Roman Daze. Brontè Dee Jackson
di spagna, is wrapped around semi-dry white chocolate that is so sweet I can’t eat more than a mouthful and which drowns out the occasional cherry. I put it aside for my husband to finish after he gets through his dark chocolate one and ask for the chocolate and pear torta, a flat, dry-looking tart. But before doing so, wary of the white chocolate and cherry roll, I ask, ‘Is there much chocolate in the pear and chocolate tart?’
‘No, it’s chocolate tart, not a tart of chocolate,’ the waitress says.
It is delicious, bitter in its chocolaty, crumbly pastry form, the sweetness coming from the syrupy pears.
We buy some Genzano bread to take back with us to Rome, which is apparently well-known as being great bread. We also have a selection of biscuits made from almond flour, nut flour, chestnut flour and flavoured with chocolate and orange, and a few slices of porcetta for our dinner. Porcetta is another wonderful speciality of the hills surrounding Rome. In many of these little eateries you will find a nearly whole cooked pig body, with no legs, resting under a large curved Perspex container. It has been roasted and stuffed with herbs. You order it by the gram or the slice. The lid is raised up and a sharp knife slices off delicious rounds of crackling, fat, roasted pork and herb stuffing. It is divine eaten by the slice from the paper it is served on, on a piece of bread as a sandwich or with vegetables.
It is time to head home. It is still raining and although I have not thrust myself into a whistling, dripping, green forest this Sunday, I still feel I have been refreshed.
Chapter 8
La Liberazione, Freedom
Today is April 25, a big day for Italy. It is a holiday that celebrates the day Italy was liberated from German occupation during World War II, the day that was also the beginning of the end for the Italian Monarchy, and the day that was a precursor to Italy becoming a democratic, voting, independent republic. My husband explains all this to me on the way to our local bar to have our usual Saturday morning cappuccino and cornetto ( breakfast pastry) .
‘That is an important day,’ I remark. ‘No wonder it’s a holiday. All of that happened in one day?’ I ask, incredulous.
‘Well, maybe not all in one day,’ my husband says, ‘but it all started from La Liberazione.’ It seems they were liberated from more than just the Germans.
Today has the air of a special and sacred day. It is a day that honours Italian soldiers killed fighting for their country, it honours those who lost their lives resisting the German-supported Fascist State, and it honours the partisan, or people’s, movement which formed the basis of the movement to become a democratic republic. There are celebrations all over Italy; military parades and ceremonies to honour the living who participated in it and to remember their comrades who died for it.
There are old faces on the news. Old faces accepting with dignity the accolades due to them for activities long forgotten and unwitnessed. Faces that know they deserve this honour for the courage they had, the fear they had to overcome, the secret deeds they had to do. It is hard for me to imagine that kind of sacrifice.
There are other faces too. Faces that say ‘I am defeated’ and ‘I can’t stop remembering’. Faces that show that some fear, some pain, some memories never go away. Faces that say ‘I cannot forgive, I cannot forget, but I go on anyway’.
Most families have a story about wartime Italy; a loss, a death, a resister, a traitor, a collaborator, a soldier, some of which were women. These were the roles given to the Italian public to play. Everyone had one. My friend’s house, just outside of the main metropolis of Rome, was taken over and used as Nazi headquarters. My friend’s parents were part of the Italian Monarchy and lived in a huge villa set in extensive grounds. Their groundsman, who I later came to also be friends with, had a brother who was one of the thirty local men randomly selected one day by those Nazis and shot, in retaliation for three dead German soldiers found nearby. Ten Italians for every one German soldier. I drive past the memorial to these war crimes, built on the sight of the massacre, on a weekly basis.
This holiday to remember them all comes a week or so after Easter and a week before May 1 which is, of course, the famous ‘workers day’. No-one works on that day. I once tried to fly out of Italy on May 1. It is worse than Christmas Day because the ‘workers’ operate the trains, buses and taxis that get you to the airport, and they are all on holiday. There is no-one on the streets and nothing is open. These workers take their one day a year seriously. The Italian democratic republic State does too.
Not so with April 25. Although there are no shops open and the streets are quiet, you can still get a coffee until 1pm or go to the supermarket, as with most public holidays. Although, you have to be careful; my husband had gone yesterday to check that the supermarket would be open today and saw a sign which said it was open the usual hours. Today, it has changed its mind and is shutting in half an hour, half a day earlier than it said it would.
Except for the fact that I know Italians are brilliant astronomers and engineers, I would assume that they, as a culture, have a problem with numbers. They change depending on who they are being given to, where they are located and the level of convenience associated with them. For example, a set of favourable statistics being requested by the Pope at the Vatican would be easy to come by. However, some unpopular economic figures requested by a mayor’s assistant in a small province, that required work during a lunch hour to produce, probably wouldn’t be.
Birth dates are another example. When I first met my husband he told me his birthday was on December 29. So on December 29 I wished him a happy birthday and made a big fuss. I found it a bit strange that no-one else seemed to be doing so – no family members, no friends. Imagine my surprise when the next day his family and friends rang to wish him a happy birthday. Yes, he explained to me, he was born on December 29 but his birthday is celebrated the day after because that is the date written on his birth certificate.
‘But why does your birth certificate say you are born the day after you were actually born?’ I had asked. ‘Is it tradition to add on a day?’
‘No, it is because the doctor signed it on the day he received the birth certificate,’ my husband said. I was outraged.
‘Apart from the obvious astrological ramifications,’ I explained to my husband, ‘the whole point of a birth certificate is to certify that you were born and on what day. Not the day it was convenient for the doctor to sign it.’
‘Well, it’s better than my niece,’ he replied. ‘She was born on August 31 but her declared date of birth is September 3.’
August being traditionally the month that everyone goes on holiday, there were no doctors around to sign the birth certificate, so it was signed when they got back from holidays. Whenever I start this conversation among Italians, there is always someone whose date of birth had to be changed for the sake and convenience of bureaucracy. Some people have up to one week’s difference.
So who makes them celebrate the date they are declared to be born and not the actual date? The State does. The Monarchy is dead and in its place is the mighty Italian State. While we are sipping our morning cappuccini on the Day of Liberation, enjoying the quiet tranquillity of the holiday, I realise that liberation from one form of social control does not mean there won’t be any in its place. It is a matter of having the choice, I suppose, and being able to choose the one that makes you feel safer and the one that you feel is the fairest. When your king runs off as the invading armies enter your country, after enjoying the fruits of Monarchy all his life, it would be galling. I can see how painful it must have been for Italians to experience that. I can see how that would lead to a fierce desire for self-determination and the realisation that the people could probably run the country just as well.
Italy as a nation had not long been in existence before World War II. It was only in the mid-1860s that all the principalities and kingdoms that make up the current landmass of Italy were conquered and forced to become one nation under one king. Before that, there were several kings and local princes that ran each part of it – there was the Kingdom of Naples, the Principality of