A gloomy mood and a surprise dinner with Ceronetti

It takes a psychological and literary audacity greater than my own to evoke a place in the presence of Guido Ceronetti, yet I shall nevertheless attempt to do so in the following lines. Why audacity? Because when faced with a dizzying book such as his *Albergo Italia*, we travellers of the Third Millennium find ourselves infinitely precarious in our perspective. And Ceronetti’s presence? He will be present because I shall take the liberty of conjuring up his ghost – even though I am now a woman who wears trousers more often than skirts, something he found abhorrent.

So here we are in the 1990s in a charming little village in Tuscany, frequented at the time mainly by rather important people – suffice to say that right on the outskirts of the village stood Valentino’s villa, where the famous fashion designer celebrated a birthday with guests arriving by helicopter; and a little further on, out in the countryside, there was a house (one of many, of course) owned by the Agnelli family. In this village, Cetona, on the slopes of the mountain of the same name, amongst the elegant guests there was one who certainly did not neglect his attire but had his own very specific idea of elegance. No golf jackets on his shoulders on chilly evenings, nor Lacoste or button-down shirts, but a collection of berets that would have been the envy of a 1940s Parisian milliner. Beneath the beret, at around a quarter past eleven, and beneath a face as white as in a Kabuki scene, he wore, in every season, a very dark overcoat that made his body as elusive and slender as that of a marionette. It was no coincidence: Guido had come to Cetona precisely to establish there, following the first venue in Albano Laziale, the new base for his ‘Teatro dei sensibili’ (Theatre of the Sensitive), brought to life by what he called ‘ideo-bearing marionettes’: nothing like the traditional puppets of folk theatre, but small creatures he had invented, like ghosts destined to stir flashes of emotion and fragments of ideas in the audience. But in Cetona, the puppeteer had also rented a normal flat, which was situated just a few metres from the one I had rented in those same years as a weekend and holiday retreat. Thanks to a mutual acquaintance whom he trusted, I had managed to overcome his habitual social wariness – he always wandered alone through the village’s narrow streets without speaking to anyone, although he did have a few friends amongst the local farmers who tended small, traditional vegetable gardens – and to establish a neighbourly relationship with him, if one can call the company of a misanthrope by passion and ideology that.

Ceronetti, however, did not inspire in me that sense of awe which a young person feels towards someone older and more renowned, because beneath his Savonarolan exterior lay a quirky and ironic childlike spirit. Every now and then I would accompany him and the only friend he had in the village on walks along the narrow lanes of the surrounding hills. His friend, too, had chosen Cetona as an ascetic retreat, though his background was quite different: Sandro Viola had been one of the most competent, cultured and brilliant journalists in the world, working as a correspondent for major newspapers; unlike the teetotaller Ceronetti, he was a connoisseur of cocktails and a meticulous, refined master of the Martini, yet like him, he spent his days in the sole company of a book. During their walks together, there were few words, a little contemplation – especially when the summit of Monte Cetona was shrouded in white and grey clouds that perfectly matched Guido’s mood and attire – and then each would return to his own solitude.

That’s why I was very surprised when Guido invited me to dinner at his flat. I was already familiar with the flat, and there was nothing special about it: just a few spartanly furnished rooms, but – unlike the large, gloomy venue where he staged his performances, which in my memory resembled a deconsecrated chapel – they were usually bright. The only piece of furniture worthy of note was a lectern in front of which he spent a great deal of time poring over his beloved Gnostic and Old Testament texts, the verses of his favourite Rimbaud, certain thorny Latin works such as Martial and Juvenal, and much more besides. But I would never have thought that in that house there was a kitchen suitable for preparing a dinner, nor would I ever have imagined Ceronetti at the hob, or even sitting at the table eating: his extreme thinness suggested he lived on nothing but tea—that very tea to which, after all, he had devoted so many thoughts, culminating in a little book, *Pensieri del tè* (*Thoughts on Tea*), thoughts not exactly as graceful as those of two English ladies in conversation, for example: ‘The aggressor sniffs out the reserves of fear that we are unable to keep buried’ or ‘So steeped as we are by now in human falsehood, how can we trust the stars?’.

Instead, not only had she prepared a dinner, but she had also written the menu in beautiful handwriting, which she showed me when we arrived in the small kitchen – a kitchen straight out of a black-and-white film, with just a few austere pieces of crockery. Unfortunately, when I left the flat in Cetona, that menu ended up amongst the lost and never-found items, but I do remember one thing: there was a starter made from berries picked from a bush on the slopes of the mountain – which I tasted with some trepidation – followed by a soup of meadow herbs, then an egg (I’m not entirely sure about this one), and finally a dessert made from carob pods. Guido, in his role as chef, was charming and very pleased with himself. Unfortunately, at the end of the meal there was a minor incident: we both headed for the sink carrying the dishes to be washed, and as I rolled up my sleeves, I was foolish enough to ask: ‘Where can I find the washing-up liquid?’ Guido let out a scream: ‘The washing-up liquid?’ ‘Have you gone mad?’ And then came a torrent of abuse about my nature as a poisoner, ready to pour monstrous toxic substances down his sink, and from there into the village’s soil and the veins of our poor Italia, ravaged by chemicals. I washed the dishes with the water he’d put on to boil in a large saucepan and, given the sort of food we’d eaten, they actually came out perfectly clean.