Un Amico Italiano Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Part One - ROMA, NUN FA’ LA STUPIDA . . .

  Chapter 1 - That’s Why I’m Here

  Chapter 2 - Places in My Past

  Chapter 3 - Anywhere Like Heaven

  Chapter 4 - Long Ago and Far Away

  Chapter 5 - Secret o’ Life

  Chapter 6 - Music

  Chapter 7 - There We Are

  Part Two - A ROMAN IN THE STATES

  Chapter 8 - Up on the Roof

  Chapter 9 - Riding on a Railroad

  Chapter 10 - Wandering

  Chapter 11 - Highway Song

  Chapter 12 - Country Road

  Chapter 13 - Hard Times

  Chapter 14 - Golden Moments

  Part Three - AN AMERICAN IN ROME

  Chapter 15 - Letter in the Mail

  Chapter 16 - Don’t Be Sad ’Cause Your Sun Is Down

  Chapter 17 - Your Smiling Face

  Chapter 18 - Little More Time with You

  Chapter 19 - You’ve Got a Friend

  Glossary of Italian/Roman Dishes

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Un Amico Italiano

  Luca Spaghetti was born in Rome, and his surname really is Spaghetti. Meeting American writer Elizabeth Gilbert in September of 2003 changed his life: Luca became one of the best-loved characters in Gilbert’s international bestseller Eat, Pray, Love, and to this day he receives letters from readers asking him if he really exists. Luca lives in Rome; he loves Roman food and American music. This is his first book. Visit him at www.LucaSpaghetti.com.

  Antony Shugaar is a translator and journalist with a special interest in Mediterranean Europe. He received a 2007 NEA fellowship for his translation of Sandokan by Nanni Balestrini, and has translated twelve novels for Europa Editions and two books by Primo Levi for a new collected works from Norton. He also translates books for Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton university presses, and has written book reviews for the Boston Globe, the Washington Post Book World, and the Journal of Modern Italian Studies. Shugaar has a master of science degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, a bachelor of arts from the University of California at Los Angeles, and a diploma superiore from the Università per Stranieri in Perugia.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

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  First published in Penguin Books 2011

  Copyright © RCS Libri S.p.A., Milan, 2010 Translation copyright © Antony Shugaar, 2011 All rights reserved

  Originally published in Italian as Un romano per amico by RCS Libri S.p.A., Milan.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Spaghetti, Luca.

  [Romano per amico. English]

  Un amico italiano : eat, pray, love in Rome / Luca Spaghetti ; translated by Antony Shugaar.

  p. cm.

  “Originally published in Italian as Un romano per amico by RCS Libri S.p.A., Milan”—T.p. verso.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-51406-1

  1. Spaghetti, Luca. 2. Travel agents—Italy. 3. Gilbert, Elizabeth, 1969—Travel. 4. Travel writers—United States. 5. Rome (Italy)—Description and travel. 6. Rome (Italy) I. Title.

  G154.5.S63 2011

  914.504’93—dc22 2010054519

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity.

  In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Giorgio

  Watch my back and light my way,

  My traveling star, my traveling star.

  —JAMES TAYLOR

  Introduction

  Believe It or Not

  “Among all the nominees on my Potential New Italian Friends List, I am most intrigued to meet a fellow named . . . brace yourself . . . Luca Spaghetti. And that is honestly his name, I swear to God, I’m not making it up. It’s too crazy. I mean—just think of it. Anyhow, I plan to get in touch with Luca Spaghetti just as soon as possible.”

  Writing in 2003, Elizabeth Gilbert, the journalist and author, used those words to introduce one of the characters of her new book, Eat, Pray, Love, the true story of her yearlong journey of rebirth across Italy, India, and Indonesia, in search of herself and true love. That young man—whose name seemed like something out of a tourist brochure about Italy, who had driven her around Rome on the back of his beat-up scooter, dragged her to the stadium to watch Sunday soccer matches, and had taken her out to sample dishes that only a real Roman could love and appreciate—was me. And, yes—since you ask—I really do exist, and my last name really is Spaghetti. Born and raised in Rome, a self-taught guitarist, a devoted soccer fan, and a lover of good cooking. Until seven years ago, I had no idea of the adventure that lay before me. Because no one, much less me, could have imagined that Eat, Pray, Love would be translated into practically every language on earth, enchanting an incredible number of readers everywhere with its candor and irony and becoming a phenomenal international bestseller, with millions and millions of copies sold. But for me, Liz’s book was simply the true—and therefore all the more remarkable—story of what happened when a blond American girl, pretty but unhappy, full of curiosity and love of life, came to Rome. I met her one September day, through a mutual friend, but in a short time she became one of the most important people in my life. A real friend, a friend I’ll never forget.

