ORANGES AND ALMOND BLOSSOM
The gardener of the Barberini Palace kept us supplied with hired plants. Never have we seen Azaleas or Orange trees grown like those, with such exquisite artistic freedom. We had a Tangerine tree that was a complete joy. This arrangement worked beautifully for the first month. But unfortunately the gardeners, father and son, were professed anarchists and, when they were in their cups, their ethical principles overcame their business sense. Loki’s Grandmother had one day to stand by helplessly while Loki’s Ma-Ma was cursed and vituperated in a foam of vulgar Italian for innocently requesting to have a faded Azalea replaced. Not being able to speak Italian herself, she could not come to the assistance of her more talented daughter.... And both felt ignominiously inclined to cry!... Alas! that any spot so beauty-haunted should have been desecrated by such coarse and stupid passions! Those gardens of the Barberini, with their Lemon groves and Orange groves; the lush grass filled with Narcissus and Violets, and, in the Roman way, with water dripping from every corner; with the bits of columned wall and the statues and the three great stone pines against the blue sky! It is all Italy in one small enclosure.
We moved from the Pincian Hill to much less interesting quarters; but, with the luck that followed us all through that happy time, quite close to the Borghese gardens. There we had a black-and-white tiled dining-room and a long drawing-room all hung with pearl grey satin and a wonderful Aubusson carpet. And when the room was filled with almond blossom there were compensations for the exiguity of our accommodation. The lady who was obliging enough to accept us as her tenants ‹for a rent that filled our Roman friends with horror at our profligate extravagance›, although bearing a noble Austrian name, it was darkly whispered, had a commercial origin. Her businesslike spirit certainly showed itself in her transactions with us; for neither blankets, nor cooking utensils, nor the necessary glass and china were forthcoming, in spite of magnificent assurances.
“What will you?” said Fiori, our beloved little chef, shrugging his shoulders, “Sono Polacchi!” “The Countess,” he informed the young housekeeper, “sent in her maid, and I showed her the few poor pans, the miserable couple of pots she expected me to do with. ‘Is it not enough?’ she cried. ‘Enough?’ I answered. ‘Enough perhaps for your lady, for a service that is content with an egg on a plate, or one solitary cutlet! But my noble family must be nobly served.’”
Excellent Fiori, he used to trot upstairs every night to receive his orders, clad in the most spotless white garments and a new white paper cap, which he doffed with a superb gesture on entering the room. Upon receiving a well-deserved compliment, he would spread out his small fat hands and bow profoundly, exclaiming, “My duty, Excellency, only my duty!”
In one single instance was his entire content in our establishment clouded; that was when, in a moment of abstraction, he forgot to send up a dish of young peas—the first in the market—which he had prepared with his own superlative skill, and adorned with a pat of fresh butter whipped to a cream at the top: “All’Inglese,” he called it. We believe he spent the evening in tears, and he could not speak of it next day without emotion.
“Useless, useless, to try and console me, Excellency,” he exclaimed. “I am profoundly humiliated, I shall never get over it!”