longing for italy
what i didn't do last summer
by Susan Van Allen
(return to travel)

Louise could not stop raving about that wine bar -- the one across from the San Trovaso church I'd told her about. She and Jack had absolutely adored it. They became regulars there during their two week holiday in Venice; thought of me every time they clinked their glasses of prosecco. They even sent me a postcard of the place, one with the charming owner, who she agreed could have been Marcello Mastrianni's brother. Of course, they've been back a week, but I probably won't get that postcard for a month. Italian mail! I laugh with Louise on the phone, while deep down… I feel that stirring of a desire that won't quit: the hunger for a trip to Italy.

It's a yearning deeply rooted in fond childhood memories of long Sunday dinners at my Italian grandparents' house in Newark, New Jersey. Fueled every August when we'd see Papa off on a ship to visit his sisters who still lived in Naples. He'd send back postcards of churches and statues. He'd return by Labor Day with glass beads from Venice, lacy handkerchiefs from Florence, and rocks from Mount Vesuvius.

I keep Louise on the phone for an hour, pumping her for details of her trip. I've spent the summer sweltering in a non-air conditioned one bedroom apartment in Hollywood, during one of the hottest Augusts on record. I am, according to the government, "unemployed." According to my agent I'm "a writer between jobs." According to Dorothy Parker I'm "dying from encouragement." And according to me: I'm a person that didn't go to Italy this summer.

I have sent no postcards. I have sent e-mails to friends, full of fabulous advice about great little hidden spots to hit while they're on their Italian vacations. Beautiful recommendations for caffes, markets, trattorias, and pensiones in Rome, Florence, and Venice. All gathered from trips I took during more stable employment years. All carefully documented in bursting travel journals -- pages scribbled with stars, arrows, squiggly maps, ecstatic drunken scrawls, praising the fabulous meal that night that was accompanied by a great Chianti or Amarone, written before I conked out to dream land, with visions of Renaissance masterpieces and steaming plates of pasta in my head.

I mark my calendar with my friends' itineraries so I can vicariously indulge in their travels. There's Donna, in Rome, probably around the corner from the Pantheon, drinking the best espresso on earth at Tazza D'Oro--thanks to me. Sheila, searching that alley in Florence with my directions in hand, and then opening the door to that amazing paper shop. I keep my fingers crossed that Ellen got the room in the Verona pensione I told her about - the one with the balcony overlooking the Piazza Erbe, the market square. I am the anti-Buddah. There is no "be here now" in my world. The desire to "be there now" has overtaken me. I see no reason to fight it, it will only make it worse. I surrender to it completely as Italy, like a billowy cartoon finger wafting from a bubbling pot of tomato sauce beckons to me… I immerse myself in the Sunday newspaper travel sections with their lusciously illustrated features on farm stays in Tuscany and trattorias in Naples.

I shut out the roar of the freeway and the drone of the traffic helicopters circling overhead with the sounds of ItaliaRadio on my Real Player. I pore over Mario Battaglia's cookbooks and make it my own personal project to perfect my fusilli puttanesca.

Out to buy groceries, I detour to the cheese store where I can close my eyes and inhale the aroma Italians describe as Piedi di Dio - God's feet. For that moment I'm in Il Mercato Centrale in Florence ready to pick up a wedge of pecorino for a picnic in the Boboli Gardens.

I miss the language. The conversation classes at the Instituto that have sustained me before between visits are closed in August. That's when the teachers, native Italians, go home. But there's a flyer at the gym advertising Andrea, who offers private instruction. Andrea is a Venetian with the face of one of Raphael's cherubs. He fell in love with an American girl who was studying in Venice, married her and moved to Hollywood six months ago. Andrea, like me, is unemployed. Unlike me, he's thrilled to be in Hollywood. He lives a few blocks away in an air conditioned one bedroom - a "classic" concrete block complex with a pool - about as far a cry from the palazzo on the Grand Canal where he grew up as anyone could imagine. But I do imagine that we're there, when once a week I go for my lesson. We drink Chianti at his kitchen table. He helps me tackle the subjunctive, the verb tense used to express doubt, probability, hope. He encourages me to create my own sentences: "I had hoped that I would get a job by now so that I could plan a trip to Italy…"

Louise's postcard finally arrives. As I stick it on the refrigerator, the memory of that wine bar rushes vividly back. I discovered it during my first hours on my first trip to Venice with my old friend, Betsy. Arriving in the quiet Dorsoduro section of the city, we dropped our bags at the apartment we rented and set out to explore "our" neighborhood that late April afternoon - wobbly travel weary gals in the golden light.

As we approached a small bridge, we heard a melancholy folk song, and saw a gondola just down the canal, where a group of happy tourists were being serenaded by a man who accompanied himself on a concertina. It took our breath away - the reflection of the rosy stone buildings in the canal, their green shutters framing lace curtained windows, geraniums tumbling out of planter boxes, winged lion statues over the doorways. And in the center of it all, the gondola glided towards us, steered by the most handsome of handsome dark eyed gondoliers. He stopped before he went under the bridge, looked up at us, gave us a smile and a ciao. Then he dipped his oar in the sparkling water, floated under the bridge and away.

Giddy from it all, we stumbled across another bridge, and there it was, that wine bar. With it's wall of bottles and dark polished mahogany bar, we knew instinctively it was perfection. And there he was, that Mastrianni look-a-like with his wife and sons, serving the local workers and us tourists with such gentility… I had my first glass ever of proseco. And a hard boiled egg with an anchovy wrapped around it.

This became "our spot" for that trip, where we enjoyed many glasses of wine and chichetti, the traditional Venetian snacks. We always took the same route to get there, in hopes of seeing that gondolier again, but we never did.

That afternoon, I stay in the kitchen cooking, near the postcard.

My husband declares my fussilli puttanesca as good as what we had at the Campo Dei Fiori in Rome. And here in my Hollywood kitchen, where I've hung garlic, planted a window box of basil, and set up my Neapolitan coffeemaker, it all comes together. I have Italy in sweet memory, in present fantasy… and even in the future. My husband and I clink our glasses of chianti and toast "Salute", as I watched my relatives do when I was a kid years ago back at those Sunday dinners. And then I tell him about that villa rental I found on the internet. The one in Positano with the patio where we can sit overlooking the Mediterranean. We know we'll be there before too long.

c.2000 Susan Van Allen - one time rights