The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club by Marlena de Blasi Page B

shaped Ninuccia.’
    â€˜And what shaped her belongs to her. Why would you need to know more?’
    â€˜Not a
need
. Her severe facade, such a heavy shield. I think she might long to lay it down once in a while. You know she’s fond of you.’
    â€˜No. I don’t know that and less do I
seek
her fondness … Why must you
invent
these …’
    â€˜Talk to her, Chou.’
    â€˜Talk to her about what? I have a hard time getting beyond
buonasera
with her. All we have in common are you and Thursdays. I …’
    â€˜Why is it that of all the men and women who have been my friends and confidantes and enemies and lovers for these past seventy-some years, why do you suppose it was to you, only you, to whom I’ve talked to more honestly than I could even to myself? Even to my agonising self, alone in the dark, wishing away thousands of nights?’
    I am an uneasy repository for the private truths of others, my own being unwieldly as they are. And yet, more here in Italy than in the other places where I’ve lived, I have often become the safe one. I am outside the clan and thus outside the clan’s judgement. The eternal stranger, a fresh white page. Talking to me is talking to the wind, to the wall. No matter how long I stay, I will always be just passing through. I think that’s it. Why else it may or may not be that I am often appointed custodian of another’s emotional archives is too elusive for my grasp.
Antonia, Tosca, Floriana, Barlozzo
. Fernando says it’s because when someone speaks, I am rapt. No interjections, no comparisons to events or sentiments of my own. As though I am empty, ready and waiting to be filled up with what they long to tell. And everyone longs to tell. Miranda has been talking while I have been wandering in my thoughts and, returning to her, I hear, ‘And while you’re at it, suggest a Thursday night to celebrate the new oil.’
    â€˜While I’m
at what?
’
    â€˜Talking to Ninuccia. The new oil. The new wine. Pasta cooked in wine, sauced with oil and cracked pepper and a few gratings of pecorino and then we could …’
    â€˜So much for permitting me to compose menus. Has there been such great progress on the work in the rustico over the past few weeks or are you ready for another supper among the buckets …’
    â€˜I was thinking we might use the old mill in Castelpietro where the olives are pressed. The floor is packed earth and the walls are bare stone but there are tables and chairs, a good-enough five-burner gas range bought from a restaurant in Montefiascone years ago. Plenty of pots and pans and the hearth is wonderful: big enough to roast an elk. We would pay Settimio for the wood we burned and … Do you know him, Settimio?’
    â€˜The mill caretaker. I don’t really know him but …’
    â€˜He’d be thrilled enough to let us use the place. More would he be to sit down to supper with us.’
    â€˜Would you speak to him then?’
    â€˜Yes, yes. I’ll stop by the mill. It’ll be grand, Chou. Why didn’t I think of this before?’
    â€¢
    A day later on a morning smelling of snow, there are four of us hitched up in the glittery ruckus of the leaves of ancient trees dripping with purply black fruit. Ninuccia, Gilda, Paolina and I are harvesting together, picking the olives by hand. Picking them one by one. Wrapped in kerchiefs and shawls, a layer of woollies, one of skirt, one of apron poufed out from under two of sweater, we are a sturdy breed of sylph. Shouting to one another across the winds, our collective mood is jubilant on this last morning of the
raccolta
with only twenty or so of the eight hundred-tree grove left to pick. I think how I’ll miss sitting up here in the high perch of one tree or another. I look at my old hands, the half-numbed fingers sticking out from cut-off gloves, plucking at the fruit, stripping the limbs and branches,