Gilberta’s kitchen was peaceful. Rough-cut stones formed an arch above the fireplace, hundreds of years old. Garlic bulbs and herbs, trussed with string, hung from hooks in what was obviously both a practical necessity to dry them and a casual way to store them. Mother Mary loomed in a painting at least a metre tall above the kitchen sink. Mario was out, helping a neighbour to build something, Lara had garnered, Gilberta’s English breaking down a little in translation. So they were alone, other than Gilberta’s small collie Greta, a miniature version of the one in the painting of Samuel’s Lily. Greta fussed about Lara’s feet for a while, suspiciously sniffing her boots and bell-bottom linen pants.
‘She must be able to smell the goats,’ Lara said, squatting to take the dog’s head in her hands and massaging her neck in greeting.
‘She is hoping you have treats,’ Gilberta said, slipping an apron over her bright red hair and tying the strings behind her. ‘I’m very naughty, feeding all the time,’ she said guiltily.
Lara washed her hands at the sink, then Gilberta passed her an apron of her own, in a shade that was a near perfect match to the older woman’s hair.
‘First we make the sauce,’ Gilberta said, moving to the stovetop and hefting a cast-iron pot onto the flames. ‘Is very simple. We use meat and wine.’
‘That’s it?’ Lara asked, astonished. ‘At home, I would use onion, garlic, basil, oregano, parsley, and I’d put in vegetables for the kids, so peas, maybe some carrot…’
‘No, no, no!’ Gilberta said, her hands in the air. ‘We no do that. Oregano, yes. Maybe add whole onion, then take it out. But that’s all. Meat and wine—if you can have leftover wine from the feast the night before.’ Her eyes shone. ‘Mario, he cannot handle seeing a little bit of vino in the bottom of the bottle!’ She threw up her hands again, this time in defeat. ‘He must get to the bottom. He is in love with the bottom!’ She laughed heartily, her hand on Lara’s arm. ‘So we open another, sì?’
‘Sounds good to me.’
Gilberta pulled out a bottle, the cork popped satisfyingly and they each breathed in the bouquet.
‘To good health,’ Gilberta said, raising her glass in a toast.
‘To new friends.’
They made the sauce quickly, tossing in the meat to brown and covering it with red wine, then moved on to the pasta.
Gilberta produced an enormous rectangular plank of wood with a lip on one side. It clunked down onto the bench, the lip holding it in place on the edge. ‘This board has been in family for many years. Here, you see the wood has worn away where all the women make their dough,’ Gilberta said proudly. She patted the board and Lara bent down to eye level to see the groove.
‘That’s fantastic,’ she said, goosebumps erupting unexpectedly over her just at the thought of all those women, their hands, their energy, their dreams and their love transforming the board.
Then Gilberta pulled out a large plastic bowl. Okay, that wasn’t quite as authentic. ‘We use plastic as it won’t make the pasta go cold. If not the bowl, you do it straight onto the board.’
Gilberta pulled out a packet of flour and a carton of eggs. She hummed as she poured the flour into the bowl.
‘How much flour are you using?’
‘One kilogram of flour. The whole bag. It makes it easy—no measure.’ Gilberta scrunched up the empty packet, shook the flour in the bowl, made a well in the centre, then reached for the eggs. ‘And ten eggs.’
They broke eggs in silence till Gilberta said, ‘It is always better to aim for abundance. Overshoot the ingredients.’ Then she waggled her head and muttered, ‘Maybe not so if adding water—there’s only so much you can fix if goes wrong.’ She wiped her hands on her apron. ‘Like going to bad hairdresser!’ she said, and burst out laughing. Then she settled again in front of the bowl and began to pull the flour into the middle to cover the eggs, then expertly worked the eggs through, pulling it all together. It was mesmerising to watch.
‘The colour of the pasta comes from the eggs,’ she said. ‘If it’s yellow, it’s the eggs. And we use grano duro wheat, type double zero.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Is hard wheat. Pasta made from the tender grain is not so good. It breaks apart easier. Hard to get al dente.’
When a smooth, pale ball of dough had formed, Gilberta picked it up and laid it on the board. Rhythmically, she pushed it with the heel of her hand, then pulled it back into shape.
