There’s a story in my Tuscan family of nobility and forbidden love. It’s set in Taranto, Puglia, on Italy’s southern heel and involves my daughter’s great-great-grandmother. The best known version is told by my husband Marco’s uncle, Riccardo, who remembers it being told to him by his elderly Nonna Anna herself. Anna Michela Comasia Maria Calianno. Her long name was a sign of her family’s noble status. She was born in Taranto, Puglia, in 1889, into a wealthy, well-educated Tarantine family of physicians, surgeons and landowners. One day, by chance, young Anna answered the door instead of the butler. There was Nicola Cardellicchio, the postman. He came from a poor family of bricklayers and wool spinners, raised by a single mother. “He was no adonis,” noted Nonna Anna. Nicola was rather short and stocky, but she liked him immediately. She continued answering the door whenever the postman passed. When Anna’s mother, Girolama, noticed her daughter’s growing interest in the postman, she forbid her to see him again, threatening to disown her. So Anna did what any lovesick girl would do: she ran away, eloping with Nicola. The couple had nine children in Taranto — Mario, Marco’s grandfather was born in the middle of the First World War — but times were very hard, and they moved north to Torino to look for work. Nonna Anna was perhaps not an instinctive cook. I wondered whether she ever had the possibility to learn how to cook. Her grandchildren, Angela (my mother in law) and Riccardo, remember her only ever making lesso (boiled meat) and these polpette, which became variously known in the family as “sugo di nonna Anna” and, oddly, “amatriciana” (which is actually a different recipe, a chilli-spiked sauce of fried guanciale and tomato to coat pasta). But these polpette – plump meat balls, cooked slowly in tomato sauce, a very traditional dish from Puglia – were passed down to Anna’s daughter in law, Angela’s Tuscan mother, Lina, who made them so often for her own family that she in turn taught her daughter in law,... According to the above context, choose the correct option to answer the following question. Question: Why did Anna continue answering the door? Options: - not enough information - Because Girolama threatened to disown her - Because she married Nicola - Because she liked Nicola
The answer to this question is:
Because she liked Nicola