• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“I envy people from small republics whose history no one knows and therefore could never resent.”

“So, let’s sit here quietly, like people from a quiet country, so no one will know where we were born.”

“A man and a woman, here in Rome, in this lovely place, under these old wonderful trees that have seen so much. Causing no problems. Embarrassing no one.”

“Especially, thank God, ourselves.”

Friday, October 19

VIA DELLE CINQUE

“Wine and Chocolates”

They meet for lunch at a small trattoria in Trastevere. Perhaps not the best choice; she is nearly vegetarian, and the specialty is grilled meats. There is another unwisdom in this choice; the restaurant isn’t far from where Valerie lives, and they both glance furtively up the small streets, afraid of seeing her.

She orders pasta peperoncini, wanting the simplicity, the sharpness: garlic and crushed red pepper. She will not, like him, allow herself lombata di vitello, for which the place is famous. Veal chops: no, she knows how veal chops come to be.

He cuts into his chop, and the anticipation of the taste of residual blood makes his mouth water. He wishes Clare were here. He wishes he were with Clare instead of Miranda. Clare loves meat. If he were with Clare, he would not have to be thinking of the suffering of animals.

“My colleagues and I were out for dinner last night,” she says. “We started talking about some great health problem, tuberculosis, I think, but the food was so good we got distracted from whatever it was we were talking about. Malaria. Avian flu.”

“Mussolini wanted Italians to give up eating pasta. He thought it was a distraction; he thought it made them weaker, less willing to put their shoulders to the Fascist wheel.”

He sees she isn’t listening to him. Her attention has shifted to a shop across the narrow street, a shop that sells wine and chocolates. A shift of attention he would never feel with Clare.

The bells of the basilica strike one. The girl closes the store; she’s going for her lunch.

“Isn’t she pretty, and isn’t it great she’s locking up that lovely store so she can go home for lunch. Her hair is just marvelous, look at those curls, so dark and rich, and that wonderful skirt: there must be a hundred pleats. I wonder if her mother irons her skirt for her.”

He sees Miranda has made up a life for her. “You haven’t given that up, I’m glad to say.”

“Sometimes I was worried that you didn’t like it when I did that.”

“I didn’t like it when I thought you were getting carried away, forgetting that you’d made the whole thing up. But usually I enjoyed it. I’d enjoy it now. So: make a life for this young girl.”

“All right,” she says, putting down her fork. “She’s going home to her father and mother for lunch. She has a pesky younger brother. For lunch her mother is serving ravioli with spinach and ricotta. Then an omelet. She’s pouring water from a decanter that’s made of light green glass. The girl mixes the water with her wine: she has to go back to work. The mother puts a plate on the table: the plate is white, the grapes are light green, they almost match the decanter, but they have a russet tinge. Muscat, the grapes are called. They’re in season now.”

“Muscata,” he says.

“Yes,” she says, not liking to be interrupted. Resenting, as she sometimes did, his precisions, which stopped her flow.

“She goes back to work at three. She has a pleasant afternoon full of good-natured and moderately profitable exchanges. She wraps the chocolates prettily in purple paper with that red-purple ribbon that she curls with the blade of her scissors. She puts the wine in silver bags, actually more like envelopes. She will close the store at six. Her boyfriend will meet her on his Vespa. She’ll cover her perfect hair with an emerald-colored helmet; his is dark blue. He’s blond, and also curly haired. Tall, perhaps a bit too thin. Maybe he takes drugs or maybe he’s a runner. He stops the Vespa on a dime at a little café. They meet their friends. She takes her helmet off and her curls