Is there such a thing as a philosophy of nutrition? Nietzsche asked himself that question. And every now and again so do I.
The city and I wake up at the same time. Or at least that’s what I like to think — the aroma of coffee, the sounds of shops opening and cars starting. Because when a city awakens, not only do its inhabitants open their eyes and reconnect with the world, but its walls are bathed in a certain light and its streets surrender once more to being trodden on and driven over. Silence lingers for a while and then breaks. Bologna is that kind of city, where it feels like everyone does everything in unison, even breathing. You learn things like that about a city, and then you feel less of a stranger.
Giuliana’s already been up for a while and the baby is playing on a rug in the lounge, having had his full share of milk and breast. When I see him like that, just before leaving the house, I start to think about the future as something that has already begun. His existence is a sign of rebellion against modernity and all its perversions, urgency, and the eternal futility of tomorrow. My baby boy has helped me discover that I like being where I am, in the moment. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s Asiago or Rome, Bologna or Florence or L’Aquila. It doesn’t matter at all because in a short while I’ll be grilling a fillet steak or looking at myself in a mirror and deciding that the past few sleepless nights are showing in my face. A few years back I would have described it as a deceleration of the centrifugal forces hurtling me toward a waiting world. Today the place I’m at is a family, and the present has never been such a fundamental part of my life.
My morning coffee tastes just as it should. I get dressed, pack my laptop, a book, and my neatly folded uniform into my backpack and sling it over my shoulder. I say goodbye to Giuliana, give the little man a hug, and leave the house musing that I am now the same age as my dad was in my last memories of him.
I have a twofold image of my father. In one I can see him the way I did back then — when I was a scared and ravenous teenager — and in the other it’s through the eyes of a man the same age. The time in between feels pleasantly familiar now.
I walk to the tram stop, running slightly late as I usually am and always have been. The morning cacophony of cars honking, shop shutters clanking, footsteps on pebble stones builds to a crescendo. Under the tram shelter there are people on their way to work, older people (where do all these elderly folk go every day?), and kids sneaking a cigarette before school, a flowing and purposeful rhythm of which I too am a part. A beautiful day under a lukewarm sun, a brisk mid-October breeze, the tram running on time, one every three minutes. Everything satisfactory, set out in the only way possible. Then I spot Carlo Cracco staring at me from a poster on the opposite side of the tracks, his arms crossed, leaning next to a potato chip topped with a sadly out-of-place quail egg, and urging me to “be daring and use it”—the potato chip — “in your dishes.” Of course he’s selling out our entire profession. In the sense that that poster says it all. I’m screwing with you. I’ve always screwed you, we’re an army of people who’ve been screwing you around for a very long time, because you have no idea what we’ve been up to, you don’t know the meaning of soul and harmony, all you need to be is punctual and able to regurgitate hackneyed clichés. Here’s a shitty quail egg on top of a potato chip out of a €1 packet, and everyone opens their mouths like trained monkeys and makes a beeline for their wallets. Take a closer look at the poster: The tagline is, “Cooking takes guts,” in quotation marks, followed by the MasterChef judge’s signature. Right concept, wrong context.
When I was a teenager, I was convinced that pain and hard work added an extra measure of dignity, so when I first began working in a professional kitchen, I believed it would wash away all my sins and turn them into grace and pride. And that scraps of meat, once they’ve gone through the mincer, would turn into good food. Now I know I was wrong. It’s television that adds an extra measure of dignity and washes away all sins.
I get word that the restaurant where I worked my knuckles to the bone and busted my ass in Thiene has closed and the owner-chef has become a regular on a food program on TV. He pretends he’s cooking, he’s become a familiar face, he can pay off his mortgage and no longer has to deal with labor disputes initiated by pissed-off former employees. Can you blame him? No, neither can I.
It’s not about whether or not you become a big shot. I believe it’s simpler than that: It’s about working less and earning more.
In the end, this is a dream shared by many, and not just chefs; maybe it’s a question of well-being. As far as I’m concerned, my little boy has a huge bearing on my current well-being and many of the choices I make. After all, we all dream of being the piece of the puzzle that fits perfectly into someone else’s dream. My son is the piece that joins me to Giuliana. I’m not being schmaltzy, just consistent. Years have passed and I’m still a chef, cooking in the same spirit as when I started: as a stepping-stone to something else, something else that reappears in a different guise over time. And then there are coincidences.
