On Mists, Memory and Italy

Last week we were at Bacău airport, in eastern Romania, not far from the border of Moldova. A strange, in-between place, whose existence seems to centre on the airport, five minutes away by car. Our hotel’s corridor was lined with photographs of London, Milan, and Paris, the three destinations you can escape to from here. I saw ‘English export’ shops for people who, I assume, wanted a taste of where they might migrate to – or where they once lived. Nearby are the beautiful mountains of Transylvania, and a plethora of folk customs, the reason we were here, but that felt so far away. We were about to board a flight to Italy, to see an old school friend and her family who live in a town on one of the lakes. It was to be an overdue catch-up, a quiet new year, and, for me, the first time I’d been in Italy since living there — now 10 years ago.

I studied Italian and French at university. I’d spent many Christmases and summers in Lombardy and travelled the length of the country. In 2014, I was studying at Milano Statale and I hated it. It was so markedly different to how I’d felt the year before, living in Grenoble, France, spending every week in the Alps (hiking was an actual course that gave me credits!), road-tripping along the Côte d’Azur and to Lyon with new friends, cycling along the river and buying fruit and vegetables from the market, bread from the boulangerie, listening to French music late into the night, binge-watching Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. There was that insanely unreal cusp day when autumn winds blew and the leaves seemed alive. A million other things made me feel alive, too. It was also a moment that could not be extended, beautiful because it was finite. In Milan, I spent more time teaching English and climbing in the surrounding mountains than sat in those overcrowded classes, learning by rote. I cried in an empty picture house while watching what remains one of my favourite films: Broken Circle Breakdown – or in Italian, Alabama Monroe – una storia d’amore. I encountered sexism, with people frequently commenting on my clothes, lack of makeup, or weight. Some people I met that year commented on my weight every time they saw me, like it was the weather. I have heard since that Italy can be a pretty awful place to visit as a black person, too, and I’m not surprised, many things can be said of Italian nationalistic pride and eurocentrism. Especially after having recovered from an eating disorder, these comments made me feel scrutinised, confirmation that my shell mattered and determined my self-worth, and that I needed to control it. Besides the point, but honestly, I don’t think my weight fluctuated that much. I didn’t think then about becoming a writer but I read a lot and wrote and looking back, my writings were increasingly dark. I had a year of living quite dangerously, seeking sensation and intensity, sky diving, paragliding, canyoning, and clambering up via ferratas: I became an adrenaline junkie. I nearly relapsed. In the city, I’ve never felt so depressed. Part of it was the city itself. It never agreed with me on a soul level. More coorperate than other Italian cities, crowds flock there for fashion and business. Most of its beauty was bombed during WWII and it never underwent the same radical or creative reclamation that cities like Berlin experienced. There was a flatness to the city and to life there. More pressingly, I had recently lost the thing that tethered me to this city in particular and now it felt very random. Far-off, sometimes, I could see the mountains, but most often they were veiled by a pollution fog.

Fog: I’ve been thinking about it a lot, recently, in part because I am slowly reading Chasing Fog: Finding Enchantment in a Cloud (a beautifully written, quiet read, perfect for winter – the next Cunning Folk Book Club read) – and partly because it has disrupted my plans. The fog was thick at Bacău airport and our flight to Milan was cancelled. Cue a long cross-country taxi drive on New Year’s Eve, a hotel stay at Bucharest airport, and an early morning flight home via Amsterdam. Landing in the Netherlands we had what felt like a close shave. Insane turbulence, close to the ground, up against a wind shear. I am a frequent flyer but my heart was racing during landing. These days we hear so many stories about aviation accidents – rare but a possibility.

So we didn’t make it back to Italy but now I’ve been thinking of the lighter side of my time there. The months spent in Florence and in Mussolini’s summer house on Lake Garda studying Italian (funded by the Istituto Italiano), taking my cappuccino and brioche at the bar, eating ice cream late at night with friends, piazzas brimming with life, cycling through Tuscany and Umbria, the smell of basil in the hot air, the hotel room curtains wavering in the sea breeze in Riomaggiore. Visits there as a child, with family and a friend. Bowls of pasta in the summer heat. Dancing to Alizée with other children my age, and not knowing what the lyrics meant, not knowing what the children were saying. A mangey kitten peering at me from behind a column of the Colosseum – I wished I could take it home. Watching St Mark’s Square fill up with water at dusk and thinking that one day all this would be underwater. The fairground in the middle of nowhere that felt straight out of a Goosebumps novel: my parents parked up the campervan somewhere, at night, and there it was, empty but loud and garish with those intense lights. Eagerly my friend and I hopped on a rollercoaster and the conductor wouldn’t let us off, cackling as we went again and again, becoming dizzier and more nauseated. Midnight Mass at Christmas. Siestas. Riding vespas through sleeping towns. Carnival in Busseto. Reading Leopardi’s Canti and their dark mood colouring my solitary walks. A late-night dip in the naturally thermal waters of Saturnia. Labyrinthine ancient cities and towns. The beauty of the Amalfi coast and Capri. The sadness I felt at Vesuvius, aged eleven, remembering that we could lose all of this in the blink of an eye. Romanticising about that love that could move the sun, and all the other stars. That summer with good friends, wandering around Rome and Herculaneum, where magical things just seemed to happen. That thunderstorm that shook the airport on our way to Athens! 2 am visits to the secret Florence bakery that sold its freshly baked pastries to those in the know. In Italy, Brazil and India, I rediscovered my appetite where for years I had felt only disgust. Italy is where I learned to properly cook: pasta allo zafferano, minestrone di verdure, pasta e fagioli, melanzana parmigiana, focaccia, tiramisu – and to enjoy salads dressed in olive oil and vinegar – and fresh fruit: juicy peaches and nectarines, watermelon – and to drink good wine. In the past I dreamed in Italian. I found in the language and its gestures a more confident expression.

In the days before our planned trip, the one that never happened, the language returned to me, reconnecting me with a part of myself I hadn’t seen in a long time. A return trip to see my friend is overdue, but also a return to Italy to reconnect with my Italian past and quella parte della mia anima che rimane oscura.

The mind’s forgetting is often spoken of as a fog or a haze. When memories come forth, the fog briefly clears. In many stories about patients with Alzheimer’s, it is music that invokes the past and the forgotten self. Flying in the early morning, I revisited songs I listened to ten years ago – charming myself back there, to France and Italy, before Brexit, and everything that happened in the past decade: Serge Gainsbourg, Carla Bruni, Stromae, The Beatles, Fabrizio de André, Indochine, Nico, and Jacques Brel. As Proust knew, food can also help us recover lost time.

One of my favourite memories of Italian life is crisp winter afternoons drinking cioccolata calda, a luscious custard-like, puddingy hot chocolate you have to eat with a spoon.

Here’s a simple recipe if you want to try it yourself:

Cioccolata calda

Serves 2 (reheats well)

Ingredients

20 g cornstarch

20 g cocoa powder

500 ml oat milk

A couple of squares of dark chocolate (70%)

2 tablespoons brown sugar, or to taste

How to

1. Place the cornflour and cocoa powder in a saucepan and add a dash of the milk. Mix until you have a smooth paste.

2. Add the sugar and mix some more.

3. Slowly, add the rest of the milk. Turn on the hob to a low heat and keep whisking to avoid lumps.

4. When hot and beginning to thicken, add the chocolate and let it melt.

5. Pour into a cup. Optional: add whipped cream (I use this one).

6. Enjoy hot with a spoon!