Summers in Supino

by Maria Coletta McLean

“Vietri sul Mare.”

  “Near Naples? Did you visit your mother’s village?”

  “Maybe next year,” I said.

  “Maybe I come with you,” said Joe. “I want to see Monte Cassino. They say that on a clear day you can get a good view of Supino from there.”

  “Ey,” said Angela from the kitchen window. “You tell them about tomorrow?”

  “All the stores are closed tomorrow. Buy what you need today,” said Joe.

  “Labour strike?” asked Bob, who’d been reading the Rome newspaper.

  “That’s for the bigga shots who work in the city. We have no time for that. Tomorrow’s August 15 ferragosto.”

  “A feast day?” asked Bob. How many feasts could one small village have? How many saints? How many festivals of watermelon or artichokes or figs? How many ordinary things to celebrate?

  “Ferragosto is the hottest day of the summer.”

  “You celebrate the hottest day of the summer?”

  “We get out of town. In the evening there’s a meteor shower. Hundreds of meteors all across the sky,” said Joe, as if the villagers arranged it. “After the 15th, the air cools down a little. Easier to breathe. How’s your cousin Guido doing, Maria? Is he coming tomorrow?”

  “Where?”

  “Mamma mia! What you think we’re talking about? You got to pay attention. Tomorrow the stores are closed for ferragosto.”

  “Is there a festa?”

  “No, it’s a pic-a-nic. Guido’s coming or no?”

  Joe took off his hat and rubbed his head. He looked over at Benito, who just shrugged.

  If Angela hadn’t called down from the kitchen window, who knows what would have happened. “Listen to me,” she began. “August 15th is the hottest day of the year. Nobody stays in the village. Everybody, she packs a pic-a-nic and goes to the mountain. The air up there is good. I hear Guido’s got some breathing trouble. Maybe he comes, breathes better. You coming?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, don’t bother with the tables and chairs,” said Joe. “I bring extra.”

  “What kind of picnic needs tables and chairs?” I asked Bob as we headed to the stores to buy some bread and cheese for sandwiches. We also picked up a few cookies and a bottle of lemonade. The shopkeeper gave us a cardboard box to pack it all in. In the morning, I’d add my red-checkered tablecloth, which we could sit on, and we’d be all set.

  “I forgot to ask the time.”

  “Noon. All picnics start at noon.”

  Kathryn came into our room around 7 a.m. the next morning. “I can’t sleep with all the traffic noise.”

  We cracked open the balcony doors to view a steady stream of cars heading up via condotto vecchio. Many of the cars had bicycles, folded picnic tables, portable barbecues, and beach umbrellas stacked on their roof.

  “Everyone in town’s going up to the mountain,” I said. “We better get moving. Are you coming?”

  “Davide’s taking me to the beach at Terracina for ferragosto.”

  “Do you know what the holiday’s for?”

  “Something to do with some conquerors who arrived on August 15 and found the city deserted. Italians still get out of town on that day. That’s what Davide told me, but at the Kennedy Bar pizza place, Adriana said it’s a holiday because it’s the hottest day of the year, and after today the weather breaks and the heat’s more bearable.”

  I waved goodbye to Kathryn and Davide from the balcony.

  “Davide said he’d like to come to Toronto for a visit next summer, if it’s okay with us,” said Bob. “She might want to move here eventually, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “If I open the summer bar, we’d be here for six months every year anyway. I’ll put a special chair and table in the corner and you can bring your computer and be the resident writer.”

  By the time we got organized and up to the mountain it was mid-morning. We drove until we saw Joe’s car parked by a grove of pine trees. A sign said, “La Pineta.” We walked on a path of soft needles to a meadow dotted with oak and hazelnut, and here the villagers were set up for ferragosto. The men had unfolded tables and chairs and beach umbrellas, and barbecues were smoking. Children with bicycles or beach balls were racing across the field between the trees and back into the sunlit meadow. Women were fussing over picnic baskets and trays covered in aluminum foil. There was an impromptu bocce court, a dartboard nailed to a pine tree, and a large cardboard box full of cantaloupes beneath a shade tree.

  There were no amusement rides or jumping pillows, no games of chance or hot dog vendors. Everyone lounged. At noon there was a flurry of activity as the men checked the barbecue coals and the women shook tablecloths and spread them on the tables. Soon the air was ripe with the scent of roasting meat and baking lasagna. I watched Angela pull provisions out of boxes and line them up on the table: wine, ginger ale, salad, bread, bowls of vegetables, a round of cheese, prosciutto in butcher paper, tubs of olives and marinated mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, another loaf of bread . . . a bottle of olive oil. Then she started unpacking the heavy plates and silverware. I thought of the paltry lunch we’d brought and was embarrassed to unpack it.

  “Ey,” called Joe. “Come. Bob, you turn these spiedini, little bit at a time, I don’t want them to cook too fast. Angela, bring me the sausages. Maria, sit down at the table, have some wine.”

  Between courses, other villagers came by to sample Joe’s spiedini or share some specialty of their own. Alfredo offered spicy sausages on sticks. Bianca from the Bar Italia passed around some chestnuts soaked in rum.

