Loves & Miracles of Pistola. Hilary Prendini Toffoli
Zia Andromaca, an avid reader of newspapers and Oggi magazine, tells him Trastevere is the oldest and cheapest part of Rome to live.
‘Founded by the Etruscans is what it was,’ she announces with a gleam in her eye as she wraps up one of her delicious brittle sbrisolona tarts for his journey on the train, ‘on the other side of the Tevere River.’
The night before his departure, he visits Teresa. She looks haunted, and still hasn’t told her parents. Their hurried low-voiced conversation in the street outside her house begins with her furiously telling him to mind his own business and ends with her begging him to bring Aguinaldo back home.
That night, Nonno Mario relents and cooks him a special farewell meal. A lean and tasty leg of wild boar he has marinated in herbs and a full-bodied Bardolino from the shores of Lago di Garda, while adding to the pot half a glass of Recioto late harvest towards the end for sweetness. He got the boar from Cecco Santangelo, secretary of Campino’s hunt club, who shoots for the pot, sometimes as far away as Yugoslavia, and considers the British extremely weird because they dress in funny red clothes to go leaping over hedges after some terrified little bony creature not even good enough to eat.
Pistola has never tasted boar before. He tells his grandfather he loves its deep dark unforgettable flavour.
‘Face it, my boy, you’re not going to get anything as good as this past your lips for a long, long time.’ Nonno Mario rolls his eyes. ‘You’re going to starve. I won’t sleep a wink while you’re away. Hope I’m still alive when you get back …’
Pistola’s rare trips to Verona have always been with his Liceo class, visiting historic Verona landmarks. He and Fiorenzo and Donato usually trail along on the fringes searching for girls among the numerous tourist groups visiting this medieval city. In their narrow cords and Monty duffle coats, they don’t look like schoolboys and often manage to get their pictures taken with the girls, smiling sweetly on the ivy-covered balcony of the Capulet house where Romeo seduced Juliet.
It’s not a school bus that takes Pistola to Verona this time, though. It’s Zio Umberto’s rummy-playing movie mogul’s son Eros in his snooty long-nosed royal-blue Alfa Romeo Giulietta.
Unlike Campino’s little one-horse set-up, Verona station is a major junction, deluged with passengers in this overwrought and undersupplied post-war era. Just finding the right platform and the right train for Rome is a military operation. Boarding it is a full-on offensive even for a colossus like Zio Umberto.
The first things Pistola notices are the Wagons-Lits. An aristocratic blue like Eros’s Giulietta, their doors bear an impressive coat of arms with two rearing lions picked out in gold above the majestically intertwined initials ‘WL’. The blinds are rolled down on most of the windows. Rich Austrians making the journey to Rome.
‘Poor things!’ Zio Umberto growls as he and Pistola hurry past. ‘Even when they occupied the country, they were terrified they would catch some nasty Italian disease. Why in hell do they still keep coming?’
Since there’s no limit to the number of tickets sold, by the time the train gets here from Austria, the second- and third-class compartments are invariably full. Zio Umberto can’t afford the first-class tickets that would buy them seats on red flocked velvet alongside the politicians and high-up bureaucrats. Instead, their lot is the second-class section, as noisy and smoke-filled as a Campino trattoria on a Friday night.
‘Allora! Andiamo, ragazzo!’ Zio Umberto gives Pistola the command to gear himself for the onslaught. ‘We get in there and fight our way through! Knees and elbows!’
The compartment they choose is bursting with men in uniform. Fresh-faced army and navy recruits returning to barracks. Jaded civil servants on the edge of retirement. Railways employees in dark suits with trousers short on the ankle and shiny on the seat.
Having experienced more than one military assault during his long life, the butcher knows all the manoeuvres. He’s determined to find seats for the two of them. If he doesn’t, they’ll have to stand the whole six hundred kilometres to Rome, or at least until Florence, when half the train will empty and they’ll have to grab whatever they can.
Their knees and elbows secure them two seats in a cabin crammed with large people and their large amounts of luggage. Not too cordial either, including a rough-looking type as tall as a baby pine, who stands up to watch Zio Umberto attempting to make a space among the suitcases.
‘Attento!’ His dark voice rumbles up from his boots and he towers over Zio Umberto.
Before Zio Umberto’s eyes can narrow into the purposeful stare he bestows on doomed animals, Pistola quickly indulges in some damage control.
‘I have an uncle your size, Signor,’ he announces. ‘Grenadier in the King’s Guards.’
This breaks the ice. The man introduces himself as Giorgio Pallavicini from Friuli in the mountains, and before they’ve even reached the outskirts of the city, he’s giving them a blow-by-blow of his day in a busy rosticceria next to Rome’s Fontana di Trevi.
Pistola doesn’t know what a rosticceria is.
‘A hole in the wall where you make and sell food all day and night,’ says the Friulano, at which the rosy-cheeked woman next to him reaches into a capacious floral bag and brings out a plastic container.
‘Roman specialities,’ she says. ‘Try.’
For Pistola, their names are as memorable as what they taste like. Deep-fried mozzarella-stuffed risotto balls called ‘suppli al telefono’ because the melted cheese hangs out in delicious sticky strings like telephone wires. Mozzarella sandwiches dipped in batter, deep-fried and called ‘mozzarella in carrozza’, mozzarella in a carriage.
Not to be outdone, Zio Umberto produces several slices of Gamba Mischi’s cotechino and a bottle of Lambrusco to share.
Two soldiers are asleep next to Pistola. A slack-jawed young khaki-clad recruit drooling on the shoulder of the one next to him, a dark wiry devil with a nasty star-shaped scar on his cheek. Neither of them wake, even when the talk of food moves to more excitable talk of war.
‘Vaca troia!’ Zio Umberto announces. ‘I realised our lives would never be the same again when they told us to give up our gold rings for La Patria.’
‘And took the bronze statue of the soldier in the square,’ says the Friulano. He passes the Lambrusco back to Zio Umberto. ‘Did you also get that British propaganda plane in the middle of the night?’
The flesh on Zio Umberto’s ruddy cheeks quivers. ‘Madonna! Telling us to get the Germans out of Italy! Telling the sheep to get rid of the wolves!’ He sighs. ‘One thing I’ll never forget is the sky red with flames when the British bombed the Germans’ ammunitions depot in Verona.’
The rosy-cheeked woman leans forwards and pats Zio Umberto on the knee. ‘Let’s rather remember the day the Americans started rolling into town after all those years of misery! What a miracle!’
‘Finally!’ says the Friulano. ‘Everyone waving at the soldiers! Everyone yelling, “Hello Johnny!” and the soldiers all shouting back, “Bella Italia!”’
He pronounces ‘Bella Italia!’ with such exuberance that the two foreign blondes sitting at the window repeat ‘Bella Italia!’ with smiley strident enthusiasm. When the Roman woman joins in, the two soldiers wake.
‘National euphoria,’ says Zio Umberto. ‘In our village we had a dancing epidemic. So many breasts bouncing, and everyone becoming an expert at that boogie the Yankees brought with their chewing gum.’
‘After those six years of misery anything was fun!’ says the Friulano with a grin.