A few years back I was on my way home on a train from Florence, and I bumped into a girl from Bologna I had met in Rome. She had perky breasts and a mountain of dreams that hadn’t yet collapsed into a mudslide. Her name was Aurora. We sat together and chatted the whole time. She showed me photos of Antonio, a geologist friend of hers with a passion for motorbikes and travel. In the winter of 2006, I had gone to India and written to her, and she had replied to say that that friend of hers was in India too. He was near the Pakistani border, on his motorbike, and she gave me his e-mail address and told me to contact him. I was in Karnataka on an Enfield 350 I had rented and more than a thousand miles from where he was, so there wasn’t much point getting in touch. But I wrote to him nonetheless, just a few lines to say hello. Then I put it completely out of my mind and a week later I decided to head inland, toward Hampi. Hampi is a village famous for its ruins of the ancient Vijayanagara Empire, and it’s the only place in India I visited where it is compulsory to register your name and details with the local police. After finding a guesthouse, taking a shower, and having a rest, I went to an Internet point, where I found an e-mail from Antonio: He had just arrived in Hampi and read my name in the police register, just above his own. He was leaving the following day, and if I wanted, we could meet at the Virupaksha Temple. He’d be waiting for me there at around eight. We talked all evening and stayed in contact for years afterward. We wrote to each other when I was in Puerto Rico and he in South Sudan, and then when I was in Brazil and he in Darfur, without ever meeting in person again. Four years after that night, I met and fell in love with Giuliana, she found a position in Bologna, and we moved in together in an apartment that turned out to be five hundred yards from Antonio’s place.
Coincidences are proof that we are in the right place at the right time. I’ve built my whole life and all of my stories around them. For Kafka, coincidences were a sign, from either the angels or the hit men of fate, representing an uncontrollable slice of life that terrified him. When on June 29, 1920, he was in Vienna to meet Milena Jesenská, he wrote to her from his hotel to say she should not startle him by approaching from the side or from behind.
In Death in Venice, Aschenbach is informed that his luggage has been sent ahead to Como by mistake, and he takes it as a sign he must remain in Venice and contemplate his beloved Tadzio; it is ultimately his death warrant. In Jungian psychology, coincidence is known as synchronicity and always has meaning. Then Twitter, Facebook, and iPhones arrived on the scene, and if coincidences still happen it’s become harder to recognize them. In any case, they continue to play a role in my life.
I look around the tram: There must be about fifteen of us, and everyone (including me) is holding a smartphone. I start reading the day’s news, jumping from Twitter to various news sites. Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, has made a few announcements; Silvio Berlusconi is doing community service at a hospice in Cesano Boscone; unrest is again stirring in the Middle East; the Roma soccer club won its last match. As did Juventus. Damn. I’d call Matteo, but he is traveling solo around Vietnam. As I mess around with my phone, an e-mail arrives: It’s from Matteo.
To: Leonardo Lucarelli
Date: October 18, 2013, 10:38 p.m.
Subject: From the East
Here I am.
I’m writing to you from a place you’d love: a food court with about 30 kiosks. There’s people cooking meat stews, fish, seafood, soups, and sweets. It’s just outside the center of Ho Chi Minh City, and tomorrow I’ll be celebrating my first month in Vietnam — on a 12-hour overnight bus to Cambodia. Being so far away and for so long tempts me to just vanish into thin air. Morph into someone else, like we used to fantasize about in Rome. Be totally different from the person I thought I’d become all those years ago. But just writing these things tells me I haven’t changed at all.
Here, everything is both real and fake at the same time. It’s weird. In any case, the Vietnamese seem happy; I’d say they’re content with the way they live and this reminds me of you. And there are all these women whose age is impossible to guess, tiny women, barefoot, that remind me so much of your mother.
It’s been at least a couple of days since I spoke to anyone, and I’m ok with that. It’s just that when you don’t talk much, your thoughts start going off on a tangent and intertwining with each other in the strangest ways. Just a moment or so ago, for instance, I was thinking about the theory that laughter lifts your mood because apparently it releases endorphins and stimulates the production of serotonin. Who knows if it’s true. It’s been weeks now since I last had a laugh — I mean a big belly laugh — and yet I feel great. And I don’t even go running in the morning. And no, no sex. I guess I laughed more when I was younger. And you always laughed more than me anyway.
All this solitude makes me feel old. Seeing me old makes me feel like a kid again. But writing all this to you, who’s had a son in the meantime, makes me feel like an adolescent again. And realizing that I’m here, writing all this to you, makes me feel like an old man again. Go figure.
In 12 years I’ll be 50. The thought is banging around so loudly in my head that I wonder if people can hear it. No, I don’t think so. Fifty is a nice round number and, in some ways, I’d like to be that age right now. But the point is not the number, 50. The point is us. Our life story. The score we settle with the meaning of things. I’m simply astonished at the power of ideas like this: a thought is like the last card that makes a house of cards come tumbling down. I’ve never actually built a house of cards, but I suppose that’s how it must be. You used to say: “When you do something really well, everything else falls into place.” In actual fact you’ve fucked up more times than I can remember. You also used to say that working as a cook was what saved you, but every time you needed to pull out all the stops, I had to remind you of it.
The years are passing and both of us are changing, and our relationship and the things we say to each other are changing too. When I came to see you before leaving, I thought the baby was awesome, and you’re a good dad in a way that’s both just like you and surprising at the same time. So maybe this is what saves us. I don’t know exactly what it is you are doing — it doesn’t even matter — but I’m thinking about you now and I think you’re fine just where you are. Me, I don’t know. And if I say I’m 27, they believe me.
Ok, I’ll sign off now, my fried banana is ready. See you soon, my dear friend Leo.
Matt