Incontinent on the Continent

by Jane Christmas

  She was a petite woman with short, curly, dark hair and thick dark eyebrows. She wore a crewneck black top printed with red, stylized flowers, over which was a red vest of boiled wool, whose placket edges were embroidered with small colorful flowers. Topping it was a crisp white bibbed apron. Simple gold hoop earrings adorned her ears; a small but substantial diamond-studded cross on a fine gold chain hung carefully around her neck. Her face, devoid of makeup, was the most contented I have seen on anyone.

  “Buongiorno,” I smiled. “Vorrei due panini con prosciutto e provolone per favore.”

  “Sì. Inglese?” she asked in a thoroughly friendly manner.

  Perhaps my accent wasn’t that good after all.

  “Sì. Yes,” I replied humbly.

  “My husband, he speak some English,” she said as she selected two fresh rolls.

  She called out to him, and he emerged from the end of an aisle where he had been stocking the shelves with packages of toilet paper.

  He was a bit taller than his wife, with salt-and-pepper hair and gray-flecked eyebrows and stubble. Tortoiseshell-rimmed, square glasses sat on the bridge of his nose, and he pushed them slightly as he approached. His black ski jacket was partially open, revealing a fawn-colored scarf that had been expertly folded and furled in a cravat style.

  “You speak a bit of English, un po’ di inglese?” I asked in that unfortunate tone people reserve for imbeciles and those who do not speak their language.

  “I sure hope so,” he deadpanned in a flawless American accent. “I spent almost twenty years in Pittsburgh.”

  Relieved that I could revert to a language that didn’t require me to keep flipping through a phrase book, I asked Federico—for he had introduced himself—how he had ended up in an American city and what drew him back to this remote town in the sky. His happy wife began preparing our sandwiches, and Federico was only too pleased to indulge my question. He had left this town, San Mango d’Aquino, the place of his birth, as a young engineer, he said.

  “Professional jobs in Calabria were few and far between at the time,” he explained. “If I wanted to practice engineering I had to move, and Pittsburgh gave me that opportunity.

  “After eighteen years, I packed it in. I’d had enough,” he said, leaning against the glass case of the deli counter. “So I came back to marry her.” He shot a smile and a wink at his wife, who giggled shyly. “That’s my Marisa. We have two kids now, both of them away at Cosenza—you would have passed it on your way here. Our son is at university studying computer engineering; our daughter is studying to be a hairdresser.”

  He gave us the Reader’s Digest version of San Mango, telling us that it was settled in the 15th century and now has a population of about eighteen hundred. Sure, he agreed with a slight shrug, it was a sleepy place compared with the bustle of Pittsburgh, but the trade-off suited him. He shot another smile at Marisa, who beamed back at him.

  A good and happy marriage, I decided.

  Marisa handed us our sandwiches and popped some complimentary pastries into the bag as we paid the bill.

  “You know,” said Federico as we prepared to leave, “my son’s trying to learn English. Can I give him your e-mail address so he can practice with you?”

  “Of course,” I replied, though I privately doubted a twenty-year- old guy would want to correspond with a fifty-something woman. I gave Federico the date we would be back in Canada.

  Sure enough, the day after we returned home, I received an e-mail from Federico and Marisa’s son. We have been corresponding sporadically ever since.

  “What are the odds of us travelling through a country we barely know, taking a random exit, winding up in this town, and meeting those two?” I asked Mom as we drove out of San Mango. I put the car in neutral and let it coast down the sixteen-hundred-foot descent.

  “It’s like a little miracle, isn’t it?” said Mom. “What a lovely couple.”

  Within minutes we had left the quiet simplicity of San Mango and found ourselves back in the warp-speed world of the A3.

  “They looked very much in love, didn’t they?” I said, still smiling at the memory of this lovely couple. “Why didn’t you and Dad ever show affection to one another? I don’t think I ever heard you say ‘I love you’ to each other—or to me, for that matter.”

  In my own household, “I love you” tends to be as common a phrase as “shut up!”

