The Reluctant Tuscan

by Phil Doran

  If it were a hot day in the shank of summer, I would pass the local swimming pool and gaze at it wistfully. This clean, modern facility was the jewel in the crown of Cambione’s municipal works. When I arrived in the spring and Nancy brought me for the first time, I was delighted to have such an opulent place to cool off and exercise. We quickly fell into a pattern of using it two or three times a week, but one day I noticed a sign somebody had just put up. My Italian wasn’t very good in those days, but I did recognize the word chiuso, closed. Soon as Nancy came out of the ladies’ dressing room I pointed it out and she told me that it was there to inform the patrons that the pool would be closed for the months of July and August.

  I was confounded. They were closing the swimming pool during the two hottest months of the summer? Nancy was disappointed but willing to let it go. I, however, wasn’t, and I insisted she act as interpreter as I grilled the bagnino (pool boy) about their policy.

  He patiently explained that they had to close the pool then because that was the time the employees took their vacations. Here’s a radical thought, I posed: Why don’t half of you take your vacations in July and the other half in August? That wouldn’t work, he explained, because July and August are the months when everybody who belongs to the pool prefers to go to the beach.

  I’m condensing this conversation, of course, but it was from episodes like this that I slowly came to accept a way of thinking that at first was totally incomprehensible. The best I could do was learn to live with it by putting it in the category of things I’d never understand, like why some people enjoy bagpipe music.

  As I came to the end of the piazza, I had to slip past the small market that the townspeople referred to as Alimentari Brutti (the Shop of Ugly Groceries). This place presented a rather ticklish problem for us, because Nancy had become chatty with the daughter of the elderly lady who owned it. Mother and daughter had pretty much given up on getting any of the locals to patronize them, but they were always urging us to shop there. Nancy tried to wriggle out of it by explaining that, as Americans, we were more used to big supermarkets, which is why we drove to Lucca once a week to shop at the supermercato.

  Truth was, their store displayed a foul-looking assortment of produce that looked to have had been fished out of a compost heap, and the canned goods were dented in a way to make you think about botulism. But the old lady and her daughter were such nice people, and besieged us so earnestly, that we tried to shop there when we needed items that wouldn’t poison us, like wax paper or clothespins.

  Another constant feature of my daily walk was the small, brown, excitable mutt that Nancy and I had dubbed Horn Dog for his penchant for humping anything that moved across his field of vision. Dog, cat, goat, squirrel, mailman, it mattered little to him. If it could fog up a mirror, Horn Dog would try to screw it. When he saw that I was not interested in his advances he would chase after me, yapping at my heels in a frenzy of sexual tension. I would have gotten angry at him, but he so reminded me of myself when I was fifteen.

  There are things I’ll always miss about the States, but I can say with reasonable certainty that when I return to L.A. after a long absence, and walk into Sav-On Drugs, the employees will not drop everything and rush over to me with hugs and double-cheeked kisses. Yet, this was precisely what happened when I returned from Hollywood and walked into Gilberto’s Farmacia. And I had only been gone three weeks.

  There is a fabric of life here, a texture that enfolds you in a way that as a young man I might have found smothering. I grew up in a small town and I couldn’t wait to get out. But the years of faceless anonymity in Chicago, Los Angeles, and London must have chilled me in a way that made me receptive to the warmth of Tuscan cheer. Maybe I’m mellowing as I get older, but I find myself no longer judging a place by its theaters and its clubs—or its lack of them. It is no longer vitally important to me to be able to buy an onion bagel at three in the morning, and for someone who has lived his life by staying out of the impact zone of human emotions, I have come to find life here oddly nurturing.

  One Friday, after my daily walk, I joined Nancy and Avvocatessa Bonetti at the Comune archives. I had picked up some Perugia chocolates at the Confused Store and placed the opened box on the table where they were working. The avvocatessa thanked me and took one, but Nancy kept right on working without so much as a glance at the sweets. She was still upset with me for wanting to give up, and this was her way of letting me know that it would take more than a box of cream caramels to persuade her to forgive me.

