The Reluctant Tuscan

by Phil Doran

  When I dug out some coins she told me that it was un regalo , a gift. I invited her to join us for lunch, but she insisted she couldn’t stay, so I handed her a couple of sweet potatoes from a box of fruits and vegetables given to us by our friends from the Alimentari Brutti. She thanked me for the potatoes and left, being far too polite to mention that the produce I had handed her was crawling with aphids.

  I had just gotten back to the table when, once again, the doorbell rang. I turned my head too fast and I had to clutch my neck in pain. The bell kept ringing, so I pulled myself up and trudged back to the door, opening it to the self-satisfied visage of Dottore Spotto. Even though I hadn’t seen him since that dinner at Dino’s some months ago, he embraced me and firmly kissed me on both cheeks, as if we were on the verge of picking out furniture together.

  He had rushed over as soon as he had heard about our accident, he said as Nancy translated. He had come to offer his professional services, but Nancy told him that we had already been examined by just about every kind of doctor one could think of, and as kind as his offer was, we were okay.

  But what about psychologically? It turned out that Dottore Spotto was an eminent psychologist and he had come to treat us for post-traumatic stress disorder. This was an insidious malady, he explained, as he sat down at our table and helped himself to a heaping portion of baccalà fritta. Between mouthfuls of fried cod, il dottore cautioned that we could be cruising along months after such a collision, thinking that everything was fine, when suddenly we could start experiencing night sweats, heart palpitations, sexual dysfunction, and even regressive bedwetting. I saw his point, and as Mrs. Cipollini brought out a chicken cacciatore that looked suspiciously like it had been sacrificed from one of her brood, I began sharing with Dottore Spotto how I had sucked my thumb until the age of six because I was improperly breast-fed.

  If I live here forever I’ll never get used to how Italians will come over to your house at any time of the day or night. In L.A., the last person to drop in on anybody unannounced was the Hillside Strangler. And from practices such as these I have come to understand how much a sense of place can shape a person. How the “where you are” ultimately becomes the “who you are.” And from what I have so far observed, there is no greater difference between Italy and America than our relationship to our natural surroundings.

  One of the more enduring axioms in literature is the idea that life in an American suburb is sterile and emotionally desolate. This is a theme that has been well explored by writers and poets from T. S. Eliot to John Updike, and in popular films from The Graduate to American Beauty. And I must admit that before I lived in Tuscany, I never really understood what they were talking about other than venting some Bohemian contempt for middle-class values.

  But I now understand that in creating our man-made environments, we have distanced ourselves from the primary experience of reality. Tuscany is far older than America, but ironically, it is more unspoiled. Tuscany is the reality, where our suburbia is the re-creation of that reality.

  Think about it . . . our neighborhood park is really a re-creation of a meadow. A mall is a re-creation of a village and a swimming pool a re-creation of a pond. The net effect is to make one’s experiences a step removed from the immediate impact of life. Our lives in the ’burbs are clean, efficient, well organized, and essentially soulless. And I would have never understood that if I hadn’t come to live in Italy.

  Most of our well-wishers had gone home and I was helping Nancy on with her nightgown when we heard a tapping on the bedroom window. I peeked through the shutters and spotted Mario Pingatore.

  “I say, old trout, hope I’m not knocking you up too late,” he said to my eyeball.

  “No, no, not at all,” I said.

  Nancy threw a robe over her shoulders and I opened the window.

  “I was gobsmacked when I heard the news. Frightful business, eh what?” He held up a cardboard-boxful of vegetables and started hoisting it through our window.

  “Please, signore,” I pleaded. “We have so much food.”

  “But they’re fresh from my garden,” he insisted.

  “Thank you, that’s very kind.” I took hold of a box filled with fat carrots, dewy tomatoes, and shiny scallions. Mario was paying us the highest compliment one Tuscan can give another . . . vegetables from one’s garden so newly picked, the dirt was still on them.

