Animal, Vegetable, Miracle_ A Year of Food Life - Barbara Kingsolver [124]
Reading the menus was reliable entertainment for other reasons too. More Italians were going to chef school, apparently, than translator school. This is not a complaint; it’s my belief that when in Rome, you speak the best darn Italian you can muster. So we mustered. I speak some languages, but that isn’t one of them. Steven’s Italian consisted of only the endearments and swear words he grew up hearing from his Nonnie. I knew the Italian vocabulary of classical music, plus that one song from Lady and the Tramp. But still, I’d be darned if I was going to be one of those Americans who stomp around Italy barking commands in ever-louder English. I was going to be one of those Americans who traversed Italy with my forehead knit in concentration, divining words from their Latin roots and answering by wedging French cognates into Italian pronunciations spliced onto a standard Spanish verb conjugation.
To my astonishment, this technique served really well about 80 percent of the time. Italians are a deeply forgiving people. Or else they are polite, and still laughing. Va bene. With a dictionary and grammar book in hand, learning a little more actual Italian each day, we traveled in our rental car from Rome up the winding mountain roads to Steven’s grandmother’s hometown in Abruzzi, then north through the farmsteads of Umbria and Tuscany, and finally by train to Venice, having fascinating conversations along the way with people who did not speak English. I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers. In this case they were kind enough to dumb down their explanations and patiently unscramble a romance language omelet.
So we didn’t expect English translations on the menu. No problem. Often there was no menu at all, just the meal of the day in a couple of variations. But restaurants with printed menus generally offered some translation, especially around cities and tourist destinations. I felt less abashed about my own wacky patois as I puzzled through entries such as “Nose Fish,” “Pizza with fungus,” and the even less appetizing “Polyps, baked or grilled.” It seemed “Porky mushrooms” were in season everywhere, along with the perennial favorite (but biologically challenging) “bull mozzarella.”
The fun didn’t stop with printed menus: an impressive sculpture in the Vatican Museum was identified as the “Patron Genius of Childbirth.” (So that’s who thought it up.) A National Park brochure advised us about hiking preparedness, closing with this helpful tip: “Be sure you have the necessary equipments to make funny outings in respects of nature!” One morning after breakfast we found a polite little sign in our hotel room that warned: “Due to general works in the village, no water or electricity 8:30 to 11:00. Thank you for your comprehension.”
Comprehension is just what was called for in these situations. Sooner or later we always figured out the menus, though we remained permanently mystified by a recurring item called “oven-baked rhombus.” We were tempted to order it just to put the question to rest, but never did. Too square, I guess.
Italian food is not delicious for its fussiness or complexity, but for the opposite reason: it’s simple. And it’s an obsession. For a while I thought I was making this up, an outsider’s exaggerated sensitivity to a new cultural expression. But I really wasn’t. In the famous Siena cathedral I used my binoculars to study the marble carvings over the entry door (positioned higher than the Donatello frescoes),