but
the paper you choose had better be expensive as well as simple.
On the subject of money, however, do not under any circumstances
fall into the trap of enclosing a hundred-euro note with
your letter. Many people do so, and to see the icy contempt which
flickers across the maitre d's face when the notes flutter from the
envelopes is a chilling sight. The bills are handed to another
waiter, to be added to the tips pool, but the letter always goes
straight into the rubbish bag without another glance. Alain
Lmfrais is famously unconcerned with money, an attitude that
permeates his whole establishment, which is why the menus have
no prices and dinner for two will set you back anywhere between
five hundred and a thousand euros.

By the time the reservations had been sorted it was nearly noon,
and the front-of-house staff took their places around the dining
room to await the first guests and make final checks of glassware,
silverware and placement. It was Alain's proud boast that the waiters
at Templi always outnumbered the customers by at least two to
one. To reach for a bottle at Templi was to find it floating as if by
magic towards your glass; if you dropped a fork, it would be
caught before it reached the ground, and just as swiftly replaced
with a clean one.
At twelve-fifteen precisely Alain Dufrais himself made his daily
tour of the dining room. You would never have guessed that he
had been in his kitchen for nearly six hours: his whites were
immaculate, untouched by a single drop of food. A tall, thin man
of few words, he made a circuit of the empty tables like a senior
commander inspecting his troops. Occasionally he picked up a
glass and held it to the light, or pushed a fork a few millimetres to
the left. On these occasions he said nothing, but Franciscus
instantly pounced on the offending object, handing it to a waiter
to be replaced. Then Alain returned to his inner sanctum, the
kitchen. The double doors swung shut; the noise and hubbub of
the morning subsided. There were no last-minute preparations,
for the simple reason that everything was prepared and ready. Like
an army that knows it has manned a perfect defensive position, the
staff of Templi waited in silence for the first customer to show
himself at their door.

By half-past two the kitchen was humming like a well-oiled machine,
pushing out intricate assemblies of haute cuisine in great gusts of fire
and steam. The cooks worked like demons, their fingers dancing
gracefully over the ingredients in a blur of dicing and stripping and mixing. Despite the extreme pressure they were under, and the
urgency with which they worked, there was no yelling or swearing,
and with the exception of the head chef, who called out the orders
as the waiters brought them in, they rarely spoke. Alain's goal was
consistent perfection, time after time, and no hint of chaos or
temper was allowed to disturb the concentration of the dozens of
craftsmen who toiled to realise his vision. Only once, when a commis cropped a saucepan, did the great man pause, turn to his head chef,
and murmur something in his ear. No one heard what was said, but
they all knew that the commis would be gone by the end of service.
lo work at Templi was a privilege. Staff came from as far afield as
Australia, France and America for the opportunity to learn from the
master. It was not an honour that could be squandered on incompetents.
Alain
Dufrais ran his kitchen the traditional way, with a brigade
made up of five distinct levels. At its apex was himself, the chef de
cuisine, with a head chef, Karl, as his deputy. Karl ran the service,
which was to say that he called out individual orders to the next
levels in the hierarchy - the sous chefs and the chefs de partie. While
the sous chefsworked the pass, putting the food on to plates, saucing,
garnishing and checking it, the chefs de partie were each responsible
for a different part of the kitchen. The saucier was responsible for
meat, the entre metier for vegetables, the garde manger for cold
dishes, and the patissier for desserts. Underneath these were a
number of specialist assistants or demi chefs. Then, finally, there were the lowest of the low - the commis, who did whatever they were told
to do by whoever told them to do it. It was a hierarchy as rigid and as immutable as a medieval society, in which everyone knew their
place and knew, too, that their continued existence in that place
depended entirely on the patronage of the person directly above
them.

Bruno had recently been promoted to patissier. His corner of
the kitchen was away from the rest - to protect the delicate
threads of sugar and confections of raw egg from heat and busde but
two or three times during service Alain Dufrais would come
over to check that here, too, all was proceeding exactly as it
should. Occasionally he dipped his finger into one of Bruno's
saucepans to taste what was in it - he had never been known to
show pain, even when the liquid was boiling - and on several
occasions over the past week this had been followed by a curt nod
of approval. These accolades had been noted by the other chefs de
partie, and there was not one of them who did not wish that it had
been themselves the nods were directed at.
Bruno himself had no time to consider whether he was doing
well or not. By three, when the other chefs were winding down,
he was still in a flurry of movement - caramelising, whipping,
folding, creating airy extravagances of sugar and cream and ice
that delighted the palate but magically seemed to have no substance
at all as soon as they entered the stomach. His powers of
concentration were intense, and it was some time before
he realised that something unusual was going on.
Throughout the service, a greater than normal amount of noise
had been filtering through from the dining room. Occasionally, as
the waiters pushed through the swing doors, a gust of raucous
laughter or a bellow of conversation came too, which Bruno only
noticed because it gradually affected the mood of the chef- something
to which the kitchen brigade were as finely attuned as primates
are said to be attuned to the emotions of their dominant silverback.
To begin with, Alain Dufrais raised his head, puzzled, and listened
intently before going back to his work without comment. A
few minutes later, however, a ragged cheer could be heard. Alain did
not appear to react, but it was noticed that a little later he swept the
delicate assembly of pigs' trotters and truffles he was working on
into the rubbish bin and started again. The chef de cuisine, despite
his almost impossibly high standards, very rarely had to start over.
By now almost the entire brigade had one eye on their chef and
only one eye on their work. Mistakes, small errors of judgement
and timing, were being made. Karl rejected more than one dish as
it was passed to him for approval, putting yet more pressure on the
sweating cooks as a backlog of sauces and garnishes instantly built
up. The huge machine faltered, and Alain Dufrais, his nerves jangling,
sensed it.
A waiter came in, bringing with him another cheer from the
dining room. Dufrais stopped what he was doing and walked over
to the waiter. 'What is that?' he said quietly.
The waiter did not need to ask what Alain was referring to.
'Table two. A birthday party.'
'How many people?'
'Twelve.'
Alain started to walk away. Then, as another waiter entered, followed
by another bellow of raucous conversation, he abruptly
changed his mind.
Straightening his hat, he marched out into the restaurant.
In the dining room, the birthday party had fallen silent - not
because they were aware of the approaching storm, but because
one of their number had just tapped on the table with his knife. As
the hubbub subsided, he wiped his mouth with his napkin and got
to his feet, grinning from ear to ear. A burst of applause greeted
this manoeuvre. Umberto, the father of Federica, whose twenty
first birthday celebration this was, intended to make a speech.
'My friends,' he began.
The Swiss chef stalked towards him, his towering height magnified
still more by his immaculate chef's hat, tall as a guardsman's
bearskin. Umberto, not at all put out, turned to greet him.
'Hello,' he cried happily. 'This is fantastic, really fantastic. Isn't it,
everybody?'
Alain took in the table with a single glance. He saw the unfinished
food in front of Umberto, the row of corks that testified to
too many bottles of good red wine consumed. A hush fell across
the room as the other diners waited to see what he would do.
'You are leaving,' he said curtly. 'Now. All of you. Get out.' He
turned on his heel and walked back to the kitchen.
Someone laughed, thinking it was a joke, but the laughter died
on his lips when he realised that the chef was serious. A platoon of
waiters, mobilised by Franciscus, was advancing courteously but
with unmistakable determination towards the offending table.
Umberto opened his mouth to protest but his daughter pulled at
his sleeve, her face pink with embarrassment.
Slowly, silently, the group rose from their places and departed,
each one escorted outside by a waiter, like prisoners with their
own personal jailers. Tommaso found himself next to the birthday
girl, who was by now in floods of tears.
'I'm so sorry,' he muttered to her. 'Chef is highly strung.' He
patted her arm. 'And a bit of a prick as well,' he added truthfully.
The initial stunned surprise had worn off and the party guests
were starting to get angry. Fingers were being poked at the waiters'
chests and fists waved in their faces. Only when a crack detachment
of porters was despatched from the restaurant as reinforcements did
the would-be customers finally get into their cars and leave.

The disruption meant that the lunchtime service rolled straight
over into the evening one. All afternoon the chefs sliced and
chopped and stirred and seasoned without a break, desperately
trying to restore the kitchen - and the mood of their chef- to its
normal equilibrium. By eight o'clock, calm once again reigned at
Templi. The first diners of the evening were eating their amusegueules
and sipping mur royale as they perused the menu in an
atmosphere of studious rapture, trying to choose between roti of
quail stuffed with wild mushrooms, potato strings au jus with
truffles, or rib-eye of lamb en persillade with a cassoulet of pole
beans and thyme-infused olive oil.
It did not help, therefore, when a mobile phone somewhere
began to play the 1970s Deep Purple anthem 'Smoke on the
Water'.
The moment he heard it, Tommaso knew that it was his. Even
in Italy there are not so many Deep Purple fans that a 'Smoke on
the Water' ringtone could belong to two people in the same
restaurant. In addition, he now remembered that he had been so
busy thinking about the American girl that he had not, in fact,
turned off his telefonino upon entering the premises, in accordance
with the standing instruction to all staff. Failure to comply
with this rule was cause for instant dismissal.
The ringing was coming from the staff coat cupboard.
Tommaso had to act quickly. Hurling himself into its depths, he
pulled his phone from the jacket where he had left it and pressed
Answer'. 'One moment,' he whispered into it. Simultaneously, he
patted the coat pockets until he located another telefonino, one
that had been switched off. Slipping his own phone into his
pocket, he emerged from the cupboard with the second phone
held triumphantly aloft.
'This is the one,' he said to Franciscus. As the maitre d' took
the phone, placed it on the floor and calmly ground it under his
heel, Tommaso slipped away into the garden.
'Sz'?' he said as soon as he was alone.
'Hello,' a girl's voice said hesitantly on the other end.
Tommaso's heart leaped. It was the American. 'It's Laura
Patterson - we met earlier? In the delicatessen.'
'Of course. How are you, Laura?'
'Well, I'm fine, but I'm not so certain about the hare sauce. I'm
not sure I quite understood what you told me.'

In fact, Laura was at that very moment staring at a mound of
steaming yellow pappardelle, perched on top of which was a
whole, almost raw, baby hare. She had managed to skin and gut it,
which had not been easy for either her or the hare, although it had
to be said that of the two of them the hare seemed to have come
off worst in the encounter.
"I guess I'm having a bad hare day,' she joked nervously.
'What?'
'Urn - never mind. Terrible joke. Is there anything I can do?'
'Did you remember the pancettaV Tommaso said sternly.
'Pancetta! Oh. I don't think so.'
'And how long did you cook it for?'
'Urn - about twenty minutes.'
Tommaso scratched his head. Passing on a recipe was one
thing, but rescuing a recipe gone wrong was way beyond his limited
culinary skills. He began to walk rapidly towards the kitchen.
Bruno would know what to do.
He would have handed the phone over to his friend but for the
sudden recollection that his chances of seducing Laura depended on
maintaining the pretence that he could cook. Tugging Bruno's
sleeve, he pulled him into the most hidden recesses of the patissier's corner and pointed to the mobile phone tucked against his own ear.
'So you have the hare, which you have cooked for twenty
minutes, and the pappardelle, which you have cooked for - what?'
he said into the phone.
'Fifteen,' Laura said. Through the door of the kitchen she
could see her father and Cassie, his odiously young personalassistant-cum-girlfriend,
glancing at their watches.
'Fifteen,' Tommaso repeated, looking at Bruno significantly.
Bruno winced. 'Fresh pasta,' he murmured.
'You'll need to cook another lot of pappardelle,,' Tommaso said
to Laura.
'But not yet,' Bruno added hastily. 'First we need to deal with
this hare.'
'But first, we need to deal with the hare.'
'Does she have a frying pan?' Bruno wanted to know.
"Is there a frying pan?' Tommaso asked.
Laura, at the other end, said, 'Yes.'
'Yes,' Tommaso relayed to his friend. Laura looked at her
phone, a little puzzled. Either there was an echo, or Tommaso was
repeating everything she said to him.
Bruno nodded. 'Good. Now let's take a look at what's in her
fridge. We won't be able to do proper sugo di lepre, not if she
wants to eat before midnight, but we may be able to do something
a little bit similar.' He picked up a lemon and began to dice the
zest into tiny pieces with a paring knife as he talked Tommaso, and
by extension Laura, through the preparation of a simple meat
sauce. He had always been able to do two things at once if they
Were associated with food. It was only when it was nothing to do
with cooking that he became all fingers and thumbs again.

It was midnight before the two young men left Templi. They had
a nightcap at a small bar before walking home through the warm,
quiet streets to the tiny apartment they shared in Trastevere.
Tommaso had stored Laura's number in his phone when she
called. As they walked he dialled it.
Hey, Laura, it's Tommaso. How was your meal?'
'Oh, hi, Tommaso. It was wonderful. I can't thank you enough."
'Where are you? I can hear a kind of reverberation.'
'Oh, I'm in the bath, soaking. I was just going to bed.'
'She's in the bath,' Tommaso whispered to Bruno. 'It's a good
sign.'
'That thing with the hare and the tomatoes was just inspired.'
Laura said. There was the sound of splashing. 'Though I guess my
sauce wasn't as good as you'd do it,' she continued. "I mean, if I
hadn't messed it up in the first place . . .'
Tommaso grinned at Bruno. 'You know, I'd like to cook something
for you, Laura. Properly, I mean.'
'Really?'
'What are you doing tomorrow night?'
Laura paused. She didn't want to appear too keen, but that
hare really had been delicious.
'Nothing much,' she said.

Tommaso ended the call and let out a whoop that echoed down
the narrow street. 'She wants me to cook for her!'
'Fantastic,' Bruno said dryly. "I will be interested to see what
you decide to serve.'
'Ah. Well, I thought you might give me some advice there, my
old friend.'
LHai voluto la bicicletta . . .*' Bruno shrugged.
'Aw, come on. You know I'd do the same for you.'
'You could hardly do the same for me,' Bruno pointed out,
'seeing as how you can't cook for shit.'
'You know what I mean.'
They walked on for a few moments. Bruno said carefully, 'Just
so I'm clear, what are you asking me for?'
'Just to come up with some ideas. Something so fantastic, so
sumptuous and sexy that it will make Laura, the beautiful Laura,
swoon with love and fall into bed with me.'
Bruno thought about this. 'But which?' he said at last.
'Because, you know, to make someone horny and to make someone
fall in love are two very different things.'
'How so, philosopher?'
'If you want to make someone cry,' Bruno said slowly, 'you
give them an onion to chop. But if you want them to feel sad, you
cook them the dish their mother used to cook for them when they
were small. You see the difference?'
Tommaso shrugged.
'And to make someone horny,' Bruno continued, 'well, that's
harder than crying, but certainly not impossible. Seafood, of
course, has aphrodisiac qualities. Molluscs, too - like lanarche ajo e ojo, snails in oil and garlic. Perhaps some carciofioni - baby artichokes
cooked with mint, pulled apart with the fingers and dipped
in soft, melted butter. Wine, obviously. And then, to finish, a
burst of sugar, something light but artificial, so that you feel full of
energy and happiness . . . but that's only one side of the story. If
you wanted someone to fall in love with you, you would cook
them something very different, something perfectly simple but
intense. Something that shows you understand their very soul.'
'Such as?'
'Well, that's the difficulty. It will vary from individual to individual.
You'd have to really know the person concerned: their
history; their background; whether they are raw or refined, dry or
oily. You would have to have tasted them, to know whether their
own flesh is sweet or savoury, salty or bland. In short, you would
have to love them, and even then you might not truly know them
well enough to cook a dish that would capture their heart.'
Parla come t'hafatto mammeta*,' Tommaso laughed. 'This is





*From 'Hai voluto la bicicletta? E pedala!' A saying meaning, literally:
'You wanted the bicycle, so pedal it.'

34

"Speak as your mother showed you', i.e. cut the bullshit.
too much thinking for me. Just get her into my bed and your
cooking will have done all that I ask of it.'
"My cooking? I thought I was just providing a few ideas.'
'Ah.' Tommaso looked a bit shamefaced. 'It's just that - think
how terrible it would be if I ruined your wonderful menu. You'd
be unhappy, and then I'd be unhappy, and then I wouldn't be able
to make Laura happy, and that would be a terrible thing to have
on your conscience, wouldn't it? Besides,' he added craftily, 'how
often do you get the chance to try out your dishes on a real live
American? Your own dishes, I mean?'
'That's true,' Bruno said sombrely. 'I'm just a factory worker
up there at Templi. A very high-quality worker in a gilded factory,
but it's a production line all the same. Every day I make Alain's
pastries, Alain's dolci, Alain's famous creme caramelwith the baked
vanilla pod in the centre - even when I could do something better,
he doesn't want it. And as for Roman ideas . . .' He mimicked the
chef's Swiss accent, '"We don't want any of those peasant recipes
here, thank you." It's Michelin, Michelin, Michelin. Foie gras,
white truffles, champagne sauce. Why? When a simple Roman coda alia vaccinara* is more satisfying than any of them? And--'
'So you'll do it?' Tommaso said quickly, having heard his friend
make this particular speech many times before. 'You'll cook something
fantastic I can pretend to Laura I prepared myself?'
Bruno laughed and punched his friend lightly on the arm. 'Of
course. I'll get you your bicicletta. Just make sure you know how
to pedal it, OK?'

* Braised oxtail. Vaccinara is the old Roman word for butchers, whose
favourite dish this was said to be.


Laura phoned Carlotta the next morning and told her the
news.
'I've found a chef. And, cara, he's so good-looking. Like a
Michelangelo. He gave me a pasta recipe already and talked me
through how to cook it. And I'm going round tonight for him to
cook for me--'
lLentamente, Laura. Slow down. You're going to his apartment?
On the first date?'
'Well, yes. Where else would he cook for me?'
'Are you going to sleep with him?'
'Of course not. I've only met him once.'
'If you go to his apartment, he'll think you're going to sleep
with him,' Carlotta said flatly.
'He didn't seem like that.'
Siamo in Italia, Laura. We're in Italy. Trust me, he thinks
you're going to sleep with him.'
Laura sighed. 'You're the one who's always telling me to follow
my heart.'
Sure. Just as long as you're clear where it is you're following it
to. Do me a favour - take some goldoni*, will you? That's something
else Italian men aren't always good at.'
'Well, I've had plenty of practice at fending off unwanted attentions,'
Laura said, a little huffily. 'Besides, I told you, he's nice.
And he does have an apartment, so at least we're not talking about
a grope in the bushes.'
'Aha. You are going to sleep with him.'
'Maybe,' Laura admitted. 'I haven't made up my mind. But a
wild fling is certainly on the cards.'
'Then you should definitely take condoms. And remember whatever
you do, no sneakers.'

It was Bruno's morning off, and he spent most of it at the
Mercato di San Cosimato, Trastevere's main food market, looking
for ingredients for Tommaso's great meal of seduction. He had no
menu at this stage, and no plan. He simply walked around, seeing
what was available, listening to the competing shouts of the stallholders
and letting an idea of the seasonal delicacies sink into his
mind. The carciofini were good at the moment, particularly the romagnolo, a variety of artichoke exclusive to the region, so sweet
and tender it could even be eaten raw. Puntarelle, a local bitter
chicory, would make a heavenly salad. In the Vini e Olio he found
a rare Torre Ercolana, a wine that combined Merlot with the local
Cesanese grape. The latter had been paired with the flavours of
Roman cuisine for over a thousand years: they went together like
an old married couple. There was spring lamb in abundance, and
he was able to track down some good abbacchio - suckling lamb
that had been slaughtered even before it had tasted grass.
From opportunities like these, he began to fashion a menu, letting
the theme develop in his mind. A Roman meal, yes; but more
than that. A springtime feast, in which every morsel spoke of

* Condoms.
resurgence and renewal, old flavours restated with tenderness and
delicacy, just as they had been every spring since time began. He
bought a bottle of oil that came from a tiny estate he knew of, a
fresh pressing whose green, youthful flavours tasted like a bowl of
olives just off the tree. He hesitated before a stall full of fat white
asparagus from Bassano del Grappa, on the banks of the fast
flowing river Brenta. It was outrageously expensive, but worth it for such quality, he decided, as the stallholder wrapped a dozen of the pale fronds in damp paper and handed it to Bruno with a
flourish like a bouquet of the finest flowers.
His theme clarified itself the more he thought about it. It was to be a celebration of youth - youth cut short, youth triumphant, youth that must be seized and celebrated. He wouldn't tell
Tommaso that, of course. His friend got a nosebleed whenever Bruno tried to explain the deeper patterns he saw in cooking.
The point was that it would work, at some subconscious level.
At the end of his tour of the market he came across an old man sitting in a dilapidated deckchair, snoozing. At his feet was a
creased old carrier bag. Bruno crouched down and opened the bag carefully. Inside, like eggs in a nest of straw, were half a dozen ricotte. The old man opened his eyes.
'All from my own animals,' he said proudly. 'And made by my own wife.'
Bruno eased one of the cheeses to the surface and inhaled.
Instantly he was transported to the tiny pastures of the Castelli
Romani, the hilly countryside around Rome. There was a touch of silage in the scent of the cheese, from winter feed, but there was fresh grass, too, and sunlight, and the faintest tang of thyme where it grew wild in the meadows and had been eaten by the sheep along with the grass. He didn't really need any more food, but the ncotta was so perfect that he knew he would find a place for it
somewhere in his meal, perhaps served as a dessert with a dusting
of cinnamon and a dab of sweet honey.
He was on his way to the pasta shop across the square when he
saw the girl again. Bruno stopped, his heart in his mouth. He had
no idea who she was, but he had seen her half a dozen times over
the last few weeks, wandering round Trastevere; particularly here
in the market, where she seemed to stare longingly at the stalls
piled high with dozens of different vegetables: radicchio, cime di
rapa, cardoons, bruscandoli - the little green hop shoots that
appeared in the market for just a few weeks in springtime; borragine,
barba difrate, even lampascione, hyacinth bulbs, and of
course the baskets filled with tenerume, the first tiny courgettes,
each one tipped with a veined, sunset-coloured flower. He had
never seen her buy anything, though. Once he had been close
enough to see that she had in her hand a plastic carrier bag containing
a jar of Skippy peanut butter, from a food shop on the
other side of the market that sold imported stuff. From this he
deduced that she was American or Australian, and that she was
homesick sometimes for the tastes of her own country. But the
way she looked so hungrily at the piles of unfamiliar vegetables
made him long to cook them for her, to show her what she was
missing. Once he had got as far as walking up to her and saying, ^Buongiorno? but the moment she turned to him, those wonderful
grey eyes lighting up with interest as she waited to see what he
would say, he lost his nerve and pretended he simply needed to
reach past her for some tomatoes. ^Scusi^ he had mumbled, and
she'd stood back to let him pass.
Today she was wearing a white halter top. He stood and drank
in the way her shoulders were dotted with orange-red freckles
beneath the swirl of blonde hair, like a scattering of chilli flakes.
For a moment, with the clarity of hallucination, he could almost
taste her in his mind, imagining on his palate the salty smoothness
of her honey-coloured skin, /will talk to her, he thought. I'll give
her the asparagus. I can always buy some more.
His mind made up, he started towards her; but he was just a
moment too late. The girl had turned and walked away.
Bruno watched her go. On the other side of the market there
was a row of tiny shops, each barely larger than a doorway - a
minuscule hardware shop, a pharmacy, a shop selling nothing but
olive oil and another selling lingerie, all packed into about ten
yards of street. The girl stood in front of the display of lingerie for
a moment, then pulled open the door and walked inside.
Bruno stopped short. What are you doing, you fool? he cursed
himself. She already has a boyfriend. A lover, in fact. Why else would she be buying lingerie? And what on earth made you imagine that a girl like that would be single in the first place? He turned, heartsick,
and went back to his shopping.

Laura loved to walk around Trastevere, the district where she was
staying. According to the guidebooks it was a slightly seedy place,
a working-class enclave in the heart of the Eternal City, but she
loved the down-at-heel vibrancy of the cobbled lanes, barely wide
enough to accommodate the Romans' miniaturised cars. The
Mystic Dread Rock Steady Reggae shop stood shoulder-to
shoulder with a shop selling power tools, while the grandly named
Institute of Sympathetic Shiatsu was a door crammed between a
pharmacy and a booth selling lottery tickets. Furniture workshops
stood cheek-by-jowl with churches; orange trees competed with
restaurant parasols for every square inch of sunlight; and the herby odour of cannabis mingled with the smells of fresh coffee and
pizza. In the squares and open spaces battered cars were parked in
random chaos, like frozen traffic snarl-ups from which the drivers
had simply walked away, and bright red splashes of geranium
trailed from every window ledge and doorway.
One day soon after her arrival she had found herself passing a
little shop. The window display was barely larger than a closet, but
it held more than a dozen sets of the most beautiful underwear
Laura had ever seen. Thongs as fine as necklaces were arranged in
cases like precious jewels. There were delicate floral camisoles edged
with lace, as fine as that for any wedding dress; sassy low-slung
hipsters; black suspender belts; creamy silk basques. At the time she
had dragged herself away from the shop without entering, but now,
preparing for her date, she found herself standing outside it once
again. Carlotta's words rang in her head: Trust me, he thinks you're
going to sleep with him.
A little light-headed, she opened the door and stepped
inside.
There were no shelves in the little shop, no racks of stock or
displays of merchandise. Instead there was an impeccably dressed
Italian in her thirties reading II Messaggero, who put down the
newspaper as the door opened and scrutinised Laura with a practised
eye.
'"Momento! the woman said decisively, disappearing into a tiny
recess. When she reappeared it was with four slim boxes, which
she opened on the counter one at a time. Inside, nestled in layers
of tissue paper, were garments even finer than those in the
window. No price tags were attached, and Laura soon discovered
why: when she eventually made her choice, a red lace basque with
complicated ties that made her feel almost lasciviously decadent,
the figure on the till was more than her entire living allowance for
the week.

'I'm going to teach you how to chop,' Bruno told Tommaso.
'That way, when she arrives you'll look as if you're doing the
cooking.'
'Sure,' Tommaso said confidently. Bruno took an apple and
placed it on the work surface. Then he unrolled his canvas knife
bag.
'If you damage my knives,' he said, 'you'll be dead.'
"I won't damage them.' Tommaso picked up the biggest, a
steel Wiisthof. 'Christ Jesus, it's heavy.'
Bruno gently removed the cleaver from his friend's hand. 'Uh
uh. Too big for you. You should start with this one.' He passed
him the smaller Global. 'It's Japanese. Made of vanadium steel.'
Bruno poured a little olive oil on to a carborundum stone. 'First,
I'll show you how to sharpen it.'
After five minutes of sharpening, Tommaso was bored. "It must
be ready now.'
'Nearly.'
When he was satisfied, Bruno took out a diamond steel. 'And
now we hone it.'
It was several more minutes before Bruno allowed his friend to
start on the apple. 'You use the heel of the knife for thicker
objects, the point for finer work,' he instructed. 'Work across the
apple at an angle, like so. Don't wait for the first slice to fall before
you move on to the next one. And keep your fingertips tucked in.
This blade can slice through a pig's trotters, so your little digits
won't be much of an obstacle.'
While Tommaso practised chopping, Bruno baked. Unlike
many chefs, he did not despise baking. He loved meat and vegetables,
too, but there was another, different kind of pleasure in
spinning artificial, dazzling confections of sugar and flour, or
baking a tray of simple biscuits.
The dolce itself, after so much rich food, was to be a straightforward
one - the ricotta, with honey and a sprinkling of
cinnamon, and a glass of vin santo - sweet white wine - into
which would be dipped tozzetti, handmade hazelnut biscuits.
Bruno was just putting the biscuits into the oven when his friend
came over.
'Here,' Tommaso said, pulling a little packet out of his jeans,
'some extra herbs for the tozzetti?
'You don't put herbs in tozzetti,'' Bruno began. Then he saw
that the little packet actually held about an eighth of an ounce of
dope.
'Trust me,' Tommaso said, winking. 'It'll taste even better with
this.'
'Uh-uh,' Bruno said firmly, pushing his friend's hand away.
It'll ruin the taste of the hazelnuts; and besides, you won't need
any more stimulants after a meal like this. How are you going to
do justice to this girl if she's in the bedroom and you're out on the
balcony?'
Bruno had decided to serve the asparagus with a warm zabaione sauce; not the complex version he prepared in the restaurant
but a simple, sensual froth of egg yolk and white wine. What
he hadn't yet told Tommaso was that finishing the zabaglione
would have to be done at the last moment, just before it was
served. Learning to use a knife was the easy part. Before the end
of the day, his friend was going to have to learn how to use a
double boiler as well.

At the Residencia Magdalena, the apartment block where the
American students were housed, Laura was starting to have
second thoughts about the basque. It was undeniably beautiful,
but there was something almost fetishistic, not to mention impractical,
about the dozens of tiny hooks and ties with which it
fastened.
'What do you think?' she asked her roommate, Judith. 'Too
much? Too complicated?'
Judith surveyed her through narrowed eyes. 'Put it this way:
you'd better hope he's good with his hands.'
"I have been led to believe that he's quite dextrous,' Laura
said. She blushed.
'Well, if he can get that thing off you, he must be. I'd say
you're in for a great night.'

Tommaso was struggling with the concept of a double boiler.
Time after time he started to whip up the egg yolks, only for the
froth to collapse into a sticky mess.
'You're being too brutal,' Bruno told him. 'Here. Move the
elbow as well as the wrist. Like this.'
Tommaso tried again. This time he was too energetic and the
mixture flew off the end of his whisk.
'Be patient,' Bruno said. 'Now, one more time.'
'It's hopeless,' Tommaso said, wearily putting down the whisk.
'I can't do this.'
'It's necessary. Now, one more time--'
'Ah, but it isn't necessary, is it? Not really,' Tommaso said
craftily. 'After all, we'll be sitting at the table, so what's to stop me
from pretending to come in here and whip the zabaglione, while
really you do it?'
Bruno thought about it. 'But where would I be?'
'In here, of course. Laura needn't know. Then, when it's all
plated, you could just creep out.'
'Well, OK then,' Bruno said reluctantly. It certainly had to be
easier than teaching Tommaso how to cook.

At eight o'clock Laura found the address Tommaso had given
her, a dingy door beside a scooter shop. She rang the bell.
Tommaso's face appeared high above her head. 'Come up,' he
shouted. 'It's open.'
She stepped into a dark courtyard and trudged up endless
flights of stairs until she got to the top. Here, too, the door was
open, and she stepped inside. The apartment was tiny and by no
means smart, a nest of four little rooms festooned with old film
posters and pictures of seventies rock stars. But the view took her
breath away.
Red-tiled rooftop after red-tiled rooftop stretched away below
her, a chaotic jumble of houses, apartments and churches all
crammed together, tumbling down towards the Tiber. On her
left, along the long ridge of the Janiculum Hill, lights twinkled in
the distance. In front of her, beyond the river, the palaces and
churches of old Rome were floodlit islands among the darkness of
the surrounding buildings.
'Wow,' she said reverently.
The window gave on to a sloped roof, which had been
adapted into a makeshift and rather lethal-looking balcony by the
addition of two battered old armchairs and a few pots of herbs,
scattered among a thicket of television aerials. Tommaso was
getting out of one of the chairs to greet her, impossibly beautiful,
his sculptured face crowned by an explosion of curly ringlets
as thick as the twists in a telephone cord. 'Hi,' he said. 'How are
you, Laura?'
'I'm great.' Even better than the view, however, was the smell
emanating from the kitchen, which almost knocked her off her
feet. 'My God,' she breathed. 'What is that?
'Dinner,' he said simply.
'It smells -' she inhaled deeply '- fantastic.''
'It's pretty good,' he said modestly. 'Needs another twenty
minutes.'
'Twenty minutes!' She wasn't sure she could wait that long.
She wanted to taste it now, right now.
'Sure. Don't worry. It will be even better if we have to wait a
little. The anticipation will be part of the pleasure.' He ran one
hand down her back as he kissed her cheek in greeting.
Laura gave a tiny, secret shiver. Carlotta had been right.

After a glass of prosecco, Laura was completely relaxed. Tommaso
was an excellent host, attentive and interested - at least he was
once she had persuaded him to turn off the atrocious music he
had playing in the background.
'You don't like the Ramones?' he said, surprised. 'But they're
American.'
'So's Mariah Carey,' she pointed out. It seemed strange that
someone whose taste in food was so highly developed could be
completely deficient in any musical taste whatsoever.
With the Ramones ushered politely out of the apartment, the}7 chatted happily as Tommaso sliced tiny spring vegetables for pinzimonio,
a dip of olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. The kitchen was
full of professional-looking chef's equipment and some of the
most ferocious knives Laura had ever seen.
'When did you learn to do that?' she asked, watching
Tommaso's knife dance over the chopping board.
'Oh, it's easy. And,' he added, more truthfully, I had a very
good teacher.'
The wonderful smells from the oven were making Laura's
mouth water. 'So what are we eating tonight?'
'Here.' He handed her a menu with a flourish and a bow, like
a waiter.
She looked at the card and read: Antipasto: verdure in pinzimonio.
Primo: spaghetti aWamatriciana. Secondo: abbacchio alia
cacciatora. Contorni: carciofi alia romana, asparagi con zabaione.
Dolci: ricotta dolce; vin santo, biscotti. 'My God. We'll never eat all
that.'
iQuanto basta. Just enough. They are very small amounts, just
enough to waken the palate. Not like American steaks, which sit
on the stomach and make you--' He mimed exhaustion.
There was the sound of a door closing. 'Who's that?' Laura
asked.
'Just my roommate. Don't worry, he's going out.'
'Is he a chef as well?'
'Bruno? Not exactly. That is, he's a trainee. Just a bottle
washer, really. Now, shall we eat?'

Laura had never eaten food like this before. No: she had never
eaten before. It was as if these flavours had always existed, had
always been there in her imagination, but now she was tasting
them properly for the very first time. Each course was more
intense than the last. The spaghetti was coated in a thick sauce
of meat and wine; rich, pungent and sticky. The lamb, by contrast,
was pink and sweet, so tender it seemed to dissolve in her
mouth. It was served without vegetables, but afterwards
Tommaso brought the first of the contorni to the table: a whole rtichoke, slathered in warm olive oil and lemon juice and
sprinkled with chopped mint. Laura licked every drop of oil off
her fingers, amazed by the intensity of the flavour. Her stomach
kept telling her that it was full, stretched to bursting point, but
her appetite kept telling her she could take a little more, just
another mouthful, until she felt quite dizzy with the excessive ness
of it all.
Tommaso left her while he went to finish the asparagus. After
a few minutes, missing his company, Laura decided she'd go and
help. She piled up the dirty plates and carried them towards the
kitchen. 'Tommaso? I'll wash these while you're doing that.'
She pushed the door, which didn't open. 'Sorry,' Tommaso
called from within. 'It's, uh, stuck. It does that sometimes.'
She rattled the door handle. 'Want me to push it from this
side?'
'No, I'll sort it in a minute.'
For a confused moment Laura thought she heard voices murmuring
behind the door, but it was only Tommaso breaking into
song as he cooked.
At last the door opened and Tommaso came out, holding a
platter from which emanated the most amazing aroma. 'Fixed it.
Tell you what, why don't you take this to the table?'
A few minutes later they were eating the asparagus. It was
breathtakingly good. The stalks, nestled in their foamy sauce of
beaten egg yolk and wine, were so tender at the tip that she could
almost suck the plump heads off, but got progressively firmer as
she chewed down towards the crisp base.
'Tommaso,' she said rapturously, "I have to tell you--'
"I know,' he said, smiling at her, and she felt her whole body
bathed in a languorous, sensual glow.

In the kitchen, Bruno carried the pans over to the sink and carefully,
so that they wouldn't make any sound, lowered them into
the water.
'So what are you doing in Rome?' he heard Tommaso say.
"I wrote an essay on art history for a competition,' a girl

answered. 'The winner got to come to Rome for a whole year. It's
sort of like a scholarship.' There was something about her voice
that made Bruno think of dolci, of meringues and sweet zabaione and peaches bubbling as they poached in wine. Unable to help
himself, he listened for just a moment longer.
'But you can have some fun as well?'
'Are you kidding? Art history is fun.' Bruno, imagining
Tommaso's expression, smiled. 'No, really,' the girl was saying. "I
mean, I guess you're used to it. You can go and look at a
Caravaggio every day if you want to, but for me it's the chance of
a lifetime.'
'Caravaggio?'
'You don't know Caravaggio?' The girl sounded surprised.
Tomasso said quickly, 'Si. Of course. All Romans know
Caravaggio. Which is your favourite?'
'Well, it's hard to choose one--'
'Of course.'
'--but if I absolutely had to, it would probably be The Fortune
Teller, in the Musei Capitolini.'
Hands in the sink, Bruno nodded. It was his favourite, too.
Tommaso's girl had taste.
'If I were a painter,' Tomasso said reverently, 'I would only
paint you, Laura. Then all my pictures would be beautiful.'
Bruno's smile broadened. When it came to the art of seduction
there was no one to match Tommaso. Drying his hands, he tiptoed
to the door that led out of the apartment.

Eventually even the ricotta lay in crumbs on its plate. Tommaso
carried the biscotti and vin santo to the battered old sofa.
I've drunk so much already,' Laura murmured.
In Rome we have a saying: l"Anni, amori e bicchieri di vino, nun se contano mai?"
'Years, lovers and glasses of wine; these things must not be
counted,"' she translated.
'Exactly.' He dipped one of the biscuits in the golden liquid
and held it gently to her lips. She hesitated, then opened her
mouth. The sweet, raisiny taste suffused her tastebuds. She closed
her eyes ecstatically. 'My God, that's beautiful.'
lSei bellissima,'' he murmured. 'Like you, Laura.' Now he
dipped two of his own fingers in the wine. Again, she hesitated for
just a moment, then allowed him to slide them into her mouth.
She licked the sticky, honeyed wine off him until every morsel of
sweetness was gone. A few drops fell on her neck and he kissed
them off greedily even while she was still sucking his fingers.
He unwrapped her slowly, peeling off her clothes as if he were
pulling the leaves off an artichoke, kissing her between each layer. This is exactly what I hoped for, she thought. Who would have
believed it? Carlotta, of course. Carlotta was right all along.
He was untying the red basque now, pulling at the little bows
that fastened it. She felt it loosen and arched her back, waiting for
him to finish. He was pulling at one particular tie with a frown of
concentration. Then he tugged at it.
'Wait,' she murmured. 'You'll tighten it.'
'I'll get a knife,' he said impatiently.
'I'll do it,' she said quickly. As she undid the ties Tommaso fell
to his knees in front of her, clasping his hands in prayer and muttering
in Italian.
'What are you doing?' she asked.
'I'm saying grace,' he said wolfishly.

Q/eco-n^/a

'When there has been time to relish and consume the first
course, to salute its passing with wine and to regroup the taste
buds, the second course comes to the table. If one is ordering
in a restaurant - one that caters to Italians, not to tourists - the
choice of a second course is made after the first course has been
eaten. This doesn't mean that one has made no plans, but that
one waits to confirm them, to make sure that original intentions
and current inclinations coincide . . .'
Marcella Hazan, The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

The next morning, Vincent, Sisto and the other early customers at
Gennaro's were greatly entertained to see Tommaso running
across the road towards the bar, still wet from the shower and
naked except for a towel around his waist.
'Due cappuccini, Gennaro, presto per favore,' he shouted. From
Tommaso's broad grin it was clear that he had a good reason to be
in a hurry, and his friends knew what it was likely to be. They
greeted him with a round of applause.
Pausing only to grab a couple of cornetti, Tommaso bore the
two cups of coffee back across the street, dodging traffic. A Fiat
van hooted at him, but although he shouted a ritual Roman insult
back - 'Go and hoot up your wife's legs, dickhead, there's more
traffic up there!' - his mind was already on other things.


Laura came back into the bedroom from the shower, wrapped in
a towel, her skin wet and glistening in the early morning sunlight
and her hair plastered back across her head.
'You're beautiful,' Tommaso said sincerely. LSei bellissima,
Laura.' He picked up a little digital camera from a table. 'Smile?'
She smiled and he pressed the button. 'Now, come back to bed.'
He patted the space beside him, where the tray of breakfast waited
invitingly.
She got back into bed and put her arms around him. He took
a little froth from his cappuccino and flicked it on to the end of
her adorable nose. She laughed, so he took her cup from her and,
placing it carefully on the floor, turned to kiss her. After a
moment's hesitation she wriggled into his arms, kissing him
urgently, pushing back at him along the length of her body.

Laura had to run to get to her first lecture, but she managed to
find time to phone Carlotta on the way. The first question her
friend asked, of course, was: 'So?'
'Uh - I probably went a little further than I'd intended,' Laura
admitted.
Carlotta's second question: 'And? What did he cook?' She was,
after all, an Italian, and while any two chiavati are pretty much the
same, no two meals ever are.
As Laura described the menu, item by item, and tried to do justice
to the taste and flavour of each, there was a series of gasps and
hisses at the other end of the phone.
'White asparagus? From Brenta? With zabaione) My God,
Laura, that's a fantastic dish. I've only had it once, and I still
remember it.'
'That was the high point,' Laura admitted.
'Cam, I'm so jealous. Maybe I'll have to come down and visit.
What's he cooking next time?'
'He didn't say. Anyway, I've got to go. I'm at my lecture and
I'm late.'
The college campus was housed in a Renaissance villa set in a
garden of pine trees and fountains on the Janiculum Hill. As Laura
had guessed, the lecture she was meant to be at had already
started, and she took a seat next to Judith in the seminar room as
unobtrusively as possible.

'So,' Kim Fellowes, the lecturer, was saying, 'the High
Renaissance. A period of just thirty years, between 1490 and the
sack of Rome in 1520, during which the patronage of a Pope and
the talents of just a few dozen artists created the greatest flowering
of genius the world has ever seen. Good morning, Laura. You
look as if you've come hotfoot from a Bramante chapel or a
Bernini fountain, so you can be the first to tell us what you have
seen of the High Renaissance so far.'
Laura thought quickly as she sorted out her books. 'Well,' she
said, 'I've been to the Sistine chapel, obviously, and seen the
Raphaels in the Vatican, and some of Michelangelo's architecture--'
'Momento. Who is this Michael Angelo, please?' Kim interrupted.
'Oh. Er, sorry.' In her haste she had pronounced it the
American way. "I meant Michelangelo.'' This time she pronounced
it as he did, in Italian. But her teacher was still not satisfied.
'In this room,' he announced, 'we won't speak of
Michelangelo, or Titian, or Raphael, any more than we would
call Shakespeare Will, or Beethoven Ludwig. We are not yet on
first name terms with these great men, nor will we presume to be
until we have studied their works for many years. We will call
them, therefore, by their proper appellations: Michelangelo
Buonarroti, Tiziano Vecellio and Raffaello Sanzio. Please,' he gestured
at Laura, 'proceed.'
Kim Fellowes was an American, but he had lived in Rome for so
long that he was, as he said, almost a native: the staff at the
University referred to him simply as il dottore. It was to be regretted,
he told the students, that his book on the Renaissance - the
same book Laura had been consulting during her futile hunt for
the church of Santa Cecilia - had had to be written in English
rather than Italian, thanks to the dictates of a publisher eager for
a commercial bestseller. And a bestseller it had inevitably become:
he kept the reviews, carefully laminated to protect them from
greasy fingerprints, on his desk for the students to examine. It had
been acclaimed as that rare thing: a work that combined the erudition
of a scholar with the sensitivity of a true artist. Everything
about Kim proclaimed his perfect taste, from the gorgeous linen
shirts he wore - Laura liked to play a kind of mental game which
consisted of trying to find the right word to describe their colours:
she usually resorted to words like cornflower, cranberry, or aquamarine
- to his pale seersucker jacket, and the straw Panama that
kept the fierce Italian sun off his finely featured face when outdoors.
Some of her fellow students found him a hard taskmaster.
Laura was overawed by his sensitivity and intelligence, and did
everything she could to impress him.
'So you saw the Sistine Chapel?' he was saying. 'And what did
you think of it?'
She hesitated. But she couldn't bear not to tell him what she
had really thought. "I thought it was a barn.'
The other students laughed. 'A barn?' Kim Fellowes repeated
questioningly, knitting his fingers together and placing them on
his knee.
'Yes. I mean, it's beautifully painted and everything, but the
paintings are so high that you have to look upwards all the time,
and the room is so big and rectangular . . .' She trailed off, certain
she was about to be ridiculed. To her surprise, though, Kim was
nodding approvingly.
'Laura is absolutely right. The Sistine Chapel,' he said, looking
round at the students to make sure they all understood him, 'is
considered by many experts, including myself, to be the embodiment
of all the worst excesses of the Renaissance. The colours are
gaudy, the design overpowering and the conception unharmonious.
It was commissioned purely as a status symbol by a
nouveau-riche philistine who destroyed some rather fine
Peruginos in the process. Buonarroti himself didn't want to touch
it, which is why we will be studying his drawings instead. Now
then, who can tell me what contraposto is?'
'That man is such an asshole,' grumbled one of Laura's fellow students
as they packed up their books after the seminar.
'He knows what he's talking about,' Laura retorted. She was
feeling a little guilty: for the first time she had found her attention
wandering during Kim's seminar, remembering the feel of
Tommaso's kisses, his body pressed up against hers as they'd
shared the last of the vin santo on his battered sofa.
'As he keeps reminding us,' the other student said sourly.
'Anyone want pizza?'
'Where?' Judith asked.
'The mortuary?' This was their name for the marble-lined
pizzeria down the road. 'One o'clock?'
'OK. See you there. Laura?'
'Uh - yes. I guess so.'

