NOTE: Each year, the world famous Harry’s American
Bar & Grill of Venice, Italy petitions would-be authors all over the globe to take part in a unique writing competition, in which contestants must “produce one good page of bad Ernest Hemingway.” In other words, write a page of hokey prose in the style of the bar’s most famous patron. The creator of the best page of “bad Hemingway”wins fifteen minutes of fame, dazzling prizes, and a trip to Venice to eat and drink at Harry’s as Hemingway himself once did. Sounds good to me.
Herewith, your humble blogger, seeking to kill two birds with one stone,
submits his entry for your consideration:
He wasn’t really an old man, though he had begun to think of himself as old
or more precisely aged. He had lived a good, good life by mixing a little skill with a touch of charm and a bit of luck to make it good. But now he watched the candle
light flicker and cast dancing shadows over faces and dinner plates and glasses filled with red Chianti, tall shadows that stirred in him memories of those many carefree nights at Harry’s American Bar & Grill when his eyesight was better, and he came to understand that his luck had finally turned sour. He was forty-three years old.
“Does it hurt much, darling?” she said.
She reached across the red checkered table cloth to touch his hand with her
long, lacquered fingertips. The dim candle light made her face look dark and
somber.
“The marvelous thing is that it’s painless,” he said. “That’s how you really when it starts."
“Oh, Nick!” she said. She held back a small sob. He had run with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, and had fished for marlin off the coast of Cuba and had studied war in Italy. Here in New York City he studied a restaurant menu and continuously rubbed his eyes. It was the menu for Luigi’Trattoria and the Italian food was described in long, elegant Italian phrases many referring to the fricassee of small animals.
He loved dago food and especially loved Luigi’s place, which was small and
intimate and inviting and one of those places that strikes you as the perfect place to write a love sonnet or hatch a conspiracy. But he did not like the menu with itsfine, black print and this caused him to rub his eyes.
“Darling, I’d be happy to read the selections to you, “she said.
“No, no,” he said. He stretched his arms as far as they would reach, past the
bread basket and jug of Chianti, nearly into her plate. Still the print on the menu
swirled before his eyes and he squinted to try to bring it into focus. “I think I’ve just got it.”
“Signore Nick,” said Luigi, “you’re holding the menu upside down.”
He had known Luigi briefly during the war in Italy when the two had been
ambulance drivers together. They were about to become friends back then but for
the assault of cannon that put his ambulance out of commission and put him in the hospital to nurse a bum leg. He had almost forgotten about Luigi until he walked into the Trattoria late one evening for a drink. Seeing each other, the two
immediately embraced and Luigi kissed him on both cheeks.
“You cannot read a menu upside down,” Luigi said. He took the menu from
his hands and turned it right side up.
“Oh, Nick,” she said, and the small sob caught again in her throat. “It’s true,
your eyes are going bad.”
“Not bad, really, kid,” he said offhandedly. “Just tired, I’m tired is all. It’s
what the French call Les Yeux Fatigue.”
“It worries me, Nick,” she said, “it worries me to see you this way.” Tears
welled in her eyes and dropped--plunk, plunk, plunk--onto the empty plate.
Luigi drew up a chair and joined them. He smoothed the ends of his long mustache with thumb and forefinger. “There is no need to worry,” he said. “It is a
condition, a simple condition of the eyes that comes with age, Signore.”
“Can it be...corrected?” he said. “Yes, Signore, si...it can be corrected easily,” Luigi said. “My cousin, Gianni, he is an optometrist. He is very good at correcting this condition.” Luigi reached into the small pocket of his red vest and drew out a calling card. “He is located here, in New York, not far from my restaurant.”
“An oculist, ‘eh,” he said, and squinted at the card in his hand.
“They call them optometrists now,” Luigi said. He stood up from the table
and bowed slightly and wished them both a good dinner.
“You won’t be disappointed,” he said.
“Darling, this will be so exciting,” she said. Her voice now was filled with
anticipation and some small delight and as the steaming food came and she
continued speaking her anticipation and delight became greater. “We’ll select a
wonderful pair of spectacles for you. Possibly one of those tiny, little pair made of
fine wire or possibly something in tortoise.”
-
“Yes, possibly,” he said. He scooped a large portion of steaming spaghetti into his bowl. He breathed deeply with relief. “Possibly a pair of tortoise spectacles would work out nicely.”
They ate and drank that night as they had not done for many nights before.
As the meal came to an end, Luigi joined them once more and they laughed and
joked and told stories of Italy and then Luigi broke out the grappa and coffee and
they concluded the evening in a fine way.
Tomorrow they would go to Gianni, the optometrist, and he would correct the condition with a pair of good spectacles and all the tears would be gone. And
tonight they would leave Luigi’s and walk home in the rain. (Originally published in February, 1996)
