Joe Ray

Monday, May 26, 2008

The Little World of Don Guido

This afternoon, I hitched a ride with Guido to his cabin where I figured I could work unconnected while he puttered around in the garden. He picked me up in his 1970s Renault R4 and headed back through Ispica for an impromptu tour of the old part of town.

“That’s my church,” he said, rounding a corner, cresting a hill and pointing out the window all at once. “Now, neutral!” he said, batting the old car’s dash-mounted stick shift back and forth with his hand and letting the car coast. Next, he passed through streets so narrow, I had previously thought it was a pedestrian area. “Modern cars don’t fit.”

Five minutes out of town at the cabin he uses both as an artist’s studio (he’s a well-known artist, with an affinity for mail art) and a base for his gardening, his mulberry tree has a carpet of fallen berries below it. A week after I was here last, the berries on the tree are now a little bigger, a little riper and a lot tastier. With high wire comic panache, Guido again brings out the umbrella and fills up a plate of berries for me to nibble on while I write.

Later, I help him sweep and shovel up the berries on the ground and return them to the earth as compost for his olive trees. Near a stack of firewood, he identifies four kinds of wood just by looking at the cross sections: carob, fig, almond and olive. I ask which type is the best for cooking.

“For baking bread?” he replies, “Olive. You take a few branches and throw it into the oven and it smokes, giving flavor to the bread.

“In the forties and fifties, when the olive trees were pruned, the farmers would put the bunched-up trimmings in bushels around the tree to dry. Later, they would load the bushels on a back of a cart and sell them in the countryside. At home, you would put a few bushels in the oven and let them burn,” he says. “When the tile in front of the oven was warm, you’d scoop out most of the cinders and put your bread dough in.

“Now, it’s different. Things are…” he trails off, whipping his hands around in the air looking for the word, “…globalized.”

There’s no malice in the word, he just uses it like the name of a country he’s never been to; he hasn’t reinventing the bread making process, he’s just sharing what he knows.

“Here, it’s peaceful,” he says. “Here, I’m good.”

“Here, have a glass of wine.”

This is Joe Ray reporting (hic!) from the Motherland.

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Tuesday, May 20, 2008

An offer I couldn’t refuse

“Quoting “The Godfather” always works,” said Francesco within a few hours of my arrival in Sicily.

I’d been back in The Motherland for less than 24 hours when Francesco’s uncle Guido unintentionally convinced me to re-open my blog for the two weeks I’m here.

It was an offer I could not refuse.

I arrived at Guido and his wife Pinuccia’s Sunday barbecue laden with the groceries for my apartment. Pinuccia (pronounced “pin-noo-cha”), noted my nasty looking store-bought garlic, and handed me a small paper bag with a handful of heady-smelling aglio. “Here. Try these,” she said discreetly. “They’re from my garden. They’re more flavorful.”

Meanwhile, home-cured olives made the rounds. Served from a one-liter honey jar, they are slightly crunchy with a pleasant, lasting bitterness.

While thin steaks and sausages cooked on the grill in the fireplace, Francesco’s mother sautéed chicken cutlets covered in a mixture of egg, parsley, nutmeg, oregano and “a little red wine.” She handed me a bite on a fork – simple and perfect.

Walking over, a smirking Francesco said, “Just like KFC, right?”

Right.

At the table, it’s a loud, pretense-free Sicilian family free for all. There seem to be more conversations than people, with everyone munching, talking and reaching across the table for a little more. Presiding over all, Guido grabs the tail end of the salad and eats it straight from the bowl.

Sated, he takes me for a tour of his garden that has furnished everything from Pinuccia’s garlic to the mulberries and loquats that ended our meal. He shows off his lettuce and peppers before pulling some lemons from a tree and sticking them in a bag for me. It’s five times more than I could possibly eat in two weeks.

Then he walks up to the mulberry tree. It is bursting with the ripe fruit, known here as gelsi, and there are already hundreds that have given up the ghost and dropped to the ground.

“Here, I’ll give you some,” he says, scooting toward the house to grab a recipient. I imagine a 20-minute picking process and more fruit than I know what to do with, but my protests fall on deaf ears. He emerges moments later, grinning, umbrella in hand.

I laugh out loud. It’s perfect. Guido walks under the tree, inverts the open umbrella, pokes the handle up into the branches and gives it a vigorous shake.

Thup, thup, thup. Thupthupthupthupthup.

The berries rain into the umbrella’s bowl and he has a couple pounds’ worth within twenty seconds. He tips the whole thing sideways and empties the contents into a bag which he hands to me.

How could I refuse?

I’m home.

—-

A non-food p.s.

This afternoon, I went to an effete yet gregarious little barber here in Ispica for a haircut and a shave with a straight-edged razor. When he’s finished trimming, he sprays herbal-smelling cologne over my face and neck, leaving me feeling spiffy and masculine. He then pulls out the local version of a styptic pencil.

“It’s like salt,” he cautions. “It will sting a little,”

He doesn’t just dab it on my tiny cuts, he wipes the broad side of the pencil across my entire chin.

I scream like a baby.

“That’s like the pain a virgin feels,” says the little man.

Clearly I’ve misunderstood.

I ask again and this time he explains by thrusting his hips into the air and using some other rather unmistakable gestures.

Welcome home, indeed.

This is Joe Ray reporting from the Motherland.

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