Back to Bologna

18

Gemma Santini reached the Bologna trade fair complex forty minutes before the event was due to begin, assuming that this would allow ample time to pick up her reserved ticket and get seated. She was wrong.

The area around the row of ticket booths was packed with people, some of whom gave every impression of having been there all night. Most were waiting their turn in a more or less orderly way for the strictly limited number of free passes being handed out to pack the hall, but a few had resorted to what Gemma privately called Neapolitan granny tactics, screaming their needs, demands and special circumstances at the attendant in the hope that they would be given what they wanted just to shut them up and get them out of there.

The moment she had learnt about the cook-off between her favourite TV personality and the awe-inspiring Edgardo Ugo which was to take place in the very city to which she was going anyway, her thoughts had turned to Luigi Piergentili. Although now a moral and physical wreck of the kind that dear Aurelio fondly imagined himself to be, in his former capacity as the dominant consigliere at the Monte dei Paschi bank Luigi had wielded a power in Tuscany and beyond second only to the equally fond imaginings of certain now-forgotten politicians. His own season of influence had been brought to an end-not entirely fortuitously, some held-by an unpleasant hit-and-run accident which had left the victim addicted, as he freely admitted, to a powerful morphine-based painkiller. Unfortunately, all of the many doctors he had consulted ultimately declined to continue prescribing this medication, citing normative pharmaceutical criteria, contra-indicative long-term health risks and, above all, a fear of losing their licences to practice medicine. It was at this point that Signor Piergentili had appealed to Gemma.

Luigi had been far too canny to make this appeal to her pity, or even her venality. Instead, with a shrewdness she had appreciated almost as much as the implicit delicatezza, he had murmured over tea at the Caffe di Simo that a very close friend of his, a professor at the University of Florence, had happened to mention to him that Gemma’s son Stefano was studying engineering there.

‘How is he doing?’ he added, with a serene Etruscan smile.

The answer was spectacularly bad, but the smile made it clear that Luigi’s friend had also mentioned that. Moments later, a mutually advantageous marriage of convenience had been arranged. Both parties had thus far remained faithful, but following Stefano’s graduation cum laude Gemma, while duly grateful for the intercession concerned, had become the creditor in the relationship. She had therefore felt no qualms about phoning Luigi the day before, and telling him to work his network of contacts and fix her up with a comp ticket for the culinary showdown between Lo Chef and Il Professore. He had called back at dawn, after ‘a blissfully dreamless night, thanks to you, my dear’, with the news that she need only present herself at ticket counter 7 of the fiera compound in Bologna the next morning, and all would be taken care of.

This turned out to be true enough, as far as it went. What Gemma had not taken into account was the sheer crush of humanity attracted by this unique event. She didn’t mind waiting, but like everyone else she was aware that since this event was being televised live, timing was of the essence. Once the broadcast began, the doors would be closed and locked, and even Luigi’s pull wouldn’t be able to get her in.

In the end, with a discreet elbow jab here, a piscine slither there, and a good deal of old-fashioned argy-bargy, she made it to the threshold of the hall with about a minute to spare, only for her mobile phone to go off. It was Aurelio, blathering away about something or other. She dealt with him very summarily and then processed into the arena with the other latecomers.

There must have been at least five hundred people present, Gemma estimated. Many of them wore identifying badges and name-tags on a cord round their necks, and busied themselves with tape-recorders, cameras and notebooks, but many were ordinary citizens who had queued up since dawn for a ticket to a contest that had been the talk of Italy ever since it had been announced. Her seat turned out to be a good one, about a third of the way up, with an excellent view of both kitchens and of the central dining area.

At ten o’clock precisely, the house lights went down and a man wearing shiny shoes, tight black trousers and a patterned silk shirt open to the navel, revealing a gold necklace nestling in his spectacular chest hair, stepped forward to the edge of the stage. With no particular surprise, other than the fact that he was so much smaller than she had imagined, Gemma recognised him as the presenter of a TV variety show broadcast on the same channel as Lo Chef Che Canta e Incanta. He proceeded to welcome the audience effusively, and then introduced the event and the participants in his usual bombastically jokey manner. Gemma noted, however, that once he got down to business the text of what he was evidently reading off a screen beneath one of the on-stage cameras had been very carefully scripted indeed, and almost certainly with a team of lawyers representing each party in the room.

In brief, it stated that Professor Edgardo Ugo, the noted Bolognese academic and world-famous author, had inadvertently written something in his column for Il Prospetto which might conceivably have been construed by the inattentive or ill-intentioned as casting doubt on Romano Rinaldi’s culinary abilities. Such a thing had of course never remotely been Professor Ugo’s intention. His comment had been made purely from a humorous and-the next word seemed to cause the presenter some trouble-metonymic perspective, and he unconditionally rejected any literal interpretation that might be placed on it. Nevertheless, to settle the matter once and for all, and also celebrate the glories of Italian cooking and the prestigious Bologna food fair, the two men would now ‘meet as equal slaves over a hot stove [pause for laughter] before you all gathered here today and watching at home’ in order to put a definitive end to any unpleasantness that might mistakenly have been perceived to have arisen.