  “This is very generous of you,” I said, shooing one of Signora Cipollini’s chickens off the bed so I could put the box down.

  “Coo, look at you with the wonky arm,” Mario said as he regarded Nancy’s cast.

  “It’s just a slight fracture,” she said. “But the doctor didn’t want to take any chances.”

  “And how are you feeling, dear boy?” he said to me, his face a cameo of concern.

  “Well, I got a little banged up,” I said. “But, thank God, it turned out to be nothing serious.”

  “Ave Maria,” he said, momentarily forgetting his English affectations and crossing himself like a real Italian.

  “We just need rest. Lots of rest,” Nancy said, hoping he’d get the hint.

  “What a terrible thing to happen here,” he said ruefully. “Our hospitals are so primitivi. Nothing like you have in America.”

  “I thought the hospital was excellent,” Nancy said. “And I was very pleased with my doctor.”

  “Well, the beastly way these cheeky buggers around here drive, you’ll need him,” he said.

  “Yes, well, we’ll just try to be real careful from now on,” Nancy said, wondering where all this was going.

  “And the red tape.” Mario slapped his forehead for emphasis. “Wait till you try to settle your insurance claim! It’s nothing short of a flippin’ nightmare.”

  “Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it,” I said.

  “Too bad we’re not more like America,” Mario lamented, “where everything is so—”

  “I hope you’re not thinking that we’ve soured on Italy because of this accident,” Nancy said.

  “It was the furthest thing from my mind.”

  “Because if that’s what you came over here to find out, you can go home and take your moldy vegetables with you!” I had to hold Nancy to keep her from grabbing the box with her bad shoulder and throwing it at him.

  “My dear woman!” Mario exclaimed as he backed away from the window. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist.”

  “We’re staying, Mario,” Nancy proclaimed. “And, no matter what it takes, we’re going to get our house finished.”

  “Bully for you.” He turned to go, and in his hurry he almost tripped over Tiberius, who was sniffing at whatever was stuck to Mario’s heel.

  “And here’s something else,” she hollered after him as she squeezed my hand. “We’re going to get remarried in that house! And we’re going to live there for a long, long time and be so damn happy, it’ll make both you and your sister miserable!”

  26

  La Festa della Liberazione

  I learned the story of how the town was liberated from two of the men who were there that day. I had gone into the village to pick up one of Nancy’s prescriptions at the farmacia when I heard voices that were distinctly American. Sitting at the café was an elderly black man in the company of a young couple with their nine-year-old son. They were being hosted by Uncle Carmuzzi, who had smuggled in a bottle of his home-brewed wine and was plying them with it.

  I struck up a conversation and they invited me to join them. I had figured out they were here for the festa, because aside from Nancy and me, we didn’t get many Americans in this neck of the woods.

  The man’s name was Robert Hilliard, from Louisville, Kentucky, and he had traveled here with his daughter, his son-in-law, and his grandson to show them the town he had helped liberate during World War II. After a few glasses of wine, we got around to what had happened that day as former sergeant Robert Hilliard and former partisan guerrilla Uncle Carmuzzi each told me their side of the story. />
  Angelino Carmuzzi caught the squirrel with his bare hands. After skinning it, he and his sister, Mariella, shared slices of raw meat in the grainy darkness of a ditch that ran alongside the Via Apua. In the distance they heard the constant rumbling of heavy artillery and an occasional staccato burst from a machine gun as it pointed its long finger of tracer shells across the landscape. But their ears disregarded those sounds, straining to listen only for the tread of marching boots or the diesel whine of a tank.

  Suddenly there was a short, nervous bird whistle, followed by the stumbling footsteps of Pietro Pingatore tumbling into the ditch.

  “Sono venuti!” he whispered, his face glazed with sweat. “They’re coming!”

