Slices of Perfection

A slice of memoir this week, about a powerful pizza.

The summer I was fourteen, I was wild with envy. My sister was about the embark on a great adventure, a German exchange with a fellow horse-lover. But adventure came in a different form for my sister when she was picked to represent Ireland in a European eventing championship.

My sister's adventure became mine, and I went to Germany in her place. I landed in the house of the future, a house of wooden floors, white walls and bins with rubbish separated into neat piles.

Versions of Womanhood

The horse lover, Anja, had a wide smile and friendly brown eyes. Her short dark hair was coaxed into spikes. She brought me to a swimming complex, which was a world away from our chlorine-soaked local swimming pool.

Anja and her friends lounged by the Olympic sized swimming pool in their bikinis. At fifteen, she wore her womanhood like a second skin. I tried to lounge beside them, but the relentless sun toasted my skin light pink. And my limited German meant that the doors to communication with them were almost shut.

I hurtled down a metal waterslide, populated by younger children and showoff teenage boys. My own womanhood was starting to poke through, in an unwelcome shade of red.

Strange Picnics

Some days we went to a lake, where Anja and I swam together and there were no bikinis or barriers to communication. But I had to contend with strange food. glistening sausage meat, raw vegetables and sour devil water, more commonly known as mineral water.

Picnics to me were sand-encrusted white bread oozing with jam, bubbles of red lemonade, crisps in lurid colours. I yearned for a glass of milk to take away the sour devil taste of the water. There was no proper milk in Germany.

The Pizza Parlour

But this was a family that paid attention. In a letter I sent to introduce myself, I said I liked being called Derv, and that's what they all called me from the moment I arrived. And when I said I liked pizza, they arranged a visit to Donato's Pizza Parlour.

We ate our meal outside at a white table. Some of the family's relatives were there. The sky was softer now; warm air blew on my face as I waited for the pizza. Donato himself came out with the pizzas, a glorious Italian stereotype with a florid moustache.

Photo by amirali mirhashemian on Unsplash

Photo Description: Here’s a pizza similar to the one I ate, a margherita pizza with melty mozzarella, rich tomato sauce and deep green leaves.

The pizza he placed in front of me covered the entire plate, a vast expanse of cheese, flecked with green. Our teenage hangout served doorstep-sliced pizzas, topped with a concoction of pepperoni, ham, sweetcorn and cheese.

A Perfect Pizza

The cheese on this pizza looked familiar. When I lifted up a slice, telephone wires of cheese remained connected to the pizza. But this cheese bathed my tongue in golden softness. The green flecks were herbs, which added to the fresh taste.

Beneath the cheese was a rich tomato sauce in a more welcome shade of red, which tasted of sun. The base of this pizza was thin and crispy; it melted as it reached my tongue.

There was sour devil water to drink with the pizza, but this time it was infused with apple juice. It cut through the heat of the pizza, of the day, and for the first time since I arrived, my thirst was quenched.

A New World

The family and their foreign talk faded away. It was just me, the pizza and the sky. It took me forty minutes to eat the pizza. When I looked up, all the other plates had long since disappeared. "You finish?" said smiling Donato in English.

Yes, I was full. I was complete. And I felt the world open up.