Benedicte

Benedicte (France)

No one can stop a pushy Italian driver like a Parisian girl.  I swear, Benedicte, the first of my new friends, shifts from quirky to cold in an instant on Sienese streets.  She can stop a Fiat in its tracks from yards away.   Benedicte was the first arrival in Piazza San Francesco, joining Jack and me after a week.  We were nervous about a new housemate – we were really enjoying the quiet nights of study and wine – but Benedicte brought humor, compassion, and a complete dedication to the city of Siena with her.  It was Benedicte who joined me on my evening walks every day, Benedicte who discovered the violinist who plays each night in the Piazza del Duomo, and Benedicte who shared her wisdom over the course of her days with us.  She is a study in contentment.  Lots of days she spent the entire afternoon with her bag, searching for the ingredients to a perfect meal.  Other days, she shopped for nothing but sweets, eating her way through the city with the greatest of pleasure.  Benedicte’s passion for Italian food, especially sweets (somehow she manages to eat them from dawn until dusk and stay enviably thin) created a mystery it took all three of us to solve.  Here’s the timeline:

Day 1:  Benedicte arrives at home with a pack of delicious, delicious ricciarelli, the lemony crunchy-chewy powdered sugar covered cookie no one can resist.  But we do resist them, at least at dinner.  After dinner, someone (me) sneaks back into the kitchen and steals one, or two. 

Day 2:  The evidence of my thievery is immediately noticeable as powdered sugar covers the floor by the cookies.  Jack shouts, “La evidenza! (The evidence!)”   Busted.  I confess, and we move on.

Day 3:  More sugar on the floor, but I have not stolen additional cookies… Knowing it’s not me this time, I shout, “Guarda la evidenza! (Look at the evidence!)”  Jack confesses and we move on.

Day 4:  Additional sugar on the floor.  No one confesses.  Nervously, we move on.

Day 5:  A man’s footprint in the sugar.  More evidence, but no thief.  What’s going on?

Day 6 (Saturday):  So much sugar on the floor that now I am leaving my bare footprint every time I go in the kitchen.

Our landlord, Pino, arrives for his weekly visit.  We show him the evidence, and PINO confesses (told you no one can resist)…during his morning check-ins (he worries that we will leave the gas on), he’s been stealing cookies.  Pino!  We share a drink and later he brings a bottle of prosecco.  Best landlord ever.

Benedicte left a week after Jack.  I miss her a lot: no more long talks in Italian at the table in our homey kitchen, no more jokes with stabbing motions and terrible punchlines.  But the bright side is that she’s returning in November to visit and I will travel to Paris in the Springtime.  I have sister now.