As for myself, I had lost all interest in the bread by this time, but
grown fairly intimate with the wine, a rosy muscatel, faintly
sparkling - very young, but not altogether innocent.
There were flies, however, and dogs, and children. We ought to have
remained indoors. Thither we retired for coffee and cigars and a
liqueur, of the last of which my friend refused to partake. He fears and
distrusts all liqueurs; it is one of his many senile traits. The stuff
proved, to my surprise, to be orthodox Strega, likewise a rarity
nowadays.
It is a real shame - what is happening to Strega at this moment. It has
grown so popular that the country is flooded with imitations. There must
be fifty firms manufacturing shams of various degrees of goodness and
badness; I have met their travellers in the most unexpected places. They
reproduce the colour of Strega, its minty flavour - everything, in
short, except the essential: its peculiar strength of aroma and of
alcohol. They can afford to sell this poison at half the price of the
original, and your artful restaurateur keeps an old bottle or two of the
real product which he fills up, when empty, out of some hidden but
never-failing barrel of the fraudulent mixture round the corner,
charging you, of course, the full price of true Strega. If you complain,
he proudly points to the bottle, the cork, the label: all authentic! No
wonder foreigners, on tasting these concoctions, vow they will never
touch Strega again....
We had a prolonged argument, over the coffee, about this Strega
adulteration, during which I tried to make my friend comprehend how I
thought the grievance ought to be remedied. How? By an injunction. That
was the way to redress these wrongs. You obtain an injunction, I said,
such as the French Chartreuse people obtained against the manufacturers
of the Italian "Certosa," which was thereafter obliged to change its
name to "Val D'Emma." More than once I endeavoured to set forth, in
language intelligible to his understanding, what an injunction
signified; more than once I explained how well-advised the Strega
Company would be to take this course.
In vain!
He always missed my point. He always brought in some personal element,
whereas I, as usual, confined myself to general lines, to the principle
of the thing. Italians are sometimes unfathomably obtuse.
"But what is an injunction?" he repeated.
"If you were a little younger, there might be some hope for you. I would
then try to explain it again, for the fiftieth time. Instead of that,
what do you say to taking a nap?"
"Ah! You have eaten too much."
"Not at all. But please to note that I am tired of explaining things to
people who refuse to understand."
"No doubt, no doubt. Yes. A little sleep might freshen you up."
"And perhaps inspire you with another subject of conversation."
In the little hotel there were no rooms available just then wherein we
might have slumbered, and another apartment higher up the street
promising lively sport for which we were disinclined at that hour, we
moved laboriously into the chestnut woods overhead.
