It was only after we had dragged the poles round the corner of the house and out of sight of the road that I noticed the dreaded green devil passing by on the top road. The silly side of this caper being that I would allow myself to be drawn into several more “pole heisting” escapades. I really cannot imagine why I felt so like a thief because Luigi can talk his way out of anything. Even if he could not, what was the worst that could happen? About five years down the road, we would have to fork over three hundred dollars, after all, we knew the legal wheels turned mighty slowly in this part of the world.
The holes for the poles were dug, no easy task, through chunks of rock the size of boxes. Poles in, cement poured, cross beams attached, and we were ready for the vines. Grapes, Virgina creeper, Old Man’s Beard, anything that would grow fast, provide shade and a modicum of privacy. Another pole heisting trip was necessary to get poles for a small grape vine support down the hill on the half acre that Meri had reluctantly agreed to give to Luigi.
I leaned out the window to see what Luigi was up to. He was heading down the hill to our measly half-acre to “release” his grandfather’s one surviving grape which over the years had been mowed down, choked with hay, eaten by cows, and assaulted by who knew what other ugly fates. He had a special attachment to this vine because it was one of a whole vineyard that existed when he was a boy and he remembers helping tend his grandfather’s vines, spending hours among the rows stretched down the hillside on the rock terraces.
As Luigi lugged the poles down the hill to build the arbor for the grapevine to climb, he was watched by three older and wiser men, Giulio, Pepino, and cousin Bruno. They have that certain way of looking, transmitting their message silently but surely. Giulio had already said Luigi was wasting his time attempting to resurrect the dead-as-a-doornail root. And I could see from their body language that they were thinking “daft Canadian does not know what he is doing, no sense. Oh, these people from the new-world, no idea, no idea at all”. As usual, their negativity and doubt drove him on to succeed.
Slowly the arbor took shape and from our window view the three posts each with a cross pole just drove me to sing “There is a Green Hill Faraway”. Luigi shouted up to the old guys, “One for each of you, you old reprobates.” I pressed on with my hymn. The noise and scoffing laughter from the men brought out the old biddies who twittered like hens. For once there was much merriment. Pierina was nowhere to be seen. I thought she might be hiding in the woodshed, frantically crossing herself and praying for Luigi’s redemption. As usual, Luigi would triumph in the face of adversity. Next year the vine would produce sixteen bunches of tiny grapes, hanging like green opalescent gems, from the vine which hascrawled all over the arbor.
Bless his heart, my dear husband who is always full of new and exciting ideas, suggested I make a basket with strips of bark he had peeled away from the poles. I had hinted many times that I wanted Giulio to apply his well known weaving talents to make me a basket and restring the old chairs, but he had not to this point. With nothing to lose I selected strips of similar widths and lengths. My idea was pretty basic. Lie eight strips across another eight. Weave a center square about 24” x 24”. Fold the unwoven ends up and take more strips to weave round and round to build up the sides. This was great fun. It was looking better all the time. I spent about two hours alternately on my knees and bent double and at times needing eight arms to control the lively strips of bark with minds of their own. I devised a way to finish the rim by bending the strips over and weaving them back down the sides. I had been bent double for so long I was unable to get up and thought I looked like Marietta with her crooked old back, but I had made a bloody good basket.
Luigi, always one to boast about the merits of his family must have sent out smoke signals. As my basket sat in the sun to dry it was visited by everyone I knew and even some that I did not. I cringed behind the shutters. What would they think? They must be having a good laugh at my expense. When the best basket maker in the whole wide world limped round on his new stainless steel hip to view this pathetic thing, I wanted to fall through a hole in the floor and disappear forever. There he stood, Giulio with Luigi, discussing no doubt my lack of basket making skills. Oh, come on Virginia, I told myself, go out there and be proud of your handiwork. You think it is good. You like it. Since when did you care what other people think of you? And so I did, and discovered in fact that he and everyone else it seemed thought Ginnie’s basket was okay. Better than they could do said some of the old ladies.
The villagers, as always, wandered by along the top road casting surreptitious glances. Our arbor was obviously causing a stir. “Bongiorno”, I shouted, getting a little satisfaction from catching them in the act of spying. “Ciao Signora,” they called, their stiff waves and tight smiles belying their acute embarrassment at being caught out. The English blood flowing through my veins demands privacy. I could not wait to get my vines, to prune, to fertilize. I would even talk to them, just grow, please grow. Give me some privacy is all I ask! For the time being I had to be content with a line of washing. Strategically hung, it blocks the view into our piazza from the top road. I learned never to hang out the washing on a Sunday. It appeared if one had time to do laundry one had time to go to church.
Eventually I would overcome my insular English ways and enjoy the natural curiosity of these people. We certainly did not have to invent ways to incur their interest in our lives. Whether I painted or sunbathed, potted plants or swept the patio there was always a stray villager on that top road. Any rockwork or tree trimming or cement pouring was scrutinized from afar, I am sure for its correctness and perfection.
