Making Bread

My New York friend Lucy married Luciano, from a small town in the Abruzzi, in 1972.

She is a classicist and a journalist, is 71, and fell in love with Italy the first time she saw it, as a teenager. Luciano is 81 and worked for decades at the Food and Agriculture Organisation. Grandchildren aside, his passions are running, cooking, and travelling.

Of these the only one he can devote himself to now is cooking. Today, in day 11 of the national lockdown, Luciano is suffering from cabin fever. Lucy to distract him has insisted that he make bread even though, as she writes “being Abruzzese, he won’t follow a recipe.”

Lucy on the other hand is able to pursue what she loves most, which is researching and writing. She last week finished an article on the Egyptian collection at the University of Pisa, and is at work now on an article on the museum restaurants of Rome. Both will come out very soon in La Voce di New York.

She writes : “It is so quiet here. You know how quiet my street is usually but now it is surreal. Except for too many selfish southerners living in the north who shot south and thus spread the virus, most people are staying home and I mean home. In a country known for its “non sai chi sono io” <you do not know how important I am>, this civil obedience is truly amazing.

Last week once I went as far as Via Gregorio VII. Rebecca <their daughter> went ballistic and said I mustn’t go out.

Luciano spends all day watching sports events and the terrifying news. He is like a bull in a china shop. His toothache is better but he is untouchable.

Luckily I don’t seem to have gained any weight though my ankles are swollen. Rebecca now comes to the courtyard once a day with goodies, rings the bell, and leaves.

The way the rest of most of Europe is behaving reminds me of the way many wealthy Jews including some of my relatives until they were taken to Dachau behaved: ‘it won’t happen to us’. I know I would have behaved like them too. I also would have behaved like that until the government said that we Italians have to stay home.

Now however that the Italians are proving so serious, maybe for once they will be admired and thanked by the rest of the world.

All quiet in our building here except for a neighbor with three university-aged sons who at 5:30 PM go out on the terrace dressed in carnival outfits and broadcast music from a computer until 6:30 PM for the national singalong to raise the spirits. They always play the ‘official’ music that is selected for the day. It’s great! Just now at 9 PM we all went out on the terrace or balcony with flashlights. It was very moving.

On the bright side, Italy seems to have become less polluted.”

—–

This was the single worst day ever, with a staggering 792 deaths in the last 24 hours.

Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio has stated that the government would take “even tougher” measures if citizens prove irresponsible, including “more ironclad and stringent norms”.

This morning Romans on our street were awakened by a foghorn as municipal police drove through the neighborhood blasting out the familiar ordinance that defines the rules of the lockdown.

“We’re suspended in space”, said Lucy last night. “We’ll just have to see what comes next.”

What indeed. More and more flags are flying on our street.