In Melbs for a Japanese Studies conference I am suddenly drawn into a whirlwind of Italian-ness.
I am staying in Carlton, the Italian quarter brought to not-so-nice celebrity by Underbelly. Carlton is way more Italian than Sydney's Leichardt or Haberfield. It's Italian-Australian in a somewhat American way; people are fat and speak in thick accents. It has a funny feeling to it.
I take students and colleagues to my fave pizzeria on Drummond st (D.O.C. pizza) and the next night I venture out by myself in search of a piatto di spaghetti on Lygon Street. The hookers outside the numerous tacky cheap(ish) restos put me off so I end up entering a more expensive, emptier place. The waiter is a middle-aged guy with a big nose and a neat white apron over an ironed shirt and suit pants.
He sits me by the window, next to a big framed picture of a port.
There's a ferry boat in the port that says Siremar so it must be Sicily but I cannot recognize the buildings; it's a small port with many little houses like any small port in the South; it could be Capri or Ischia. The waiter keeps me company; he asks a lot of questions and I can't tell whether it's an Italian or Australian mannerism, yet I don't mind, for once. We speak Italian and it's clear that it is a bit of an effort for both, that it feels weird not to be speaking English even if a broken English; yet I think we both enjoy it, to be talking to a stranger in the mother tongue.
I ask a question back: what is the port in the picture? Sicily he says, well I guessed as much from the Siremar ferry I say. Lipari, he says. Are you from Lipari I ask, no, io sono di Siracusa; il padrone e' di Lipari. I have spaghetti alle cozze and insalata verde; the tomato sauce is too liquidy and the salad has too much vinegar on it but it's nice to be there anyway, looking at the framed picture of Lipari's port and at the people walking on the wet shiny dark sidewalk.
"Il padrone" leaves the resto with a plate wrapped in silvery foil; how are you going he asks, very well thank you and you, I reply.
"Offrici un porto, alla signorina" he tells the waiter on his way out the door. And so he does. I sip the thick sweet wine and think that just yesterday in the pizzeria, the young waiter kept calling me signora and I kind of resented it. Ma "il padrone" Liparota calls me signorina and the glass of Port suddenly feels like my teenage years and makes me smile and confuses me a bit too.