Only in Naples (3 page)

I
am five feet three inches tall, and in September of 1996 I weighed 155 pounds. The Calabrese girls at the boarding school thought, That's what American food does to you. Salvatore thought, She likes to eat. What no one in Naples would have guessed is that I had binge-eating disorder. I loved food too much to become anorectic, felt disgusting puking it up, so what was left for me? BED: I would binge and then starve myself, avoiding food altogether for a few days or munching on celery sticks for nourishment. Be rational, rein in your appetites, my upper-class, East Coast upbringing had taught me. I tried. And then every once in a while I ate three boxes of Oreos in one sitting.

During my first six weeks in Naples, I stopped bingeing and lost twenty pounds. I did not go on a diet; in fact, I've never enjoyed food as much as I did then. What happened was in part a practical consequence of living in Italy, and at the same time something deeper.

Naples is an anti-binge city. In Neapolitan culture, mealtimes are sacred—food is freshly prepared and consumed
in compagnia.
There is no rushing, and you will hear the Neapolitan
Statte cuieto
—Keep your pants on—if you look anxious or pressed for time at the table. You eat when you are seated without distraction and preferably with a glass of wine. You eat when it is breakfast time, lunchtime, and dinnertime, period.
Punto e basta.

Stopping in a little café after I finished work at the Consulate, I'd get an espresso, but I couldn't have gotten something substantial to eat even if I'd begged for it. Why would you want to eat at 5:30
P.M.
? Pastries are put out fresh in the morning, and desserts are displayed after dinner. When food isn't processed and doesn't have preservatives, eating at random hours means that you eat food that is stale. And only crazy tourists do that.

Because everything I ate in Naples was fresh and full of flavor, at the end of meals I felt satisfied. There were no additives to make me crave more. For the first time in my life I could, along with the rest of the city, get up from the table and not think of my stomach until the next meal.

One evening at the Denza dining hall when I was waxing eloquent about American eating habits, Maria Rosa got a sad look on her face. The problem with your country, she said, is that you eat in a way that is
scombinato.
This means “disorganized” or “messy.” I had told her about American college students ordering pizza at 3:00
A.M.,
and the look on her face—the empathy in those Sophia Loren eyes!—made me feel like I was confessing to heroin use.

The Italian expression for “eating disorder” is
disordine alimentare,
literally “disorganized, messy eating sickness.” She had put her finger on it—I was a girl from the land of messy eaters who had an extreme messy eating sickness.

“Non è vero?”
Don't you think? she continued, as I took in my messy eating diagnosis. “
Per esempio,
in America, people eat while walking. They dirty their hands with gooey sandwiches and then suck their fingers. And men in the United States get noodles in little cardboard boxes for dinner. They eat at their desk while they're working, right?
Che tristezza!
[What sadness, what a pity, what sorry lives they lead!] They're really not very good at organizing their meals, are they?”

Wait a second, was an Italian going on about American organizational skills? The flag-waver in me reared her head.

“It's not that they're not capable,” I said, trying to keep my cool. “It's just that sometimes Americans eat well, like at a restaurant, and sometimes they grab a bite because they have more important things to do.”

My Italian translation of “grab a bite” probably came across as “capture a mouthful.” The second, more fundamental idea of “more important things to do” was met by stunned silence. Francesca mercifully changed the subject.

But it wasn't just about organizing my meals. The Italian girls my age all seemed to
live
in their bodies in a way that I didn't. I'd see them draped over a motorbike on the waterfront outside the Consulate. They'd hook their thumbs in each other's pockets, caress each other's hair, enjoy their own and each other's physicality. When it was time to get moving, they'd casually throw a leg over a
motorino
—three or four of them on one tiny little scooter—and unapologetically snake through a traffic jam. The word for what they are is
carnale.
The English word
carnal
is derogatory and has sexual connotations, but in Italian
carnale
is precious and sacred.