‘After the war, when people had no money, they made pasta with no egg. It is eaten with fagioli—white beans or chickpeas. Poor man’s food. Here,’ she said, shifting to one side and motioning for Lara to come to the dough. ‘You work it now.’
Lara placed her hands on the dough. It was slightly cooler than skin temperature. She pushed the heel of her hand into it and it moved like a wave, silky smooth yet with a bit of grit. She adjusted her stance and got both hands into the dough; it was stretchy but sprang back again. It was resistant, but flexible.
If she was a poetic type of person she might see a metaphor for people in this dough, certainly for herself and her own healing. She could push that dough around and stretch it to its limits, yet it always came back into itself—a whole, gathered ball of potential, which could be turned into any number of things.
She smiled softly to herself, working the dough more vigorously, building heat in her body and in the dough itself. ‘How do you know when it is ready?’ she asked.
‘When it feels the same as your earlobe,’ Gilberta said, and laughed once more.
Together they kneaded the dough and tested their earlobes to come to an agreement on when they should stop.
‘Now, we let it rest,’ Gilberta said.
‘For how long?’
‘Ten minutes. In between, we drink wine.’
Gilberta’s Italian ten minutes ballooned out to an hour while she told Lara all about the 1966 flood in Florence when the river Arno rose four metres.
A knock at the front door interrupted her story. They heard the door open and a voice shout out to them.
‘Matteo!’ Gilberta called, rising from the small stool. Lara did the same. Gilberta got to him first, wrapping him in a bear hug and muttering all sorts of Italian endearments, by the sound of it.
Matteo—in working clothes and with a big goofy grin—winked at Lara over Gilberta’s head, then kissed the woman on each cheek. When Gilberta released him, she wiped at her eyes. ‘I advise you, I am easy tears, huh. We hope none go into the pasta.’
Lara’s grin was so wide it hurt her cheeks. They’d been apart two nights and she’d missed him terribly. She was even more thrilled when he reached for her, kissing her full on the mouth and each cheek, embracing her as though he hadn’t seen her for weeks, rather than just a couple of days.
‘Oh, lovebirds!’ Gilberta clapped, then squeezed her strong dough-pounding arms around them both and wept some more.
‘What are you doing here?’ Lara asked Matteo when finally all the crying and cheek-pinching and hugging had subsided.
‘It’s riposo time,’ Matteo said, moving easily in Gilberta’s kitchen. He helped himself to some wine and leaned over the dough, nodding in approval. ‘Everyone on the farm is resting. But I choose to come see my favourite girls.’
‘You are perfect time,’ Gilberta said, draining the last of her wine and rinsing her hands. ‘We are about to roll out the pasta.’ Lara admired the way the woman moved, as though she was about to break into dance at any moment.
Matteo came to Lara’s side and put his arm around her, pulling her close. She leaned into him.
Gilberta brought over the squat little pasta machine and clamped it onto the edge of the bench. ‘Now, we need many space to roll out the pasta and have it to dry. They can’t be all like sardines top of each other or will stick.’
She beckoned Lara to the bench and handed her a knife. ‘Cut off a slice of the dough, squeeze in fingers to the right depth.’ Thickness, Lara mentally corrected, and pressed the dough flat. ‘It needs two people,’ Gilberta said, pulling Matteo to the bench. ‘Now, Lara feeds the little machine and Matteo catches the ribbons at the other end. Like catch baby,’ she teased.
Lara fed the warm dough into the machine and cranked the handle. The pasta came out the other side in perfectly flat, if not perfectly straight, golden lengths, much like the shape of bandages as they unrolled.
First aid food.
Matteo held out his hands and the pasta fell gently across them.
‘There!’ Gilberta whispered, watching the pasta come to life.
They kept rolling, the volume of the final product far exceeding what Lara would have expected. They floured the sheets between the layers so they didn’t stick. When the dough got tacky between the rollers, Gilberta sprinkled more flour. Broken pieces were simply put back together and rolled again. Mostly, they worked together in silence, the methodical turn of the wheel and the slow emergence of the ribbons creating a meditative space. Finally, they had used all the dough. Lara’s arms burned from all that turning of the wheel.