  I plopped down on a stool and hauled a thick, mildewed ledger onto my lap. Numbers swam in front of my eyes as I tried to focus on the 2.930,00 lira that had been paid in property taxes by Lot 7BY-2 on 08/06/66. That was the lot right next to ours, and like all the land around us, it was owned by the Pingatores. What stuck out was that this amount was higher than that paid on the surrounding plots, which were purely agricultural, perhaps indicating that a structure existed there. Was that a mistake? Could that structure be on our lot, and in fact, could it be our house? It was a slim chance this would come to anything, but we were desperate and we had to run out every ground ball.

  Just then Nancy screamed. I whipped around to see her jump out of her chair and hysterically flick a spider off her arm. The little gray spider landed on Avvocatessa Bonetti, who also started to scream. I rushed over to make sure nobody had been bitten. They were unpunctured, but in shaky voices they urged me to hurry up and kill it. I told them I didn’t know where it went. They pointed in the direction of a stack of cardboard boxes piled up in a corner.

  They were far too upset for me to invoke my vegan creed, so I picked up the heavy ledger and advanced. I started moving away boxes amid Nancy’s cautions to be careful because there were probably thousands of spiders under there. In fact, two did scurry away, but unable to identify either one as the perp, I held my fire. I was pushing aside a half-buried box with my foot when I noticed that stenciled on the side were the words U.S. ARMY AIR FORCE.

  I dropped the ledger and pulled the box free. Brushing away the spiders, I ripped it open. As Nancy and Avvocatessa Bonetti timidly approached, I discovered it was full of large black-and-white photos. I took out several and realized what I had found. They were aerial reconnaissance photos from World War II. All thoughts of spiders forgotten, we tore through them until we found one that showed some familiar landmarks, and there, right in the middle of the photo, was our house! Of course the air force had photographed the Bunker. The Germans were using it as a gun emplacement!

  At last, we held la prova in our hands . . . the proof that our house existed. We were shouting with glee and pumping our fists in victory when I glanced at the clock and realized that the Dipartimento d’Autorizzazione della Licenza Edilizia would close in about fifteen minutes. And this being Friday, it wouldn’t reopen until Monday afternoon, maybe. We bade a hasty good-bye to the avvocatessa, grabbed the photo, a handful of chocolates, and raced for the car.

  Thanks to the unusually light traffic, we made good progress until we were flagged over by two carabinieri standing on the side of the road, machine guns hanging from their shoulders. Despite the show of ordinance, this is a common occurrence in Italy, where motorists are routinely stopped to have their papers checked. So while Nancy showed them her passport and a smile, I anxiously stared at my wristwatch and groused about this lack of “probable cause” and their violation of “due process.”

  One carabiniere, who was thick and muscular with the neck of a weight lifter, examined the car’s rental agreement, while the other, tall, skinny with a big Adam’s apple, looked in our trunk. The weight lifter seemed pleased that we were Americans and informed us that he had relatives in Philadelphia. When the tall, skinny one heard that we were from southern California, he dropped whatever he was doing in our trunk, and came over to our window to rhapsodize about surfing and California girls, repeatedly using the one word of English he knew, Baywatch.

  I think they would have stood there all d
ay chatting with us, but Nancy told them that we were running late for a very important appointment. They handed us back our papers and we left amid smiles and friendly waves.

  I checked my watch and realized that the office would be closing in less than five minutes. Nothing else runs on time in Italy, but the door locks of every store and office in this country are obviously connected to a chronometer at the Specola Astronomica at the Vatican, so everything can close up tighter than a fist at the exact stroke of one.

  We raced through town, squealing tires through the roundabouts just like real Italians. Double-parking in front of the office, we jumped out just in time to see a police car bearing down on us. We froze at the thought of how many traffic laws we had broken. Nancy was preparing her excuses, when we recognized the tall, skinny carabiniere getting out of the police car. He approached our car and sheepishly asked us to open our trunk. Then he reached in and retrieved his machine gun. He apologized for having left a deadly firearm in our vehicle, but the thought of all those surfer girls in bikinis had made him a little absentminded. We told him there was no problem, if he’d just watch our illegally parked car for a few minutes while we dashed inside.

