Pizza Night Puzzlements

We are gathered at Sacrestia to re-establish our Saturday night rite: Pizza Night with Bente and Merisa. For a time we went to another a pizzeria because Daniela wanted to support the young family who had opened it, especially after a group of my students nearly burned down their Monteluco hotel while building a bonfire in their fireplace. Then Bente had been diagnosed with liver cancer and had spent most of the winter in the hospital and the summer and fall adjusting to a specialized diet the doctors had prescribed and subsequent months adjusting to the impact of chemo on her appetite. It really is the first time the four of us have celebrated Pizza Night together in a year. Bente has lost 16 kilos she never had to lose and looks gaunt in her gabardine suit with a spilla—lapel pin—shaped like a leaf or a feather of tiny pearls. Merisa remarks how much she likes the pin and Daniela remarks she has one just like it that her mother had bought her in Spain when they’d traveled there, just the two of them, when Daniela was a girl. Bente remarks that she likewise bought her pin in Spain but was already married and so not a girl—but it could have been at the same time Daniela had gotten hers, given Bente is so much older. I tell them both I’ve decided it is a feather—because the fronds of pearls are so delicate.

The boy named Matteo who knows I eat only the Mezzanotte—arugula, tomato and smoked provola cheese--says outright that he will make it a quarter of the normal size out of respect for my diet. He likewise knows also what each of my friends will order, even after a year, and it amazes us all that he remembers and, not only that he remembers, but that we are all so predictable without knowing how predictable we are…or was it the power of suggestion, his telling us what we liked and reminding us how good it was the last time we were here, so that the idea of choice and full menus of choices, eludes us or seems to interfere with the more crucial things we have to talk about.

Tonight the gossip concerns a woman in town who was once engaged to a twin. For years the woman was the lover of this man we will call Federico. Then they’d had the kind of lover’s spat that lovers tend to have and she’d gone along mourning him for maybe a year until they’d suddenly encountered each other per strada not too long ago—must have been six or seven months ago, given the size of her pregnant belly. The thing was: It was not Federico she’d encountered and gone to bed with, but the twin, Franco…and after one night of love making she’d conceived a baby without knowing that the baby was the baby of a stranger. The deceit had so enraged the woman that she’d sought DNA testing and taken the imposter to court to sue for moral damages. She had learned that identical twins have the exact same DNA so that it was impossible to prove which twin had fathered the baby, but she’d nevertheless won the law suit—50, 000 euro in “moral damages” plus eighteen years of child support for the offspring of that one night of dark pleasure.

I think it’s hilarious, Daniela hoots—perfect justice. She could have taken the pill or, better yet, practiced abstinence. “Pensa!” Merisa says, astonished, as this is the first she’s heard the story and was widowed recently after having been married to only one man for fifty years. Bente is the one who loves to chatter and has recounted the details of this tryst, both for its surprise value and the mystery—just imagine, she turns to Merisa—if Maurizio had had a twin and you’d made love to his double! Merisa turns a little pale at the thought and then blushes.

I don’t buy it, I interrupt—I’m sorry. I don’t believe she could not tell the difference. Even if the two men had the exact same body (the one twin was shorter, Bente interjects) their maniera would be different, especially in bed. Tell me you wouldn’t know the touch of your lover from that of a stranger! I just don’t buy it!

Certo, certo, any woman would recognize her lover’s touch, Daniela proclaims as though she and I had reversed the court’s verdict and could now set right all the world’s injustices. “Vero, Merisa? Vero, Bente?” You would think I were the oracle given the queasy way the two older women look at me, perhaps assuming I've known too many lovers if I have figured this out. Daniela alone is delighted that we have stumbled upon such clear and irrefutable evidence.

Matteo with his sweet always-sleepy looking face and murmur-y way of addressing us, dispels the sudden awkwardness with an on-the-house plate of struzzichini—fried mozzarella, a rice ball, a potato ball, each of which Daniela cuts into four liliputian slices in honor of Cinzia’s ever-precarious diet.

“I think I agree with Cinzia,” Merisa suddenly announces—la spilla, your pin, Bente—it is a feather. All this time I saw a leaf, but now that I see a feather I can’t stop seeing the feather. Do you agree Daniela?

Per dire la verita, Daniela says to all of us, amused by her own silliness—I see una spilla, a piece of jewelry, white gold that is not really white gold and tiny pearls that at any moment could fall off the fragile wire they’ve been clinging to for fifty years. Mine is bent entirely out of shape at this point. Bente, how have you kept yours intact?

We all look at Bente’s pin and then at Bente, who we remark looks extraordinarily well for all she's been through. How delighted we are that she’s going against doctor’s orders and splashing red wine into her water.