  “To say ‘I love you’ is meaningless,” Mom said with a practical clip to her voice. “When you think about it, what does ‘I love you’ mean? I’d rather have someone show me than say it.”

  “Show it how?”

  “By respect and honesty, an occasional little gift,” she said.

  “That’s where we’re different,” I replied. “Respect and honesty are the baseline in any relationship, but I also need physical intimacy and verbal reinforcement. I want it all.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Mom twitch at the words “physical intimacy.”

  “Your father and I showed you and your brother enough love when you were little,” she said defensively.

  But had they? Certainly my brother and I lacked nothing growing up. We had a lovely warm place to live, good clothes, firm values to model, and no shortage of food on the table. But the many chores (from polishing silver to planting trees) and strict routines (from curfews to regimented homework and piano-practice times) imposed by my parents never allowed for relaxed interactions. By the time the chores were done and the routine had been followed to the letter, everyone was too worn out and too resentful to care about bonding.

  My mother—she must have been Norman in a former life— ensured that order reigned when it came to me. My posture, my hairstyle and color, my personality, my clothing, came under her microscopic scrutiny. She wanted a neat, compliant, gregarious, and happy child; I was none of those things. The more she insisted, the more I resisted. She was not gentle with me, and I retaliated by not being gentle with her.

  Talk of “feelings” was not encouraged in our family. It was the ’60s after all. I picked up by nuance what I had to know, and that made me anxious because I was always looking for clues or anticipating disasters, afraid of messing up. There was a tension in our home, an anticipatory sense that something was about to happen or that someone was going to be asked to do something productive. When I came home after playing with my friends, I would tiptoe in the door, gauging the tenor of the household before shouting out a wary “Hello?”

  I would intently watch tv sitcoms and privately wonder what ingredient, aside from product sponsorship, our family needed in order to become just like the tv family. What made other families so easygoing and good natured?

  My parents seldom laughed around my brother and me. Certainly not on weekdays. There wasn’t a formal decree or anything about this, but if memory serves, Monday to Friday was a sober, almost monastic time of schoolwork, green vegetables, and early bedtimes. On the weekends we did chores during the day and were allowed to eat hamburgers and french fries on Saturday night while watching Hockey Night in Canada. Our bedtime was extended to 10:00 pm, when the game ended.

  But when my parents had a dinner party, which they occasionally did on Saturday nights, they unleashed their fun-loving, witty natures among an eclectic, colorful cast of friends—artists, academics, businesspeople, writers, and engineers. The women were always glamorous in their cocktail dresses, high heels, and glittering bijoux, the men exuding elegance in their dark suits with starched white shirts and polished shoes.

  A steady din of chatter and tinkling glasses would pervade our home on these nights, frequently punctuated by an outbreak of riotous laughter. These were giddy, relaxed affairs. My father would croon along with Frank Sinatra on the hi-fi while shaking a batch of his signature martinis; my mother would lay out a remarkable buffet and be the consummate hostess of grace and ease.

  I would loiter in the shadows upstairs, trying to catch a glimpse of the guests, but more importantly to watch my p
arents laugh and let loose. I felt hurt that they didn’t act this way in front of me.

  When the guests were gone, our household settled back into its somnolent, orderly state. My father would retreat behind a book or the Globe and Mail; my restless mother would keep the activity level and routines running like clockwork.

  My parents were not big on showing physical affection. I have no memory of ever being cuddled or hugged by either of them when I was growing up, aside from the occasional stiff embrace, and yet I don’t recall ever being worried about the lack of hugging. This changed when I had children of my own. The presence of little tykes softened my parents, and from then on, they were all about hugging.

  As our car zoomed along the autostrada, I began to drift into a zone of self-pity, wishing that we had been a cuddling family, wondering why my parents had felt more comfortable with rigidity and remoteness.

