Summers in Supino

by Maria Coletta McLean

  The sun was glowing rosy red across the wildflowers, casting long shadows beyond the laundry, where a woman pulled off wooden clothes pegs and folded the clothes into a large wicker basket. I watched her fade into a shadow in the twilight, and then it was dark. I could barely see Bob’s face across the table. That’s when Riccardo’s nephew began to light the torches that edged the field.

  “Allora,” said Riccardo, returning to our table, “what will it be?”

  Bob ordered in his newly learned Berlitz Italian, “Vino rosa e pizza con peperoni.”

  Riccardo wagged his index finger. “No, signor Bob,” he said, “peperoni is peppers and you don’t like peppers. You want salsiccia piccante. That’s spicy sausage, in English.”

  “His English is better than my Italian,” said Bob.

  “Only with food,” I assured Bob. “You just need practice.”

  Riccardo’s son, who was about 10, approached the table with a dish of olives and a beer glass holding bread sticks. He was back a few minutes later to pour red wine from a pottery jug. “Vino di papa mio,” he explained. Now that Riccardo’s nephew had lit all the torches, we could see the perimeter of the pizza field as well as the path that led to the back door of the restaurant. The buttercups had tucked their faces beneath their leaves and settled down for the night.

  Riccardo, with plates of pizza up one arm and down the other, ran this pathway dozens of times that evening. Our pizzas were still bubbling hot when he sat them on the table. We stayed a long time. The pizza crust was so thin that even though we’d both eaten a pizza the size of a dinner plate, we were willing to try a second. Riccardo recommended a white pizza with artichokes since they were in season. The artichokes were drizzled with olive oil and grated garlic. We drank a second bottle of wine.

  “It’s endearing in its own crazy way, isn’t it?” said Bob. “Eating pizza in the middle of some farmer’s field.”

  “It’s different, I’ll give it that,” I said. “In most places you don’t have to wait for the sheep bells to stop clanging so you can order. And in Toronto, you’d never get away with using 10- and 12-year-olds as waiters. I don’t see how Riccardo can make any money charging 10 bucks for all-you-can-eat pizza.”

  “That’s not the point,” said Bob. “He wanted to try something new and he did.”

  “You’re always assessing restaurants in Toronto. You’re always telling me about location and experience and competitive pricing.”

  “That’s business.”

  “This is business too, Bob.”

  “It’s a different business sense here. Look at Riccardo. His family owns this land — probably owned it for generations — so instead of grazing sheep or planting wheat, the family built the hotel and the restaurant. He’s not renting the place — or, as your father would have said, ‘Throwing money out the window on rent.’ A few hotel guests each night and a few customers in the restaurant and he’s doing okay. The thing is, he’s enjoying it. If the all-you-can-eat pizza doesn’t pan out, maybe he’ll try pizza delivery. You know, that’s not a bad idea.”

  “Joe would say, ‘Why you need delivery? You just walk to the place and buy.’”

  “Joe’s only thinking about Supino Centro. It could work out here in the suburbs.”

  “Is it really 11:30?” I asked, pulling on my sweater. “Let’s get the bill.”

  As we got up to leave, I realized that all the tables were full, but the voices of our neighbouring diners distilled across the pizza field, their stories travelling next door to the sheep now asleep in their field. Riccardo’s nephew was right beside us — “Momento,” he said, and he pulled a torch from the ground and led the way back to the parking lot.

  Electricity in Italy is expensive, so that summer we tried once again to sort out our hydro bill. Originally, our travel agent had arranged to have our hydro turned on for us. That’s when our problems began, because according to Frosinone hydro logic, our travel agent had requested the activation of the hydro for our house and therefore the travel agent received the bill. Since the travel agent paid the bill (and we then paid him), the hydro company believed the travel agent owned the house. Not only had the hydro officials classified our house as the travel agent’s second home, they charged a higher rate for the hydro for our house.

