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At Harry's Carlo met us. Tall, lean, sporty elegant as always. "Good morning dear ones. Are you accepting an exchange, Ernest? Federico has been looking for you all morning on the phone, without finding you. He's in trouble in the country, they can't come to breakfast, they apologize very much. I'll take their place, if you accept me."

Papa smiled. While Giuseppe Cipriani accompanied us to the table: "How about a Montgomery?" he asked. 

"Perfect" said Carlo. Then, looking at me, "You've lost weight."

"Ugh." I sighed. "Every time you see me you find me out of sight, stop reminding me of how it was centuries ago." 

"You weren't bad, centuries ago." Then, turning to Papa: "Do you know what they called her then? She had a flame red overcoat, she was pretty plump, solid in the flesh and they called her the fire in the Doge's Palace or Ciccia Bomba*."

"It's true. After the war" I explained to Papa "because of my backward hunger I ate all the time and got fat to the point of seeing my cheeks when I smiled. I burst out in my clothes, I couldn't close my belts anymore, a disaster."

"Certainly not a disaster. You were appetizing," said Carlo. "How the hell did you manage to lose so much weight?" 

"By stopping eating all the time." 

"I confess that I preferred it before. You know Ernest, Adriana and my nieces shared all kinds of things during the war. They became theft specialists..."

"Home food theft," I interrupted. "One of us," I explained to Papa, "would go out to ring the door and while Giuseppe the waiter went to open the door, we sneaked into the kitchen to get the crispy bread. So that it didn't get moldy, they put the old bread in the oven, it became hard hard and because of the noise it made against our teeth we called it crisp** bread."

*a "flesh bomb"

** note the use of the phrase "cri-cri" which Google translates to "crisp" though there is an Italian pastry called "cri cri" which may be the actual reference but without any added context it's difficult to know which she meant.