Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson Page A

first thing he did was blaspheme quite inventively (I think) & reach for the bottle I’d brought – not good Voynovian slivovitz, I’m afraid, but more to his taste.
    Eventually I got him back up to his house & into bed. Remind me to tell you some day about this house of his. For the moment it’s enough to say that I glimpsed a teddy bear wearing a blue waistcoat sitting on the cistern in the downstairs lavatory. That  will tell you all you need to know. The next morning I called around with home-made kasha to aid recovery. You can’t say I shan’t be going to heaven. He was a bit stiff but there was nothing wrong with his appetite. He said he’d been demolishing an old lavatory that had collapsed with him inside it. ‘Of course, Gerry,’ I said soothingly. A likely tale. You don’t wear a tool belt to knock down a flimsy old hut. No, I think he was going to mess about with the fussy little balustrade he’s put up along the edge of his terrace, lost his footing in his alcoholic stupor, crashed down onto the hut & took the whole lot with him to the bottom. He’s lucky to be alive. One of his eyes was slightly black & he looked so pathetic sitting there woozily eating kasha like an obedient small boy in a nursery I suddenly couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. Stranded up here in mid-life, blundering around in DIY outfits in a daze of alcohol while singing fake arias, I mean excuse me. He really is none of my business and quite awful. As a matter of fact his singing was so obtrusive the other day my lineage asserted itself & I wrote that little rodent Benedetti a good strong letter. I told him bluntly he had shamelessly lied & that the neighbour who was ‘only ever here one month of the year’ was in fact a permanent & highly irritating fixture. Still, after Gerry’s accident I’ve repented somewhat & now feel sorry I sent the letter. I think Gerry is disturbed in some way. Perhaps it’s this that manages to press a maternal button deeply hidden inside me. But it’s a very small button & only connected to some extremely basic circuitry.
    On that note I shall stop. Keep me in touch, Mari darling. I want to know about Timi & how you’re going to induce Father to let you come here soonest.
        
    Heaps of love
    Marta

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    I can at least admit to myself what I can’t even to Marja – viz ., that the script for Piero’s film has come as quite a shock. The basic story as he originally gave it me in his letters is still there after a fashion, I suppose; but what in my naïve former socialist way I had taken for a biting political satire on the eco-cant of the times seems to have slewed off sideways into something altogether more urban and an excuse for orgies and violence. The working title has changed significantly, too. Originally it was something harmless – Mare Verde , I think Filippo said. Now, though, it is Arrazzato . That meant nothing until I asked Simone, the boy they sent up to help me install and use the computer equipment. He blushed prettily and prevaricated but I persevered until he explained it was dialect or slang for sexually aroused, apparently formed from razzo , which means rocket. You live and learn. It’s true the film is going to end with a huge display of distress rockets sent up by some Albanians trapped on a beach by crazed racist Greens, but even so, Simone said it’s not a commonly used expression and not everyone knows it, so perhaps the film will intentionally sound enigmatic.
    That I should feel obscurely let down is an unwelcome reminder of the earnest bore I suppose I am at heart: the middle-European hayseed whom no doubt Gerry spotted at once and has been laughing at ever since. Still, I cling to my confidence in Piero Pacini that he knows what he’s doing. I believe he has yet to direct a bad film, although they have not necessarily all been winners at the box office. Given that in the last twenty years the Italian cinema has become more and more dependent on