  We chugged up the stairs and managed to slip in the door just as the handsome guy behind the counter was putting on his hat to go to lunch. Nancy blocked his way, and I held the photo in front of him. He vigorously protested that office hours were over for the day. Nancy argued back that a government office must deal with everyone who is waiting before they can officially close. The argument escalated, until the good-looking guy’s boss, who was also trying to get out the door, saw that we had no intention of moving. Finally, they stopped quarreling with us long enough to actually look at the picture. Then they looked at each other in disbelief.

  After briefly conferring, the boss left for lunch, turning us over to the good-looking guy. Muttering something about stranieri lacking any respect for a worker’s hours, he went back to the counter and handed us the forms to fill out so we could petition for an address.

  This called for a celebration, so we left the Comune and went to an obscenely expensive ristorante for lunch. I ordered a bottle of Sassicaia, and as we lifted our glasses, I made a toast to that little gray spider, hoping that in its honor, Nancy would never make me kill one again.

  16

  Il Sentiero

  Having proved that our house existed, we were not out of the woods yet. In fact, the woods were causing our latest problem. This dilemma reared its ugly head when we first met with our geometra, Gigi. Despite the image the name conjures up, Gigi was not an adorable little French girl like the type Maurice Chevalier would have sung to. Gigi, the common nickname for Luigi, was our land surveyor—a burly Goliath of a man with a forehead wide enough to show home movies on and thick locks of long hair that curled around the sides of his face, giving him the appearance of a rather alert-looking musk ox.

  Gigi had hauled his surveying equipment up to our land so that he could take the necessary measurements and file the proper documents with the Comune. When all that was approved by everybody who had to approve it, we could get down to the hard business of turning this pile of . . . well, crap . . . into a house. Nancy had driven some stakes into the ground to mark off how we wanted to expand the structure to include such things as a closet and a bathroom. But no sooner had Gigi squinted into his surveying level than he started shaking his woolly head and telling us that what we had planned could not be done.

  Gigi unrolled an ancient, yellowing map that looked like something Vasco da Gama might have used and pointed out a small grove of olive trees sitting at the top of our hill. The map clearly showed that the only way to get to that piece of land was to come through our property. By law the owner of those trees had the right of access, which in this instance meant a footpath (un sentiero) that happened to run right though the area where we wanted to expand. We followed Gigi’s thick finger as he traced the course of this path, pointing out how it had been worn down by centuries of use, and that its ancient heritage made it all but untouchable.

  All of the obvious questions ensued, followed by all the obvious answers. No, the path cannot be obstructed in any way. No, the only way to change the course of the path was to petition the Comune and get permission from the owner of the trees. And, yes, the owner was none other than our neighbor, Vesuvia Pingatore.

  Nancy fumed and stomped all over the disputed strip of land, trying to figure out how she could enlarge our house while still allowing Vesuvia to get up to her land. As she did this, I studied the ancient map, looking for a loophole. Unable to make any sense out of the renderings of property lines so arcane, I half expected to see illustrations of dragons in the corners to show what would happen when you fell off the edge of the earth.

  I walked over to where Nancy was talking to Gigi about how we might reconfigure our design in light of this new development. Not that I could be of any help, but the sun was really starting to beat down, and I wanted to stand in some of the shade Gigi was casting. I watched them carry on for a while, then Gigi walked away—either because the conversation was over, or because he was feeling uncomfortable that I was standing so close.

  “What does he think?” I asked.

  “Well, as it stands now, Vesuvia’s footpath will run right through our new shower stall.”

  “That’ll be cozy,” I said, studying the terrain around as if I actually knew what I was looking at. “I don’t suppose we could open up the area behind the house.”

  “Solid bedrock. It would cost a fortune. The only way we could grow the house is in this direction, and now we can’t even do that.”

