Page 42 - WTP Vol. XI #6

A Taste of Italy (continued from preceding page)
of Italy, prove in all the years he would spend in the
country so peculiar. So remarkable. ~
It was a matter of a restaurant—an outdoor space, on a narrow grassy shelf beneath a string of dim bulbs, flush against the face of a stark granite cliff. Strange experience indeed.
At 8 p.m., as told, he’d appeared in the square. The car awaiting him was a small compact two-door, occupied already by a pair of men besides Corrado. The one was riding shotgun, the other in back. This left it to Parsons, as tall as he was, to pretzel himself into the one remaining seat, hoping that the ride to dinner would be brief.
It wasn’t to be. The town left behind them, Corrado was soon piloting through sharp, dizzying drops and tight, twisting turns, uphill and down, in a roller-coaster ride through a wholly blackened landscape. Parsons’ glimpses through the window yielded nothing more than a swirl
of forest and cliff face as they crossed tight bridges next to thundering cataracts and pitched up new inclines, the obscurity more phantasmagoric by the minute.
Some forty minutes later the car yanked sharply off the road to their left onto a gravel parking lot, a long narrow strip running parallel to the roadway.
They got out without speaking. The other two men had exchanged names with Parsons when they had set out, both of them somewhere around Parsons’ age, dressed in bulky dark clothes. Friendly enough men, but no interest in talking. He’d have no interaction with them for the balance of the evening.
“One can imagine,” Parsons murmured, “how truly disconcerting the whole thing was for me! Here the four of us were, in the middle of nowhere as far as I could see, no facility in sight, save a squat stone building
that stood to our left. I turned to Corrado. ‘There’s a restaurant here?’ I asked. He nodded and said, ‘But it’s a private party tonight.’ An answer, of course, that left me even more perplexed.”
They had climbed a short ramp to an uphill path, which led at a shallow angle beneath the string of bare bulbs dimly lighting the way. Well ahead, Parsons saw, a sizable group had assembled and stood around talking, all in casual clothes, beer bottles in hand. All of them men. On nearer approach, he could take in the layout.
The “restaurant” consisted of the slender grassy shelf, some fifty feet in length, bounded on the right by the sharp, sudden drop to the parking lot below. On the left
rose the high vertical wall of the cliff face. A handful of trees clung to the edge along the righthand side, beneath one of which a man stood stirring a large simmering vat. He stirred it, Parsons, saw, as the four of them drew nearer, with a length of 2 by 4. From the contents of
the vat rose two things: steam and fragrance. Lamb! deduced Parsons, the fragrance arising both delicate and spicy. The man stirring it, illuminated by one of the bulbs, was about age forty, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Obviously, the chef.
Even more peculiar were the furnishings to be seen.
All the tables consisted of large, flat-topped rocks— boulders, really—the chairs smaller boulders, also flat-topped for sitting. On one of the bigger boulders in the middle of the area cold beer was set out, some two dozen bottles, there for the taking. It wasn’t very long, as they mingled with the group, introductions traded
and smiles being offered (a blur of dialect for Parsons), before he found himself holding a cold bottle in his hand and taking swigs from it.
Dinner, he inferred, was still some time away, so he ventured over to the cauldron and the chef. His hunger sharpened, he said without preface, “It smells delicious! What kind of spices are you cooking it with?”
“What’s at hand,” the man replied, in a not-too-friendly tone. Seeing Parsons’ confusion, he pointed a finger over his head.
Parsons laughed. “What? Overhead?”
The man reached up and from a low-hanging branch, one close above the cauldron, snapped a sprig of several leaves. He handed it to Parsons. He then did likewise with another low branch, from another nearby tree.
“My word,” said Parsons, inhaling the fragrance.
The man reclaimed both sprigs without any comment. He dropped them into the cauldron and stirred them in.
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