We went for a cocktail-hour potluck last week at Paule and Flavia’s place. They’re both architects and they live in a house of their own design in the medieval village of Poreta.
We had been to visit them once before and I pretty much sort of knew where it was. It was up this steep little street, I remembered. Well, it’s not a street; it’s more like steps that you walk up but cars use it, too. It’s a medieval thing. I have driven up a number of stairways in my time, in quaint European villages, but never intentionally.
So, we parked at the bottom and trudged up the steps in the direction of the twelfth century castle that crowns the hill. I figured I’d recognize Paule and Flavia’s place when I saw it. By the time we got to the top of the hill, I thought I had seen three possible candidates but no clear winner.
We walked back down the steps, which was a lot easier than going up but Jill was tiring of carrying the bowl of hummus and the plate of raw vegetables that we were adding to the lucky pot. I carried the wine, which is a husbandly duty.
“We could call them,” she offered.
“No, let’s ask this guy. There couldn’t be more than eight people in the whole village. He’ll know where they are.”
The man was sitting alone in his garage on a decrepit wooden chair that looked like it went back to the Garibaldi era. And the guy was older than the chair.
“Excuse me,” I said in my best Italian, “do you know where is the house of Paule and Flavia, the architects?”
His face lit up and he rose and vaguely pointed in the direction we had just been.
“Do you know which house?” I asked.
Without answering he started to shuffle up the hill. Italians don’t tell you where to go; they take you there. But this is a very steep hill and we were afraid he wasn’t going to make it.
“Please, sir, don’t bother yourself to take us there. If you could just point it out …”
He nodded and smiled and continued his very slow climb. He was in a good mood about the whole thing. It was a hell of a lot more interesting than sitting in a garage. We followed, one on each side of him, with our arms held out — like you do with a toddler.
“Thank you so much, thank you, sir,” said Jill, taking her turn to convince him to go back to the hill. She can usually convince a man to do anything but he was having none of it.
Twenty minutes later we got to the top for the second time that evening and it became clear that he didn’t know where Paule and Flavia’s house was any better than we did. We thanked him again and slowly squired him back down the hill. I’m quite sure he was still alive when we left him in his chair.
We found the house, which had been right there all the time — just where I remembered it. We sat around the fire, sipped wine and tucked into the various antipasti: everyone had brought vegetarian things because they know Jill is a vegan and they wanted to make sure she didn’t starve. Paule and Flavia also provided a plate with prosciutto and cotto that was home-made and hand-sliced by Ugo, everybody’s favorite butcher. This was a sop to the otherwise deprived meat eaters at the party.
The best dish of all was smoked eggplant, which we slathered onto bread, crackers, vegetables, our fingers, the tablecloth — it didn’t matter. The eggplant made everything taste great.
Paule had just poked some holes into whole eggplants, tossed them into the hot coals and waited until they got charred and began to collapse into themselves. That’s the cue that they’re ready. Then she cut them in half and scooped the smoky pulp into a bowl.
Next time I make a pasta alla Norma, I’m going to use this fire-charred eggplant rather than the usual fried. Just thinking about that smoky flavor mixing with the garlicky tomato sauce is making me happy already.
Michael Tucker is an actor and author whose recent novel is "After Annie