Build the room first, then the kitchen, then the family. There are seven ovens and stoves, from the brick dome with its chimney to the little cast-iron stove, six tables under their checked cloths and seven chairs down to the baby's high chair, a glass counter of pizzas and a tiled one with its till. Upstairs go the nonna's armchair with its crocheted cover and the washing line; by the back door, the delivery scooter, the stack of oven logs and the baker's rack of dough. Twenty-six things to eat and drink wait for a table: two margheritas, a calzone, a basket of breadsticks, tiramisu in a glass, a cannolo, an espresso.
Put the pizza on the table and it rides the table. Move the table later and the pizza comes along. The candle in its wax-dripped bottle, the lanterns and the wall lamps are real lights: turn the night on and the room glows the colour of the oven.
Nothing can go wrong here and nothing runs out. You stop when the room looks like the place that has fed the same street for forty years.