  It was the sort of intense, forthright conversation I wanted to have with my mother during our trip. But discussions with her require the kind of checklist preparation that Batman undertakes when he climbs into the Batmobile and races off to face his wily opponent: “Guilt deflector up, hostility radar activated, I-told-you-so shields engaged, self-esteem force field on standby.” In other words, I need to be psychologically armed when I face my mother. A stiff drink doesn’t hurt, either.

  I wanted that conversation with my mother desperately, and I wanted it to be meaningful and cleansing for us both. But a car is never the ideal place for an intense talk, especially if I’m behind the wheel. Besides, I was holding out for something more from Mom, something more than her predictable response, “You only seem capable of remembering the unhappy events in your childhood,” which she had started to chant in the car. Memory, like hearing, can be selective.

  THE RAIN caught up to us and accompanied us through most of Calabria. Pewter clouds hung low and heavy as our tires swished through sprawling puddles, and the thwap-thwap of windshield wipers dodged a staccato fire of rain pellets. Would we have been better off staying in Alberobello? I had a suspicion bad weather was following us.

  Still, there was a prehistoric beauty to what we could glimpse through the rain-splattered windshield of this new landscape. The vegetation in these parts was fecund, moist, sexy, and oversized. Huge swollen aloe limbs thrashed wildly like octopus tentacles; massive prickly pear with pancake-shaped pads the size of brontosaurus footprints sprouted tomato-sized red buds that looked ready to burst. Glossy new growth was evident everywhere in this richly saturated green landscape.

  We had not yet seen northern Italy to make an informed comparison, but based on what we were glimpsing of southern Italy I couldn’t help but jump to conclusions. Aside from Taranto—and to be fair, it was a modest size—we did not encounter any explosively large cities on the scale of, say, Milan or Naples. In fact, once you are south of Naples, there isn’t anything that could be called a booming metropolis. There is a refreshing absence of glossy shopping malls, skyscrapers, and tourist attractions, though, sadly, those fixtures seem to be the measure of a boom economy these days.

  A wide socioeconomic chasm has existed between northern and southern Italy for centuries, a disparity that is particularly pronounced nowadays. Although Italy has boomed economically since the Second World War, the spoils have not been equally distributed. The country might very well be united under one government, but it is starkly divided between the prosperous North and the poor South.

  In 2006 a referendum was held on whether the North and South should separate. Despite all the bickering from the North about how their hard-earned cash is being used to prop up the South—or maybe because the Northerners were too lazy to get out of their café chairs to vote (only half of them cast ballots)—Italians overwhelmingly agreed to remain united. That might very well change: Silvio Berlusconi, who bounces in and out of the presidential job, has campaigned on a promise to split Italy in two.

  According to 2006 statistics, unemployment in the South sits at more than 12 percent, compared with 3.6 percent in the North. More disturbing is the exodus of young people from the South: more than 34 percent are fleeing small towns in the South such as San Mango d’Aquino, compared with 13 percent of their Northern counterparts.

  Italy’s government is trying to reverse the trend by sending loads of cash to tart up the South for international tourists. Still, the question remains, Why has action been so slow in coming?

  This was a question raised in 1969 by H.V. Morton in A Traveller in Southern Italy. Morton bemoaned the state of some of southern Italy’s treasures: castles neglected to the point of being regularly pillaged, fortresses left to the mercy of the elements, important ruins overgrown by brush, towns unable to afford gatekeepers to protect their artifacts. Much of what Morton described then was still in evidence during our trip nearly forty years later.

  Still, the South is not entirely disadvantaged, as I learned while leafing through La Repubblica one day. Southerners work fewer hours, have more holidays, and enjoy a lower cost of living than their frenetic-living northern counterparts.

  The South also has a more ancient pedigree. You can see it in the robust and gnarly trunks of the olive trees.

  Here’s my advice: If you want to experience Old Italy, don’t go to Tuscany; go to Calabria. It is the sole and the soul of Italy.

  NEARLY THREE hundred miles and about five hours after leaving Alberobello, we arrived just after 1:00 pm in Reggio di Calabria, the tip of the toe of Italy’s boot.

  “Keep your eyes out for the word traghetti,” I said to Mom.

