The Wedding Officer

EPILOGUE

TIME PASSES.

Time passes, and as the hot midday sun and cool mountain nights alternately bake and freeze the blackened landscape of Vesuvius, something remarkable happens.

Gradually, the streams of cold lava are colonized by a lichen, stereo-caulon vesuvianum. This lichen is so tiny that it is almost invisible to the naked eye, but as it grows, it turns the lava from black to silvery gray. Where the lichen has gone, other plants can follow—first mugwort, valerian, and Mediterranean scrub, but later ilex and birch trees, along with dozens of species of apricot.

Meanwhile, the clinkers and ash that covered the landscape like so much grubby gray snow are slowly, inexorably, working their way into the fields and the vineyards, crumbling as they do so, adding their richness to the thick black soil, and an incomparable flavor to tomatoes, zucchini, eggplants, fruit and all the other produce which grows there.

Time passes.

Time passes, but people do not forget. Every year, on the anniversary of victory, they gather in the places that are special to them—an airfield, a war memorial, a café on a French bridge, a landing beach where they survived but others who were with them did not.

One of the places where they gather is a little osteria on the flanks of Mount Vesuvius, in a tiny village called Fiscino. This is a select gathering, and you are unlikely to see it mentioned in newspapers or on TV. But although it is select, it is not small. They come from all over Europe, and from the United States too—for those who live on the other side of the Atlantic are glad of a chance to fly back occasionally and visit their families in Naples.

The men have names like Bert and Ted and Richard. The women…the women have names like Algisa, Violetta, Silvana and Gina. They are the war brides, the Italian girls who married Allied soldiers, thanks to a dispensation given with great reluctance by the men’s commanding officers.

Others are here, too, of course. There is Angelo, the former maître d’ of Zi’Teresa’s, long since retired, along with his wife and his sixteen grandchildren. There is Eric Vincenzo, who when asked what he is doing now is always somewhat evasive, but who is based in Langley, Virginia, the home of the CIA. And there is the elegant middle-aged lady who is always dressed, however unseasonably, in the finest furs. She is accompanied by her much younger husband, a millionaire industrialist, who addresses her with unfailing politeness as carissima. She has only one eye, the other being made of glass, and she answers to the name Elena.

Marisa is here, or Dottor Pertini, as we must now learn to call her. She has long had a thriving medical practice in Boscotrecase, where it is known that for certain ailments beyond the reach of conventional medicine, such as backache, arthritis or the infidelity of a spouse, she will be able to prepare you a compound not found in any pharmacy.

And her sister is here. She, too, is known as dottoressa Pertini these days, though in her case it signifies that she has completed a university degree in political science. However, the fiery local councillor will always find time to cook, particularly when it is a meal such as this, a feast for family and friends.

And here is her husband, moving a little slowly as he works his way down the long trestle table that is set under the trees on the shady terrace, checking that everything is as it should be. His stiffness is the result of an old war injury, but it does not prevent him from making sure that the waiters are setting out the antipasto correctly—for it is he who took over the management of the restaurant and farm after Nino’s death, and it is under his direction that it has become celebrated by all the food guides. It is said that he has been known to help out in the kitchen himself on occasion, and that his fettuccine al limone is even better than Livia’s. The antipasto today will be burrata, creamy balls of mozzarella wrapped in asphodel leaves, made with milk from his own much treasured water buffalo, whose lowing floats occasionally across the fence from their tiny pasture next door.

But there is a ritual to this meal, as there has been every year since the war ended. As the guests bring their glasses of sparkling prosecco to the table, they are served first of all with bowls of a thin, insubstantial soup. It is little more than pasta water, containing a few humble beans and flavored with a little mutton fat, and it is, frankly, not very pleasant. The younger members of the group—those who are not old enough to remember the war themselves—make faces, and push it away after one or two mouthfuls. But the older ones eat it slowly and in silence, a faraway expression in their eyes as the taste transports them to another time, the memories crowding back to people the table with yet more visitors.

Then, when the soup is cleared, the mozzarella is consumed. Wine is poured; bread is broken. Conversations begin, turn into arguments, and eventually become conversations again. Civilization resumes its normal course.

There are children here too—dozens of them, for in the period immediately after the war there was an explosion of procreation such as the world had never seen before. Some of them are a little shy, unaccustomed as they are to conversations carried out in more than one language. As the meal goes on, and on, and the adults still show no sign of wanting to do anything other than talk, these youngsters slip one by one from their chairs, gathering in small groups to play, or to look moody, or to flirt, depending on their age and sex.

Periodically they are called back to the meal, the center of the gathering, to be argued with, or fed a titbit, or simply to join in one of the many toasts that are raised up and down the table, the young lifting their glasses in celebration of a victory about which they know nothing except what they have learnt in school and from their parents’ stories.

And if they see Livia Pertini reach out a hand to touch her husband’s arm as he passes, or see him bend his head for a fleeting kiss—habitually, almost unconsciously, breaking off his conversation to touch his lips to hers—they will, naturally, screw up their faces in mock disgust, or pass some smart remark. For if they know little of war, they know even less of love. That is as it should be: Each generation must be allowed to believe that it makes these discoveries for itself.

Besides, they have more important things to think about. Look, here comes another course, the long-awaited apricot dolce, carried to the table in triumph by the cooks.