Heloise and Bellinis by Harry Cipriani

you how Harry’s Bar in Venice came into being, in all this time I have never really talked to you about my father. So here goes. One hot August evening in 1931, a few months after opening Harry’s Bar, he took my mother dancing at the only place they knew at the time, the famous Martini dance hall, owned and operated by Cavalier Baldi.
    As far as alcoholic beverages are concerned, my father was probably the greatest barman of his era, and so he remained for a great many years, partly because he was mad about the drinks he mixed with such incredible bravura. If it had been up to him, he would often have drunk a great deal, but what saved him from alcoholism was the terrible hangover he usually had the morning after a real bender. I could give you a detailed account of all the sensations and the numerous and frightening discomforts, because I too, to my good fortune and for reasons I will explain later, have suffered hangovers all my life, despite trying all kinds of ways to avoid them.
    Whenever it happens—and it still does on occasion—that I lay my head down on the pillow because the room has no intention of staying still, it is as sure a thing as the national debt that about five o’clock the following morning I will wake from a gasping half-sleep in a state near death, a state marked by extensive hot and cold sweats and a murderous headache that throbs at every unusually rapid beat of my heart. The heartbeat intensifies the headache in geometric progression, and the only thing the heart seems to be doing is pumping a poisonous liquid that has nothing whatever to do with blood through veins and arteries.
    Breathing is extremely rapid, and inhaling and exhaling are uncontrollable. The general impression is what any mortal must feel when he has only a few minutes left to balance his accounts before meeting his Maker. At this point the mere thought of imbibing even the smallest amount of alcohol is clearly unbearable torture. And the different sensations that usually go with this
post-bibendum
state are enough to make anyone a strict teetotaler for the rest of his presumably very short life. And then there’s the added fact that because of business neither my father nor 1 have ever been able to enjoy a Sunday off, which, people say, is a great way to recover from the effects of liquor. Quite the contrary, even in the worst throes of this unbearable agony we have always had to get out of bed and carefully tread our way to work. Treading carefully is exactly what I mean, because it is hard to take more than thirty or forty steps without having to throw up, so you have to plan your itinerary in such a way that you can find some place that offers discreet protection from the eyes of perfidious busybodies.
    Despite all the experience that ought to remind you of the disadvantages rather than the pleasures of wine and its derivatives, there often comes a moment in which you are overwhelmed by the innocent charm, freshness, and incomparable delight of good liquor. So, every now and again, in the evening, when all the customers in your bar have wined and dined, you set out a glass for yourself. You have no desire at ail to set your head spinning, but you succumb to the pleasures of taste and smell. You are also in rather a hurry to close the place up after the last customer has paid his bill, and then you realize that you drank too fast, and you notice the first troubles the moment you get to your feet. These include difficulty in pronouncing correctly any word in which a nasal sound comes immediately after a sibilant, and you can’t pronounce labials that aren’t interspersed with a friendly vowel without twisting your tongue or getting it stuck against your palate. Words like Has-drubal, for example, become all but unutterable. This is the point when you are torn between embarrassment that your inebriation may be discovered and a desire to proclaim forcefully all sorts of absurdities that strike you as truth.
    You walk out