Io sto Venexiana!
It means "I am (a) Venetian (woman)!"
However, I have purposely used the wrong form of the verb "to be," the one that indicates a temporary state. If I were, in fact, from or of Venice, I would say "Io sono"...but my state of Venecianity is quite passing, I'm afraid.
And I have used the spelling of Venetian as it is given in the dialect of this city — like Hawaiian, a once endangered language; unlike Hawaiian, still forbidden to be taught in schools, but used in homes. This is in homage to my beloved Commissario Guido Brunetti, the thoughtful and often troubled protaganist in Donna Leon's very readable series of detective novels set in Venezia.
Being a person willing to look below the surface, Brunetti, I hope, would forgive my fractured Italian, my pathetic would-be-ism and understand that my delight — when I felt briefly Venetian this morning — came from an honest heart. Not all Venetians would, I fear.
This short period of which I speak came when I was sent, all on my own, proudly and a bit nervously, like a child allowed to venture to the corner for the first time, to do the last grocery shopping of our stay in Venice.
Our list was simple: bread, milk, eggs, butter, a little fruit (I know most of the major food words, so no troubles there, I thought, not considering the complications involved in deciphering the terms for "skim" milk, which turns out to be, "partialmente scremato" — or does that mean half screaming?) and then — potential for failure here — water softener for doing laundry.
My friend, never one to leave anything to chance, gave me minute directions about how to handle the produce end of things, though I'd observed the process myself just a few days before: find the disposable glove dispenser, touch no fruit without a glove on, find the computerized pricing machine, place the fruit on the machine and touch the picture that relates to it, affix the price tag that spits out of the machine, hey pronto!
This all went swimmingly, as did asking for bread at the hot bakery counter ("Buon giorno! Per favore, une ciabatta. Si, una" — they can't even understand me when I'm saying the simplest word in the vocabulary, sigh. "Grazie, signora."), searching out the butter, milk and laundry stuff. Then, a few purchases of my own: superfine cornmeal for baking, fine polenta for boiling — both to be carried home — and, my favorite new munchy, grissini, bread sticks. They had a half-dozen brands, each offering a half-dozen flavors — rosemary, cheese, salt — and shapes (thin as a pencil to stubby and short as a man's thumb) but I couldn't find my favorite sesame. Settled for salted. And a few slices of mortadella, because I like it better than prosciutto or salami.
It was while I was puzzling over the grissini that a Venetian paid me the ultimate compliment of assuming that a) I might be from here, and b) I might speak Italian. Rolling her cart alongside mine, a well-dressed middle-aged woman rattled off an incomprehensible (to me) paragraph, gesturing about her (Italians gesture even when they're on the phone). Being a jaded supermarket veteran, I felt sure she was saying one of two things: "Can you believe these prices? My mother would turn over in her grave!" or "They move things all the time and you can't find a thing!"
My choices of response were slim. I know how to say "I'm sorry. I'm an American. I don't understand." But I wasn't about to say that. I wanted to say, "What can you do?," which would have covered either base. But I wasn't sure how to phrase that (something like "Che lei puoi fa?", I think, but that's probably wrong, the result of dictionary diving).
So I used universal language, smiled, shrugged, laughed, wheeled on. She seemed satisfied, smiling at me later as we both packed up our rolling carts for the walk back home over the bumpy cobbles and bumpy arched bridges. Could she have any idea how happy she'd made me? Probably not.
And now we come to lunch. Is there no end to Serenissima's culinary bounty? Ever since Bonnie and I peeked at the menu and were charmingly greeted by a waiter who popped out his head to say hello (she'd been there before), I'd been dying to get back to tiny Vini da Arturo in an anonymous alley not far from Campo S. Angelo (Calle degli Asssassini, S. Marco 3656A). I'll tell you who I'd assissinate — anyone who got in the way of my going back here.
We had but four dishes: Saor al' Melanzane (eggplant in onion-vinegar marinade), Tagliatelli alla Rucola (housemade pasta strips with arugula sauce), a simple pear salad fresh prepared for us and their off-the-charts and one-of-a-kind tira mi su. Came to more than 80 bucks. I'd pay my share again. Smiling.
The saor — grilled eggplant slices, raisins plumped in something, pine nuts, fruity olive oil, red wine vinegar— achieved the mandatory razor-thin balance of sweet to sour, meltingly oily to cuttingly sharp to make this dish a success. The pasta, snaking around and colored by the gray-green vegetable, reminded us both of luau leaf in the best possible way. (Bonnie said she had tried to replicate this seemingly simple dish at home and failed miserably.)
The salad — no greens, just fruit, fennel, walnuts, couldn't even identify any oil or vinegar, perhaps some citrus? — esquisito! And that tira mi su. As though Italian meringue (egg white whipped to satiny softness with fine sugar) and custard sauce (cream, egg yolk, vanilla) ascended into heaven, sat at the right hand of the father the mother and the holy ghost and on the third day came down to Arturo's and took on just a hint of powdered coffee and chocolate. This frothy, creamy bowl of stuff (not a ladyfinger in sight) is hardly the conventional dish but two spoonsful sent me back to the apartment after lunch in a dreamy, drunken, dangerous state. (I say dangerous because, when I'm sated, I tend to spend money. And if there'd been a light, frothy little silken dress between the Dorsoduro and Campo S. Angelo, I'd be wearing it now.)
As for Bonnie, as she scraped industriously at the bowl, the waiter walked by and laconically remarked, in that seductive accent that adds a syllable to every syllable, "Don'a wash'a da dishes. We do it after."
If, right now, this very second, the Pope granted me this indulgence — that I could choose to return to any restaurants experienced on this trip — I would fly to Arturo's for whatever that gracious waiter suggested; I would be in Bologna again for tortellini with cream and tomato sauces; I would have a strudel from Venice's Jewish gheto bakery in one hand and any flavor of torti di torrone in the other, and I would be ordering rabbit (either the nonna's rabbit stew of La Bitta or the tagliatelli with rabbit and mint ragout from Osteria all' Antica Adelaide) and maybe mussels and, oh, yeah, the whole branzini with the olive oil essence ....and the Panna Cotta of Life from Bitta.
And, you know what? We've got five days and at least a dozen restaurants left to do. May God, and the Pope, have mercy on our souls.
PS no new photos with this post, my camera battery died