Peter Elbling

Thank you for calling me Mr. Ugo. Strictly it should be Mr. DiFonte, but any time anyone calls me Mister anything, I'll take it. For some time, I, like many others in my calling, used amulets and talismen; unicorn bones, scorpion stingers, locks of hair that had belonged to Elijah, and so on. But after a while I realized that most of these had been made by some charlatan out to make a quick ducat for himself. (As you will see in my book I tested them out and found them to be worse than useless.) Since I could not be in the kitchen all the time -- who would want to be in the kitchen all the time?-- I made an arrangement with Tommaso, a kitchen boy, that he could have my daughter, Miranda in marriage, if he was my eyes and ears in the kitchen. The fact that he was deaf and blind much of the time, as well as a liar, made my life very difficult. Before you get upset about giving my daughter's hand in marriage for something like this, remember that without me to look after her, her life would not have been worth anything. Here is my translator, Mr. Elbling to answer your other question. Thanks Ugo. Mr. Ugo. Mr. Ugo. Translating the book took almost six years. Not just because the manuscript was in bad shape but also because Mr. Ugo was completely self-taught and his writing skills somewhat lacking. Potta! I worked like a dog-- Yes, yes, I know...you were a peasant, your fingers were like sausages...I've heard it all before..To continue: I haven't discovered any journals by other foodtasters and as far as Ugo's writing's are concerned, he claims that he is working on a sequel but he still writes with a quill, and he's getting older and grumpier by the day, so I've no idea when it will be ready. .

All poisons are painful. Wolfsbane makes the body tingle. Your hands get a funny feeling. Your body aches. Then you die. Meadow saffron makes your mouth feel as if it was in the fires of hell. You get a terrible stomach ache. Then you die. Wolfsbane gives you diarrhea. You bleed. You're in great pain. Then you die. It doesn't matter what it is, you bleed, or you shit, or you're in great pain, or all three and then you die. How can you have a favorite? If I had a choice I would jump off a tall cliff. Thank you, Ugo. (Elbling here) I only worked with Andy Kaufman twice on Taxi. I have no idea why he was named after a Jewish potato pancake or any other pancake for that matter. There was nothing potato or pancake like about him. Not did I see any obsession with food. He only came in on the first day of the table read through and then again on the day of shooting. Even on those days he would spend all of his time in his dressing room unless he was rehearsing. I do remember passing his dressing room once just as he was saying goodbye to a woman. As soon as she was out of earshot he looked at me, shook his head and said, "She was a reporter. She wanted to see the rubber room in my house. (This was where he supposedly wrestled women.) I told her she could only see it if she agreed to wrestle me. Of course she wouldn't. Thank God. I don't have a rubber room.

Five years ago, while visiting a friend in Barga, a village in Northern Tuscany, I was introduced to a neighbor of his by the name of GianCarlo Tula(not his real name.) A short stocky man, now gone to fat, with a profusion of unruly gray hair and a mouth full of gold teeth, GianCarlo told me that he had been born into a family of gypsy high-wire artists in his native Bulgaria. He boasted they had toured the world, appeared twice on the Ed Sullivan Show and once, to advertise a performance at the 69th St. Armory, he crossed Wall Street, blindfolded, thirty stories above the ground. A short time later, distracted by an aching tooth, he fell and broke his right leg in three places. In short order, he became a pornographic filmmaker, met and married an actress in the Andy Warhol/Studio 54 circuit, and fathered a child. In the late seventies, he returned, or was booted out, to Paris, becoming a fixture on the Eurotrash scene. Somewhere along the way, he married again, and through his second wife, from whom he was also divorced, became interested in rare objects. Now he suffered from emphysema and was in the care of Berta, a pretty Austrian blonde. (How these guys always manage to get pretty blondes to look after them is beyond me.) I drank Grappa with him while he regaled me with one outrageous story after another; he’d partied with the former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in Cuba, sunbathed with Mick Jagger in the South of France, and frolicked in the whorehouses of Bangkok with Saudi Princes. My friend told GianCarlo that I was also interested in rare objects, to which he replied that he had something of interest which might intrigue me. I said I'd like to see it. He hemmed and hawed; it was the only thing of real value he had left in the world, he would have to speak to his lawyer, etc., I thought it was just another story and so gave it no further thought. Besides, his boasting had begun to weary me and I did not plan to see him again. The morning before my return to the States, Berta woke us to say that GianCarlo had passed away in the night. We went over immediately. The place had been ransacked; Berta had been looking for money which GianCarlo had promised her and which she could not find. She wanted to give me the ‘something of interest’ GianCarlo had been talking about. It was an old dilapidated manuscript. Knowing GianCarlo, she suspected it was forged, but I took it anyway. I showed the manuscript to rare book experts in New York and at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and to my surprise they assured me it was genuine and even offered to buy it. I declined because I decided to translate it myself--I had studied Italian and had spent quite some time in Italy--and that is what I did on and off for the next four years. Since most of the story takes place in the town of Corsoli, which was situated where the provinces of Tuscany, Umbria and the Marche meet, I went there several times hoping to find some trace of the city. However, the records indicated that it had been destroyed in the late seventeenth century by a series of earthquakes. The remains had obviously been picked clean by the surrounding communities. I completed my translation of the document three years ago. I tried to keep as close to the spirit of the original as I could, only updating certain phrases and syntax for the modern reader and, even though some pages were missing and others damaged beyond repair, I believe I have achieved this with a fair measure of success. As far as I know, the manuscript is the only record of that time and place and of its author, Ugo DiFonte. Peter Elbling Translator