"Oy vey!" he says, then pauses and adds, "Or maybe that's the wrong word for praising a Catholic church . . ."

We watch the Sabines getting raped¹ right there in the middle of the sculpture garden with nobody doing a damn thing to stop it, and pay our respects to Michelangelo, to the science museum, to the views from the hillsides around town. Then I leave my aunt and uncle to enjoy the rest of their vacation without me, and I go on alone to wealthy, ample Lucca, that little Tuscan town with its celebrated² butcher shops, where the finest cuts of meat I've seen in all of Italy are displayed with a "you know you want it" sensuality in shops across town. Sausages of every imaginable size, color and derivation are stuffed like ladies' legs into provocative³ stockings, swinging from the ceilings of the butcher shops. Lusty buttocks of hams hang in the windows, beckoning⁵ like Amsterdam's high-end hookers. The chickens look so plump and contented⁶ even in death that you imagine they offered themselves up for sacrifice proudly, after competing among themselves in life to see who could become the moistest and the fattest. But it's not just the meat that's wonderful in Lucca; it's the chestnuts⁷, the peaches, the tumbling displays of figs⁸, dear God, the figs . . .

The town is famous, too, of course, for having been the birthplace of Puccini. I know I should probably be interested in this, but I'm much more interested in the secret a local grocer has shared with me--that the best mushrooms in town are served in a restaurant across from Puccini's birth-place. So I wander through Lucca, asking directions in Italian, "Can you tell me where is the house of Puccini?" and a kind

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