Meanwhile, olive oil prices have soared – in Europe, up to 50 percent higher this January compared to last January – as production falls due to weather and disease, with millions of trees in Italy succumbing to the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa , which scientists believe may have been transported from Costa Rica to a coffee factory in 2008. And in perhaps the most direct blow to the nation’s psyche, pasta prices soared in Italy last year, the government called emergency talks and consumer advocates lobbied for a price cap. Later, it was found that the companies were trying to recoup costs by buying branded wheat in the early stages of the war in Ukraine, a major producer. Prices stabilized. life is back to normal. Maybe the pasta, at least, is safe — for now.
Around 39 AD about, recounts the Roman historian Suetonius (born later that century), a bridge was opened across the Bay of Naples. It was over three miles long, made of earth-weighted boats so that the young emperor Caligula could ride on top of the water, first on horseback in armor stolen from the tomb of Alexander the Great and then in a chariot following full military retinue. A tribute to human endeavor and proof of its limits: Caligula was assassinated shortly after, aged 28, and in 79 AD, Vesuvius erupted. Black torrents of hot gas and ash swept over the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, running at speeds of up to 450 miles per hour and reaching temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than the surface of Venus, hot enough to break bones and teeth and vaporize them soft tissues, to make the flesh a sifting mist. A skull excavated from Herculaneum was found to contain a dark, translucent substance which, upon examination, revealed proteins normally present in the brain—the human mind, sealed within itself.
“We live in the shadow of Vesuvius,” Amedeo Colella, a 60-year-old local historian who designs culinary tours of Naples for a company called Culinary Backstreets, tells me. “Even when we’re talking about the future, we’re talking about the present.” Is this self-conscious romanticism, or is poetry the only sensible response to living with a volcano looming on the horizon? Not to mention, even closer, about nine miles to the west, is the increasingly restless supervolcano known as Campi Flegrei (or Burnt Fields), much of which lies beneath the Gulf of Naples. Half a million people live in direct range of an explosion. In the first 10 months of last year, more than 3,000 small earthquakes shook the region, raising fears of an impending rupture. The government drew up evacuation plans.
The world is ending. the world goes on. In Naples, I book a small room in a decaying 17th-century palazzo, equipped sometime in the last century with an elevator that can only be operated by inserting a coin into a slot. There seems to be an open border between past and present. History haunts the Italians I meet. Someone says, “Besides, we only joined in 1871,” as if it were yesterday. When night falls, I ride the dark streets on a Vespa, giddy with its cliché, ready to surrender to my creator. Italians from elsewhere in the country have informed me that the Neapolitans are the worst drivers on earth, but I think they must be the best, because how else do they cheat death at every turn? And then I realize that what appear to me as near collisions are actually skilful negotiations of space, knowing exactly how close you can get.
In a field in the Monti Lattari where ash fell nearly two millennia ago, Abagnale picks up a handful of soil. The explosion “created a lot of damage, but it also gave us that,” he says. A flood that took place nearly 1,500 years before the tomato appeared in Italy created the kind of mineral-rich soil that would one day be necessary for its flourishing, and thus for its eventual union with pasta and the birth of an entire cuisine . Now, at the dining table in Sant’Antonio Abate, we eat. Once “pasta was reserved for the holidays,” writes Zanini De Vita. It was only after Italy recovered from the toll of war, when the economy began to roar again in the late 1950s and early 60s, that people in the countryside could have it whenever they wanted. To think of pasta al pomodoro as an everyday, staple dish, to take it for granted: This was a new kind of privilege.
At the end of the meal, we’re supposed to cut pieces of bread to mop up whatever sauce is still stuck to the plate, a ritualistic gesture the Italians call scarpetta. It’s a reminder of those lean days when every bite mattered. Abagnale goes one better and brings the giant pan to the table, with its precious dregs like sunset pulp, and we take our bread and pass it around.
Set design by Victoria Petro-Conroy. Retouch: Anonymous Retouch. Digital Technology: Lori Cannava. Photo assistant: Karl Leitz. Assistant stage designer: Natasha Lardera