Nervous cellist becomes healthy olive farmer. And writes about it.

A cellist with high hopes but no work left for Italy. His book Fratello & Sorella is now coming out.

From Amsterdam

That Frans. You wondered if things would ever work out with him. The answer is yes.

Still, the charming and nervous young man managed to skim along the edges in the 1990s. Back then, we still shared a flat in Amsterdam. In a neighbourhood where charity headquarters housed in capital villas.

French was the cellist. Without a job. On some evenings, he would go out for a schnabble in dress suit, with his box. Then he looked peaky. But on many days he could also hang aimlessly in a writers' pub. Or we strolled the bar at Hotel Winston together, a last-night stop where losers are not losers.

An empty book with a bad ending must have been on our faces.

Strangled in Italy

It was a time when noisy women haunted him. He had a thing for them. Or they with him. Until a no-nonsense Italian managed to snare him. From a tiny Amsterdam boat, where he was now bivouacked, he set off in a rush to southern Italy.

Those least happy about the subsequent wedding were the local pigs. This was slaughtered from above at the wedding outside in a Fellini-like scene. Frans was brutally introduced to the culinary idiosyncrasies of the Puglia region.

That also had its advantages.

Active correspondence

From a so-called trullo, an iglo made of stones, the new olive farmer Frans began corresponding with his sister Karin (who reviewed restaurants as one of The Ladies Traveller). Lots of inside information about Italy and about cooking. The correspondence was featured on Vrij Nederland for years and later on its own website.

Now a number of stories have been compiled in Fratello & Sorella, published by Prometheus. Earlier there was the booklet Tastyissimo, a kind of eyewitness account of life in southern Italy. Also includes a recipe for a local dish with many chapters.

An artist who cooks

The only recipe I learned from Frans was low budget: a sliced courgette that you fill with minced meat and sour cream. In the meantime, the former housemate has fortunately become an expert in Italian cuisine. Not a cooking artist pur sang; you won't see him on 24Kitchen anytime soon. But an artist who cooks: which is why he also talks colourfully about life in Puglia.

No need to think anymore

The ex-cellist with no job and no purpose is now up to his ears in olives. With the simple wisdom of a hard-working farmer in the fields, he no longer needs to think about a purpose.

So the story of the artist struggling to get a job ended well.

Sometimes I buy a hefty tin of French's olive oil. I taste southern Italy, the trullo, his Anna, the days of work, the pig. My life here could use that bit of colour from there.