When my baby girl was born, ten years after my arrival in Naples, my father-in-law didn't call her
bellissima,
or splendid or adorable. He used the adjective that is beyond all compliments in Italy: he called her
carnale.
Of the flesh—wonderfully, squeezably of the flesh. After all, we are in a Catholic country, and the ultimate gift was the word made flesh.
La
parola
became
carne.
In my Protestant background, I seem to have focused on the word part. Lots and lots of words. My relationship with the flesh took second place, my mind was given priority. And every once in a while my flesh demanded three boxes of Oreos in revolt.

After my first dinner at Salvatore's family apartment, there was a lot of kissing of cheeks as I said goodbye. I invariably dove for the wrong cheek (go toward the right first! Right first! I would chant to myself for weeks before it became instinct), and ended up bumping noses awkwardly with Benedetta. (For years, Benedetta's “cooler older sister” aura would cause me to drop things, ram into furniture, doubt my word choice. Whenever I got around the silky hair and turquoise eyes, my best bet was to find a couch and sit in silence.) Salva returned me to my dormitory and said,
“Ci sentiamo.”
The literal translation would be “We'll hear each other,” but the expression really means “Talk to you soon.”

However, at that time, I thought it meant “Call me.” So I said, “When?” and Salvatore said,
“Presto.”
Soon. I took that to mean tomorrow. So while he was saying his goodbyes with a very noncommittal “Talk to you soon,” I was receiving the command “Call me tomorrow.” I didn't mind: I liked the idea of hearing his laugh again. I'd never met anyone so
happy.
I'd also never met anyone who smelled that good as he leaned over to cut my food.

So the next day I phoned him. We talked (listened? giggled?) for about five minutes. He called me Pagnottella, after a doughy muffin-like Neapolitan bread (which I didn't understand) and teased, “You like to eat, don't you?” (which I
did
understand).
Te piace mangiare.
He was referring to my chubbiness, and I'd met the guy only once. I should be offended, I thought. But strangely, I wasn't. It seemed that my appetite was endearing to him, possibly even attractive. There was nothing wrong with loving to eat and showing it.

And then he laughed again, followed by
“Ci sentiamo.”
I thought, now I need to buy another phone card so I can call him tomorrow.

When I called him the next day (I was a good girl, I always followed orders), he had his sister answer the phone and say he wasn't there. Years later, he told me that what he was thinking was that he'd never seen a girl so desperate for action.

Can a relationship, a life, be determined by a miscommunication? My moving to another continent, my becoming an Italian wife and mother: would it have happened if I had understood the meaning of
Ci sentiamo, Pagnottella
?

S
artù di riso
is a Neapolitan specialty that was invented by the chefs of the Bourbon king Ferdinand I of Naples at the beginning of the 1800s.

After the Greeks and Romans, Naples had been ruled by the Normans, French, Austrian Hapsburgs…you name the empire or dynasty, and it ruled Naples at some point. In 1735, Italy was still made up of city-states, and the Bourbon king Charles the Something of Spain (he was simultaneously Charles the First, Third, Fifth, and Seventh depending on which of his kingdoms you were talking about) conquered the Kingdom of Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples and joined them under his crown.

Naples under Bourbon rule was the place to be. In Paris, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote, “Do you want to know if there is a spark within you? Run, no, fly to Naples” to hear the masterpieces of Neapolitan composers at the San Carlo opera house. Mozart's dad brought him there on his Wolfgang Wows the World! tour of 1770 (on the trip, they also got some very swank silk outfits from Neapolitan tailors).

Insomma,
if you could make it there, you could make it anywhere.

King Ferdinand I was the son of Charles. He was technically named Ferdinando Antonio Pasquale Giovanni Nepomuceno Serafino Gennaro Benedetto. Ferdy loved art, he loved music, and he also loved to eat.