  The three of them clambered out of the ditch and proceeded down the road. Eyes darting from side to side, they silently stepped around shell holes filled with pools of oil-stained rainwater from yesterday’s downpour. Twice they had to jump back into the ditch when fighter planes roared overhead at treetop level. The planes were American, the Luftwaffe having been blasted out of the skies weeks ago, but they had still had to dash for cover because the fighters were strafing anything that moved.

  When they approached the junction where the road branched off toward the marble quarries, they readied their machine guns. Since the fall of Livorno three days earlier, elements of the 29th Panzer Brigade had been spotted retreating on this road, and they well understood the German army’s policy of shooting partisans on sight.

  They were walking slowly when Mariella stopped them by silently putting out both arms. She was sniffing the air when she detected something. Something good. Then, out of the mist, they saw the outline of six soldiers coming toward them. By the shape of their helmets and silhouettes of their rifles, they instantly knew.

  “Americani!” Angelino yelled.

  “Halt!” Sergeant Hilliard hollered. Weapons were leveled as both groups cautiously approached.

  “Viva America!” Pietro Pingatore called out. “Viva Franklin Roosevelt!!”

  “Siamo partigiani!” Mariella squealed, hoping they would understand that they were all on the same side.

  “Okay.” Sergeant Hilliard waved at them to come forward. “Slowly.”

  The partisans approached each of them, thinking that the first light of dawn was playing tricks on their eyes by making the faces and hands of all the soldiers look black. The Italians looked at each other in confusion. Was this some new kind of camouflage invented by those ingenious Yanks?

  “We-are-try-in’-to-get-to-Pietra-santa,” Hilliard said pronouncing each syllable as he pulled a map out of his shirt pocket.

  But the partisans could not look at the map because their eyes were riveted on the soldiers’ skin. Surely this wasn’t the color of Americans, they wondered. These faces were not like those of Jimmy Cagney or Gary Cooper, whom they had seen in the few Hollywood movies that had managed to play there.

  “Pietrasanta?” Sergeant Hilliard repeated, pointing up the road.

  “Sì, sì, Pietrasanta,” Angelino Carmuzzi said. Then he tried to explain how they must first come to Cambione, which was on the way. For even though the Germans had pulled out two days ago, until the Americans occupied the town, there was always the chance the Nazis would come back.

  The two groups proceeded down the road, each eyeing the other with curiosity. The GIs were not altogether convinced that these Italians weren’t really pro-fascists leading them into a trap, and the partisans were unaware that they had stumbled into the advance units of the 92nd Infantry Division, an all-black fighting unit known as the Buffalo Soldiers.

  After marching for the better part of an hour past the rusted hulks of burned-out armored cars and an occasional dead horse lying in the road, the GIs and the partigiani reached the ancient Roman wall. There, in the full light of dawn, they saw that half the town had turned out to welcome them with flowers, bottles of wine, and homemade American flags. Black faces split open with wide, toothy smiles as the Buffalo Soldiers passed out chocolate bars and packs of Lucky Strikes. While the crowd cheered, and an impromptu band played, the mayor looked at the partisans quizzically.

  “Loro sono Africani?” he asked. “They’re Africans?”

  “Loro sono Americani,” Angelino Carmuzzi replied. “They’re Americans.”

  We decided that the Festa della Liberazione would be our first public appearance. We were hoping to marshal whatever sympathies we had accrued, by being both accident victims and Americans, into a way to get our house moving again. And like a complex military operation, Nancy and I drew up our plans to target Marco Mucchi, isolate him outside the fortress of his office, and soften him up until his bank unfroze our money.

  Nancy would spearhead this operation, so she woke early to dress for battle. She chose black to properly frame the hospital whiteness of the plaster cast on her arm. Her dress was lacy, sheer, and clingy, yet respectful to the point of somber, and all topped off with an antique wooden crucifix, designed to say that only through strong faith were we able to endure this catastrophe.

  The holiday fell on the hottest day of the hottest month of the hottest summer anybody could remember. The sun had baked all the stone surfaces of the Piazza Maggiore until it felt like a kiln, and the only relief was a seat close to the fountain or the chance that a passing pigeon might flap its wings near your face.

