I must admit, however, that I felt I would hear from you sometime soon . . . I hoped so. I didn’t write to you earlier because, even though I live a zillion kilometers away, I wanted to leave you in peace . . . I’m glad the wedding went well. I’m happy for you, believe me. I couldn’t not be, looking at the photos you sent me. I truly am happy.
As for the novel, I’m not hurt at all. I’m actually excited and even a bit moved that I’ll be able to read, along with thousands of other people that don’t know us, the experiences we shared, where, when, and maybe even why . . .
I’m surviving in this wolf lair. I somehow managed to overcome all the small-town corruption of this place and about six months ago I found a job. Like with my last job, I’m not exactly working as a geologist. Maybe I don’t even like the profession as much as I used to.
I work as an electrotechnician for a company that runs windmills. They’ve built a plant for creating aeolian (wind!) energy in the countryside around Monte San Rocco, and I’m responsible for making sure the windmills run well. When they break down, it’s my job to fix them . . . often that means going all the way to the top (they’re 80 meters tall) and spending a lot of time up there . . . I call them my fifteen Moulin Rouge girls. It’s strange but the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning is actually them, from the window at the top of the stairs. I make sure that they’re all spinning, that everything’s good. Only then can I go downstairs to the kitchen and have my coffee in peace. It’s a job that some days I find satisfying and other days I don’t, maybe just because the work itself is unusual, dangerous, difficult, even modern . . . I don’t think it’s my be-all and end-all. It’s just a phase, a challenge, maybe a game.
Over the last year I’ve spent some time abroad, a month in the north of Germany, practically Holland, for professional training. I learned a lot about the people there. Then I spent a month in Spain, in Don Quixote’s Mancha, to really learn about the job. I even learned Spanish. I speak it pretty well. Again I have you to thank for taking me by the hand to see the world. I would have never left Monte San Rocco if I hadn’t met you, if I hadn’t fallen in love with you . . . and my English. You won’t believe it but even after all these years I’m still decent at speaking, reading, and writing it. I use it at least three or four times a day to speak with people on the phone in Germany . . .
Gabriele lives in Barcelona. He’s teaching in an Italian school but finding it hard to fit in with the people there (I’d told him it was like that). Our parents are getting older. Despite their ripe old age, they get by pretty well . . . they grumble all the time and have all their same old habits . . .
I’ve found a girlfriend. Or rather it’s more accurate to say that she found me. It didn’t take much searching: she lives 50 meters from my house. She has a degree in languages (from the Istituto Orientale, a coincidence?). I think she loves me. She puts up with me. She’s very patient with me and my mood swings. She tolerates my absences . . . I care for her a lot. But I’m not able to love her like I should. Like she deserves.
I should tell her. But as always, I expect her to be absolutely understanding, impossibly so. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just afraid of being alone.
What a joy it is to look at the picture of you two on your deck. But the bougainvillea behind you is in dire need of a good pruning! Don’t think ill of me: I only said that because your letter sitting before me has the scent of a life I desire and I know I will never be able to have. I feel a bit like a prisoner, not a prisoner of a place or people but of my own character, which by now has taken on its irrevocable form. I love to know that you exist, even at an enormous geographical distance.
You did the right thing running so far away from me. Had you gone to any other place, I probably would have already come to visit you. I really did book a ticket to New Zealand. I had every intention of joining you there. But it was probably a good thing that I didn’t go. I would have only ruined the balance and the life you’ve made for yourself down there. For a while I would have acted like a man in love, perhaps till the time came to sow the field, and then I would have run away like a coward. In the end, I think our love story really was a novel.
Heddi, what can I say? You were always wonderful to me, you gave me every chance possible, more than once . . . but I felt tired, overwhelmed by events, afraid and with a life ahead of me that was too different from the one I was cut out for. But I have a whole lifetime to think it over and regret my mistakes. I accept it, that’s all I can do, knowing what I sacrificed.
It’s hard to move on from those years, that period, those people, you . . . How will I ever be able to show you how much of my soul, my skin, my life belongs and will always belong to you, even though our lives are spinning around the globe in opposite directions? Have I already told you that I’ve decided to tattoo your name? I think I’ll get it done this summer.
I’m happy for you. And I’m a little bit happy for me too. I don’t know why . . . I guess it’s like being given the go-ahead to do new things and set new goals (even though unfortunately I don’t have any yet) . . .