‘Now we let them dry,’ Gilberta said. ‘Later, we tear into pieces. This is maltagliati. No fancy pasta!’
‘It means something like rustic, homemade or badly made,’ Matteo explained. ‘It’s as authentic as you get.’
Lara checked the time and realised it had run away on her, the whole pasta-making experience taking much longer than she had thought.
‘You need to get going?’ Matteo asked, coming to her side.
‘I have to get to the village shops.’
He nodded but frowned, then took her hand and led her out the door and into the yard, where a biting wind raced up Lara’s clothes and made her wrap her arms around her body.
Matteo pulled her against the stone wall of the villa, positioning her out of the wind. ‘I wanted to talk to you, but we got caught up in the pasta and now you have to go and so I am rushed,’ he said, scratching behind his ear.
‘What is it?’
He leaned his shoulder into the wall. She did the same.
‘Will you stay on here in Italy, with me?’ he blurted, his dark eyes even darker under his serious brow. ‘I don’t know when you thought you might move on, but I want more time with you.’ His voice was strong but his eyes betrayed his nerves. ‘In my head there was more of a lead-up than that.’
Lara reached out her hand and laid it on his cheek, taking in the scattering of tiny freckles under his eyes, feeling the roughness of his beard in her palm. He covered her hand with his.
‘I want to see where we can go, here together. I don’t want you to leave. You have a lot waiting for you back in Australia, I know that, but I think I have something to offer you here, too.’ He took a quick, sharp breath. ‘Our time away together…’ He lost his words then, clearly unable to express everything he wanted.
But he’d said enough, more than he’d ever risked all at once while they’d been away together. He’d learned to hold his words back, but now they’d just tumbled out for her.
The stiff cold she’d been feeling vanished.
It would have been so easy to feel overwhelmed at this moment. Because while she may have felt that it was so right that he had asked her to stay, and it may have felt so right to agree that she would, they both knew it simply wasn’t that easy.
But when had it ever been simple?
What she did have now, for the first time, was confidence in herself. It allowed her to envision something new, something she hadn’t even known she wanted. Above all else, she had resounding faith in her sister and their shared ability to channel their love for the kids into something great. With no more word from Dave, she felt more confident every day that the future was bright for them all. She didn’t know how she and Matteo could make it work; she just knew that it was entirely possible.
‘Yes!’ she said, grinning like a fool. ‘I want to stay here with you too.’
‘Lara, mio amore, I love you.’
‘I love you too,’ she said, loudly this time, so there was no way he could miss it.
He picked her up and twirled her around and she squealed with joy.
From the doorway, Gilberta clapped and cheered. ‘Bravo, bravo!’ Lara felt her cheeks flame.
Matteo took her hand and led her back to the doorway and inside. Gilberta grabbed them both and hugged them tightly, kissing first Matteo’s cheeks and then Lara’s.
‘We are in love!’ Matteo announced to the room, sweeping his arm wide. Lara thought her chest might actually crack open with the emotion swirling inside.
‘We must celebrate,’ Gilberta said, looking around for something fitting, then stopping at the kitchen table. ‘But look at all this pasta!’ she said, her arms wide. ‘We cannot eat it alone!’
‘We’ll take it to Samuel,’ Matteo said, turning to Lara. ‘Your feast that you wanted, it’s here. We can take it over and I’ll pick up cheeses and Gilberta will come, and Henrik is already there.’
‘We will find Mario too,’ Gilberta said, catching on. But then the woman’s face fell.
‘What is it?’ Matteo asked, placing his hand on her shoulder.
A shudder went through Gilberta’s chest and her breath caught. ‘Samuel,’ she whispered. Matteo nodded and pulled her into his arms for a moment while she sniffed. ‘I listened to your mamma,’ Gilberta said. ‘But…’
‘I know,’ Matteo said ‘My mother is a difficult woman.’
Gilberta widened her eyes in implicit agreement.
‘I too have been guilty of listening to her when she thought she knew best and I thought that maybe she was right.’ Matteo shot Lara an apologetic look. ‘But it’s in the past. What’s done is done. Let us bring Samuel a feast today.’