A Small Adventure

by Eleonora Natilii (Italy)

I didn't expect to find United Kingdom

The Poetry Café was just as you’d expect it to be. Small, stylish - but not pretentious - part of a central district, though hidden in a side street, and incredibly affordable when compared to the other bars you could find around, considering you’d be in the West End of London. I went in on a Tuesday evening, sharp at six. I remember it clearly, because it felt like I could be on time for something (latecomers like me tend to notice this kind of stuff). Indeed, I was on time! A little more than that. I was one hour in advance. The poetry reading I wanted to attend was starting at seven, and I was eager to try what they had on the menu. I’d eyed a dish I’m crazy about: tomato soup. I know, right? You don’t understand. In Italy, where I come from and presently live, there’s no such thing as tomato soup - nor traditional carrot cake, as a matter of fact, which is the next thing I ordered. The atmosphere was above my expectations. Every table had a notebook full of poems or thoughts written by other people, and I couldn’t wait to leave a trace of me in the one lying on the table where I sat. I ordered at the counter to a kind woman, probably my age, maybe a bit younger (Twenty five? Thirty?) and I disappeared for a few minutes in the bathroom downstairs. When I came back, something was waiting for me already: a napkin rolled around a spoon and a glass of water. I opened the notebook and leafed through the pages to pass time. The café seemed to be very active. They regularly hosted readings and every week, precisely on Tuesdays, a group of poets of former AA held their meetings in a room on the first floor. I was intrigued by them too, but the reading felt more open, so I waited for that one. The soup came, along with the cake. I ate; wrote something depressing about my ending relationship in the notebook, and decided to have a sip of water before I’d scoff my dessert. The minute I drank, I knew something was wrong. The water tasted weird, I didn’t swallow. ‘Is it flavoured?’ I wondered, quickly checking with my tongue if what I was tasting was lemon, orange, ginger or cucumber. ‘It’s not flavoured; this is alcohol,’ my brain answered. I spat the liquid back in the glass and walked to the waitress. ‘Excuse me?’ The rest of the sentence is easy to imagine. To this day, I still wonder what happened. Wine was the strongest thing they were allowed to serve, and no one in the kitchen knew where that glass of what-I-assume-was-vodka came from. ‘Someone must have had a flask with them,’ told me the waitress. Why pour vodka in a glass and serve it to me? The question remained. ‘Maybe one of the AA was about to fall back and then had second thoughts. After pouring the drink, they didn’t know what to do with it and left it on my table.’ I made a first assumption. ‘There’s also another option,’ I continued, ‘But it’s kind of creepy. It could be someone trying to make a terrible joke on a former alcoholic. If I’d been one of the AA, just the taste of it would have driven me crazy.’ ‘Wow. Yeah, that’s creepy,’ she answered. We laughed to take the edge off the tension. ‘I guess I’ll never know.’ ‘The cake is on the house, to repay you for the inconvenience.’ ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘That’s very kind. No inconvenience, though. Just a small adventure.’