Turkey truth

Turkey truth

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Thu 05 Nov 2015 1:00 AM

turkey

 

Jeremy is my American scholar-friend who dresses like an Englishman and happily attends Florentine cultural lectures like the kind I conjure. Then, as a member of the educated audience, he raises his hand and asks grand-prize questions that no one sane could ever answer on the spot. His latest query was worthy of Hamlet himself and is indeed where ‘the rub’ lies: ‘How do you reconcile regional differences when writing about Italians?’ 

 

Good gracious me, I don’t. For if I ever were to manage such a feat, I’d be the first in history to do so. Thus, I’d just as soon leave the achievement for someone far smarter and braver than I. In truth, Italians do not want their regional differences reconciled. In this country, regional prejudice is treated like the proof in the pudding and, quite honestly, ‘pudding’ means dessert. To Italians—all Italians—provincial bitterness makes for the sweetest of conversations. 

 

The man I credit for proving this point is called Lapo, a friend and the son of the son of the son of a palace-dweller whose family’s central abode is a gazillion-dollar money-pit that’s now a museum. Most weekends, Lapo is on duty at official dinners that ‘demean’ him and help pay the bills, but sometimes he’s willing to take a body like me through the palace rooms, on the promise that I will never use his real name in an article. 

 

Indeed, the palazzo is quite a place. The fireplaces were carved by a friend of Michelangelo, whose name has since gone up in smoke, and the curtains were fashioned in his family’s patented color, woven on a loom designed by Leonardo da Vinci. And none of the brocade chairs are worn down enough to be further spoiled by sitting. So, enjoying ‘story-time’ in the palace feels much like partaking in a Japanese tea ceremony. There’s high risk of losing your legs after squatting on the floor for four hours. That is how long it takes to learn of all the cardinal cousins Lapo’s family has engendered from the Middle Ages to near-modern times. All the gems they bought, the wars they fought, the women they sought make for a truly frightening religious education, and I told Lapo I thought so.   

 

‘Ah,’ he answered. ‘We don’t worry too much about the hypocrisy of so-called saintliness. Noi diciamo “pane” al pane e “vino” al vino. We say “bread” to bread and “wine” to wine. The Florentines prefer to tell it like it is.’

 

The qualifications that followed this statement are likely to keep Jeremy and I busy for the rest of our culture-hungry lives, for Lapo went on to clarify that Florentine frankness is nothing like the grandiose verbosity of the Romans, the theatrical flattery of the Neapolitans, the jovial diplomacy of the Bolognese stuffed-pasta makers or the stuffy conversation of the stiff Milanese suits. He nearly swore by his cardinals’ graves that Tuscan straightforwardness made his compatriots more virtuous than any man of the cloth might ever be. 

 

‘In Tuscany, we know little of compliments. We only know that they are laced with lies. Bread is called “bread” and wine is called “wine”. We talk without giri di parole. We speak without turns in our words.’

 

‘In English, when we talk straight, we say, ‘to talk turkey’. 

 

Lapo found this comment fabulously funny. I mean he found it echoing-laughter-down-the hallowed-halls kind of funny. It made me worry that his noble mother would alight from the livable upper apartments and disinherit her well-indulged son and banish his ruinous American company. 

 

‘Be quiet! The Countess will hear you.’

 

‘You eat turkey. You talk turkey. Is it the only real food in America?’

 

Yes. You Turkey.

 

I didn’t say it, of course. Not that Lapo wouldn’t have liked the insult. I’m just not quite fully versed on the ‘bread’ to bread and ‘wine’ to wine rule. One needs a couple of painted relatives in the region, before that axiom becomes immediate. 

 

To end with adoptive Tuscan frankness now: Lapo, like all of us turkeys the world over, takes his prejudices as truth. Whew—I’m going to be in big trouble. But I can’t wait to hear what bread-and-wine words he has to say about that. 

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