The bakery didn’t look like much from the outside, on the contrary: the decor was of a disconcerting, even depressing poverty. On the whole it exuded scarcity and we never ever would have gone inside. But we were hungry and hunger doesn’t consider surroundings or have any regard for aesthetic sensibilities.
So we walked in, prepared for anything, even stale, butter-laden buns. We got three pastries and a cappuccino. We looked around the room. Everything was decidedly bare and the impression that we’d gotten from the outside inside was even worse from the inside. Besides us, no other customers. Our survey stopped at a map hanging on the wall right next to us showing Biblical sites. It was a very beautiful map besides, an insert from the American magazine National Geographic, Issue No. 9 from November 1977, to be exact.
Our curiosity piqued, we immediately asked the baker why he had that map from National Geographic hanging on the wall and how it had come into his possession. He told us, with the most innocent air in the world, that he had spent three years in America when he was young, and had returned to Montecchio Precalcino, the little village we were in, with a solid knowledge of English and a passion for travel, which he cultivated by assiduously reading National Geographic, of which he had a full twenty years of back issues. He showed us different maps, also inserts from the noted magazine. One showed China, another Indonesia, yet another Russia, Africa, Antarctica, the Scandinavian Peninsula, Iceland, and so on, from all over the world.
He himself, also, he told us, had taken round-the-world trips a full three times on three different airlines, and each year he indulged in at least one intercontinental trip always and invariably alone, avoiding organized tours like the plague, thusly privileging complete freedom to move around. He was alone in the world, he told us, but he was content. He liked making pastries and anyway the important thing was taking at least one nice trip a year. And us, he asked, did we travel? Sure, we replied, we liked to travel too, but only by motorcycle because we prefer it that way, and, to tell the truth, we were a little scared of airplanes. And he, we asked, wasn’t he afraid? He was used to it, he said with a smile; plus, his name was Angelo, he said, and angels aren’t afraid to fly because flying is in their nature.
We paid and left because it was getting dark and we had to go. The pastries we had were absolutely delicious.
They were so good they had what my uncle called a flavor that contains every flavor in the world.
(1994)
Author and Translator Bios
Vitaliano Trevisan was an Italian screenwriter, playwright, actor, and writer of several books, including the novels I quindicimila passi (2002), Works (2016), Black Tulips (2022), and story collections Shorts (2004) and Grotteschi e arabeschi (2009). His work often depicted the province of Vicenza, where he was born in 1960 and died by suicide in 2022.
Jamie Richards is a translator of Italian literature currently based in Los Angeles.
Comments