Laura had been surprised by her fellow students. For her, coming
to Rome had been the chance of a lifetime, an adventure made
even more attractive by her mother's insistence that it was (a)
academically a waste of time and (b) perilously unhygienic, a consequence
of the Italians' notorious inability to wash their hands
after visiting the bathroom.
She had landed at Fiumicino airport just a few days before the
first semester began. In her excitement she already felt a gulf
between herself and all the package tourists getting off the plane:
they were here to visit, but she was here to live. Accompanying her
were a backpack crammed with art books and two small suitcases,
all she had been allowed to bring. As the letter of acceptance from
the Anglo-American University in Rome had breezily informed
her, 'Closet space is cramped in even the grandest Roman apartments
- and believe us, yours won't come into that category.'
Before she could get to her suitcases, though, there was the
small matter of Passport Control. Like Passport Control halls the
World over, the one at Fiumicino contained two separate areas:
one for locals and one for everyone else. A series of zigzags
painted on the floor, culminating in a yellow line in front of each
little booth, indicated where you were meant to form an orderly
queue before stepping up to present your papers. That was the
theory, at any rate. In practice, only one booth in the entire place
was open. Crammed into the tiny interior were three young men
in elaborate uniforms, complete with military hats tilted at jaunty
angles, while in front of them surged a great sea of travellers of different
nationalities, all brandishing their passports in the air,
gesticulating, and shouting angrily at the trio of officials, who
paid them no attention whatsoever.
From her position at the side of the mob, Laura was able to see
the cause of the delay. A young woman wearing tight cutoffs and
a very brief top, which highlighted the small tattoo high up on
one shoulder, and whose sleek blonde hair was threaded with the
earphones of an expensive-looking MP3 player, was leaning up
against the booth chewing gum while the three men flirted with
her under the pretext of examining her passport. One of the officers
even seemed to be writing out his phone number for her, an
action that caused the hubbub from those waiting behind to
double in volume. Eventually the young woman was allowed to
pass, though it was not until her impressively pert behind was
completely out of sight that the young men were able to drag their
attention back to the job in hand.
When Laura finally had her own turn at the booth, she laid her
passport on the ledge and tried her very first'Buongiorno'.
The official glanced at the photograph, then back at Laura.
'Good afternoon,' he said in perfect English. 'Where will you
be staying in Rome?'
'At the Residencia Magdalena. It's in Trastevere.'
'Bene. I will come and meet you there on Saturday night. We
will go out on a date.'
Laura's mouth dropped open. Then she laughed.
'No, why not?' he insisted, sounding a little hurt. 'It will be
fun. We will have a good time.'
'Scusi.' This was one of the other officials, reaching over and
picking up her passport. He was wearing a more extravagant
uniform than his colleague so presumably he was the more
senior. He examined her passport minutely, turning it this way
and that.
'Is there is a problem?' Laura asked.
'Si. The problem,' he announced gravely, 'is that you are so
much more beautiful than your photograph. I should like very
much to take you out to dinner.'
The third man said something rapidly in Italian. The first official
translated. 'Alessandro, he would like to take you out too. But
I asked you first.'
A very short nun pushed her way to the front of the booth and
started haranguing the men in a shrill voice. 'Enjoy your stay,
Laura Patterson,' the first official said, unperturbed, as he stamped
her passport. 'Prego? All three came smartly to attention and
saluted her as she walked away. The nun they waved through
without a second glance.
When Laura found the minibus that was to take her to where
she was staying, the girl with the small tattoo was already sitting in
it, surrounded by a vast pile of luggage. It soon became apparent
that this was Laura's roommate, Judith. It also became clear that
Judith's interest in Michelangelo and Raphael was rather less than
her interest in Versace, Prada and Valentino. She was majoring in
Fashion Psychology but had almost been thrown out after a term:
her parents had insisted she go abroad in an effort to get her to
concentrate on her work. 'They wanted to get me away from my
boyfriend, mostly,' Judith confided as they were driven at breakneck
speed through the suburbs. 'They seem to think I'll calm
down if I'm not with him. He's a vampire.'
'What?'
he
You know. We drink each other's blood.' Judith dug into her
cleavage and retrieved a phial on a silver chain. 'This is Jeff's, and
he's got mine. Great farewell gift, huh?'
'Right.' Laura's visions of discussing fifteenth-century painting
techniques late into the night were evaporating rapidly.
After they had settled in - the letter had been right, by
American standards the apartment was minuscule - they set off to
explore Rome, armed only with bottles of water and identical
copies of the Lonely Planet guidebook. It was hot, and both
women wore shorts. The reaction was extraordinary. Cars
sounded their horns like huntsmen sighting prey. Shopkeepers
standing in their doorways hissed at them like geese. Young men
on scooters - even those with girlfriends on the back, impossibly
beautiful Italian girls with cascading black tresses and perfect
burnt-umber skin - slowed down alongside them to call cUeh,
biondineV appreciatively, muttering rapid-fire suggestions.
'Do you get the feeling we might be underdressed?' Laura said
eventually.
They took to the subway, only to find themselves trapped in a
carriage with three beggars, a mother and her two tiny gypsy
daughters, who immediately surrounded them, clamouring for
money. Judith pressed a note into the smallest child's hand. The
money vanished and the child's pestering redoubled.
'No,' Judith said firmly. 'Finito. No more. Chiuso.'' The beggars
ignored her, pawing her eagerly with their outstretched hands. At
the next stop a uniformed guard got into the carriage. The girls
heaved a sigh of relief, then watched open-mouthed as the mother
reached into the folds of her clothing and pulled out a fistful of
money, which she brazenly handed to the guard before resuming
her harassment of the Americans unchecked. To cap it all, when
they finally got to the object of their journey, the Museo Vaticano,
a nun picked them out of the line and sent them away for showing
bare legs.
The next day had been Orientation Day. The first to stand up
to address the assembled students was Casey Novak, the president
of the grandly titled Student Government. Casey smiled brightly
as she gave the assembled newbies the benefit of her own six
months' experience. The food here was nice, if a little oily, but
be careful what you ate - many restaurants had really gross stuff
on the menu, like wild songbirds or veal. Remember to tell your
waiter you wanted clean cutlery for each course. Everything was
shut between two-thirty and five for siesta, and on Mondays and
Thursdays most shops were closed all day, which was a real pain
but you got used to it. Girls should wear a wedding ring to deter
unwelcome attention. The university could provide a trained
counsellor if you got really homesick, though there were so many
social activities on offer that you were unlikely to have time to get
depressed.
'What else?' Casey had mused. 'Well, CNN is on channel sixteen.
MTV is on twenty-three. There's a good American music
radio station called Centro Suono. Italian music is truly awful, by
the way, but not as bad as Italian TV. They use the same two
voices to dub every American show - there's a guy with a butch
voice, and a girl who's supposed to sound like a sex kitten, which
is kind of weird when you're watching Friends- which, incidentally,
is on every Thursday evening.'
By the time Casey sat down to a scattering of applause, Laura
felt a bit like a moon-colonist - safe as long as she stayed inside her
air-tight capsule with the other colonists, but surrounded by a
deadly atmosphere outside.
The next person to stand up was the elegant figure of il dottore.
'Bienvenuti a Roma, la cittd eterna,' he began. He spoke in
fluent Italian for a minute or so, then switched to English.
Welcome to the birthplace of Western civilisation. I promise that
you are about to have the most extraordinary year of your life.'
This was more like it. Laura listened intently as Kim Fellowes
told them which art galleries had ruined their treasures with
restoration, and which were closed all day Monday. He told them
Which galleries had introduced half-hour time limits on viewing, which famous sights were ghastly, and which were exquisite. The
torrner included almost anywhere frequented by tourists; the latter
included most small churches. He even told them which guidebooks
to buy: 'Whatever you do, don't get Fodor's or the Lonely
Planet, unless you want to be taken for a tourist. Baedeker is probably
still the best one. And some of the Italian-language art guides
are quite good, if a little insular.'
Laura had wondered if by the end of her year she, too, would
be reading guidebooks in Italian and, even more impressively,
finding them a little insular. She resolved to throw away her
Lonely Planet guide just as soon as she got back to her room.
'But,' he concluded, 'if I could say just one thing to you about
your year in Italy, it would be this. You are not only here to study
the Renaissance, but to live it. This is the only city in the world
where Renaissance masterpieces are housed in Renaissance masterpieces,
where the drinking fountains, the bridges over the river,
the churches, even the city walls, were designed by the likes of
Buonarroti and Bernini. To walk the streets, to eat in a restaurant,
to have a conversation with an ordinary taxi driver about his football
team, or to buy some fruit at a market stall is to be part of a
living work of Renaissance genius. Open yourself to Rome, and
Rome will open herself to you.'
'Oh, I almost forgot,' Casey said, standing up as Kim Fellowes
sat down. 'The main place we hang out is an Irish bar, the Druid's
Den, particularly on Saturday nights. And there's a baseball team
that plays every Sunday.' The cheer that greeted this remark
seemed to indicate that the majority of Laura's fellow students
found Irish bars and baseball a rather more enticing prospect than
Bernini fountains.
Luckily, Laura got on well with her roommate - better than she
had expected to, in fact. Her own reproduction Caravaggios and
Judith's posters of death-metal rappers shared the apartment
peacefully enough, as did their owners, even if Judith's vast
hairdryer tripped the apartment power-breaker every time she
plugged it in. The phial of blood, however, proved ineffective at
warding off the temptations of distance. Every week or so Laura

would bump into one or other of the male students from the
course, half-naked, in the apartment's tiny bathroom. Maybe, she
thought to herself, Judith's parents had known what they were
doing by sending her to Rome after all.
Little by little, Laura's own days and nights fell into a kind of
routine - lectures and seminars in the morning, followed by art
galleries or language lessons in the afternoon, and CNN or pizza
in the evenings. Friday nights saw her at the Fiddler's Elbow or
the Druid's Den with the other students, drinking Bud and watching
American or British sports on TV. Occasionally they might go
to one of the little restaurants in Trastevere, and even more occasionally
she might have a date with an Italian, each romantic
disaster being subsequently relayed by phone to Carlotta in Milan.
When homesickness crept up on her, as it did from time to time,
either she or Judith would make the trip down to Castroni's and
hand over huge bundles of euros for a tub of margarine, some
sliced bread and a big jar of Skippy peanut butter. But then, quite
by chance, she wandered into a little bar off the Viale Glorioso,
and Rome - noisy, impetuous, colourful, chaotic - decided to
reach out and haul her into the dance.

At the restaurant, Bruno, unable to understand why nothing
was going right for him, shouted at the commis that the eggs
must be stale. He had never had this problem before with his zuppa inglese, and the meringues he was making had refused to
harden too.
The unfortunate lackey scurried off to find more eggs. Bruno
felt bad. He knew it wasn't the eggs. It was something to do with
himself. To make dolci you had to be able to conjure yourself into
a mood that was as joyous and light as the dishes you were creating But
today he was distracted. He kept thinking about the girl in
the market, the girl he'd barely spoken to, wishing that he could
have cooked for her the meal that he had cooked for Tommaso's
girl last night. He could imagine her expression as she slid the first
piece of lamb into her mouth, a mixture of rapture and astonishment,
and then the gradual contentment settling over her face as
her appetite was sated by another mouthful, and then another. . .
He sighed, and tried to put the whole thing out of his mind.

The pizzas were cooked in the Roman fashion: thin slivers of
dough, as crisp as poppadums, slathered with a sauce of fresh
tomatoes, mozzarella and basil. Traditionally, a Roman pizza is
cooked for the length of time that the cook can hold his breath,
and these had been fired to perfection in the wood-burning oven
at the front of the restaurant, making them hard underneath but
leaving the sauce still liquid.
To her surprise, Laura found she was starving. Last night's
meal, far from leaving her sated, seemed to have awakened her
appetite, and she tucked in with gusto.
'This isn't a pizza, it's a pancake,' a student called Rick muttered,
poking his food with a finger. 'Do the words "deep" and
"pan" mean nothing to these people?' The boys had all ordered
side salads. Laura almost told them that in Italy you had the salad
afterwards, but thought better of it.
'Who's got the ketchup?' another student called. Rick produced
from his backpack a bottle of Heinz Tomato Sauce, which
was ceremoniously passed around the table.
A mobile phone rang. It took Laura a few moments to work
out that it was hers, since for some reason it was now playing the
Cream classic 'Sunshine of Your Love'. Then she realised
Tommaso must have changed it while she'd been in the shower. 'Pronto^ she said cautiously.
It was Tommaso. 'Laura! Do you like your new ringtone?'
'Thank you. I love it.'
"I don't know why I called you. I just can't stop thinking about
last night,' he said dreamily.
She lowered her voice. "Me too.'
'I don't think I've ever had a night quite like that before.'
"Me neither.' She remembered the taste of that zabaione. 'It
was fantastic' She blushed a little.
'When can I see you again?'
'Well, I guess I'm free on Saturday.'
He sighed. 'Unfortunately Saturday is our busiest night. But I
can get Sunday off
'OK. Would you like to go to a movie?'
'No, I'd like to cook for you,' Tommaso said. 'Something really
special.'
Just the sound of his voice was enough to make her blush
again. 'OK. I'll look forward to it. Ciao, Tommaso.'
'Ciao for now, Laura.'

'Seafood,' Tommaso hissed.
'What?' Bruno said. He was busy making a series of tiny
meringues stuffed with soft chestnut paste and hard nuggets of
chopped fresh pistachio.
'Next time, we'll give Laura frutti di mare? Tommaso, who
was in the middle of service, pushed a pile of dirty bowls into the
sink and dashed back to the pass, where a neat line of plated dishes
waited to be carried into the restaurant. 'First, it will make her
horny, and second, once she's had a few oysters in her mouth
she's hardly likely to object to playing trombone with my belino for dessert,' he called gleefully as he spun out of the kitchen doors
into the restaurant, a tray held over his head in one hand like the
swirl of a matador's cape.
Bruno opened his mouth. He wanted to point out that the art
of culinary seduction required a little more subtlety than that,
but his friend had already gone.

Although the centre of Rome is only twelve miles from the sea,
the excitements of the city have always tended to distract its inhabbitants
from the pleasures of the coast. Eels from the Tiber are a
traditional Roman delicacy - pan-cooked with soft onions, garlic,
chilli, tomatoes and white wine - but a much more common dish
is baccala, preserved salt-cured cod, which is fried in thin strips,
then simmered in a tomato sauce flavoured with anchovies, pine
nuts and raisins. For really good, fresh fish you are better off heading
either up or down the coast, towards Civitavecchia to the
north or Gaeta to the south.
'I don't understand,' Tommaso said when Bruno explained all
this to him the next day. 'Am I meant to go all the way to
Civitavecchia just to bring back some fish?'
"I thought perhaps, instead of bringing the seafood to Laura,
you could take Laura to the seafood,' Bruno suggested.
Tommaso's brow furrowed. 'No, I still don't get it. How will
that work?'
'You could borrow Gennaro's van and drive her to the sea.
You could even do some surfing, if you go far enough. Then you
just build a charcoal grill on the beach.'
Tommaso looked a little shifty. 'But that will mean I have to
cook.'
'Yes, but grilled fish?'
'My grilled fish,' Tommaso said sadly, 'won't be as good as your grilled fish. You have to come too.' He brightened. "I know. I'll
pretend to be giving you instructions, so it'll look as though
you're preparing the fish under my guidance.' Tommaso nodded
enthusiastically. He rather liked the idea of talking to Bruno like a
chef. After all, he'd watched enough of them over the years, giving
their underlings hell. 'And, ah, afterwards . . . well, you'll just
have to go for a walk or something.'
'I'm not sure--' Bruno began.
"I like it,' Tommaso said. 'We'll have a romantic day at the seaside,
just the three of us. Well, two of us. Well, three. You know
what I mean.'
Bruno opened his mouth to protest. The thought of playing
gooseberry for a whole day when he could be back in his kitchen,
working on new recipes, didn't appeal at all.
'Oh, come on,' Tomasso said impatiently. 'What else are you
doing this weekend? Nothing. Besides, Laura's got a roommate,
another American. Apparently she's as hot as hell. I'll get her to
come along too. It'll be a double date. You just have to remember
to pretend that I'm the one who can cook. How big a deal is
that?'

There were two very good reasons why Bruno agreed to go to the
sea with Tommaso, and neither had anything to do with the
chance of a double date.
Years ago, when he had first come to Rome, he had been forced
to take the only restaurant job open to someone without any
qualifications: a waiter. He had been terrible at it. Distracted by
the food that was coming out of the kitchen, he had forgotten
which table was which and even mixed up the bills. Only the
quick-thinking of another young waiter, who saw what was going
on and intervened to sort the problems out before anyone
noticed, prevented him from being fired on his first day. That
waiter was Tommaso. Taking Bruno under his wing, Tommaso
taught him the rudiments of the job and covered for him when
Bruno drifted off into one of his frequent culinary-inspired daydreams.
He showed Bruno how to steal tips instead of sharing
them with the maitre d'; how to magic half-full bottles of wine
and spirits away at the end of the shift; and how to pocket enough
food from the kitchen to keep from being hungry on their rare
days off. In return, Bruno had cooked the stolen food for them
both. Tommaso only needed to take one mouthful to realise his
new friend had talent. It was Tommaso who pushed Bruno into
attending catering school to get the all-important qualifications,
Tommaso who made sure he kept getting a share of the tips while
he was studying, Tommaso who let him stay in his apartment and
cook instead of paying rent. By the time Bruno had graduated he
easily came top of his year - Tommaso was still a junior waiter,
happily wasting his time flirting with pretty foreign guests. But
Tommaso was as loyal to his friends as he was fickle to his women.
He knew through his network of contacts where the best job
openings were, and he always made sure that Bruno was working
in the best place. Bruno owed Tommaso a great deal, and he
found it very hard to refuse him anything.
The second reason was even simpler. He rarely got a chance to
cook really good fish.

On the other side of the city, Umberto Erfolini, the Italian who
had been forcibly ejected from Templi, paid a visit to an impressive
house in a quiet suburb. He walked into the entrance hall and
stopped so that the two large men who waited there could pat him
down before they nodded him forward towards the study.
In the study, the man in the chair put down his cigar and stood
up. Umberto, who was himself only five foot eight, towered over
him. 'Umberto. My old friend,' the other man said, reaching up
to kiss Umberto on both cheeks, 'how are you? And how is my
beautiful goddaughter?'
'Federica's well, Teo. Well, but a little upset.'
'Upset?' Teodoro asked, an expression of concern flitting across
his face. 'Why?'
"I took her to a restaurant to celebrate her twenty-first birthday,
a fancy foreign place. I know,' he shrugged, 'what was I thinking
of? But I thought it would be an interesting experience for us. It
was a restaurant called Templi, up in Montespaccato.'
'And?' Teodoro prompted gently.
'Well, it was an experience. But a humiliating one.'
As Umberto explained, the expression on the other man's face
darkened. 'Truly, Umberto, this does require our attention, and I
want to thank you for bringing it to my notice. But be patient. Si
pigliano piu mosche in una gocciola di miele che in un barile
d'aceto*.'

"You'll catch more flies in a drop of honey than in a barrel of vinegar.'


They had agreed to meet at Gennaro's before setting off. This was
partly because it was necessary to fortify themselves for the trip
with several coffees and a croissant or two, but also because
Gennaro had removed the fuel pump from the old van's engine to
see if it would improve the performance of his Gaggia, and they
had to wait while it was returned to the vehicle.
It was the football season, and all of Rome seemed to be wearing
eitlier the yellow and purple colours of Roma or the blue and white
of Lazio. The fans, or tifosi - the name means, literally, those
afflicted by typhus - had festooned their team's colours from every
car window and balcony. In Gennaro's bar there was much hilarity
because Sisto had lost a bet with Vincent and, as a penalty, had been
forced to wear the colours of the hated Romanisti for a day.
'What he doesn't know is that I've got the Lazio strip on
underneath,' Sisto confided to Bruno. 'As soon as we get near the
ground I'm going to take these damn things off and burn them,
bet or no bet.'
Bruno wasn't listening. He had just seen two girls walking
down the street towards them. They were carrying backpacks and
rolled-up towels, and each of them was holding a bottle of water.
They were dressed, in fact, for a day at the beach. One of them
was a typical Tommaso girl - pretty, curvaceous and tanned, with
a mass of dyed blonde hair and a small tattoo. And the other - he
simply couldn't believe it - was the girl, the girl with the freckled
shoulders he had seen so many times around Trastevere. His
whole body quivered like a plucked string.
'Ah,' said Tommaso. 'Excellent. Here are the girls.'
The two girls were pointing at the van, and then they were
coming into the bar. Bruno wanted to kiss his friend. For once
everything had worked out perfectly. He would be spending the
whole day with her at the beach! That was even better than talking
to her at the market.
His exultation was quickly followed by a spasm of terror. What
if she didn't like him or, worse still, what if he was so tongue-tied
that he never got the chance to impress her? But then he relaxed.
He would be cooking, and that meant he wouldn't get nervous he
was never nervous when he cooked.
The two girls had come into the bar by now, in a flurry of buongiorno's. Vincent and Sisto were staring open-mouthed at
Tommaso's girl. Bruno, his heart pounding, waited to be introduced
to her roommate.
Sisto quickly pulled off his Roma shirt, revealing the blue and
white of Lazio underneath. 'There are limits,' he whispered to
Bruno. 'My God but you're a lucky bastard.'
"I know,' Bruno said. He still couldn't believe it himself.
"I mean, Tommaso's girl is all right, but she's nothing compared
to what you've landed yourself.'
'Bruno, this is Laura,' Tommaso said as he did the introductions.
'Laura, Bruno; Judith, Bruno.'
'Hello, Laura,' Bruno said. Then he turned towards his girl,
holding out his hand with an awkward smile on his face. He wondered
if she would remember him from the market. 'Hello,
Judith,' he said softly.
The girl laughed. 'No. I'm Laura. She's Judith.' She pointed at
the girl with the tattoo.
'Hey, Bruno,' the other girl said. 'Nice to meet you.'
Bruno was still staring at the first girl. 'You can't be.'
"I can't?'
"I mean--' He desperately tried to salvage the situation. 'Right.
So you're Laura. And she's Judith.'
'That's the general idea,' Judith agreed.
'Nice going, Romeo,' Sisto muttered under his breath. He
stepped forward and shook Judith's hand himself. 'Hi. I'm Sisto.'
'And you're going out with Tommaso,' Bruno blundered on.
'Well, of course you are. You're Laura. For a second there, I was
confused. You see, I've seen you before. In the market. Do you
remember?'
'I'm afraid not,' Laura said, looking puzzled.

Bruno stopped, his face burning red. She didn't remember
him. He was looking more of an idiot with every word that he
said.

'What is wrong with you?' Tommaso hissed as they loaded up the
van with borrowed surfboards and wetsuits.
Bruno shrugged. Now that the embarrassment had worn off,
there was the awful realisation that he was actually helping
Tommaso in his seduction of Laura. As they drove out towards the
coast, Bruno found himself staring miserably at the floor of the
van.

'Sorry,' Laura muttered in Judith's ear. 'He's not a bundle of
laughs, I'm afraid, your Bruno.'
'Don't worry. Perhaps he'll perk up later.' The van swayed
from side to side as Tommaso swerved exuberantly around a motorino. The girls yelled. Bruno, lost in thought, seemed not to
notice.
Judith was telling the story of their wedding rings.
'There was a girl in the class who said that if we wanted to avoid
getting hassled we should buy ourselves some wedding rings,' she
explained. 'So Laura and I found this little jewellery shop, just
over the river, and tried to explain what we wanted. Only our
Italian wasn't very good at that point, and we found ourselves
asking for circonvallazione.'
'Which, of course, means ring roads, not wedding rings,' Laura
said. 'Though we didn't know that at the time. I had a dictionary,
and I found that Buci di orecchini means earring, so I told her to
try buci--'
'Due buci,' Judith said. 'By this time I was sort of gesticulating
with my fingers, miming putting on a wedding ring--'
'A gesture that turned out to be open to misinterpretation--'
'As we realised when we discovered that buci actually means
hole or piercing--'
'But we were so relieved when he seemed to understand us that
we followed him downstairs to this sort of cellar. And it was only
when he told us to get undressed that we realised he thought we
wanted piercings--'
'In an intimate part of our anatomies,' Judith finished.
Tommaso roared with laughter, and even Bruno managed to
smile.
'So Laura chickened out and I had to go ahead on my own,'
Judith added. Tommaso's eyes widened thoughtfully.
Bruno and Judith ended up playing Bohnanza, the bean
trading game, on the table in the back of the van while Laura read
a book on art history. Bruno suddenly realised that he was having
too good a time to feel jealous of Tommaso. And when, during
one of Tommaso's more spectacular swerves, Laura gasped and
grabbed on to his arm for support, Bruno felt a great surge of happiness. What does it matter if I can't have her? he thought. At least
I can be with her. At least I can cook her a meal she'll never forget.

They parked on a long strand of beach just below the harbour at
Santa Marinella, unloaded the boards and ran straight into the
water. The others were still in the sea an hour or so later when
Bruno came out to begin the preparations for supper. First he
made a firepit on the beach, which he filled with charcoal and
aromatic vine prunings from a sack he had brought with him in
the van. Then he went in search of the menu.
On the harbour front there was a long, low wooden building,
unprepossessing from the outside, its function given away only by
the rows of fishing boats tied up next to it, their decks still littered
with glittering nuggets of ice, discarded crab shells, rolled-up nets
and other fishing paraphernalia. On the other side of the building
the surface of the road was coated by an iridescent sheen of fish
scales where each day's catch was loaded into vans. In the shade,
an ancient fisherman sat and worked his way methodically through
a pile of totani - red squid - beating each one with a wooden club
to tenderise it.
Bruno's heart quickened as he stepped inside. Now this is a fish
market, he thought to himself.
It took his eyes a moment to adjust from the brilliant maritime
sunshine to the gloomy interior. Piles of fish rose on either side of
him in the half-darkness and the pungent stink of fish guts
assaulted his nostrils. On his left hung a whole tuna, its side
notched to the spine to show the quality of the flesh. On his right,
a pile of huge pesce spada, swordfish, lay tumbled together in a
crate, their swords protruding lethally to catch the legs of unwary
passers-by. And on a long marble slab in front of him, on a heap of
crushed ice dotted here and there with bright yellow lemons, were
the shellfish and smaller fry. There were riccio di mare - sea
urchins - in abundance, and oysters too, but there were also more
exotic delicacies - polpi, octopus; arogosti, clawless crayfish; datteri
di mare, sea dates; andgranchi, soft-shelled spider crabs, still alive
and kept in a bucket to prevent them from making their escape.
Bruno also recognised tartufo di mare, the so-called sea truffle,
and, right at the back, an even greater prize: a heap of gleaming cicale.
Cicale are a cross between a small lobster and a large prawn,
with long front claws. Traditionally they are eaten on the harbour
front, fresh from the boat. First their backs are split open.
Then they are marinated for an hour or so in olive oil, breadcrumbs,
salt and plenty of black pepper, before being grilled
over very hot embers. When you have pulled them from the
embers with your fingers, you must spread the charred butterfly
shaped shell open and suck in the meat' col bacio' - 'with a kiss' leaving
you with a glistening moustache of smoky olive oil,
greasy fingers and a tingling tongue from licking the last peppery
crevices of the shell.
Bruno asked politely if he could handle some of the produce.
The old man in charge of the display waved him on. He would
have expected nothing less. Bruno raised a cicalea to his nose and
sniffed. It smelled of ozone, seaweed, saltwater and that indefinable
reek of ocean coldness that flavours all the freshest seafood.
He nodded. It was perfect.
Bruno bought a sea bass, as many cicale as he could afford,
some oysters, a few tartufi, some clams, a double handful of spider
crabs and one of the squid he had seen the fisherman beating
outside. He watched as the old man slashed the squid with his
knife, just once, then jerked the sac away from the tentacles.
Another movement of the knife and the long shapeless head was
gone. He plucked off the beak with a quick squeeze of his fingers,
then rinsed everything under a cold tap, pulling the bone from the
sac as he did so. 'Prego,' he said, handing the various parts to
Bruno. 'Buonaforchetta.' The whole procedure had taken him just
a few seconds.
Bruno walked back into the sunshine, which was turning
redder now that the sun was low in the sky, and wandered down
the shoreline to where Gennaro's old van was parked. He had lit
the fire before going to buy the fish; a plume of glassy smoke
crackled from the firepit. The others were still in the sea. He stood
for a moment, gazing at Laura, her sleek figure outlined in a wet
suit as she clambered over the waves with her board. As he
watched he saw her put an arm around Tommaso and pull him
towards her for a kiss. Bruno flinched, and turned his attention
back to the meal.
This is for Laura, he told himself. From me to her, even if she
never knows it.
He spread a tarpaulin, found a stone to use as a chopping board
and set to work. He had brought garlic, courgettes, fennel and
potatoes with him from Rome, and now he busied himself peeling
and chopping. After a few moments his mind went blank and he
drifted into the semi-automatic trance that cooking always seemed
to induce in him, looking up only when the long shadows of the
others fell across what he was doing.
'Ah, Tommaso, you're here. It's nearly ready for you to start
cooking,' he said respectfully.
Laura squatted down next to Bruno to look at his haul. 'It's all
so beautiful,' she breathed, picking up a clam shell in which red
shaded through to orange, like a sunset.
Bruno glanced at her hair; wet, tangled from the sea and
crusted with salt. Her face, too, was daubed with apache-streaks of
dried salt under each eye, and the cold of the water had raised the
skin of her neck into little bumps where it was exposed above her
wetsuit, like the tiny nodules on a sea urchin. He closed his eyes
and inhaled. Just for a moment, he could taste her - her skin
rinsed with seawater, the salt in her hair . . .
'You haven't washed the squid properly, Bruno,' Tommaso
said, tossing the shapeless polyp into his lap. 'You'd better take it
down to the water and clean it again.'
The squid, of course, was fine. 'Sure,' Bruno said, getting up.
'What are you cooking us, Tommaso?' Judith asked.
'Sea bass stuffed with shellfish, and a mixed grill of marinated frutti di mare,' Tommaso said proudly. 'It's very simple, but I
promise you, you'll never have eaten anything like this before. Pass
me that knife, would you?'
Bruno had spent an hour or so back at the apartment teaching
Tommaso how to open clams. By the time he returned from the
sea with the squid Tommaso was in full flow, explaining how he
had been preparing this recipe since he was a child, giving orders,
tossing shells in all directions, and generally making an exhibition
of himself while Bruno quietly got on with the real work.
' Ueh, Bruno, you need to put some more flavours in that fish.
Chop some garlic, would you?'
'Certainly.' The garlic was for the potatoes, not the fish, which
would be annihilated by its pungent flavour. Bruno made a show
of smashing some garlic on a stone, then quietly put it to one side.
His hands twitched helplessly as he watched Tommaso clumsily
stuffing the shellfish into the sea bass. Even worse, he saw that
Laura was watching Tommaso, apparently transfixed by what he
was doing. He felt a brief, terrible stab of jealousy.
'Now we simply put the fish in the dish . . .' Tommaso was
saying. Bruno quickly passed him the bottle of wine, a cold, white
Orvieto.
'Thank you, my friend,' Tommaso said, taking a long swig.
'The fish,' Bruno muttered. 'It's for the fish.'
'And the fish needs a drink too,' Tommaso said smoothly,
upending the bottle into the fish's jaws.
Several more times Bruno had to intercede surreptitiously as a
flame got too high, or a piece of skin was left unoiled, but by and
large - somewhat to his surprise - Tommaso talked a good game
as a chef.

When at last it was time to eat, Bruno watched Laura intently as
she pulled the shellfish apart, cramming them into her mouth
with noisy expressions of delight, the buttery juices running down
her chin, giving her skin a glossy sheen in the fading light. He
loved the way she ate: without inhibition or guilt, sucking the
oil off her fingers with gusto, revelling in every new taste and
unfamiliar flavour. He had seen so many elegant women at Templi
picking delicately at their food as if it was something dangerous,
pushing it around their plates or fussily cutting it into dozens of
pieces before leaving half of it untouched. Laura ate with genuine
pleasure, and the pleasure she felt was echoed in his own heart.
'You eat like an Italian,' he said to her sincerely.
'Is that good?' she asked with her mouth full.
'Si. It's the only way to eat.'
'Actually, I eat like a pig. Always have done. My mother
despairs of me.'
'What are the herbs in this, Tommaso?' Judith wanted to know.
'Er,' Tommaso said anxiously, looking at Bruno.
"I can taste fennel and oregano,' Laura said, screwing up her
face. 'And something else. Ginger?'
Bruno nodded surreptitiously at Tommaso.
'Well done,' Tommaso declared. 'Fennel, oregano and ginger.
Laura, you are exactly right.'
Bruno's heart swelled with pride. There had been only the
faintest whisper of ginger in the sea bass. Even a professional chef
would have been hard-placed to identify it. Laura's palate
was untrained and untutored, but she had the tastebuds of a true
aficionado.

When the last cicala had been pulled from the embers and
devoured, and the discarded shells lay hissing in the fire, Tommaso
passed round a joint. As the sun slipped beneath the sea and the
sand started to get a little chilly, they pulled the surfboards up to
the fire and sat on those. Soon the only light came from the glowing
embers. For a long time nobody spoke. In the cab of the van,
even Tommaso's Blue Oyster Cult compilation was finally, mercifully,
reduced to tape-hiss and silence.
Laura leaned back against Tommaso. 'I'm stuffed,' she said
dreamily.
'Sono pieno come un uovo,' Bruno murmured.
She smiled at him. For a moment his eyes smiled back, then his
gaze slid away shyly. 'What does that mean?' she asked.
'It means "I'm as full as an egg."'
'Italian is such a beautiful language.'
'American sounds pretty good too.' He wanted to add, 'when you speak it', but he couldn't. Tommaso could say it - not just
because she was his girlfriend: Tommaso could pay anyone a compliment
and make it sound, if not sincere, then at least charming
and funny. Only if he, Bruno, said it would it sound like a corny,
desperate pick-up line.
'Sono pieno come un uovo,' Laura repeated.
'Hey, Laura,' Tommaso said. 'Tell Bruno what your first Italian
date told you to say to anyone who got fresh with you.'
'Well,' she said, considering, 'there was "Cacati in mano e
prenditi a schiaffi."'
Tommaso laughed uproariously. 'Take a shit on your hands
and then smack your own face,' he translated. 'What else?'
'Uh - "Lei e' un cafone stronzo, vada via in culo."'
'Excellent. "You're a piece of shit, so get back up your own
arse." We'll make a Roman of you yet. Any more?'
'"Guar done ti sorella e allupato ti bagnasti."'
'That's harder to translate,' Tommaso said, shaking his head.
'It's something like: "It turns you on to watch your sister and
me." But there's no English word for guardone. It's like voyeur,
but stronger. Someone who's afraid to fuck, so he watches other
people.'
Bruno felt an awful moment of self-disgust. That's me, he thought. A watcher.
"I was sure I was being polite,' Laura said. 'It sounded so beautiful.'

'What do you mean? It is beautiful, and it is polite - for a
Roman.' Tommaso put his arm around her shoulder. It was the
signal Bruno had been waiting for.

'I'm going for a walk.' He got to his feet, his heart heavy.
'I'll come with you,' Judith said quickly. She reached out a
hand to him. 'Pull me up?'
As Bruno pulled her upright, Judith came a little further into
his arms than he had been expecting. He suddenly realised that,
while he had been thinking about Laura, her roommate had evidently
been considering the possibility of a romantic encounter
with him. He glanced at Tommaso for support but his friend was
already entwined with Laura, their lips glued together.

'OK, let's walk over there,' he said. He looked down at the
lovers. "I expect we'll be gone some time,' he added reluctantly.

This is perfect, Laura thought. I'm on a deserted beach with my
beautiful Roman lover, who has just cooked me the most amazing
seafood I have ever tasted. What more could I want? They were far
enough away from the road not to be seen, and in any case they
would only be two silhouettes against a fire, so she made no
protest as Tommaso's lips worked their way down her body.

Soon after they had left the others, Judith put her arm through
Bruno's. She's waiting for me to kiss her, he thought awkwardly.
They reached the water's edge and she leaned into him meaningfully.

'Judith,' he began apologetically, 'there's something I should
tell you.'
'What?'
'Well - there's someone else.'
'A girlfriend?'
'Not exactly.'
'A boyfriend?'
'No, no, not that.'
'What then?'
'The usual thing. Just a girl who isn't in love with me.'
Judith thought about this. 'Well, there's not much point in
being faithful to her if she isn't in love with you,' she pointed out.
"I know, but - I can't help thinking about her.'
'Suit yourself. But I need to cool down,' she said decisively.
'I'm going to swim. Want to come?'
'Why not?' As they plunged together into the creamy white
spume, he called, 'Now surf!'
'But the boards are back at the van.'
'Who needs a board?' He waited for a wave, then threw himself
into it, letting it carry him towards the beach.
The first half-dozen waves they tried took them head over heels
and they went under, spluttering. But it was exhilarating, and as
soon as they found their feet they waded out again for more.

At last, just when Laura couldn't bear for Tommaso to delay any
longer, he slipped his tongue into her, spreading her like a cicala, sucking the sweet flesh into his mouth. 'Oh, Tommaso,' she whispered,
'that's fantastic' He swivelled round, working his tongue
deeper, and she felt the first small ripples of gathering pleasure. It's
like lying on a surfboard, she thought dreamily; waiting for the
right wave to come along and lift you up. She breathed more deeply,
willing it to happen.

Eventually they all piled into the van for the long drive back.
Unfortunately Tommaso's driving, while perfectly adapted to
weaving a scooter in and out of endless Roman traffic, was hardly
conducive to sleep. It was all right for the girls in the back: they
couldn't see the other road users, though some of their insults and
the blare of their horns must surely have permeated even the
deepest dream. Bruno stared out at the darkness. In his imagination
he was cooking meals for Laura, presenting her with dish after
dish, simply for the pleasure of watching her eat.
He longed to educate her palate. She had so enjoyed the unfamiliar
tastes of the seafood that he began to dream of all the other
things he might introduce her to. No one knew better than he
that to enjoy a new flavour was to be changed by it for ever. But
what should he cook her?
As a particularly exuberant piece of road-skating threw them all
from side to side, Laura stirred. Bruno couldn't help himself. He
turned round to look at her. She lay curled up against her roommate
on the back seat, the two of them wrapped in Bruno's
sleeping bag. His heart lurched as erratically as the van itself had
just done.
For you, he thought, I would cook such a wedding cake . . .
He shook his head to clear the thought away. She was
Tommaso's girl, not his. What was he thinking?
Bruno suddenly realised that Judith's eyes were open. She was
watching him even as he watched Laura. He quickly looked away,
wondering if it was now obvious that it was her friend he'd been
talking about, and if so, whether she'd say anything.

At last they were back in Rome, making their way through
Testaccio, the old meat-selling district. Many of the warehouses
here had been turned into clubs and bars: this was the one part of
the city that never slept, and more than once they had to slow
down as groups of people spilled across the street, moving from
one club to another.
'Look at that,' Tommaso said as they passed a new bar. 'We've
got to try that place.'
Bruno grunted. Even quite recently, this area had been full of
slaughterhouses and butchers. Now the meat men were being
forced out.
As far as he was concerned it was Testaccio, not the Via del
Corso or the Piazza del Campidoglio, that was the real heart of
Rome. For centuries animals had been brought here to be
butchered, with the good cuts going to the noblemen in their
palazzos and the cardinals in the Vatican. The ordinary people had
had to make do with what little was left - the so-called quinto
quarto, the 'fifth quarter' of the animal: the organs, head, feet and
tail. Little osterie had sprung up which specialised in cooking these
rejects, and such was the culinary inventiveness of the Romans that
soon even cardinals and noblemen were clamouring for dishes
like coda alia vaccinara, oxtail braised in tomato sauce, or caratella d'abbacchio - a newborn lamb's heart, lungs and spleen
skewered on a stick of rosemary and simmered with onions in
white wine.
Every part of an animal's body had its traditional method of
preparation. Zampetti all' aggro were calf's feet served with a
green sauce made from anchovies, capers, sweet onions, pickled
gherkins and garlic, finely chopped, then bound with potato and
thinned with oil and vinegar. Brains were cooked with butter and
lemon - cervello al limone - or poached with vegetables, allowed
to cool, then thinly sliced and fried in an egg batter. Liver was
wrapped in a caul, the soft membrane that envelops a pig's intestines,
which naturally bastes the meat as it melts slowly in the
frying pan. There was one recipe for the thymus, another for the ear, another for the intestines, and another for the tongue; each
dish refined over centuries and enjoyed by everyone, from the
infant in his high chair to the nonnina - the grandmother who
would have been served exactly the same meal, prepared in the
same way, when she herself was a child.
It was known that foreigners did not always share the Roman's
love of the quinto quarto. Even a Neapolitan, for example, could
become a little squeamish when faced with some particularly
obscure byway of the gut or stomach, or a quickly seared kidney
with its sharp aftertaste of piscia. Bruno thought that Laura,
however, might be different. There was something about her
that seemed ready for new things, for adventures. And if she did
have any culinary inhibitions left, his dishes would smooth them
away, luring her with smell and texture and taste on a journey of
the senses, step by step; an adventure into the entrails of Rome
itself.
For his first dinner he had cooked her the countryside. For his
second he had cooked her the sea. For his third, he decided, he
would cook her the city - the rich, dark, intense, blood-soaked
city, in all its pungent history. If he was right, it would awaken
something in her. If he wasn't - well, at least he would have
cooked her a real Roman meal.

As they walked to their first lecture of the day, Judith told Laura
about Bruno's curious behaviour on the beach.
'So he basically said that he was too much in love with this mystery
woman to fool around with me,' she explained.
'Ahh. That's so romantic'
'Just my luck. I thought Italian men were supposed to be fickle,
faithless horndogs, and I get one who doesn't want to play'
"I didn't realise you liked him that much.'
'After a meal that good, I would have done it with the Pope,'
Judith said, with some feeling.
Laura's dirty laugh caused a cat, sleeping on the seat of a nearby
scooter in the sunlight, to raise its head, startled for a moment.
Then, seeing that it was only two girls animatedly discussing a boy,
it settled back to sleep.

Bruno was building a house of cards. Or so it felt. In fact he was
cooking a fruit millefeuille - layers of delicate pastry leaves,
crushed fruit and cream. This being Templi, however, the dish had
been adapted by Alain so that it was a bravura display of technical
virtuosity. First, the layers of pastry were cooked between heavy
weights to make them flaky and crisp. Then they were sprinkled
with icing sugar and caramelised with a blowtorch. Between each
of the three layers was a filling of the lightest, most delicate fruit
souffle. Because it looked exactly like pastry cream, the diner
would only realise it was a souffle when he took a mouthful. But
there were a frightening number of things that could go wrong
with this concoction. F^ach souffle had to rise with a smooth,
hydraulic motion, lifting its delicate ceiling of caramelised pastry
without tilting it, so that it could provide a level floor for the next
layer up. The slightest sticking or swelling would mean that the
whole assembly would lean sideways like the tower of Pisa. Again,
each souffle had to be just a little smaller than the one below, so
that the weight of the top layers did not crush those underneath.
And finally, the very top layer had to accept a spoonful of coulis without breaking or sagging.
There was always a certain amount of wastage, and Bruno
habitually cooked more than had been ordered, just in case one
didn't turn out right. Dishes like this couldn't be made in advance.
Each souffle spent just seven minutes in the oven, and had to be
served within three or four minutes of being cooked, before the
mixture started to sag. Coordinating this with the orders of a
whole table of diners, some of whom might have ordered lengthy
oven-baked dishes such as tartesfines auxpommes, was a logistical
nightmare.
Bruno had taken an order for two millefeuille and as usual had
cooked three, just in case. He had not been thinking about pastry,
though. In some part of his mind he was thinking about offal about
dark, sticky sauces of braised calves' liver; about combinations
of mushrooms and kidneys, sweetbreads and artichokes;
turning over and over in his mind the various possibilities of his
next meal for Laura. Back in the real world, his timing faltered.
Two of the souffles collapsed and he was obliged to halt the delivery
of the dishes to the table while he started again from scratch.
To save time, he didn't make a spare. His arm went numb as he
frantically folded the sieved fruit into the egg white, which meant
that he couldn't tell from feel alone whether it was just stiff
enough to produce the light, airy consistency Alain required.
There was no time to wait and check. He eased the second batch
of souffles into the oven and turned immediately to make the coulis.
A few moments later there was a faint popping sound from the
oven as an air bubble in one of his imperfectly folded souffles
exploded, sending shreds of half-cooked egg mixture in all directions.
' Un ce pozzo credere,' Bruno cursed. On the other side of the
kitchen, Alain raised his head. Knowing he was now being
watched made it even harder for Bruno. He also knew that there
was no way Alain would allow the one souffle that hadn't
exploded to go out - it would be past its best by the time the
other one was ready. He started again from the beginning on two
more souffles. Sweat was trickling down the small of his back as he
whipped and folded and sieved. Eventually the replacements were
ready, and this time he was lucky. They weren't the best millefeuille he had ever made, but they were acceptable - or so he
thought. When he finally carried them, with shaking hands, over
to the pass, he had to suffer the humiliation of having the sous-chef inspect them, wordlessly, for several long moments, as if Bruno
were a commis on his first job. To make matters worse, Alain himself
came over to take a look. For another agonising moment both
the chef de cuisine and the sous peered at his dessert like doctors
examining an open wound. Then Alain glanced at the clock, and
Bruno's cheeks flushed with shame. Alain was communicating to
the whole kitchen, as clearly as if he had said it aloud, that he
would have liked to redo the dishes completely but Bruno had
taken up so much time that it was not possible. At last he nodded
reluctantly, and the waiter quickly placed the substandard dishes
on to a tray.

A subtle shift had taken place in the pecking order of the
kitchen. Bruno could sense it. He hadn't thought he cared about
being Alain's favourite, but he realised now that was only because
he was so accustomed to it. He saw that, in fact, Alain's approval
could come and go as quickly as the heat on a hob, and that most
of the young chefs had to compete desperately for their share.
There was only one person whose work Alain seemed consistently
pleased with: Hugo Kass, the newly appointed saucier. A handsome
young Frenchman with a sleek mane of floppy black hair,
Hugo had worked under Ducasse in France and Beck in Italy
before coming to Templi. He was only twenty'-two years old and
already people were talking about him as a future Michelin winner.
Alain treated Hugo almost as an equal, and once that afternoon
even asked his advice on a marinade, holding up a spoon for the
younger man to taste. Bruno was too far away to hear what Hugo
said, but he saw Alain nod vigorously as if he agreed with him.
Bruno also began to notice just how hard the young
Frenchman worked at keeping Alain's favour. As a new chef de
partie, for example, he had the perfect reason to quiz the chef de
cuisine about the dishes he was cooking - but not, perhaps, to
make quite so many flattering remarks in response as he seemed to
be doing now.
'Hey, Bruno. How's it going?' That was Tommaso, finished
now for the afternoon.
'Terrible,' Bruno muttered. Tommaso followed his gaze to
where Hugo Kass was once again tasting one of the maestro's
signature dishes appreciatively.
'He's so far up chef's culo I'm surprised he can taste anything
except caeca' Tommaso commented. Bruno laughed. However
bad things were, he could always rely on his friend to come up
with a suitably Roman response.

Laura, sitting in Dr Fellowes' seminar room, hums to herself
as she writes notes about torsione and contraposto. On the
whiteboard there is a large projection of a Michelangelo drawing,
a male nude. His elegant buttocks flit across Dr Fellowes' equally
elegant face as il dottore paces back and forth, explaining in clear,
well-rounded sentences the nobility of the ideals that lie behind
them.
On her notepad, Laura doodles buttocks. Her humming
becomes audible, until her neighbour gives her a surreptitious
nudge.

The hush of the restaurant was broken suddenly by a loud crash.
In the kitchen, everyone jumped. There was the sound of shouting
from the direction of the dining room. Then the doors to the
kitchen slammed open and one of the waiters ran in shouting,
'Come quickly!'
The kitchen emptied as the staff went to see what was going
on. It seemed that a delivery man had been carrying a box of
fresh eels through the foyer when the bottom of the box had
burst open. About half a dozen eels were now zig-zagging like silvery
lightning across the deep-pile carpet of the restaurant in
desperate search of freedom.
Franciscus clicked his fingers as he snapped out orders. 'Pieter,
Stephanie: move the customers to the bar. The rest of you, deal
with this.' But it was easier said than done. The eels were Roman
mud-eels - small, agile and determined - and the staff were hampered
by having to crouch down at carpet level to apprehend
them. Again and again there was a yell of triumph, followed by a
curse as the slippery anguilli wriggled through someone's fingers.
The customers, ushered to the bar and initially distracted by
glasses of free Dom Perignon, were soon crowding back into the
restaurant with their glasses in their hands; offering advice, cheering
a successful catch or groaning with disappointment as yet
another eel slipped through its captor's grasp. It took five minutes
before two eels were back in the box, and another five before the
next one joined it. The staff, exhausted, paused for a rest.
Tommaso nudged Bruno. 'Where's the delivery man gone?' he
muttered in an undertone.
Bruno looked around. It was true that whoever had caused
the mayhem had disappeared.
'And how come he didn't bring them to the kitchen door?'
Tommaso continued. 'Everyone who delivers to Templi knows
to use the kitchen entrance. There's something strange about
this.'
'You two,' Franciscus snapped. 'Talk later, when you've caught
them all.'
Obediently, Tommaso went and prodded an eel from under the
table where it had taken refuge, only for it to slither beneath a
nearby chair before he could grab it.
As the free champagne did its work, the diners' sympathies
began to side with the escapees. They started applauding ironically
each time the eels managed to wriggle out of their captors' grasp.
Alain stood watching from the side, his face like thunder.
It was Hugo who eventually broke the stalemate. He turned on
his heel, went into the kitchen and returned a few moments later
with two huge knives, one in each hand. They were steel Sabatiers
as long as icicles, each ending in a lethally sharp point. He
advanced on one of the eels and, rather than trying to catch it,
simply stabbed it behind the head with the point of his knife,
spearing it on the steel blade.
The watchers fell silent. Without pausing to remove the anguilla from his knife, where it thrashed around in a writhing
treble-clef, Hugo moved on. Again the point of the knife stabbed
down. Now there were two eels wriggling and twisting on the
bloody blade. A third eel was making a break for freedom across
the floor. Calmly, Hugo took three paces towards it and, crouching
down in one fluid movement, speared it behind the gills with
his second knife. He turned towards the next, and moments later
the fourth and final eel joined the others on his knife. Without a
word he went back into the kitchen. As the doors closed the
sound of blade snicking on blade could clearly be heard, followed
by the quiet thump of eel pieces falling to the floor.
'Back to your places, all of you,' Alain ordered. 'And thank God
someone around here has some sense.'
When the kitchen brigade returned to their stations, the eels
were gone and Hugo was calmly preparing sauces.
It was Tommaso, clearing away the broken box from which the
eels had escaped, who found the words written on the side: 'Be
careful who you throw out of your restaurant. They may have
slippery friends.'

Finally it was Bruno's day off and he could go in search of ingredients
for his next feast. The mattatoio, the old municipal
slaughterhouse in Testaccio, was long closed, turned into stabling
for the horses that pulled tourists around the city in little traps, but
there were still several smaller places nearby which took delivery of
carcasses and butchered them on site; as the saying went, throwing
away nothing but the bleat. One of these was Elodi, a
butcher's shop hollowed out of the base of Monte Testaccio which
was itself not a hill at all but an ancient rubbish mound
some thirty-five metres high that dated back to Roman times,
formed from an orderly heap of broken amphorae, the terracotta
jars in which the ancient Romans transported olive oil. Around the
base of this centuries-old bottle bank various motor repair shops,
butchers and even restaurants had excavated long, windowless
caverns with arched roofs. Elodi was gloomy, and the sawdust on
the floor was spotted with dark pools of blood, but the quality of
the meat was known to be second to none.
Bruno spent twenty minutes talking to the owner, Iaco. Widi
offal, you were working on trust, and the consequences of being
sold some dubious meat were far worse than with ordinary cuts.
He let the other man know he was a chef, and discussed various
recipes with him until the butcher was as excited as Bruno himself
about the meal Bruno was preparing. Iaco went into the back and
returned with his bloody hands full of treasures - the intestines of
a baby veal, the brain of a sheep, a pig's tongue, and a whole oxtail,
still unskinned, like a rider's whip. From these they made their final
selection. The old man impressed upon Bruno that he was not to
make the dishes too fanciful. 'Stick to the simple recipes and you
won't go wrong,' he insisted. 'Resist the temptation to make them
your own. I know you young cooks, you always want to tinker.'
With these words ringing in his ears, Bruno took his haul, carefully
wrapped up in newspaper, back across the river to Trastevere.
In the event his menu largely reflected the old man's advice. His antipasto was the classic Roman fritto misto - tiny morsels of mixed
offal, including slivers of poached brains and liver, along with snails,
artichokes, apples, pears, and bread dipped in milk, all deep-fried in
a crisp egg-and-breadcrumb batter. This was to be followed by a primo of rigatoni alia pajata - pasta served with the intestines of a
baby calf so young they were still full of its mother's milk, simmered
with onions, white wine, tomatoes, cloves and garlic. For the secondo
they would be having milza in umido - a stewed lamb's spleen
cooked with sage, anchovies, and pepper. A bitter salad oipuntarelle
al' acciuga - chicory sprouts with anchovy - would cleanse the
palate, to be followed by a simple dolce of fragole in aceto - gorella
strawberries in vinegar. To finish the meal off with a theatrical flourish,
he had tracked down a tiny amount of kopi luwak, a rare coffee
bean from Indonesia. Despite what the old man had said, however,
he could not resist the occasional twist; substituting an ingredient
here and there, or breaking down a sauce into its constituent
flavours and deducting anything that wasn't completely essential.
In his heart happiness and sadness were now inextricably mixed
together, like the yolk and white of an egg when they are whisked
together in an omelette. The pain of not having Laura himself was
exactly balanced by the pleasure that it gave him to cook for her,
until he no longer knew where the sadness ended and the happiness
began.
@®
Even before she got to Tommaso's apartment Laura could smell
the rich, earthy miasma that wafted down the little street. She
stopped, closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. The smell was as
complex and pungent as old port, but unmistakably carnivorous.
Just for a moment she shuddered. There was something dark
about that smell, something almost rank - a musky, feral richness
that belied the sweet, inviting top notes of clove and garlic. Her
nostrils flared and her mouth watered. Pushing open the door into
the courtyard, she hurried up the stairs.
The door to the apartment was opened by Tommaso's roommate.
'Hi,' she said. 'Is Tommaso here?' She smiled at Bruno,
whom she liked.
'He's just putting the finishing touches to dinner,' Bruno said.
'Come on in.'
The door to the kitchen was closed and from behind it came
the sound of various Romanesco oaths and curses. "I wouldn't go
in there if I were you,' Bruno advised shyly. 'He's a bit obsessive
when he's cooking - you know how it is: he likes everything to be
exactly perfect.' A crash, and the sound of shattering crockery,
served to underline his words.
"I guess it's hard work, following a recipe.'
'Sometimes, yes, but there's much more to being a chef than
just assembling ingredients.'
'Really? Like what?'
Bruno hesitated. 'It's like the difference between a pianist and
a composer,' he said hesitantly. 'The pianist is creative, certainly,
but he is only the mouthpiece of the person who dreamed the
tunes into life. To be a cook, it's enough to be a pianist - a performer
of other people's ideas. But to be a chef you have to be a
composer as well. For example, the recipes you are going to eat
tonight are all traditional dishes from old Rome - but if all we do
is simply recreate the past, without trying to add to it, it stops
being a living tradition and becomes history, something dead. Those dishes were refined over centuries, but only through people
trying different things, different combinations, rejecting what
didn't work and passing on what did. So we owe it to the chefs of
the past to continue doing as they did and experiment, even when
we are dealing with the most hallowed traditions.'
Laura nodded, fascinated, and he plunged on, 'Take one of the
dishes you will be eating tonight: fritto misto. The old butcher
who sold me the meat was most insistent that it should be cooked
the old way - so brains, for example, are always poached in vegetables,
then left to cool before being sliced and deep-fried in
batter. But then you think, this batter is not so different to
Japanese tempura, and tempura can be served with a sweet chilli
and soy dipping sauce, so why not make an Italian version of that,
perhaps with balsamic vinegar from Modena instead of soy, and
see what happens--' He stopped, suddenly aware that he was getting
carried away. Not only was he waving his arms around and
becoming overexcited, but he had also completely forgotten that
Tommaso was supposed to be the chef. He thought back rapidly.
Had he said anything stupid?
But Laura had other concerns. 'Tommaso's cooking me brains)' She pulled a face.
'Among many other things that you won't have tasted before,'
Bruno said gently. 'Brains, liver, intestine. You just have to trust '
he wanted to say me: with an effort he swallowed and went on 'trust
Tommaso. He knows what he's doing, and there is nothing
that you won't think is delicious once you've tried it.'
'Like that old saying: "I've never tried it because I don't like
it."'
'Exactly. I think you, Laura, may surprise yourself with what
you like.'
'Maybe.' Laura felt a little uncomfortable. Bruno was looking
at her in a weird way, and his conversation was full of awkward
pauses and gaps during which he glanced at her and then shyly
moved his gaze away again.
She noticed, though, that when he was talking about food he
wasn't shy at all. Then he looked her straight in the eye, his own
eyes blazing with passion. To try to get him back on to the subject,
she said, 'So it was you who bought the food, not Tommaso?'
'What?'
'You said an old man sold you the ingredients.'
'Did I?'
Laura gave up. After a minute Bruno mumbled something
about going out. He got up and dashed for the door.

