Angelica Lost and Found

Chapter 6. Pizza in the Sky, Six Miles High

This kind of flying was very slow. We ate, we drank, we saw pictures that moved: for this a screen appeared and the aeroplane was darkened. From first being seated we had been provided with a little apparatus that fitted on the head and fed voices and music into both ears. My Volatore mind was bemused by the constant presence of music everywhere. How, I wondered, did modern humankind find mental space for thought? The moving pictures before us had music and the sound of voices and large and small explosions. I removed the hearing apparatus and for a while I watched the screen on which a man ran, jumped, and drove various machines while being pursued by other men who ran, jumped, and drove other machines. Sometimes the single man stopped and fought with the other men, then he would go to a room where he had a box in which were many passports and sheaves of various kinds of banknotes. I understood that the pictures formed some kind of story imagined by whoever made up the story. But it seemed strange to me to be deprived of the pleasure of imagining one’s own pictures to a story told in words. I fell asleep, awoke, consumed food and drink served on a little tray, slept and woke again. After a long time the windows tilted, I saw a great bridge over sparkling water, little sailing boats.

‘First time in SF?’ said the man next to me.

‘What is SF?’ I asked him.

It was not something I found in Marco Renzetti’s mind, a mind I was not consistently in possession of; perforce I leapt from tussock to tussock of knowledge through a wide swamp of ignorance.

My neighbour laughed.

‘Good question. San Francisco is just about anything you want, plus maybe some things you don’t want.’

‘Named for a saint, yes? A holy place?’

‘Let’s just say it’s wholly a place, OK?’

‘This is the New World?’

‘It’s slightly used by some not very careful owners but it’s all there is. The flight attendant is coming with landing cards. Do you need one?’

‘I need to land, yes.’

‘Italian passport?’

‘Yes.’

In my tussock-jumping I found that things I knew a moment ago were not always there in the present moment; new information appeared and disappeared and left me with no firm ground under my feet.

‘Raise your hand,’ said my neighbour, ‘and they’ll give you a landing card.’

I raised my hand, got a landing card, and he helped me with it.

‘Occupation,’ he said. ‘What do you do?’

‘I was rugby, now I am pizzeria.’

‘Rugby what? Player?’

‘Yes.’

‘But now you are pizzeria. You work in one?’

‘I own one.’ I had a picture in my mind of a case in the overhead compartment in which were important documents. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I have to get quotes on ovens and everything must be perfect because her beauty is the rock I am chained to.’

‘Whose beauty? What rocks and chains? You Italian guys must be into some really kinky S and M!’

‘Sorry, I am a little deranged just now.’

‘Don’t apologise, there’s always room for a little more derangement in SF. Myself, I like a good spanking every now and then. Does wonders for the circulation.’

‘A brick oven is what I need,’ I said as I felt rising in me from my feet to my brain the self-awareness of Marco Renzetti. I must have spoken that name aloud.

‘Clancy Yeats,’ said my companion, and shook my hand.

‘The poet Yeats said that words alone are certain good,’ I said.

‘He was probably drunk when he said it. I wouldn’t have figured you for a poetry reader.’

‘It could even be that there are poets who play rugby.’

‘I doubt it. Poker maybe, but nothing as rough and dirty as rugby. Where’s your pizzeria?’

‘In the Mission. Not open yet, just getting set up.’

‘I know the best places for restaurant supplies,’ said Yeats as we separated at Passport Control, ‘being the owner of Clancy’s Bar. Let me know if I can help with your business. Or your pleasure. Here’s my card. Call me.’

I didn’t think I would. In my human form I still retained some animal instincts and something about this man made me not want him for a friend. My passport and visa were in order and as Marco Renzetti I knew my way around the airport. I collected my luggage, passed through Customs, and boarded a shuttle for town.

On the bus I reviewed my position. My name was Marco Renzetti. I was thirty years old. I had been a professional rugby player, a wing with Viadana until a year ago, when I decided to leave sport and go into business while my knees were still in working order. On the advice of my cousin Giuseppe in San Francisco I bought a restaurant called Il Fornello from its owner on his retirement. On a previous trip I had looked the place over thoroughly. It was close to the thriving Delfina restaurant near Valencia in the Mission. It was Giuseppe’s opinion that being a neighbour to Delfina would do us good on this busy street. The fixtures and fittings were immaculate, even to the mural of the Bay of Naples, and the price, though high, was fair. It included the apartment over the restaurant into which I could move immediately and from where I could supervise the conversion of the kitchen.

On my arrival from the airport I installed myself in the apartment and sat down to work out the details of my new venture. The kitchen conversion was the biggest expense and would be the most trouble. The picture in my mind was from my childhood in the Abruzzi: the brick oven and the wooden paddle. The next thing was to find someone who could make it a reality.

It took me three weeks to locate a man who had knowledge of such things. He was old and he wept when I told him what I wanted but he said it made him feel young again and he could do the job. When it was finished I wept remembering my childhood.

In a month I was ready to open. The blue lettering outlined in gold on the window said MARCO’S PIZZERIA CLASSICA and the tables and chairs waited for what the future would bring. The oven was placed so that passers-by could see me through the window as I shaped the dough and put it in to bake. Soon there were lines outside and the tables began to fill up with people waiting for my classic pizza while drinking Chianti Classico. Others came in full of nostalgia, just to shake my hand and wish me well.

I had anticipated success and had hired a pretty waitress who spoke both English and Italian and had a walk that stimulated the appetite. Giuseppina her name was, and when her lips formed her name it was almost impossible not to kiss them. I forbore during business hours but after closing time she exceeded my expectations. She was delightful but her charms were not to be compared to the immortal poignancy of the naked Angelica glistening with salt spray and chained weeping to her rock.