Chefs were brought to his palace in the center of Naples directly from France, the seat of the Bourbon dynasty. They were supposedly the best chefs in the world. Pasta, fish, baked vegetables, elaborate cakes: they made sure that Ferdinand the First went to bed with a satisfied tummy. One day, the king asked his head chef, whom he called
'o monsù
(derived from the French
monsieur
), what was for lunch. He was told that rice was the first course.

“Rice?”
King Ferdinand was furious. Rice was for the sick! Even today in Naples, there is an expression,
'O rriso d'o mese int'a 'o lietto stesa:
Eat rice and stay in bed for a month. Rice is considered insipid, insignificant, hospital food. It is even called a
sciaquapanza,
or tummy rinse.

“Please,” the
monsù
insisted. “Enough pasta. We'll make the rice hearty! We'll add butter and cheese and…”

“Very well. I challenge you to prepare rice that I
like
!”

And so the Neapolitan
sartù di riso
was born. It is made with dense tomato
ragù,
pieces of egg, cheese, sausage, peas, and tiny fried meatballs or salami. Then it is baked in a buttered casserole dish.

The king was thrilled. Who knew? Rice could actually taste good and make for a decent meal.

It was a Saturday afternoon and I was in the Avallones' kitchen while Raffaella was cooking
sartù di riso,
one of Nino's favorite dishes. Salvatore had picked me up at the boarding school—always late, always smiling—and had deposited me in the kitchen with his mother while he finished studying in his room. He was in his third year at the University of Naples, studying law. In Italy, a university law degree is a combination of undergraduate and graduate studies, so after five or six years (or longer for some) “repeating” his books, he could take the bar and begin practicing as a lawyer.

He studied in his room all day, every day, and went every few months to take an exam. No listening to lectures, no comparing notes with fellow students, no interaction with professors. Just memorizing law texts in his boyhood room, which was adorned with teddy bears and third-grade soccer trophies. (I remember describing to Salva later that at Princeton we had precepts, small groups of students who were encouraged to express their opinions on the subject matter to the professor. Salva's reaction: Why would a professor care what a twenty-year-old
thought
?)

I had assumed that when Salvatore picked me up we would do something together. There had been chemistry, I thought, when he cut my pizza into little squares. On the phone the previous evening he had said not just
Ci sentiamo,
We'll hear each other, but
Ci vediamo—
We'll see each other!

And here I was in the tiny kitchen with Raffaella. Who was I for them? I certainly wasn't Salvatore's girlfriend, but I wasn't the Avallones' guest either. There was neither “have a seat in the
salone,
do you take milk or sugar?” nor “Salvatore, honey, why don't you come and show this girl a good time?” Maybe this was how it felt for brides in arranged marriages. Your future husband is busy somewhere, so in the meantime let's teach you how he likes his rice. Would an arranged marriage really be so bad, though, if my fiancé was someone who made me feel as happy and alive as Salva did? I wouldn't
have
to cook for him, after all. Or would I?

What I didn't realize was that I wasn't being judged, and I wasn't being primed. Raffaella's focus was on the
sartù,
and she was making it to satisfy my hunger as much as anyone else's.

Her dance was perfectly choreographed: she simultaneously stirred the
ragù,
fried the meatballs, sautéed the peas. I ducked and dodged. I was at times behind her, at times beside her. She had been to the gym, and wore New Balance sneakers and light green, fitted sweats. How was her makeup perfect after a workout?
“Non sudo,”
I don't sweat, she explained. Ah, that's convenient. The kitchen window was open and sea air was coming in. Look at the volcano! Raffaella pointed. When it's windy like this, you can see the towns surrounding the base of Vesuvius. Even the outlines of the houses. The wind sweeps away the mist and fog.

“Vieni, assaggia.”
Come, taste. Her wooden spoon was suddenly coming at me, full to overflowing with
ragù,
her hand cupped underneath to catch any spills. She stuck the whole huge spoon into my mouth, and I almost gagged on the wood.
“Com' è?”
How is it? I answered that it was
buonissimo,
and she dipped the same spoon back into the pot and tasted it herself.