There was a triumphant yell from the kitchen. 'Eh, Bruno! Who
says a cock can't learn to lay eggs!*' The door opened and
Tommaso appeared, holding a salad bowl in both hands at shoulder
height as if it were a race winner's cup. 'Puntarelle al' acciuga, Tommaso-style.' He stopped dead. 'Oh, Laura. I didn't hear you
arrive.'
'Bruno let me in.'
'Is he still here?'
'No, he's gone out.'
'Oh. OK.' Tommaso became aware that he was still cradling the
salad bowl. 'It's a very difficult salad,' he explained. 'First you have
to slice the chicory just so. And the anchovies - the anchovies need
chopping too. Salt, pepper, oil . . . it's tricky to get it just right.'
'It doesn't sound all that hard. Not compared to some of the
other things you've cooked me.'
Tommaso's face took on a serious expression. 'Ah, but in cooking,
the simplest things are the hardest. It's a zen thing.'
'Now you sound like Bruno.'
'Bruno? Yes, I call him the philosopher of food. Not that he
knows much about it, of course,' Tommaso added quickly. 'But
he's picked up the odd bit of knowledge here and there. Crumbs
from the master's table.'

*From the expression: 'Agallina fa Vovo e }ogallo c'abbrucia 'o cuW The hen makes the eggs, the cock just strains his asshole.
'Is the master going to give me a kiss?' Laura asked prettily.
Tommaso put the bowl down and kissed her upturned mouth,
followed by her neck, her chin, her eyes and the rest of her face.
'Hey, forget supper,' he whispered urgently into her ear as he
nuzzled and bit at her earlobe. 'Let's just go to bed instead, hmm?'
'You must be kidding,' Laura breathed. 'It smells fantastic'
'We can have it later.'
'But I want to see what you've cooked me.'
'It'll keep.'
Tommaso's hands were expertly undoing buttons all over her
body. She felt her trousers loosen as the button on her waist was
popped. At almost the same time her bra was being undone. For
a moment she was in two minds, then she pulled away. 'So will I.
Please, Tommaso?'
He accepted the inevitable with a shrug. 'OK. Food first, then
we'll go to bed.'
Laura felt a momentary flash of irritation. It wasn't that she
didn't want to go to bed with him, just that she didn't want him
to assume that she would, or that the meal was just courtship. She
opened her mouth to explain, then closed it again. For all his
charm, she didn't think Tommaso understood the complications
and contradictions of the way her body worked. She wasn't altogether
sure she understood them herself.

Once they had started to eat, though, she had to revise her opinion.
Anyone who could cook antipasto like that - who could put
what must have been hours of work into a few delectable mouth
fills of crisp, light batter, each one concealing a single morsel of
tender meat or sharp crunchy fruit, each individual flavour as precise
and decisive as the sound of different instruments in an
orchestra - must surely have depths of complexity and feeling,
even if he kept them very well hidden.
'It's like a lucky dip,' Laura sighed happily. "I just have no idea
what I'm putting in my mouth.'
'I'll tell you afterwards.'
She pouted. 'Bruno already told me it included brains.'
'Have you eaten brains before?'
'Once, in an Italian restaurant back home. They were horrible,
not like this at all.' She speared another piece of the fritto misto with her fork. 'What about this? What is it?'
'That is a sweetbread. A piece of the thymus.'
'And what's a thymus?'
Tommaso had absolutely no idea. 'It's a part of the thyme,
which is inside the animal, just here.' He pointed to his chest,
somewhat vaguely, with both hands.
'Oh. Well, it's good, anyway. How about this?'
'That, I think, is a testiculo d'abbacchio. A lamb's - well,
testicle.'
'A testicle? Let's try it.' She put it in her mouth. Tommaso
could hear the noise her sharp front teeth made as she chewed it.
'Mmm. It's crunchier than I expected.'
'Yes,' Tommaso said faintly. "I wasn't sure you'd like it, actually.'
'Oh,
it's wonderful,' she assured him. 'Chewy and gloopy at
the same time. Are there any more in there?' She stabbed the
bowl of fritto misto with her fork.
Tommaso put his own fork down. Suddenly he wasn't feeling
hungry. 'I'm sure there are. You help yourself while I get the
pasta.'
Like most Romans, Tommaso had been brought up eating
offal, but for that very reason he had never really stopped to think
about it. It was just there, something that was put in front of you
by your mother and which you ate appreciatively while talking
very loudly across everyone else. He had never considered the
origins of the various dishes he had been served. Now, under the
glare of Laura's curiosity, he started to do so, with the result that
he was soon feeling a little squeamish.
Laura ate everything he put in front of her. What was more, she
wanted to know what each new thing was, which part of the
animal it came from, what its function was in the body and how it
had been prepared. 'It's so illogical,' she was saying. 'Why are
people happy to eat a lamb chop, but not a testicle or a kidney? It
hardly makes any difference to the lamb. In fact, as far as the
lamb's concerned, it would much rather you did eat its testicles or
kidneys - I mean, it could survive without one kidney, and without
either testicle, but as soon as you decide to slice up its ribcage
for chops, it's had it.' She forked another mouthful of rigatoni
allapajata on to her plate. 'Aren't you eating? These pajate are so
creamy, it's like you're suckling the cow yourself
Tommaso consoled himself with the thought that Bruno had,
at the very least, succeeded in pulverising any shred of inhibition
Laura might have had. So long as he could get through dinner,
what happened afterwards was going to be fantastic.
Eventually they got to the strawberries, the sweetness of the
fruit colliding with the sharp tang of vinegar in an explosive conjunction
of flavours. Laura exclaimed softly with pleasure each
time she put one in her mouth. 'Oh - oh - wow - that's so good.'
Tommaso smiled modestly and shrugged. She hasn't made those
noises yet with me, he thought a little jealously, only with Bruno's
cooking. Then he stopped himself. It was he, Tommaso, who was
going to go to bed with Laura. What did it matter if she liked to
put Bruno's food in her mouth first?
'I'll make the coffee,' he said.
When he came back from the kitchen with the little octagonal
espresso pot and two tiny cups, Laura had turned the lights down
and was lying on the floor, leaning against the sofa. She had kicked
off her shoes, and she smiled up at him invitingly. This is more like
it, he thought. He poured two cups and sat down next to her. She
sniffed appreciatively. 'Interesting. What kind of coffee is it?'
'Kopi luwak.' He tried to remember what Bruno had told him
about it. 'From Indonesia.' He tried some. It had a slightly musty,
smoky taste.
'Kopi luwak - wow.' Laura took an experimental sip. 'I've
heard of this stuff but I never thought I'd actually drink it.'
'No? Why not?'
She looked at his face. 'You do know how it's produced, don't
you?' When he didn't say anything, she explained, 'In the coffee
plantation, there's a kind of rodent called a luwak which eats
coffee berries - and because there are so many, it chooses only the
very ripest, reddest berries it can find. The coffee bean, which is
the seed in the centre of the fruit, passes right through the luwak and is excreted. It's considered a great delicacy, and the young
men who work in the coffee fields give it to their sweethearts, so
it's not usually exported. I love coffee, but I've never come across
any of this stuff before.'
Unobtrusively, Tommaso put his cup down. He couldn't
believe it. Bruno had given them coffee made from rat crap.
'How about a distillatoV he suggested. Anything to take away
the taste of that coffee.
'You go ahead.'
He poured himself a sambuca and put his arm around her.
That was better. She turned her head towards him and leaned in
close, her eyes closing as her lips found his.
That damned coffee. He could taste it in her mouth, and
behind that a faint ghost-taste of all the other dishes they had
eaten that evening. The word 'thymus' popped back into his
brain. As her tongue explored his mouth and her teeth nipped at
his lower lip, Tommaso found himself wondering exactly where in
the body the thymus was. For all he knew, it was the same as a
prostate, and a prostate was . . . He closed his own eyes and tried
to think of nice, simple things - pizza, meatballs, spaghetti alia
carbonara . . .
He felt Laura's hand slide inside his trousers and drew in his
breath. Now that was more like it. She was doing things with her
long, delicate fingers that he certainly hadn't expected. There was
no doubt about it, she was a dark horse. He slipped his own hand
under her T-shirt and expertly undipped her bra. She took his
hand away for a moment, then pulled her T-shirt over her head for
him before going back to what she had been doing.
He peeled her remaining clothes off her, kissing each area of
exposed skin. Then she was doing the same to him. He had been
right: the meal had shattered any inhibitions she had left. He took
a strawberry from the bowl and stroked it down her breasts,
before going in with his tongue to lick up the trail of vinegary
sweetness it left behind.

A few minutes later Tommaso said, 'Oh.'
'Do you like that?'
'Urn - I just didn't know heterosexuals did that.'
Laura laughed, a deep, throaty laugh. 'Then there's a lot of
things you don't know yet.'
'Oh,' Tommaso said again. He yelped, and tensed. 'Careful
with those, too,' he said anxiously.

She felt strange and wild. Her body was just a collection of organs.
She was blood and p>lumbing, like any other creature, and there
was nothing that was forbidden about any of it. She gnawed on
Tommaso ravenously, like an animal plundering a carcass, and
when she had had enough of that she swung her leg over him, like
a rider swinging into a saddle, and galloped.
She was riding naked on a big horse, among a pack of hunting
wolves, at night. The flanks of the horse were slippery with foam.
She could sense something in the distance, some small animal
which was desperately trying to escape the pack, but they were
getting closer to it every second. The wolves could sense it, too,
and increased their pace. She galloped faster, urging her mount on
with little cries and squeezes of her thighs. Closer and closer they
got to their quarry. Now there was a jump ahead, a vast wall rushing
towards her, but it was too late to stop. She dug her nails in
hard and held on for dear life. As she finally took off into the air,





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At
she arched her back and shouted. The animal was screaming, too,
as the wolves finally caught it and tore it apart, ripping its soft pajate open with their sharp teeth, devouring the coratella and the
bloody bright red heart--
'Are you OK?' Tommaso asked.
'Uh,' she panted.
'Could you perhaps . . . ?' He tapped one of her hands, which
were still squeezing his pectorals.
Her fingers were stiff, and as she unclasped them she saw she
had left deep claw marks in his skin. 'Oh Tommaso, I'm so sorry.
I got carried away.' She climbed off him and, as she cuddled up
against him, tried to tell him how amazing it had been, to explain
the weird fantasies that had been flitting through her mind just
before she came, that incredible sensation of flight. But Tommaso,
exhausted, was already asleep.

Next morning, Bruno walked into the bathroom and stopped
short. Laura was crouched by the bathtub, wrapped in a towel,
washing her hair. She hadn't heard him come in. The suds had
turned her hair into a soapy white meringue. For a moment he
stared at her, transfixed. Then he backed away and shut the door,
his heart pounding.
Later, when she had gone, he went into Tommaso's room. His
friend was printing out some photographs of Laura from his
computer.
'Hey, Bruno. The meal was a triumph!'
'That's good,' Bruno said. He looked over his friend's shoulder
at the pictures. Something moved deep in his heart, like tectonic
plates grinding against each other.
'She's a dark horse, all right,' Tommaso confided. 'Wild as hell
once she's been warmed up.' He opened his cupboard door and
pinned a photograph of Laura alongside the other pictures. He
stood back to admire it. 'What do you think?'
'A worthy addition,' Bruno agreed. 'In fact, she's the prettiest
girl in your cupboard.'
'She is, isn't she?' Tommaso agreed enthusiastically, looking at
the dozens of photographs. He pointed at one. 'Except maybe for
that one. Madchen, her name was. German. But she was a model.'
He sighed. 'You know something tragic, Bruno? There's only one
Tommaso in the world, and so many women.'

Laura phoned Carlotta for a serious talk.
'Carlotta,' she began cautiously, 'do you ever have random
thoughts pop into your head during sex?'
'Of course. Sometimes I think about shoes, sometimes I think
about bracelets. It's generally always accessories though.'
'So you don't ever think about being naked on a big black
horse and hunting down a small furry animal with the help of a
pack of wolves?'
There was a short silence. 'Uh-uh.'
'Or tearing it apart with your bare teeth and devouring its
intestines by moonlight?'
"I think I'd remember that one.'
'Just checking.'
'That must have been some meal he cooked you.'
'Oh, car a, it was just amazing.'
As Laura listed the menu, Carlotta clicked her tongue and murmured, 'Tay, yay, yay,' appreciatively. When Laura had finished she
said, 'All that and erotic fantasies as well? I am definitely coming
down to Rome next weekend. And you can bet I'll be bringing
Andrea with me. It's time he met my parents, anyway.'

Bruno was dismayed to find that Hugo Kass had been assigned to
work alongside him on the patissier's station. Even more worryingly,
and against all normal etiquette of a three-star kitchen, it
had been left vague as to which of them would be in charge.
Ostensibly the move was because Alain had been developing some
new dolci, but Bruno knew that it was really because the chef
wanted to play a little mind game with Bruno, to punish him for
his recent lack of performance.
It did not take him long to realise that Hugo was intent on
seizing any opportunity to demonstrate his own superiority. As the
orders came in and were called aloud, it was customary for the
underling who was to cook each dish to respond with a crisp, 'Oui, chef Bruno found that an order would barely be out of
Karl's mouth before Hugo had claimed it as his own. Hugo even
took on orders that required him to work on two dishes simultaneously,
while Bruno was left fuming and twiddling his thumbs.
Tommaso, passing on his way to the sink with a tray of dirty
dishes, saw what was happening. 'Why aren't you doing anything
about this?' he hissed.
'There's nothing I can do,' Bruno hissed back, watching Hugo
build an intricate terrine of fruits in layers of alcohol-soaked sponge.
'So? You're better than he is.'
'I'm not so sure,' Bruno said as Hugo's hands danced over the
ingredients.
'Do you want to work here or not?'
'Yes, but--'

'Then you need to levati questo camello dai coglioni*. Your
problem, Bruno, is that you're a nice guy. Too nice. If you want
something, you have to fight for it.'
'OK, OK. Point taken.'
The next time Karl called out an order, Bruno had rapped out
a 'Oui, chef before Hugo had even opened his mouth. It was an
order for papillote de banane. Even in the sophisticated version
served at Templi - cooked in a parcel, with strips of vanilla pod
and a passion fruit coulis- it was a dish Bruno could have cooked
to perfection in his sleep. Hugo stood back, his face expressionless,
as Bruno brushed some greaseproof paper with egg white.
'Table fourteen, one tarte fine aux pommes,' Karl called.
'Oui, chef,' Hugo said instantly, turning to his station.
'One gratin de fruits--'

* Literally: 'Lift this camel off your balls.'
'Oui, chef,' Bruno snapped. Even before Karl had finished
speaking, he was reaching for the eggs.
A waiter handed another order to Karl, who scanned it quickly
and added, 'Table eight, anothergratin.'
Bruno was about to respond but this time Hugo beat him to it. 'Oui, chef,' Hugo said quickly, reaching for some eggs himself.
So now they were effectively cooking the same dish, gratin de
fruits, in parallel. It was a deceptively simple recipe: fresh fruit in
a sabayon sauce, lightly caramelised. Sabayon is simply the sophisticated
French cousin of the Italian zabaione. The difficulty of the
dish came in the way it had to be cooked, which required
absolutely precise timing. Fresh egg yolks were whisked in an
electric mixer at the highest speed until they had tripled in volume.
Meanwhile, rhubarb was cooked with sugar and lemon juice and
strained through a sieve to make a syrup. Then the mixer was
reduced to its lowest speed and the hot syrup poured drop by
drop into the sabayon. It was this hot mixture that both cooked
the egg yolks and stabilised them. If the syrup hit the cold sides of
the bowl it would solidify into thick lumps. If it touched the spinning
blades of the mixer it would spit drops of boiling syrup back
at the face of the cook.
Like choreographed dancers, the two chefs reached in unison
for lemons and halved them. Their knives, as they chopped the
rhubarb, were as perfectly synchronised as a drummer's sticks.
Each wore an expression of grim determination as they tried,
unsuccessfully, to edge ahead of the other. They both squeezed
the lemons with two deft twists of the wrist. They both hurled the
husks of their juiced lemon into the bin, where the two fruits collided
as they fell. They both turned to the big gas stoves at the
same moment, and the two coronets of blue flame appeared on
both their burners at exactly the same time.
The other chefs had realised by now that something was
happening. They watched, surreptitiously at first and then with
open-mouthed amazement, as the two young men battled it out.
As he whisked the egg yolks, Bruno plated the bananes en papiT love with his left hand and slid them down the counter towards a commis to go to the pass. Hugo, though, had neglected his tarte. With an oath he had to break off from the sabayon and lower the
heat before the apples burned.
Now Bruno was precious seconds ahead. Calmly he lowered
the mixer speed and prepared to add the hot syrup, drop by drop.
'Souffle aux fruits de la passion,' Karl called.
Neither chef responded. Neither wanted the burden of yet
another dish to prepare until the battle of the sabayon was
resolved. There was a long silence, broken only by the hum and
descant of the two electric mixers.
'Souffle aux fruits,' the head chef repeated.
Bruno was torn. On the one hand, he didn't want to do the
order. On the other, this was his station. It was his responsibility
to make sure the customer wasn't kept waiting.
'Oui, chef,' he muttered. Opposite him Hugo smiled wolfishly.
Bruno reached for another mixing bowl with his left hand. He
poured in equal amounts of passion fruit puree and pastry cream
for the souffle and flicked the second mixer on. Luckily he had
kept the egg whites left over from the sabayon. Still with his left
hand, he started to whisk them in a bowl, at the same time adding
a thin trickle of hot syrup to the sabayon with his right.
'Afaccia d'o cazzo!*' one of the other chefs breathed. 'A DJ
couldn't work those decks better.'
Bruno placed the fruits on a plate, poured the sabayon on top
and reached for his blowtorch. While his left hand still folded egg
white into the souffle mixture, with his right he began to glaze the
surface of his sabayon with the naked flame.
His attention on the food, it was only the sudden intake of
breath from the onlookers that alerted him. He leaped back just

*Literally: 'The face of the dick.' This expression translates roughly as,
'Amazing!'
as a foot-long flame lanced out of Hugo's blowtorch, missing
him by inches.
"I beg your pardon, Bruno,' Hugo said calmly, adjusting the
nozzle.
Bruno said nothing. The surface of his sabayon was webbed
with caramel now, crisp and brown. It was finished. Wiping the
sides of the plate carefully with the end of his cloth, he called a commis to take it to the pass. One or two of the other chefs broke
into applause.
'Quiet,' Alain snapped. Bruno realised that he must have been
watching silently from the other side of the kitchen. 'Get back to
work, all of you.'
It was at least another minute before Hugo's dish was ready.
Bruno quietly got on with preparing the souffle. Out of the corner
of his eye he saw Alain walk over to the pass and bend over the
two sabayons, inspecting them minutely. Then he came over to
where the two young men were working.
'If I ever see the pair of you doing anything like that again,' he
said quietly, 'you will both be out of here. Do you understand?'
'Yes, chef,' they muttered.
'This isn't a racetrack. It's a kitchen.' He stalked off to inspect
a plate of vegetables.
Bruno turned back to the oven, pulled out the souffle and
cursed. The top had burned. Then he saw why. He had set the
oven to 190 degrees. Now it was at 210 degrees. Someone had
changed the setting while he'd been distracted. He glanced at
Hugo but the Frenchman's head was bent over his counter and it
was impossible to tell what kind of expression he had on his face.
Bruno chucked the souffle in the bin and started again. He might
have won this battle, but he was prepared to bet that the war had
only just begun.

'We come now to the difficult notion of harmony,' Dr Fellowes is
saying. 'Harmony was not just an aesthetic ideal for the great men
of the Renaissance but a spiritual one also. It is the point at which
conception and creation mesh; the painter's skill reflecting and celebrating
the greater harmony of the Divine.' He plucks a piece of
fluff from his shirt, which today is of a colour best described as
grape.
Laura smiles at him dreamily. She smiles at everyone today. He
coughs and continues: 'The grace of the human figure, the delicacy
of forms, the precise symbolism of colour and placement these
are all elements of harmony.'
As Laura bends her head over her notebook, Dr Fellowes
admires the quattrocentro profile of her neck, both delicate and
harmonious. For a moment he falters. He thinks how amazing it
is that Italy can do this, can bring out the beauty in the most ordinary
people.
Laura, meanwhile, is thinking thoughts so completely filthy
that she is amazed they aren't making her blush. Quite the reverse,
in fact. She glances coolly up at her teacher and pictures herself in
bed with Tommaso. Ah yes - that goes there, and this goes here, and wouldn't it be a nice surprise if that went there as well--
'Harmony,' Kim repeats, favouring Laura with a smile.

'So we're cooking for Laura's best friend. And her best friend's
boyfriend.'
'We are?'
They were at Gennaro's, savouring the first ristretti of the day.
Bruno felt a little light-headed. He wasn't sure if it was because he
was in love, or because Gennaro had now turbo-charged his
Gaggia by fitting to it a vast pump from an industrial pressure
washer. This sent the pressure inside the machine right up to the
maximum, into the red part of the dial, and the caffe was now so
potent that even die-hard regulars sometimes found themselves
staggering to a table and sitting down.
'Yes. Although I have to tell you that a slight complication has
arisen.'
'It can hardly be any more complicated than it already is,'
Bruno pointed out.
'Perhaps complication is the wrong word. A small change of
plan. No, not even of plan. Of venue, that's all.'
'What do you mean?'
'This friend of Laura's has told her parents about me, you see.
These parents live here, in Rome, and the result is that they want
me to go and cook for all of them at the parents' house, where this
Carlotta and her boyfriend will be staying. So of course I had to
say that would be fine.'
Bruno stared at him. 'Are you crazy?'
'What's crazy?' Tommaso shrugged. 'I'll go and commandeer
the kitchen, throw the mother out and then we'll just have to find
a way to get you inside.'
'I take it I'm not actually invited?'
'Well, no.'
'So let me get this clear, Tommaso. You are expecting me to
break into this house--'
'Apartment.'
'Apartment. Even better. I suppose it's on the sixteenth floor?'
'Uh - second, I believe.'
'To break into this apartment, which is on the second floor,
conceal myself somehow in the kitchen, and then, without being
spotted, cook a meal?'
'Exactly. Bruno, your grasp of the situation is masterly and shows
that you are clearly the man to formulate a plan to carry us through.'
'Sooner or later, Tommaso, we're going to be found out. Have
you thought of that?'
'Of course. And then we'll run like hell, before we have a good
laugh about it all. Meglio ungiomo da leone che cento da pecora*, as my father used to say, God rest his soul.'

*'Better to live one day as a lion than a hundred as a sheep.
At the restaurant, Alain had positioned himself so that he could
see everything taking place in the patissier's corner. He was clearly
looking for any excuse to elevate one of his two proteges at the
expense of the other.
As Bruno pressed a mixture of pastry cream and mashed apricots
through the sieve to make a syrup, he noticed that it was
coming out lumpy. Surprised, he spooned it back into the sieve
and tried again. Again, the puree had blobs of fruit and even seeds
in it. He picked up the sieve and looked at it more closely.
Someone had pressed something sharp a dozen times into the
metal surface, enlarging the holes.
He replaced the sieve without saying anything and inspected
the rest of his station. A chef's work area is called his mise-en-place, and each chef surrounds himself with his own individual combination
of tools, prepared ingredients, knives, seasonings and
favourite gadgets. In the pressure of a service, you reached for
whatever was needed automatically, barely looking at it. You
assumed, for example, that your bowl of cream was the same bowl
of cream you had taken out of the fridge and checked a few hours
before, that your vinegar was the same brand you always used, that
your sugar really was sugar . . .
Bruno dipped his finger into his sugar bowl and licked it. Along
with sugar, there was another taste. Salt.
With a sudden lurch of dread he tasted his vinegar. Instead of
vinegar, the bottle contained liquorice water.
He felt sick. How many dishes had he already sent out with the
wrong ingredients? Thank God there had been no complaints,
though it said something very strange about the customers at
Templi that they hadn't dared to mention that their desserts were
full of salt and their fruit slathered in aniseed.
Marching over to where Hugo Kass was holding court to a
small group of acolytes, Bruno pushed him roughly on the shoulder,
making him turn around.
'Did you mess around with my mise)' he demanded.
'Of course not,' Hugo said shortly.
One of the acolytes sniggered. It was the only excuse Bruno
needed. All his frustrations suddenly boiled up into one moment
of complete fury. Pulling back his fist, he punched the Frenchman
right on the chin, sending Hugo crashing back against a pile of
vegetable crates. It felt fantastic, even though Karl saw the whole
thing from the other side of the kitchen and immediately marched
Bruno off for a tongue-lashing from Alain Dufrais and an instant
demotion. From now on Bruno would have to report to Hugo;
and, Alain informed him icily, if Hugo wasn't happy with his work,
Bruno would be out on his ear.

Laura, at the residencia, receives a call from the porter to say that
there's a delivery for her. She comes downstairs and is surprised to
be handed a curious-looking bouquet.
Only on closer inspection does it become apparent that this is,
in fact, a bunch of candied flowers - pale orange blossoms, bright
blue florets of borage, even tender young rosebuds, all encased in
hard clear shells of sugar, like tiny toffee apples.
There's no note, but she knows that there's only one person in
the world who could make her such a present. She goes to sleep
with the sweetness of toffee on her lips, and dreams of her Roman
lover with the crazy, passionate eyes.

Bruno, standing in his little kitchen, looks out at the sleeping city
and touches a morsel of the crunchy caramel to his lips. As the
sweetness floods his mouth he thinks: this is what her mouth tastes
like, right this moment, as she eats my gift. His heart fills with joy as
he imagines her now, experiencing the same taste at the same
moment he does, like a kiss flying between them across the
rooftops.

qM>


trie

Bruno had decided that the only way Tommaso could possibly
pass off a meal cooked in Carlotta's parents' apartment as his own
was to assemble and cook everything beforehand. He would make
something simple but impressive that could be smuggled into the
other kitchen for Tommaso to heat up. And since there is nothing
simpler or more impressive than really good fresh pasta, that was
what he was busy making.
He had placed a large wooden board on top of his work surface.
Handmade pasta is never prepared on marble; its coldness
stiffens the dough and prevents the breakdown of glutens. A pile
of Tipo 00, the finest grade of flour, stood to one side, light as
ash, its top gently flattened to make a small crater. Into this he
had poured some beaten eggs. Drawing flour over the egg mixture
with the tines of a fork, he worked the two together a little
at a time. Then he put the fork aside and started to use his fingers.
Gradually, the sliminess of the eggs and the dryness of the
flour became one smooth, muscular mass, worked and reworked
until there was no trace of stickiness. After Bruno had washed
and dried his hands, he was able to press his thumb into the
mixture and pull it out again without the dough clinging to his
skin at all.
Using the heel of his palm, he pushed the dough away from
him, then folded it over. A quick half-turn and then he did the
same again, slowly breaking down its inner resistance. Push, fold,
turn. Push, fold, turn. Pasta-making is a ritual, both in the kneading
and the stretching; the same hand motions performed over
and over again, as automatic and precise as the movements of a
master plasterer or a pianist. Bruno kept up his kneading for
exactly eight minutes. It was hard, physical work and he was soon
perspiring freely, but slowly the dough became elastic, its surface
as smooth as Laura's skin.
Inevitably, as he worked he found his thoughts returning to
her. The physical exertion was having a corresponding effect on
his mind, filling his head with erotic daydreams. Push, fold,
turn . . . His arms ached with the longing to hold her, and his
body tensed with sexual frustration. Feverish images danced
through his mind. Push, fold, turn. I will make her a dessert that
will set her blood on fire, he decided. I will let her feel what I am
feeling now. Although a part of him recognised that it was
Tommaso, not him, who would reap the benefits, the need to
express his feelings as food was overwhelming.
After their exertions, both dough and cook had to rest. Bruno
prepared his secondo, which was to be saltimbocca, the classic
Roman sandwich of veal beaten paper-thin and folded over a slice
of prosciutto and a couple of sage leaves. Once prepared, the saltimbocca could be flash-fried in minutes, something even
Tommaso couldn't mess up.
After about ten minutes Bruno returned to his dough,
squashed it down a little and picked up his pasta-rolling pin. The
pin was as long as a sword - thirty-two inches or eighty centimetres,
to be precise - and thinner than a conventional rolling pin, so that
it would spin faster between his hands as he pushed it over the
pasta. The trick was not to use force. You were not so much
squeezing the pasta flat as pushing it gently outwards, like spreading
icing across the surface of a cake.
When the rolled dough was the size of a pizza base he changed
the movements of his hands, letting them slide sideways along the
pin as he worked it, distributing pressure evenly along its length.
This was the hardest part. Bruno knew he was not as good at this
as a housewife somewhere like Emilia-Romagna, who did it every
day of her life, but there was no time to be cautious. If he went
too slowly, the pasta would lose its moisture and crack before he
was done. He felt his way into the dough, stretching it little by
little until it became as thin and filmy as silk, fluttering a few centimetres
off the table each time he rolled it. It was time to stop
and cut the pasta into tortellini.

'Signora, do you have a colander?' Tommaso called through the
kitchen door. Carlotta's mother bustled in to open a cupboard and
show him where the implement was kept, passing a critical eye as
she did so over the array of ingredients he had assembled on the
work surface.
'You are making fresh pasta?' she said in surprise, looking at the
pile of flour and the eggs which he had ostentatiously placed to
the fore.
'Of course.'
'Do you want to borrow a rolling machine?'
Tommaso looked down his nose haughtily. "I never use them.
I prefer to do everything by hand.'
'But do you have a rolling pin?'
Tommaso waved his hand airily. 'I'll improvise.'
Carlotta's mother looked sceptical. 'How can you possibly
improvise a rolling pin for pasta?'
Tommaso decided it was time to change the subject. 'I'll need
a large jug, please, signora, ceramic not glass, and six egg cup>s of
different sizes. Oh, and a bottle of good marsala, the best
your husband has.' That should keep them distracted, he thought,
watching her scurrying off to do as he had asked. He hoped
Bruno wasn't going to be long. This was turning out to be harder
than he'd expected.

'How's it going?' Carlotta asked her mother. The would-be diners
had been banished to the dining room to await Tommaso's masterpiece, and everyone was getting impatient.
'He hasn't started the pasta yet, and he's been chopping the
same stick of celery for twenty minutes. Now he wants egg cups.
And a bottle of marsala.'
"Iil get it,' Dr Ferrara said quickly, getting to his feet. He still
wasn't quite sure how it had come about that a stranger had commandeered
his wife's kitchen, but after years of living with her he
knew a potentially explosive situation when he encountered one.
Costanza Ferrara's mouth was set in a thin line, and she had pulled
her hair back so tightly that her scalp had gone white.
"I promise you it'll be worth it in the end,' Laura said loyally.
From the kitchen the sound of pans crashing together could be
heard, followed by a burst of song from Tommaso. Andrea,
Carlotta's boyfriend, laughed and lit another cigarette.

The Piazza Agnelli was in the middle of a grid of identical streets,
each containing dozens of identical white apartment blocks. After
scouring the area on Tommaso's scooter for half an hour, Bruno
finally located the right place and sounded his horn twice. Above
him, on the second floor, a window flew open.
LPe' ventinove e trentaj Tommaso said urgently. 'Tengo certi
cazzi che mi abballano per }a capo.* You're just in time: this is
doing my head in.'
'Sorry. I got lost.'

*Pe) ventinove e trenta - literally: 'For twenty-nine and thirty.' Tengo
certi cazzi che mi abballano per 'a capo - literally: 'There are so many dicks
dancing in my head.'
Tommaso was already lowering a bucket on a string which contained
a mess of flour and eggs hurriedly scraped off the work
surface. When it reached the street below, Bruno carefully replaced
it with a pan containing his parcels of pasta, which Tommaso
rapidly hauled up again. 'These are the tortellini, siV he called.
'Yes. The sauce is in the jar.'
'Where are the saltimboccheV
'Coming up next. Send down the ingredients.'
Tommaso sent down the raw veal and loose sage leaves, and
Bruno sent up the meat he'd prepared earlier. 'You'll remember
what to do?' he called anxiously.
Tommaso tapped his head. 'Of course. Years of remembering
orders. It'll be fine.'
Bruno shrugged and got back on the scooter. He didn't have
Tommaso's confidence that this would work, but it was out of his
hands now.

Tommaso burst out of the kitchen with a dish of tortellini and set
it down on the table with a flourish. 'Here, everybody. Time to
eat.'
Carlotta's mother's face was a picture of surprise. 'It's ready?'
'Of course.' Tommaso served them all with a flourish. 'While
you eat that, I'll get back to the kitchen and make the secondo.'
'It smells amazing,' Carlotta said.
'It tastes pretty good,' her boyfriend, who had already started
eating, confirmed.
Costanza sniffed. Men might call themselves chefs, but that was
a very different thing from being able to cook. She had rarely
eaten in a restaurant that in her opinion served food as good as
that which she herself prepared at home. She speared one of the tortellini on her fork and held it up.
'It's not a good shape,' she commented critically. She put it in
her mouth. Everyone looked at her, waiting for her verdict.
'Hmm,' she said at last, spearing another. That was all she said
until the end of the primo, but it was not lost on those around the
table that she finished every single scrap of pasta on her plate.
even after that, there was a little dribble of sauce left on the side.
She eyed it hungrily. The others were all taking pieces of bread and
wiping their sauce up. Costanza resisted for several minutes, then
her plump hand snaked out and grabbed a piece to do the same.

As the meal wore on, Laura, who was seated to Dr Ferrara's left,
couldn't help noticing two things. First, he seemed remarkably
eager to engage her in conversation; and second, during those
conversations he seemed to be making eye-contact with her
breasts rather than her face. By the time they had eaten the saltimbocche,
he had draped his left arm around the back of her chair as
he told her breasts in some detail about the wonderful time he'd
had in the 1960s living in a hippy commune in Tuscany. From
time to time his fingers brushed against Laura's back as he emphasised
a point.
On the other side of the table, Carlotta was making eyes at
Andrea. She slipped her shoe off and worked her foot up his leg,
laughing at the effect this had on his attempts to make conversation
with her mother, who was sitting next to him.
Eventually Costanza lurched unsteadily to her feet and
announced that she was going to see Tommaso in the kitchen.
Bouncing off the doorframe, she advanced on the young man
with outstretched arms and a cry of congratulation, folding him
into her ample bosom. Caught in her embrace, Tommaso felt her
hands pinching at him as if he were a piece of chicken she were
testing for freshness at the butcher's.
'The dolce^ he gasped. 'We have another course still to come.'
Reluctantly, Costanza released him.
"Iil bring it in just a minute,' he added.

The dessert was tartufo, a dark chocolate gelato dusted with
cocoa.
Around eighty-five per cent of the world's chocolate is made
from the common-or-garden Forastero cocoa bean. About ten
per cent is made from the finer, more subtle Trinitario bean. And
less than five per cent is made from the rare, aromatic Criollo
bean, which is found only in the remotest regions of Colombia
and Venezuela. These beans are so sought after that, kilo for kilo,
they can command prices many times higher than the other local
crop, cocaine. Having been fermented, shipped, lightly roasted
and finely milled to a thickness of about fifteen microns, the beans
are finally cooked into tablets, even a tiny crumb of which, placed
on the tongue, explodes with flavour as it melts.
A tartufo is a chocolate jjelato shaped to look like a truffle, but
it is an appropriate name for other reasons too. Made from egg
yolk, sugar, a little milk and plenty of the finest Criollo chocolate,
with a buried kick of chilli, Bruno's tartufo was as richly sensual
and overpowering as the funghi from which it took its name ~ and
even more aphrodisiac.
The arrival of the tartufo at the table finally persuaded the
diners to return their attentions to the food. For a few minutes
there was a stunned silence as they spooned the rich ice cream into
their mouths, each of them lost in a private reverie of sensation.
It was Costanza Ferrara who finally broke the silence. 'That was
remarkable,' she said at last. Around the table, heads nodded vigorously,
or as vigorously as they were able to. Tommaso himself
smiled modestly. 'After such a meal,' she continued, 'we must
certainly all have a siesta.' She rose majestically from her seat.
'Come, Aldo.'
Startled, Dr Ferrara disentangled himself from Laura's chair
and hauled himself upright. His eyes had suddenly acquired the
thousand-yard stare of a soldier walking out of the safety of his
trench into No Man's Land.
"I'm rather tired too,' Andrea announced when they had gone,
with a meaningful glance at Carlotta. 'Tommaso, a fantastic meal.
I feel as if my trousers are suddenly much too tight.'
'Let's hope so,' Carlotta murmured. 'Laura, there's a spare
room through there if you and Tommaso want to take a nap as
well.'

Fifteen minutes later the apartment echoed to muffled grunts and
gasps as the three couples succumbed in different ways to the passions
engendered by their lunch. Dr Ferrara, who had not made
love with his wife for many months, was gasping for breath as she
bounced on top of him like an over-enthusiastic space hopper,
making the legs of the bed splay alarmingly every time she did so.
Carlotta and Andrea were enjoying a more relaxed coupling. And
Tommaso and Laura were in the spare bedroom, their clothes
strewn across the floor, when Laura broke away from Tommaso
and whispered, 'I've got an idea.'
'So have I,' Tommaso said. 'My idea is that we screw like rabbits.
What's your idea?'
Tee cream.'
'Hmm. Tell you what, let's do my idea first and then we'll do
your idea.'
But Laura was already tiptoeing away from the bed. 'Wait here.'
Pulling on a T-shirt in case she met anybody, she crept to the
kitchen where the remains of the chocolate tartufo sat in the ice
box of the refrigerator, and took it back with her to the bedroom.
'Now close your eyes,' she told Tommaso as she climbed back
on to the bed. 'And lie very, very still.'
Obediently he closed his eyes. She took a spoonful of the cold
ice cream and carefully placed it over his left nipple.
'Ow,' Tommaso said. 'It's cold.'
'It'll soon warm up.' She spooned a second mound on the
other nipple. He gasped again.
'Good?'
'Urn,' he said, shivering a little.
'And one here,'' she said, putting a third on his belly, just below
the navel. 'Now, which one shall I eat first?' She looked at him,
trying to choose. Thegelato was already starting to melt. Rivulets
of dark ice cream were running down his sculptured chest. She
bent to the little mound of tartufo in his navel and slipped it into
her mouth. She sighed ecstatically. Oh . . .
Bending back to his supine body, she followed one of the
streams of melted chocolate up his chest with her tongue. Oh . . .
She felt dizzy, unable to tell where her taste buds ended and her
nerve endings began. Switching the other way, she began to
nibble down towards the crumbs of half-melted chocolate around
his hips. He squirmed with relief as she licked the last morsels of
icy chocolate off him with her warm tongue, like licking a cone.
Then she could wait no longer. Straddling him, she pushed down
on to him in one molten movement, arching her back as she felt
him sliding up inside her, so hard and urgent it seemed almost as
if he must be touching her spine from the inside.
Oh...
She hunkered down to get him even further in, and leaned
forward to kiss him with a mouth that was itself cold and sweet
from the ice cream.
Oh...
Tommaso gasped too. After the gelato, the warmth of her was
almost burning him.
Oh...
Laura suddenly realised something was missing. Her mouth felt empty. The gelato. Grabbing the dish, she spooned some into
her mouth. "Yes. . . She closed her eyes in rapture. Another spoonful,
and then another . . . faster and faster went the spoon, from
dish to mouth.
The two sets of movements were becoming synchronised.
Every time Tommaso pushed into her, a spoonful of gelato slid
into her mouth. Every time he pulled back, the spoon left her
mouth too and dipped into the dish for another scoop. She balanced
the dish on Tommaso's chest, so that she could get at it
more easily. Tommaso winced from the coldness of it but Laura
was past caring. Dropping the spoon, she scooped a handful of ice
cream out of the bowl with her fingers and crammed it into her
mouth.

Bruno, meanwhile, was back at the apartment, desperately baking
bread to try to take his mind off Laura. Every time he stopped,
erotic images - painful images - seared into his brain. He seemed
to glimpse Laura out of the corner of his eye, naked, smiling at
him, only for the apparition to vanish as soon as he turned his
fevered gaze directly towards it.
He regretted the tartufo now. It had been too much. He had
eaten some himself, just a few minutes ago, and had been shocked
by just how potent it was. That chilli, in particular. It was an idea
he had borrowed from Mexican cuisine. Initially disguised by
the coldness of the ice cream and the sweetness of the chocolate,
it lingered as a tingle on the tongue and a gentle sting on the lips
that seemed to grow in intensity the longer you left it.
Bruno stuffed pieces of dough into his mouth to try to calm
himself. But it was no use. Far from cooling him, the ice cream
had simply made things worse.

While Andrea snored gently beside her, Carlotta lay awake.
An idea had occurred to her, one so irresistible that she simply
couldn't get it out of her mind.
Carlotta was thinking that, even now, as her boyfriend slept,
there was a dish in the refrigerator in her mother's kitchen containing
the remains of that delectable tartufo. Earlier, the six of
them had gorged themselves on it, but the jjelato had been so rich,
so dense, so explosively chocolatey that they had been unable to
finish it all. Carlotta remembered quite clearly that there had been,
at the end, a single portion left - a portion which was now calling
to her. The call was all the louder because Andrea had, as usual,
fallen asleep as soon as he was satisfied, leaving her tantalisingly
unfulfilled. In some strange way, her lack of sexual fulfilment was
translating itself into a powerful yearning for just one more spoonful
of that wonderful dessert of Tommaso's.
Throwing back the covers, Carlotta pulled on a robe and tiptoed
to the door. The apartment was silent. She crept into the
kitchen - and stopped.
Her mother, also wearing a robe, was just walking through the
other door.
Mother and daughter looked at each other, both immediately
guessing why the other was there. The fridge was exactly halfway
between them. Casually, as if she were just going to the sink to get
a glass of water, Carlotta sidled towards it.
On the other side of the room, her mother also moved nonchalantly
in the direction of the fridge.
Carlotta moved a little faster. Across the room, her mother
picked up momentum too. Throwing dignity to the wind,
Carlotta broke into a run. But her mother could move surprisingly
fast for such a small, stout person. As Carlotta reached the fridge
and yanked on the handle of the ice box, she found her mother's
thick arm blocking the way. They stopped, glaring at each other.
Then, as if by unspoken agreement, they both pulled on the
handle together.
The ice box was quite empty.
At that moment Laura walked into the kitchen bearing the
empty tartufo dish, which she carefully carried over to the sink
before greeting them with a smile.

While the three women did the dishes in silence, the cause of
their discord was discovering a common bond with Carlotta's
father, who had put on one of his old CDs.
'Ah, "Return to Fantasy",' Tommaso said, listening. 'One of
the greatest album tracks ever.'
'I'm amazed you recognise it. I was still a young man when this
came out.'
'Oh, I'm a big Uriah Heep fan.'
'See if you recognise this, then.'
He put a different CD on the player. Within moments
Tommaso nodded. 'Hawkwind. "Warrior at the Edge of Time." A
classic'
'Shit, you're good. What about this?' Dr Ferrara changed the
CD again.
'"Bad Company."'
'Fantastic,' Dr Ferrara breathed. He started to dance, a little
creakily. 'You know,' he said over the music, 'you're a pretty good
cook too.'
Tommaso shrugged modestly.
'Today I fucked my wife three times, and I still have a hard-on
like a concrete cucumber.'
lPre£ro. You're welcome, really.'
'The thing is, I have some money to invest,' Dr Ferrara said.
'Costanza's mother died and left us a pile, the tight old skinflint.
And I don't want to put it in the stockmarket; the government
just takes whatever you make. I want to put it into a cash business,
something small and local where I can take the profits straight out
of the till when times are good and shout at the staff when they're
not. Like a restaurant, for example. And it seems to me that people
would pay good money to eat like I did today, particularly if they
knew that it was going to make their date hotter than a ewe in
September.' He tapped his head craftily. 'What's more, I have the
perfect place. Old Cristophe has a little osteria right in the centre
of Rome and I know for a fact he wants to sell up. What do you
say?'
'Oh, I'm very happy where I am,' Tommaso assured him.
"I'd make you a partner, naturally. Well, not an equal partner,
but you'd have a share of the profits.'
For a moment Tommaso was almost tempted. 'No, really,' he
said. "I love to cook, but I don't think I'm ready for my own
restaurant.'
'He's amazing,' Carlotta said to Laura later. 'Your Tommaso is
simply amazing. What an artist.'
'Isn't he?' Laura agreed.
'You know my father wants to back him in a restaurant of his
own?'
'No, he didn't tell me that.' It occurred to Laura for the first
time that Tommaso didn't actually tell her very much. In fact,
when she thought about it, she could barely remember one proper
conversation they had had. There was the food, of course, which
was fantastic, and the sex, and the jokes, and there were the sweet
Italian endearments he murmured when they were either about to
eat or about to have sex, but she very rarely knew what was really
going on in Tommaso's head.
But then, as Carlotta said, he was an artist; and food, not
words, was the medium through which he expressed himself.

'Dr Ferrara wants me to open a restaurant with him,' Tommaso
said. He laughed. 'Can you imagine? He even offered me a share
of the profits. He was most insistent. If I hadn't known what your
reaction would be, my friend, I might almost have said yes.'
They were in Gennaro's. Bruno drank his caffe with a thoughtful
expression on his face, but said nothing.
'Of course,' Tommaso continued, "I told him it was impossible.
We have enough complications without trying to set up a restaurant
as well.'
Bruno still didn't say anything. Erotic images of Laura kept
erupting into his head. He was imagining what the different parts
of her body might taste like. The sensation was so real that his
mouth watered.
'I've been thinking,' he said as they left the bar. 'Next time, I'd
like to cook Laura something a bit different. Some old country
recipes, perhaps.'
'But why?' Tommaso said, puzzled.
'Well - I think she'd enjoy it.'
'No - I meant why does there need to be a next time?'
'Well,' Bruno struggled, 'for Laura, of course.'
'But your cooking has done all that I asked of it, and more. I can take over from here.'
'You can?' Bruno said doubtfully.
'Of course. I'm getting bored with all this rich food, in any
case.'
'But what will you cook her?'
'Simple stuff. Simple, but wholesome.' Tommaso waved his
hand dismissively. 'Pasta, for example. Salads. Risotto.'
'Risotto is harder than it looks.'
'Nonsense. My mother used to make it when I was a child.
There's nothing to it. A little rice, a little wine, a little parmesan
. . .'
'She's used to the best,' Bruno warned. He felt sick. Not even
to be allowed to cook for her! It was as if his tongue had been
ripped from his throat and he was to be left mute, unable to
express his feelings. But Tommaso was adamant.
'She'll soon get used to it. When all's said and done, it's only
food. You'll see.'
Bruno could only stand by and watch as Tommaso took over the
kitchen and set about preparing his first solo dinner for Laura.
Despite Bruno's warning, he had decided to cook a risotto.
'You have to make sure that you use superfino rice,' Bruno
said, trying to be helpful. 'Carnaroli, for example, is the best,
although Vialone Nano will soak up more liquid--'
'Enough!' Tommaso thundered, pushing him out of the
kitchen. "I will make it as my mother made it.'
Privately, Bruno thought that Tommaso's mother might not
have been a very good cook, to judge from the ingredients he had
seen assembled on the kitchen table, but Tommaso was determined
and there was nothing he could do about it. "I'll be at
Gennaro's if you need me,' he said, accepting defeat.

