Incontinent on the Continent

by Jane Christmas

  In 1952 the union of a Canadian-born Anglican and a Hungarian-born Roman Catholic was considered a mixed marriage. My parents were not allowed to marry in a church, and instead were wed in the modest clergy office of Saint Gregory’s Roman Catholic Church in Oshawa. I was born a few years later, and my brother eighteen months after that.

  I was fascinated by my mother’s Hungarian Catholic heritage, but it was a subject that was not discussed outside our home. My young and fertile imagination determined that this was because my mother was a spy, a thought that was amplified whenever I heard her and her kin speaking Hungarian.

  I was amazed, proud in fact, at how my mother could toggle effortlessly between English and Hungarian. To the average North American in those days, Hungary was a vaguely gray, heavily shelled Eastern Bloc country of people who used paprika when they cooked. To me, it was exotic, mysterious, and dangerous. At family gatherings, one of my mother’s cousins would roll up his pant leg to show off the bullet wounds he received from the Russian soldiers in 1956 when he and his young bride were escaping on their bellies through a farmer’s field during the Hungarian Revolution. A little thrill would rise up in me whenever he recounted that story, and I would sit on the floor, my arms clasped around my knees, and beg for more details.

  On rare occasions my mother would allude to her heritage proudly. “Don’t forget the definition of a Hungarian,” she would remind me. “A Hungarian is someone who goes into a revolving door behind you and comes out ahead.”

  My mother rarely talked about her past, either because there had never been time to do so or because she didn’t think it was interesting enough to share with me. But her anecdote about refusing to date the Hungarian couple’s son was an eye-opener for me. When I was growing up, she would despair at my single-mindedness, and yet here she was relating an episode that illustrated a much stronger will than mine. Why don’t parents ever notice themselves in their children, and why do they have such a hard time cutting their kids some slack? Perhaps for the same reasons we have such a hard time cutting our parents some slack.

  I was about to voice this observation, but she interrupted.

  “Now you, you are too permissive a parent,” she said, pointing a crooked finger at me. “You need to drill into your children about not getting involved [that’s Mom code for “not having sex”] with nonwhites. I can be flexible now—they can marry Europeans, but they have to be white Europeans.”

  I imagined sharing this news flash with my children. When they were much younger—long before they were near dating age—they would return home from a visit to their grandparents and inform me of their Nana’s strict rule about dating nonwhites.

  “She said she would cut us out of her will if we did,” they would say in earnest little voices.

  Still, my mother is entitled to her opinions and prejudices like everyone else. Not wanting to get into a heated argument about it, I replied, “My children’s preference for a mate is really none of my business. I know you think it should be but it isn’t, nor will it ever be. I do not control their sex lives.”

  “I DON’T WANT TO IMAGINE ANYONE HAVING SEX!” Mom shouted. Then, in a softer voice, “Has it stopped raining?”

  4

  Alberobello

  HOW ARE you feeling today?” I asked, poking my head into Mom’s bedroom the next morning. Her pine bed “ was festooned with a pretty white lace canopy that suited her often queenly demeanor.

  “I feel OK ,” she mewed, pulling the covers closer to her.

  “But I just want to sleep.”

  In the planning stages of our trip I had fantasized about Mom and me lounging poolside in our swimsuits on the sun-soaked patio of our trullo, sipping wine and amiably chatting about our dysfunctional relationship. We would raise a thorny subject, discuss it with civilized, wasplike, faux nonchalance, and then laugh hysterically at the folly of our past foolishness. With a clink of our wine glasses we would bury the hatchet, take another sip, and stare dreamily into the distance as the toll of a church bell and the light rustle of olive leaves provided a soothing soundtrack. When we weren’t sipping vino by the pool we would be off on day trips exploring towns and cities in the vicinity.

  The reality was that we stayed cocooned in our separate rooms, warding off the cold and trying to ignore the rain pounding incessantly on the windows. Mom would sleep or read; I would study a road map of Italy, work my way through a book of Sudoku puzzles, or practice Italian from the little phrase book my daughter had slipped into my stocking the previous Christmas.

