23. Be not afraid
The Anguilla. Ada devotes several pages to this long, slippery, water creature.
The most common eel is the freshwater, and the most well-known are from the Como valley and the Lago di Bolsena, Ada writes, with the eels of the Tiber (the river which flows through Rome) being smaller and having more delicate skin.
Interesting. Certainly these facts were valid at the book’s publishing in the 1950s, but what about today? Does Rome’s river still have a flourishing eel population? I asked Google. Sadly, the answer is no. The European eel is now a critically endangered species. The Tiber has long been the unfortunate destination for sewage treatment wastewater. Years ago, in an effort to clean things up, hydrochloric acid and chlorine where added. The river became clearer, but the microorganisms eaten by the eels were wiped out, which in turn starved the eel population.
A BBC online report ( https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29425984 ) leads with the following: “Fifty years ago, the river Tiber in Rome was home to dozens of eel catchers, but now there is just one….” The story was written five years ago and features Cesare Bergamini who began fishing in 1947 when he was seven years old. That would make him now, if living, almost eighty.
The outlook is grim. According to the report, 75% of the water samples collected in 2014 from the Lazio region (of which Rome is the capital) contained bacteria concentrations above the legally prescribed level. Yet there has never been a ban on fishing in the Tiber delta, which means that the eels that have managed to survive—and that Cesare has been fishing—are quite possibly unsafe to eat.
Blissfully unaware of their future fate, Ada continues on about the eels. Among those that live exclusively in salt water, she writes, are ones which are darkly colored and quite long (as in up to three meters, nearly ten feet)...and the precious Moray eel, somewhat smaller, with yellow and brown variegated skin like a snake. She warns that although eels can live for some time out of the water, you should never buy them dead.
Let’s get cooking.
Come Si Spella l’Anguilla, or How to Peel the Eel :
First make a cut around the base of the head and then hang it from a grappling hook. Use a finger to slide beneath the skin until enough is pulled away to be grabbed with a cloth, pulling down from top to bottom. Stripping it away like a glove. (Rovesciandola come un guanto.)
Imagine (or maybe don’t....) undergoing a de-skinning and then being stunned in boiling water and immersed in cold…then dried, floured, fried with onions and parsley, doused with white wine, and finally stewed a half hour with tomatoes, a bit of garlic, and a laurel leaf. So is the fate of the eel in Ada’s “Anguilla Stufata.”
Stufare means to stew. But importantly it also means to be tired, bored, or fed up with. Sono stufo(a) di te! I’ve had enough of you!
EACH WEEK FOR SEVERAL YEARS Laura met me at her gate and lead me into her quiet space—a large room with a wall of books, an ancient wooden desk, a sofa, two chairs and several side tables. Glass doors looked out to a garden of butterfly-laden blossoms and velvet roses. Near her desk on a podium-like stand was a weighty Oxford dictionary. For not only was she a Jungian analyst and an artist, she was also a woman of words. Those years I visited her, I sat perched on the edge of the couch, leaning forward, she in her chair, leaning in. She was of my mother’s generation, an elegant woman, Peruvian, with gray-laced auburn hair. “What have you brought today, Lisa?” she’d often say, and I’d pass her a copy of what I’d written—vivid recollections of the week’s dreams—and read it aloud. Laura listened with an intensity that honored Jung’s teachings. Dreams were the voice of the subconscious. In dreams one encountered the essence of being. In dreams one met the truth.
I read to her about underground staircases and outdoor banquets and rugged cliffs from which people sprang. About buildings with flying elevators and hotels with changing hallways. About angry forests. Trips in buses. Fearsome battles. Attics. Babies. Wolves. And water, lots of water: oceans, rivers, swamps, swimming pools. And snakes: thick albino ones with monstrous heads; brown hellish ones rising from the soil around me.
There was one snake, an especially dreadful one, that had lived at the bottom of my nighttime bed as a child. Arriving moments after the light was dimmed and before I’d fallen asleep, he was real and supersized—larger than any I’d ever seen. As his head slowly lifted, the pulse of his roping, coiled body electrified the air.
Before getting into bed, I’d search in the closet, behind the dresser, under the boxspring, assuring myself that I was alone in the room. But I never was: darkness consistently brought his terrorizing return.
Jung believed in certain archetypal images. I’d experienced my share of them, such as the wise-woman guide who often walked beside me through the underworld, a silent, steady companion.
But other images had to be interpreted on a personal level. A dog, for example, could be a loving dream presence or an aggressive one, Laura said, depending upon one’s life experience.
What about snakes? They aren’t necessarily to be feared, Laura assured me, remarking that the ancient Greeks regarded them as both sacred and wise. A snake curled around a staff is the apothecary symbol of healing.
“Talk to your snake,” she said. “He was certainly persistent. The subconscious always is.”
“But he’s been gone for more than thirty years….”
“Oh, he’s not gone,” she said. Her certainty made my pulse wiggle. “Quiet everything in you and go to him. It may take some time but you will find him. Ask why he was there night after night. What was it he so needed to tell you?”
I shook my head. There was nothing in life I wanted to do less.
She leaned in closer. ”You’re not that little girl anymore,” she said. Then, “Surely you want to know.”
Did I?
