Domesticity: A Gastronomic Interpretation of Love by Shacochis Bob

Author:Shacochis, Bob [Shacochis, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781595341907
Publisher: Trinity University Press
Published: 2013-11-11T18:30:00+00:00

SOUP THERAPY

“O poor immortal comforts: Fish, some bread and wine.”

—NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS

February, and we are prisoners of woe.

At dinner some evenings ago, at a restaurant on the misty Via Benedetta in Trastevere, in Rome, we talked with visiting friends about the food of comfort and reconciliation. One must talk about such food, when you’re sentenced to rain-haunted Rome for the winter; cloistered for the crime of writing books, alongside the innocent Miss Sniffley F. in a drab and damp one-room cell at the American Academy in Rome, command post for the ongoing Grand Tour, and the last institution I know of in the modern democratic world that takes the royal point of view regarding what might most successfully inspire and enrich the creative effort. Money? No. Pampering? Heavens no. Comfort? Nope. Discomfort? Ah. Suffering? Ecco!

It’s beyond me, how this myth has managed to survive, here at the Academy, but persist it does and we were embalmed within it, Miss F. and I, victims of the gilded punishment called the Prix de Rome: freezing, aching, congested, claustrophobic, shuffling in our robes across icy tiles to the communal bathrooms, squinting in the dimly lit interiors. Eating Italian chaingang food at long tables, seated with the 30-odd scholars and artists who share, some complacently, some more gracefully, this backhanded reward. The low-budget meals are cooked by a mamma whose mamma instincts are in full flower in our parsimonious colony. With what little she has to work with, she struggles to comfort us with her pastas and frittatas; she slips me extra servings of lentils to reconcile me with the gods of this bleak kingdom who declaim: “Silence, insect, you’re in Rome, ancient capital of gluttons, conquerors, and role-model martyrs. Thou shalt not bite the hand that barely feeds thee.”

So, we escaped for the evening to Da Checcho e Carrettiere, an excellent and warm-hearted establishment where we would be daily nourished if either I or Her Flushedness Miss F. had been wise enough to be born with trust funds waiting. Our friend Susan, having just heard a tale in which I am cast as both angel and scoundrel, commiserated with the weak Miss F., half-recovered from a rampage of Post-Classical flu. “When I’m sick,” said Susan, cutting her eyes at her husband Tom, “you bring me what I want.”

Hear the threatening tone just right: Susan wasn’t making a statement, she was issuing law. It seems that when she was last convalescing, Tom had confused her sickbed request for lemon ice and had brought strawberry. Or vice versa. Susan had never forgotten this cruel denial. Now she was rubbing it in, delivering a commandment from the domestic bible, one that a cook and husband, friend and lover must heed. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Myself, I heed slowly, but well, once I find the rhythm. As for the infirm, I would as soon lock them in a closet, which is where I take myself when sick, to lie in isolation and darkness, off the path of the world like an injured dog, until my strength returns.

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