  The phrase book turned out to be a small delight. It carried the curious warning that travellers to Italy should steer clear of three topics of conversation: the Mafia, Mussolini, and the Vatican. That just made me want to raise those topics with someone immediately. The book also contained a number of rather salacious offerings, which I read and reread with intense interest. What else was there to do?

  Curled up in bed, I sounded out such provocative sentences as: Non lo farò senza protezione (I won’t do it without protection); Toccami qui (Touch me here); Andiamo a letto (Let’s go to bed); O dio mio! (Oh my god!); and the ever-handy Calma! (Easy, tiger!)

  In the evenings, Mom and I fell into a lazy routine. We made our own dinner—usually pasta and salad followed by yogurt or an orange—then watched the bbc’s World News or a movie from the small video library stacked in a corner niche of the living room.

  “Watched” was a bit of a misnomer: My mother didn’t actually listen to the movie; she more or less conducted a running commentary that began before the dvd was loaded into the player.

  Here’s an example.

  “What shall we watch tonight?” she asked one evening.

  “Have you seen Bridget Jones’s Diary? It’s a comedy,” I said.

  “No I haven’t,” she replied. “Who’s in it?”

  “Renée Zellweger and Hugh Grant.”

  “Oh, I can’t stand Hugh Grant,” she said. “What an awful, disgusting creature.”

  “You don’t have to like him—in fact, he plays a jerk in the movie anyway, so it’ll make it easier for you to watch,” I offered.

  The movie began.

  “Who’s that nice young man with the dark hair?” Mom asked about five minutes into the action.

  “Colin Firth.”

  “He’s a handsome one, isn’t he?” Mom said admiringly.

  “He’d be nice for you, Jane. I do like his hair. Oh, now look at that dreadful Hugh Grant. Ewww! Look at him. I don’t see what anyone sees in him. Don’t you agree?”

  I nodded eagerly so as not to prolong the discussion.

  When she wasn’t critiquing the actors’ off-screen lifestyles or on-screen hairstyles she insisted I recap the plot for her—every five minutes. A volume setting of one hundred is apparently not loud enough for her to glean comprehension on her own.

  “HE’S SLEEPING WITH HER BUT HE’S ACTUALLY ENGAGED to someone else!” I yelled over the tv volume and into her deaf ear.

  “I don’t like it when people sleep around like that,” she replied with much tutting and shaking of her head, as if it were my fault that Hugh Grant was bonking Renée Zellweger, or as if I somehow had the moral authority to call a halt to the action and redirect the players to a more appropriate pastime, such as antiquing in the Cotswolds.

  The movie ended happily, not because Renée Zellweger wound up with Colin Firth, but because Mom had the pleasure of seeing Hugh Grant get his comeuppance.

  As I removed the dvd from the player and returned it to its case, Mom studied her watch.

  “Is it really 7:45?” she gasped. “Where does the day go?”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘dago’ too quickly in these parts,” I muttered.

  “Pardon?”

  “Yes, it is 7:45,” I said louder. “The rest of Italy is just getting dressed to go out for dinner.”

  “Well, those Italians can do what they want,” said Mom with the vigor of someone rallying the troops before a battle.
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  “Because we Canadians are going to bed!”

  And with that, she hauled herself upright, paused to get her balance, and then inched her way toward her bedroom. The click of her cane on the terra-cotta tiles was the last I heard of her for the night.

  After three days of this I had had all I could stand.

  “I’m going out,” I announced to Mom between naps one afternoon. “Will you be OK without me?”

  “You’re going out in the rain?”

  “It’s let up a bit. Do you need me to pick up anything?”

  “Where are you going?” she asked. “And why are you going?

  The interrogation had begun.

  “Just into Alberobello. I’m getting cabin fever. I shouldn’t be long.”

  “But we were there the other day. Why are you going?”

