Scenes From an Italian Restaurant I
Harriet Gilbert Savage
On things never changing
Admittedly, it’s more of a bar than a restaurant, but it would be wrong to pass up an opportunity to publicise a wonderful yet underrated Billy Joel song. The tour guides would tell you my not-quite-Italian-restaurant lies on the wrong side of the tracks. You scuttle through the poorly lit underpass, gingerly navigating the pothole-pitted pavements. Beneath you, rows of cobblestones resemble crooked teeth, their jaws snapping at your ankles, daring you to stumble. The roar of racing traffic ricochets around the arched tunnel. As you leave the subway the echo subsides, only to be replaced by an orchestra of car horns - is each blare a complaint? A criticism? A call for attention? They fuse into a frustrated crescendo, drowning out the sweet birdsong, expelling the choir of starlings from their trees.
A pair of well-worn boots command the cobbles; their owner possesses a domineering stride. His dark glasses hold a memory of hotter days, days long since forgotten by the dreary drapes of cloud that currently hang across the sky. The terracotta folds of his parchment skin echo the building walls, a patchwork of sun-scorched reds and oranges – this is his territory. He pauses his pavement patrol to throw some tangle of dialect at a similarly dressed, similarly aged man standing across the street. And for a moment, the air is electrified with an uncertain tension: will this be the revival of a life-long rivalry, will the two men descend into a brawl over chivalry and honour and all those matters that coat the pages of outdated history textbooks? Their rapid exchange is halted by a fritter of laughter; a face crackles, within the sea of wrinkles swims a smile. And you appear mistaken, their verbal battle is not against one another, rather they are united in their defiance against a common foe: old age. Those faces forced into frowns in the effort to catch the strings of sentences exchanged, raised voices an attempt to overcome the deafness dwelling in a bad left ear. They step over the threshold of my little Italian bar filled with that special merriment reserved only for grandads, and you – an imposter – scurry in behind them.
And yet, any feelings of estrangement evaporate as you are enveloped in the silky scent of coffee. You take a step closer to the bar, an instinctive reaction to the nectary scent: your body craves a sip of the intoxicating elixir. Over the busy chatter of the espresso machine soar chirps of ‘auguri’, ‘buona giornata’, and ‘un abbraccio’. You side-step to the right, narrowly avoiding the hot heels of a hastened woman, her coffee-stop making her late to a morning meeting. Next to you hang cluttered shelves of spirits, all of which possess an aged calm absent from the busy mill of bodies below. They have been here long enough to know that no one interview will be career-ending, no overdue task will ever result in the consequences a boss may threaten. You grasp the bar to steady yourself amidst the throng of nonni crowding around an impossibly small table. As these old men complain about their nagging wives, the wooden countertop chuckles as it recalls a time when these men were not old at all, but full of youthful excitement, recounting every detail of their Saturday night dates with the girls they planned to marry.
The barista offers you a glittering glance, a call of ‘cara’ signals it’s your turn to order. And though your higgledy-piggledy Italian betrays that you are, in fact, an outsider, he nonetheless places your fiddly espresso cup firmly between gesticulating madmen, partaking in a volley of debate about the most recent political scandal. Even though he is unable to usher you into the conversation, he is more than capable of welcoming you into the community.
There is a well-worn Italian tradition, born on the Neapolitan streets, called ‘caffè sospeso’. It’s about paying for two cups of coffee but only drinking one, ‘suspending’ the other in a realm of charity, to be taken, for free, by someone who ordinarily could not afford the luxury of a cup of coffee. It’s about extending a hand, unknowing of whom may accept it, and offering that stranger a moment of solidarity, of distraction, of relief from whatever cards chance may have dealt them. It’s about presenting the possibility of a conversation, a community, to those who have nothing.
You nurse your espresso, savouring these fleeting moments, reluctant to sip the final treacle-like drops of coffee. And as you come to leave – paying after, never before, with cash, never card – you drop some extra change into the saucer: your contribution to a caffè sospeso. Each coin glazed with the hope that someone else feels, like you, embraced into this hodgepodge community, if only for a short while. You drag your feet to the door, unwilling to leave this welcoming warmth for the unfamiliar beyond. But there’s a comfort in knowing that our little Italian bar will forever be here to welcome all with open arms and (of course) two Mediterranean kisses.
Harriet is a third-year MML student, currently on her Year Abroad studying in Rome.
Illustration: Harriet Gilbert Savage