The fruttajola of the Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina, and the waiter of the Café di Roma are responsible for our coming to Nemi. I like to linger chaffering in the fruttajola’s shop (at this season it smells of strawberries and apricots) not only because she has the best fruit in Rome but because she has three of the prettiest daughters—the youngest looks as the Fornarina, the baker’s daughter beloved of Raphael, might have looked. When the fruttajola was young she must have been even handsomer than her daughters, though their cheeks seem like duplicates of the peaches and nectarines they handle so daintily; she has an intensity of expression, a look of power that none of her girls have.
“You tell me these strawberries are from Nemi,” I said; “how is that possible? For the past month you have sold me strawberries from Nemi, always from Nemi! All over Rome I see the strawberries of Nemi advertised. Is it likely now that a little town like Nemi can supply such a great city as Rome with strawberries all these many weeks?”
You see I remembered what the Tuscan wine grower said to us about the wine of Chianti. The fruttajola tossed her handsome head. “Signora, you have but to see Nemi to understand!” she said, laying on the counter a little blue paper box she had been making and lining with grape leaves as she talked and which she now filled with purple figs and yellow nespole. That night, wishing to give our servants “an evening off,” we dined at the Café di Roma. Of course we had the inevitable dishes of this season, chicken, hunter’s fashion (braised, with green peppers), salad of tomato and endive, finishing off with strawberries from Nemi, and of course the cream was too thin. J. asked Leandro, the waiter who always serves us, if it was not possible to get better cream. He has often asked the same question before.
“Signore,” said Leandro, “this cream comes from the dairy next door. We always order the best for you, and this is what they send us. Why do you not yourself step in and speak to the proprietor? He will take more pains for you than for me.” Pricked by memories of Jersey cream which those ravishing strawberries evoked, J. sought the padrone of the dairy.
“Is it not possible to have thicker cream than that you send to the restaurant?” he asked. The man looked surprised. “The Signore desires thicker cream? Why, of course, it is possible to have the cream as thick as he wishes, only have a moment’s patience.” As he spoke the padrone took up a fine hair sieve, put into it a lump of some soft white stuff which he mashed with a big spoon into a paste; this he passed through the sieve, every now and then letting a few drops fall out of the spoon to show how thick the cream had become.
“Is that thick enough, Signore?” he finally asked.
“Quite thick enough, thank you,” said poor J. grimly. “Will you do me the favor of telling me what you use to thicken the cream?”
“But surely! Various things are used; the best is this that you see, the brains of a young calf nicely boiled.”
When J. came back to the restaurant he said that, on the whole, he preferred his strawberries with wine and sugar, as the Romans eat them. The waiter pushed a flask hung on a swivel towards him; J. drowned his plate in a flood of red Genzano. Isn’t it odd that in Roman restaurants wine is sold by weight? Leandro weighed the flask before putting it on the table, and again when he took it off after dinner.
In order to make conversation I said, “Leandro, do you know where these strawberries really come from?”