Game for Five Read Free

his mind—he was someone who never missed the opportunity to communicate
urbi
et orbi
his opinions on every subject under the sun.
    â€œWhat I don’t get is what people see in it! They shut you up in a big room with the music blaring out, you’re all crowded together one on top of the other, you can’t dance, all you can do is wriggle about like you had sand in your underpants, and by the time you leave your mind’s all befuddled. And they actually make you pay to be treated like that! Now you tell me if that’s normal . . . ”
    â€œGrandpa, first of all, lower your voice and stop making such a fuss. Thank you. Now, what do you care if people want to enjoy themselves that way? Are they hurting anyone?”
    Ampelio put down his glass. “I tell you who they’re hurting!” he went on. “Themselves, that’s who! I say if they want their ears to ring, they should bang their heads a few times with a hammer, at least it’s free . . . ”
    Aldo stood up to get his lighter from the pocket of his coat. It was the day the Boccaccio was closed, and being a carefree, gregarious widower, he liked coming to the bar in the evening because he was sure to always find someone there.
    â€œThe problem is,” he said as he tried to get the lighter out without his overcoat falling off the rack, “so many kids these days only enjoy themselves if what they do costs a lot. Not that there’s anything new about that, let’s be clear. It’s just another way to look cool, to show that you have money. Except that fashions change. Right now, luckily for me, it’s fashionable to pretend to know about wine. If only you saw how many kids come in after dinner, take the wine list and then call you over. ‘What I’d like is a . . . ’ and maybe they confuse the name of the producer with the name of the wine, or else they want an ’87 Chianti, which if they knew the least thing about it they’d know that an ’87 Chianti is no good for anything but lighter fuel, and then as if that wasn’t enough they eat cheese with honey. The hardest part is to agree with them without laughing.”
    â€œYou should just tell them they don’t understand a damned thing,” Pilade cut in with his usual politeness, “and then set them straight on a few matters. That way they’ll learn little by little.”
    â€œOh, yes, they’ll learn little by little, and then they’ll go somewhere else,” Aldo replied. “They don’t want to drink well and eat well, they just want to show off how cool they are for knowing about wine. Let them do what they like. I sell food and wine, I don’t give lectures.”
    One thing has to be recognized: whenever Aldo asserted that he sold food and wine without frills he was absolutely right. The Boccaccio offered an extensive cellar, with a particular leaning toward Piedmont, and exceptional cooking. Period. The service was good, if informal, and the décor was not especially elegant. Moreover, if anybody ever happened to express any disappointment with the food, this would somehow always reach the ears of the chef, Otello Brondi, known as Tavolone, who, although endowed with incomparable talent in the ancient culinary arts, had not been greatly blessed by the Muses in any other respect, and so the critic would often find him looming over the table, with his thirty-five cubic feet of belly and two thick forearms as hairy as a bear’s, asking, “What do you mean, you don’t like it?” in a not exactly accommodating tone.
    Aldo lit his cigarette. “Personally,” he went on, “I hate places where if you order a wine not perfectly suited to what you’ve chosen to eat, or if you try to bend the rules of Gastronomy with a capital g, they treat you as if you’re some kind of hick and say, ‘No, no, no, why do you want to spoil that saddle of rabbit