After Le Feste

Today all the women of Spoleto are complaining about their livers. They do their daily rounds of the Rocca, hoping to walk off yet another zillion calories from yesterday’s Feast of the Epiphany, but no one’s feeling very peppy. The weather is partly to blame: the air is heavy, the sky grey; over toward Assisi a strange darkness prevails, could be rain, could be nebbia or fog, could be some atmospheric beast with an underbelly so dark it is dragging across the horizon and coming after us. “Did you feel una goccia di acqua—a rain drop?” The women don’t know what to wish for: They really should do six, seven, eight kilometers to make up for the giri they did not do yesterday, but how nice it would be to have an excuse to go home. "My liver is proprio crazy.” “Mine, too!” the women confide, clutching their sides, relishing the opportunity to complain and compare symptoms.

It has always amazed me, how in touch Italian women are with their inner-organs. They seem to know exactly where yesterday’s pranzo has wound up, stuck, fermenting, agitating or simply refusing to behave. They complain about the taste of gastric juices, making little tsking sounds with their tongues or sticking them out to prove they are coated. They probe around under their ribs, trying to jab a lazy gall-bladder into functioning, trying to massage up fresher bile. “That pizza I ate last night, non mi va…didn’t go well…is still right here,” a friend will point, as though I can see straight through her parka, her skin, her abdominal wall, to the exact spot in her intestine where the wad of bread and cheese is stubbornly sulking. And it is sulking, behaving like a recalcitrant child, defying every effort one has made to stay “leggera”—light, unencumbered by the internal heft of over-eating.

Italian women do not follow the same health fads that American women do. Theories concerning anti-oxidants or Vitamin A or fiber or eating vegetables everyday are intellectually interesting and certainly worth reading about in the magazines while waiting for the hairdresser or a train, but ideas about nutrition are not nearly as important as how one feels after eating. Most women are not convinced it’s important to take vitamins. Water makes the belly bloat and, besides, who wants to be running to the bathroom to pee all the time—they’re not convinced drinking all that water is necessary. What is crucial is a kind of inner-hum of efficient digestive functioning. Women drink aloe vera, believe in aloe vera, said to heal the digestive track and keep it slippery. Intestinal flora is also something that makes perfect sense to them. The dairy section of the grocery store is over-stocked with a variety of yogurt products, mostly drinkable in little vials guaranteeing a certain proficiency of pro-biotics. Little pictures of transparent torsos show the probiotics at work: Golden stars of vivaciousness move happily from throat to colon, guaranteeing regularity and a tingling inner-freshness and leggerezza. The women trust the picture—viscerally it makes sense.

They want to be thin and generally are thin. When one eats too much one day, one fasts the next—simple. One can drink tea, perhaps a little fruit juice, if desperate. But then, if the liver is really agitated, one can always resort to artichoke soup—curried artichoke soup, which is the perfect antidote for cantankerous livers. The artichokes contain a chemical called “cinerina”—which works as a diuretic and also stimulates the bile—and the curry also stirs up gastric juices. After le feste, even if one is careful, even if one eats small portions, the variety of foods will make the liver sluggish. A few days of artichokes may well be the answer. This is a known remedy—one can feel oneself deflate and the organs start to tingle.

I do not think I over-ate yesterday. My liver seems just fine, though I’d be hard pressed to know precisely where it is in my abdomen, nor would I know how to poke my gall-bladder. Lord knows, I could lose several pounds, but I haven’t eaten breakfast and after eight rounds of the Rocca, eight kilometers of talk about digestion, food, stomachs, livers, hunger, I am ready for pranzo, something, perhaps just a drink at the bar.

“Let’s go out to lunch today,” I suggest to Daniela as we near the end of our last lap. She thinks I am kidding, making a joke. Food? Food? Who can think of food after un giorno di festa? I suggest a Campari Soda instead and again she’s incredulous: “Like alcohol and sugar are any better for us!” It’s one thing to drink at a café when the sun is shining, we try to convince each other, but quite another thing to stop with all our dogs in the rain.

“Perche’ no?” I insist as we approach the few tables the barista leaves out during the winter season.

Suddenly her face is transfigured by an insight. She almost squeals, recalling that Cynar is a bitter aperitivo made from artichokes! We can drink Cynar! It does indeed stimulate the gastric juices. It might not hurt us after all…it may indeed cure us...to stop for a drink.

And of course the pistachios and potato chips and spicy rice-crackers Mira brings with our drinks do not count. They are cosini, “little things,” and can hardly be considered food.