  “I need a bit of air and a change of scenery,” I said evenly, holding back an urge to explode into a weeping tirade of how utterly bored I had become. Bored, in Italy! I had dreamed of Italy for about forty years, had pined for everything Italian— the music, the language, the architecture, the art of the great masters. During my university days I had taken courses in conversational Italian and in art history in an attempt to forge a deeper connection to the Italy of my dreams. In those days I sought out Italian men in the hopes that I could become their girlfriend and they would whisk me off to their parents’ villa and introduce me to a large and boisterous family of apple-cheeked aunts and swarthy cousins. I never did find an Italian boyfriend, but that didn’t stop me from craving all things Italian. I frequented small Italian grocery stores, pausing to eavesdrop on Italian conversations, and gravitated toward Italian recipes. I gave clothing with a “Made in Italy” label top priority in the dressing room and in purchasing decisions. Without having stepped on Italian soil, I could close my eyes and summon smells and sensations connected to Italy—the thrashing sea against the coast, the aroma of homemade tomato sauce, the notes of an uncorked bottle of wine, a smoky café; or even the haughty indifference of a Milanese store clerk. With such a vast repertoire to explore, how was it possible that I was already bored in Italy? As I saw it, precious time was being wasted holed up in a cute but remote home with Ms. Lazy Bones.

  I unlocked and opened up the solid wooden front door of the trullo, struggled to find the right key to unlock the double wrought-iron screen doors beyond it—getting in and out of the place was like coming and going from Fort Knox—and then sprinted to the car, splashing through puddles that had accumulated on the pale stone patio.

  Safely in the car, I was about to turn the key in the ignition when I was seized by panic. I was about to go for a drive with only the vaguest idea of my destination. Once there, would I be able to find my way back? What if the car broke down? What if I had an accident? I spoke no Italian. I had no cell phone. No map of the region. If I made a wrong turn it could catapult me to the far reaches of Apulia and beyond, and I might never find my way back. Despite the few forays Mom and I had made in and around Alberobello since our arrival, I did not feel confident venturing out on my own.

  When I encounter situations in which it is clear that I have bitten off more than I can chew, my mind defaults to an intense longing for home and familiarity. Six weeks in Italy no longer sounded as idyllic as it had during the six months in which I planned the trip and spoke excitedly of it to friends. Now it sounded daunting and reckless.

  I’m the type of person who gives herself over to suggestibility and impulse. When an idea launches in my brain I am off to the races, and there is no stopping me. I am propelled by my own enthusiasm. I become a one-person cheering section while those around me aren’t sure whether to humor me and wish me well or alert the nearest mental institution. It was the sort of reaction that greeted me when I took up rollerblading in my forties and when I decided to sell almost everything I owned and move to small, remote Pelee Island, Ontario, one winter to embrace the simple life.

  So it was one day about six months earlier when Frank, the Italian owner of a café I frequent in my hometown, suggested I go to Italy. I don’t know whether it was the way he said it, with tears glistening in his eyes—he had emigrated from Italy to Canada about fifty years before and had never been back—or whether I had worn myself out with unfulfilled promises to visit Italy. Whatever. As soon as I realized that there was no logical reason preventing me from going to Italy I began packing my bags. It seemed like the most sensible course of action.

  I have intermittent bouts of confidence. I give the impression of being a blithe and brave spirit when it comes to travelling, but there is a part of me that is a total scaredy-cat. Rationality flies out the window—not in the planning stages, but only when my two feet are firmly planted at my destination. In other words, at the point of no return. There I stand, stock-still and dumbfounded, as the tap of common sense suddenly turns on and begins to course through me. The question that should have been asked much, much earlier sputters to life in my right brain: “What the hell were you thinking when you came up with this bright idea?” Like the time I stood at the base of the Pyrenees and realized I was going to spend the next eight hours of my life climbing them. God, that was hard. Oddly enough, I continue to put myself in the same predicament time and time again.

  The thought of returning to Mom’s bedside and telling her I was too frightened to go out on my own was simply out of the question. So I did the only logical thing: I turned the key in the ignition.

