Free The Art of Waiting by Christopher Jory Page B

wild ducks that thrived among the reedbeds of the lagoon. For years the sawdust had been fighting a losing battle against the steady tide of wine that fell from careless lips or was brushed by rough hands from the stained old bar top on which elbows, heavy with work, rested a while as their owners engaged in animated conversation about the progress – or otherwise – of the war, the elevated price of eels, mullet, and bream, the diminishing wildfowl in the marshes around Torcello, or the problem of sediment building up, as ever, in the lessfrequented canals. Or perhaps they would simply prop themselves up and contemplate the coarse rosy-coloured wine, reminiscent of diluted blood, in their squat flat-bottomed glasses, rows of which Luca kept, like transparent headstones, on precarious shelves upon the facing wall.
    Lunchtimes were always the most animated. Sometime after midday, the workers from the markets near the Ponte di Rialto cleared up for the day and made their way along the narrow alleys, sometimes bringing in old bags the fish they wanted Luca to prepare for them. There was no formal menu, just a hastily scribbled list of possibilities that was passed around the room as more hungry men arrived. As each dish ran out, it was crossed through until only one or two of the least popular choices remained for the late arrivals, perhaps meatballs in sauce or veal cutlet done in the Milanese style. And there was no price list at Casa Luca either. Unless you were a particular glutton, you paid the same as everyone else. Each meal would start with a dark green bottle of house wine, whether you wanted it or not, brought to the table freshly filled from the barrels in the back, and the customers would then choose from the handwritten list.
    â€˜You want that, do you?’ Luca would say. ‘Sorry. We haven’t got it. Choose something else.’
    â€˜But it’s on the list.’
    â€˜Yes, I know, but the list is wrong. The meatballs are very good today, though. Have those.’
    â€˜Hey, Luca, what does this say here?’ someone else would enquire, indicating something indecipherable on the little notepad.
    Luca would take a look. ‘I don’t know. I can’t read that.’
    â€˜But Luca, you wrote it.’
    â€˜Yes, well, it’s probably finished anyway.’ And he would strike it through with a decisive flourish of his pen. ‘But the veal’s great. Have some of that.’
    â€˜Hey, Luca,’ another voice, hoarse with cold and smoke, might call out from some dark corner of the room. ‘Can you stick this in a pan for me?’
    And Luca would take the fish from the man and take it into the kitchen where his wife, Maria, would cut off the head and the fins and shovel out the guts and fry it up, and the man would be charged an especially insignificant sum, and the next time he came he might bring half a dozen fish and eat two and leave the rest to be added to what passed for a menu.
    Luca would drift between the tables, or busy himself behind the bar and pretend not to notice Elena flirting with the better-looking customers as she took them their plates of food, and as the men finished their meals he would wander around dispensing small plates of homemade biscuits and cakes while filling stubby little glasses with amaro or grappa or limoncello .
    â€˜How much are you going to give me today, then?’ he would say.
    â€˜Whatever you say, Luca.’
    â€˜How about . . .’
    And Luca would hazard a particularly round figure, conservative by any measure, and the cash would be handed over, and the taxman would only receive what Luca felt to be his fair share, which varied with the seasons and with his mood but was always significantly less than the fiscal authorities would have wished had the decision been their own.
    By two-thirty the din would start to abate as one by one the fishermen, market workers, boat-builders and gondoliers drifted back to