We bought our vines the next day and then set off again in our all-purpose Fiat, heading for “Cow Bruno’s” farm to get manure. With buckets, boots, shovels and bags, we assaulted the mountain of cow dung. Entering the realm of the voracious, massive horseflies, we feared for our lives as we shoveled and loaded as fast as we could. Oh God, the smell was disgusting. This huge, wreaking pile of muck was steaming. Almost overcome by the fumes, I looked up to see “Cow Bruno” perched on his tractor. His grin stretched from ear to ear, revealing many gaps among his few remaining tobacco stained teeth, his eyes twinkling, his amusement evident as he laughed aloud at the spectacle before him.
He is the last holdout up here of the livestock generation. Every day of every month of every year, he herds his magnificent stock of fifteen great milking cows out of the barn and across the road. Leaving their plops of smelly evidence they wander down the lane heading for the meadows. They will graze happily until four o’clock at which time they will begin to head home. “Cow Bruno” rests awhile, leaning on his staff, hands crossed cushioning his chin. Lost in thought, his cows, his life, he turns to guide them back, or do they guide him? A time of union and peace between animal and man. Again the plops across the road, the earlier mounds run flat with imprints of tire treads. Those same tires now parked outside Meri’s house or downtown in the piazza, permeating the cappuccino, blending with the incense wafting from the church. Giuliana is quite convinced that Cow Bruno deliberately drives his animals across the road just before she heads down to work at seven and home again at four. Running the gauntlet every day, flying around the winding curves at breakneck speed but always getting caught on the wrong side of the manure trail, this elegant young lady becomes a screaming, thrashing fishwife. Leaping out of her car, arms flying, thumb tip to fingertips, hand raised revealing her total contempt for Bruno and his stinking cows. “Quelle vacche e la strada tuti sporche di merda”, she screams. “Those cows and the street full of filthy shit. He has never liked me, he is jealous because his old woman looks like a shoe”. We listened and tried not to laugh while Luigi made helpful suggestions such as comparing Giuliana to a wild animal, that we could sell tickets to the spectacle and make money exhibiting this fiery she-cat. As the ranting beauty stomped off into the house she gave Luigi a withering look and did not speak to him again f
or the duration of our stay. Did we really want Giuliana, this young Italian hellion, to visit us in Canada? I have worked with high school and college students, Luigi has taught young apprentices but I at least, do not recall encountering such a volatile personality in a young lady. I was once pinned to the wall by a big grade twelve boy but even that experience did not seem as bad as Giuliana’s reaction. It felt like a slap in the face.
What a variety of personalities this little village hasspawned.
Giuliana, a thrashing young beauty locked into a life full of old, bitter people. Wanting to escape but unable, for who knows what reason lacking the ability to make such a move.
“Cow Bruno”, content with his lot. A peaceful uncomplicated life, shoveling cow dung, milking at five o’clock in the morning, cutting firewood, mending fences, raking hay, milking at six o’clock in the evening. There is an unorganized comfort in his house with the warped green shutters at the windows, rusting hinges, and the smell of cheese and baking bread as his “old shoe” of a woman takes care of the inside stuff.
A cousin, Lena, one of the five who had left Rovinaglia years ago as a child with her family to start a new life in Scotland. This was only the first move in her life, here began an odyssey of world travel, England, America, Australia, somehow finding time to have three children but never finding that special something she sought. Finally at seventy-six, she is settled in Australia with one daughter and son and her grandchildren.
And yet another woman fleeing the poverty and degradation for England, working her fingers to the bone in search of something, flailing around at the bottom of the ladder, seeking membership in “The Cut Above”, striving to find security in materialism. Having apparently attained that life-long desire, she wallows in her life of perfection and wealth, among society’s best known. “Lord so-an-so lives down there and that famous radio announcer lives around the corner. Oh yes, and I had tea with the wife of a Harley Street physician who has a patient who knows the lady-in-waiting to the Queen, you know. And did I tell you that my perfect, darling little six-week-old grandson is enrolled in Saint Someone’s Academy from which he will graduate and go to Oxford.” Yes, you have told me, over and over again.
There is the “Scott’s Porridge Oats” lady, Katerina, when I remember her name among the Adelinas and the Natalinas, her Scottish brogue still so strong. She returned to the fold from Scotland years ago after being carted away with her brother to the Scottish Highlands. As adults she and her brother returned and she is content now to while her time away in the fields. Alone since her brother died and never having married, she spices her life with the church, the market and the odd trip to Lourdes or Rome.
Some continue their struggle to sever the ties to this village way of life, others are content to see it through to the inevitable conclusion, some complaining, some not.
A stroll through the villages that are Rovinaglia is always an interesting experience. The views, the personalities, the houses, even the fat duck that waddles in the ditch in Giacopazzi, all contribute to my enjoyment of this way of life. One road connects the separate little villages. Old cart trails lead off in different directions. One of these heads up the hill and just at the brow divides, where one branch goes off up past the “Sad Lady’s” and “Tractor Boy’s” house and on into the mountains. The other trail passes behind the “Dog Man’s” house and then down into Giacopazzi.