  We waited for the actual ceremony to begin before making our entrance. The mayor, select capos from the Comune, and several prominent local poobahs were seated on the podium set up at the open end of the piazza. The United States of America was represented by an assistant under secretary from the consular office in Florence and a lieutenant colonel from the NATO base at Camp Darby. We chose the moment when the makeshift marching band made up of volunteer firemen and local forestale (forest rangers) struck up the national anthem. As the opening strain of “Oh, say can you see . . .” played on in a brassy, off-tempo way, we entered.

  Nancy was on my arm and our steps were slow, but steady, in testament to our resolve to overcome any adversity. I could feel all eyes upon us, and when I looked over to Nancy, her chin was trembling, but her head was high. She looked like Greer Garson coming out of the bomb shelter after the blitz in Mrs. Miniver. I could feel gratitude and affection pouring out of each one of our friends and neighbors as we passed. Italians love high drama, and we were giving it to ’em, baby, we were giving it to ’em.

  Dino and Flavia had saved us two seats in front, and we got to them just as the mayor finished his speech and introduced Angelino Carmuzzi. The old man stood up and nodded to the applause, and I realized how differently I now saw him from that first time at Dino’s party when Uncle Carmuzzi had fought with Dottore Spotto over my approval for their homemade wines. How different this gnarled old man was from the brave twenty-two-year-old hiding in a ditch, waiting for the Americans to come free his village.

  Uncle Carmuzzi paid tribute to the other members of his little band of partisans, reminding the audience that small groups such as theirs, operating all over Italy, managed to pin down twenty divisions of German soldiers and keep them from being used at Normandy. His voice wavered when he reminisced about Pietro Pingatore, father of Mario and Vesuvia, who were sitting two rows in front of us. Not to be outdone by our theatrics, Vesuvia clutched her heart and sobbed dramatically at the mention of her father’s name, reminding the town how she had dutifully cared for him during that long and fatal illness that took his life in the bitter winter of 1986.

  Any Italian in the crowd who was not crying already completely broke down when Angelino Carmuzzi offered up a prayer for his sister, Mariella. Small and frail as a baby bird, she had survived countless firefights and ambushes with the enemy, only to step on a German land mine two months after the war.

  And just when you thought it couldn’t get any more emotional, the mayor introduced the last survivor of the American platoon that liberated their town. Former sergeant Robert Hilliard, seventy-nine years old, stood up in a slightly bent
military posture. The elderly black man walked stiff-legged to the microphone, saluted the mayor, and embraced Angelino Carmuzzi.

  The crowd cheered, the band struck up “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” and I started crying.

  “Nice touch,” Nancy whispered to me.

  “I’m not faking,” I sniffled.

  Oh, my God, what was happening to me? I’d turned into an Italian. An Italian woman!

  After an Italian has a good cry, he has to eat. And then dance.

  Long banquet tables had been set up ringing the piazza, and in spite of the heat, outdoor kitchens were churning out prodigious quantities of penne alla carbonara and risotto con funghi. People of all ages and walks of life sat together, laughing, shouting, eating, and drinking toasts to everything and everybody.

  We didn’t sit, but circulated, thanking many of our fellow cittadini (citizens) for their kindness and reassuring them that, despite any rumors to the contrary, we still loved Italy and had no intention of leaving. We also spent some time chatting with the Hilliard family. Robert’s wife had passed on some years ago, so he had been brought here by his daughter and son-in-law.

  He told us how different it had been back then, when the armed services were segregated, and even the fabled 92nd Infantry was made up of black foot soldiers under the command of white officers. As we chatted, various people came up to shake his hand and thank him. I commented that the Italians seemed as glad to see him today as they had been back then, and he joked that if his rifle company had taken a different fork in the road, Cambione would have been liberated by soldiers from the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, who were operating on their right flank. That made me smile to think about samba music and how different this party would have been.