Tommaso opened a bottle of wine and set to work. It was good
wine, he thought as he poured himself a glass to try it; and with
risotto, that was really all that mattered. He put the rice in a pan
with some butter and started to chop an onion into chunks. What
else did he need? Some oil, some garlic. And herbs. He couldn't
remember precisely which herbs his mother had used, so he cut a
generous selection at random from Bruno's window boxes.
When he had finished adding the herbs his risotto still looked
a little sparse. He opened the fridge and peered inside. Ah yes,
some cream - cream always made things better. In a cupboard he
also found some dried porcini. He dimly remembered his mother
making risotto with funghi sometimes, so he chopped up the porcini and threw them into the mix as well.
A ring at the door heralded Laura's arrival. As usual, she came
straight into the kitchen to see what was cooking.
'Uh-uh,' Tommaso said. 'Tonight it's a surprise.' He replaced
the lid on the pot she'd been trying to smell and gently pushed
her out of the kitchen.
'Then for the time being I'll just have to make do with the
chef,' she said, slipping her hands inside his shirt and lifting her
head up for a kiss.
Five minutes later she said breathlessly, 'How long until it's
ready?'
'Don't worry. We've got ages,' Tommaso said, continuing with
what he had been doing.
Five minutes after that they were entwined on the sofa, half
naked, when Tommaso suddenly smelled burning.
The risotto. He'd completely forgotten about the risotto.
Dashing into the kitchen, he lifted the lid on the pan. Instead of
a creamy liquid soup of wine and rice, what stared back at him was
a stinking, sulphuric crater of blackened grains, like the remnants
of a burnt-out volcano.
'Fuck,' he said with feeling.
'Is everything OK?' Laura called from the other room.
'It's fine. Everything's fine.' He thought rapidly. Bruno had
said he'd be in Gennaro's. Perhaps his friend could still salvage this.
'I'm just popping out for more ingredients,' he called. "I'll
only be a moment.'
Bruno listened to his friend's explanation and immediately
guessed what must have happened. 'Did you remember to soak
the porcini before you used them?' he asked.
'Soak them?'
'Never mind. Look, you won't be able to use any of that rice
now, it will have tainted the whole dish. Let's go upstairs and
we'll see what we can do.'
'But we have to stop Laura seeing you,' Tommaso said. "I
know - I'll go first and blindfold her.'
' Blindfold her?"
'Sure. She'll think it's a game. Girls love that kind of thing.'
'They do?' Bruno said doubtfully.
'Just leave it to me.'

Bruno waited outside the door of the apartment. After a few minutes
Tommaso slipped out. 'Done it,' he whispered. 'She doesn't
suspect a thing.'
'Well . . . if you're sure . . .'
'Don't worry. Now, what do you want me to do?'
'Run down to the store and get another bottle of red wine. As
fast as you can.'
'OK.' A quick thumbs up and Tommaso was gone.
Bruno pushed open the door and crept cautiously into the
apartment. It was silent. Then there was a dirty giggle from the
direction of the sofa. Laura was lying on it, half-undressed. A
thick woollen scarf was tied round her head, covering her eyes.
'Tommaso?' she said. Bruno froze.
"I know you're watching me because I can't hear you cooking.'
She turned her head this way and that, trying to detect his whereabouts
with her ears alone. 'And if we're going to play this game, I
want a kiss,' she announced. 'A kiss for every five minutes you keep
me waiting for my meal. So that's at least two you owe me already'
Bruno stood stock still, not daring to move.
'Or else I take the blindfold off.'
Unsure what to do, he took a step towards her. He must have
made some sound because she said 'Aha,' and lifted her head up,
waiting.
He couldn't help it. He bent his head. He touched his lips to
hers, briefly. The lightest of kisses, so brief and fleeting that it
barely counted. And then a second . . . His stomach felt as though
he were falling through space; and afterwards, his lips stung and
his cheeks were as red as someone who has bitten a diavolillo.
'Hmm,' was all Laura said, and he thought in his guilt that she
sounded a little puzzled.
He went into the kitchen and tried to pull himself together. A
risotto would take at least twenty minutes, but he didn't have the
ingredients for anything else. He put the rice on and started frying
up the other ingredients. While they were cooking he quickly
assembled some antipasti from the bits and pieces in the fridge:
olives into which he stuffed some capers and sage; breadsticks
wrapped in slices of prosciutto.
'Time's up,' Laura called from the other room.
He tiptoed out and, when she lifted her mouth for a kiss, carefully
pushed one of the olives inside it.
'Mmmm,' she said, her mouth full. 'Very nice. But I want a kiss
as well.'
Bruno hesitated, then quickly dipped his head and kissed her,
briefly. The taste of the olive mingled with the sweeter taste of her
own mouth. He gasped, and took a step backwards.
'More,' Laura murmured. 'Tommaso, stop teasing me.'
The sound of his friend's name shattered Bruno's reverie. What
on earth am I doing? he thought, aghast. He went into the kitchen
and leaned against the door, trembling.
At last Bruno heard Tommaso coming up the stairs. When he
slipped into the apartment, holding his bottle of wine, Bruno
pointed at the sitting room and quickly left his friend to take care
of the rest of the evening.
He wandered the tiny cobbled streets of Trastevere for hours,
trying not to imagine what Laura and his friend were doing now.
He had a distillato at a late-night bar to calm himself, shaking his
head when the beautiful transsexuals who were its only other customers
tried to proposition him.
He was still shaking as he contemplated how close he had been
to disaster. If the blindfold had slipped ... it didn't bear thinking
about. He could imagine all too readily the horror and disgust in
Laura's eyes. Not to mention, of course, Tommaso's red-blooded
rage. What had he been thinking of?
But alongside that vision of horror, another version of events
kept slipping unbidden into his mind. In that version, Laura looked
at him not with disgust and horror but with love and longing,
opening her mouth as she leaned towards him for another kiss . . .
Madness. It was all madness. "You have to get a grip on yourself, Bruno told himself. You've just got to exercise more self-control.
She's Tommaso's girl, and that's an end of it.

Bruno let himself into the apartment and listened. All was quiet.
He went into the kitchen. There was only one remedy when he
was feeling like this. Trying not to clatter the pans, which would
wake the others, he poured some olive oil into a frying pan and
added some slices of chilli and a crushed clove of garlic. In another
pan he heated up some stock for pasta in brodo.
Lost in what he was doing, he didn't notice the face at the
window, watching him, until he was taking the stock off the heat.
Caught by surprise, his hand shook and some of the boiling liquid
slopped on to his bare arm. He gasped in pain.
Laura, unable to sleep, had climbed out on to the roof to sit
and look at the view - that incredible chaos of medieval rooftops
tumbling down to the river, with the palaces and domed churches
of Rome's centre immediately beyond. Hearing noises coming
from the kitchen, she had assumed at first that it was Tommaso.
Then she'd seen that it was Bruno, cooking. But what made no
sense was that he was so good at it, even better than Tommaso.
She had never seen anyone who could prepare food like that. Just
the way he chopped the chilli was unbelievably deft, and yet he did
it without even glancing down at his hands. Then he saw her
watching him, and spilled the boiling liquid on himself.
'I'm sorry,' she said quickly, "I didn't mean to frighten you.'
Bruno had already thrust his arm under the cold tap. 'Wait, I'll
come round.'
By the time she got to the kitchen he was trying to wrap a
dressing round his arm one-handed, tightening it with his teeth.
'Here, let me.' A patch of skin on his forearm was starting to
blister. 'Bruno, I am so sorry,' she said again as she took the bandage
and wrapped it round his arm. "I wasn't thinking.'
'It's OK,' Bruno said. 'It happens all the time in a kitchen.'
'When you're washing dishes?' she said, puzzled.
'Uh - sure. Sometimes the dirty pans are hot.' Luckily Laura
was concentrating on the bandage, so she couldn't see that his face
had turned almost as red as his burned arm. 'And I'm clumsy.'
'You didn't look clumsy to me.'
He looked down at her hair as she tied the bandage for him.
Automatically he began to separate the various ingredients of her
scent. Bergamot, citrus, cinnamon . . . and something else, too; a
faint, sweet top note that was the smell of her own skin. He tried
to capture it in his memory, to fix it precisely in his palate.
The wedding cake would have candied fruits . . . No, stop thinking
like this, he told himself sternly.
'All done,' she said, stepping back to admire her handiwork.
'It's tight,' he said, trying to flex his arm.
'It needs to be.'
'But I need to finish the soup.'
"I can do it.' She put the saucepan back on the stove for him.
'Just tell me what to do.'
'There's a spoon on your right to stir it,' he said. 'And the chilli
needs to go in now.'
'Like this?'
'Perfect.'
He watched her. 'It will be about ten minutes before it's ready,'
he said. 'You don't have to wait.'
'No, I'd like to. Least I can do.'
There was a long silence. Laura said, 'When I was watching you
through the window, do you know what you looked like?'
'No, what?'
'A wizard. Stirring your cauldron. Eye of newt and wing of
bat.'
'Eye of newt?' He screwed up his face. 'That would taste of
very little,' he said thoughtfully. 'Too small.'
She smiled. 'It's just an expression.'
'Oh. I see. Well, I suppose cooking is like magic, in a way.
Spells are just recipes, after all.'
'Imagine if you could really cast a spell on someone just by
cooking. That would be freaky, wouldn't it?'
'Yes,' he said, avoiding her eye. 'Imagine.'
'People turning into frogs all over the place.' She pointed at the
soup. 'Should we taste this?'
'If you like.' He already knew exactly what it would taste like.
She took a spoon and tasted some of the broth. 'That's really
good,' she said, surprised. "I mean - really, really good.'

'It needs two pinches of salt and a little olive oil.'
'You haven't tasted it.'
He shrugged. 'That's still what it needs.'
'Okay, mister wizard. You're in charge.' She added the salt,
then picked up the bottle of oil. 'How much?'
'Two glugs.'
'Could we possibly translate that into imperial measures?'
'Put your thumb over the top of the bottle and tip it up. When
you let your thumb off, the olive oil will glug twice as it comes
out. Then you've put in just the right amount.'
'Neat.' She put the bottle down and sucked the last drops of oil
off her thumb. Bruno felt his heart lurch. 'So how come you
aren't a chef?' she said, not noticing. 'You've obviously got the
talent.'
'Well - maybe one day'

'Tommaso's teaching you, I suppose?'
'Something like that.'
'He's a very talented cook.'
'He's talented at lots of things,' Bruno said loyally.
"I guess he's always been a big hit with women,' she said
casually.
"I suppose so.'
'Was there ever anyone - you know - special?'
'No,' he said truthfully.
'But there must have been other women he's cooked for?'
Bruno hesitated. How he longed to tell her the truth! But it
was too late now. Too many lies had been told. If Laura ever
found out what had really happened, she would be appalled.
'No,' he said. "I can promise you: Tommaso has never cooked
like this for any girl before.'
He saw the happiness flood into her eyes and had to turn away,
full of self-disgust.

In the kitchen at Templi, quiet reigned. The first diners were
sending in their selections, Karl was calling each item, and all
around the room chefs were quietly acknowledging their orders as
they began to execute their allotted tasks. Surveying the scene,
Alain Dufrais allowed himself a tiny nod of satisfaction.
Over in the patissier's corner, Bruno was also feeling better. A
shortage in the garde manger station meant that Hugo Kass had
been temporarily removed from desserts, and Bruno was able to
get on with his preparations undisturbed.
Suddenly he heard a 'Psssf. Looking around, he could not at
first identify the source. Then he saw Tommaso crouching behind
the stove.
'Hey, Tommaso. What's up?'
'We have to swap places. Carlotta's parents are here. You
know - Dr Ferrara and his wife.'
'Why?' Bruno asked, puzzled.
"I don't know. Because they think I cook here, I suppose. He
must want to get laid again.'
"I meant, why do we have to swap?'
'Because if they see me they'll know I'm only a waiter. And if
I just go and hide, no one will serve them. So I need to hide in
here, and you need to put on my uniform and look after their
table.'
Bruno sighed. For a moment, he was tempted to tell Tommaso
to forget it. But the memory of those stolen kisses was still on his
conscience. 'All right. But I'll have to be back at my station before
the first orders for do lei come in.'

At that very moment, a group of four men was sauntering through
the front doors of the restaurant. Although they were expensively
dressed, there was something about the rough-and-ready way they
walked that suggested these were not the sort of customers Teinpli
usually dealt with. Their leader was a tiny man, barely five foot tall,
whose well-cut suits had clearly been specially tailored to fit his
diminutive frame.
A waiter hurried forward. Before he could open his mouth, the
small man said, 'We have a reservation. Four people, in the name
of Norca.'
The waiter looked at the list. Sure enough, there was a reservation.
He was not to know that the real Signor Norca, the
businessman who had originally made the booking, had that very
morning been persuaded to relinquish it in favour of some well
connected friends of friends. Initially he had resisted - he had,
after all, waited three months to eat at Templi, and he was looking
forward to it enormously - but a somewhat curt phone call from
his chairman in Palermo, followed shortly afterwards by another
from his most important client in Naples, had persuaded him that
it would be altogether less stressful to spend his lunch hour in a
small wine bar near his office, where he was even now taking a
restorative grappa to steady his nerves.
'That seems to be in order,' the waiter said slowly.
'Good,' Teodoro said, patting the waiter's arm. 'In that case,
you can lead us to our table.'
As they walked through the bar, one of the men casually helped
himself to a bottle of whisky. The waiter pretended not to notice.

The news that there was a group of mafiosi in the restaurant went
round the waiting staff like wildfire, and from them permeated
into the kitchen. Alain Dufrais stiffened and reached for his hat. As
he marched rigidly towards the doors into the dining room, however,
the maitre d' headed him off. Franciscus was an Italian and
knew how these things worked. He whispered urgently in the
chef's ear.
For a moment it looked as though Alain was going to ignore
him. His face twitched. Then, with a mighty effort, he turned and
went back to the pass.

It was a long time since Bruno had been a waiter. Moreover, each
table at Templi bore a bewildering assembly of cutlery and utensils,
and it was up to the waiter to pour the wine into the right
glass and ensure that the correct implement was positioned next to
each plate. Soon Bruno was horribly confused. Luckily Dr Ferrara
and his wife were cooing over each other like a couple of teenagers
and didn't seem to notice; at least until it came to ordering, when
Dr Ferrara called him over.
'Am I right in thinking you have a chef called Tommaso Massi
working here?'
'Yes, of course.'
'Can you tell me which dishes on the menu he would have
prepared?'
'The dolci,' Bruno replied.
'In that case,' Dr Ferrara turned to his wife, 'we shall just have
a primo and then one of Tommaso's desserts.'
Bruno slipped away before the maitre d' could spot him. He
was fortunate that there was such a vast crowd of waiting staff at
Templi that one more went unnoticed.
Franciscus himself served Teodoro's table. He started off by saying
that the meal would of course be on the house. In addition, he
murmured, the chef's signature dish, the confit of lamb en persillade,
was particularly good at the moment.
"I'll have pasta carbonara and a steak,' the first man said firmly.
"I'll have the same,' his neighbour said.
'We don't actually . . .' Franciscus began, then stopped.
'Since it's Thursday, I'll have gnocchi,'' the next man added.
'And I'll have gnocchi and a piccata Milanese, followed by tiramisu,'' Teodoro said benevolently. He handed the menus,
which none of them had opened, back to Franciscus. "I'll leave the
choice of wine up to you, since you're paying for it.'
'Of course,' Franciscus said with a slight bow, hoping that the
Chateau Petrus was still in the cellar, and in good condition.

'Two pasta carbonara. Two gnocchi. Two steaks, well done. One piccata Milanese.'' Karl called the order in an appalled whisper, as
if by lowering his voice the words were less likely to sully the rarefied
air of Monsieur Dufrais's kitchen. In equally hushed tones,
various chefs acknowledged that they had heard.
There was a brief pause after Karl called the tiramisu. If there
was something a little strange about the patissier's voice when he
eventually did respond, nobody noticed. They were too busy wondering
how on earth they were going to cook the unfamiliar
Roman dishes that had just been ordered.

Tommaso stared at the contents of the fridge. A tiramisu, he knew, was just biscotti soaked in espresso and brandy, topped with
beaten egg and mascarpone. But in what proportions? What
should he do first? If only he had a recipe book.
It is sometimes said of Romans that they are terrible at organisation
but brilliant at improvisation. Desperately, Tommaso pulled
some ingredients out of the fridge and prepared to improvise now.
Franciscus, opening the Petrus, froze. He was convinced he had
just seen one of the chefs, dressed in a waiter's uniform, pouring
wine into a water glass. He passed the cork of the Petrus under his
nose and the rich odour of long years of cellaring, magnificent and
majestic, momentarily calmed him. He poured a little wine from
one glass to another to check the quality, which was perfect, and
then allowed himself a small restorative mouthful.

Bruno made it back to the patissier's station just in time to stop
Tommaso sending up to the pass a concoction so vile-looking
that he, Bruno, wouldn't have served it to a dog. Fortunately, the
head chef's attention was elsewhere.
'Is there no one who knows how to cook these peasant dishes?'
he roared. 'For God's sake, one of you Italian barbarians must
have some clue.'
'He's talking about gnocchi,'' Tommaso whispered, pulling off
his whites and grabbing his own jacket from Bruno. 'And piccata
Milanese.''
"I do,' Bruno called. For a moment there was silence, then
with a collective sigh of relief the whole kitchen turned towards
the patissier.

Roman gnocchi are a completely different dish to the light, fluffy gnocchi that are found in the rest of Italy. For one thing, they
are made not from potatoes but from semolina, the coarse
ground flour of the durum wheat. Essentially they are a kind of
pancake.
'You mix the milk and the semolina in a saucepan,' Bruno was
explaining as he cooked. 'Beat in an egg and leave it for a few minutes
to cool. Then you just cut it into circles, sprinkle the cheese
on top, and bake them in the oven.' While he talked he was also
assembling another tiramisu. He had already explained to Karl
how to make a piccata Milanese, and the head chef was busy chopping
parsley and strips of parma ham.
'Add some pork rind to that, if you can find any,' Bruno called
over.
Meanwhile, another chef was making the sauce for the pasta.
Other orders were forgotten as the whole kitchen mobilised to
cook the unfamiliar menu.

With the secondi sorted, Bruno turned his attention to vegetables. Carciofini, zucchini, cardoons and treviso were all found and
prepped. Simultaneously he began to organise the orders of the
other restaurant diners. He pulled all but a few sous chefs off
the Italian food, and still found time to supervise the cooking
of the meat.
'You know, we have a very similar dish to this in France,' Karl
said as he cooked the piccata. 'But we would add black olives, and
a little brandy' He smiled nostalgically. "I haven't tasted it since I left Provence, and this smell is bringing it all back for me.'
Bruno shrugged. 'Black olives would fight the parsley, but
some brandy would be fine. Go ahead.'

To everyone's surprise, the maftosi were reduced to silence by the
unexpected excellence of the cooking, and the atmsophere at
Templi slowly returned to normal.
'This is a very strange place,' Dr Ferrara commented as he
looked around. 'That maitre d' is quite drunk, you know.'
'They're just having a good time,' his wife said. 'How's your primoV
'Fantastic. How's yours?'
Costanza didn't reply, but she squeezed her husband's thigh
under the table.

After the meal, Teodoro and two of his companions sent a message
via Franciscus, summoning the chef to their table.
Whatever Alain was, he was certainly no coward. He glanced
at the clock and curtlv told the maitre d' to inform table four that
he would be out in a quarter of an hour, when service was
finished.
Franciscus, who was a coward, was a little free with his translation
of this message. 'Monsieur Dufrais has just popped out and
will be with you as soon as he is back,' he told Teodoro.
When at last Alain did deign to visit the dining room, he made
a point of touring all the tables in his customary clockwise direction,
coming to the Italians' table last. But the maftosi, soothed by
large cigars and a hundred-year-old cognac, were too relaxed to
care.
'Your restaurant is a little fancy for my tastes, my friend,'
Teodoro told Alain, 'but your cooking is first-rate. Just make sure
you're hospitable to any colleagues of mine and you'll do well.'
'And how will I know who your colleagues are?' Alain asked
coldly.
Teodoro thought for a moment. 'You won't,' he said. 'Better
be nice to all Romans, just to be on the safe side.' His companions
laughed uproariously. Only Alain did not join in.
'Thank you for your compliments,' he said stiffly, moving on to
the next table.
Dr Ferrara leaned across. 'You know, he doesn't really do the
cooking,' he confided to Teodoro.
'He doesn't?'
'No. There's a young Italian in the kitchen. A genius with
Roman food. His name's Tommaso Massi. I'm trying to persuade
him to set up his own place, in the city.'
'Tommaso Massi,' Teodoro said thoughtfully. He nodded to
one of his companions, who made a note of the name on his
napkin.

'Get those plates out of my sight,' Alain ordered, marching back
into the kitchen. 'Wipe the surfaces. And get rid of all that peasant
food, too.' He swept the left-over pieces of gnocchi into the
bin and glared at Bruno. 'Chef, your station is unmanned. And
what in God's name are you doing?' He was talking to Tommaso,
who was hiding in the cupboard Alain had just pulled open.
'Finding a coat, chef.'
'Well, hurry up. And get yourself properly dressed.'
'Did they like their meal?' Bruno asked.
'Apparently.'
'You see, I was thinking. It might be nice, for local people, if
some of those dishes were available on the menu.'
Alain stared at him. For a moment a vein throbbed on his forehead.
'Last time I looked, I was the chef de cuisine in this
restaurant,' he said icily.
'Of course,' Bruno said quietly. 'Sorry, chef.'

"I want to do it.'
'Do what?'
'Open a restaurant with Dr Ferrara. I think it's a good idea.'
'Are you serious?'
'Why not?' Bruno shrugged. 'It's not so complicated, not compared
to what we've been doing already. I'll do the cooking and
you can help me.'
'Is this to do with all the trouble at Templi?' Tommaso said
quietly.
His friend avoided his eyes. 'Perhaps.'
'You're really going to let those talentless bastards drive you
out?'
"I don't know. Yes, perhaps. But it's more than that. These
other dishes I've been cooking recently, for Laura - they're not
Alain's, or Hugo's, or anyone else's. They're mine. And if I don't
leave Templi and start cooking on my own somewhere, they'll just
be lost. Don't you see, Tommaso? I have to give them the chance
to exist. I can't explain it. It's like a woman wanting to have children,
or something.'
'Except you want your children to be eaten.'
Bruno said helplessly, "I told you I couldn't explain it.'
'Then there's the fact that we'd be trying to fool everybody. I
mean everybody. Customers, critics, suppliers, staff- this is serious
stuff, Bruno. It's not like a little joke to get a girl into bed. If we're
caught - when we're caught - there'll be hell to pay. We'd never
work in this industry again.'
cMeglio un giorno da leone che cento da pecora, as your father
used to say, God rest his soul.'
'Ah, Bruno, did I ever tell you how my father died?' Tommaso
asked.
"I don't think you did, no. And I didn't like to pry.'
'He ignored a stop sign and drove straight out in front of a
truck. He assumed the truck would slow down for him. It didn't.'
'Ah.'
'Sometimes lions get killed. Particularly when they pull out in
front of trucks.'
'It's a good thing we're only opening a restaurant, then, and
not a transport company.'
Tommaso sighed. Something about this conversation told him
that Bruno wasn't really listening. He knew from experience that
his friend, normally the most easy-going of people, was also
extraordinarily stubborn about anything to do with food.
'Wouldn't it bother you that Dr Ferrara would think it was me,
not you, who was the head chef?' he asked.
'Not in the least. In fact, it could be a great partnership. You
could do all the shit that chefs have to do these days - talking to
customers, flattering reviewers, dealing with Dr Ferrara and so
on - while I get on with the part I really enjoy'

Tommaso and Bruno made a trip to inspect the restaurant in
which Carlotta's father was proposing to invest. As might be
expected, since the existing owner was nearing retirement, it was
a run-down trattoria with no airs or graces and an all-pervading air
of neglect.
Christophe showed them around with an air of apologetic resignation.
'We have our regulars,' he confided in the two young
men. 'But there are too many restaurants round here, and people
don't eat out as much as they used to.'
'Hear that, Bruno?' Tommaso said meaningfully. 'People aren't
eating out.'
'The best restaurant in Rome will always be full,' Bruno said loftily.
'It's a struggle to pay my staff,' Christophe continued.
'Sometimes we lose money, even in the good years.'
'How many people do you employ?' Tommaso asked.
'Two. Johann helps me in the kitchen, and Marie is our waitress.'
He lowered his voice. 'Between you and me, she's the reason
most of the regulars stay regular.' He called to a young woman
who was sorting cutlery on the other side of the room, 'Marie,
come and say hello.'
The young woman turned round. Marie was raven-haired,
dark-skinned, full-mouthed and full-breasted; and as her curvaceous
body squeezed between the tightly packed tables and chairs,
Tommaso muttered 'Fosse a' Madonna? under his breath.
Automatically he broke into his most winning smile. She scowled
back at him, but he didn't take any notice. For a girl like her, a
little scowling was only to be expected.
'Pleased to meet you,' Bruno said, shaking her hand. 'Tell me,
Christophe, how often do you have the ovens serviced?'
'Every six months.' It was Marie who answered, not
Christophe. 'At least, since I've been here. Before that,' she
shrugged, 'who knows? The paperwork was a bit of a mess.'
'Marie helps with some of the administration, too,' Christophe
explained.
'Sweet-talking creditors, mostly,' Marie said.
'I'm sure you're very good at it,' Tommaso said knowingly.
Marie ignored him. 'Of course, we very much hope you'll stay
on,' Tommaso continued.
"I may do,' she shrugged. 'It'll depend on what plans you have.
If I like them, I'll stay for a bit, see how things work out.'
'Our plan is simple,' Bruno said. 'We're going to serve the
finest food in Rome. Proper Roman food, the same dishes your
grandmother made, but brought up to date; a bit simpler, a little
lighter, and given a small twist here and there so that you look at
everything afresh and don't take it for granted.'
'Hmm,' Marie said suspiciously. "I suppose you'll change the
decor?'
"I love it just the way it is,' Tommaso assured her.
Bruno reached up to where a string of garlic cloves hung from
a dark beam. He squeezed it in his fist and watched it crumble to
dust. 'Well, maybe it needs just a little updating here and there,'
Tommaso acknowledged. 'But you know, this seventies look is
very popular right now.'
'It's a shithole,' Marie said firmly. 'It needs to be changed
enough so that it brings in a younger crowd, but not so much that
it frightens off the regulars. Some decent lighting would help,
but you'll need to budget at least a thousand euros for rewiring.'

'She's nice,' Tommaso said casually as Bruno and he took a coffee
together after their visit.
'Who?'
'The waitress.'
'She seems very organised. Which, to be honest, could be a
godsend, since neither of us are.' He looked his friend in the eye.
'So. Are we going to do this or not?'
'Absolutely,' Tommaso said, his earlier misgivings apparently
forgotten.
'Good. We'll need to call it something different, so people
know it's under new management.'
Tommaso thought for a moment. 'What about II Cuoco?' he
suggested.
'"The Cook". Hmm. Meaning you, or me?'
'A bit of both.'
Tl Cuoco it is then.' Bruno raised his espresso cup. 'To the best
restaurant in Rome.'

It was one thing to create a few meals. To create a whole menu,
Bruno soon discovered, was another thing altogether, and
required much more work. But his inspiration remained the same:
Laura.
From the little kitchen in their apartment emerged dish after
dish. Bruno was trying to recreate the traditional dishes of Rome,
but he was also trying to impose a little of his own personality on
them, and to bring to them some of the quality he loved in
Laura - the same mixture of complexity and simplicity, freshness
and acidity, innocence and experience. In some way, every dish he
created had to taste of her.
He hummed as he worked, and lost himself in a blizzard of
flavours and combinations. Later, when he looked back, he was to
think of this as one of the happiest times of his life, when anything
was still possible, and his heart was not broken, only fractured.

Laura had decided to show Tommaso some of her favourite paintings.
'Caravaggio
was famously excitable,' she told him as they stood
in front of the Boy Bitten by a Lizard. 'He once pulled a dagger on
another artist during an argument about a painting. Oh, and he
loved his food. He once asked a waiter which artichokes were
cooked in butter and which in oil. The waiter told him that if he
couldn't tell by smelling them, he certainly wouldn't be able to
taste the difference when he ate them. So Caravaggio hit him.'
Tommaso nodded unenthusiastically. 'It's tough, being a
waiter.'
'His big obsession was realism,' she continued. 'He wanted his
paintings to show ordinary Romans, not idealised figures from the
Bible.'
But Tommaso had already moved on. His idea of a tour round
a gallery was a brisk stroll, glancing at whatever took his fancy, but
certainly never stopping, the sooner to reach the exit.

Eventually Laura gave up. What did it matter if Tommaso
didn't share her appreciation of art? He clearly had a lot on his
mind at the moment.

Something was troubling Tommaso, in fact, and that was the
refurbishment of II Cuoco. Various things were conspiring to take
them over budget. Dr Ferrara had acquired some new partners,
about whom he was somewhat vague, but the amount of money
he had to spend was finite and never seemed to be enough. First,
there was the redecoration, which was proving incredibly expensive.
Then there was old Christophe's wine cellar - Marie was
insisting that the price paid for the restaurant include a fair
allowance for all the wine he would be leaving. But the worst
thing was that Bruno was hiring staff and ordering state-of-the-art
kitchen equipment with no regard to compromise or cost. When
Tommaso asked his friend if a twenty-speed mixer or a wood
fired oven was really necessary, Bruno simply gave him a puzzled
look.
There was only one thing for it, Tommaso decided: Bruno
would have the equipment he wanted, but the rest of what was
needed they would obtain in the same way Tommaso had stocked
his larder when he was an impoverished waiter, just starting out.
Night after night, therefore, Tommaso and Bruno left Templi
with their pockets full of silver cutlery. Clanking audibly, they
trudged back down the hill, before finally emptying their haul
into a box at the apartment.
'At this rate it'll take us a year to get enough,' Tommaso said,
inspecting the contents of the box one night. 'I'm going to put
the word out.'
From then on, petty theft at Templi escalated to epidemic proportions.
Franciscus would pull open the silverware drawer to
discover that there were no teaspoons left at all, while bowls, platters,
side plates and even lead crystal glasses seemed to vanish as
surely as if there was a poltergeist in the building.
'It's the mafia,' Franciscus said despairingly to Alain. 'Once
those thieving bastards have their eye on you, there's nothing you
can do.'
Alain had no wish to see Teodoro and his pasta-eating companions
again. 'We'll just have to live with it then. Order some
replacements, and put the prices up by another ten per cent.'
Word of what was happening circulated quickly among their
friends. Vincent, Sisto and various other colleagues past and present
came by regularly to lend a hand or to drop off some booty. II
Cuoco's wine coolers bore the crests of the Hilton and the
Intercontinental, and the kitchen was filled with bits and pieces
smuggled out of the Radisson and the Marriott. Sisto even turned
up on his scooter carrying an entire sink unit under one arm,
balanced only by the weight of the electric juicer he had jammed
into his opposite pocket.
There was no money to employ decorators, so the two of them
did most of it themselves before they went to work. They were
painting the walls one day when they heard an unfamiliar sound
coming from under the dustsheets. It turned out to be an ancient
telephone, its bell so loose and pitted with rust that it could now
manage only a wheezy rattle.
'Pronto,"1 Tommaso said into the receiver.
'Is that II Cuoco?'
'Si, but we're not open yet.'
'Well, when will you be?' the voice said impatiently.
Tommaso plucked a date from the air. 'Two weeks on
Saturday'
'Good. I want to make a reservation.'
'Our first customer,' Tommaso said wonderingly as he replaced
the receiver. 'It looks as if this is really going to happen.'

Laura decided to wear a pair of white linen shorts she hadn't worn
for a while. When she came to do them up, however, she discovered
they no longer fitted. She tried on another pair of trousers
instead and found that they, too, were a little tight.
She had never needed to worry about her weight before. But
now, as she inspected herself in the tiny mirror in her apartment,
she had to admit that her figure had undoubtedly expanded.
'Never mind,' Judith said. 'I've got plenty of looser stuff you
can borrow. And it's got to be worth it for all that fantastic sex,
right?'
Laura hesitated. She hadn't yet told her friend that sex with
Tommaso actually wasn't that fantastic. Oh, he was beautiful, for
sure, and the food he cooked made all her senses tingle in anticipation,
but when it came to the act itself she was slowly coming to
the conclusion that Tommaso was just a bit too - well, straightforward.
Not to mention perfunctory. In fact, you couldn't have
cooked a Roman pizza in the time that it sometimes took
Tommaso to make love to her. Slow and painstaking in his cooking,
it seemed as if in bed he sometimes reverted to that other
Tommaso, the impatient, exuberant Italian who drove at ninety
miles an hour, swallowed espressos in a single gulp and toured art
galleries at breakneck speed. But when everything else was so perfect,
it seemed a small price to have to pay.

When Bruno finally plucked up the courage to tell Alain he was
leaving, the chefde cuisine took him to one side.
'And where are you going?' he asked calmly.
'I'm going to open my own place.'
'In Rome?'
'Si, in Rome.'
Alain sighed. 'Listen,' he said kindly, 'you're a good chef. If I'm
hard on you sometimes, it's only because I can see that you're like
me; you understand food, you have potential. But can you honestly
tell me that you know everything?'
'Of course I don't. No one does.'
'Then why are you in such a hurry to stop learning? If you
really want to leave here, let me make some calls for you. I can get
you a job with someone good, someone who'll teach you properly.
Don't you want to work with the best? I can call Bras, Martin,
Ducasse . . . even Adria, if you fancy going to Spain. We all talk to
each other, you know. A word from me and any one of them
would create a job for you, just as I made room for Hugo. You're
simply too inexperienced to start your own place. Wait a few years,
learn a little more, and then, when you're ready, we'll help to set
you up in a real restaurant, one where you can earn your own
stars. Believe me, there's no point in doing these things by halves.'
Bruno hesitated. The names Alain was dangling in front of him
were the names of his heroes. A few months ago he would have
given his right arm to be told that he was good enough to work
with Guy Martin or Michel Bras.
But a few months ago, many things had been different. In
some way, his feelings for Laura had also changed the way he felt
about food, and the dishes he had been cooking for her had been
part of a voyage of discovery for him, too; one from which there
was no turning back.
'It's kind of you, chef, and I will always be grateful,' he said.
'But my mind's made up.'

'Wily old bastard,' Tommaso commented when he heard what
Alain had said. 'The only reason he wants you out of Rome is
because he doesn't want II Cuoco stealing his customers.'

'Tell me honestly, Tommaso,' Laura said as she got dressed one
morning, 'am I getting fat?'
'Of course not,' he said; which was true, because although
Laura had certainly put on weight, she was also a long way from
being fat. Tommaso sighed. Laura's need for reassurance, not to
mention the fact that she had a very slow fuse in bed, was making
him a little weary

There is not a great abundance of gyms in Rome. The average
Italian male, when faced with the evidence of his increasing stomach
in the mirror, will tend either to invest in a more generously
cut pair of trousers or to buy a new mirror, while his female counterpart
seems to be genetically programmed to slenderness, at
least until her wedding day. It was perhaps not surprising, therefore,
that when Laura went along for her first session at the
grandly named Gymnasia de San Giovanni, she found several
other Americans of her acquaintance among the clientele, including
Kim Fellowes. Dressed in faded sweats emblazoned with the
logo of his East Coast alma mater, he was pulling a steady stroke
rate of twenty-eight on the ergometer.
'Hi, Dr Fellowes,' she called as she mounted a treadmill.
'Good morning,' he called back. He was nearing the end of his
daily thousand metres but he was only a little out of breath. "I
haven't seen you here before.'
"I just joined today,' she explained.
He watched Laura as she began to run. Her skin was soon
flushed with perspiration, and a sweet, almost imperceptible odour
began to suffuse the air around her. It was the smell of summer
herbs, and honey, and olive oil, and salt - the tastes of Bruno's
cooking, released into the air for a second time, mingled now
with the delicate scent of her skin.
According to the rowing machine's readout, Kim had reached
the thousand-metre mark, but he kept on rowing for the pleasure
of watching Laura. She had tied her hair back in a ponytail and the
fine hairs on the back of her neck were now beaded with sweat,
like the beads of moisture on a glass of cold white wine. There was
something undeniably fine about her, he thought to himself.
Usually the students were little better than brats, the indulged offspring
of rich parents. Laura was different. In his art history classes
she seemed to devour knowledge like someone who had been
starved of it all her life, eagerly replacing the spoon-fed pap of her
school classes with the real thing.
One could almost fall in love with a girl like that. Of course, relationships between staff and faculty were, strictly speaking, against
the rules, but they were in Italy, and rules were a little more flexible
here. And the age difference was only a few years - less than
between Dante and Beatrice, for example, or Petrarch and his
Laura.
After Laura had showered, she came out of the changing room
to find Dr Fellowes waiting by the notice board, a sweater draped
elegantly over his shoulders. "I thought you might like to come
with me on a little tour,' he said diffidently.
'What sort of tour?'
'A tour of my own personal Rome. There are some wonderful
collections that aren't open to the public. And after that -' he
shrugged - 'perhaps we could have a little lunch somewhere?'
'That sounds wonderful,' she said.
He took her to places she didn't even know existed - to tiny palazzi, where archivists and curators unlocked dark rooms containing
priceless masterpieces. He ushered her past the security
guards into the Farnese palace, now the French embassy, its fabulous
Carracci ceilings long since closed to the vulgar hordes. At
the Palazzo Doria-Pamphili he took her into the family's private
apartments, where they chatted with someone who bore the same
features as the Titian portraits on the walls. They visited tiny,
jewel-like chapels, grand salons with majestic ceilings, dimly lit
churches where at the flick of a switch vast frescoes of unimaginable
beauty leaped out of the darkness.
'Enough,' he said at last. 'We mustn't cram you too full of art
on an empty stomach.' He escorted her to a restaurant in a little
square where the owner greeted him by name. A bottle of cold
Orvieto and some long, irregular grissini arrived on the table a few
moments after they sat down.
'I'm afraid my diet doesn't allow me much in the way of carbohydrate,'
he said apologetically. "I'm just going to have a salad.
But please, order anything you want.'
"I'll have a salad too,' she said. 'I've been eating way too much,
and I don't want to undo all that running at the gym.'

'Is Laura coming to the opening night?' Bruno asked Tommaso.
Tommaso screwed up his face. 'To be honest, I hadn't thought
about it.'
'She should,' Bruno said emphatically. "I'm planning something
special for her. An authentic Renaissance menu, in honour of
her studies.'
'You don't have to do that,' Tommaso said. 'Let's face it, on
the opening night the place will be full of important customers maybe
even some reviewers. We should be concentrating on them,
not Laura. Why create more dishes just for her?'
For a moment Bruno felt a terrible compulsion to tell
Tommaso everything. Because to me she's the only person who matters, he wanted to say. Because I'd swop all the good reviews in the
world for a smile from her. Because I love her in a way that I don't
think you, Tommaso, fine and noble friend that you are, are actually
capable of.
But he swallowed those words before he spoke them. He said,
'But think how it will look to the reviewers and all those important
people to know that certain dishes have been created in
honour of one particular woman. People will talk about it, and
perhaps they'll bring their own girlfriends and wives to try it out.'
'Hmm,' Tommaso said. 'Yes, I like that. The grand passion of
the chef, reflected in his creation of a dish of love. That's a great
idea. I wish I'd thought of it myself.'

For inspiration, Bruno went to art galleries and studied the paintings,
making sketches of the meals they showed. There were many
paintings of fruit, of course, and pictures of Bacchus surrounded
by grapes, but he was more interested in discovering what ordinary
people would have eaten in the restaurants and taverns of the
day. Luckily there were plenty of portraits that showed people
eating. Even more useful were the studies of the Last Supper, for
which the artists had clearly used as models the food that they
themselves were served.
He was in the Galleria Borghese one afternoon, studying the
paintings, when he suddenly heard a familiar voice calling his
name. He turned around. It was Laura.
'Hello,' she said, clearly surprised to see him. 'What brings you
here, Bruno?'
Putting away his notebook, he mumbled something about
looking at a new display.
'Well, since you're here, let me show you my favourite painter,'
she said, slipping an arm through his and guiding him towards the
next room.
'Caravaggio, you mean?'
'How did you know that?' she said.
He shrugged. 'Tommaso must have told me.'
They stopped in front of Caravaggio's Boy with a Basket of Fruit.
'You like the light,' Bruno said. 'The way it falls from one side,
putting half the face in shadow.'
'That's right. I do like that.'
'Whereas Tommaso,' he gestured at the paintings, 'sees all of
these in terms of food.'
'He does?'
'Oh yes. He told me so. He told me that you could see what
each painter ate, by the way he painted. So Michelangelo there '
he nodded - 'could only have been a Florentine. He would have
liked simple grills, the plainer the better.' He pointed across the
room. 'Raffaelo, on the other hand - he's all grace and lightness,
like the cooking of his native Urbino. But Caravaggio was a Roman,
with a Roman's hearty' appetite. When he paints a Last Supper, it's
simply that - a painting of a proper Roman dinner, with a real roast
bird just out of the oven and a plate of contorni beside it, just as he
himself would have been served at the osteria he was lodging at.'
'Tommaso said all that?'
He glanced at her, wondering if she was teasing him, but she
seemed entirely serious.
'Actually, I think he may be right,' she said, slipping her arm
through his as they continued through the gallery. 'Raphael fell in
love with a baker's daughter, and started putting little pastries
into his paintings in her honour. And Caravaggio was broke most
of the time, so he was probably thinking about his next meal while
he painted. I'll have to tell my teacher what Tommaso said. I
think he'll be really interested.'
That afternoon, Bruno paid a fortune for an old cookery book in
the Porta Portese flea market and started trying out ideas.
Eventually he decided on a recipe for roast chicken stuffed with
peppers that in turn were stuffed with figs, and set about fine
tuning it so that it would be a creation worthy of its intended
recipient.

Laura lies in Tommaso's bed and stretches luxuriously. Tommaso
himself has already left to supervise last-minute preparations at II
Cuoco. Today, finally, is the grand opening, and there are a million
and one things he still hasn't done.
She gets out of bed and starts to dress. Last night they ate
baby artichokes, flattened into stars and deep-fried in oil, and she
sees to her consternation that there's a streak of olive oil on her
shirt. She opens Tommaso's cupboard to find a clean one, and
takes a step back.
The inside of the cupboard is covered with photographs.
Photographs of girls. There are brunettes, redheads, a few black
haired Italians, but overwhelmingly the cupboard is filled with
blondes. There's a picture of herself, and she remembers now the
occasion when Tommaso took it, in this very room, right after
they had slept together for the first time.
Oh, she says out loud, as the implications of that sink in.
She looks again at the other girls. There are dozens of them.
Now that she examines them more closely, she sees that most of
the photos were also taken here, just as hers was.
At the thought of all those women sharing a bed with Tommaso the
same bed that she now shares - the tears spring to her eyes.
'Fuck,'' she says, like someone who has cut themselves and who sees the blood a second or so before they feel the pain.
And then she does feel it.

As the restaurant filled up with customers, Bruno kept a careful
eye on the table in the corner that had been reserved for Laura
and her roommate. But it stayed empty.
By one-thirty the orders were coming in thick and fast. They
had done well to attract so many people to their opening.
Carlotta's contacts in the magazine world had helped: the little
dining room was full of people who would certainly never have
visited the restaurant under its previous ownership. This included
the mysterious business contacts of Dr Ferrara's, a group of
rough-looking men in very expensive suits whom the other customers
treated with careful deference.
For Bruno it was a new experience to be running an entire
kitchen, and he had his work cut out making sure all the food was
absolutely perfect. Eventually, though, during a brief lull, he had
time to pause. Tommaso was looking as miserable as a dog that
had lost its bone.
'Where's Laura?' Bruno asked, suddenly fearful.
'Not coming,' his friend said tersely. 'We had a row.'
Bruno stopped in the middle of taking a pan out of the oven.
'What about?'
'Nothing. Well, something, obviously. But nothing I could
make any sense of. What do women ever pick fights about?'
Tommaso looked so crestfallen that Bruno put his arm around
him. 'Tommaso, I'm so sorry. I can guess how you must feel.'
'It's just a row,' Tommaso muttered.
"I can tell how upset you are,' Bruno said gently.
'What are you talking about? Laura will be fine. I'm upset
because I'm stuck in here,'' he indicated the kitchen, 'while it's all
happening out there.'' As he spoke, Marie whirled in with another
fistful of orders, slapped them into Bruno's hands and picked up
half a dozen plates from the pass before rushing out again. "I can
feel it! It's alive out there. Whereas in here -' he looked around
and shrugged - 'you're just cooking.'
'This is the bit that really matters,' Bruno pointed out gently.
'But it's your bit. I'm just hanging about. Can't you give me
something to do?'
'Sure. We need some fish filleted for table four.'
'Great. And where's the fun in filleting a fish if there's no one
to see you do it?' Tommaso demanded miserably as he moved off.
Bruno had no answer. It occurred to him that if this venture was
going to be a success, he'd need to find Tommaso some proper
work to do.
He got back to his cooking, but a part of his mind was still
coming to terms with the fact that Laura wouldn't be eating his
creations. Suddenly, dishes that had flown from his fingers like
sparks just a few minutes before seemed impossible. Marie came in
with another fistful of orders, and he was distracted further by
trying to call them to his sous chefs, as well as cooking other dishes
himself. Within moments the smooth production line was backing
up. People were colliding with each other, boiling water was being
slopped from pans on to bare skin, orders were being double
cooked or missed altogether.
'What are you doing?' Tommaso hissed as he brought back
the filleted fish.
We got in a muddle,' Bruno said tersely.
'You can say that again. You'd better unmuddle yourself pretty
fast. That's the order for table six you've just fucked up, and
there's a reviewer from Trova Roma there.'
'Oh shit,' Bruno said as he prepared to redo the order in its
entirety.
Marie came in with yet more orders. 'Guess who's just walked
in and asked for a table?'
'The prime minister?'
'Worse. Alain Dufrais. He's got a young chef with him as well.'
'That'll be Hugo Kass,' Bruno muttered.
'Let's hope he doesn't recognise the glasses,' Tommaso said.
'Put him on the next table to the mafiosi. That'll stop him
looking around too much.'

Eventually everyone had eaten their fill, and the roar of noise
from the dining room lessened to a contented hum.
Tommaso was outside, talking to a pleased Dr Ferrara. Bruno
was alone in the kitchen. He saw Tommaso's phone lying on a
counter, and then he saw that Tommaso had been composing a
text message to Laura.
He picked it up and read it. It said: Hi Laura. Sorry about all that. CU tomorrow? Regards, Tommaso.
It hadn't been sent yet. Bruno picked it up and, with one eye
on the door in case Tommaso came back, began to change it.
By the time he had finished it read:

There was something I wanted to cook tonight
The
recipe of love

Take 1 American girl with honey-coloured skin & freckles like

orange-red flakes of chilli on her shoulders.

Fill her with flavours, with basil and tomatoes and pine nuts and

parsley.

Warm her gently with your hands for several hours, turning
occasionally, and serve with wine and laughter, straight from the dish.

- but sadly 1 of the ingredients was missing. Maybe tomorrow?

He pressed send, and waited for a long, agonising minute before
the phone beeped with a reply.

That's lovely. Why wait till tomorrow? I'll come round later. Hope
it went well, love L x.

When Tommaso returned, he picked up the phone and said 'Oh'.
'What is it?
"I must have sent my text without meaning to. Still, it looks like
Laura's forgiven me.'
'That's good,' Bruno said, his face buried in the pan that he
was cleaning.
'Pronto ?'
'Carlotta, it's me.'
'Hey, Laura. What's up?'
"I'm on my way to Tommaso's.'
'You two made up, then?'
'No, but we're just about to.'
'That was quick.'
Laura smiled. 'Let me read you this text he just sent me.'
When she finished Carlotta said, 'Oh Laura, that's wonderful.'
'Isn't it? That's one I'm definitely keeping.'

'This is getting pretty serious, isn't it?' Carlotta said softly. 'It
sounds like you two really like each other.'
'Maybe. You know, I didn't really think about it too hard at
first. But then, when I saw those photographs and I thought that
one day someone else's picture could get pinned over mine - I
couldn't bear it. Did I tell you he changes my ringtone every time
I stay over?'
'Sweet. What is it at the moment?'
'"Stairway to Heaven."'
'Appropriate. If a little uncool.' Carlotta was silent a little while.
'Do you remember? At the beginning, all you were looking for
was a man with dextrous hands. And now here you are, falling in
love.'
'Do you know what's ironic? He actually isn't that dextrous.'
'He isn't?' Carlotta sounded surprised.
'When I first met him, it was definitely a physical thing. I mean,
he's gorgeous, right? But what I love about him is that he really
believes in something. He's got passion, and a sense of purpose.
He knows he's got a gift and he'll do anything, anything at all, to
use it. So I know I come second to cooking sometimes, but I
don't really mind that, because what comes first is something so
fundamentally generous.'
'Wow. You are in love.'
"I guess,' Laura admitted.

'What will you do? When you have to leave Italy, I mean?'
'I don't know. I've already told my parents I may stay until the
very end of the summer. But after that - I don't even want to
think about it.' She had reached the street where Tommaso's
apartment was. She could see the boys in Gennaro's, sharing a jug of jimppa. 'I'm here. I'd better go.'
'Have a good night, cam.''
'I will.'


From Stozzi magazine:

Cucina Romcma becomes Cucina Romantica
Six weeks ago I ate one of the best meals I have ever had. The
location was Rome, in the apartment of my parents, where a
talented young chef, Tommaso Massi, had volunteered to cook
us some of the dishes of our native city. The menu was a simple
one, such as might be found in any one of the hundreds of ristomnti that crowd the city centre: pinzimonio; fresh tortcllini
al pomodoro; saltimbocca; a chocolate tartufo for dessert. What
elevated this meal to the level of high art was, first, the quality
of the ingredients and, second, the skill of the chef, whose
passion is to recreate such traditional dishes and reveal them in
their true glory. Just as the Sistine Chapel or the Stanze Raphael,
expertly scrubbed clean of centuries of accumulated grime and
soot, reveal unexpectedly glowing and vibrant colours which
surpass anything that our imaginations could have devised, so
these simple dishes were restored by this young magician to
unimaginable freshness and splendour.
What was most remarkable about this meal, however, was the
effect it had on me - and I do not just mean my palate. How can
I put this? As the meal was consumed, I too found myself being
consumed by passion of a different kind. Massi's intense, sensual
flavours and deft handiwork in the kitchen seemed to have
awoken appetites that could only be fully satisfied in the
bedroom.
Massi is perfect casting for a god of love, being both
handsome and charming. He is also winningly modest. When
asked about any of his recipes, he struggles to explain what
makes them work. 'It's just food,' he shrugs. 'You buy it, you
cook it, you serve it. At the end of the day, the cook is no more
important than the waiter. A really good waiter, now, has a skill
that is often underestimated.'
The good news is that this remarkable chef is now cooking in
his own establishment, II Cuoco in Viale Ostenze. I was
fortunate enough to eat there soon after the opening, and was
delighted to find that his talents have survived the transition to
a bigger stage intact. The women of Rome are in for a treat and
so are their boyfriends.