  When we showed Joe the bill, he said, “It’s crazy to pay so much. I shut off the hydro.”

  “Joe, we need hydro.”

  “Those guys in Frosinone with their sit-down jobs. How many times you have to tell them that you own the house? I run the electric cord from my house to your house while you’re here. When you leave, you give me a few dollars.”

  “Maybe we better keep things the way they are until we can get the bill changed to our name.”

  “Better I put the cord from my house to yours.”

  “Is that legal?”

  “Legal?” repeated Joe, as if he wasn’t familiar with the word.

  Joe ran a fluorescent orange hydro cord from his upstairs bedroom window across the street to our balcony. The cord was so bright it practically glowed. Anyone walking or driving down our street could see that we were sharing electricity.

  “This is dangerous,” I said to Bob. “If someone from Frosinone hydro sees the cord we’re going to be fined, and without hydro.”

  “We’ll explain that it’s temporary.”

  “We can’t even explain that we own the house.”

  “Let me talk to Peppe about it, see what he says.”

  Our next-door neighbour Peppe did not speak English, but he and Bob had struck up a friendship using Bob’s Berlitz School Italian. Peppe would take Bob off to some bar or another in Supino and they’d talk. I was never part of this arrangement, although Bob would tell me Peppe’s stories when he got back home. Peppe was a businessman. He owned a car-parts dealership in the next town and a chestnut grove on the mountain. His parents lived on a farm near the base of the Santa Serena mountain; his family had always lived in Supino and they always would. Peppe was a widower — his wife had died several years before and he was raising two teenagers on his own. The older one was Davide, the boy with whom Kathryn spent most of her days and evenings, often on the back of his motorcycle.

  Someone in the suburbs of Supino had just opened a bar that summer in the main floor of their house. That’s where Bob and Peppe had their coffee and conversation. “A good size bar with eight tables,” Bob told me. “And they turned their driveway into a patio where they could seat more customers.”

  “Where did the customers park?”

  “Wherever,” said Bob, making the circular gesture. “Peppe thinks you should always make a business in your own house. Never rent. If you don’t have enough room, or your wife doesn’t want to turn her living room into a bar, then you have to buy.”

  “We are not turning our living room into a bar for the summer,” I said. “I don’t care what Peppe and Joe say.”

  “Joe says that empty lot between Sam’s place next door and Carlo, the mechanic’s shop, would make a good patio.”

  “Mario across the street owns that land.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “He’s got a vegetable garden there.”

  “That’s because he doesn’t have enough room in his own yard. Listen, Joe says there’s a place for sale at the piazza of San Pietro. It’s a three-level house. I could have a bar on the main floor and rent out the upstairs rooms. The rent would eventually pay for the house.”

  “I don’t know, Bob. It’s one thing to buy a house for ourselves, but to buy with the idea of opening a business . . .”

  “Don’t worry. We’re just going to look. No one said anything about buying. But doesn’t the location sound good? Right on the piazza, with parking directly in front of the church and no competition. Think of the possibilities . . .”

  “Did you get anywhere with the hydr
o?”

  “Yeah, Peppe agrees with Joe that it’s an outrageous amount to pay for hydro, especially since we’re Summer Supinese. He thinks you’re right too. It’s dangerous to run the extension cord across the street. He says it’s just a matter of time before some snoopy official starts asking questions.”

  “But did he have a solution?”

  “Sure, he said we’ll run the cord out the back window from his house and into our back bedroom window. No one will see it.”

  On Thursday mornings there was a huge outdoor market in Frosinone, about half an hour away. Kathryn particularly liked the shoe vendors who arranged their shoes in towers by price — 10 euro, 15 euro, etc. — and all you had to do was find your size. We often went there early in the morning, just to browse. Sometimes we’d buy something for Angela: buffalo mozzarella from Salerno or pineapples from Sicilia that you’d never find in Supino. After the market, we’d stop at Rendezvous, the take-out pizza shop in Frosinone, where they displayed thick pizza baked on cookie sheets and the woman cut the pizza with scissors and weighed the slices on her scale. After that we’d go to the newsstand in the middle of the parking lot, where Bob would buy a Rome paper so he could practice reading Italian.

