Free Amore and Amaretti by Victoria Cosford Page B

fortifying the town seems to contain and transmit the cold. Not quite as cold, however, as the previous winter, when the front page of La Nazione featured a photograph of nuns skiing through the streets of Rome, and when millions of hectares of precious grapes withered and died. Into Bar Sandri blow men in overcoats and women with scarves. Everyone is laughing and talking in high-pitched voices; the barista pours a stream of thick creamy milk into coffee cups lined along the bar. There is a complicated perfume of vanilla, hot pastries, grinding coffee and Fendi. Someone leaves with the wrong umbrella by mistake and rushes back in apologetically; everyone becomes suddenly involved in the incident and there are jocular cries to guard carefully one’s own umbrella. My cappuccino has a heart on it where the steamed milk has been carefully poured, and from behind the bar the glamorous middle-aged woman with extraordinary glasses passes me a jam-filled brioche wrapped in a tiny serviette.
    Perugia: closed stone city of walls and silences, muted women murmuring through passageways, a sudden muffled flutter of pigeons. And then the gaudy warmth of the piazza, lit up and twinkling with the beautiful people strolling and gesticulating and embracing, scarves and jackets swinging, boots clipping and shoulder bags sailing through the crowd. Sudden little streets as narrow as alleys dropping away from the main beat, twisting into cheese shops, bakeries pungent with vanilla and a tiny yellow stationer’s cluttered with cards. The wood vendor is next door in his low-ceilinged garage with swarthy men who move soundlessly, piling wood into hessian bags. I climb the long, delirious streets until I reach Annamaria’s apartment, where the fire in the kitchen is lit. We sit at her wooden table over wine, toasted slabs of bread with garlic and oil, creamy sheep’s cheese and salad, and finish off with strong, good coffee.
    In Via Deliziosa, I sprawl on the double bed filling in pieces of a 3,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, bored by too much sky. Ignazio bustles off early each morning and in the beginning returns mid-afternoon to spend several hours with me before heading back for the evening shift. I am half-heartedly looking for jobs, contemplating joining a gym, smoking thin joints of hashish in the evenings with introspective Talk Talk songs on the stereo. After a while, Ignazio begins to come home later and later in the afternoons. I am revisited by the Gianfranco experience – sick, lurching suspicion and jealousy – so one day I set off for the restaurant to look for him. Through the glass I see him sitting at one of the tables in the empty dining room, reading comics and stubbing out cigarettes. I creep back home and mention nothing.
    All through that bleak isolated winter, I prickle with indecision. Despite the occasional company of Annamaria and Raimondo, I am not enjoying Perugia. I roam around the beautiful old town, drinking solitary proseccos in the lounges of fading elegant hotels, buying paper bags filled with assorted shortbreads from pastry shops, and writing long, introspective diary entries about my pointless life. I feel that I have taught Ignazio as much as I am capable. We make love uneventfully because I realise, too late, that in my challenge to educate him I have omitted to tell him how to best give me pleasure. I am reluctant to look for a job because of being so undecided. For the first time in four years, I begin to think seriously about returning to Australia; I change my mind every day.
    Then Ignazio receives notice of his impending military service and everything is suddenly simplified. He will be away for one year – away from the restaurant, away from Perugia and, most importantly, away from me. This offers me the perfect reason to go back home, and from that vast objective distance sort out whether or not we have a future together. I buy a return ticket valid for twelve months and fly out of