The “Dog Man” and his wife and little girl are somewhat of an incongruity among the local inhabitants. Obviously wealthy and educated but not in any way flaunting those facts, they are very down to earth and work hard digging, planting and gathering the vegetables. He breeds and shows Italian hunting dogs and treats them like his children. He is so devoted to them that he has trouble parting with the puppies and will sometimes keep one or two. I think the dog population up there is now in the region of fifteen or so. His wife, having spent many years in London speaks perfect English. She devotes her time to their daughter and to her parents who recently retired from London to live in Casa di Grossi. She is terrified of anything with feathers. I was walking by one day when all their chickens were out on the road. As I looked up she had just come out onto the balcony. “Do you know your chickens are running free?” I called over the cacophony of the barking dogs. “Yes”, she wailed, “but I am terrified of them. They’ll have to stay out until my husband comes home”. With visions of flattened feathered corpses on the road and eagles flying away with white bodies clutched in their talons, I offered to “herd” them back to safety. As her six year old daughter held the gate open I whistled and called in my most professional chicken herding manner and managed to steer all thirty of them through the gate into the field. The little girl shut the gate behind them and we looked proudly up at Mom as though we had achieved the impossible. I guess it was much more of an achievement than I realized.
My herding talent became the talk of the village. The word probably being spread by “Popeye”, an old lady who does not miss a thing, who knows everything about everybody. I once saw her walking towards me some way off, which gave me the time to walk up the steep lane behind the “Dog Man’s” house and avoid her. My evasive tactics were not successful. She lay in wait at the top of the hill having seen me slinking the other way. I was trapped in her gossip session for half an hour. She speaks English as she and her family had spent years in London. When my brother, Christopher visited Rovinaglia a huge coincidence was uncovered. While he was chatting with her husband, he discovered that the old man ran a café in the same area where Christopher plodded the streets as a London Bobby and would often drop into that same café for a good cup of tea.
I did discover some interesting aspects of Luigi’s childhood and the lives of the kids who were his buddies. “Popeye” told me about Luigi’s father, Lorenzo. How the kids loved him because he was so kind to them. During the winter on their way to school he would have hot drinks ready for them when they called for Luigi. He would see that their shoes were warmed up by the fire, then send them on their way to school. This was a side to Lorenzo about which I knew nothing. He made shoes out of old tires for the kids who had none, and wooden ski sets so the kids could have some fun in the winter. Much of the time the children were worked hard on the farms and on inside chores. The strap was a great inducement to obey and stay on the right track, and Lorenzo did not hesitate to target Luigi’s bottom when he felt it necessary. “Popeye” certainly opened my eyes! Luigi’s more recent teenage recollections from New York were tales of constant bitterness between his parents, disagreement and arguments rampant in their home. I can only imagine how miserable it must have been, how this part of his life had overshadowed the happier moments of childhood.
My favorite house is just up the road from the chicken place, among the group of houses called Giacopazzi. Very old, its walls exhibit patches of brick and rock where the crumbling ochre colored stucco has fallen away. Worn, warped bright blue shutters hang precariously at the windows and a tangled mass of climbing red roses have crept up and across the walls. During what must have been a sixty or seventy year journey they have traveled up to the eaves and into the eaves troughs and now venture forth across the terra cotta roof. Hanging in the doorway is an old, faded orange fly curtain made of long fuzzy strips of material. The occasional wave from a breeze is the only indication of movement at this house. Seldom seen are its occupants except for the old grandpa who perches on his favorite rock at the end of the house in the shade. His mind now departed to another plane, he sings away to himself in what seems to be unintelligible gibberish. The old dog and cat often lie at his feet. I will always turn and look back at the house from a higher point up the road beside the fat duck that is usually waddling in the ditch. The colors are what attract me most about this house. One does not often see blue shutters in this part of the world. Set against the crumbling old ochre walls, they leap out in happiness from among the gorgeous red roses. I might feel sadness at the spe
ctacle of this old man on his rock if he was against the more usual background of drab gray stucco so common now, but I can only smile when I see him seated against this lovely, colorful old place. I always converse with the old fat duck and she looks at me, her head cocked just to one side and then to the other, believing I am sure, that this thing before her is an alien. People round here just do not talk to ducks, except of course for the old grandpa who will sing to her when she waddles by.
My usual route will take me on up the hill to the cemetery and church. Along the way I stop often to look out over the valley. The land drops away steeply and I can see over the tops of the beautiful chestnut trees covering the hillside. Because the church stands at an isolated spot and not in the middle of the group of homes it is kept locked, otherwise I would spend time looking round inside.
I have not seen the interior for a few years at which time it was badly in need of repair and maintenance. I cannot often be talked into attending a church service, or mass, but on one occasion I allowed Luigi to twist my arm. It was the yearly feast of Madonna del Carmine. Pierina will raid the flower gardens the day before gathering flower heads so that she can strew petals along the processional route through the village. I am very protective of our roses now. On that day when I looked out of the window to see Nona’s roses picked clean, I was not pleased. I know Nona would have approved but she was tending a higher garden now. These roses were under my care. For want of better words, hands off my roses!
In Love With Emilia Page 9