  I looked over at Vesuvia’s house, and unless the sunlight was playing tricks on my eyes, I thought I saw a figure moving behind one of the shaded windows. She was watching us and probably enjoying the heck out of our latest problem.

  I nudged Nancy and directed her attention to Vesuvia’s window. “What if we offered to buy it from her?”

  “She’s not going to sell to us,” Nancy said.

  “It’s worth a shot.” I looked uphill at the clump of trees in question. “It’s a such a small plot, she probably doesn’t even use it anymore.”

  “All our money’s tied up, remember?” she said.

  “Maybe we can put it on a credit card,” I said.

  “Look, don’t worry about it.” Nancy started pulling up a wooden stake and repositioning it. “Maybe there’s a way to alter the design so we—”

  “No, why should you?” I said. “You spent time working this out, let’s see if we can’t get it the way you want.”

  “How? Just call her up and ask her how much she wants?”

  “I was thinking more of a peace offering. Suppose we give her a gift. Something nice. And in the note we say that since we’re going to be neighbors, would she consider selling us that piece of land?”

  Nancy thought for a moment, chewing on her lower lip in concentration. Then she looked over at Vesuvia’s window, where our neighbor was now in full view. “Think you could get me a photo?”

  This took a little figuring out, but I was finally able to give Nancy what she wanted by using my camcorder. I set it up on a tripod behind some foliage so it was surreptitiously aimed at Vesuvia’s house. I zoomed in tight on her side porch and locked it down. Then, using the remote, I started taping whenever she appeared there to shoot another malocchio in our direction. It took a few days, and there were times I felt as if I were filming a nature special for the Discovery Channel, but at least I wasn’t standing hip-deep in a piranha-infested river waiting for two tsetse flies to start mating.

  What Nancy wanted was a nice clean profile, almost a silhouette, which I was able to get. I then used the software on my computer to clean up the edges, sharpen the image, and enlarge it. I printed it out for her, and Nancy took it to her marble studio. She selected a small, flat piece of moon-white alabaster, and working freehand with an air hammer, she carved out a bas-relief showing Vesuvia’s face i
n profile.

  The carving was a remarkable likeness, even though Nancy took pains to turn Vesuvia’s flyaway hair into smooth, flowing locks and make her hawkish nose look aquiline and aristocratic.

  When it was complete, we carefully composed a note saying how much we were looking forward to being her neighbor, and how, in the spirit of friendship, we’d like to give her this gift. We ended the note with the humble suggestion that perhaps she would consider selling us the small plot of land at the top of our hill. We arranged to have the package dropped off at Vesuvia’s door, and then waited for her response.

  It would prove to be a long wait.

  17

  Tito Tughi’s Auto Mundo

  Working at a speed that undoubtedly made them dizzy, the Comune approved our petition for an address, and within a week il piccolo rustico was forever to be known as 42 Via Serena. I liked the number because it was easy to remember, but Mario Pingatore was particularly delighted, for as we learned from Umberto, who heard it from Vesuvia, forty-two was the year he was born, and he wasted no time spreading the word that this was an omen the house would soon be his. And this portent apparently had enough street mojo to prompt several customers of Lucca’s Barbershop to set up a pool establishing Mario as the eight-to-five favorite.

  The force of superstition in Italian life can never be minimized. It seems to exist with equal potency up and down the boot as well as the socioeconomic ladder. Some of these superstitions exist without any trace of explanation, like the one decreeing that the head of your bed must never touch a wall that faces out to the street, or you’ll die of brain fever. Some have a twisted connection to science, like the adamant Italian belief that no water, not even the amount involved to wash your face, can touch you after you eat, or you will die. This is probably related to the avoidance of swimming after eating, which can cause cramps. And some superstitions, as crazy as they sound, may actually have a basis in logic, like the phobia about eating freshly baked bread. This came from the hard years after the war when Italian mothers, wanting the loaf they had just baked to last a few days, told their kids that eating bread while it was still warm could cause, you guessed it, brain fever.