By Francesco Bianchini
I cooked him lentil soup. I hadn’t had much time to think it through. I had just moved house. A painful chapter of my life that needed to be closed for good. And then there was Christmas—decorations, family meals. But none of that was the real reason.
I cooked him lentil soup because it is quick — twelve minutes in the pressure cooker — and almost impossible to get wrong. Not a dish to showcase any particular culinary talent of mine, true, but at least nothing to expose my shortcomings either. Most of all, lentils were neutral, I told myself; they would adapt to whatever direction this blind date might take. They were comfort food, whether the evening turned into a pleasant memory or a complete disaster.
Castelluccio lentil soup — humble, fragrant, and ready in twelve minutes
If things went nowhere, the soup would gently dissolve the awkwardness; if there was a future, I’d have all the time in the world to redeem myself. My philosophy with first dates had always been the same: never overdo it. Only parvenus fire all their guns at once. If something is meant to happen, there will be time later to play one’s best cards.
And if conversation should run dry, lentils would offer their own interesting detours. Aren’t they among the oldest cultivated foods? Archaeological evidence shows them being eaten as early as 13,000 BC. Umbrian lentils rank among the finest in the world; they’d give me a chance to talk about landscapes of the soul, high plateaus swept by winter winds, whitened by the first snows of the season, transformed into impressionist canvases in summer.
Before leaving to fetch him at the station, I set out a few navigational buoys to help me steer by instinct: first stop, the small pensione where I’d booked him for the night; a city map with the route highlighted so he could find his way to my place; lentil soup ready in twenty minutes.
Dan in the small pensione that welcomed him on his very first night in Umbria, December 1999
The train from Florence arrived on time and passengers began to spill out—some from the front, some from the back, some from the carriage where I was standing. I say ‘blind date’, but in truth Dan and I had been writing back and forth for months and had exchanged photographs, so I told myself I would recognize him easily as I scanned the whole length of the train. I also knew a few things about him: that he was older than me, that he lived in Bermuda where he worked at a private school, that he’d insisted on meeting in person even though I was still recovering from the end of a soured relationship. And that he had set out on Christmas Day from Munich, where he’d been visiting a good friend.
I spotted him stepping down from a carriage near the front — positioned so far beyond the platform that it was almost open countryside. I saw him glance back, as if waiting for someone. He was not alone. The blond, ruddy man trailing him could only be the German friend.
“He wouldn’t hear of letting me travel to meet a stranger on my own,” Dan told me when the man was out of earshot. I later learned that Hans had forced aside his prejudices about Italian trains, Italian motorways, and Italians themselves — whom he claimed detested Germans — to make sure his friend would not fall prey to an unpleasant adventure. “What if he turns out to be a serial killer?” Hans had warned. “If he reacts badly to me coming along, that will be our first red flag.”
A minor complication arose with the car I’d borrowed, a Citroën 2CV with only two front seats. A prolonged exchange of politeness ensued, each of them insisting on taking the cramped space in back, squeezed in among the luggage. At last, it was Dan who settled beside me, joking with his friend as Hans was tossed about on the hairpin turns. Yet both were admiring the wooded ravines along the Tiber River growing darker in the evening light.
The pensione I had booked lacked nothing in romance except perhaps the name Bertolini from Forster’s novel. Polished terracotta floors, painted ceilings, antique furniture, ancestral portraits. It even had a “room with a view” over rooftops, bell towers, and the Umbrian hills — to the delight of the Charlotte Bartlett Dan had brought along as a personal chaperone. I left them to settle in, after inviting them to come to my place for dinner.
Todi cascading down its hillside (view from the kitchen)
At the time I lived in a tiny apartment in the very first building at the entrance of Todi’s old town — known in the family as Number One. I had probably done too little in describing it, for Dan had pictured a peripheral district ripped straight from a neorealist film, or from what he had glimpsed through the train window that afternoon leaving Florence: gritty buildings with laundry hanging from the balconies. And yet, although it was nothing more than a one-room flat in a late–nineteenth-century townhouse — barely big enough for a washing machine in the broom closet and a sofa bed I had to pull out every night — I had arranged the surviving pieces of my life with care: the books in a custom-built corridor library, oil paintings and old prints on every wall, framed photographs in the bathroom, rugs layered one atop the other, and a beautiful eighteenth-century chest of drawers.
My tiny apartment — layered rugs, books, and warm light
And there was the view: from the living room, ancient cedar trees plunging down toward the Tiber Valley and the sunset; from the kitchenette, the rest of the city tumbling away like a miniature Toledo.
Dan and Hans arrived at the appointed time. The streetlamps in the park cast pools of light that echoed the candles inside. Soft jazz hovered in the room. The lentil soup was finishing up in the pressure cooker, and the small table was set with my English china, mismatched silverware, and monogrammed starched napkins.
The evening lamps in Todi’s Giardinetti
Their faces were relaxed: Italy — a first for both — had initially stunned them, then overwhelmed them, finally seduced them. As for me, I had welcomed them into a warm, intimate cocoon, and did not seem particularly dangerous. Even the lentil soup, which Hans had eyed with alarm, played its part. I later learned that his aversion stemmed from the lentils his father used to concoct, which had nothing to do with the prized Castelluccio lentils cooked in rainwater with carrots, celery, tomatoes, and Umbrian olive oil.
The meal concluded happily, and after a final glass of wine, Hans declared himself exhausted from the journey and left Dan and me to ourselves. His mission as chaperone was complete.