  How could I ever have imagined that, in any country I visited around the world, I’d find copies of Liz’s books at the airport, or that my face would wind up on one of the most popular television shows in the United States, the Oprah Winfrey Show, where Liz would show the viewers a photograph of the two of us together in Rome? Who would have thought that readers from every walk of life and from around the world would ask me, curiously: Are you the Luca Spaghetti? And last of all, who would have ever thought that the story would be made into a movie, with Julia Roberts playing my friend Liz? Or that I myself would be portrayed in that movie, played by a likable and jovial Italian actor.

  Life is odd and full of surprises: Liz taught me that. And she taught me the value of true friendship, the kind of friendship that neither time nor distance can undermine. Friendship, as she and I have said to each other many times, is almost a different kind of love.


  In this book, I’ve tried to tell my part of the story: my life, my dreams, my passions, my unexpected and extraordinary friendship with Liz, and the joys of my beloved birthplace, Rome. The Rome that I have known my whole life, since I was a child playing soccer in the courtyard, being made fun of for a surname that smacks of red checkered tablecloths and tomato sauce; the Rome that I explored inch by inch with Liz, sharing with her my loves and my memories—sharing my whole self, because that is how true friends are made—and in turn learning from her a valuable lesson about life and starting over, how you can always find the strength inside yourself to search, search, search, until you find what you’re really looking for. And most important of all, I discovered that happiness can be hiding where you least expect it: in a plate of pasta with fresh tomatoes, in a goal scored by your beloved soccer team, in a glass of ice-cold wine in the Campo de’ Fiori, in the excitement of learning a brand-new word in a language you’re just beginning to know.

  Because, as the great Roman poet Trilussa once wrote, in a poem entitled Felicità, “When you add it all up, happiness is a small thing.”

  Part One

  ROMA, NUN FA’ LA STUPIDA . . .

  1

  That’s Why I’m Here

  My grandmother always used to tell me: “Your last name is going to bring you luck! When people meet you, it makes them happy. And a little bit hungry, too . . .”

  Of course, I never believed her. I didn’t understand what she meant. Every time she said it, I just thought she was making fun of me, like everyone else.

  We were in Italy, in Rome—it must have been 1978 or so—and I was a child, a child whose mind was just beginning to register what it meant to have my last name: Spaghetti . It was an enormous burden to place on the fragile shoulders of a seven-year-old boy.

  At first I hadn’t fully grasped that it was my last name at all. It’s probably just a nickname, I told myself. Maybe a few generations back we had a fat and jolly ancestor who ran a trattoria and was famous for his spaghetti all’amatriciana. Or else, even before I was born, my father had made a name for himself by consuming an outlandish amount of pasta on one occasion or another, so impressing all his friends with his prowess as an eater that he earned himself that sobriquet.

  It’s true that when people asked me my name, I would say, “Luca Spaghetti,” but only because my parents had told me that’s what I should say.

  It wasn’t until I started school that the full meaning of my last name dawned on me. Or, what was worse, it dawned on my classmates. In first grade, the situation was still relatively peaceful, but every September in the years that followed, when classes resumed after the summer break, I dreaded the first roll call. When the teacher got to my name, the entire class would burst into laughter. But I was too young to be able to laugh at myself. As if that weren’t bad enough, I had a little brother, Fabio Spaghetti, four years younger than me; naturally enough, I wanted to protect him from the same miserable fate. I did my best to warn him, but luckily for him, he hadn’t yet grasped the gravity of the situation. I remember weighing the benefits of simply eliminating him entirely—I may even have made a few efforts in that direction. In my great and farsighted benevolence, I simply wanted to spare him the ordeal I was undergoing. My parents, unfortunately, failed to see things my way. They thought that my determination to wipe Fabio off the face of the earth was because I was “jealous of my little brother,” not a result of “my great and farsighted benevolence.” (Just for the record, let me point out that Fabio is alive and well, and he still carries our surname with pride.)

  Of course, over time my classmates and my friends from the parish after-school program—where I went to play soccer every afternoon—gradually got used to my name, but still . . . For instance, whenever there was an argument, I always started out with a handicap. I got used to hearing the inevitable retort: “What do you know? Your name’s Spaghetti!”

  And that’s not to mention the little rocket scientists who, at least once a week, would ring our buzzer, and when we asked over the intercom, “Who is it?,” would shout, unfailingly, “Hey, Spaghetti—you want some tomato sauce?”

  My mamma and papa, and my grandmother Ines, who lived with us, would simply smile at what they saw as nothing more than a harmless prank. To me, the situation was dire, intolerable. I had no recourse. What was I supposed to do? How could I retaliate against a kid my age named, let’s say, Carlo Bianchi? (Bianchi, meaning “white,” is the second most common family name in Italy.) Sing back, “Ciao, Mario Rossi says hello!”—a taunt based on Rossi (“red”), the most common family name in Italy? It wouldn’t have the same sting.

