They weren’t walking they were marching like soldiers, marking their steps, and like soldiers they wore uniforms. The heels of their heavy boots echoed on the sidewalk. We all spun our heads toward the corner of Via Alessandria.įrom the direction of Corso Trieste, three people came around the corner in that precise moment, heading straight toward us.
#Cone and crumb how to
To know how to wait, to give way to others, to help oneself last of all that was the moral rule practiced in the Rummo household, among his numerous family. Rummo, for his part, stood off to the side, courteous as ever.
“Choice provokes anguish,” Arbus said, as he began licking his ice-cream, while Marco Lodoli and I, as said, hesitated. Today the choices are so varied they make your head spin: wild bronte pistachio, mascarpone with pear and ginger, salted dulce de leche, or dark chocolate with avola almonds… maracuja. Only the ice-cream man knew which they were, and to dig them out with his big spoon he popped off the round covers of the tubs in rapid sequence, closing one while opening the next with a gesture both professional and jealous, not only to keep the cold from escaping, but also to hide from view which flavors were full and which empty or nearly empty, a fact we were given to know only by watching how deep his arm plunged into the tub. Of the four of us that evening, only Arbus answered without doubt: “Cream and chocolate.” “With whipped cream?” “No, none.” Moreover, in the era when the episode I’m about to tell took place-despite its almost total insignificance-even the most renowned ice-cream parlors offered only a few basic flavors, always the same, always those seven or eight at most, kept hidden in a stainless steel freezer. People often hesitate for no reason before proceeding to choose the flavors for their ice cream cone, peering through the glass in search of who knows what novelty.