The Frankfurt Kitchen by Heidi Laird

Author:Heidi Laird [Laird, Heidi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781649529749
Google: r6eBzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Fulton Books
Published: 2021-06-08T01:05:16+00:00

22

The True Believers

By the middle of June, with the summer heat reaching temperature measurements which seemed improbable and fantastical to people from northern climates, Harry and Vera decided that our future was not in Italy. There were probably a number of reasons for this decision, having to do with growing doubts about Harry’s association with the Italian businessman, and Vera’s unhappiness without her Steinway. One day, on relatively short notice, Harry’s vintage Citroen was methodically loaded up with boxes and suitcases, leaving three small niches in the back seat for René, Stefan, and myself to nest in during the two-day return journey to Frankfurt. The three of us took the change, of course, in stride, and it seems that we were more drawn to resuming our life in Frankfurt than invested in our Italian experience. I initially missed the daily routine of wandering through our neighborhood open-air market and looking for novelty pasta shapes in the vendors’ huge glass jars, walking to our bakery down the street, chatting with Emiglio, helping Ricchetta with the cleaning and watching Vera try out new Italian recipes while Sofia would talk about what was going on in her school. What has remained in my memory of our year in Rome is not a list of world-famous artworks, churches, and monuments but the general sense of having lived an ordinary life there, having blended in with the people around us, participating in quotidian routines among the descendants of the ancient Romans for whom, two thousand years ago, the word quotidian was a part of their everyday vocabulary and which, in fact, literally meant “every day.” These ancestors had thought, spoken, argued, whispered, dreamed, shouted, sung, and cursed in Latin just as their compatriots did on the frontier in Nida, to which we were now returning.

The tenants of our apartment in Frankfurt still had a month to go on their lease when we returned from Rome, which meant that we dispersed to various temporary living quarters for a month. I went to live with a foster family in a village outside of Frankfurt and experienced a culture shock when I discovered that no matter how hard I tried to blend in with their routines and customs, I would never fit in. They were extremely religious, frequently referred to Bible stories and quoted scripture when discussing news stories and current events, and invoked the Word of God at every turn. They were naturally very interested to hear what I had seen in Rome, and on the second or third day, at the dinner table, when I got to the story of the pope in his glass coffin with his face covered by a layer of silver, they marveled at my good fortune to have been able to see this miracle. I assured them that the pope’s silver face was not brought on by a miracle but by the hands of a human silversmith, a fact which I had learned from the small wall-mounted plaque near the glass coffin.

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