From Wanted In Rome:
From Time Out Roma:

Fellini meets foodie in hip young uberchef Tommaso Massi's
take on the traditional Roman trat. The crowd is young, the
ambience dark, the music fashionably retro and the word-of
mouth impressive, but the food lives up to expectations. The
buzz is that this is a chef who understands women; when Massi
came out of his kitchen to tour the tables the reaction was more
like that afforded to a rock star than a restaurateur. Book ahead you'll
need to.

From RomeBuddyBoard.com:

Posted by Alessandro Bonaguidi:

> Have you heard the rumour about II Cuoco? Apparently
women go wild for the food there.

Posted by Miko Trenti:

> Yeah, I went there with my girlfriend. It worked for us. Your
mileage may vary.






The 'romantic restaurant' is not common in this city. The
ordinary Roman would rather eat under floodlights than by
candlelight, the better to inspect what he is putting in his
mouth. The candles at II Cuoco, in Viale Ostenze, however, do
not conceal anything except perhaps the beauty of the food and
that would be clear even to a person wearing a blindfold.
This is traditional cooking, creatively reinvented, and to judge
from the blissful expressions on the faces of the other diners,
they were as smitten as we were. Highly recommended.
From II Messaggero:

The tradition and inspiration of the cultural imperative that is
Rome can nevertheless be explored gastronomically through the
fantasy of a chef. At Ristorante II Cuoco, greedy pilgrims may
entrust Tommaso Massi with the creation of an abbacbio
cacciatore or a coda alia vaccinara, as well as more mythical
dishes according to his alimentary philosophy. Roman tradition
is a reference point. Flavours are in harmony with the past and
the present also, and thus the expression of a civilisation which
is rigorously passionate and creatively orientated. Approximately
€80 for two, with wine.

Posted anonymously on www.e-pinions.it/rome:

God, it's true! All of it! Take us to II Cuoco, guys - there'll be
much more than dinner on the menu!

From The Pocket Guide:

if * iO'«()CaEao©©©8823^^

From The London Review:

Readers of this column will already know that I was fortunate
enough to be present at the last dinner given by President
Francois Mitterrand of France, when he was already aware that
his death from cancer was imminent. On that memorable
occasion he served no cheese or dessert. The last dish the
President wished to taste on this earth was the ortolan, a tiny
songbird that is, ridiculously, protected by law in every country
in urope. Mitterrand ate his in the traditional way, with a cloth
covering his head, the better to appreciate the intense flavour of
this ornithological morsel. I did the same, popping it whole into
my mouth, then biting off the head and spitting it into a bowl.
All around me the only sound was the mutual gasp as my fellow
diners inhaled the fatty juices that flowed out of the birds' tiny
throats and into ours.
Once caught, the ortolan must be kept in a box and fed
on figs for a month before being drowned in brandy and roasted
for just a few minutes, whole, in a very hot oven. It is the
traditional food of lovers. In Colette's novel Gijji, for example,
when the eponymous heroine becomes a whore, she is said to be
'learning how to eat ortolan'.
I was reminded of this historical curiosity when I dragged
my jaded palate, along with Fiona, my jaded trophy girlfriend,
to the distinctly degenerate environs of II Cuoco in Rome. If you
like restaurants - and I detest them - then this may well be the
sort of place you like. It has the usual complement of tables,
chairs, attractive waitresses and so on, though the presence of so
many other human beings had the usual depressing effect on my
mood. The food, however, was not bad, although regrettably
there was no ortolan on the menu. I forget what we ordered. It
certainly seemed to have a stirring effect on Fiona, who later that
evening informed me that she was leaving me. Frankly, this was
something of a relief, as her sexual demands thus far had left me
feeling rather enervated. Anyone wishing to replace her should
write to me at the usual address, enclosing a photo and a
stamped self-addressed envelope.

From Romance:

Some of the best food this reviewer has ever had. Each dish
tasted distinctly of its ingredients, which were of the highest
possible quality. Simple, precise, imaginative reinterpretations of
the classics. Chef Tommaso Massi is a wonder. Reservations
essential.
d%

It was full. Not just at weekends, either: every evening, and every
lunchtime, too, the little dining room was packed to capacity.
Two by two they came, for the reputation of II Cuoco, as Dr
Ferrara had predicted, rested partly on the wonderful flavours of
the food and partly on the wonderful effect that eating the food
had on the female libido. Husbands discovered that their wives
forgave them their domestic shortcomings; young men on a first
date found that picking up the bill at II Cuoco was more persuasive
than any number of whispered compliments; and lazy
boyfriends realised that the subtle seductions of a five-course
dinner were a congenial alternative to forcplay.
They had taken on a couple of extra commis to help with the
prepping, but even so Bruno was busier than he had ever been in
his life. His day started soon after dawn, when he arrived at the
restaurant to check the deliveries. By ten he was making desserts,
and by eleven he was preparing lunch. This being Italy, lunch
started late. It was not unusual to have people turn up at three,
and - this being Italy - these same diners, who had been tearing
about and cursing each other and generally rushing around all day,
suddenly lost any desire to hurry the moment they sat down at the
table, and would be mortally offended if, say, their secondo arrived
less than half an hour after the end of their primo. Thus the last
lunchers would still be finishing their distillati at five or even six
o'clock, barely two hours before the first evening customers were
due. Bruno would be lucky to leave the restaurant by midnight to
catch a few hours' sleep before it all began again.
But he was cooking, and that was all that mattered. For the first
time in his life it was his signature on the plates that were going
out of the little kitchen. The dishes were an exact expression of his
personality, his influences: Roman, just as he was Roman; virtuoso,
just as he was a virtuoso; sensual, passionate and physical, because
that was part of his nature too. And if his own yearnings were
unfulfilled, if his love for Laura was unreciprocated and unconsummated,
perhaps that only gave his dishes an extra piquancy; a
tantalising sense of urgency mixed with regret. 'Eat me now,' they
seemed to whisper; 'seize me quickly. For the fruit is only ripe for
a day, the meat only tender for a moment. All things must pass;
take your pleasures while you can.'

Tommaso had taught Marie everything he knew about waiting
tables: how to balance trays piled high with hot dishes on one
hand; how to pour wine; how to stage-manage the theatre of
serving each table so that the customers knew, even before they
tasted it, that this was serious food, worriiy of respect. Her uniform,
though, had been her own idea: a tight black blouse tucked
into a long white bistro apron, so that from the front she looked
as if she was wearing traditional waiters' garb; not until she turned
around did you catch a glimpse of the extremely short skirt underneath.
Inevitably, this only added to the heady atmosphere of II
Cuoco. The nature of Bruno's cooking meant that by the third or
fourth course diners often found themselves experiencing sharp
pangs of another appetite. Customers who were unaccompanied
by loved ones - and even some of those who were - sometimes
found their gaze wandering towards the beautiful raven-haired
Roman girl with the flashing eyes, and more than once she had to
discourage the attentions of some lovestruck admirer. Being a
Roman girl, however, this was second nature to her, and anyone
who overstepped the mark soon retreated, his cheeks and ears
burning from a volley of abuse.
Tommaso, meanwhile, still had very little to do. Marie,
although rushed off her feet, was so competent that front-of
house ran perfectly. In the kitchen he could help Bruno a little,
but once service got under way his friend functioned on some
kind of mystical autopilot, intuitively juggling a dozen different
orders at once, and he didn't really want any assistance from an
amateur. The highlight of Tommaso's evening, therefore, was his
nightly tour of the customers' tables. The adulation he received on
these occasions was like rain to a thirsty plant, and he needed
little encouragement to pull up a chair and share a distillato or a
glass of wine with his adoring public.
It was on one such tour that the Incident Of The Cigar
occurred. Tommaso had accepted a sambuca - an anise-flavoured
liqueur, traditionally ignited before being drunk - from two young
women, who were telling him in some detail how brilliant he was,
when the smoke from a neighbouring diner's cigar began drifting
in their direction.
Tommaso wafted it away. Then he glanced over at the smoker
and saw that his companion was still eating. He leaned over and
said, quite mildly, 'I think perhaps your friend would be able to
appreciate my chestnut mousse better if it didn't taste of your
cigar smoke.'
The man regarded Tommaso with a weary sneer. ''Che cazzo
stai dicendo? What's this crap you're talking?'
'I'm talking, sir, about your cigar, which would perhaps be
more appropriate when the other diners have finished their meals.'

A young woman at another table said, 'He's been smoking
those things all evening.'
A pained expression crossed Tommaso's face. 'That's a little
inconsiderate of you, my friend.'
iVaJfanculo a lei, e a sua soretaj the smoker said, gesturing at
Marie, who was walking past.
Tommaso calmly took the cigar and doused it in the man's
wine glass. 'She's not my sister,' he said. 'And she doesn't.'
The smoker stared at Tommaso for a moment, his eyes bulging.
Tommaso picked up his sambuca. As the man angrily pushed
back his chair, his fist raised, Tommaso poured the burning liquid
down his trousers.
'Marie, a glass of water for the gentleman,' he said. 'He appears
to have set himself alight.'
The applause around the room was deafening.

That afternoon, Bruno and Tommaso and Marie had a visitor.
He was polite and businesslike, and said that he was calling to
inspect the restaurant on behalf of some interested investors.
Marie, who had been expecting such a visit, made the polite gentleman
an espresso and offered to show him the accounts, an offer
the gentleman declined with a slight smile. He would, he said,
much rather see the reservations book. Accounts, he explained,
particularly accounts prepared for the authorities, could sometimes
be overly pessimistic. In his experience, a reservations book
was a rather better guide to the health or otherwise of a restaurant.
He glanced through the book, nodding approvingly. 'So,' he
said at length, 'you are taking--' And he named a figure that to
Marie's amazement was accurate to within a few euros.
'Which, after costs, is leaving you with a net margin of--' he
added, almost as an afterthought. Again, Marie was amazed at his
accuracy.
'We will take four per cent,' he said thoughtfully. 'Of the gross,
that is. We'll charge it as a mark-up on costs, though, so it's effectively
tax-deductible. You'll barely notice it on the bottom line.
Now, is there anything you need?'
Marie thought about it. 'We could do with a permit to put
tables outside, on the pavement, in summer,' she said. 'We've
applied, but nothing's happened.'
'Consider it done. Is that all?'
'One of the neighbours has been complaining about the refuse
out the back.'
'I'll get it collected twice a week then. Nothing else?'
'And the chef has been having difficulty tracking down wild
seabass.'
'I'll tell my friend at the wholesalers to put you down for some.'
The polite gentleman drained his espresso, stood up and offered
Marie his hand. 'A pleasure doing business with you. I shall come
to eat here myself, one day very soon. And if you need anything,
anything at all, just speak to Franco, the one who brings your vegetables.
He knows how to reach us.' He tapped his nose. 'But no
need to mention this arrangement to Dr Ferrara, you understand?'
It was, they all agreed later, a remarkably good service for the
price, certainly much better than anything they got in return for
their income tax.

'Uno ristretto, Gennaro, per favored Tommaso said wearily next
morning. 'No, better make that two.'
'Two?' Gennaro shook his head. 'Nobody drinks two ristretti.''
'Believe me, I can drink two.' Tommaso went and sat down, leaning
his head on his hands. 'And even then I may go back to sleep.'
'You want them there, at the table?' Gennaro said eagerly,
dollar signs appearing in his eyes.
'Give him a break, Gennaro.' Bruno sat down next to his
friend. 'What's up, Tommaso?'
'It's Laura. She's wearing me out.'
Bruno flinched. If Laura was his girlfriend he wouldn't want to
sleep much either. Tommaso, not noticing, continued in a low
voice, 'She's just a bit - well, strange.'
'In what way?'

'She's obsessed with food.'
Bruno knew he ought not to have this conversation, but he
couldn't help himself. 'Well - so am I, for that matter.'
'Yes, but this is in a weird way.' A noise like pistons hammering
on a steel plate came from Gennaro's Gaggia as the vast industrial
pump he had fitted to it pounded water into a space many times
smaller than nature had ever intended. It sounded rather like a
very old steam train going up a steep hill, and like an old steam
train there was a ghastly moment when one thought it might not
make it after all. The hammering got slower and slower, and more
and more laboured, until at last, with a shrill protesting shriek of
escaping pressure, water blasted into the packed coffee grounds.
When this cacophony of groans, gusts, wheezing pipes and juddering
joints finally subsided, Gennaro carried two tiny thimbles of ristretti over to the table.
'Tell you what - drink them both and I'll give you your next
one on the house,' he joked.
Tommaso drained one thimble in a single gulp, and paused
only briefly before following it with the second. 'As soon as you
like, Gennaro.'
'Are you kidding? It'll kill you. I meant, next time you're in.'
'Now is good.'
Shaking his head at the folly of the young, Gennaro retreated
behind his counter.
'Weird how?' Bruno wanted to know.
Tommaso leaned across the table and lowered his voice. 'Well,
last night she wanted me to baste her with olive oil and rosemary
and then turn her slowly on my spit.'
Bruno made a face. 'Rosemary?'
'I told you she was odd.'
'Very. Marjoram would be much better.'
'What?'
'Never mind. So the problem is what, exactly?'

'Now she wants me to think up some other recipe ideas, as she
calls it.' He lowered his voice even further. 'Between you and me,
she's hard work sometimes.'
Bruno barely heard the last part. His imagination was racing. 'I
would cover her with currants and dust her with icing sugar.' He
blushed. Had he said that out loud? He was thinking of that
damned wedding cake again. 'I mean, that's one suggestion. Or
you could--'
'Hang on, let me write some of these down,' Tommaso said,
pulling out a pen.
Gennaro brought over a third thimble. 'It's the strongest yet,'
he warned. "I just increased the pressure.' Tommaso tossed it
down his throat with barely a glance.

By the time they got to the restaurant Tommaso, his brain
sizzling, was bug-eyed and jumping around as if on springs. When
the phone rang he snatched it up and yelled ''Pronto' into the
receiver like a madman. 'You want a what? A reservation? Why?
Who are you?' There was a pause while he listened. 'What's wrong
with your voice?' he demanded. 'A speech impediment? Well, we
don't want anyone with a speech impediment eating here.
Dentures? You have dentures* I am Tommaso Massi. How can you
possibly appreciate my cooking with dentures? Yes, go to hell.' He
slammed down the handset and said cheerfully, 'From now on,
Marie, no smokers and no dentures. What?'
Bruno and Marie were staring at him open-mouthed.
'For a moment there,' Bruno said gently, 'you sounded just like
Alain Dufrais.'
'Oh.' Tommaso looked crestfallen. 'Of course. Sorry. I must
have drunk too much of that damn coffee.'

Tommaso liked to watch Marie working. He liked the way she had
to go up on tiptoe to squeeze her ample bottom through the
gaps between chairs; the fluidity of her bosom when she leaned
down to clear a table. Occasionally he tried to flirt with her, but even
though he employed all his considerable charm, she maintained a
professional detachment. Tommaso wasn't used to this. He found
himself thinking about her wistfully. Somehow he knew that Marie
wouldn't be into having pitted olives skewered on her nipples, or
playing strange games with meringue mixture.
Marie kept him in order, too. When, on a sudden whim,
Tommaso announced that from now on the dining room was
going to be kept completely dark, so that everyone could concentrate
better on what was going into their mouths, it was Marie
who took him aside and said, firstly, if you do that how am I supposed
to see who I'm serving? And secondly, if you don't stop
behaving like an arrogant prick I'm going to put this fork up your
nose in front of the whole restaurant.

They were clearing up one evening, after all the customers had
gone, when Marie said suddenly, "I think you'd better tell me
what the deal is here.'
'Deal?' Tommaso said innocently.
'You're supposed to be the chef, but he does all the cooking.'
She pointed at Bruno. 'And don't tell me you came up with the
recipes and he's just doing what you've shown him, because I
know that isn't true.'
'Ah,' Tommaso said. He paused. 'You see, there was a girl,
and she wanted to go out with someone who could cook, and I
wanted to go out with her, so I told her I could. Cook, that is.
And I couldn't. But Bruno could, and - and - it just all started
from there,' he said helplessly.
'So you've started a restaurant because you didn't want to tell
a girl you can't cook?' Marie said in disbelief.

'Urn, yes, I suppose so.' Hearing it put like that, Tommaso
experienced a feeling he got more and more these days - a feeling
that he couldn't quite work out how or why things had got as
complicated as they had. 'You see, if she thinks I'm only a waiter,
she'll probably dump me.'
'And what's wrong with being a waiter?' Marie wanted to
know, tapping her foot dangerously.
'Oh, nothing,' he assured her. There was something about
Marie that made him not want to argue with her.

'That's the stupidest story I ever heard,' Marie decided.
'It's pretty stupid, yes,' Tommaso agreed.
'So when are you going to tell her the truth?'
'Soon,' he said. A thought was forming in his mind. If Laura
found out the truth, she would dump him. Life would go back to
the way it had been before, and actually Tommaso wasn't averse to
that at all.


Ever since Bruno had started creating the menu for II Cuoco, he
had been struggling with the impossibility of creating the dish he
had spoken of to Tommaso that first night, walking back from
Templi, when the two of them had discussed the difference
between aphrodisiacs and the food of love itself.
Bruno remembered very well what he had said on that occasion:
'If you want someone to fall in love with you, you cook
them something that shows you understand their very soul.'
'Such as?' his friend had asked.
And Bruno remembered, too, every word of the answer he
had given: 'You'd have to really know the person concerned: their
history; their background; whether they are raw or refined, dry or
oily. You would have to have tasted them, to know whether their
own flesh is sweet or savoury, salty or bland. In short, you would
have to love them, and even then you might not truly know them
well enough to cook a dish that would capture their heart.'
But even though he knew he loved Laura, he found it far, far
harder than he had expected to create a recipe that would do
justice to her. He knew that it would have to be something sweet,
and so insubstantial that it was barely more than a morsel, leaving
the palate gasping for more. But it would also have to be perfect,
and perfection remained elusive. Like an alchemist desperately
pursuing the formula that will transmute base metals to gold,
Bruno tried everything. Again and again he tried, always hopeful
of success but never quite attaining it. There was something
missing, some ingredient that he couldn't name or describe, even
by its absence.
And then, one afternoon, Laura herself came round to II
Cuoco. She was looking for Tommaso, who wasn't in, and she
came into the little kitchen before Bruno was aware of her presence.
He was muttering to himself as he spun barefoot from stove
to fridge to prep surface, trying different combinations of tastes
and textures, half demented with his lack of success. He was close,
he knew he was close, but something wasn't quite there . . . His
face glistened with sweat from the heat of the oven, his hair was
streaked with flour and oil and his hands were crusted with
splashes of burnt sugar that he had barely noticed, much less
stopped to wash off.
Laura had been drawn into the kitchen by the most extraordinary
smell. She had expected to find Tommaso in there, and her
surprise at discovering Bruno was matched only by her shock at
the intensity of the aroma.
It smelled of baking cakes, which took her back to the kitchen
of her childhood, coming home from school to find her mother
making her cookies . . . but it also smelled medicinal, and that
made her think of being ill and being looked after when she was
tucked up in bed. Then there were spices, and a faint hint of
Christmas: nutmeg, perhaps, and cloves . . . But underneath all
of those was something else, something insidiously smooth and
emollient, like vanilla or eucalyptus. She had a sudden memory
of touching her father's cheek as he gave her a kiss goodnight the
rasp of his eight o'clock shadow, and that smell . . . she had
it now: it was the smell of his cologne, the smell of his business
suits, the smell of her parents' bedroom and the big double
bed and the terrifying dark thought of what went on there.
But after another moment she relaxed: there were comforting
aromas in there too: apples, brandy, crisp butter pastry and
cinnamon.
'What was that?' she breathed.
Bruno spun around and stared at her like a madman. 'I'm
making apple pie,' he said.
Apple pie . . . Laura hadn't had apple pie for years. Suddenly
she felt thousands of miles from home, and a tear welled into her
eye. 'I'm sorry,' she gasped.
'Here. It's ready.' Without bothering to use gloves, Bruno
pulled open the oven door and brought the pie dish out. She
noticed that it was extraordinarily tiny, like something made for a
doll. He put it on the counter. She buried her face in the steam
and inhaled deeply.
'Can I have some?'
'Of course,' he said. "I made it for you. It just needs a little
cream . . . here.' He took out a spoon and thrust it into the pie,
releasing more vapour. The whole creation was barely more than
a single spoonful big. He poured a little cream on top and held it
up to her lips. 'Don't worry. It's not too hot.'
She opened her mouth and he slid the morsel inside. She
couldn't help gasping. She closed her eyes and chewed ecstatically,
unwilling even to swallow lest she make the experience a moment
shorter than it had to be.
'Bruno,' she said at last when she was capable of speaking, 'it's
fantastic'
He kissed her.
Shocked, she pulled away.
Bruno was looking at her with an expression of such intensity
that she was almost frightened. Laura remembered all the situations
she'd got into with other Italian men, the ones who'd
groped her and stroked her and tried to sneak her into dark
doorways. Surely not - not Bruno, who was her friend. Who was,
even more importantly, Tommaso's friend. What was going on?
'I'm sorry,' he said quickly. 'It's an Italian thing. We - we kiss
each other all the time. It really doesn't mean anything.'
'No, of course,' she said, recovering. 'I know it doesn't. I was
just a bit surprised. Americans don't do that, you see.'
'No.'
'And I don't think we should mention it to Tommaso.' She
looked him in the eye. "I think he would misunderstand too.'
'Of course,' he said. 'And I promise you, it won't happen
again.'

As she hurried back to her own apartment Laura found herself
shaking. Bruno, of all people. I mean, I like Bruno. I certainly don't
want to lose him as a friend. He's funny and nice and thoughtful.
How could he do a thing like that?
But then, she was in a foreign country, and Italian men were impetuous compared to Americans. Maybe she was overreacting.
Maybe it was the kind of thing an Italian would have taken in her
stride.
So long as Tommaso never found out, no harm had been done.

Tommaso, returning from a pleasant morning arguing with friends
over a coffee or two, was surprised to see Laura's textbooks on the
kitchen counter.
'Laura's here?' he asked Bruno, who was busy washing up.
'She was, earlier.' Bruno kept his eyes on the sink, afraid that he
wouldn't be able to meet his friend's gaze.
Tommaso put his finger in the little pie dish, licked it and made
a face. 'Actually, I'm glad she's not around. I want to talk to you
about her.'
'You do?'
'Si. I think this thing I've been having with her has run its
course. It's been fantastic and everything, but the truth is - well,

I'm getting itchy feet. Actually,' he added, for he was always
honest with Bruno, 'maybe it's not my feet, you know?'
'You're going to dump her?' he said, stunned.
'Yes, but that's the problem. This is sort of new territory for
me. I've never been in a proper relationship before, so I really
don't know how it's done.'
'I'm probably not the right person to ask,' Bruno said. 'Since
I've never been in a proper relationship either.'
'But you know things, like how to let her down gently.' An idea
occurred to him. 'Maybe you could say something to her for me.
Kind of preparing the way.'
'I really don't think that's a good idea,' Bruno muttered. 'This
is something that's got to come from you.'
'But you could help soften the blow. You know - explain what
an idiot I am, how I'm always messing around with other
women . . .'
'Tommaso, there's something I've got to tell you.'
'Yes? What?'
Bruno kept his eyes on the sink. "I'm fond of Laura.'
'Ah.' Tommaso nodded. 'You don't want to see her hurt.'
'No - not that. I'm not making myself clear.' Bruno struggled
to find the words. "I think I'm in love with her.'
'Oh,' Tommaso said. He thought for a moment. 'When you
say "in love", you don't actually mean--'
'I mean I think about her every single moment of every single
day. I think about her when I sleep, when I wake up, when I'm
doing other things. I even think about her when I cook - especially
when I cook. I think about her smile, about her frown,
about her mouth, about the little orange-brown freckles on her
shoulders. I have imaginary conversations with her. I dream of
catching a glimpse of her. Then, when she turns up, I can barely
look at her.'
'Oh. Ah. I see.'
'Are you angry with me?'
'Of course not. I mean, it's not your fault. You've done nothing
wrong.'
'That's not--' Bruno had been about to say, 'That's not quite
true', but then he realised that he couldn't. He had promised
Laura that the kiss would remain a secret.
'Listen, it happens.' Tommaso slapped Bruno on the back. 'I'll
tell you something I've never told anyone else. I fancy Lucia,
Vincent's girlfriend. See?'
'But you're not in love with Lucia.'
'True,' Tommaso conceded. He began to pack coffee grounds
into an espresso pot. 'That's weird, isn't it? All the time I've been
going out with Laura, you're the one who's in love with her.'
'Yes. It's weird all right.'
'So after I finish with her, are you going to ask her out?'
"I can't.'
'Of course you can.'
'Trust me, Tommaso, I can't. She'd never have me.'

Laura's six-month residency permit was about to expire. Being a
law-abiding sort of person she therefore presented herself at the
appropriate office of the appropriate authority to get it stamped
with an estensione.
When she finally made it to the head of the queue, however,
the polite young man behind the counter informed her that there
was a difficulty. Well, not so much a difficulty, perhaps, as a discrepancy.
Her residenza, wrhile appearing to be correct, had been
stamped not with the stampa di notifica but the altogether different stampa d} identitd, and was thus technically invalid. And since
it would be altogether wrong of him - indeed, impossible - to
extend a document that was invalid, Laura would have to provide
an acceptable residenza before he could proceed.
'But it's just a mistake, isn't it?' she said. 'The official must have
used the wrong stamp.'
The young man conceded that an error was indeed the most
likely possibility. He indicated the device in front of him, a wire
merry-go-round with as many tiers as a wedding cake, which held
a dozen stamps of various shapes and sizes. He showed her the stampa di notifica. It was, she could see, not dissimilar to the stampa d'identita. In addition, the identitd had once been acceptable
on such documents, although not any more. He produced
from a dusty file a piece of official paperwork, an internal memorandum
several pages long which apparently explained the change
from identita to notifica. He pointed to the date, several years
ago, and shrugged.
'So what should I do?' Laura asked.
Well, that was self-evident. She must get herself a valid residenza and bring it back to him, at which point he would be
delighted to extend it.
'Can't you give me a valid residenzaV Laura asked with what she
hoped was a winning smile.
Alas, no, the young man decided, giving her an equally warm
smile in return. He would love to, particularly for such a charming
foreigner, but he himself only dealt with extensions. It would be
necessary for Laura to go back to the office of the residenza.

It was past two o'clock and the office of the residenza was now
closed for the day. Laura returned next morning and presented her
papers to another elegantly dressed young man. He was sympathetic;
even more sympathetic than the last young man had been.
Yes, yes, there had clearly been a mistake. It was certainly usual in
these cases to use the stampa di notifica, not the stampa d'identitd. But in his opinion a stampa dHdentita was also perfectly valid, so
she should have no difficulty in getting her residenza extended.
'And how do I do that?' Laura asked.
The official frowned. He pulled at his cheek. He frowned some
more. 'I will go and consult,' he decided. Twenty minutes later he
returned, smelling strongly of cigarette smoke, and indicated that
she should come with him.
She followed him down an endless corridor that smelled of
mildewy air-conditioning. Eventually she was shown into a small
office in which an older man, also elegantly dressed, was sitting
behind a tiny wooden desk. On the desk he had Laura's residenza. Another man was sitting with one buttock resting on the
edge of the desk.
The owner of the desk, who exuded competence and intelligence,
explained to her what the problem was. He seemed to take
an almost intellectual pleasure in summarising the situation concisely
and, apparently, wittily, since his account brought wry smiles
and even appreciative laughter from the other two. The problem,
it transpired, was that their friends and colleagues in the office of
the estensione were as stubborn as mules about certain changes in
procedure that everybody else had chosen to ignore.
'So it's the other department's fault?' Laura asked, still hoping
that all this was leading to some sort of conclusion.
The older man lifted a warning finger and his voice took on a
certain gravity. No, no, one did not use words like fault when talking
about government departments. It was simply a question of
differing interpretations. Laura had a perfectly valid residenza, this
was certain, but unfortunately his colleagues in the office of the estensione were correct as well. Laura's document was valid as a residenza, but not as a residenza-tor-cxtcmion, since a residenza that
required extension, as his colleagues in the office of the estensione had pointed out, should have been stamped at the time of issuing
with a stampa di notifica. Since Laura had always intended to stay
for more than six months, she had therefore acquired the wrong
stamp, and was thus technically not in possession of a valid residenza, and was technically an illegal alien. She saw, he hoped, the
distinction he was making. It was not the residenza itself that was
invalid, but Laura's possession of it, and therefore the understandable
mistake lay with her and not with either department.
He sat back, smiling the satisfied smile of a theologian who has
succeeded in reconciling two apparently contradictory principles.
'But what shall I do?" Laura asked, not caring very much whose
fault it was.
The question seemed to take the man by surprise, and
prompted some further consultation with his colleagues. At last he
declared that she must bring all her papers to him and he would
see if he could sort something out.
It was at this point that Laura made a crucial error of judgement.
Had she consulted any of her Italian friends, they would
have told her precisely what to do, which was nothing at all,
since there was absolutely no reason whatsoever why anyone
should come knocking on her door to check that she had a
permit. But Laura was a tidy-minded person, and she assumed,
quite erroneously, that it would be a time-consuming but
straightforward matter to get one. She therefore went straight
back to her apartment, called the administrator of the college to
organise a letter of authorisation, found the necessary papers and
returned to the office of the residenza the very next day, thus
establishing in the eyes of the officials that she undoubtedly had
something to hide.
'I have all the papers,' she announced to the theologian and his
two colleagues. She laid them on his desk with the confidence of
a poker player laying out a winning hand.
The theologian picked up her letter of authorisation and read it.
Yes, he agreed, these were undoubtedly the right papers.
Unfortunately, while they were undoubtedly the right papers, they
also showed that Laura, as an illegal alien, had also been engaged
in studying, something that was not permitted. Only if she had
been in possession of a valid residenza would it have been permissible
for her to have been studying in this way.
Once again, she asked what she should do.
She was obliged to return to America and re-apply for permission
to visit Italy, came the answer.
'What?
The theologian gave an eloquent shrug, which expressed quite
clearly the impression that while he himself, as a civilised person,
would not require such a. course of action, the logic of it was
quite inescapable.

With a heavy heart Bruno prepared a very different meal to all the
others he had cooked for Laura. A simple chicken stew, rich and
hearty, to be eaten with chunks of dense Italian bread. Comfort
food - all he could do to soften the heartache to come.
'It's ready,' he told his friend, 'I'm going out. lust take it off
the stove when you want to serve it.'
It occurred to Bruno, as he went down the stairs, that this was
probably the last meal he would ever cook for Laura. He hoped
Tommaso would at least break the news to her gently.

Tommaso tried to steer the conversation round to the subject of
breaking up, but Laura was preoccupied.
'Tommaso, I need to find a lawyer,' she said as they ate the
stew.
'A lawyer?' Tommaso would have crossed himself if he hadn't
remembered in time that he was an agnostic. 'What on earth do
you want a lawyer for?'
Laura explained the predicament in which she found herself,
and Tommaso laughed.
'So you've discovered the muro digomma*. Congratulations.
It's one of our oldest and most treasured monuments.'
He explained that in Italy, the state traditionally curried favour
with the electorate by providing a large number of jobs for life.
This in turn meant that government ministries were staffed largely
by statale; people who had turned doing nothing at all into an art
form. Laura's problem would be now bounced backwards and
forwards between departments for ever, or at least until someone
did something to resolve the situation.

* Rubber wall.
'But they're talking about throwing me out!'
No, Tommaso assured her, she was perfectly safe. The officials
simply required a bustarella - a little envelope.
'A bustarellaV
'Si. A bribe.'
Laura was horrified. Surely that was illegal. What if he was
wrong? Then she'd be arrested and deported for sure.
'Trust me, Laura. Siamo in Italia. It's the way things are done
here.'

'How did it go with Laura?' Bruno asked when he returned.
'I haven't told her yet. It's hard, I'm picking my moment. And
she's got some problems right now.'
'Well, there's plenty of stew left for tomorrow,' Bruno
muttered.
The following day Laura returned to the office of the theologian
and once again laid her papers on his desk. This time, however,
she also produced an envelope containing three hundred euros,
which she placed next to them.
The theologian did not so much as glance at the envelope. For
one horrible moment Laura thought she had made a dreadful
mistake. But when he picked up her letter of authorisation, it now
seemed to be, magically, perfectly acceptable. A substitute residenza was quickly found, and just as speedily stamped.
Throughout this procedure the bustarella lay on the desk, apparently
unnoticed, and it still lay there when she was ushered to the
door.
Laura found that she was strangely exhilarated. When she had
finally taken the bustarella out, her heart had been thudding.
When she had placed it on the desk, it had been like getting into
bed with a new lover. She felt authentically Italian at last.
She rushed back to the Viale Glorioso.
'Ah, Laura,' Tommaso said when he saw her. 'I'm glad you're
here. There's something I want to talk to you about.'
'Is Bruno here?' she asked him.
'No. Why?'
'Why do you think?' she whispered, gluing her lips against his
and sliding her hands inside his shirt.
If there was one thing Tommaso was never averse to, it
was quick, uncomplicated sex. 'Whoo,' he said thoughtfully.
And, a few minutes later, 'Whoa.' And a few minutes after that,
'Whee.'

'So what did you want to talk about?' Laura asked later, when they
were done and were lying on the bed among a mess of rumpled
bedclothes and abandoned underwear.
Somehow Tommaso suspected that these conversations were
better held before wild, panting, exuberant sex rather than after,
but he decided he was honour-bound to seize the opportunity.
'The thing is,' he began, then stopped. How was he going to
put this? 'The thing is, it's like a meal. When you've had beef every
day for two months, you're ready for some lamb. Which is not to
say,' he added hurriedly, 'that there was anything wrong with the
beef. The beef was perfect. Unforgettable, in fact. But eventually
the time for beef is over.'
'You mean, like the seasons?' Laura asked, not understanding.
'Exactly. Beef season is followed by lamb season. Well, actually
there isn't a beef season, but there is a season for lamb and it's
over, and soon it'll be time for something different. Game, for
example.'
'So you'll take lamb off the menu, and put game on.'
'Exactly'
'And how will you cook game at the restaurant?'
Ah.' He saw the difficulty now. 'I'm not talking about the
restaurant,' he said helpfully. 'I'm talking about us.'
'Us?'
Yes.' He struggled again. 'Let me put it another way.
Sometimes, when two people linger over a long meal, it takes
them a while to realise they've reached the end. They have a grappa, perhaps some biscotti, then they order some coffee, but
really it's time to call for the bill. To say goodnight, and goodbye,
and of course to tip the waiter. But instead they linger until the last
possible moment.'
'And when that happens, the staff can't go home. They have to
wait.'
'Yes. Exactly.'
'I understand, Tommaso. Sometimes you have to stay late. It's
not a problem.'
'It isn't?'
'No. It's your job, and I love the fact that you're a chef. Even
if it does mean that you sometimes fall asleep during sex.'
"I do not!' he said, offended.
'Not asleep during your bit. Asleep during my bit,' she
reminded him. 'Remember two nights ago, when--'
'OK, but that was an exception.'
'But it's all right,' she assured him. 'I don't want to change
you. You've got your cooking, I've got art history. That's why
we're great together. We've both got other interests.'
'Talking of other interests--'
'I love you,' Laura said happily. 'And I love it when we
talk about food like this. What's on the menu at the restaurant
tomorrow?'

"I will tell her, honestly,' Tommaso said to Bruno later. 'I've
planted the seeds. It just takes a little time.'
'There's only a little stew left now. It'll keep until tomorrow,
but no longer.'
'Yes, that was Laura. She's developing quite an appetite.'

"I had the strangest conversation with Tommaso last night,' Laura
reported to Carlotta.
'What about?'
'That was the weird thing. He didn't seem to be able to say.
He'd cooked this wonderful stew, and he kept saying there was
something he wanted to tell me, but instead he started talking
about what a shame it was he had to work so late at the restaurant.'
There
was an intake of breath at the other end of the phone.
'Maybe he's trying to propose.'
'No!' Laura laughed. 'We've only known each other a few
months.'
'But he's sleeping with you. If you were an Italian girl, that
would mean you are practically engaged.'
'But he knows I have to go back to America this summer.'

'All the more reason to ask you to marry him now.'

'Carlotta, that's crazy'
'Is it? You said yourself that he adores you.'
'Yes, but - my God,' Laura said. 'Engagement? Do you really
think so?'
'Maybe. And if he does ask, what will you say?'
"I don't know,' Laura admitted. 'It's so complicated. I'll have
to think about it.'

Tommaso walked to the restaurant with a heavy heart. He had
tried to spell it out to Laura, but it was so hard to say the blunt
words that would break her heart. Everyone was going to be cross
with him. There was Laura, of course, but there was also Dr
Ferrara, his main backer, who was the father of Laura's best friend.
The atmosphere at II Cuoco was difficult enough already. Ever
since he had revealed that he wasn't actually a chef, Marie had
begun treating him with apparent disdain, while deferring with
exaggerated respect to Bruno. Bruno, meanwhile, had fallen into
a huge, inexplicable depression and barely spoke. The only time he
opened his mouth was to ask whether Tommaso had dumped
Laura yet.
He looked up. It was a girl who had spoken to him. She was
blonde and pretty', and she was wearing shorts. There was a rucksack
on her back and she was holding a guidebook.
'&'?' he said.
'Can you tell me how to get to the Piazza Navona?'
A tourist. Tommaso had forgotten how much he liked tourists.
'Of course,' he said. 'In fact, I'm going that way myself But I'm
afraid,' he dropped his voice gravely, 'that there has to be a fee for
guiding you there. It's a city regulation.'
'It is, is it?' the girl asked sceptically.
'Absolutely.'
'And how much is this fee?'
'The fee is that, when we get there, you have to allow me to
buy you a grappa.'
The girl laughed. 'And if I don't want to pay that fee?'
'Then you have to give me a kiss.'
'I'll settle for the grappa. For the moment.'
'Excellent. What's your name?'
'Heidi. I'm from Munich,' she said, putting out her hand for
him to shake.
'Hello, Heidi. My name is Tommaso and I'm--' He hesitated.
He had almost said, 'I'm a chef,' but at the last moment he
stopped. 'I'm a waiter/
As he said it he felt a wonderful sense of liberation, as if a great
weight was lifting from his shoulders.

Two hours and many drinks later, Heidi and Tommaso went back
to the apartment. Bruno was at the restaurant, cooking; Laura was
at classes. Tommaso told himself that he wasn't actually cheating
on Laura, since in effect they had broken up already, even if he
hadn't quite finished making that clear to her.
So many women, and only one Tommaso. As soon as they
were inside, he started making up for lost time.
Laura runs up the stairs to Tommaso's apartment. Her diet, and
the exercise she's doing at the gym, are definitely starting to have
an effect.
'Tommaso?' she calls. 'Bruno?'
There's no answer. But someone has been here recently. The
CD player is playing one of Tommaso's favourite songs, 'The
Boys of Summer'. Which means, she thinks, that Tommaso has
been here very recently. Bruno tolerates his roommate's taste in
music but he doesn't share it.
Then she hears the shower hissing. He must be in the bathroom.
She smiles and goes through to his bedroom to wait.
The printer by Tommaso's computer is whirring. Idly she goes
to see what he's printing. And watches, dumbstruck, as a picture
of a pretty' blonde girl, taken in this very room, scrolls out, line by
line.
She hears footsteps on the stairs. The door of the apartment
crashes open. 'Due cappuccini' Tommaso's voice calls triumphantly.
'Heidi, I even persuaded the crazy old barman to
serve us cappuccino in the afternoon!'
The shower is turned off. The only noise now is the whirring of
the printer and the pounding in Laura's own head. Tommaso
comes into the bedroom and sees her there, and for a moment
everything is suspended in time, like a film that has been frozen--
And then she pushes past him, desperate to get out of there
before the bathroom door opens, before the other girl comes out.
She spills the coffees and does not stop; runs down the stairs, out
into the street, with Tommaso calling her name somewhere
behind her.

He catches her up but she won't listen. He tries to talk to her as
he walks alongside her, dodging cars and pedestrians while she
pushes forward, refusing to give way for anyone or anything.
'Laura, listen, I didn't mean for it to be like this, I wanted to
break it to you gently--'
'Get away from me,' she hisses. 'Leave me alone. Go back to
your cappuccino-drinking Heidi.'
'It's been fantastic, I'll never forget you--'
She snorts. 'That's funny. Because I'm unlikely to forget this
either, Tommaso. Strangely enough, this is something that is
unlikely to slip my mind for a very long time.'
'I tried to tell you I was fed up,' he cries.
She searches for the most hurtful thing, the very worst thing
she can say to him, and she finds it. 'You're as bad as Bruno, you
know that?'
'What do you mean?'
'Your friend Bruno. Kissing me. Making me promise not to tell
you. Staring at me all the time. Making my skin crawl. You're a
pair of perverts, both of you.'
She breaks into a run again, and this time he doesn't try to

follow her.

When Bruno got back from II Cuoco it was after midnight.
Tommaso was waiting in the apartment, his face dark.
'How'd it go?' Bruno said gently.
Tommaso shrugged.
'You seem pretty upset.'
'Yes.'
"I hadn't realised it was going to be so hard for you.'
'It wasn't.' Tommaso said curtly. 'Not that part, at any rate.'
Bruno realised that something was very wrong. 'Tommaso,

what's up?'
'Laura told me you kissed her.'
Bruno froze. 'Ah.'
Tommaso got to his feet. 'How many times?' he said threateningly.
'Once,'
Bruno said. 'Maybe twice. Three times. Tommaso, I'm
sorry. I told you how I felt about her--'
'You said you'd done nothing wrong.'
'Well, no, actually. You said that.'
'You tried to steal her,' Tommaso snarled. 'You're my friend supposed
to be my friend - and you made a pass at my girl.'
'It was just a kiss.'
'Only because that's all she'd let you do. If she'd been willing,
would you have stopped there?'
Bruno couldn't answer that.
'If it was anyone else, I'd beat you to a pulp,' Tommaso said.
'As it is . . .' He slammed his fist into his palm. 'We're not friends
any more, Bruno.'
'What about the restaurant?' Bruno heard himself say.
'Oh yes. The restaurant. Another great way to make a fool of
me. Well, I don't give a shit about the restaurant. It was a stupid
idea in the first place.' He pointed to the door. 'Now get out of
here.'
Bruno stumbled out of the apartment, followed by Tommaso's
shouts. A final 'Vaffanculo\ accompanied by the ritual gesture of
a clenched right fist, with the left hand simultaneously clapped to
the right bicep, issued from the window above his head as he
staggered blindly down the little street.
He wasn't surprised that Tommaso was angry. The knowledge
that another man has made a pass at your girlfriend would still, in
some parts of Italy, be considered grounds for pulling a knife.
The fact that he had been on the verge of finishing with her was
no excuse: if anything, it made it worse, since it could be construed
as trying to take advantage of a vulnerable situation.
Bruno started running. He had to find Laura. Perhaps if he
could just explain how it had happened, how he had only gone
along with Tommaso's crazy scheme as a favour to his friend . . .
At last he reached the Residencia Magdalena. There was an
entryphone, and he buzzed the bell marked Patterson until a voice
answered.
'ludith?' he panted. "I need to speak to Laura.'
'Who is this?'
'It's Bruno.'
'She doesn't want to talk to you. She won't talk to either of
you. Just go away.'
'Please,' he begged. 'Just get her to come to the intercom.'
'She doesn't--'
Then Laura's voice, brittle and hoarse, interrupted her. 'What
do you want, Bruno?'
"I can't let you walk out of my life without telling you how I
feel about you,' he said.
'Oh, sure. You and Tommaso both. Why don't you--' Bruno
had to stand back to let a group of people into the building, and by the time he got back to the speaker she was just finishing,
'--thought you were my friends. I actually liked hanging out with
you both. What an idiot you must have thought I was. When I
was just another tourist to warm up your beds.'
'No,' he said quickly. 'Laura, listen to me. I love you. I love you
more than I've ever loved anyone.'
There was a moment's silence from the entryphone, and just
for a second he thought he might have got through to her, but
her voice, when she answered, was thick with tears and disgust.
'Just get away from me, you creep. Don't you know how repulsive
that is? Go away and leave me alone.'

When Gennaro came to open up the coffee bar the next morning,
he found Bruno slumped in the doorway.
"I need a favour,' the young man said as he hauled himself to
his feet.
'By the look of you, you need a coffee.'
'That too. Look, Gennaro, you know that van of yours?'
'You want to borrow that old rust bucket again? It's in pretty
bad shape at the moment. I'm not sure how far you'll get in it.'
"I was wondering if you'd sell it to me.'
'Oh.' Gennaro thought for a moment. 'It's a fine vehicle, structurally.
I mean, when I call it a rust bucket, that's just my
affectionate name for it - for her. Cosmetically she may not be
much to look at, but her engine's as sound as. a bell.'
'I don't have time for this,' Bruno said wearily. 'How much do
you want for it?'
Gennaro gave it some more thought. 'Well,' he admitted, 'the
truth is that she may need a few minor mechanical upgrades. I've
been cannibalising her, you see, for the coffee pump.' He pointed
proudly to where his Gaggia stood, now almost invisible inside an
elaborate cage of auxiliary pipes, stopcocks, valves, conduits and
fans. 'So I'll accept five hundred.'
"I have two hundred. But I'll throw in these.' Bruno pulled
something out of his jacket, a rolled-up bundle of cloth that he
proceeded to open on the table.
' UanemaP Gennaro breathed. 'These are your cooking knives,
aren't they?'
'They were. I don't need them any more. What do you say?'
'It's a deal,' Gennaro said, picking up one of the knives.
'Can I have the keys then?'
'No point,' Gennaro said cheerfully. He pointed to where the
ignition lock of a Fiat van was now built into his Gaggia.
'So how do I start it?'
'Here.' Gennaro handed him a spoon. 'This should do it.'
'Great.'
'Don't worry,' the cafe owner said confidently. 'No one will
steal that van. Not unless they're completely off their heads.'

'L'insalata is served invariably after the second course to signal
the approaching end of the meal. It releases the palate from the
grip of the cook's fabrications, leading it to cool, fresh sensations
. . .'

MARCKLi.A Hazan, The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
The young woman seated across the room at table twelve is familiar
to us. As the crowd of attentive waiters finally steps back,
leaving the couple to enjoy their persillades of wreck-caught
salmon, celcriac puree, jasmine sauce and roasted fennel, not to
mention their glasses of chilled Puligny-Montraehet, we can see
that she is indeed Laura, though a rather different Laura from the
one we left three months ago in Trastevere. For one thing, she
looks fantastic. Gone are the extra pounds she put on when
she was gorging herself on Bruno's extravagant pasta and rich
desserts. Her newly sleek and almost muscular torso is a testament
to the many hours she has put in at the gym, as well as the four
kilometres she has been running every day. Her hair is different,
too: shorter and tied back in a fetching little ponytail. We cannot
see her eyes, because they are hidden behind a pair of elegant
dark glasses which reflect the image of her companion, who is
equally smartly dressed; for this is a special occasion.
'Potatoes, madam?" the waiter enquires, his spoon hovering over the silver dish of vegetables.
'Not for me.'
'Sir?'
'Just one, please.' Kim Fellowes adds to Laura, as an aside:
'The great thing about this kind of food is that the portions aren't
too big. I still have twenty grams of carbohydrate left.'
'You're going to stick to the diet today?'
'Of course. Especially today. It isn't a diet if you throw it out of
the window every time you walk into a good restaurant. It's places
like this that separate those with self-control from the rest.' He
reaches for the wine, nestling in its silver cooler, and a waiter's
hand immediately completes the action for him, filling their glasses
to the exact halfway mark. 'A toast,' Kim says, raising his own glass
to his lips. 'To us.'
Laura drinks. 'To us.' Dabbing her lips with a crisp white
napkin, she adds, 'You know, I thought this place was going to be
different.'
'Why so?'
'That guy I--' She pauses, as if there is something in her throat,
then continues: 'That guy I went out with for a while worked
here. I thought it would be - well, more like the stuff he cooked.
You know, Italian food.'
'Aren't you glad it isn't?' He tastes his wreck-caught salmon,
one of Templi's specialities. 'One gets a bit fed up with pasta, to
tell the truth. How's your essay coming on?'
He is changing the subject, she notices; something he often
does when she tries to talk about Tommaso. It is almost as if her
time with him was in Kim's eyes a brief period of madness; a sort
of going native, best now forgotten.
"Quite well, I think,' she says dutifully. 'I'm up to the Baroque.'
'Then you've started on Titian? That's good. He's one of the
few real masters of colour, don't you think?'

In another restaurant, just a few miles down the road, Tommaso
is cooking. The dish is a simple one but the presence of several
cookery books, their pages liberally encrusted with scabs of dried
meat-juice and calcified egg yolk, would suggest that he is having
trouble. As he refers to his books one more time, a pan catches fire
on the burner behind him and he spins round with a curse to deal
with it.
'Two saltimbocche, one tagliatelle, one insalataj Marie says,
coming into the kitchen with an order on her notepad.
Tommaso doesn't reply.
'Did you hear me? I said--'
The ne sbatto il cazzoj Tommaso fumes. 'Can't you see I'm
busy fucking up the orders I already have? Just leave it on the side,
I'll fuck that one up in a minute. Dio caneV He has pulled the
burning pan off the stove as he speaks and in the process slops
black oil all over the orders. 'Now see what you've done.'
Marie knows when to retreat. She goes back into the dining
room, where only three tables are occupied. News of II Cuoco's
rapid departure from its previous form has spread quickly.