  That Thursday morning, as we approached the autostrada, where we’d cross over into the city of Frosinone, I said, “Why don’t we drive down to Vietri sul Mare? It’s not that far.”

  “I told Joe we were going to the market.”

  “We’ll be back by dinner.”

  “Hold on,” said Bob, and he made a U-turn onto the autostrada heading south. We left the windows open as we sped along; Bob had to shout to be heard. “I figure we can make it in about two hours. I wouldn’t mind spending a bit of time in Naples. Maybe next time we could spend the night.”

  “Sure, if we got permission from Joe and the neighbours,” I said.

  “They’re just watching out for us so we don’t miss any of the summertime activities. By the way, they’re closing the street in front of the three telephone booths and setting up chairs there. Joe said he and Benito are putting torches on the wall above the phone booths and stringing plastic flags. I thought I’d give them a hand if we’re back in time. There’s a jazz band performing tonight.”

  “You don’t even like jazz particularly.”

  “That’s not the point,” he said. “It’s important to go to these activities. We don’t want people sitting inside watching television every night. Even if I’m not a jazz fan, I enjoy being involved.”

  “You know what, Bob? You’re becoming Italian.”

  “Thanks,” said Bob, and he reached over and patted my leg. “Do you still want to buy those tiles for the kitchen?”

  “Yes, and maybe I’ll look at their hand-painted dishes.”

  I didn’t need dishes, but my mother had had a soft spot for china, and since her death I’d somehow picked up her interest and her habit of buying a pretty piece here and there. We drove past Naples and Salerno to my mother’s part of Italy. My mother had no happy memories of this place and her sad stories had rubbed off on me so that I’d never considered visiting her village. Her recollections of her childhood in Colliano were hunger and poverty, and even though that was years ago, her impressions were so negative that I too avoided the village where she’d gone hungry.

  Vietri sul Mare, on the other hand, was a charming village high above the sea. There potters and painters spent their days creating ceramics. Their main street was full of ceramic shops and tourists, but just a few steps up the hill was the residential area with locals and trattorias and young artisans in tiny shops creating unusual pieces. The first thing I bought was a small stoneware tray with six espresso cups and a sugar bowl. Then I bought a jug in the shape of a rooster and four plates of navy blue with yellow lemons. I stood in the corner of the shop watching the painter working on his plates. He had just a few pots of colours on his worktable, which was pushed up tight to the open window, overlooking the sea. When he finished a piece, he signed his name on the bottom in black.

  Before leaving, I bought a few bowls because they had cherries painted on them and my mother had been fond of cherries. I also bought a ceramic house plaque for Joe and Angela that had the number 13 in the centre and was bordered with pretty yellow and blue flowers.

  “What about the kitchen tiles?” Bob asked.

  “I can’t decide. We can look again after lunch.”

  We left the parcels in the car and started walking back uphill. Joe had warned us never to eat in a restaurant that offered a tourist menu because the food would only be the North American idea of Italian food. “Spaghetti — cooked too much — and meat-a-balls. Always eat where the locals go,” said Joe, and when I’d asked him how I would know where the locals ate, he said, “Look around.”

  So we looked around: the shopkeepers were locking their doors; businesspeople came from upstairs offices. We followed them into the side street where a set of stairs led to an open doorway hung with beaded ropes. Two businessmen went inside. “What do you think?” I asked Bob. “Scusa,” said the parking lot attendant as he stepped by us and pushed aside the ropes. Inside, long tables were set for communal dining and, as we hesitated, looking for a hostess or some sign that we were to seat ourselves, more locals pushed in. Bob grabbed my hand, then grabbed two chairs, and we sat. Water, wine, and bread were already on the table.