“Hm.”

I was told to cut the hard-boiled eggs into quarters. Raffaella laid the fried meatballs, spitting and sizzling, on freshly ironed dishrags. My Italian had improved enough to be able to ask, “How much egg? How many cheese? How many much peas?” Okay, my quantifying adjectives weren't perfect, but I got my point across. In response, she put her arm around my waist and whispered conspiratorially,
“Più ci metti più ci trovi!”
—the more you put in the more you get out. In other words: That analytical, precise, quantifying brain has no place in my kitchen, girl.

(Many years later, in my mother's kitchen in Bethesda, Maryland, I would find Raffaella staring at a ring of measuring spoons as if they were an archaeological find. “They're for measuring quantities,” I explained. “In cooking?” she asked, bewildered. She then shook her head and laughed.
“Americani! Americani!”
Yes, we're a wild and crazy people.)

“Lella!”
Nino was standing in the door of the kitchen calling his wife's nickname. He was pissed off. What had she done? I wondered.
“C'è una puzza
terrificante!”
It stinks in here! Nino, I later learned, has an extremely sensitive sense of smell. He insists that his wife turn on the ventilation when she is cooking so that the smell of food doesn't waft into the rest of the apartment.
“Scusa, scusa!”
Sorry! she cheerfully replied, and turned on the hair dryer–sounding machine. Nino disappeared, still indignant.

Nino was fourteen years Raffaella's senior, and had spent most of their marriage managing the hotel that he and his brothers owned. He left early in the morning and came back late at night, Raffaella told me; it was the least she could do to care for him with a smile when he was at home. He was forced into early retirement because of an ugly family battle that nobody talked about, and now he was at home all the time. She made sure the ventilation was on when she was cooking, served him at the table, and accepted his negative comments about how the pasta was cooked with a smile or a wink and “I think you're right, Nino.”

It bugged the hell out of me—she was cooking his favorite dish, for God's sake! But soon I realized that my irritation at Nino's outburst had no place in Raffaella's kitchen, either. “Ketrin!” she was yelling over the fan (the flat
a
and
th
of Katherine were too much of a challenge for most Italians), “make sure you add a little
ragù
first so the rice doesn't stick….” I was forced to move on, to concentrate on the preparation of that rice.

The preparation became aerobic. Raffaella's biceps bulged as she stirred the dense
ragù
in with the rice. I was asked to lay out fresh dishrags (impossibly white) on the table, ousting the baby meatballs (they'd had themselves enough of a nap). I held the tiny balls in my fists until Raffaella offered me the pot with the rice and
ragù.
I plopped them in and she smeared the casserole dish with butter.

Salvatore emerged from his room smiling just as I was helping his mother pour the heavy mass into the pan. He came over and pinched my cheek. “Pagnottella! Did you learn how to make the
sartù
? There's going to be a test later.
Esame, esame!
Princeton!” He found himself delightful. I wasn't laughing. I was hot and hungry. And I really wanted to taste that
sartù
.

My mother first put me on a diet when I was in kindergarten. I was never called fat: the words that were thrown around our household in reference to my weight were
chunky
,
heavy
, and
plump.
As a child, I was probably never more than eight pounds overweight. But for my mother, that was enough to call for drastic measures.

Bonnie Salango Wilson was born in Princeton, West Virginia, during the Second World War. Her father was a Presbyterian minister who was the son of Italian immigrants; they had come from Calabria at the beginning of the century. Although my great-grandparents were devout Catholics, they allowed a Presbyterian Sunday school to use their basement when my grandfather was a little boy. He thought the Sunday school was fun: Protestants were so child friendly! After college my grandfather enrolled in a Presbyterian seminary. His parents never worried about his conversion from Catholicism. It was enough that one of their eight children was a man of the cloth.