Bruno, meanwhile, is standing by the side of an empty road in Le
Marche, coaxing the engine of his old van back to life. His face
wears an expression of rapt concentration, not dissimilar to the
one he once wore when he cooked. Although his hands are black
with grease, rather than white with flour or slippery with raw egg,
the process by which he intuits through his fingers what new
malady ails the ancient, half-cannibalised engine is not so very
different from the methods he once used to conjure new depths of
flavour from his recipes, though not nearly so successful.
When he left Rome he simply drove north. Quickly growing
tired of the autostrada, and unable in any case to tease more than
sixty or seventy kilometres an hour out of the rickety vehicle, he
had turned on to the smaller roads. Near Florence he camped for
the night in a tiny olive grove, next to a five-hundred-year-old tree
as fat and short as a Tuscan grandmother. The next morning he
found a tiny stream, where he caught a small trout which he
cooked over a fire of fragrant olive wood. The trout would have
been delicious, he knew, but on this occasion it might as well
have been made of cardboard. He had completely lost his sense of

taste.
The next evening he pulled in beside a roadside stall where
T-bone steaks were being cooked alia brace, over hot wood
charcoal. Again, he could taste nothing. Even when the owner
proudly anointed the steaks with a dribble of his own olive oil, so
young and fresh it was still a vibrant green colour, Bruno could
barely register it. He slathered his steak in salt, ate it quickly and
got back in the van, mumbling his thanks to the affronted stallholder.
More
than once the van stopped, apparently exhausted by the
endless succession of hills and valleys, and had to be patched and
cajoled with spare parts from roadside garages. One such garage
was selling mandolini, ewe's milk cheeses. Bruno bought several
to keep in the van so that he didn't have to stop every time he was
hungry. He guessed he probably stank of the stuff, but he didn't
care.
From Tuscany he continued to head north, hugging the
Ligurian coastline as far as Genoa. Here he ate minestrone con
pesto, soup with fresh basil, and farinata, the staple street food of
the seaport: a batter made with chickpea flour, mixed with extra
virgin olive oil, water and salt, spread out on a two-foot platter and
cooked quickly in a wood-fired oven. It was properly croccante
sopra e morbida sotto - crisp on the top, soft underneath - but it
gave him no pleasure.
The way north left the coast for the very different landscape of
Piedmont. Here long, straight roads built at the command of
imperial Caesars ran across smooth plains filled with flooded rice
paddies, for this part of Italy is the largest producer of rice in the
Western world. Each night, when the sun sank beneath the surface
of the flood plains, he parked the van and prepared to sleep, while
thousands of mosquitoes scribbled dementedly all over the windows.
When he ate it was usually a simple, soupy risotto from a
roadside osteria, the same food that the rice workers themselves
ate: rice cooked with chicken or the ubiquitous frogs' legs,
flavoured with cinnamon and made liquid with the heavy wine of
the region. Eventually, though, there was no more paddy plain left
and the bristling foothills of the Alps rose up ahead of him. Now
when he stopped the van the locals spoke a harsh dialect, their
speech a strange intermingling of Italian, German and French,
and the roadside cafes served boiled meats, sauerkraut and
Austrian -style pastries. He knew the van would never survive up
there, in the thin mountain air and the snow, so he reluctantly
turned east towards the Adriatic coast. Here he picked up another
Roman road, the Via Emilia, now known more prosaically as the
N90 but still running straight and true for hundreds of miles
across Emilia-Romagna to the sea.
This was the gastronomic heartland of Italy, where every inch
of the fertile soil was cultivated. In Parma he visited shops festooned
with hams, each one postmarked with the stamps of a
dozen different inspectors - the regions of Italy are fiercely protective
of their produce, and only a handful of towns between the
Enza and the Stirone rivers are allowed to designate themselves as
true producers of prosciutto di Parma. Because the huge lofts in
which the hams are aged are always left open to the wind, the villages
of the Enza valley seemed scented with the aromatic
sweetness of the meat as he drove through them. In a valley to the
north of Parma Bruno sampled culatello di zibcllo, perhaps the
greatest of all Parma's pork products and for that reason almost
never exported, even to other parts of Italy: a pig's rump marinated
in salt and spices, then sewn inside a pig's bladder and aged
for eighteen months in the humid air of the flat river basin. It is a
process so delicate that almost half the hams are spoiled before
they are ready, but those which survive are incomparably delicious.
There had been a time when the almost creamy texture and
sweet, intense flavour of the meat would have made Bruno laugh
out loud for sheer joy. Now, although he still found it curious, he
was like a man trying to taste from a photograph, or someone who
eats with a bad cold. It was as if his palate, usually so exact, had
become no more sensitive than that of any ordinary person.
He was interested, though, to see the process by which accto
balsamico tradizionale was made in Modena, just twenty miles to
the south but as different again from Parma as vinegar is from
meat. In a traditional acetaia he was allowed to peer briefly
through the door of the attic, where a dozen barrels of different
sizes dripped their precious contents with infinitesimal slowness
into open buckets lined with brown paper. The air was heady with
grape must, and even the songbirds that clustered at the open
window seemed stunned into silence by the thick, viscous aroma.
For an exorbitant fee Bruno was given a coffee-spoon-sized
mouthful of the fifty-year-old vinegar to sip. As rich as old cognac,
perfectly balanced between sweet and sour, the taste was so powerful
that it seemed to flood through his chest like medicine. But
it gave him no pleasure, and since even a tiny 100 ml bottle cost
many hundreds of euros, he drove on without buying any.
In another village he stopped to buy cheese, and watched the
two owners of the dairy as they whisked a huge tank containing
hundreds of gallons of whey with a spino, a whisk as big as a broom.
It was backbreaking work that at the end of the day would yield just
two large cheeses, although it would be another three years before
they would be ready to be sold. However, the same dairy also
made slattato, a soft, fresh ewe's cheese, which he ate rolled up in
a piece of piadina - a flat tortilla-like bread - for nourishment.
As Bruno neared the sea the little road became crowded with
tourists spilling off the autostrada, heading for the fashionable
resorts around Rimini. It was time to change direction again. This
time Bruno set the van's nose south west, once more heading

inland.
He had been driving for weeks, but he had never experienced
such an empty, rural landscape as the one in which he now found
himself. This was Le Marche: the Marches. There were few major
towns here. For mile after mile the only signs of life were tiny
hamlets and villages, dotted between the wild limestone gorges,
where peasant farmers scratched a living much as they had always
done, tending a few pigs, a few cows and a few sheep on a couple
of steep fields. The roads tended to be winding, following the
contours of the land and the serpentine rivers, and Bruno made
slow progress. That suited him fine, though. It was becoming
apparent that unless he stopped somewhere, and perhaps got himself
a job as a labourer, he was eventually going to end up back in
Rome again, where all roads led, and that was the last place he
wanted to be. Almost as if it sensed its driver's mood, the van
began to slow down, so that even when he did come across a
stretch of straight road he was unable to travel at more than fifty'
kilometres an hour without gusts of black smoke belching from
the old vehicle's patched-up guts.
Bruno picked up another Roman road, the Via Flaminia, which
took him through the dramatic Eurlo gorge. The road was
squeezed alongside the river by towering cliffs, just as it had been
ever since it was built in 220 BC, and even though the traffic was
light he was soon holding up behind him a queue of impatient
drivers. After the three-kilometre darkness of the Furlo tunnel,
also built in Roman times, he pulled off at the first turning and
drove upwards, into the hills. Here there was no traffic at all.
Eagles spun lazily overhead, and once he thought he heard the
distant howl of a wolf.
As he climbed higher above Acqualagna the van began first to
breathe heavily and then to wheeze, all the time going more and
more slowly; until finally, with a coughing fit worthy of a forty-a
day smoker, it came to a complete stop.
Bruno got out and contemplated the silent engine. He was
about three hundred feet above the valley floor, somewhere
between the little towns of Cagli and Citta di Castello. He could
not, however, see a single house or farm. It was deathly quiet. The
sound of goat bells clattering in the distance as their owners
methodically chewed at a meadow indicated, however, that there
was some sort of settlement nearby. The fields, too, although tiny,
were clearly well cared for. Underneath each tree was a tidy stack
of firewood, piled up to dry for the winter, and the rows of vines
in the pocket-sized vineyards were heavy with ripening fruit.
He tried in vain to coax the engine back to life. Once he
thought he had it, but the van seemed to splutter apologetically
and then lapse back into its coma. Sighing, Bruno pulled his backpack
from the passenger seat and prepared to walk. Since he knew
there was nothing for miles the way he had come, he walked
uphill, hoping that the woods which obscured his view were also
concealing the presence, somewhere, of a village.

Tommaso's evening had been a disaster. By the time the last diners
left, only partially mollified by several free digestivi, he was just
about ready to collapse. But there were still the books to be done.
Glumly he emptied a box of crumpled invoices on to one of the
tables.
'The thing is,' Marie explained, 'we're still getting in food from
our suppliers, who are still expecting to be paid, and on top of that
there's the mafia's four per cent. But there's no money coming in.
What's more, all those freebies we have to hand out are costing us
a fortune. And because the waiters aren't getting any tips, they're
skimming off the top. Every night we open for business simply
adds to our debt. We need to shut down now, before we lose Dr
Ferrara any more of his investment.'
Tommaso sighed. 'If the waiters are skimming us, let's get rid of
the waiters. It's not as if there's anything for them to do anyway'
'What about the commisV
Tommaso hesitated. The two commis were youngsters, fresh
out of catering school, but at least they had some idea of what
they were doing, unlike himself. 'We'll keep one of them,' he suggested
as a compromise.
Marie punched some buttons on her calculator. 'We'll still be
losing money,' she said gloomily. 'We can't even pay Dr Ferrara his
next instalment of the capital.'
'I'll pay him out of my savings.'
, 'Don't be stupid.'
"I don't want this place to close, Marie.'
'You're sentimental about it,' she commented. 'That's dangerous,
for a business.'
'You don't have to stay yourself if you don't want to.'
'That's different,' she said gruffly.
After she had gone, Tommaso sat for a long time going
through the bills, looking in vain for some way of cutting the
operating costs and returning II Cuoco to profit. Even he, though,
could see that it was hopeless. They simply spent too much and
made too little.
After Bruno had left Rome, Tommaso's anger had evaporated
as quickly as it had come. In fact, he soon started to feel a little
guilty. What he had said to Bruno was certainly true - Bruno had kissed his girl behind his back - but given that he himself had been
unfaithful to the same girlfriend with a pretty blonde backpacker
from Munich, he suspected that he was hardly entitled to claim
the moral high ground. Besides, Tommaso loved Bruno, and the
harsh words had been as much from his own sense of hurt that he
hadn't been told the whole story as from any real injured pride.
As the realisation had slowly dawned that Bruno wasn't coming
back, Tommaso had sunk into gloom, along with the fortunes of
H Cuoco. Had the restaurant not by now owed money to everyone
from Dr Ferrara to the mafia, he might have tried to walk
away from it. But gradually he realised that there was another
reason why he couldn't leave. It was to do with the look on
Marie's face when she'd discovered that he wasn't a real chef. He
was determined to show her, and the rest of Rome as well, that he
Was just as capable of running a restaurant as Bruno had been. But
the truth, at this moment, seemed to be that he wasn't.
The nights had been the worst. That was when Laura had found
herself thinking that she actually couldn't stand the pain; that she
would do anything, anything at all, if only Tommaso would take
her back; that she would even share him with all the tourists in
Rome if it meant she could be with him again. On nights like
those she would sit numbly on her bed, leaning against the wall,
and wait for the morning, her cheeks burning with humiliation
and her eyes stinging with wretchedness.
She had cried all the time. She had cried all over Judith, and on
the phone to Carlotta. She had come within a whisker of abandoning
her course and going back to America. She had cried over the
student counsellor, who had arranged for her to see a doctor, who in
turn had prescribed anti-depressants. She had cried over Kim
Fellowes. He had been sympathetic, arranging to see her privately to
help her catch up; at which kindness, of course, she had simply cried
some more. He did not seem to be in the least repelled by her tears:
if anything, the more she cried, the more attentive he became, and
she soon got used to the familiar comforting smell of the cologne on
his elegant linen handkerchiefs. Gradually the pain receded, and
when, finally, he had escorted her to his bed, she realised how lucky
she was to be loved at last by someone who genuinely cared for her.

Bruno walked uphill for over an hour. Although the sun was setting
it was still hot, and only dogged determination, and the
knowledge that if he didn't find somewhere to stay he was going
to have to sleep out in the open, kept him going.
Eventually he saw houses in the distance. There was a plume of
smoke beyond them, as straight and upright in the windless air as
the cypress trees that dotted the hillside. As he climbed higher he
saw that it was indeed a tiny village, consisting of no more than a
dozen or so stone houses. On one of the buildings there was an
ancient advertisement for Fernet Branca, painted directly on to the
crumbling plaster. That was a good omen: it meant there was
probably some kind of osteria.
As he walked into the village a couple of dogs on chains barked
at him, but otherwise the place seemed deserted. But he could
smell something coming from the direction of the smoke he'd
seen from the road. He recognised the aromatic smell of burning
beech wood immediately, but it was the scent of roasting pork that
made his mouth water and his pace quicken. Someone was barbecuing
a pig, and Bruno suddenly realised that he had not eaten for
days.
He rounded the corner of the piazza - which was hardly a
piazza at all, but an open space around which the houses and a
church were grouped. Its surface was unpaved and it contained
little apart from a few lime trees and a vast Fascist-era war memorial
representing Victory as a naked woman being held aloft by half
a dozen soldiers. It did, however, contain the source of that wonderful
smell. Outside a tiny bar, someone had set up a makeshift
spit over a fire. A few people were milling around it, tending to
the golden-brown piglet that was slowly rotating above the hot
embers. Chairs and tables had been dragged out into the evening
sun, someone was fingering an accordion, and one or two elderly
people were dancing. Half a dozen pairs of eyes turned to watch
Bruno as he approached, although no one spoke to him.
Bruno hardly noticed. / can smell it, he thought. Really, properly
smell it.
Once, as a child, he'd been swimming and had got some water
stuck in his ear. For days every sound had been muffled, and no
amount of banging and poking would shift it. Then, quite suddenly,
a warm trickle in his eardrum had announced the return of
his hearing - and, having almost got used to being without it, he'd
found each sound new-minted and fresh. So it was now with his
palate. Somehow, the smell of that porchetta had done what all of
Emilia-Romagna's finest produce had failed to do. His extrasensory
perceptions of taste and smell, which had all but disappeared,
Were flickering back into life. Porchetta . . . The piglet was a deep
honey colour, its back blistered and split open where salt had been
rubbed into it for crackling, and the ears, nose and tail were covered
with individual caps of tinfoil to prevent these delicacies from
burning in the intense heat. Even now several people were fussing
over it: one turning it, another basting it with a lump of lard on a
skewer, while a slim figure in an apron and a headscarf was opening
the meat up with a sharp knife to see if the middle was done.
Stuffed whole suckling pig is a feast-day speciality everywhere in
Italy, although each region cooks it slightly differently. In Rome
the piglet would be stuffed with its own fried organs; in Sardinia,
with a mixture of lemons and minced meat. Here, evidently, the
stuffing was made with breadcrumbs and herbs. He could make out each individual component of the mixture: finocchio selvatico wild
fennel - garlic, rosemary and olives, mingling with the smell
of burning pork fat from the fire, which spat green flame briefly
wherever the juices from the little pig, running down its trotters,
dropped into it.
'Hello,' Bruno said politely to the person nearest to him. 'My
van has broken down and I'm looking for somewhere to stay the
night.'
The man scratched his ancient brown suit while he considered
this. He pretended to wave a couple of flies away from his forehead
with the back of his hand, although there were in fact no flies
around. ' Ueh, Gusta,' he called at last.
One of the people near the fire turned around. It was a woman,
her face weatherbeaten and leathery from the sun. Bruno surmised
that this was the owner of the bar and repeated his request.
The woman stared. 'We don't rent rooms, usually. You can use
the telephone, if you like, to get someone out to your van. Where
are you trying to get to?'
Where was he trying to get to? It was a good question, and one
that Bruno had no answer for, having given up using a map several
weeks before. He shrugged.
Another voice spoke from the group around the fire. It was the
person who was squatting down, the one in the apron. Although

the speaker didn't turn around, Bruno heard a female voice, murmuring
something.
Gusta shrugged. 'My daughter says it's too late to get anyone
out from Acqualagna, and Hanni, who usually deals with the
breakdowns, has gone to Belsaro to help his brother build a roof.
We can make up a room, if you really have to stay, though as you
can see, we're cooking porchetta, so don't expect any choice for
dinner.'
Bruno assured her that he would be delighted to eat porchetta, and that he would try to be no trouble as he could see that they
were busy. He sat down at one of the tables with his backpack at
his feet and tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible.
The villagers, for their part, pretended to ignore him. The only
one who looked directly at him was Gusta's daughter. She stood
up and stepped back from the fire, wiping her hot forehead with
her sleeve, and glanced at him for a moment with dark, unreadable
eyes. Bruno smiled politely at her, but evidently he had been too
familiar, because she scowled and looked away.
Someone put a glass of wine in front of him, and a plate containing
a few squares of crispy pork skin. He ate them gratefully,
by now very hungry indeed. Eventually, after much discussion, the porchetta was ready, and was lifted away from the heat to rest. But
first, of course, there was pasta - great bowls of fresh green tagliatelle,
made with spinach and just a hint of nutmeg, served with fagiole - fresh beans - and a little goose broth. No, not spinach
after all, Bruno decided after a second taste: the green in the tagliatelle was actually from young stinging nettles. Rather to his
surprise, it was excellent.
He was by now squashed between two large women, their
accents so thick he could barely understand what they were saying.
He asked what they were celebrating and they launched into a
long explanation, the gist of which seemed to be that someone
had borrowed a tractor from someone else, but the brakes didn't
Work properly, and then it had hit this poor three-legged piglet
and killed it, so of course it had to be eaten straight away. Had
Bruno not noticed that the porchetta had only three legs? Bruno
confessed he hadn't, a comment that prompted much hilarity
from those around him. He was asked where he came from.
Rome, he answered. His companions nodded thoughtfully, as if
that explained everything. You couldn't expect a Roman to see
what was under his nose. Trying to make a joke of it, Bruno
remarked that in Rome all pigs had three legs, only for his comment
to be passed up and down the table as seriously as if he had
said that he was personally acquainted with the Pope. .After that he
tried to keep his mouth shut, except when he was eating.
This wasn't difficult, since the porchetta was delicious. It was
handed round not on plates, but wrapped in myrtle leaves, so
that the bitter flavour permeated the meat. Everyone else had
fallen silent too, and the only sounds were the satisfied sighs of the
diners and the crunch of bones being chewed. The only light
came from a couple of tiny candles and the deep red embers of the
fire. Finally the bones were removed, or thrown to the small army
of waiting dogs, and bowls of fresh peaches were brought out,
served sliced and covered in sweet wine. Then the accordion
struck up again. The large lady on Bruno's left, who must have
consumed at least a dozen glasses of wine during the meal, immediately
asked him to dance, much to the amusement of their
neighbours; and feeling that part of his payment for their hospitality
was to provide them with entertainment, Bruno agreed. He
happily made a fool of himself for a few minutes before excusing
himself and sitting down again.
Someone sat down in the large lady's place, and he turned to
find that it was Gusta's daughter. She had changed out of her
cooking clothes immediately before dinner was served and was
now wearing a long, dark dress; a patchwork of silks and other
shimmering materials. There was something almost Romany
about it, and now that he thought of it he could see that there was
a similar look to the clothes of some of the other women, too. He
remembered reading that some of these remote villages were
descended from gypsies who had settled and turned to farming,
hundreds of years ago. Her hair was dark; as dark as the night
behind it.
'I've made up your room,' she told him. 'When you get tired,
just tell mother or me and we'll show you where it is. Though I'm
afraid you may not sleep very well. Once this lot get started, they'll
be drinking and dancing all night.' There was an affection in her
voice, he noticed, which belied the curtness of her words.
'Thank you. But I'm enjoying myself, really. And that was a
remarkable meal.'
She shrugged. 'Just a pig. It doesn't take much to cook a pig.'
'That pasta, too,' he said gently. 'The nettles and the nutmeg fantastic.
Who made that?'
'My mother,' she said. She looked up. A huge young man with
sandy blond hair and the broadest shoulders Bruno had ever seen
was standing on the other side of the table.
'Time to dance, bella di casa,' he said. Though he spoke to the
girl, his eyes were on Bruno. He leaned across the table and placed
a large, muscular hand in Bruno's. 'I'm Javier,' he said. 'Pleased to
meet you . . .'
'Bruno,' Bruno said. He felt his hand being crushed for a
moment, then released. 'My van broke down.'
'Yes, I know.' Javier turned back to the girl. 'Come on then.'
She got up, her dress shimmering. She said to Bruno, 'But I
added the nettles. And the nutmeg. It makes people . . . happy.'
He watched her dancing, his eyes straining in the dark for the
shimmer of her dress as she spun. Then he realised what he was
doing. Yes, Laura was right. I'm aguardone, he thought wearily. A
pervert; always watching, never doing. He got to his feet and
Went to find Gusta and directions to his room.

When Bruno got up the next morning, the little piazza was
deserted. He assumed they were all sleeping off their hangovers the
music had gone on late into the night, just as Gusta's daughter
had predicted. Then the doors of the church opened and a
stream of villagers poured straight down the steps and across to
the bar, where Gusta, still in her church clothes, immediately got
to work dispensing distillati from unmarked bottles while her
daughter took round a tray of pastries. Bruno accepted both. The
drink was a fiery peach alcohol, not unlike schnapps, while the pastries
were soft and sweet, dusted with almond flour.
He was introduced to Giorgio, a dishevelled-looking young
man who was happily having third helpings of the liqueur.
Giorgio, he was told, had brought his tractor to church and
would soon take Bruno to pick up his van. 'Soon' turned out to
be a relative concept. It was another hour, and several more
schnapps, before Giorgio finally took Bruno behind the piazza,
where the tiniest tractor Bruno had ever seen was parked.
Giorgio shooed a mongrel off the seat and settled himself at the
controls. There was barely room on the machine for his body: if
he lowered his feet from the pedals they would drag along the
ground, like an adult riding a child's pony. He pressed a button
and the engine belched black smoke. An elderly man, walking in
the opposite direction, laughed and shouted something over the
noise of the engine. It sounded like 'Nice pig, Giorgio'. Giorgio
scowled and didn't reply. It occurred to Bruno that this must be
the tractor responsible for running down last night's meal. It
seemed unlikely: surely even a three-legged piglet could outrun
this relic.
Bruno and the dog walked behind as the tractor putted slowly
down the road. Rather to Bruno's surprise, however, the dwarf
tractor turned out to be easily capable of towing the defunct van
up to the village, and his vehicle was eventually uncoupled and
pushed into a small barn which contained a reassuring number of
wrecked, half-cannibalised cars, all awaiting the return of Hanni the mechanic from his brother's roof.
'Hanni has a piece of everything here,' Giorgio commented,
rolling himself a cigarette now that work was over. 'He'll sort you
out. Mind you,' he added thoughtfully, 'it's been three months
since he said he'd find me some brake discs, and I'm still waiting.
That'll be fifteen euros, please.'
There was nothing to do now but wait. Bruno went back to
the piazza, where the smells of lunch were already wafting out of
Gusta's kitchen. Plates of: antipasti wrere placed on the tables in
the square, which magically filled with people - whole families,
still in their church suits, and the priest himself with a paper
towel tucked into his cassock. Bruno took a piece of chicory
and dipped it into a saucer containing oil and vinegar - a tiny
black yolk of accto balsamico floating in the middle of the golden
oil. He was amazed to find that both the olive oil and vinegar
Were among the very best he had ever tasted. The village might
look poor to the casual eye but the villagers certainly knew how
to eat. Italians called it il culto de benessere: keeping the very best
Produce for themselves, being self-sufficient but living well,
combining the strong stomach of a peasant with the refined
palate of a cardinal.
The pasta was taglierini, thinner and longer than tagliatelle, sparsely flavoured with garlic and porcini mushrooms. Again,
Bruno was surprised: the season for funghi was many months off.
But these were undoubtedly fresh. He commented on this to the
family whose table he was sharing, and they nodded.
'It's all a matter of knowing wrhere to look,' the man told him.
'And there's not much the Galtenesi don't know about funghi.''
The Galtenesi, it turned out, was the collective name for those
who lived in these hills.
'You see those two?' the man continued, nodding at a mongrel
scratching itself in the dust, not far from where a weatherbeaten
old man with a long stick was methodically polishing off an enormous
bowl of taglierini. 'That's Alberto, and his dog Pippino.
He's one of the best trifolai in all Italy.'
Bruno looked at the old man with new respect. If there were
truffles here, that explained why the locals ate so well and
seemed so contented with their simple lifestyle. A good trifolau, or truffle hunter, could make a fortune during the winter season.
Then, for the rest of the year, he could relax and tend his smallholding.
'But
don't the best truffles come from Piemonte?' he
remarked. This caused a gale of laughter from his eating companions,
and more laughter as his comment was repeated up and
down the long table.
The villager shook his head. 'The Piemontese have the best
markets,' he confided, leaning forward conspiratorially, 'and of
course they like to pretend that what you buy in the markets
comes from the hills in their own region. But if it wasn't for
Le Marche, the market at Alba would be empty most of the
season. As for us, we're happy to sell them up north. Here there
are so many truffles that we wouldn't get anything like the same
price.'
This conversation was interrupted by a sudden shout from the
direction of the bar. A little terrier was scurrying from the door,
carrying off a huge joint of meat in its jaws, hotly pursued by a
red-faced Gusta, yelling profanities. The chuckles of the villagers
rapidly turned to alarm when it became clear that the animal had
just made off with the capretto, the joint of kid that had been
going to be the secondo.
There was a long wait, punctuated by occasional bursts of
shouting from inside the house. Tensions in the kitchen were
clearly running high. Then there was a double burst of shouting,
followed by a loud crash, and silence.
Bruno got to his feet. 'Excuse me,' he said politely to his companions,
"I think I should go and offer to help.'
The man looked at him in alarm. 'Are you crazy? There are
knives in there. And believe me, the women in that family have a
temper; they're famous for it.'
Bruno shrugged. 'Still, I'd better see what I can do.'
He made his way into the tiny bar, and from there to the
kitchen behind it. It wasn't much bigger than the bar and it contained
both Gusta and her daughter, who were staring fiercely at
each other across the kitchen table. Evidently he had walked in to
the middle of a row.
'Excuse me,' Bruno said mildly, "I came to see if you would like
some help.'
'Everything's fine,' yelled Gusta, flapping her apron at him.
'Go and sit outside.' She glared at her daughter. 'And take
Benedetta with you.'
'For example,' Bruno continued, "I thought perhaps I could
turn the leftover porchetta from last night into meatballs, while
your daughter makes a tomato and olive sauce, and you, signora,
prepare some finocchio fritto."1
There was a brief silence while the two women thought about
this.
'For that matter,' Benedetta said at last, 'we have some sheets
of pasta left over from making the taglierini. We could make a sort
of vincisgrassi*.''
'We don't have a food processor,' Gusta said dismissively. 'If we
have to dice all that porchetta by hand, we still won't have fed
everyone by the time evening Mass starts.'
'With respect, signora, I am a very fast worker,' Bruno said.
'You're a man,' Gusta said with an air of finality, as if it were
self-evident that this ruled out both the possibility' of Bruno being
a cook and of him being a fast worker. Bruno found himself wondering
whether there had ever been a signor Gusta.
'True, but--'
LPorco DioP yelled Benedetta. 'Can we stop talking and start
cooking?'
Bruno reached for a knife, a chopping board and, since no one
stopped him, opened the meat safe to remove the platter that
held the remains of the porchetta. There was rather less than he
had remembered: even if he flayed every ounce of meat from the
bones, it was going to be hard to make it stretch to feeding the
twenty or thirty hungry villagers who were waiting outside.
'We'll need some stale bread,' he decided. 'We can soak it in oil
and use it for bulk. And some herbs, of course. What do you have
in your garden, signora?'
'Sage, thyme, marjoram, oregano, bay, basil--'
'And what vegetables?'
'Celery, courgettes, peas, tomatoes--'
'Bring in as much as you've got,' Bruno said, 'particularly the
celery and the zucchini.'' As he spoke, his knife, almost without his
thinking about it, was dancing over the carcass of the pig,

* Lasagne of the Le Marche region, named after an Austrian general,
Prince Windisch-Graetz, who fought against Napoleon. The authoritative vincisgrassi is made with Bechamel sauce and a meat base comprising
lamb testicles, liver, cockerel giblets and no tomatoes but, like pizza,
there are many variations possible on the basic theme.
stripping it of meat. He saw Benedetta glance down at his hands, her eyes widening a little, although she said nothing. She reached for a length of tomatoes, still attached to their vine, and with her
own knife began to chop them without even bothering to strip them from the stem.
Bruno started to dice the strips of pork into tiny pieces. Not
needing to look at what his own hands were doing, he looked
instead at Benedetta's. She was good, he thought: she must have been cooking for years. Her knife was a blur as she worked her
way along a celery stalk. He realised that Benedetta, too, wasn't
looking at her own hands but at his. Then, at the same moment, they both looked up at each other's face and their eyes met.
Bruno's knife didn't miss a beat, but he felt a shock of recognition.
It was like looking in a mirror.
'You're left-handed,' he said, noticing.
'And you're a chef,' she said drily.
'Yes.'
'So what are you doing in Galtena?'
'Just passing through.'
'Really? The road up here doesn't go anywhere else.'
He opened his mouth, and a moment later felt a sharp pain on his knuckle as the knife sliced deep into the skin. 'Shit!'
'There are plasters by the sink,' Benedetta said, sounding
amused.
He rinsed the cut and wrapped the plaster around it before
picking up the knife again. 'I'm a little out of practice,' he muttered.
'So
I see. Never mind, we need all the meat we can get, even if
it comes from your fingers.'
Angry with himself for making such an elementary mistake,
Bruno chopped even faster, as Gusta returned with the vegetables.
In half an hour the three of them prepared a meal that would
normally have taken four or five hours. It was not the best dish he had ever cooked, Bruno admitted to himself as he sent the first
plates out of the door, but it was one he would always remember.
In particular, he would remember the way that he and Benedetta
had worked together, in silence but in perfect accord.
Finally there were just three plates left, and the small child who
had been roped into service as a waiter reported that everyone
outside was eating.
'These are for us,' Gusta said, taking off her apron. 'Let's go
outside.'
If the customers had minded the wait, they didn't show it. The
accordions were out again and the children were being allowed to
run around, teasing the dogs and each other into a frenzy of
excitement. There were places left at the main table, but Javier was
sitting there, his food untouched, waiting for Benedetta with a
scowl on his face. Bruno thought it was probably tactful to go
back to the table he'd been sitting at before.
'Did you make this?' the man he'd been talking to earlier
wanted to know.
Bruno shrugged. 'Well, I helped.'
"It's not bad,' the man commented, 'though there's a touch
too much marjoram for my taste.'
Damn, Bruno thought as he ate his own plateful, he's probably
right at that. These country people had more sophisticated palates
than any he'd come across at Templi. To change the subject, he
said, 'What happened to signor Gusta?'
'Ah. He ran away. Years ago, when Bene was just a little girl.
People say that's why his daughter learned to cook so well,
because she had to help her mother instead of going to school
Now,' he sighed, 'we're going to lose her anyway.'
'Oh? Why's that?'
'Are you crazy? She's twenty-one, she's beautiful and she cooks
like an angel. Every young man in the Galteni wants to come
home to her, temper or no temper. Sooner or later she'll be cook
ing for her own husband in his kitchen, and none of the rest of us
will get a look in. What's more, her mother won't be able to
manage all by herself so the bar will probably have to close too. All
in all, it's a disaster.'
Bruno looked across to where Benedetta was sitting next to
Javier. 'So is Javier the one she'll marry?'
The man shrugged. 'Who knows? It's the dog who howls at the
moon, but the fox who eats the chicken. Just because he's following
her round like an idiot doesn't mean that he's getting
anywhere. In fact, he's probably doing it as much to impress his
rivals as anything.'
Looking at Javier's vast frame as he silently shovelled food into
his mouth, Bruno could see how that would work. But it was
nothing to do with him. He was just passing through.

Back in Rome, Tommaso was looking at the empty walls of his
apartment. He had already sold all of Bruno's kitchen appliances,
his own watch and his digital camera. The restaurant had been
picked clean of its wine: he was down to a skeleton stock of just
half a dozen bottles and there was barely a corkscrew left to open
them with. Yet still the bills kept coming. Now there was nothing
left but to sell his prized CD collection, and when the money
from that was gone, he would have to fire Marie.
Sighing, he packed the CDs into boxes and lugged them downstairs
to where the vast Porta Portese street market stretched from
the Tiber right up to the Viale Glorioso. There was a record dealer
just across the street. Tommaso put the box down on his stall.
'How much for all of them?'
The stallholder flicked through the collection, which was full of
Japanese imports and rare bootlegs. 'Five hundred,' he said at
last. It was worth double, but he recognised a fire sale when he
saw one.
'Done,' Tommaso said wearily. The stallholder pushed some
notes into his hand quickly, as if afraid Tommaso might change his
mind.
As he was going back to his door, Tommaso heard a voice






220
221

;) n, ¦ Uiji!

whispering from one of the doorways: 'Grass, speed, pills,
coke . . .' It came from an ageing Scottish hippy who hung around
the markets, doing a little dealing to fund his own prodigious
habit. Tommaso stopped. A desperate idea had just begun to form

in his mind.
That evening, the menu at II Cuoco was reduced to a choice of
just one pasta, followed by a single secondo.
Unknown to the four couples wrho comprised the restaurant's
only customers, their spaghetti carbonara had been dusted not
with pecorino romano but with a highly idiosyncratic and frankly
unpredictable mixture of cheese and ecstasy. What Bruno had
achieved with his culinary skills, Tommaso was hoping to replicate
with simple pharmacology.

Bruno, meanwhile, had finally made the acquaintance of Hanni
the mechanic, who was examining his old van with a portable
lantern and an expression of dismay.
'You're looking at about four weeks,' Hanni informed him.
'More if I can't get a gearbox.'
'Four weeks? But that's impossible. Nothing takes four

weeks.'
'The problem is, they don't make these any more.' Hanni
shrugged. 'It's like waiting for a heart transplant. Some other
vehicle has to die and give up its parts before yours can be

repaired.'
With a sense of dread Bruno asked, 'And how much will it

cost?'
Hanni shrugged again. 'Who knows? Could be a hundred,
could be five hundred. We'll just have to see what's available.'

The results of his experiment exceeded Tommaso's expectations.
Once again the air at II Cuoco was filled with passion. True, it was a little more anarchic than before. Of the four couples, one was
trying to kill each other, and a woman was dancing very slowly on
the bar, half naked, while her partner was nowhere to be seen. But
everyone was having a good time, that was undeniable.

'This is how we cook rabbit in Rome,' Bruno said. 'A little sage,
a little rosemary, then we leave it to simmer in the wine.'
'Interesting,' Benedetta said. 'But incorrect. In Le Marche we
stuff the rabbit with peppers, pancetta and liver before cooking.
And when we simmer it we leave the lid off, like this.'' She reached
out and pushed the lid of Bruno's pan askew. 'That way it reduces
while it cooks.' She glared at him.
Bruno sighed. His plan to ask Gusta for a job in exchange for
board while he waited for Hanni to get the spare parts he needed
was proving trickier than he'd expected. Gusta had insisted on
giving him a trial run, and Benedetta in turn had demanded that
he use it to demonstrate that he could cook the local dishes in the
local way - which, of course, meant her way.
'Well,' he suggested, 'we could be a little creative.'
'What do you mean, creative?' Benedetta asked suspiciously.
'Instead of stuffing the rabbit with the peppers, we could stuff
the peppers with the rabbit.'
Gusta laughed. 'Are you joking? Our customers would riot if
you tried to pull a crazy trick like that.'
Bruno said nothing. He was looking at Benedetta.
'It's an interesting idea,' she said slowly. 'You could grill the
peppers first, and then you could put some lemon zest in with the
rabbit--'
Gusta looked horrified. 'Now why in God's name would you
want to do that?'
'To balance the sweetness of the roasted peppers,' Bruno
explained. 'And I see that you have serpillo* growing wild around
here. You could put some of that in as well.'

A bitter wild herb, particularly used to flavour cheese.
'Oh, you young people cook what you like,' Gusta said impatiently, throwing up her hands. 'I've got customers to attend to.'

While Bruno cooked the stuffed peppers, Benedetta made pasta.
But they were both watching each other surreptitiously.
'Do you have some cloves?' Bruno asked politely.
'Yes. In the cupboard. But don't use them.'
T thought just a couple--'
'--would kill the delicate taste of the serpillo.'' She glared at
him.
'Or complement it.'
'Uh-uh. Too many flavours,' Benedetta said firmly.
Bruno sighed. 'May I be permitted some nutmeg, then?'
There was a pause. 'A pinch, no more.'
She watched suspiciously as he grated a little nutmeg over the
rabbit meat. The message was clear: this was her kitchen and she
was in charge of it. Bruno sighed again. Not since he'd worked for
Alain Dufrais had he encountered anyone quite so opinionated
about cooking.
'When you said that nutmeg makes people happy, why was
that?' he asked, hoping some conversation would break the ice.
'Because it does,' she said tersely. 'Just as fennel relaxes people,
and cardamom is good for the digestion, nutmeg makes people
dance.'
It sounded like one of the crazy superstitions country grandmothers
clung to. 'I've never heard that before,' he muttered.
'Oh well, in that case it can't be true, can it?' she said icily. She
pounded the pasta dough with her fists, a quick one-two that left
deep depressions in the mixture. It occurred to Bruno that, skinny
as she was, it wouldn't do to get on the wrong side of Benedetta.
He got on with his cooking in silence.

He had to admit, though, that he had never seen anyone make
pasta as well as this. When she rolled out the sfoglia, the sheet of

fresh dough, she barely glanced at it, but it was so thin and so even
that he could see the grain of the wooden table through it.
He couldn't help himself. 'How do you get it so thin?' he
asked.
'Practice.' Then, relenting, she added, 'And I have the right
hands.'
'What sort of hands would that be?'
'Here.' She held out her hands to him. They were warm,
almost hot. 'You can't make good pasta with cold hands,' she
explained. 'That's the secret. So I eat a lot of peperoncino. It keeps
my hands warm.'
Bruno opened his mouth to point out that this was unlikely to
be the cause of her warm hands, but closed it again. They were
just about talking to each other, and there was no point in starting
another fight.
Benedetta was looking pointedly at her hands. With a start
Bruno realised that he was still holding them. Abruptly, he let go.
Benedetta turned back to her pasta. But just for a moment, a
ghost of a smile flitted across her face.

When she had finished making the pasta, Benedetta cut it roughly
into maltagliati, random shapes that were traditionally made from
leftover scraps. Then she pressed each piece against a strange
implement with long, stiff wires, like a comb.
'What's that?' Bruno asked.
'That's the pettine.'
'What's it for?'
'Don't you have these in Rome?' she said, surprised. "I don't
know. I suppose it gives the pasta more grip.'
He nodded. He could see how that would work: the grooves
left by the comb would give the thin pasta more surface area,
which would hold a creamy sauce better.
'Do they use them in Romagna and Abruzzo as well?' he asked.
"I don't know.'
'When you go to other regions, don't you eat?'
She didn't answer.
'You've never been outside Le Marche, have you?' he guessed.
'Why would I want to?'
It was a good question. Changing the subject, he asked, 'What
sort of pasta are you making?' ''Pasta con funghi?
He watched as she took a bowl of strange, round, reddish
brown mushrooms out of the larder. The air was immediately
filled with their rich, earthy scent. Ripe as a well-cellared cheese,
but tinged with the odours of leaf-mould and decay, it reminded
Bruno a little of the smell of offal in his native Roman dishes.
'How many kinds of funghi do you cook with?' he asked.
'Oh - hundreds. It just depends on what I find in the woods.'
'You pick these yourself?'
'Of course.'
As the smell of funghi combined with the scent of hot butter
and garlic in the frying pan, Bruno felt his nostrils flare. And not
just his nostrils. The aroma was stirring up his blood, awakening
sensation in a part of him that had been quiescent for a long time.
'They say these are an aphrodisiac,' Benedetta said, as if reading
his thoughts. 'Of course, it's just a kind of superstition that the old
grandmothers like to talk about.'
'Of course,' he said stiffly.
Was it his imagination, or was the look she gave him almost one
of pity?
Two could play at that game, though. Bruno's retaliation was to
make a dolce.
For sheer showrmanship, it is hard to beat the creation of a
really flashy dessert. Without asking Benedetta's permission,
Bruno assembled his ingredients. Eggs. Sugar. Cream. Pastry. A
large dish of blackcurrants and other fruits from the garden.
First he spun sugar into delicate lattice bowls of crisp brown
caramel. Then he made meringues, inside which he placed individual
baked peaches. Where the peach stone had been he inserted
a berry gelato, made with pieces of solid fruit. It was pure Alain
Dufrais - virtuoso, exuberant, and completely over the top.
'Careful,' was all Benedetta said when he had finished. 'We
don't want our customers to think we've gone completely poncy.'
'They won't think that when they taste it.'
'People round here,' she said firmly, 'have pretty high expectations.'
'They
won't have eaten anything like this, I can assure you.'
'Hmm.' She squeezed past him to get a whisk. 'Excuse me.'
Their eyes met. just for a moment, Bruno was confused by what
he saw there. Are we fighting? he wondered. Or flirting?

He decided on the direct approach. 'How long have you been
going out with Javier?' he asked casually as he wiped down his
prep surface.
But Benedetta, nowr carefully slicing salume for antipasto, would not be drawn so easily. 'Wrho told you I was going out with
Javier?'
'One of the villagers.'
'People here do love to gossip.'
'Actually, I don't think my informant was too keen on the idea.
He said you'd soon be cooking for a husband rather than the
whole village.'
'People here like to think about their own stomachs, too.' She
stretched across him for a pan. He felt her softness press briefly
against his shoulder. Flushing, he pushed himself back as far as he
could. Luckily, Benedetta didn't seem to notice.
This is a tiny kitchen, he told himself firmly. If you are going to
work here - and lefsfacc it you have to work here, since your tractor
driving skills are non-existent -you will simply have to learn to be
professional about your co-worker.

Laura, in Rome, does not spend the nights crying any more. She
attends concerts with Kim; small gatherings for a select few, held
in the salons of baroque palaces. But sometimes, in the intervals,
she surreptitiously takes out her mobile phone - the mobile phone
that no longer plays Rod Stewart or Eric Clapton when it rings,
but Vivaldi - and scrolls through the text messages until she finds
one that she rereads for the hundredth time:

There was something I wanted to cook tonight
The
recipe of love
Take 1 American girl with honey-coloured skin & freckles like
orange-red flakes of chilli on her shoulders.
Fill her with flavours, with basil and tomatoes and pine nuts
and parsley.
Warm her gently with your hands for several hours, turning
occasionally, and serve with wine and laughter, straight from

the dish.
- but sadly 1 of the ingredients was missing. Maybe tomorrow?

Then she allows a tear to roll silently down her cheek until
it reaches the corner of her lip, where she licks it off absentmindedly,
salty and insubstantial and tasteless on her tongue.

to Gusta's surprise, the new menu at her little osteria was
a great success. Since there was almost no choice of dishes, the
customers were forced to try what they might otherwise have
spurned; and having tried it, they decided that they liked it. What
was more, they talked about it to their friends. Within a few days
Gusta was having to put out extra tables.
'It's just a novelty,' Benedctta told her, shrugging. 'It'll settle
down in a week or so.'
It seemed as if each lunchtime they fed the whole village.
Labourers in vests and blue serge trousers sat alongside the priest
and the doctor. Children, released from school for lunch, ate with
their parents before sliding from their chairs to run riot in the
square while the grown-ups chatted in the shade before their
siesta. People were even starting to come by car and scooter from
villages further down the valley.
One person who was always there, usually eating with his
"lends, was Javier. Bruno noticed now that, although Benedetta
Was friendly towards Javier, and would sometimes sit with him
while he had an amaro after his meal, she never kissed him or sat
on his knee as the other courting couples did. He wondered about
their relationship, but thought it best not to enquire further.
Giorgio, the owner of the miniature tractor, was often there
too. One day Bruno overheard him talking about the new disc
brakes Hanni had finally fitted to his tractor, and decided that it
was time to pay the mechanic a visit himself.
He found his van propped up on bricks, which seemed to indicate
that Hanni had started work; but the mechanic was apologetic.
'I've phoned round all my contacts but none of them have the
necessary parts,' he explained. 'They will come, eventually, but we
just have to be patient.'
'No problem,' Bruno said. Now that he'd found work, a couple
of weeks' wait wasn't the end of the world. Besides, the villagers
were talking about this weather turning into a heatwave, so maybe
staying up here in the relative cool of the hills for a while wasn't
such a bad idea.
Abruptly, summer had come to the Marches. Bruno was used
to the city, and to the scorching temperatures of restaurant
kitchens. But the fierce humidity that enveloped them now was
another matter. Tendrils of heat reached from the plain right up as
far as the village, and only at night did a breath of cooler air press
down from the hills above them. Lunch was served early, and
dinner late. In the kitchen, Benedetta had taken to working in
shorts and a T-shirt. The insidious smell of her skin mingled with
the cooking smells, distracting Bruno. He gritted his teeth and did
his best to ignore it.

The heatwave lasted only a few days, a brief harbinger of the furnace
to come. One morning Bruno woke up with a start, certain
he had heard Benedetta's voice. He listened. It was still dark. He
must have dreamed it.
'Bruno?'
It was her. She was standing in the doorway of his little room.
Just for a moment a crazy notion popped into his mind.
'Do you want to come and pick funghi? she whispered.
So that was why she was here. He pushed the crazy notion
away. 'Sure.'
'Come on then. I'll see you downstairs in ten minutes.'
A little while later they set off uphill in the darkness, both carrying
the shallow wicker baskets in which they would bring home
their haul. 'Are you sure there'll be any? At this time of year, I
mean?' Bruno asked.
'Of course. Perhaps not so many now as autumn. But there'll
be coprini, and orecchietti, and piopparelli, and pleurate, and cepatelliif we're lucky--'
'OK,' he said hastily, "I get the idea. And none of these are poisonous?'
'Some
of them are very similar to poisonous mushrooms, yes.
But don't worry. I know what we're looking for.'
By the time they reached the woods it was starting to get light.
She led Bruno to where, in the long, lush grass at the edge of the
trees, a darker green circle twenty feet across stained the paler
green of the pasture.
'Gambe secche. A fairy ring. This one is quite old - it gets a little
bigger each year as the mycelium spreads out.'
'It's edible?'
'No, but once the fairy ring's established, the prugnolo comes
and shares the circle.' As she spoke she was rummaging in the wet
grass, pushing it apart gently with her fingers. 'See? This is the prugnolo - what the people here call San Giorgio.'
'Why's that?'
'Because it first appears on the feast of San Giorgio, of course.'
She twisted the mushroom deftly from its stalk and put it into her
basket. 'There'll be more, if you take a look.'
When they had harvested a dozen mushrooms from the fairy
ring they went into the woods, each plucking a hazel stick on the
Way to push aside the undergrowth. After a few minutes Benedetta
stopped and sniffed the air. 'Can you smell it?'

Bruno sniffed too, but all he could smell was the dank, mouldy
scent of the woods.
'Over here.' She pushed a little way off the path and there, like a
tiny neolithic henge in the forest floor, stood a cluster of squat
mushrooms. 'These are good,' Benedetta confirmed. 'Make sure
you snap them off without pulling them or you'll damage the roots.'
'What are they?'
<Ceppatelli. Like porcini, but they fruit earlier in the year.'
Bruno plucked one. It was lighter than the chocolate-brown porcini he was used to in Rome, but it had the same heady, pungent
smell.
'And tap the spores on to the ground,' Benedetta added. 'That
way you'll make sure it grows again.'
After the ceppatelli they followed a tiny trail left by a deer,
pushing deeper and deeper into the woods.
'There's one,' Bruno said, pointing with his stick to where a tall,
pale mushroom with a spotted cap stood at the base of a beech tree.
It seemed to glow faintly with phosphorescence in the dim light.
'Now! that is poisonous. It's an Amanita phalloides. You can
guess why it's called that from the shape.' She had crouched down
beside the mushroom and was plucking it carefully, her hand
wrapped in a tissue to avoid touching the mushroom's flesh.
'Why are you taking it?'
'Oh, poisonous ones are useful too. We use these to kill mice.
And there are others we put into remedies.'
Nearby was a tree stump covered in undulating black rills of
fungus. They looked deeply unappetising, and Bruno was surprised
when Benedetta said they were edible.
'And here, look,' she called, moving on to a neighbouring
beech tree, 'this is what we call an apartamento - an apartment
block. There are gelone at the bottom, and then a layer of pioparelli,
and then pleurate, oyster mushrooms, all the way up. If we
don't pick them they'll destroy the tree.'
By mid-morning it was hot. Both baskets were full, though
Bruno was frustrated to find that he was still unable to follow the
scent trails Benedetta was tracking so easily.
'We may as well give up now,' she said at last, sitting down in a
wide clearing on a bank of moss and thyme. 'The smell of the funghi isn't so strong any more.'
Bruno sat down next to her. Below them, the village basked in
the sun. Trails of smoke and the distant sound of chainsaws
reached them. Benedetta stretched and lay back.
'It's so quiet up here,' he said.
'Yes. No one from the village ever comes up this high.'
The weight of their bodies was crushing the thyme, releasing
wafts of warm scent that mingled with the dank smell of the funghi in their baskets. Benedetta began unbuttoning her shirt.
His surprise must have shown on his face, because she added,
"I'm going to sunbathe.'
'Oh. Right. Go ahead, I won't look,' he said, averting his gaze.
Out of the corner of his eye he could still see her, though; a flesh
coloured shape lying back on the warm moss. Was he blushing?
And if so, how could he have so much blood in him, that it was
rushing to his cheeks and his groin at the same time? He lay back
and closed his eyes.
There was the rustle of cloth on skin. A few moments later,
Benedetta rolled over and slipped her hand under his T-shirt.
'Oh,' Bruno said, his eyes opening again. There was a pert
nipple dangling inches from his face, as ripe as a fruit, and that
warm pasta-making hand was stroking his stomach in slow, circular
movements. 'Benedetta,' he said. His voice came out hoarse.
'You should know - I'm just - just--'
'Passing through? Of course. That's why I can sleep with you.'
'What do you mean?' He gasped as her fingers slid under the

waistband of his jeans.
'Isn't it obvious? If I sleep with Javier, I'll have to marry him.
If I sleep with one of the other men from the village, they'll tell
each other and I'll be labelled a puttana and a witch. Whereas
you -' she stood up and pulled off the remainder of her clothes,
before lying down again and easing herself against him, skin
against skin - 'aren't going to tell a soul.'
'How do you know?' he asked, as she undid his jeans and freed
his cock with both hands.
'Because you never tried to grab me in the kitchen. Not even
after I started putting the special herbs in your food.'
'You've been putting what . . . ?'
She laughed softly. 'Couldn't you tell? And you such a great
chef One long leg lifted itself over his hips, and then she was
straddling him. He felt wetness on his stomach, and realised that
it must be hers. Reaching out, she plucked a sprig of thyme and
crushed it between her lips, then bent forward to kiss him. As the
flavour flooded his mouth like wine his hips bucked impatiently,
but he was securely held captive under her and she had no intention
of allowing him to hurry.
'When did you--?' he whispered.
'The first night. When you smelled the nutmeg.' She pushed
his arms over his head and pinned them to the forest floor with
one hand, leaning forward over him so that her breasts brushed
his mouth. He found a nipple and bit it gently. It was hard, and
salty as a pistachio with her sweat. He groaned. 'Please--'
She rose up and positioned herself. 'Like this?' she said softly.
And, still teasing him, 'Or like this?
And then everything was cinnamon and cream, fennel and
strawberry, the scent of crushed thyme and sweat and sweet
honey, and he was amazed at how ridiculously easy it was.