  I drove tentatively down the long steep driveway and then carefully up the insanely steep road opposite the trullo, stalling the car half a dozen times in the process. I inched my way along a lane that was no more than six inches wider than my car and oppressively bordered by stone fences and trulli whose walls abutted the road. I took a deep breath, foolishly thinking that by inhaling I might somehow shrink the width of the car by an inch or two and make the passage easier.

  Upon reaching the main road, with the rolling Apulia countryside stretching out on either side of me, I turned left and steered the car toward Alberobello.

  The steady sweep-and-thump of the windshield wipers and the low rumble of distant thunder provided an ominous soundtrack. Fog drifted like wispy ghosts in front of my car and encircled the twisted, gnarled trunks of the olive trees with their weary branches stretched out like Christ on the cross.

  “At least there’s no snow,” I murmured to myself, trying to find the bright side in the soggy scene and buoy my resolve.

  Distant brush fires burned and smoldered on a couple of farms. A tradition occurs around mid-March in southern Italy when vines, limbs of olive trees, and other bits of vegetation from the previous harvest are collected, piled into huge mounds, and lit as a sign of rebirth and renewal for the coming season.

  Yes, rebirth and renewal: Wasn’t that the reason for this trip to Italy? At least I’m in sync with the spirit of the season, I told myself, desperately clutching at any straw that might make sense of my being here.

  I pressed the accelerator pedal down a bit more firmly. The forces of coincidence or happenstance are, for me, like stars aligning, and when this occurs a feeling of confidence returns. I began to feel more like an adventurer and less like an impulsive idiot.

  Low, ivy-draped drystone walls built from the abundant local tufo stone were everywhere. They were weathered to an ancient patina, but in spots you could tell by the lighter coloring where new sections had been built or recently patched. This stone border lined the narrow roads and formed gray ribbons across trapezoids of farms, olive groves, and vineyards. The landscape looked a lot like rural England, and the resemblance is no coincidence. About fifty years before they launched their famous conquest of England, the Normans were checking out some Italian real estate. A group of them, fed up with being mercenary Crusaders, left the grinding poverty of their French homeland and trundled off to southern Italy. One day, one of them likely said something along the lines of, “Hey, you know that crossroads we reach on our way to Palestine—the one where
we always go straight rather than hanging a right? Let’s check out that other route.” And off they went.

  Once the Normans had heaved themselves over the Apennines, the formidable range that runs like a spine from the north of Italy to the tip of its boot, they discovered, to their great delight, a largely wild but culturally prosperous and diverse frontier populated by Byzantines, Lombards, and Carolingians.

  One of the many gifts the Normans brought to southern Italy was order—a paradoxical commodity given Italy’s sterling reputation as the epicenter of chaos. In addition to their neat and tidy Norman rules, the Normans introduced their neat and tidy stone fences. The Normans were big on boundaries.

  I had told Mom that I was going into Alberobello just to get more familiar with the region, but my real purpose was to hunt for an Internet café. It had been several days since I had last logged on. I hated being out of contact with people, especially my children—something my mother could not comprehend. When I was growing up and left my parents for an extended period of time, we never checked in with one another. We operated under the assumption that everything was fine and dandy unless we heard otherwise.

  Those days are long gone, and as much as I like being off the grid, an innate sense of wanting to know, just to be sure, seizes me until it can be assuaged.

  I was sure my little family was fine, but we have a habit of staying in contact with each other every few days. I was curious to know what was new in their lives. My boys were in their early twenties—Adam in his first year of college, Matt taking a year off college to work, and sixteen-year-old Zoë was on a three-month exchange program in France. Likewise, they would want to know what I was up to. At the very least they would want to know that their Nana and I had arrived safely.

  Now, you would think an Internet café would be fairly easy to find in Europe, but finding one in southern Italy became a grail-like quest. I parked the car and set off under gray skies to troll the streets and lanes of Alberobello, which were slick with rain. I did this for a long time, until I got cold and returned to the car.