IL FATTO BELLO
The bread and cheese controversy
The friendly rules of party etiquette forbid the rabid discussion of religion and politics, whose fanning flags risk turning the centerpiece candle into a blazing hazard. We could even stretch that axiom another step: sociable guests gathered around a yuletide table the day the fir goes up should avoid money-talk, too. Especially with people, like Enrico, who actually have it-unless you're prepared to purchase philosophical fruit that's bruised before you even get it home from the market. Money can't buy happiness. Even the rich are known to cry. I soldi non sono importanti. Unfortunately, I am almost never prepared for such sensibility, and it took me every tinseled scrap of willpower in the house to avoid decorating him rather than the Christmas tree.
In English, we have cash for spending under the table, ‘dough' for the ephemeral elastic needs of greed and ‘dosh' for a respectable night on the town in top-hat. ‘Bread' can buy much more than bread, and ‘cabbage' stands for money that folds. We use ‘bucks' for daily over-the-counter exchange and ‘grand' when money manages to collect three zeros behind its braggart lead digit. Italians who talk about money mention grana,
a cheese similar to parmesan, which also doubles as the word for trouble. A gruzzolo gets pinched and saved for the future's next hey-day and the being broke in the meantime merits the phrase non ho il becco di una lira, there's not even a chipped fragment of the old currency left in one's crab-filled pockets.
But the money we had the misfortune of discussing on Immaculate Tuesday was the most dangerous variety around: the kind that's earned. At Christmas time, those who work amidst the crowded ranks of time-indeterminate employment fuel their holiday sprees with the much-awaited tredicesima, the thirteenth month of salary that certain firms are still obliged to include in winter's first paycheck. However, those who earn their fivers freelance are left to chew the troubling cud of the term a progetto. Italy, in times of economic crunch and reparatory question-swept reform, considers work ‘a project' rather than an authentic source of livelihood. And perhaps this is where my bias lies.
Enrico, who on an ordinary day is friend enough to deck my halls with boughs of holly, was the one I most wanted to stuff as turkey. A business man who knows shrewd rules and how to work in spite of them, he is actually quite a well-measured guy whom I trust with most questions that count. Normally, he has no qualms about generating quattrini-or admitting that most money in Italy is made through laudable skill or unmentionable decadence.
That afternoon, perhaps in efforts to clinch a late place on Santa's Nice List, there was nothing industrialist about him. The smell of pine had modified his brain waves. ‘Money doesn't matter,' he was saying, picking the plums from his pile of chestnut stuffing. Italians are sticklers about savory tasting, well, savory.
I replied with equal skittishness: ‘If money doesn't matter, then why do we spend the better part of the day trying to make it?'
He chewed, fork mid-air and quite content to have found a tender chestnut. My bristling porcupine nature did little to sting him. ‘That's true,' he agreed. ‘But what I mean is, it's not the most important thing.'
‘Okay, so what's the most important thing?' If he could save himself, I was willing to wait.
‘Serenity,' he said as if the word were as light as the principle.
‘Earning one's rent money does wonders for serenity, haven't you heard?'
He grinned. ‘I love you so much better when you're nice to me.' His tone was teasing and matter-of-fact.
‘I love you so much better when you're an entrepreneur,' I replied. He was fact and I was matter.
‘Touché,' he said, pulling a single quill from the heart of the discourse.
It was going to be a Buon Natale. And soon we would be thinking solely of silver stars atop freshly chopped pines and how to keep poinsettias alive until after January 6th. Or pondering good will and world peace and how to make angel wings from wire and netting scraps. Italy, in reality, is generous and well populated when it comes to festivities. San Niccolò, Santa Maria, Sant'Ambrogio, Santa Lucia, Santo Stefano-they stand as celebratory guardians, tugging at the corners of the Christmas canopy so the season may stretch wide and billowing over the whole of December. There is sufficient merriness to be collected. Tradition-lovers seek mandarin oranges, carrots to feed Saint Lucy's donkey, candles that burn as long as night lasts and cow tongue that will be thankfully silenced in time for the family's fine boiled dinner. And word-lovers like you and me will spend much time dispensing good wishes. May we become healthy and wealthy and wise. And may our New Year's gardens be well cultivated with sprouting rows of Most Important Things.
Teacher by profession and writer by necessity, Linda Falcone is celebrating her fifteenth year of Italian living. Author of Italians Dance and I'm a Wallflower and If They Are Roses, she delights in experimenting with both poetry and prose. Only the grocery list should never be written.
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