They walked back down the hill in a companionable silence. That
afternoon, as well as pasta con funghi, Benedetta cooked salame
da sugo, the traditional wedding meat of Ferrara: ground pork,
liver and tongues, enriched with spices and wine, said to maintain
a bridegroom's potency.
The next day they went to pick fragole di bosco, wild strawberries,
and made love in a deserted old barn above the pastures, their lips
still smeared with the pulp of the fruit. The next day it was misticanza,
wild leaves for salad. Benedetta was scrupulous that they
must always pick first. If anyone saw them walking home with
empty baskets, she warned, tongues would start wagging instantly.
So they filled their baskets with rocket, wild fennel, dandelion
and lamb's lettuce before temptation overcame them and they
collapsed into a quiet corner of a field, hidden only by the tall
fronds of the finocchio stalks. Bruno made her close her eyes, teasing
her naked body with a spray of fennel: when he kissed her
between her legs the aniseed mingled with the faint, faraway taste
of the sea. We were all fish once, he thought, and this is the proof of
it, this whisper of oceans in the deepest recesses of the body.
The day after that it was wild currants, and the day after that
they took a gun with them and shot hares. Their lovemaking was
different after that hunt, fast and furious and urgent, while the
dead animals with their bloody noses watched them from the
baskets.
The next morning she woke him very early again, while it was
still dark, and took him to a dense wood they had never visited
before. She wouldn't tell him what they were after, but when they
were deep inside the trees she told him to smell the air. He sniffed
obediently.
'Can you smell it?' she whispered.
'No. Can you?'
'Yes. Over here.'
He followed her into the dense undergrowth. She was turning
her head this way and that, sniffing like a dog. He understood that
whatever scent she had caught, it was elusive and precious, so he
kept quiet, not wanting to disturb her concentration.
'Now,' she whispered. 'Smell again.'
This time, just for a moment, he thought he caught it - a faint,
feral reek, almost sexual.
'Wild boar?' he whispered back. But Benedetta shook her head.
She tracked backwards and forwards between the trees, her
nose close to the ground. Abruptly she stopped, and began to
lever up the earth carefully with the end of her stick. The smell was
stronger now, heady in the cold clear air of the dawn. Then, suddenly,
Benedetta was pulling a knobbly object like a tinv
misshapen potato from the roots of the tree - a tartufo, quite
small, still caked with earth, its reek filling the air.
'Alberto would kill us if he knew,' she whispered. 'We shouldn't
really pick them at this time of the year.'
She broke the truffle open and pressed it to his nose. The scent
was almost overpowering: sex and old socks and musk. He felt
himself becoming aroused, and saw by her eyes that she was too.
He reached for her, pulling her towards him.
Afterwards, she took some of his seed on her hand and wiped
it on the tree roots, to encourage the precious fungus to spore
again in the same place.

Tiny as it was, the truffle lent its intoxicating flavour to enough
dishes to feed the whole village. Taglierini, sauteed in a frying pan
with lesser funghi such as cardoncelli and orecchietti, had some
truffle shaved over them before they were served. Then a leg of
kid was served from a giant casserole into which the rest of the
truffle had been diced, along with tomatoes, marjoram and rosemary.
There was a noticeable air of excitement in the little piazza
that evening during dinner. Laughter was louder, flirting more
obvious, more wine was consumed, and afterwards the accordions
came out. Bruno had no idea how much Gusta charged for the
food - there was nothing so straightforward as a price list, let
alone a menu, and the electronic cash register, as required by the
tax authorities for every retail business, sat untouched in a corner,
gathering dust. However, he saw her folding up a great wad of
banknotes and tucking it away carefully in a pocket, so presumably
she was doing quite well out of the truffle too.
Javier was sitting with a group of his friends. They were drinking
beer rather than wine, and vast quantities of it at that.
Benedetta and Bruno helped Gusta wait tables by carrying plates
outside when the food was ready, and Bruno noticed that there
was much ribald laughter and joshing between Javier and his
friends whenever Benedetta went out.
Suddenly he heard a yelp. He looked up. It was instantly clear
what had happened. The young farmer had just grabbed
Benedetta's behind. The two of them were frozen in a tableau: she
had jumped away from him, her eyes blazing, and he was laughing
at her. Bruno took a step towards them, his fists clenched.
Benedetta's eyes swivelled towards Bruno and saw what he was
about to do. Instantly she took the plate she was holding and
smashed it down over Javier's head, breaking it in two. There was
a moment of stunned silence, then his friends started applauding
and whistling. Bruno stepped back, his fists unclenching.
At first Javier sheepishly joined in the applause. Then his eyes
followed Benedetta's own gaze, over to where Bruno was standing,
and his face darkened.

She came to his room after Gusta was asleep and slipped into bed
beside him. 'That was quick thinking earlier,' he whispered.
"I only did it because I thought you were going to hit him.'
"I probably would have done,' he admitted.
'But you mustn't. Promise me, Bruno. As soon as you do
something like that, he'll think he has to fight you. And let's face
it, he'd beat you to a pulp.'
'Don't you think he's guessed anyway?'
'He may suspect. But so long as it isn't obvious - so long as
there's nothing public - he'll tell himself that it's just gossip.'
'People are gossiping?'
'Of course. We work together in the kitchen all day - people
would talk even if we were a nun and a priest. But that's to our
advantage. Because everyone here gossips all the time, and most of
the time it turns out to be nonsense, no one quite believes anything
they hear. As long as they can tell themselves it isn't true
when they need to, they'll even believe two different things at
once.'
'Like the councillors coming to the restaurant on Fridays, but

eating fagioliniV
'Exactly.' The local council was staunchly communist, like most
of the rural councils in this region. However, there wasn't a communist
in the area who would eat meat on Fridays, and every Friday
the osteria kitchen was kept busy shelling a vast pile of borlotti beans, fresh from the garden, for vegetarian stews and pasta dishes.
'But if Javier knew, it might stop him making a nuisance of

himself.'
'No, it wouldn't,' she said firmly. 'I've known him all my life.
Besides, I don't think I want Javier to lose any sleep over you. I
may want to marry him one day.'
'What! Are you serious?'
'Of course.' She put her hand on his chest. 'You won't be here
for ever, and I don't intend to be an old maid. Javier is a good
man. Any woman would be lucky to have him.'
Bruno felt awkward. He knew- he ought to tell her that he
loved her, that he wanted to stay here with her for ever. But he
couldn't, because it wasn't true. He thought she was the warmest,
most generous person he had ever met; he adored her; she was
beautiful and sexy, and she was a soulmate and a friend. But his
heart had already been given to someone else. So he said instead,
'You're wonderful, Benedetta.'
"I know.' She wriggled on top of him and opened his lips with
her tongue, the way a fisherman opens an oyster with a knife. 'So
let's enjoy it while we can.'

He had thought they were being discreet, but the next afternoon
he had a strange conversation with her mother.
It was the quiet part of the day, the siesta between lunch and
starting to prep dinner. Bruno was reading. He had asked
Benedetta if there were any local recipes written down and she had
shown him where the family notebooks were kept - ancient, handwritten
cookbooks, row upon row of them, going right back to
pre-unification days, the oldest on yellowing paper as fragile as
tissue. The combinations of local ingredients were still relevant
today, however, even if some of the raw materials - such as creste
digallo, cock's combs, or camoscio, wild goat - would be hard to
come by now.
Just as practised musicians can read an orchestral score and
hear the music in their heads, Bruno could read a recipe and taste
the result in his mind. He was turning the pages slowly, garnering
ideas, when Gusta came into the room. She was holding a tiny jug.
'Ah, there you are,' she said. 'Benedetta said you were going
through the old books. Where have you got to?'
'Goose stewed in red wine.'
'Oh yes. Oca in potacchio - my grandmother's recipe. You cut
the goose into pieces and stew it in peperoncini and wine, very
slowly. Then, just before you serve it, you add a little vinegar to
offset the richness of the goose fat.' She hesitated. 'Actually, that
reminds me. Have you got a moment? There's something I've
been meaning to show you, upstairs in the attics.'
Intrigued, he followed her. He suspected that this had something
to do with Benedetta, but although Gusta paused outside
his room, and seemed to glance meaningfully at the tousled bed,
she said nothing.
She led him up the stairs to the very top of the house.
Producing an old key the size of a spoon from her pocket, she
unlocked a dark wooden door and ushered him through.
The moment he smelled the air he knew what the attic contained.
The sight of a dozen or more wooden barrels, all of
different sizes, confirmed it. It was smaller than the acetaia he had
visited in Modena, but the smell of balsamic vinegar was just as
overwhelming.
'Here.' Gusta had crossed to the largest barrel and put down
her jug. 'Look at this.' She pointed to a date carved roughly into
the wood.
Bruno crouched down next to her. 'My God,' he breathed.
'1903.'
She nodded. 'And it still isn't empty. It was my great-grandmother's
dowry, the same one who wrote that recipe for goose.
This barrel was started by my great-great-grandfather when she
was just a baby.' She tapped each of the barrels in turn with her
fingers. 'This one's oak, but this small one is beech . . . and that's
juniper . . . and chestnut. . . and cherry. After the vinegar drips out
of one barrel, it gets put into the next, and then the next, getting
a little thicker every time, taking a little of the flavour of each different
wood. Then some of it goes back into the first barrel, along
with a little new wine to keep it going.'
Around the bung there was a tiny ooze, as thick as toffee,
straining to fall into the bucket beneath. As Bruno watched, it fell,
making hardly a ripple in the viscous liquid.
Gusta said softly, 'When I married, this was my dowry too.
And when Benedetta marries, it will go with her.' She was not
looking at him, her eyes carefully fastened on the barrel, but he
felt her hand reaching for his, lifting it, pressing his finger into the
thick, sticky liquid. 'Go on, try it.'
He put his finger to his lips and felt his mouth flooded with the
taste of it - old wine, and honey, and wood sap, and the almost
citrus sharpness of the vinegar itself, flowing like warmth through
his stomach and chest. He gasped.
'It's good, isn't it?' she said.
Unable to speak, Bruno nodded.
'Do you know why they call it balsamico) They used to believe
it was a balm that was able to cure anything. Any illness you had.'
She reached to the smallest barrel and carefully opened the tap,
allowing a tiny amount into the little jug. 'Even a broken heart.'

-one-

Bruno didn't tell Benedetta what her mother had said. Evidently
Gusta had a similar conversation with her daughter, though,
because Benedetta no longer confined their lovemaking to the
outdoors. Most nights she slept in his room now, and although
they never referred to it in her mother's presence, it became, like
so many things in Italian life, pubbliche bugie e verita private*; something that was accepted but never spoken of.
Even between the two of them they did not actually discuss the
implication behind Gusta's tacit acceptance of the situation: that
she approved of him as a prospective son-in-law. Perhaps if Bruno
had been absolutely certain that he did not want to marry
Benedetta he would have said something. But the truth was that
he wasn't so sure any more. I could be happy here, he found himself
thinking as he trailed through the fields behind her, finding
mushrooms or salad leaves or fruit for the table, or watched her
rolling pasta shapes with those deft fingers on the kitchen table.

'A public lie and a private truth.'

I've never found anyone before who shares my gift, let alone a
woman. I'd be crazy not to marry her. Together we'd build up the
osteria into a famous restaurant, one that people would come to from
right across Italy, and we'd make love every day and have babies and
do all the things that happy people do.
If only it was Laura.
If only it was Laura who was sharing her bed with him, who
was cooking with him, who was his friend and his lover and, yes,
whose family owned a beautiful little restaurant in the middle of
nowhere. Because no matter how wonderful a time he shared
with Benedetta, the truth was that his heart had already been
given to a girl with orange-red freckles on her shoulders. There
was simply nothing he could do about it.
Then he'd sigh, and try to stop scratching the itch in his

mind.

He went to see Hanni the mechanic to find out how the van was
coming on. The answer was that it wasn't. It was still up on
blocks, and Bruno was rather surprised to see that the wheels had

disappeared.
'That's just because I was taking a look at the brake discs, and
it was easier to get the wheels out of the way,' Hanni explained.
'Don't worry, they're around here somewhere.'
Bruno looked rather doubtfully at the heaps of rusting spare
parts that slopped up against the walls of Hanni's barn like tidal
debris on a beach. 'They are?'
'Of course. And look, don't worry. I had some news of a possible
set of spares the other day. I'm just waiting to hear.'
Bruno thanked him for being so persistent and made his way
back to the restaurant. On his way he passed a tractor which was
sporting a windscreen and a pair of windscreen wipers that
looked remarkably like those on his van. He stopped. Now that
he thought about it, had there been any glass in his van? In the
gloom of the barn, it had been hard to tell. He turned around
and went back to check, but Hanni had already disappeared and
the barn was now securely padlocked. It suddenly occurred to
him to wonder why Hanni had been fiddling with the brake
discs at all, since as far as Bruno knew the brakes were one of the
few parts of his van that worked reasonably well. Presumably the
mechanic had his reasons, but Bruno couldn't imagine what
they were.

Tommaso's restaurant was full again, though the clientele had
changed somewhat. The food might have the desired effect but it
tasted awful, and now the couples chewing their way with grim
determination through his saltimbocca or padellata di polio were
the desperate or those who simply didn't care - jaded Euro trash
businessmen, dripping with jewellery and chest hair, lunching
their perma-tanned young mistresses, or groups of drunk students
looking for the quickest route to another high. Even foreigners
had started turning up - a sure sign that II Cuoco had dropped off
the culinary map.
What was more, he had failed to stem the financial haemorrhage.
The restaurant might be booked out, but he had been
forced to buy huge amounts of drugs through the restaurant mafia
contact, Franco, and although the deliveries were as regular as
clockwork, the costs were ruinous.
"I can't believe we're losing so much money,' Dr Ferrara
shouted at him when he saw the monthly audit.
'Neither can I. Look, we've turned the corner,' Tommaso said
desperately. 'Just stick with it for a few more weeks. There'll be
more tourists then.'
'I'll have to go to the bank and arrange a bigger overdraft.
This is my pension on the line, you know.'
Tommaso paused. The last thing he wanted was to leave Dr
Ferrara penniless, but there was nothing else he could do. 'It'll be
all right,' he promised. 'Just a few more weeks.'
Here is Laura, wandering contentedly around the picture gallery
of the staggeringly beautiful Palazzo Doria-Pamphili, hand-in
hand with her handsome lover. They are both listening to audio
guides, and though the guides are just a little out of sync they turn
and nod to each other as each useful nugget of information about
the treasures on display is revealed into their ears. They spend a
long time in front of Caravaggio's Repentant Magdalene, for
Laura is now writing her final essay of the year, a thesis-length dissertation
on themes of redemption in the Roman Renaissance, and
this strangely tragic painting is one of her subjects. They note the
tiny tear, all but invisible in reproductions, glistening on the side
of the Magdalene's nose, and the wine at which she seems to cast
a longing glance, but which remains untouched, as if she must fast
in perpetual atonement.
Here is Laura with her boyfriend in Castroni's, the food store.
Her days of buying Skippy and Folger's are long gone, for she is
acclimatised now, and culinary homesickness is not among her
vices. She comes here just once a week to buy low-fat margarine
and skimmed milk, since these are never available in the street markets
where, at Kim's insistence, they do most of their shopping.
"just look at them,' Kim murmurs, casting a dark glance at a
gaggle of tourists. 'Don't they realise that the real Italy is outsider'
He speaks in Italian, something he often does with her now,
although Laura has noticed that he is more likely to do it when
there are other Americans around.
Here is Laura with her boyfriend in bed. The city is swelteringly
hot but the apartment is air-conditioned, and their bodies move
together with practised precision. There is just a tiny glitch when
Kim's headphones get caught in Laura's hair; for her lover likes to
listen to Puccini when making love, while Laura prefers silence.
But the entanglement is quickly resolved and they see-saw
smoothly on.
She does not speak to Carlotta so much now, what with being
so busy, but when she does her friend is surprised to note that
Laura sounds happy. She has lost some of her gauche otherworldliness
and embraced something of the Italian notion of bella
figura - the art of looking elegant in public, of cultivating a
sophisticated detachment from the frustrations of daily life.

There was no option but to sack Marie. Tommaso was dreading it,
but he couldn't think of an alternative.
She seemed to take it quite well, he thought. She listened to
him in silence, nodding occasionally as he explained that there was
simply no other way for II Cuoco to survive. Only a foot, tapping
dangerously, gave a hint of her feelings.
'So what you're saying is, there's no money to pay me,' she said
when he had finished.
'That's it, in a nutshell.'
'And you're not paying yourself?'
'No. I haven't been for months.'
Marie seemed to make a decision. 'Right then. I'll work for
nothing too.'
'You mean that?' He stared at her.
"I said so, didn't I? But there are two conditions.'
'What are they?'
'First, I want a share of the profits when we do make money.
And second, I want to go through the books to see why we're
losing so much. I may want to make some changes. If I could keep
this place going for all those years before you came, I can certainly
keep it going now.'

August came to Le Marche like the opening of an oven door. It
had been hot before, but now people felt as though they were
being cooked. For a month no one walked fast, or ventured out in
the afternoons; and the houses in the village closed up their shutters
as if against a storm, conserving what little coolness lingered
^side their thick stone walls, until evening brought with it a welcome
trickle of colder air.

The Galtenesi, always great meat-eaters, stopped eating lamb,
kid and pork and started eating the inferior summer meats asino
- donkey - and came di cavallo - horsemeat. There was
nothing much you could do with it - the donkey's meat was
sometimes cured, as coglioni di asino, and the horsemeat was
stewed with juniper berries and other flavourings to tenderise it.
Bruno did his best, but one just had to accept that this was not the
time of year for great meat dishes. Instead Bruno concentrated on
introducing the villagers to the richly concentrated ice creams of
his native Rome, and to granite, the flavoured ices from further
south. There was some grumbling at first when he served as a
dessert a simple paper cup of crushed ice into which a shot of mocha had been poured, or a scoop of ice cream made from the
peaches that now hung ripe in every garden, but the locals soon
discovered how refreshing they were and devoured them eagerly.
There were tourists in Le Marche now - not many, by comparison
with other parts of Italy, most of them just passing through
en route for the cooler seaside resorts of Ancona and Rimini. Ferragosto, August the fifteenth, when Rome closed down for its
annual holiday, came and went without Bruno noticing. Only
when the heat began to wane and the woods began to fill with
skylarks and thrushes, migrating gradually southwards along with
the warm weather, did he stop and think that by now Laura, too,
would have gone back to America, her studies in Italy over.
And then, suddenly, August was gone and he was busy again.
There were myrtle berries to pick and then to serve gratinated
with a topping of mascarpone. There were blackberries to gather,
to make into pastries and sorbets. Chestnuts and walnuts added
their sweet richness to pasta sauces and stews. The walnut trees
were surrounded with bibs of white netting to catch any prematurely
falling fruit. Whole families climbed the trees to pick them,
or walked down the rows of grapes in the vineyards with panniers
on their backs, filling them with the fruit that would become the
local wine.
And there was Benedetta. Each new harvest was an excuse to
take to the fields above the village and, as soon as their baskets
were full, to make love. And each night, too, when the dishes were
finally washed and put back in their racks above the range to dry,
there was the darkness of his bedroom, and her warm body slipping
quietly into his bed while her mother snored softly in the
room below.
The woods were dense with funghi now. Shaggy ink caps grew
along the verges of the lanes, with chanterelles and spugnoli just a
few yards further in. Porcini, king of mushrooms, dotted the gaps
between beech trees, and the even more splendid Caesar's mushroom,
the ovolo, clustered under the gnarled roots of oaks in twos
and threes like eggs in a nest. As if from nowhere, truffle-hunters
appeared in the village, taciturn individuals who downed a solitary distillato in the bar before heading off to the woods with their
dogs and an air of feigned nonchalance, careful not to let anyone
know exactly where they would be looking. Benedetta and Bruno
paid them little heed. They had their own secret places.
Her abilityr to smell out truffles without the aid of a dog
amazed him. His own palate, so highly attuned to scents and
tastes in the kitchen, was thoroughly outclassed. She was determined
to teach him, however, and little by little he too began to
be able to discern the faint feral perfume they trailed on the still
night air.
These truffles were a different thing altogether from the
summer truffle he and Benedetta had found earlier in the year.
Pale in colour, and as large as potatoes, they were both awesomely
pungent and deeply intoxicating. Gusta and Benedetta threw
them into every dish as casually as if they were throwing in parsley,
and after a while Bruno did the same. He would never forget the
first time they cooked a wild boar with celery and truffles: the
dark, almost rank meat and the sulphuric reek of the tuber combined
to form a taste that made him shiver.
He was aware that Benedetta was deliberately cooking dishes
designed to bind him to her. As well as the truffles there was robiola
di bee, a cheese made from the milk of a pregnant ewe, rich in
pheromones. There were fiery little diavolesi: strong chilli peppers
that had been left to dry in the sun. Plates ofTried funghi included i
morsels of amanita, the ambrosia of the gods, said to be a natural
narcotic. He didn't mind. He was doing the same to her:
offering her unusual gelati flavoured with saffron, the delicate
stigmas of the crocus flower; elaborate tarts of myrtle and chocolate;
salads made with lichens and even acorns from her beloved
woods. It was a game they played, based on their intimate appreciation
of the taste of each other's body, so that the food and the
sex became one harmonious whole, and it became impossible to
say where eating ended and lovemaking began. He no longer
went to enquire about his van. Its red bonnet had appeared on
one of the olive lorries, and he thought he recognised its headlights
on somebody else's scooter. He noticed, too, that when
Hanni the mechanic sat down to eat at the osteria, he got up
again without paying, which made Bruno laugh. Never mind: the
body of the dead van had been recycled into the life of the village,
like a fallen log in the woods sprouting orecchietti, or trombette di
morte growing on the rich earth of a grave.

A different kind of tourist came to the restaurant now from as
far away as Urbino and Pesaro. These were people who were serious
about their food. In particular they came to eat the seasonal
truffles, and Bruno served plate after plate of came al albese slices
of raw beef covered with celery, parmesan, truffle shavings
and olive oil - and salads of caesar mushrooms, truffles and potatoes.
These dishes were simple to prepare but, with truffles selling
for over two thousand euros a kilo, ridiculously profitable.
Occasionally Gusta pressed huge piles of banknotes on Bruno,
which he accepted without counting.


The car that made its way up the winding road from the valley was
hired, and its occupants clearly tourists: they stopped several times
to admire the views, and when they finally parked in the piazza
and folded up their touring map they first of all went off to take a
look round the church, the war memorial and the rest of the
sights. But even the most determined sightseer could not find
much to detain them in Galteni, and it was inevitable that, come
lunchtime, they would settle themselves at a table for two and wait
contentedly for Gusta to come and tell them what was on offer

that day.
Gusta's face, when she came into the kitchen with their order,
bore the studiously blank expression she put on whenever she was
confronted by the oddness of strangers.
'One truffle salad, to shared she said pointedly.
'And?' Benedetta asked, not looking up from the stove.
'And nothing. No pasta. No secoyido. A glass of'wine each. And
they want to know what kinds of mineral water we have.' She
shrugged. 'They're foreigners, of course.'
Since Gusta used the word foreigners to describe anyone from
beyond the valley, Bruno didn't pay much attention. 'I'll make the
salad a large one then. No point in sending them away hungry.'
He began to arrange the ingredients in a dish.
Then he heard her voice.
The small kitchen window overlooked the square where the
tables were and conversation often drifted in - so much so that
Benedetta and Gusta would sometimes join in, shouting their
contributions over the crash of pans. Benedetta was searing meat
now, and the hiss made it hard for him to hear. Bruno put a hand
on her arm to stop her and listened.
'Probably about another hour or two from here to Urbino,' a
man's voice was saying, in American.
'So there'll be plenty' of time to go right up to the top,' his
companion agreed. The hairs on the back of Bruno's neck tingled,
and his heart stood still.
Benedetta looked at his face. 'What's wrong?'
'Nothing. I thought - nothing.'
Through the window, they heard the voices again.
'. . . can't believe how much cooler it is up here than Rome,1 the man was saying.
'And so beautiful. And that food smells fantastic! When he heard her say that, Bruno was sure. He put down his
knife and went through to the tiny bar, from where he could see

all the tables.
She was thinner than when he'd last seen her, and she was
wearing sunglasses, but there was no mistaking the sweep of her
neck or the way she sat with her long legs spread out over the
chair next to her. He felt dizzy.
'It's her, isn't it?' Benedetta said softly beside him. He nodded,
unable to speak.
'Do you want to speak to her?'
He shook his head and made his way back to the kitchen.
There was a dish of snails to prepare, ordered by the Luchetta
family, and he tried to force his mind to concentrate as he cleaned
them. But his hands were shaking and the slippery shells clattered
all over the floor.
Benedetta grabbed a board and began chopping livers in
silence. Thwick - thwick - thwick went the knife through the soft
flesh, just a little harder than was necessary.
'I'm sorry,' Bruno said at last.
'For what?' Benedetta's reply was even sharper than the knife.
'For being upset, I suppose.'
Benedetta tipped the chopping board against the pan and
scraped the livers into the bubbling oil. 'You can't help the way
you feel.'
And nor can you, Bruno thought, looking at the angry flush on
the back of Benedetta's neck.
"I did think I was over her,' he said apologetically.
'And I always knew you weren't.'
He opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again.
'She's pretty,' Benedetta said, taking an onion and slicing it in
a dozen deft movements before reaching for another.
'Yes.'
'Prettier than me.'
'No,' he protested. 'Just - different.'
'And you love her.'
It wasn't said as a question, but it was a question nevertheless,
and Bruno knew he had to try to answer it. 'Well,' he began, 'it's
complicated. I fell in love with her but she didn't love me back,
and I'm not sure whether - I mean, they say you can't really be in
love with someone unless they love you too, don't they?'
'That's what they say.'
He looked at her but she was concentrating on what she was
doing. Her voice was a little thick, but that might just have been
the onions.
'So you told her that you loved her, and she told you she wasn't
interested,' Benedetta went on. 'What happened next?'
'It was a bit more complicated than that,' Bruno confessed.
'She was in love with my best friend, and - well, it all sort of
spiralled from there.'
Benedetta wiped her hands and poured two glasses of wine
from the bottle that stood open by the stove.
"I think you'd better tell me exactly what happened,' she said

gently.
So Bruno talked, and Benedetta listened and nodded, cooking
while she did so, and Gusta, coming in and out of the kitchen with
empty plates, pretended she wasn't eavesdropping.
'And that's why I don't want to go and speak to her,' Bruno
said finally. 'She thinks I'm a complete pervert and I don't blame

her.'
'Nor do I.'
'Thanks,' he said wearily. 'Anyway, it's best she just has her
lunch and leaves.'
'Perhaps.'
At that moment there was the sound of shouting from outside,
followed shortly afterwards by the unmistakable sound of someone
retching. Bruno heard Laura's voice in the bar. She sounded panicked. 'Semi, signora, is there a doctor? My friend has been
taken ill.'
Bruno glanced at Benedetta but her face betrayed nothing.
They heard Gusta's voice saying that she would call for the doctor
straight away. In the meantime, they would make her friend comfortable
on a bed. Benedetta went to see if she could help.
'What's all that about?' Bruno asked when all was quiet and
Benedetta was back in the kitchen.
'It must have been the funghi.''
'In what way?'
'Some people have an allergic reaction to coprini*. Particularly
if they mix them with alcohol. He must be one of those.' She gave
him a blank look. 'He'll be laid up for at least two hours. There's nothing the doctor can do, but he'll have to wait for him anyway,
and my mother will give him some aceto balsamico to settle his
stomach.'
'Benedetta, we don't have any coprini.'' 'No, but that's because I used them all.'
He gave up. It seemed to him more likely that Laura's companion
was suffering from a small amount of one of those
poisonous mushrooms that Benedetta insisted on collecting
during their forays into the woods. But the important thing now
was what he was going to do about Laura.
"I can't talk to her,' he decided. 'She thinks we've given her
boyfriend food-poisoning, for God's sake. I can't go out there and
start talking to her as if nothing's happened.'

'No,' Benedetta agreed. 'But my mother's already told her
about the effects of coprini, and of course we're not going to
charge her for her meal, so . . .'
'. . . so I could cook her a dolce on the house, by way of
apology.'
'Brilliant. What about the tart with the myrtle berries?'
He shook his head. 'Too sweet.'
'Then baked figs?'
'Too straightforward.' lZuppa ingleseV 'Too heavy.'
She threw up her hands. 'Your turn, then, maestro. What are
you going to cook her?'
"I don't know,' he said slowly. As he spoke his hands were
already reaching for ingredients. Figs, yes, and cream, and nuts. Some sort of cake? 'But whatever it is, I don't think there's a
recipe for it.'
He was not thinking now, but improvising. No: even improvising
wasn't the right word for what he was doing, Benedetta
thought as she watched him juggle candied fruits and pastry
cream, and pound hazlenuts into a creamy paste. Bruno was composing.
Occasionally she made a comment, or a quiet suggestion,
but he could barely hear her, so focused was he on the feel and
taste of what was in his hands.
Eventually it was done. He blinked, and there in front of him
was a kind of trifle cake, a many-layered mousse that was sweet
and bitter, smooth and sharp, cold on the outside and warm
underneath: a dessert, he thought, that was as rich and as simple
as life itself.
'Well done,' Benedetta commented. 'Although it has to be
said, it might be better prepared in advance next time.'
He stared at her. How long had he been cooking? He had no
idea. Then he heard the church bells striking four. Four o'clock!
He had been making this dessert for over an hour.
'I'll take it to her,' Benedetta said beside him.
'Are you sure?'
"I said so, didn't I? She should taste it first, before she knows
who it's from.'
He knew what an extraordinary thing it was that she was offering
to do. He watched as Benedetta picked up the little plate. She
touched her finger to the side of the cake, picked up a crumb and
tasted it. For a moment her eyes met his, and there was something
in them he didn't quite understand. Then she took his dolce outside.
Laura had been terrified when Kim started having convulsions at
the table, but now the doctor had confirmed that it was just an
allergic reaction to a particular type of mushroom, and that he
would be right as rain within a few hours if he was left to sleep
quietly. The other customers and the lady who ran the place were
sympathetic and helpful, and now, with the sun filtering through
the trees and the amazing view beyond the war memorial to entertain
her, and a bottle of the restaurant's best wine open in front of
her, she was feeling quite mellow. She helped herself to another
glass, a little guiltily. Poor Kim. On the other hand, if he were here
he would almost certainly be reminding her of the one-glass-a-day
rule, and it was really rather nice to be able to indulge herself a
little.
Heavens. Here was one of the kitchen staff coming towards
her, a strikingly pretty girl in a white jacket, her black hair cascading
over her shoulders in defiance of all normal kitchen
regulations. She was bearing a plate on which a dessert sat, an
island in a little lake of sauce. The girl put it down in front of her
and said, 'Here. This is for you. Cooked specially by our chef, with
his compliments.'
Was it her imagination, Laura wondered, or did the other girl's
eyes search her face with a quizzical look while she spoke, as if she
was subjecting Laura to some kind of scrutiny?
'Oh, thank you,' Laura began. 'But I couldn't. You see, I don't
eat desserts.'
'And a vin santo^ the girl said, ignoring her and placing a glass
of golden liquid on the table.
'No, really,' Laura said firmly. 'Please take it away.' But the girl
had already gone.
Laura told herself she didn't want to appear rude. She would
have a couple of mouthfuls, and she could always slip the rest to
the dogs that lay panting in the shade of the church wall. She
pushed the teaspoon into the top of the pudding, through the
layer of sauce, and tried a little.
The sauce. Memories flooded into her brain. It was zabaione. She had a sudden vision of herself, that first night in Tommaso's
apartment, licking sauce from her fingers.
Coffee. The next taste was coffee. Memories of Gennaro's
espressos, and mornings in bed with a cup of cappuccino . . . but
what was this? Bread soaked in sweet wine. And nuts - a thin
layer of hazelnut paste - and then fresh white peaches, sweet as sex ltself, and then a layer of black chocolate so strong and bitter she
almost stopped dead. There was more sweetness beyond it,
though: a layer of pastry flavoured with blackberries; and, right at
the centre, a single tiny fig.
She put down the spoon, amazed. It was all gone. She had
eaten it without being aware of eating, her mind in a reverie.
'Did you like it?'
She looked up. Somehow, she wasn't surprised. 'What was it?'
she asked.
'It doesn't have a name,' Bruno said. 'It's just - it's just the

food of love.'
'How do you make it, if it doesn't have a name?'
'Well, there's a sort of recipe.'
She was silent, remembering the apology that Tommaso had
texted her once, still stored on her phone. It seemed so long ago.
As if reading her thoughts, Bruno said: 'Take one American
girl . . .'
She looked at him, surprised.
'With honey-coloured skin,' Bruno continued softly, 'and
freckles like orange-red flakes of chilli on her shoulders. Fill her
with flavours, with basil and tomatoes and pine nuts and parsley.
Warm her gently between your hands--'
'It was you,'' she said, realising at last.
'Yes,' he agreed. 'It was always me.'
'You're the cook. And Tommaso . . .'
'Tommaso is a fine person in many ways. But not a chef.'
She closed her eyes. 'Why?'
'As a favour to Tommaso, originally. And then - I really did love
you, and I loved to see you eat. And it all got horribly complicated,
but I was too stupid to see that it would end the way it did, and
before I knew it everyone was shouting at everyone else.'
'There was a lot of shouting, wasn't there?' she agreed with the
faintest of smiles.
There was a sudden commotion at the door of the osteria. Gusta's voice could be heard, and it was clear that she was arguing
with someone. A moment later Kim appeared, looking pale and
angry, with Gusta and Benedetta just behind him.
'Sweetheart,' he said icily, stopping at Laura's table. 'When we
ordered, do you recall seeing anything like a menu?' There was a
note of petulance in his voice Laura hadn't heard before.
"I guess not,' she said.
'And do you remember reading, on this non-existent menu, a
non-existent warning to the effect that dangerous mushrooms
were being served at this restaurant which might precipitate an
allergic reaction?'
He waited. Laura was clearly meant to play her part in his
tirade. With an apologetic glance at Bruno, she muttered, 'No.'
'Was there any verbal warning, explanation or other rider to the
effect that this meal was actually life-threatening?'
'Not that I heard,' she said, looking at the ground.
'Not that you heard.' He turned to Gusta, who was standing
with her arms folded and a face like a dog that has just swallowed
a wasp. 'And thats why I want the name of your lawyer. So that I
can sue your fat ass into the ground.'
Laura flinched visibly, though Gusta herself didn't blink.
'It might have been the wine,' Benedetta said. She shrugged.
'Everybody knows that you have to be careful if you drink white
wine with mushrooms.'
'Everybody except me,' Kim said firmly. 'And who served me
this wine?' He pointed at Gusta. 'She did. Did she tell me to be
careful? No, she did not.'
Bruno stood up. "I prepared the food,' he said calmly. 'If
anyone's going to be sued, it's me. I'll happily give you my name
and address, though I'm afraid I don't have a lawyer.'
There was a brief silence as the two men stared at each other;
Kim still flushed with rage, Bruno apparently unconcerned. 'Oh,
forget it,' Kim snapped at last. 'Come on, Laura. We're going.' He
stalked off to where their car was parked next to the church, leaving
Laura to follow.
'I'm so sorry,' she said awkwardly to Gusta. 'He doesn't like
being made to look stupid, that's all. It was,' she hesitated, 'it was
really good to see you, Bruno.'
'When do you go back?'
'To Rome? Right away.'
"I meant to America.'
'Next week. I've left it as late as I can, but I have to get back for

college.'
He nodded. She was flying away, like the skylarks. He watched
the two of them buckle themselves into the car, and then the car
itself move off rapidly down the hill, towards the autostrada, and
Rome.

They went back into the kitchen to finish clearing up. For a long
time nobody spoke..After a while Benedetta announced that she
was going up to her room to rest. Bruno tried her door later, but
it was locked.
He had to wait until much later, when the evening service was
over and the house was quiet, before he was able to speak to her.
There was no answer when he knocked, but this time when he
tried the door it opened.
She was sitting at her dressing table, brushing her long black
hair. 'Go away,' she said without turning around.
He sat down on the end of the bed. "I wanted to say thank
you,' he began. 'What you did earlier - that was unbelievably
generous.'
'Too generous.'
'What do you mean?'
'If I really cared that much about you, I wouldn't have helped
you go after someone else.'
'You cared as my friend,' he said gently. 'That means a lot to

me, Benedetta.'
'That's what we are, is it - friends who have sex?'
'You're my mirror image, Benedetta. We understand each
other. We even have the same gift. If I'd never met Laura I'd
want to be with you, but I did meet her.'
'So why didn't you go after her today?'
He shrugged. "I did my best.'
'Oh, sure. You offered to let her boyfriend sue you. Nice work.'
'What was I meant to do?'
'You were meant to hit him. Wasn't it obvious?' She stamped
her foot. "I went to a lot of time and trouble to arrange things so
that you and he were out there, with everyone shouting, and you
didn't even hit him! What sort of an Italian are you?'
'Not a very good one, evidently,' he muttered.
"I should have realised you were spineless when you first
arrived, and you never tried to grab my ass when we were together
in the kitchen.'
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Benedetta was just
getting warmed up and was brooking no interruptions.
'You know your problem, Bruno? Menefreghismo*. You don't
really give a shit about anything or anyone apart from your cooking.
Not her, and certainly not me.'
'That's not true,' he protested.
'Isn't it? Did you even ask Laura to choose you over that idiot
today?'
'No,' he admitted.
'And why not?'
'Because she would have chosen him.'
'How would you know, if you haven't asked her?'

'Look at me,' he said hopelessly.
'What do you mean?'
'Just - look at me.' He gestured at his own face in the mirror.
'That guy she was with - he's good-looking. Tommaso - he's

*An expression that combines The nefregd' - 'I don't give a damn' - and ''machismo': in other words a cultivated attitude of not bothering.
good-looking. Laura's beautiful. Why should she choose a guy like
me when she can have a guy like that?'
There was a brief pause, during which Benedetta regarded him
with narrowed eyes. 'You're beautiful, too, of course,' he added
belatedly.
'Thank you. So why did I sleep with you?'
'I've absolutely no idea,' he confessed. 'I'm very glad you did,
but it's a complete mystery to me.'
'Santa CieloP she cried in exasperation. She dragged his face
closer to the mirror. 'Tell me, Quasimodo,' she commanded,
'which part of you exactly is so ugly?'
'Well . . .' He made a vague gesture. 'All of me.'
'Specifics, please.1
'My nose,' he muttered.
'Your palate, you mean? The secret of your success?'
'When I was little, other kids used to say things.'

'Such as?'
'"Can I plug you into the TV so we can pick up the football in
Tokyo?"'
'Is that all?'
'"Your nose is so long your ID card won't fold."'
'Ha! Very good.'
'"Your nose is so long that if you shake your head you'll hit the
person next to you . . . Your nose is so long that if you sneeze we'll
hear an echo . . . Your nose is so long that if you were a sheep
you'd starve to death--"'
'Enough about the nose,' Benedetta snapped, putting up her
hands. 'Bruno, you have a perfectly normal Roman nose. What else?"
'I'm overweight.'
'No, you're not.'
It was true: hard work, vigorous lovemaking and the health)'
diet of Le Marche had trimmed the extra pounds from his frame. He shrugged. 'I'm just not good-looking enough. Not for a
woman like Laura.'
'Then I have a question for you.'
'Go ahead.'
'This friend of yours, Tommaso. He's nice to look at, you say?'
'Undoubtedly. Women throw themselves at him.'
'But he can't cook?'
'Good God, no.'
Benedetta held up a comb from her table. 'This is a magic
wand. Now pay attention, because I am going to offer you the
chance to make one wish. Understand?'
"I think so.'
'If you want, you can wish that you become as good-looking as Tommaso - but at the same time, you will become like Tommaso
in every other way as well, with Tommaso's talent for cooking.'
He saw what she was getting at, and the realisation took his
breath away.
'So. Just say the word and you will become handsome and talentless,
just like Tommaso. That's what you want, isn't it?' She
raised the comb expectantly.
'No!' He stared at her. 'If it meant I couldn't cook, I wouldn't
want to be like anyone else. Cooking is who I am.'
'Exactly,' Benedetta said quietly. 'That's who you are. So stop
regretting that God has made you exactly the way you actually
want to be.' She tossed the comb back on to the dressing table.
'And if you want to be with Laura, go to Rome and tell her so.
Tell her so, and keep telling her until she understands.'
He kissed her, wrapping his arms round her and hugging her until
she gasped. 'Thank you,' he whispered. 'Thank you for everything.'
'Now get out. Go on. And take your hands off my tits. They're
not yours any more.'

The next morning he was up early, battering at the door of
Hanni's barn and shouting that he needed his van back.

'Come in,' Hanni said, opening the barn door. 'And don't
Worry. I got the message yesterday.'
Bruno had no time to wonder exactly what he meant. 'It's
mended? You've finally got the parts?'
'More or less. Of course, I had to improvise a little.' He led the
way to where, in the middle of the barn, a strange vehicle now
stood. It had the body of Bruno's van, the front wheels of a tractor,
and the pop-up headlamps of a very old Alfa Romeo. Inside,
Bruno could see that where the steering wheel had once been
there was now a pair of scooter handlebars. 'It may not look
much,' Hanni added unnecessarily, 'but I reckon it'll get you as far
as Rome. After all, it's downhill most of the way, isn't it?'

'In the relationship of its parts, the pattern of a complete Italian
meal is very like that of a civilised life. No dish overwhelms
another, either in quantity or in flavour, each leaves room for
new appeals to the eye and palate; each fresh sensation of taste,
colour and texture interlaces with a lingering recollection of the
last. To make time to eat as Italians still do is to share in their
inexhaustible gift for making art out of life.'

Marcf.lla Hazan, The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

Laura had arranged to meet Judith for lunch at one of her
favourite restaurants, Cecchino's. It was not, Judith thought as she
entered the long, low, tunnel-like room, the sort of place she
would have chosen herself. For one thing, it was distinctly lacking
in what the guidebooks would call 'ambience'. The tables were
plain and functional; the lights, which hung directly overhead,
were relentlessly bright; and the waiters, who all seemed to be at
least sixty, could barely manage a token smile, even for beautiful
young women dining without male company. But the food, Laura
had assured her, would more than make up for these shortcomings.
Judith
paused by the door. On a trolley, displayed as proudly as
any array of desserts, were the specialities of the day: a dozen or so
calves' feet, neatly laid out in rows, along with several mounds of
a white, gristle-like substance whose function in the body Judith
could only guess at. She made a face. Then because, after all, this
was a girl who for the past year had happily worn a phial of blood
around her neck, she shrugged and looked around for her friend.

Laura had been seated right at the back, a bottle of wine already
open on the table. Her lunches with Judith were a chance to
abandon Kim's dietary strictures and restricted intake of alcohol,
and Laura had already made inroads into her first glass of

Sangiovese.
'Hey, girl,' Judith said, kissing her friend before taking the
other seat. 'How was your trip?'
'Great. But, ah, a bit shorter than we planned.'
Judith raised an eyebrow.
'Kim got sick. A touch of mushroom poisoning.'
Judith sensed there was something she wasn't being told. But
the waiter had arrived at their table, flipping open his order pad
with a bored expression that suggested he knew already what they
were going to eat.
He had clearly not expected to be interrogated fiercely, in
Italian, about the day's specials. The cart by the door was wheeled
over and a long discussion ensued, during which the waiter began
to look at Laura in a different light. To discuss gristle with knowledge
and passion in Cecchino's is to command instant respect, no
matter what your appearance or country of origin.
Eventually the girls ordered - rigatoni con la pagliata and zampetti
for Laura, bucatini all' amatriciana and scottadito for
Judith - and Judith was able to tease some of the details of Kim's
misadventure out of her friend. Eventually Laura got to the part
where she had met Bruno unexpectedly in Le Marehe. Judith
gasped and prepared to dispense sympathy. Knowing how much
Laura hated even to hear Bruno or Tommaso's name, she could
see how meeting him by chance must have been an unsettling
experience. As yet more details tumbled out of Laura's mouth,
Judith became increasingly horrified.
'So they were lying to you? All that time) That's--' She wanted
to say 'humiliating', but she settled for the milder 'weird'.
'Yes,' Laura said. 'All the time I thought it was Tommaso doing
the cooking, it was actually Bruno.'
'But why?'
Laura shrugged. "I suppose--' She stopped. "I suppose because
he was in love with me.'
'Tommaso?'
'No. I think Tommaso - well, if it hadn't been for the food it
would only ever have been a quick fling. Of course, I thought that
because he was cooking for me like that, it must be something
more he wanted. Whereas Bruno . . .' She hesitated. 'Bruno was
probably someone I'd never have looked at twice, to be honest.
And I think he knew that. So he went on cooking for me because
it was all he could do.'
'You're well shot of both of them,' Judith said. 'And all's well
that ends well - if it hadn't been for Bruno and Tommaso, you'd
never have got together with Kim.'
'Absolutely,' Laura said. But there was a note of doubt in her
voice which her friend immediately picked up on.
'Things are all right with Kim?'
'Oh, of course,' Laura assured her. 'Things with Kim are great.'
Because although she knew Judith very well by now, there were
some things - some niggling doubts - that you couldn't say even
to your best friends without seeming - well, a bit disloyal.

Hanni had been partly right: the way to Rome lay downhill as far
as the valley and the long road-tunnel of the Furlo gorge, but after
that there were more mountains to cross - the fearsomely high
Sibylline peaks, capped with snow even at this time of year. The
van gasped for breath, and Bruno gasped with cold, since a heating
system was not one of the luxuries Hanni had thought worth
installing. His maximum speed was barely more than a tractor's,
thanks to the various modifications, and it was an exhausting day
and a half's drive before signs to familiar towns such as Frascati,
Nemi and Marino came into view. He stopped as infrequently as
he could. Before leaving, Gusta had given him a basket of food:
some piadina and salume to eat on the way, and other culinary
treasures for the task ahead: two large white truffles, the finest
they had, prised from the roots of a nut tree and now wrapped
separately in foil to preserve their aroma; a sheep's cheese matured
in the cool limestone caves beneath the village; and a tiny flagon
of the family's precious aceto balsamico. At the very bottom of the
basket, wrapped in a piece of old brown canvas, he found four
chef's knives, their blades ancient and discoloured but their cutting
edges gleaming and newly honed.

When he finally entered Rome, Bruno's first task, however, was
not to find Laura but to repair another fractured relationship. He
drove slowly through the outskirts, oblivious to the whistles and
honks of his fellow motorists, and finally drew up outside the little
building that had once housed II Cuoco. With a heavy heart he
pushed open the door.
He stopped, amazed. It was full. More than full: there were
people waiting patieiuly at the bar for tables. The long cellar where
once bottles of wine had gathered dust had been opened up to
make more space; the wall between the kitchen and the main
dining room knocked through; and there was Tommaso, cheerfully
cooking away to the accompaniment of deafening rock music--
Pizza. At every table, Bruno now saw, they were eating pizza.
He laughed out loud. Of course! As he watched, his old friend
flung a huge ball of dough into the air, spinning it nonchalantly
above his head to aerate it before slamming it down on to the
counter again and grabbing a pair of rolling pins to bang it flat in
a blur of movement, like a drummer. There was a burst of
whistling and applause from the waiting customers, which
Tommaso acknowledged with a huge grin and a roll of his shoulders,
before flicking the pizza across the kitchen into the
wood-fired oven as casually as if it were a Frisbee. Now that Bruno
looked more carefully, he realised that many of the adoring customers
were young women, and that they were not so much
hanging round the bar as hanging round the kitchen, moving
their bodies in time to the music.
Another familiar figure rushed past. It was Marie. If Tommaso
was drawing plenty of female admiration, Marie was getting the
same from the men in the room. Her top was the shortest Bruno
had ever seen, exposing a swathe of brown midriff, and instead of
an order pad she had been writing orders directly on to her arms,
legs and even her stomach, which were covered in scribbles of different
colours. Together with her newly pierced eyebrow,
lowr-slung hipster jeans and cowboy boots, she looked more
like a rock chick than a waitress. He noticed, too, that the normal
rules of restaurant service seemed to have broken down: when you
saw a pizza going past, you grabbed a slice, before passing the
plate on to your neighbour.
He made his way over to the kitchen, squeezing through the
crowd. There was a pizza on the counter in front of him and he
broke off a tiny piece to try it. It was really very good - a thin
Roman crust, a slather of fresh tomato pulp, some chunks of
creamy buffalo mozzarella, sea salt and two fresh basil leaves,
nothing else. As he watched, Tommaso added a looping signature
of olive oil to the one he was making. The oil, Bruno was pleased
to note, was from the same estate he had used himself when cooking
here - though he had never been able to pour it from over his
head, like a bartender making a cocktail, the way Tommaso was
doing now.
'Tommaso,' he yelled over the din.
Tommaso saw him and froze for a moment. Then he wiped his
hands on his apron and clapped Bruno on the shoulder. 'How are
you? I
didn't expect to see you here, old friend.'
'Neither did I. Tommaso, I'm sorry I went off like that.'
'My fault. I overreacted about that girl. What do you think of
the place now?' He spread his hands proudly.

