And I am here. The pepperoni, the spinaci dance in my belly, spaghetti and olio winding around their waists. Even the dried peppercorns on my tongue act freshly dramatic as a grump Italian woman woken up from her siesta by a load of tourists.
No, there is no scanner here. The vendors have eyes, they have dirt-creased hands, they have responses: laughing for a stranger, excited for the meal they help to prepare, disgruntled at the rush hour where their produce cannot be given the proper care. Produtti di Italia, that is what we buy here.
I buy cheese every day or two, bread every day or two, milk and pasta once or twice a week. But the fruits, the vegetables, the greens and roots - I bring a new bag of bags of them home every afternoon. Yes, even with each day's purchase overlapping with the next, each meal is still fresh.
Sometimes I am disappointed, that all I can say in Italian are in introduction of myself as a student, and then a heaping sack of food words. But, we are communicating through our mouths somehow, the Italians and I. If we eat together, if we share their handsome produce, bagged by hand in paper and plastic, instead of crated crates of crudely decrepit crassness, if we pass the food from one to another, the game of telephone comes through more clearly, the scents brighter, stronger, more audible. Yes even a stranger from across the Atlantic can learn in the first dish to cook with the Italians, to cook with their fruits, their pomodori, their piatti. I don't like to go out to the restaurant. I don't like to go out to the supermarket and rush back home. I like to make my way from the bakery for half a loaf of Napolina to Roberto's for some guanciale and parmiaggiano, to the frutavendoli, back and forth between them until I find the perfect combination for a salad, sauce, a stuffed pepper, a midday snack and some vitamin C. They teach me as we speak, even if it is only with the price and a smile - I know what to make of a dish, if I can listen to what is fresh, sometimes even see the dirt around the cracked hands of the fig vendor in the Piazza in Trastevere. Nothing more than, "che...che Buona."
---
Tomorrow is Rosh Hoshannah and Today in the Campo, I picked out seven apples and passed her the bag. Relentless sugary munching on a sweet new year. She did not weigh them. She looked in the bag, shifted hands, and said un euro cinquanta. Un limone (to contrast the sweetness and raise its happy effect) as bumpy and gnarled and plump as I could find. E tre funghi (tonight was to be my second attempt at a stuffed peperono). It was rush hour, it was the Campo, and soon we were both gone. But all day I carried those apples in my pack with the crusty stubs of bread. Carried them when I went back over the filthy Campo (though at least it is filthy with bright, fresh leaves and fruits of Roman soil) while those useless sweepers attempted to tidy the place while blowing puffs of smoke into the air and spitting mud all over the ground in two neat little brush-stroked lanes. In late morning, she was the first apple seller I saw, and I walked all the way around the Campo and saw other busy people with more costly apples and I walked back and stood there with a bag of reds and speckled yellow-greens, and I waited for her to come. I paced around the stand to every angle to catch her at ready. And when the lines had cleared and I stood solitary off to the cash register at the side, she was still in a hurry. But she still has my three euro, and I her apples, and we trust each other with them.
---
Roberto and I smile easily to each other now. Just as easily as we started, really. The first day Mark and I walked in on our way home through Trastevere, we found ourselves talking about peace and tranquility of the world, of what is important. And when I returned from Florence he dramatically responded to my fazed view of the city with the knowledge that Rome truly has "cuore, cuore." This he assured me of with a nod, a squeeze of the brow, and bend of the back, and crook of the arm; it was as though he was wrapping his skin around the heart of Rome, in his heart, in his San Francesco a Ripa store, In his full-feeling city.
Roberto has given me many interesting cheeses, each one with a lingering bushy smile. He's a skinny guy, for an Italian specialty shop. The buconccini, the Sieneta, the Malga, each wrapped up finely in plastic, wax, unwaxed, with a twist that remains impenetrable until it is warmed by the heat of the pan and the cutting board. But when I see him next, I am going to want him to wrap something different. Product of Italy, I want him to wrap a journal for me. Hopefully there will be a nice little stick handy to put on the edge. Smiley man, friendly man, a bushy moustache on his skinny browned frame - skin the color of the yellowed lights of his shop. How can I buy cheddar from Trader Joe when I get back home? How?
---
---
It felt strange going all the way to the Campo to buy bread from an unfriendly, hurried baker. I wanted to meet an unfriendly baker in Trastevere. The first time I went in, she was curt. I knew nearly as much Italian bakery lingo as I did today, but it's all about timing in the oven, and how much you knead the bread. The next time I ordered two cornetti, lemony frosted and my first, in exchange for some euro and a broken friendly offering. Yesterday, I gave a quick ciao. I got a pagnato, mezzo. And just as I was leaving, I tossed in a pointed Buon Domenica. She smiled. Today, I noticed, we still do not know each others names, but we know our produce - her work, my appreciation. Un ossagio d'Italia, I told her, as I asked for two different half loaves.
---
I had wanted to share that day, but by the end of the morning's market experience, I felt like I had only given the two vendors half of what they wanted. The first had run all over the Piazza Trastevere for me just trying to break my hefty ten. But I left there with three syrupy, oozing figs, the lightest flesh with the slightest hint of sweet water and a blast of sugar within. "Due fichi" had meant three to him, " with the explanation of "...che...Buona." Came back a week later to make some sweet insalata. Roberto had some Greek Feta for me, but at first didn't know why I needed so much, or wanted to put it with fichi. The fig man. Asked for some figs and in a moment I felt myself spinning away with a kilo plus of little tough balls of the fruit, boxed and bagged with 4.50 euro and a smile. Still don't really know how that happened so hastily. But when I left, I remember, between the dizzing results of a rapid--paced sale, that there were no more figs on the table when I staggered away grinning goofily. They went very well with the feta. The full kilo plus.
---
First I wanted to know what that dirty looking batch of pre-cut leaves sprinkled with bright violet beans and glowing carrot slices was. Really, sitting in that shallow crate, half shoved to one side, half of the pale wood planks showing, it reminded me of the market's equivalent of the pork butcher (they are definitely the most raw; the whole store looks pinker than a 60's diner). But on a Saturday before Notte Bianca, after a week when I had learned that if I did not stock up on energy and excitement for Sunday, the quiet would make me sad and hungry, I just asked: "Minestrone," I chewed on the familiar word. That is my next dish, or pot, as the case may be.
---
Damn it. I just got back from Despar - the desperately dispensed despot. I have some pale red tomatoes (they're supposed to be truly red tomatoes). I have a 44 cent pasta bag, which I should be frustrated with myself for buying. The tear in the bottom of the frail green plastic just about amounts to my amount of confidence in this shop. I looked for twenty five minutes, three friends waiting for beans. Canned, frikkin' beans. "Sotto," the red-shirted, broom-wielding man said. Not sotto. Not! Alla entrata. Sopra. SOPRA!
I hope the pasta e fagioli turns out tasteful. Hopefully rosemario will save the evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment