Monday, October 22, 2007

Scene at the marketplace

“People live there,” she says as she points to the Theater Marcello on our way back home. They have built homes and raised families among ruins. I imagine the little place, accessible only by a staircase out in the open air, overlooking the road leading to the Campo de Fiori and the Winged Victories on top of the Vittorio Emanuale monument. In the distance, I picture the glow of the hidden TV playing in the corner and the milk bottles already delivered at the doorstep, and the little girl who perks up from her favorite morning cartoon shows to pick up the milk and give thanks to the man who delivered them. Morning cartoon shows. Is that an American concept? Do they even deliver milk anymore? The point of my fantasy is the concept of a city where seller and buyer want to know each other; they are recurring characters in the lives of people. They await their next lines and spark dialogues which fire up into new stories. And occasionally, they’ll have a sip of the milk they receive fresh in the mornings.

Despite my romantic version of the mysterious delivery and exchange of foods, I can confidently ascertain the freshness of the ingredients one gets at the market at the Campo de Fiori. Plump, misshapen varieties of fruits you know are made in Italy, without the certifying sticker on the inside of your leather purse (and even then, you wonder: “Really? You’ll go from a hundred euros to twenty for me?”).

I am most guided by their ripe smells which also
invite the small but bothersome flies that habitually get swatted away. I did mention food was fresh, which I have come to learn means embracing the small patches of browning pigment which make for juicier pears and trusting in the knowledgeable flies to guide you to the melon that is ready to be sliced open. Closer to nature, like the unshaven underarms of my Italian teacher that expose themselves when she passionately gestures with her arms and fingers the verb mangiare. To eat.

I wanted to be prepared for the time I ventured away from the grocery store and bravely ask, in metric measurements, for a mezzo kilo of pears. I, who had never even bought meat by the pound and yet only understood weather in degrees Celsius. So when I arrived at the crowded marketplace at the Campo de Fiori, I was eager to simply listen to the interactions taking place and learn from them. In the crowd, it is easy to pick out the long-term customers from the newbie who stumbles upon the market. Does it become systematic, this exchange of food for cash? Surely, a daily ritual for those who come readily equipped with larger purses; but I wonder if the businessmen who get off their scooters do so with the intention of grabbing a fresh snack or speaking a few words to the vendor. One must inevitably lead to the other. There are no express check-outs, no way to anonymously get the food which is handed to you in a brown paper bag by farmers or planters. The market is a place you can sincerely say thank you. Thank you for the food that you helped grow with your hands, thank you for the food I am about to spread on my bread and sprinkle with cheese. Not: thank you for scanning my cellophane-wrapped food over a machine and getting angry when I don’t have change.

I wander over to a stand which draws me with its bright figs, peaches and pears. I point to the pinkish pears and ask for three. Did you grow these? How lovely. So far, so good; I didn’t even have to order by the kilo. She asks me if I want the green kind as well and is amused by my astonished expression. You can do that? I bitterly remember being scolded for my naïveté when I put golden apples and fuji apples in the same bag at a grocery store in Georgia. “You cannot put different kinds in the same bag,” my mother had said. “They are different.”

I only have a fifty Euro bill and apologize profusely before handing it to her. She smiles. Thank you.

No comments: