A friend was expressing horror about pineapple on pizza. Or maybe horror at the arrogance of objecting to pineapple on pizza.
I didn’t pay attention. He took my mind elsewhere.
In the summer of 1990 late in the afternoon — evening, really, for the sun sets late — very nearly 34 years ago to the day, I went out on my own in Rome, randomly looking for a place to eat, and stumbled upon the best pizza I had ever had and perhaps I’ve had since.
The owner was there behind the counter and believe it or not, because they put potatoes on the pizza, we had a conversation about the orthodoxy of putting other things on pizza.
He strenuously objected to the American tendency to put things on pizza that don’t belong there.
I was studying philosophy but I didn’t know Italian for “beg the question” — apparently Americans don’t know the English for it either anymore 🤣 — so I didn’t object to the framing. Besides, he was amusingly cantankerous and seemed kindly and wistful. He did seem especially invested in whether or not I liked the pizza, and the theoretical conversation we were having about pizza aesthetics. The connection felt momentous in a way I couldn’t quite identify or even recognize, as is the blessing and curse of young people the world over.
He was maybe 80 years old and I think had been in business there for over 50 years. He said his father and father before him had been in that same business, in that same place, undisplaced by the War to End All Wars, and the Great Depression, and Mussolini’s urban revisionism, and the vagaries of war, and economic upheavals, and governments changing like children’s distant laughter lost on the wind.
I liked the pizza so much, that even though I was on vacation there only for a short while, the next day I went to the exact same place at noon to have more pizza. I had taken note of the writing on the door saying they opened at noon.
It was closed.
I don’t mean closed for the day. Or because it was too early. I mean, there were guys with jackhammers inside tearing up the stone and concrete floor. I can still feel the noise in my chest, making a sickening feeling.
Or maybe it was the news. Over the cacophony I asked what was going on, and the forman told me the place was closed, permanento. The old man had retired. His kids didn’t want the business. It was done, forever. He wasn’t even there to oversee the destruction.
I had been there the day before near closing time. The owner had talked to me because there wasn’t anyone else around. I’m not entirely sure, but I think the best pizza I had in my life may have been the last pizza this gentleman ever made.
Because his pizza was the best ever, I can’t help but want to defer to his opinion about what should be on a pizza. On the other hand, there may be no harsher indication that the world had passed him him by than the fact that the last pizza he ever made was enjoyed by an insufficiently cultured American, blithely accosting him with creative options for pizza toppings.
I can’t help but wonder if my conversation is what sent him over the edge.
It’s horrifying to imagine.
And yet narcissistically satisfying to fantasize that I could matter so much, even if so terribly.
But I knew that in truth I was nothing but the avatar of an entire society of bad news. A raven resting on the window sill.
And, perhaps, a last chance for him to fight the battle. I hope he knows that with me, finally, he had won.
I still think of him.