  Perhaps the root of the problem is the special relationship we Italians have with pasta. I’ve often wondered where this unconditional love springs from. It can’t be just simple familiarity—the fact that at least once, often twice, a day this heaven-sent manna appears on our dining room tables, at lunch or dinner. There must be something more to it. In Italy, putting a steaming plate of bucatini all’amatriciana in front of someone who’s just returned from a trip abroad is the finest welcome-back gesture you can make. How many times have I overheard phone calls made by compatriots who were returning from overseas? Their one and only concern is that, the minute they turn the front-door key, they see, in the distance—beyond the radiant faces of mother, wife, or whoever welcoming them home—the oversized pasta pot boiling on the stove.

  According to the dictionary, I am—well, spaghetti is—“a type of long, thin pasta with a round cross section, a mainstay of Italian cuisine.” That same dictionary goes on to define pasta as “a foodstuff made with bran or flour of various grains or seeds, divided into small regular shapes, and cooked in moist heat; it may also be used to describe a dish in which pasta is the chief ingredient, accompanied by a sauce or other flavoring.” Make no mistake: if that’s your last name, and you live in Italy, it’s not something you can take lightly.

  I’ve given quite a bit of thought to the question of what my favorite kind of pasta is. The knee-jerk answer is obvious: I love spaghetti . . . But I really ought to recuse myself from the running entirely. To even begin to answer this question, we need to agree on some classifications and categories. We’d have to distinguish between, for instance, long pasta and short pasta, smooth and ridged pasta, fresh pasta, homemade pasta, pasta with filling—and then we could add variants that, to my mind, don’t really fall under the heading of pasta at all, such as lasagne and cannelloni, though they’re often grouped in that category. But even then we can’t really say that one kind of pasta is preferable to another, because the pivotal role is almost certainly played by the sauce or other flavorings.

  This is my personal pasta ranking system: For long pasta—just the pasta itself without sauce—first place goes to spaghetti, obviously. (To be specific, spaghetti number 5.) But if we’re talking about long pasta with sauce, then bucatini are unrivaled. Bucatini are like spaghetti, but thicker, and hollow, like a drinking straw. They have a wonderful, irresistible consistency—the sirloin steak of the pasta world—and each and every strand acts as a powerful sauce magnet. There is only one problem with bucatini, though: you can’t possibly eat a plateful and stay clean. A bucatino is a natural sauce catapult. There are only two ways to approach a plate of bucatini without worrying about the tomato sauce that will inevitably fire off in all directions: either sit down for your meal stark naked, or wrap yourself up in napkins from head to toe like an Egyptian mummy (leaving your mouth free and ready for use, of course).

  I’ve seen people shoot drops of pasta sauce over a distance of yards, hitting neighboring tables as they struggle to spin forkfuls of rebellious bucatini dripping with tomato. I’ve watched with amusement as a reckless diner orders bucatini during a business lunch, only to leave the restaurant with a once pristine, now polka-dot suit. And at weddings, I’ve been astonished at the sheer bravery (and folly) of newlyweds who insist on bucatini as the first course of their reception dinner, recklessly endan
gering not only the formal suits and gowns of their guests, but the bride’s exquisite wedding dress.

  Let’s move on to the short pasta. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no question that “ridged” short pasta is far superior to “smooth” short pasta. I love sauce, and I must tell you that, sadly, smooth pasta doesn’t seem able to hold on to the sauce. Maybe this kind of pasta is better suited to people who prefer the taste of the noodle to the taste of the sauce. Ridged pasta, on the other hand, just seems to attract and hold sauce to its surface. Penne, rigatoni, macaroni, mezze maniche—each of these short pasta varieties has its own particular shape and size, and each was probably designed for a specific sauce. In fact, in Rome it is traditional to serve a specific sauce for every variety of noodle: penne all’arrabbiata, rigatoni alla pajata, and so on. A special case is the fusillo, with its peculiar corkscrew shape; it’s technically a smooth pasta, but its unusual shape makes it behave very much like a ridged noodle.

  Foreigners especially seem to love fettuccine with butter. Incredibly, the mere combination of an egg noodle—fettuccine, or, as we Italians say, la fettuccina—with butter is a marriage made in heaven. Of course, it’s not as easy as it appears: apparently there is a technique for mixing the butter perfectly to create a sort of luxurious blend that ideally coats each individual fettuccina. Foreign visitors love it. We Romans, not so much . . . But at least once in our lives, we’ve all tasted this dish.

  There are also specialties from each of Italy’s twenty-one regions, pasta with special shapes accompanied by specific local sauces. These range from the orecchiette alle cime di rapa from Puglia to Ligurian trofie al pesto, and include as well Sardinian spaghetti con la bottarga, pizzoccheri from Lombardy’s Valtellina, strozzapreti from Trentino, the pici of Tuscany, Sicily’s spaghetti alla norma and pasta con le sarde, and—last but most certainly not least—Roman cacio e pepe served not in a bowl, but inside a hollowed wheel of Pecorino Romano cheese.