'Well, it's the first time I've ever seen a restaurant with a mosh
pit.'
'Isn't it great?' A worried look crossed Tommaso's face. "I suppose
you want your job back. But I should warn you, our new
clientele doesn't go a bundle on calves' intestines and all that

shit.'
'It's all right, I don't want a job,' Bruno assured him. 'I've
come to look for Laura.' He noted the way Tommaso was able to
keep track of half a dozen pizzas even while they were talking:
pounding the dough on one, dragging another out of the oven,
sliding a third down the counter for collection by a waitress, and
still finding time to play air-guitar on his rolling pin to Status
Quo's 'Caroline'.
'Is this music ironic?' he shouted.
Tronic? Never heard of them. This is the Quo.'
Bruno gave up. 'Listen, I'll see you later. Oh, and this is for
you.' He took one of the foil packages from out of his pocket.
'We don't do that stuff any more,' Tommaso yelled.
'It's a truffle. Just grate it on the pizzas.' He gestured at the
crowds. 'It'll be the best pizza they've ever had.'

He drove to the Residencia Magdalena. But Laura's name was not
on any of the doorbells. Eventually he stopped someone coming
out and asked if they knew which apartment was hers.
"I don't think she's here,' the man explained. 'This is a summer
school course on Etruscan history. I guess the regular students had

to leave.'
'Do you know where she's gone?'
'Sorry.' The man shrugged. 'You could try the university office.
They may have an address for her.'
He drove around the streets of Trastevere, searching for her.
He knew it was hopeless but he couldn't bear to do nothing.
Eventually, well after midnight, he went back to the little side
street that snaked down the hill from the Viale Glorioso. It
occurred to him that he hadn't actually asked Tommaso if he
would mind him sleeping there: it was perfectly possible his friend
had a new roommate now.
He climbed the stairs to the top floor and let himself in. It was
quiet and dark. Then, from the direction of Tommaso's room, he
heard a familiar sound.
'Oh - ah - oh - oh--'
Laura.
He heard another female gasp, and Tommaso laughing throatily
in response. His blood boiled. Kicking open the bedroom door,
he flicked the lights on.
iScusi,'' he said apologetically as Tommaso and Marie stopped
what they were doing and stared at him. "I thought - ah, that is I'll
just go now.'
'Nice to have you back,' Tommaso called as Bruno beat a hasty
retreat.

Gennaro was so delighted to see his van again, he offered to take
it back for what Bruno had paid for it, plus free espresso and cornetti,
a deal that Bruno thought remarkably generous.
'I'm impressed by these modifications you've added,' Gennaro
explained. 'Not to mention the old girl's homing instinct, of
course.'
If only I had a homing instinct for Laura, Bruno thought
gloomily. He had already phoned the university office and got a
recorded announcement saying it was shut until term started the
following week.
'But a week's not long to wait, is it?' Marie asked, her arm
looped casually through Tommaso's as they drank their coffees.
'No, but in a week's time, give or take a few days, Laura's next
term will start too - in the US. If I leave it until then it'll be too
late. She'll have gone back home.' He sighed, then a thought
occurred to him. 'Tommaso - her mobile phone number. It's
programmed into your phone!'
'Ah. It was, yes. But Marie has wiped all my old numbers from
my card.'
'An accident,' Marie shrugged.
'Damn. So what do I do?'
A girl roared past them on a scooter, helmetless, her dark hair
flowing out in her own slipstream like a cape. Automatically,
Tommaso turned his head to look. When his gaze returned to the
others, Marie slapped his face, once, very hard. Tommaso continued,
as if this were barely worth remarking on, "I guess Carlotta
could tell you her number.'
'It's like training a dog,' Marie explained under her breath to
Bruno, seeing his puzzled expression. 'Carrot and stick. That's the
stick.'
'What's the carrot?'
She smiled and patted her breasts.
"I see,' Bruno said. 'Tell me, do you know about the cupboard?'
'I'm the only girl in the cupboard now.'
'Nice work, Marie,' he said, impressed. 'And the accident with
the phone numbers . . . ?'
Marie shrugged enigmatically.
'Will you two listen to me?' Tommaso complained. 'It's a good
idea. We phone Carlotta, she tells us where Laura is.'
'Except we don't have Carlotta's number.'
'Maybe not, but we know a man who does.'
Bruno looked at him quizzically. 'Dr Ferrara,' Tommaso
explained. 'Remember? My backer, who just happens to think the
sun shines out of my culo?
But when they called Dr Ferrara, they discovered he was out of

town.
'We'll just have to look for her ourselves,' Marie decided.
'Where does she like to hang out, Bruno?'
He shrugged. 'Art galleries, mostly.'
'Then that's where we'll look.'
'Art galleries?' Tommaso looked pained. Marie poked him in
the ribs.
'Yes, art galleries. And don't think you're not helping, because
you are.'
There are over five hundred art galleries in Rome. By the end of
the day the three of them had succeeded in visiting twenty-five.
'This is hopeless,' Tommaso groaned. "I have to work this
evening and I'm already exhausted.'
'I'll come and help in the restaurant,' Bruno offered. 'It's the
least I can do.'
Tommaso looked stern. 'OK - but remember, my customers
have come for pizza, not fancy cooking.'
Bruno would have laughed if he hadn't been so worried about
finding Laura. 'So what are you telling me? That I mustn't get too
creative?'
'Exactly. We do Margherita, Marinara, Romana and Funghi.
Our motto is: you want anything else, you eat somewhere else.'
'That's fine by me. I'll just do what you tell me,' Bruno promised.

While
Tommaso delighted his female fans by kneading the dough
in swooping, flamboyant gestures, spinning it like a lasso or tossing
it from hand to hand, Bruno concentrated on quietly adding
the toppings. It was undemanding work and he was able to let his
mind return to the problem of finding Laura. He knew she went
to a gym but he couldn't remember which one, and in any case he
guessed that you couldn't hang around gyms all day watching the
customers. What was left? Bars, he supposed. He realised he had
absolutely no idea where Americans hung out in Rome. He lifted
his head, thinking that there were bound to be some Americans in
the crowd waiting for pizza. He would ask them where he should
search.
He looked up, straight into Laura's eyes.
There was a group drinking beers near the entrance. Laura was
standing with a bottle in her hand, blowing across the top of it
absent-mindedly as she listened to something one of her companions
was saying. Then she looked up, saw Bruno staring at her,
with Tommaso standing next to him, and her face darkened. She
said something to the person next to her and turned towards the
door.
She's going, Bruno thought. She's going and I'll never see her
again.
He leaped on to the counter. The crowd, thinking this was
part of the show, roared their approval. Bruno jumped down the
other side and tried to force his way through. It was impossible.
They were packed too closely and, because anyone in a white
jacket could be distributing pizza, they were trying to get closer to
him, not give him space. He pushed and shoved but it was like
trying to swim through treacle, and he made no headway.
He had an idea. Turning back to the bar, he got up on the
counter again. This time when the crowd roared he simply fell forwards
on to their hands as if he were stage-diving.
For one awful moment he thought they were going to let him
fall, then he felt himself bouncing back up again, carried aloft
towards the back of the room on a moving conveyor belt of hands.
Of Laura, though, he could see no sign.
Running out into the street, he thought he saw a figure hurrying
round the corner. He ran after it. Yes, it was her: she was
walking fast, her head down. He shouted but she didn't hear him.
Then a taxi with its light on came towards her and slowed as she
waved at it, and she was climbing into it, and though he sprinted
after her as fast as he could, he was just one more yelling Italian in
the driver's rear-view mirror.
He had lost her.

Wearily he trudged back to II Cuoco. My one chance, he thought, and I blew it. And even worse than that thought was the knowledge
that she had seen him and turned away. She hadn't even
wanted to talk to him.
'Bruno?'
He looked up. 'Oh. Judith.'
'It was you. I thought it must be.'
'When you saw Laura run away, you mean?' he muttered. 'Yes,
I think I'm the only person who has that sort of effect on her.'
She was silent for a moment, then she said, "I wouldn't be too
sure.'
'You mean there are others? That's some consolation.'
"I probably shouldn't say this,' Judith said slowly, 'but she's
been talking about you a lot since they came back from their trip.'
'Saying what?'
'Nothing in particular. Just talking. But a bit too much, if you
know what I mean. I think that's why she doesn't want to see you,
Bruno. Because it's too late to turn the clock back. Why make
everyone miserable by talking about how much better things
could have been if you hadn't been such a dickhead?'
'I've got to find her, Judith, please. You've got to tell me where
she is.'
"I don't know where she is right now. But I know where she'll
be tomorrow. There's a restaurant called Templi--'
"I know it.'
'There's a big dinner there tomorrow night. Everyone who's
still here from the course is going, and all the faculty as well. To
celebrate our last night in Italy.'

The next morning Bruno made his way to the restaurant at the
top of Montespaccato and asked to see Alain Dufrais. When he
was taken to the great chef's office, he asked for his old job back.
Alain smirked. "I knew you'd be back. Your own establishment
is making pizza now, I hear.'
'Yes,' Bruno said meekly. He didn't tell Alain that he hadn't
been working there for some time.
'Well, I'll think about it. Come back in a week or so.'
"I need the job immediately.'
Alain raised an eyebrow. 'You haven't got any more reasonable
while you've been away, have you? I can't just take on another chef
at the drop of a hat.'
Instead of replying, Bruno reached into his pocket and took
out a little flask and a small package wrapped in foil. He unstoppered
the flask. Silently he held it towards the other chef's nose.
Alain's nostrils flared. He took the tiny container, dabbed a few
drops of the hundred-year-old aceto balsamico on to the end of his
finger and touched it to his tongue. His eyes closed, and for a few
moments he seemed incapable of speech. Then he said,
'Remarkable.'
Bruno unwrapped the one remaining white truffle. There was
no need for Alain to hold it to his nose. The smell gushed into the
little office, flooding every corner and cranny, saturating both
men's brains with pleasure, like bread soaking up oil.
'How much do you want for it?' Alain said hoarsely.
'Nothing -- so long as I can cook with it, here, this evening.'
'Done,' Alain agreed, quickly resealing the truffle in its foil to
preserve the precious aroma. 'But you can't be a chef de partie - I
already have every station covered. You'll come back as a junior, or
not at all.'

Like Alain, the other chefs assumed that Bruno had returned to
Templi with his tail between his legs. Hugo Kass, in particular, lost
no time in putting him in his place.
'Go and chop those chillis, chef.'
'Yes, chef.'
'Now dice those onions.'
'Yes, chef
Somebody laughed. They understood what Hugo was doing: if
Bruno wiped his eyes while he was chopping the onions, the chilli
would get in them.
Bruno chopped the chillis and the onions, then washed his
hands and walked over to where Hugo was preparing a ferociously
complicated gratin of crabmeat and pink grapefruit. Without a
word, Bruno picked up a crab and began to copy the other chef's
movements.
'What are you doing?' Hugo Kass enquired icily. Bruno didn't
answer. He simply worked faster. By the time Hugo had finished
his first crab, Bruno had already moved on to his second. Hugo
snarled and concentrated on what he was doing. But Bruno had
already finished his second crab and was reaching for a third.
Unlike the duel the two of them had fought the last time Bruno
had worked here, this was a hopelessly uneven contest. Beads of
sweat popped from Hugo's forehead as the heat of the burners
combined with the humiliation of being shown up. With an oath
he reached for a sharper knife, and in doing so dropped his crab
on the floor.
There was silence in the kitchen. Bruno calmly walked away
from the counter and made himself a space to work between two
of the other chefs. He knew that Hugo would not be troubling
him again. But Bruno had more important things to think about
now, such as what he was going to cook Laura.

Meanwhile, outside a little bar off the Viale Glorioso, Gennaro the barista was humming happily as he dismantled the engine of his
van. Bruno appeared to have fixed it up with tractor parts, and
Gennaro was keen to see whether any of them could be fitted to
his Gaggia to help in his quest for ever-increasing amounts of
pressure. Some of them, he thought, looked very promising
indeed.

Like Bruno, Kim Fellowes and Laura were getting ready for their
big meal at Templi. But while Bruno was chopping, dicing, peeling
and sifting, Kim and Laura were washing and dressing.
It was a particular ritual of Kim's that he liked to dress Laura
himself. She stood naked in his apartment in front of the mirror as
he pulled a red chenille dress over her head, then slowly brushed
her hair so that it fell against the collar.
'This dress is kind of heavy,' she murmured, half hoping to
persuade him to change it for a lighter one.
'But it makes you look like a Botticelli princessa,'' Kim said,
standing beside her. He put his hand on her stomach, feeling the
gym-toned hardness of it through the cloth. 'And it's not as if you
have to wear anything underneath.'
She smiled at the reflection of his own smile.
'Besides,' he murmured. 'This evening is going to be special.
You'll want to have looked your best.'
"I know. I've been looking forward to it.'
'That's not what I mean, Laura.'
'And of course, it's the last night. Last time either of us will see
all the guys.' For Kim was leaving Rome, too, off to take up a
plum appointment at his old college.
"I didn't mean that either.'
She shot him a puzzled glance. He closed his eyes for a
moment, as if wondering how much he should tell her, then said,
'In my pocket is a ring.' He touched the side of his dinner jacket.
'An exact copy of the one in Michelangelo di Merisi's portrait of
Mary Magdalene. I had it made up specially by the head jeweller
at Bulgari. I thought you'd like to know now, so that when I say
something later you'll be prepared. I know you'd hate to be so
overcome by surprise that you'd spoil the perfection of the
moment. And believe me, I've arranged everything so that it will

be perfect.'
'Kim, what are you saying?'
"I simply want you to be prepared for something special to
happen tonight, Laura. But when I do say a few words, later, will
you do me a favour? I'll speak in Italian, and I'd appreciate it if
you'd do the same. It will sound so much better, and I want
everything, every tiny detail, to be just right.' The doorbell
buzzed. 'There. That'll be our transport.'
'You ordered a taxi?'
'Not exactly. Like I said, everything about tonight is going to
be special.'
He had booked a horse and carriage; and waiting in the back of
the carriage was a bucket of ice and a half-bottle of champagne. As
he helped her on to the seat, it was all still sinking in: her last night
in Italy, in Rome, was also going to be the night that Kim proposed
to her. It was so unexpected that she felt completely
stunned.
As the sunset turned the church towers orange, a flock of doves
wheeled over Santa Maria de Trastevere. 'Next week it'll be back
to stressed-out Americans, psychotic panhandlers and Don't Walk
signs,' Laura said.
'How ghastly. Let's not think about it.' Ghastly: that was a
word he was using a lot these days.
Suddenly the cart lurched and came to a stop. A tiny Fiat van
had reversed into the road without looking and was now blocking
the street as it tried to straighten out. The driver of the cart
shouted something: the Fiat's window was wound down and the
young man at the wheel retorted that he would only be a
moment, and in any case the cart-driver might like to use the
time to make love to the horse, who was probably also his mother.
Laura laughed. Kim took her hand. 'Thank you for not minding,'
he said quietly.
'Mind? Why should I mind? It's--' She had been about to say,
'It's the best bit,' but thought better of it. 'It's just one of those
things,' she said tactfully.
The cart-driver had obviously come up with a suitably inventive
response, because the Fiat-driver had abandoned any attempt to
unblock the road and was now telling the cart-driver what he had
previously done to the cart-driver's sister, who was apparently
famous throughout Rome for the enthusiasm with which she
gave blow-jobs to complete strangers. In case the cart-driver was
not familiar with his sister's technique, the Fiat-driver helpfully
mimed it.
'You know what?' Laura said. 'This might take a while.' Others
were being drawn into the discussion. The man whose courtyard
the Fiat had been reversing out of had appeared, and was now
proposing to make the cart-driver back up a few feet so that the
Fiat would have room to turn. The cart-driver was refusing to
budge. From a window above their heads a woman was complaining
about the noise, at full volume. The Fiat-driver's response
was to drown out her words with his horn. The horse, far from
being startled, appeared to be asleep. Then it suddenly opened its
eyes and, ducking its head, ate one of the potted geraniums that
lined either side of the doorway, causing further protest from Fiat
driver's Friend.
'Ghastly,' Kim said again. 'Rome's wasted on these people.'
'Let's walk to the end, then get a taxi,' Laura suggested.

Kim's mood was quickly restored when the taxi deposited them at
the door of Templi. Alain's establishment had lost none of its graciousness,
and from the moment the man whose sole job it was to
open the door to them opened the door to them, Kim was in
heaven. Nor was the cosseting provided by Templi the only soothing
influence. Kim had pulled out all the stops. As they greeted
their friends in the bar, a barbershop quartet dressed in dinner
jackets sung Puccini arias, their mellifluous voices mingling with
the quiet hum of conversation.
Laura suddenly had the sensation that she was waking from a
dream. The dream had been quite pleasant, but like a sleepwalker
who suddenly wakes up and knows where they are but not how
they got there, it was a complete mystery to her how her life had
come to this point.
'Kim,' Laura said carefully. 'There's something I've got to tell
you.'
'What is it, caraV
'What you're going to ask me later - if it's what I think you're
going to ask - I'm so flattered and pleased, and you really are
special to me, but - well, I just need much more time before I'm
ready for something like that . . .'
Kim's eyes flashed, but he said mildly, 'I've told you before,
Laura: you've got to learn to be more spontaneous. Don't be so
American. Just go with your heart.'
'Yes, but--'
'It's your last night in the Eternal City. What better place to
pledge eternal love? Ah, here are the flowers I ordered.'
A waiter was bringing over the largest bunch of roses Laura had
ever seen. They were, she noted, the exact same shade as her
dress. The other diners, having realised by now that something
special was happening this evening, started nudging each other
and looking expectant. Laura, who had gone as red as the roses,
tried to accept the flowers in a way that looked grateful but not
engaged. Definitely not engaged.

It is hard to carry a bunch of thirty-six long-stemmed red roses
and maintain a conversation at the same time. By the time the students
and staff moved to their table, Laura felt like the statue of
Daphne in the Villa Borghese, caught at the very moment she
turned into a tree. Finally, she managed to persuade a friendly
waiter to take the flowers away on the pretext of putting them in
some water. By this time Kim and some of the others were having
earnest discussions about which wine to choose, and she was able
to look around.
I guess tonight's a big night for you,' said the man on her right
conspiratorially. 'Kim's a lucky guy.'
It dawned on Laura that Kim had already told some of his colleagues
what he was intending to do. He must have been planning
it for days, weeks even, without saying anything to her. If she
turned him down in front of all these people his vanity - never
inconsiderable - was going to be horribly punctured. He would,
in fact, be totally humiliated. Did she really want to do that to
him? Or was there some third option, such as saying she'd think
about it, or saying yes but then changing her mind a few days
further down the line?
She sat there, sick with nerves, trying to think of a way out of
this. As a result, she was the only one of the party not to eat any
of the amuse-gueules that were being passed around the table and
loudly exclaimed over.

In the kitchen, a second plate of amuse-gueules was waiting at the
pass when Alain suddenly strode over to take a closer look.
'What are these?' he demanded. No one answered him.
Bending down, he tasted one. For a long moment, as he ate it,
his face took on the distant look of a man who has seen beyond
the mortal world and witnessed seraphim. He turned towards
Bruno. There was no need for either of them to say anything.
There was only one person in the kitchen who could have been
responsible for what was on that plate.
Alain stared at Bruno. Then he took the plate and tipped it into
the bin. 'Do these again,' he said quietly. 'No, not you,' he added
quickly as Bruno reached for his pastry knife. 'You.' He nodded at
Hugo, who shrugged and prepared to do as he had been told.
'Orders for table twelve,' Karl called. 'One salmon . . .'
Table twelve. That was the Americans' table. '. . . one scallops,
one veloute, one caviar--'
'Oui, chef, oui, chef, oui, chef,' Bruno was calling as he scrambled
to claim all the orders for himself.
With two long strides Alain was standing in front of him. 'What
in God's name are you doing now?' he snapped.
'Cooking,' said Bruno, to whom the answer was obvious.
'Not in my kitchen, you're not. Get out.'
'But you said--'
'--nothing at all about you coming in here and destroying the
discipline of my brigade. Get out, before I have someone throw
you out.'
Stunned, Bruno picked up his knives and went. He couldn't
believe it. Just when he'd got everything organised at last, it had
all gone horribly wrong.

He blundered out the back door and straight into a waiter. 'Scusi,' he mumbled, his head still down.
'What's up, Bruno?'
He looked back. It was Tommaso, dressed in his old Templi
uniform. 'See? Still fits,' his friend said, pulling at the sleeves of his
jacket. 'Though not as well as hers.' He pointed to where Marie
was emerging from the changing room, trying to make the uniform
she was squeezed into look like it belonged to her instead of
to a short Italian man several sizes smaller.
'What are you two doing here?' Bruno said.
'We brought you a pizza. Thought you might be hungry.'
Then, when he saw Bruno was in no state for jokes, Tommaso
added, 'That is, we thought you might need some help.'
Bruno sighed. 'Thanks, but it's no use. I've been thrown out of
the kitchen.' He explained briefly what had happened with Alain.
'And where is the head prick now?'
'In the kitchen, supervising the service.'
'Any way we can get him out of there?'
'Absolutely not. He never leaves the kitchen during service.
Not for anything.' A thought occurred to Bruno. 'Apart from
when he throws people out, that is.'
'Excellent.' Tommaso delved into the pocket of his waiter's
jacket and came up with an order pad. He scribbled something on
it. 'You two wait here, and get ready to lock him in the coat cupboard
as soon as he comes out.'

Tommaso walked up to the pass and handed the slip to Karl, who
glanced at it and froze.
'What is it?' Alain snapped.
'Table twelve. One of the Americans has asked for,' Karl lowered
his voice, 'steak with ketchup.'
'Has he indeed?' Alain said icily. 'Hugo, come with me. The
rest of you, get on with your work. This won't take a minute. And
cancel all the orders for table twelve,' he called over his shoulder
as he walked towards the doors.

Seconds later, Alain and Hugo were safely incarcerated in the coat
cupboard. 'Now what?' Tommaso asked.
'Now I have to talk to the others.' Bruno walked back into the
kitchen. 'Listen to me, everyone,' he called.
Instantly he had the attention of the room. But now that all
their eyes were on him, he wasn't sure what to say.
'It's like this,' he began. 'There's a girl here tonight, on table
twelve, and I want to cook her the best meal she's ever had. It
means changing the menu, because I know this girl, and the kind
of food she really loves isn't Alain's food, good though that is. It's
Roman food, the kind of food I like to cook. But I can't do it on
my own, not at this level. We'll have to prep an entire menu from
scratch, right now, and that means I need all of you to say you'll
help.'
There was a long pause. Then Karl said, 'Where's chef?'
'Locked in the coat cupboard.'
There was another long pause. 'He'll fire us,' someone said
nervously.
Bruno shook his head. 'No, he won't. If you all agree to help,
how can he pick on any one of you? And if he fires all of you, he
wouldn't be able to open tomorrow, any more than I can cook
tonight without your help. The truth is, he needs you more than
you need him.'
Karl said, I liked that Roman dish you showed me how to cook
when the mafia turned up. And I've been calling out that idiot's
orders long enough anyway. It's time we had some fun. I'll help you.'
'What about the rest of you?' Bruno said, looking around.
One by one, with various degrees of enthusiasm or reluctance,
the kitchen brigade nodded.
'Right,' Bruno said. 'Let's get to work. You,' he pointed at the sous nearest to him, 'get me some whites.'
'Yes, chef
'The rest of you, listen carefully.'

'Hi,' Marie said brightly to table twelve. 'Has anyone told you
guys the specials?'
'We've already ordered,' someone pointed out.
'I'm afraid what you ordered is off
'AH of it?'
'Pretty much. But we do have, uh, carpaccio of pan-fried capretto with a sleepy margherita jus and line-caught radicchio,' she said, rattling off the ingredients very fast since she actually had
no idea at all what Bruno planned to cook.
'Sounds good to me,' said the young man nearest to Marie's
breasts.
"Me too,' said the girl next to him, who couldn't remember
what she'd ordered in the first place.
'Good. Chef's specials all round. And let me get you some
more of that wine,' Marie said quickly, bending low over the table
to pour the last of the bottle into Kim Fellowes' glass.
'Does the chef's special have carbohydrate in it?' he asked suspiciously.
'Absolutely
not,' she assured him. 'It's one hundred per cent
organic' She was gone before he could ask her to explain. At the
next table, Tommaso was also busy explaining that the menu had
been unavoidably changed at short notice.

The kitchen staff at Templi had never worked so hard under
Alain's dictatorial rule as they did now for Bruno. Dishes that
should have taken hours to prepare were being turned out in a
matter of minutes.
'It's going great,' Tommaso confirmed when he came back for
more plates. 'Just keep the food coming.'
'I'm doing my best,' Bruno muttered.
"I need your best, but faster. There are people in there who'll
start to get hungry in about ten minutes.'
Bruno cooked faster. Soon a stream of dishes was being carried
out to the dining room, but he had no time to rest. He immediately
got the kitchen to work on the secondi.

Something strange was happening in the dining room. The kitchen
staff became aware of an unfamiliar hum, like the buzzing of a
swarm of bees, coming from beyond the swing doors. One or two
of them, who had been present during the night of the eels, looked
up apprehensively. Then a waiter pushed through the doors and
the sound, previously muffled, suddenly came into focus. It was the
hum of animated conversation. And not just conversation. Mingled
with it was the sound of laughter, laughter of every sort - amused,
bawdy, raucous, jovial, and even that of one unfortunate lady
whose laugh sounded like the honk of a goose.
At table twelve, only two people remained immune to the
changing mood. Laura, sick with nerves, wasn't eating a thing.
And Kim, rigidly adhering to his diet, was looking increasingly
puzzled as all around him his fellow diners became more and
more animated.

Kim's barbershop quartet filled the interval between courses with
their own mellifluous arrangement of a theme from Rossini. But
Tommaso was having none of that. From his pocket he took a
CD, and a moment later the opening chords of'Rocking All Over
The World' swept through the dining room. The singers soon
gave up in disgust.
Looking around, Tommaso saw that there were still too many
people without any food in front of them. Everything was fine for
the moment, but sooner or later they were going to wonder where
their next course was.
'Someone should check on Alain,' Bruno muttered to Tommaso.
'Make sure he hasn't had a heart attack.'
'Don't you worry about him. I'll give him some more of your amuse-gueules,' Tommaso said.
Going to the coat cupboard, he unlocked it and eased the door
open so that he could peek inside. Alain's chef's hat had fallen off,
and he was pressing his lips passionately against those of Hugo
Kass.
Tommaso smiled to himself as he quietly shut the door again

and locked it.

At last the secondi were organised and Tommaso, supervising the
flow of food between kitchen and dining room, began to relax.
'You can concentrate on cooking for Laura now,' he informed

Bruno.
Sweeping the dish he was working on to one side, Bruno
reached for another set of ingredients.

All around him, Kim's fellow diners appeared to be intoxicated.
They weren't even staying in their seats, he saw to his horror:
people were walking around, chatting to complete strangers,
laughing and joking. He made a decision. Better to do this now,
before these noisy Italians ruined the perfect atmosphere he had
worked so hard to engineer.
'Turn that music off, please,' he told a harassed-looking waiter.
Eventually, the Quo fell silent. Kim stood up. One by one the
other diners stopped whatever they were doing and turned to see
what was going on. Kim nodded to his barbershop quartet, who
began to sing. The hum of laughter died, replaced by the quiet,
solemn harmonies of Allegri's Miserere.
'Laura, my darling,' Kim began in Italian. 'It was in this very
city that Petrarch wrote some of his most beautiful poems about a
girl called Laura. Now, five centuries later, I too have fallen in love
with her . . .'
It's happening, Laura thought as forty-eight pairs of eyes swivelled
to look at her. What on earth am I going to do ?

'It's a disaster,' Tommaso shouted to Bruno as he rushed into the
kitchen. 'The American's proposing to her.'
'What?
'Si. You'd better come quickly.'
Bruno looked at the mess of ingredients on his board. 'But it's
not ready.'
'Too bad. By the time you are ready, it'll be too late.'

Kim was reaching the end of his speech. It was fine and noble and
deeply moving: men as well as women were openly brushing away
tears as Kim finally went down on one knee, pulled out a small box
and flipped it open. There was a collective gasp as the ring flashed
in the evening sunlight.
'Laura - bellissima - will you be my wife?' he said, just as the
singers drew to a close.
All around the room, people lifted their hands expectantly,
ready to clap. There was just the little matter of Laura's response which
would undoubtedly be equally as beautiful and equally as
moving - and then they could all go wild.
Laura took a deep breath.
'Kim, you've asked me this question in front of all these people,
so it's in front of all these people that I have to respond. You're a
wonderful, intelligent, sensitive person, and I've really enjoyed
our time together. But the answer's no. You can ask me to explain
now, or I can explain later, but I'm sorry, my mind's made up.'
You could have cut the silence with a knife. Kim said quickly,
'Laura, it's a lot to take in. Yes, let's talk about it. Of course we
must talk about it. You've drunk a little wine, you've eaten well you
know how stupefied carbohydrate makes you feel - so I'll take
that as a maybe, and you can have all the time you need--'

'You're not listening,' she interrupted. 'No isn't a negotiating
position, Kim. You've taught me a lot, but you were only ever my
rebound from - from something before that went horribly wrong.
I don't want to spend the rest of my life being told what to do by
you, and I don't want to be told that I have to marry you.'
At the back of the room, Tommaso pushed Bruno forward.
'It's now or never, my friend,' he whispered.
Bruno was holding a plate on which there were some pieces of
pear and a small amount of zabaione sauce - all he had had time to
prepare. As he walked towards Laura the other diners, suddenly
sensing that the entertainment wasn't over yet, swivelled to watch
him. Somebody sniggered. Bruno felt his cheeks go red.
At last he was standing in front of her. In her eyes there was
nothing he could read, no expression from which he could take
either comfort or despair.
'This is for you,' he began, putting the plate in front of her.
Laura looked at the pear in its little island of zabaione. Suddenly
Bruno knew that it wasn't enough. There was a long, terrible silence.
"I was going to tell you that it expresses what I feel better than
I ever could,' he said helplessly. 'But that isn't true, is it? It doesn't
express anything. Sometimes food is just - food.' He glanced at
Kim, who was staring at him with an expression of fierce disdain.
'At least he had the guts to tell you what he wanted. Whereas I
always thought that my silence, and my cooking, would somehow
be enough.'
Laura nodded slowly.
'When I think back to all the meals I made for you,' he said, I
remember meals that were meant to impress you, meals that were
meant to dazzle you, to excite you, to comfort you, even to
seduce you. But there was never a single dish or recipe that was
designed to tell you the simple truth.'
She said nothing.
'The truth is,' he began. He stopped, aware that every single
person in the room was staring at him, their expressions varying
from amusement to incomprehension. The silence stretched on
for ever. He could taste it. It was filling his mouth like uncooked
dough, sticky and cloying, making speech impossible--
'The truth is that I love you,' he said softly. 'I've always loved
you. I always will love you. And what I want, more than anything
else in the world, is to go on loving you.'
'I'm going home tomorrow,' Laura said.
"I know,' he said simply. 'But we've got tonight.'
As she stood up, she took one of the pieces of pear and slid it
into his mouth.
'In that case,' she said, 'let's not spend it here.'

In a little bar in a side street off the Viale Glorioso, Gennaro had
finally finished the modifications to his Gaggia. There was a rudimentary
turbo-charger, created from the tractor parts he had
found on his van, and an auxiliary pressure pump adapted from
the engine cooler, as well as various other improvements he felt
sure would make a difference. Having packed the barrels with
coffee grounds, he turned on the ignition and stood back.
For a moment nothing happened. Then, with a great clanking
throb, the vast engine caught and began to build the pressure.
Across the street, on the top floor, Bruno and Laura did not
hear the chugging of Gennaro's coffee machine. Finally, they were
oblivious to everything except the sweet, long-awaited taste of
each other's body.
As the needle on the pressure gauge climbed towards the maximum,
Gennaro exhaled a sigh of satisfaction. It was working. He
had achieved his life's ambition - the perfect cup of coffee. He
reached for the valve that would release the pent-up water into the
coffee grounds. But he reached for it a moment too late.
There was an explosion that was heard on the other side of the
Tiber, and the sky above Trastevere lit up briefly.
'What was that?' Bruno said, pausing for a moment. Then,
because Laura didn't answer, he went back to what he had been
doing before.

'The taste [these recipes] have been devised to achieve wants
not to astonish but to reassure. It issues from the cultural
memory, the enduring world of Italian cooks, each generation
setting a place at table where the next one will feel at ease and
at home.'


Marcella Hazan, The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking


To: Bruno
From: Laura

And there you are. A long way away. This place seems very big and
stressed-out after Rome. College, though, is exactly the same. Weird,
when I've done so much, to come back and find the same people
doing exactly the same stuff as before I went away.

In ten weeks it'll be the holidays, and then I'll be straight back to see
you (thank God for cheap flights). In the meantime .. . this afternoon
I went down to Little Italy and found a deli. OK, it isn't Gigliemi, but
it's got lots of stuff you'd recognise. And guess what? There's a
cooking class here I can sign up for. You'd better watch your laurels,
boy.
love,
L.
PS Where should I start?


To: Laura
From: Bruno
Re:re:Well,here lam.

Spaghetti aio e oio.

This is about as simple as it gets . . .

Actually, spaghettini - the thin stuff - probably holds the oil
better than spaghetti. If you can't get that, try linguine or even
vermicelli.

Slice a clove of garlic as thinly as you can and fry it in some good oil
until it goes soft (not brown). Add some dried chilli flakes. Remove
the garlic. Meanwhile, boil the pasta in salted water, drain, and tip it
into the frying pan to fry for a minute. Serve with salt, pepper and a
lot of grated pecorino romano.

Alternatively:

Tagliatelle con ragu bolognese

The Bolognese are famously undiscerning about what they put in
their mouths, which is why 'Bolognese' also means a blow-job. But
the classic ragu isn't too bad.

Fry some chopped vegetables - onion, carrot, celery, maybe a couple
of mushrooms. You'll need about 115g of pancetta or chopped bacon
for 325g of minced meat. (Pork is best.) Fry until the meat goes grey,
then add a little wine: wait till it evaporates, then add four
tablespoons of tomato paste and season. A dash of chilli helps too.
Gradually add the rest of the bottle and half a pint of stock.
Traditionally you should cook this 'from sunrise to sunset', but
actually a couple of hours will do.Then stir in some cream and cook,
uncovered, until it goes thick and sticky.

Or, if you're feeling a little braver:
Pappardelle con sugo de lepre

Fry some chopped bacon or pancetta, add your hare in (fairly small)
pieces & brown it all over, remove and keep warm. Fry a chopped
onion and some garlic gently until soft but definitely not brown. Stir
in a handful of flour (gradually), then add three-quarters of a bottle
of wine. Drink the rest. Put the hare back in, season, add a clove and
plenty of thyme (not the stalks) and a dash of pepper sauce. Simmer
for two hours, then strip the meat off the bones and shred it before
returning it to the sauce.Turn the heat up to reduce it further. (If you
have the hare's liver, fry it and blend it with the sauce to thicken it.)
Serve with pappardelle and grated parmesan.
Did I tell you I love you?
B

To: Bruno
From: Laura
Re:re:re: Well, here I am.

Yes, several times.

Tried the ragu last night on my new roommate, Lucy. Which led, of
course, to the whole story coming out, bit by bit, over dinner. . . She
actually cried. So, to make a long story short, she's appointed herself
your official representative, keeping me from temptation, singles bars
and middle-aged lecturers. I think I may be able to give her the slip,
though. (Joke.)

Tomorrow I have my first cooking lesson. Apparently we will be
learning how to chop. Ha! I shall soon be a mean hand with a sharp
knife, so don't mess with me, lover boy. I know what you Italians are
like, remember.

Laura

PS If you really think we can get hares over here . . .


To: Bruno
From: Laura
Re:re:re: Well, here I am.

Thanks for the hare. You're very sweet.The man from FedEx looked
a bit puzzled, though.

According to Martha, my cooking teacher, I have nimble fingers!

To: Laura
From: Bruno
Re:re:re:re: Well, here I am.

Actually, I remember those nimble fingers very wel
To: Laura
From: Bruno
Re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re: Well, here I am.

Zabaglione

- eaten as a breakfast dish in the countryside here, I'll have you know.

Beat 6 fresh egg yolks with 3 tablespoons caster sugar until pale, then
stir in a glass of dry white wine. Pour into a bowl which you have
placed in a saucepan of gently simmering water, and whisk. It will
swell to a thick foam. Lovely.

Serve with asparagus, toast, muffins, desserts, breasts . . .







To: Bruno

From: Laura

Re:re:re:re:re: Well, here I am.

Speaking of which . .. phone sex, tonight, about ten p.m. my time?
To: Bruno
From: Laura
Re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re: Well, here I am.

That zabaglione . . . pure heaven. Lucy says: if I am ever unfaithful,
can she have you please?

In the meantime, what about dinner?






To: Laura

From: Bruno

Re:re:re:re:re:re: Well, here I am.

Mmmmmm.That was nice. Sleep well.

To: Bruno
From: Laura
Re:re:re:re:re:re:re: Well, here I am.

Wasn't it? & I will.

What's for breakfast?

298

To: Laura
From: Bruno
Re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re.-re: Well, here I am.

Saltimbocca

Now this is a proper Roman dish.

For 2, you need four slices of veal. Wrap them in greaseproof paper
and beat them very thin with a rolling pin. Place a slice of prosciutto
on top of each one, then a couple of fresh sage leaves. Traditionally
you should hold this together with a cocktail stick, but I find it's
easier to just fold the veal over and bang it all into place with that
same rolling pin. Dip them in a mixture of flour, salt, pepper and
maybe a few chilli flakes.Then you just fry them for a minute or so
each side. Remove & keep warm. Pour a glass of white wine or
marsala into the juices and reduce quickly. Add some butter and a
squeeze of lemon before pouring over the meat.

To: Bruno
From: Laura
Re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re: Well, here I am.

I can now make Bechamel sauce! Martha says I have a knack

Shall we have dinner together tomorrow?

To: Laura
From: Bruno
Re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re: Well, here I am.

Let's. Same time, different continents, same meal.

This next one takes a little longer but believe me, it's well worth
it.

Coda alia vaccinara

You'll need an oxtail, about 1.8kg, washed and chopped across the
joints. Boil for ten minutes and remove any scum. Add one carrot, one
leek, one celery stalk & some parsley or thyme. Simmer for about
three hours. If you can get ox or pork cheek, put that in too. Keep the
liquid.

Next, in a different saucepan heat some lard or oil and gently fry a
chopped onion, chopped carrot, the chopped pork cheek (or some
bacon if you couldn't get pork cheek) and a chopped garlic clove. Add
some chopped parsley, and the oxtail. Pour in half a bottle of dry
white wine and allow some to evaporate. Then add half a dozen
chopped tomatoes (i.e. about a tin and a half) and a big spoon of
tomato paste. Nutmeg and cinnamon could also make an appearance.
Simmer for two hours, adding a little of the stock from the other pan
whenever it gets dry.

You could also add some boiled, sliced celery hearts, raisins, pine
nuts, or even some bitter cocoa powder. If so, add at the end and cook
for ten minutes extra.

B

To: Bruno
From: Laura
Re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re:re: Well, here I am.


vRemove any scum', eh? Story of my life. I managed to track down
some oxtail - it took forever, and the butcher I eventually got it from
asked me if it was for my dog! However, it's cooking now. I'll go and
check it for moistness in a minute.

Here's a milestone: at class we were told to buy our first Italian
cookery book, a massive tome written I'm sure by a real nonnina for
example, this is what she says about making pasta:

'Do not be tempted by one of those awful devices that masticate eggs
and flour at one end and extrude a choice of pasta shapes
through another end. What emerges is a mucilaginous and totally
contemptible product and, moreover, the contraption is an
infuriating nuisance to clean.'

I thought at first 'mucilaginous' must be an Italian word, but
according to my dictionary it means 'having the properties of a thick,
viscous animal secretion'. The lady certainly has a way with words.
!l"

!li

11
Did I tell you that I am determined to learn to make you pasta by
hand? Then I'll be a real Italian housewife.

Call tonight when supper's ready. I'll be eating it in bed.

L

To: Laura
From: Bruno
Re: last night

I know I've said this before, but I thought you might like to have it
in writing: I love you.

To: Bruno
From: Laura
Re:re: last night

Me too. In fact, I keep getting all mucilaginous at the most
inappropriate moments.

Lx

To: Bruno
From: Laura
Re:re:re: last night

.. . like today when we were doing vegetables and I found a zucchini
that looked just like you. I gave it a little kiss when no one was
looking.
To: Laura
From: Bruno
Re:re:re:re: last night
Lucky zucchini.
This is a nice recipe for an antipasto:
Fried zucchini flowers

Make sure you get the male flowers (from the stem) and not the
female ones (from the fruit) - the males stay crisper. They must be
fresh and firm. In Rome they sometimes stuff the flowers with a little
mozzarella and anchovy before frying.

Make a batter from 135g flour, salt, pepper, nutmeg, two tablespoons
of oil and two egg yolks (keep the whites). Gradually beat in 6
tablespoons white wine and 6 tablespoons water, maybe a little
more - just enough to make the batter creamy. Rest for 30 minutes.
Then beat the egg whites until stiff and fold in. Remove the stamens,
dip the flowers in batter, then deep-fry quickly in a pan of very hot oil.
Toss on to kitchen paper, season, and serve at once. Goes well with:

Peppers stuffed with rabbit

- a recipe from the countryside.

Cut the tops off four peppers and keep. Scrape out the insides. Bake
at Gas mark 4 (350°C) for 20 minutes, no more. Meanwhile, fry your
rabbit, cut into small pieces, in some butter. Add a double handful of
sliced mushrooms and a glass of dry white wine; allow to evaporate
slowly. Add the same amount of chicken stock and a little tomato
paste. Cook gently for another 10 minutes, then spoon into the
peppers. Replace the lids and bake for 15 minutes.

To: Bruno
From: Laura
Re:re:re:re:re: last night

Now this is just getting fancy. How about some simple ones?
Desserts, for example?

(From my cookery class textbook: 'The juices of those two
quintessential^ Mediterranean fruits, the olive and the lemon, have
a beguilingly fragrant effect on poached brains . . .' - now I
understand what happened to me in Italy. My brain got poached in
the heat and then I was beguiled. Not to mention fragranced. And it's
all your fault.)

To: Laura
From: Bruno
Re:re:re:re:re:re: last night

Two desserts coming up. Make these and take them and the phone to
bed with you. I'll call about eleven your time ...

Tiramisu

Beat 5 egg yolks with 180g (about 3/4 of a cup) sugar until the latter
has dissolved and the mixture is light and fluffy. (It should leave a
ribbon trail when it drops from the whisk.) Add 250g mascarpone
and beat until smooth. Whisk the egg whites in a separate glass bowl
until peaks form. Fold into the mascarpone mixture.

Pour 250ml of very strong ristretto and 3 tablespoons of
brandy/Marsala into a wide dish. Soak about 40 sponge fingers in
this mixture, but don't let them fall apart. Pack about half of them
into the base of a serving dish. Then add a layer of the mascarpone
mixture, then a layer of biscuits, then more mascarpone. Refrigerate
for at least two hours. Dust with grated chocolate before serving.
There's a favourite Roman dessert that's even easier Peaches
in red wine.

Just pour boiling water over the peaches to help you skin them, slice
them into bowls, sprinkle them with sugar and pour red wine over
them. They're ready to eat after about 1 hour in the fridge.
Talk to you later in bed. Oh - you won't need a spoon.
B.

To: Bruno
From: Laura
Re.re.re.re.re.re.re: last night
Messy ...!
love L xxx :)

PS What are you going to cook me the first night I come back to
Rome?

To: Laura
From: Bruno
Re: coming back?

Now that is a tricky one.

Perhaps we could cook it together?

i
To: Bruno
From: Laura
Re:re: coming back?

Oh no, maestro - don't forget, I've only been doing this stuff for about
two minutes. And I know what you chefs are like. You'll shout at me
if I get it wrong, won't you? You'll probably make me cry.

L

To: Laura
From: Bruno
Re:re:re: coming back?

Shout at you? I'd rather cut out my own heart and fry it. And
sharing a kitchen with you would be just the most wonderful thing
I could imagine . . . which reminds me, there was something someone
- before we got together that I probably need to tell you
about. Call me later - but not before you've closed your eyes and
thought about:
Abbacchio alia cacciatiore
Remember this?
A dish that's best left until the first suckling lambs are available.

You need about a kilo or more of shoulder and loin, cut with a meat
cleaver into bite-sized pieces. Brown it thoroughly, preferably in lard.
Add salt, pepper, chopped garlic, a big handful of torn-up sage and
some rosemary. Cook for 1 minute, stirring, then dust the lamb with
flour through a fine sieve. Turn the pieces once, then add 8
tablespoons of good wine-vinegar. After half a minute reduce the heat
to a simmer and put in a few splashes of water. Cover the pot, with
the lid slightly askew, adding more water if it dries out. It's done when
the lamb starts to fall off the bone - maybe an hour or so.
Just before serving, mash 4 anchovies with some of the lamb juices
and a little water. Add this to the lamb and stir.

Or.

Porchetta

You can get suckling pig any time of year. (Well, maybe not where you
are.)

There are so many ways of doing this. I had some once that was
stuffed with sage and wild fennel, which was amazing. But I prefer
this recipe, which is more Roman:

Take the pig's offal - heart, lungs, liver etc - slice finely and saute in
lard or oil. Add a large amount of rosemary, garlic and sage. Bone the
pig and stuff with the mixture before sewing it together again, scoring
the skin, and roasting for five hours over a wood fire. If no wood fire
is available, a wood-fired pizza oven would do.

Let's talk later,

B

To: Bruno
From: Laura
Re: that conversation last night

Well, I suppose I should thank her. She obviously taught you a lot.
(I'm talking about cooking here, of course.)


To: Laura
From: Bruno
Re:re:that conversation last night

Of course.
Winter's almost here now. I only noticed it at first because there were
chestnuts in the market, and in the restaurants they've put Monte
Bianco on the menu . . .

Monte Bianco

A seasonal dessert from the north. Before you start, put a mixing
bowl in the freezer.

Soak 500g fresh chestnuts in water, then cut around the shells to
loosen them - your cookery book will show you how to do this. Boil
for 25 minutes and peel while warm.

Put in a pan and cover with milk. Simmer. After about 15 minutes the
milk will have been absorbed. Reduce to a puree with a food
processor. Add 200g chocolate, melted in a double boiler, and a little
rum. Cover with cling film and refrigerate for one hour. Use a food
mill or a pierced piping bag to turn the mixture into little worm-sized
pieces, like mince. Pile up on a plate. Mix 300ml cold whipping
cream with a teaspoon of caster sugar, whisk until it stiffens and pour
it over the dessert so that it looks like Mont Blanc - which we call
Monte Bianco - covered in snow.

Now that it's getting cold my bed seems very empty.

B

To: Bruno
From: Laura
Re: cold

Cold? In Rome? You must be joking. It's -10 degrees here.

How's the new season's oil? According to my Italian lady's cookbook:
'On those brisk days that bridge the passage from autumn to winter
and signal the release of this year's freshly pressed olive oil, toasting
bread over a smoky fire and soaking it with spicy, laser-green newly
minted oil is a practice probably as old as Rome itself. . .'

To: Laura
From: Bruno
Re:re:cold

Yes - she's describing bruschetta. Just grill some good Italian bread,
preferably on a flame (a naked gas flame would do). Rub it with a
mashed garlic clove and pour on a thin stream of the new season's
olive oil your faraway lover has just sent you by FedEx. Sprinkle with
salt. For a more filling antipasto, top with diced tomatoes and fresh
basil.

love you,


To: Bruno
From: Laura
Re: that recipe for bruschetta

Thing is, I just don't seem to be able to get that one right. It's simple
but difficult, as Tommaso would probably have said. Every time I try
to do it, something goes wrong. Tell you what - I think I need
someone to show me how to do it. . .


From: Bruno
To: Laura
Re:re:that recipe for bruschetta

?????????

I'm not with you.






308
309
To: Bruno
From: Laura
Re:re:re: that recipe for bruschetta

Aha! No, you're not. And that's my whole point.

To: Laura
from: Bruno
Re:re:re:re:that recipe for bruschetta

I mean, I don't understand. How can you not be able to cook
bruschetta, when you can do all those other things? And what do you
mean about needing somebody to show you?

'. . . it is a pattern of cooking that can accommodate improvisation
and fresh intuitions each time it is taken in hand, as long
as it continues to be a pattern we can recognise; as long as its
evolving forms comfort us with that essential attribute of the
civilised life, familiarity.'

Marc ella Hazan, The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking







¦
To: Bruno
From: Laura
Re:re:re:re:re:that recipe for bruschetta

Well, it's like this. . .

I was talking to my cooking teacher the other day. She says she
knows of at least a dozen Italian restaurants over here where
someone who's cooked at Templi could get a job . . .

What do you think?

To: Laura
From: Bruno
Re:re:re:re:re:re: that recipe for bruschetta

I think I'm on my way.

Want to send me a shopping list?

www. thefoodoflove. com
I'd like to thank Nick Harris at A.P. Watt for putting the pot on
the stove; Caradoc King and Linda Shaughnessy for giving it a stir;
Bobby Thomson for tasting it; Peter Begg for showing me how a
real chef would do it; Alessandra Lusardi for adding some Italian
flavours; Ursula Mackenzie and Clare Ferraro for ordering it; Tara
Lawrence and Carole DeSanti for sending it back to the kitchen;
and of course my family, for a much-needed pinch of salt.

This book is dedicated to the memory of Nunc Willcox, a good
man and a good friend.

The End.Look out for Anthony Capella's second novel
coming soon from Time Warner Books

THE WEDDING OFFICER
Anthony Capella

A sumptuous tale of food to heal the deepest wounds, of the
hungers of war and the bittersweet nature oflove.

Naive but already war-weary, twenty-four-year-old James
Gould arrives in Naples in 1944 as part of the Allied
administration. What he doesn't anticipate is that this
involves eating a limited menu of fried Spam fritters and
dissuading beautiful Italian girls from marrying British
soldiers. James's chance at true heroism arrives when a
German tank is sighted and he is caught in its path. However,
the tank is being driven by a fiery Italian girl, Livia Pertini,
who is trying to get her home-made mozzarella to market.

The disaffected girls of Naples, sensing their chance, secretiy
arrange for Livia to become James's cook, believing that a
man who has eaten well must surely be more amenable to the
idea of matrimony. Gradually, James falls in love - not only
with Livia, but with the language, tastes and zest for life of
Italy itself. But then the eruption of Vesuvius triggers a chain
of explosive events that will force the two to flee behind
enemy lines and will alter their lives immeasurably.