  “That’s the word for ferries.”

  “Did you say spaghetti?” she asked. “I’m not really hungry.”

  “No, tra-ghetti,” I said, louder. “Just look for signs with a boat symbol.”

  It wasn’t long before we arrived on an industrial-looking quay stacked with rust-colored cargo containers. I stopped at a small building inside a raised gate barrier to ask for directions to the ferry. A big swarthy man with a cigarette dangling from his mouth pointed to the far end of the quay.

  I got back into the car and drove farther along, through a graveyard of rusting metal, but could not find the ferry’s ticket booth. We circled around, and on our second loop spied a tiny, nondescript kiosk.

  I got out of the car and approached the window. A young, jaundice-skinned fellow with a cigarette hanging from his mouth was absorbed in the task of counting a wad of euros.

  As I waited for him to finish, glancing down at the phrase book I held in my hand to make sure I was going to ask my question correctly, one of the lenses in my (new, I might add) eyeglasses inexplicably popped out and fell to the pavement.

  “What the hell?”

  I dropped to my knees and groped madly around. I located the lost lens inches from my foot—it had not broken, thankfully—then fumbled to replace it in the empty frame. My eyesight had declined rapidly in the last year, and without glasses I was hopeless.

  The young man stopped counting his money and regarded me with amused curiosity, as if I were some odd species he had not encountered before.

  “Mi scusi,” I smiled. “Dove posso comprare un biglietto per Messina? Due biglietto . . . biglietti?”

  “Qui. Venti euros,” the man in the booth said in a gruff voice.

  “Per due? Con macchina?” I asked, trying to clarify whether the cheap ticket price included passage for our car.

  “Sì,” he answered.

  “A che ora . . . ”

  “Le tre e mezza,” he replied quickly.

  I looked puzzled. He held up three fingers and slowly with emphasis said “e mezza.”

  I pretended to understand and then remembered that mezzo meant half, so, of course, half past three.

  “That was cheap,” I said to Mom returning to the car.

  “Only twenty euros, about twenty-eight dollars.”

  “With the car?” she asked with surprise.

  “Yup.”

  We waited in the car for an hour an
d a half, not wanting to risk leaving the dock in case we could not find our way back. We were hungry, but the lone café on the dock was, naturally, closed.

  Two truck drivers loitering nearby—one large and shy; the other thin and uncertain looking—edged their way toward us. Mom’s hands tightened around her purse.

  “You go there?” said the larger of the two in halting English, pointing across the Strait of Messina to Sicily. Both men maintained a respectful distance from our car.

  “Yes,” I replied. “Does the boat dock right here?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “It will come. Three-thirty. Stay here. I tell you when to drive on.”

  He had short, strawlike hair and round features, and was dressed in worn black sweatpants, dusty black plastic beach sandals, and a loose, dirty navy T-shirt. His stocky build and quiet, almost shy demeanor reminded me of someone, but I could not place my finger on who.

  They were from Germany, they said. Yes, they agreed, nodding their heads vigorously, they were a long way from home, but they had made this journey many times before and were used to it.

  They asked where we were from. I answered “Canada,” and they stared with slight incomprehension, as if trying to fix the location of Canada in their minds. Or maybe they expected us to be attired in parkas and mukluks.

  The conversation was quickly exhausted. The larger of the two gave us a slight smile and a polite nod of his head, and they both sauntered back to their respective vehicles to await the ferry’s arrival.

  Several sleek white ferries were docked along the quay, so I was somewhat taken aback when ours arrived. It wasn’t a glamorous ferry—not that I cared—but I was expecting something a bit more polished than what chugged up to the dock. It looked more like a barge, with a large open deck for transporting vehicles or cargo and a third of the vessel dedicated to passengers. My first impression when I saw it was that it could do with a paint job. I looked at the large shy trucker inquiringly, and with a firm nod he indicated that this was indeed the ferry for Messina. We drove our car onto the open deck and parked it alongside a number of bulky transport trucks, including those of our new German friends.