I love you. Please don’t ever forget me,
p.
P.S. I have a gray cat and she’s just had three kittens: two of them are black with white paws and one’s a tabby.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Naples first and foremost for all the experiences I had in its narrow streets, and I hope I can be forgiven for any errors made by my memory, the only map of the city I had.
I wouldn’t have been able to write this novel without the support of my family and whānau (Maori for “relatives and lifelong friends”), especially my husband, Kevin, and our two young boys, Elio and Mattias, who made sacrifices.
Thanks to my friends, in particular my three Kiwi girls, for their endless enthusiasm even when I seemed like a lost cause. A special thanks to Costantino Pes, Sonia Cerasaro, Ester Monti Reid, Mary MacKinven, and Rina Ziccardi; to Elena Bollino for urging me to take a leap and instinctively knowing what the right form for the title was; to my elementary-school teacher Donald Bufano, whom we recently lost and who long after fourth grade encouraged me to keep writing about southern Italy, which he loved so and which ran not only in his blood but in his soul.
I wouldn’t have had the guts to write in Italian in the first place if it hadn’t been for the premonition and conviction of my friend and travel companion Shelley Sweeney, otherwise known as “the witch doctor.” My deepest gratitude goes to my friends at Giunti publishers, who more than new friends feel like old ones I’ve found again, and in particular to Antonio Franchini, who was somehow able to hear my voice from so far away.
A Note From the Translator and Author
I was as stunned as anyone to discover one day that, despite a lifetime of writing in my mother tongue, I could only truly express myself in the Italian I learned growing up and smartening up in Naples. This novel is that eureka moment. But when the time came for me to translate it to English, my newfound literary voice still felt so fragile I was afraid I’d lose it. Yet as an English teacher, translator, and copyeditor, how could I possibly shy away from the challenge? And who, other than me, could divine the true intentions of the author? Translating myself turned out to be stimulating and fun. I paid a great deal of attention to sound, trying to retain some of the alliterations, for example, and to recreate what Italian readers have described as the “freshness” of the language in the original. However, whereas my somewhat naïve lack of linguistic prejudice in Italian allowed me to, for instance, stick certain adjectives onto certain nouns in unexpected ways in my native language, where I know fully well what’s “acceptable” and what isn’t, I was constantly aware of the risk I might bend the words or force the syntax too intentionally, thereby losing the sincerity—the heart—of the novel. The most challenging passages to translate were those that involved physical intimacy or Neapolitan dialect. That said, my sense that some of these nuances may have been unavoidably lost in the English ed
ition is compensated by the tiny but delicious opportunities to go even deeper behind the scenes and thus reexperience the same beloved places and faces and voices, but this time through your eyes.
Here ends Heddi Goodrich’s
Lost in the Spanish Quarter.
The first edition of this book was printed and bound at LSC Communications in Harrisonburg, Virginia, August 2019.
A NOTE ON THE TYPE
The text of this novel was set in Fournier, a typeface first developed by French engraver and typefounder Pierre-Simon Fournier (1712–1768), who was noted for his decorative typographic ornaments and his standardization of type sizes. Stanley Morison of Monotype released the version of Fournier seen on this page in 1924. Fournier has a greater contrast between thick and thin strokes with little bracketing on the serifs that produces an open, clean look on the pages that is both distinguished and friendly.
An imprint dedicated to publishing international voices, offering readers a chance to encounter other lives and other points of view via the language of the imagination.
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
LOST IN THE SPANISH QUARTER. Original Italian language publication: Copyright © 2019 by Heddi Goodrich. Original English language publication: Copyright © 2019 by Heddi Goodrich. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Originally published as Perduti nei Quartieri Spagnoli in Italy in 2019 by Giunti Editore.
FIRST EDITION
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Goodrich, Heddi, author.
Title: Lost in the Spanish Quarter : a novel / Heddi Goodrich.
Other titles: Perduti nei Quartieri Spagnoli. English
Description: New York, New York : HarperCollins, 2019
Identifiers: LCCN 2019003702 | ISBN 9780062910226 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780062910233 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780062910240 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Americans—Italy—Fiction. | Man-woman relationships—Fiction. | Naples (Italy)—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3607.o5922548 P4713 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019003702
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Digital Edition AUGUST 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-291024-0
Version 08032019
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-291022-6
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