  A woman came from the kitchen with plates of antipasto and put one on each table. After a few minutes she returned with bowls of penne in tomato sauce and a small dish of grated romano. A younger woman collected the empty pasta bowls. Then they brought several platters: roasted potatoes with rosemary sprigs, peas, and prosciutto, and thin slices of veal with lemon quarters edging the plate. We ate family-style with platters of food passed from hand to hand. Our tablemates poured wine or water and passed the breadbasket. The salad arrived in a large ceramic bowl with ruffled edges. The only choice we had regarding the meal came at the end when the woman offered espresso. There was no bill. We followed the others to the cash desk at the front where everyone was charged the same amount, unless they had espresso, and then they were charged an extra euro.

  The shops were closed until four.

  “We can walk around a bit, if you want,” said Bob. “Or drive down to the beach for an hour.”

  “Let’s head home.”

  “What about the tiles?”

  “Next time.”

  At the parking lot, the newspaper kiosk was open and Bob bought a cooking magazine, Sale e Pepe, for me.

  “You don’t have to make any of the recipes,” he said. “It’ll be good for your vocabulary, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, and I can give the magazine to Angela when we leave.”

  “No, she’d be insulted. She’d say, ‘Why you give me this? You think I don’t know how to cook?’”

  We took the Amalfi Coast roadway, which hugs the hills on one side and has a guardrail that keeps cars from driving over the cliff on the other. The views were so spectacular that we had to keep pulling over so Bob could take photos. We folded the car’s side-view mirrors in and parked mere millimetres from the rocky hillside, then we waited for a break in the traffic before we raced across the road to the guardrail. Even with my knees touching the guardrail, I could feel the swoosh of the traffic at my heels. “No more photos,” I said, but then we’d round another bend in the road and we’d see something irresistible — a whitewashed house perched precariously on the side of a cliff, tiers of olive trees carpeted with nets, a parking garage on the rooftop, a tiny strip of pebble beach, a cove of fishing boats, a wisteria vine hanging long and purple, a row of terra cotta rooftops so close together they looked like steps — and we’d risk the traffic to take a closer look and another photo. At one point, we made a wrong turn north of Naples and found ourselves on a beach road instead of the autostrada. By then the sun was low. We entered a little be
ach town called Sperlonga, where we stopped for gas and directions. Bob spoke Italian to the gas attendant.

  “There’s a good trattoria in the town,” Bob reported when he returned to the car. “They specialize in fish.”

  “You don’t like fish.”

  “You do. And I can practice ordering senza pesce.”

  It was a tiny trattoria with a blue-striped awning and several men at tables out front. The setting sun bathed them in cinematic colour. Inside, the tables sat on marine blue tiles. The whitewashed walls featured photos of the beach. Bob ordered everything in Italian: the seafood platter for me with white wine and some asparagus risotto and roasted chicken with red wine and a bottle of bubbly water.

  When Bob finished ordering, the waiter repeated the items quickly and the waiter may have added an item or Bob may have said, “Sì . . .” one time too many times, because the waiter brought everything Bob ordered including a plate of penne. There was a saltshaker on the table but no pepper.

  “I think I’ve got all the variations of the word pepper worked out,” said Bob. “There’s pepperoni and peppers and pepper.

  “Pepe?” asked Bob.

  The waiter said, “Scusa?”

  “Pepe.”

  We looked around at the other tables in the hope that one of them would have a peppershaker and we could point it out, but the other tables were bare.

  “Momento,” said the waiter, and he went back to the kitchen, returning in a few seconds with a puzzled-looking cook. “Peppe,” introduced the waiter.

  I felt pretty confident that Joe would accept the house tile as a gift. No doubt he had some old tiles hanging around his garage, which he could have painted if he’d wanted a ceramic house number. I was prepared to remind Joe that the tiles were hand-painted by an artisan, and the cost was immaterial because they were a gift.

  “Where’d you get these?” asked Joe, turning over the tile to reveal the painter’s signature.