‘And now please welcome…’

The presenter gestured towards the kitchen area to the left of the stage as Edgardo Ugo walked in from the wings. The professor was wearing an English style tweed jacket, khaki cords, a rumpled dark-green shirt and a clashing lime-green tie, and looked as though he couldn’t care less about the whole event. Acclaim from the audience was respectful but subdued.

‘And in the opposite corner…’

Clad in his trademark white uniform and toque, Lo Chef made his appearance at a leisurely, relaxed pace, grinning confidently and waving to the crowd. The applause was tumultuous and so prolonged that after a considerable time the presenter was forced to appeal for silence.

The judges then filed in and were briefly introduced as leading chefs, cookery writers and culinary experts before taking their places at the dining table in the central section. After that the presenter began to explain the rules of engagement, and Gemma felt her interest slipping away. It was all about food, and she didn’t feel in the least hungry, not least because it brought to mind Aurelio, whom she had unwisely contacted in a moment of elation the evening before with a virtual invitation to lunch and an implied reconciliation. She now felt very dubious about both, besides which she had been invited to dinner by Stefano and Lidia, who would be sure to take any lack of appetite on her part personally. Flicking idly through the brochure covering the Enogastexpo fair that she had been handed along with her pass, she noticed an advertisement for what sounded like a fashionable snack bar right in the centre, and texted Aurelio the name and address. That was the solution, she decided. A meaningless encounter, a quick bite, e poi via.

On stage, the presenter flung his arms wide, his expression one of astonishment and awe.

‘And now, let battle commence!’

Gemma put the glossy brochure down and studied the two very different contestants. To the left, Edgardo Ugo had clearly resigned himself to his inevitable defeat. He sloped confusedly around his kitchen set under the brilliant TV lights in his pathetically homely garb like a parody of the drab, ineffectual bachelor wondering where everything was and what to do first.

Romano Rinaldi could not have presented a clearer contrast. From the very first moment, it was clear that he owned the space he had been allotted. He glanced at the display panel, then moved rapidly to turn up the flame under a pan of water for the pasta before turning his attentions to the ingredients and the chopping board. While Ugo pointedly ignored the onlookers and the cameras, turning his back all the time and never saying a word, Lo Chef romanced his audience constantly, chatting aloud, sharing his thoughts and cracking jokes.

Then he suddenly froze rigid for a long moment, as though struck by a spontaneous inspiration.

‘Ci vuole una cipolla!’ he proclaimed. ‘I know it! How do I know it? Because the onion is calling out to me!’

Launching into ‘ Recondita armonia ’, he sloshed copious quantities of his name-brand olive oil into a pan and set it on a high flame. The pasta water was now rising to the boil. Still singing and grinning, Rinaldi poured in the spaghetti and swirled it about a bit with a wooden spoon before seizing an onion from the array on the counter. He skinned and chopped it, then turned dramatically to the audience and walked downstage.

‘The onion has spoken to me,’ he said softly, wiping mock tears from his eyes. ‘And what it has to say makes me weep.’

This provided an irresistible segue into Donizetti’s ‘ Una furtiva lagrima ’, during which the pot of pasta boiled over, flooding the right side of the stove and extinguishing the flame.

Rinaldi proved unable to relight the burner, despite hammering away repeatedly at the spark lighter function and then looking around in vain for matches. Meanwhile, on the other side of the stage, Edgardo Ugo was lumbering about like the caged bear he rather resembled, adding something to the sauce, keeping an eye on the pasta, and generally displaying complete indifference to whatever might be happening elsewhere. Eventually a businesslike woman of about thirty came running on to Rinaldi’s kitchen set, moved the pasta pan to a different burner and ignited the flame before hastening off-stage. Lo Chef turned to the audience, showing his teeth in a huge smile above his bearded chin.

‘What a thing it is to have a woman around!’ he declared in a tone at once humble and triumphant.

The audience burst into laughter and applause. Rinaldi acknowledged their appreciation of his wit and poise with a rendition of the famous aria from Rigoletto, changing the lyrics to ‘ La donna e mobile, ma indispensabile ’. This led to still more applause. Keenly in tune with the mood of his public, he proceeded with the rest of the piece, interpolating or altering lyrics as he went, before ending on a high and long-held note at the very edge of his vocal range.

It was at this moment that the pan of oil on the stove behind him burst into flames.