  After lunch, Benito took Bob’s arm and led him to the makeshift bocce court. Apparently Bob was on Benito’s team.

  “I don’t know how to play this game,” Bob said.

  “It’s like bowling,” said someone.

  “It’s like French boules.”

  “It’s like horseshoes.”

  “You just throw the ball.”

  Their team was eliminated in the first round.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Joe. “You’ll do better in the tug-of-war.”

  While the bocce tournament continued with shouts and curses, Bob spread our tablecloth beneath the shade of a beech. I lay my head in his lap and closed my eyes. Peppe and Joe walked over and sat talking to Bob. Peppe started in Italian, pointing in the direction of his chestnut grove, then Joe translated. “Peppe’s got a piece of land on the mountain full of chestnut trees,” he said. “In October, he and Davide go up to harvest the chestnuts. They sell them at the market. He wants to know how long you’re staying. Do you want to go up for the harvest?”

  “We won’t be here in October,” Bob said. Even though I was half-asleep I could hear the regret in his voice. “Next year,” he said. “Spero.”

  Spero, I hope.

  “Okay,” said Joe. “And he wants to know about Kathryn.”

  I was wide-awake now.

  “When she goes to school in Lanciano and comes to Supino on the weekend, Peppe says not to worry. He’ll take care of her, make sure she’s okay.”

  “Grazie, Peppe,” said Bob. “And, Joe, I’d like to see that house that’s for sale before we go back to Toronto. No hurry.”

  Joe knocked on the door the next morning. “You ready?”

  His car was parked on the street; we got in and away we went to the piazza of San Pietro to see the house that was for sale. There was actually a red-and-white “For Sale” sign in the window and, on closer inspection, I saw three signs on three levels.

  “Are there three apartments for sale?” I asked Joe.

  “The owner’s gone back to Germany,” he said. “But I have the key.”

  A few years ago we may have asked why Joe had the key to some house belonging to a man in Germany, but now we didn’t bother. “The house has three rooms, but the guy had trou
ble selling it.”

  This news made me feel better. I was totally unsure about buying a house where Bob could open a summer bar. If no one else wanted to buy the place, there had to be something wrong with it.

  “See all the parking spaces?” Bob said. “And the front door opens right onto the piazza — that’s good.”

  The double doors of the house on the ground floor were fronted with wrought-iron gates. Joe unlocked the padlock and pulled open the gates. He put the next key into the front door. When we’d first viewed our house in Supino, the rooms smelled musty from years of being unused. I stepped back in preparation, but the air inside this house was sweet and clear. The house had only one room. It was shaped like a cave. The back wall was part of the mountain rock. Someone had chiselled a series of ledges on the rock wall, among the lichen and a few tenacious weeds.

  “Here’s where you put the fancy liquor bottles,” said Joe. “Millefiori, grappa, sambuca.”

  “Just what I was thinking,” said Bob. “And on this wall we could put the counter for the espresso machine and the coffee grinder.”

  The only other thing in the cave room was a door.

  “The bathroom,” said Joe, opening the door to a modern bathroom all tiled in white.

  “Where’s the kitchen?” I asked.

  “Follow me,” said Joe.

  We went back outside to a set of ledges. I’d seen these ledges, which circled around the side of the building, filled with pots of azaleas during the azalea festa.

  “Be careful,” said Joe, as he stepped onto the first ledge. “There’s no handrail.” The ledge stairs led us to another door. Joe pulled out another key, opened another door. “The kitchen,” he said. The room was small. A window, containing the second “For Sale” sign, overlooked the piazza.

  “There’s no sink,” I said. “No refrigerator. No cupboards.”

  Joe sighed. “The plumbing’s there. The electricity’s there. We put our own cupboards.”

  Across the back wall was a set of indoor stairs that led upstairs to the bedroom. Here was another small window and the third “For Sale” sign.

  “There you are,” said Joe. “Just like I told you. Three-room house. That German guy had a girlfriend back home. No, he was engaged but when he brought the girl to Supino to see the house she said she couldn’t live in a place where you had to go outside to climb the stairs to the next room. She went right back to Germany. The guy had a good job here, but what could he do? He went back too. I heard he bought an apartment there, in a building with an elevator, and all the rooms on one floor, like the girlfriend wanted.”

  “Of course,” I said. “No one wants to climb the stairs every time they want to use the bathroom.”

  “The bathroom at your house is upstairs,” said Joe. “This one is downstairs.”

  “But the stairs are outside, Joe,” I said. “What about the wintertime?”

  “You put on a sweater.”

  “It’s not like the bathroom is outside,” said Bob. “Just the stairs. This room is really a perfect size. Not too big. Enough space for — what do you think, Joe — six tables?”

  “Wait a minute. Wait a minute,” I said. “How can you rent the two upstairs rooms to someone without a bathroom?”

  “There is a bathroom,” said Joe and Bob in unison. “They just have to walk down the stairs.”

  The next day I was sitting on Joe’s front step when the donkey loaded with bags of cement went clumping down the cobblestones. The man leading the donkey tipped his hat. “There’s a house they’re fixing up,” said Joe. “You can see it out your balcony. It’s the highest house in Supino Centro so it’s the house with the best view and the freshest air. The place was bombed in the war. There’s no roof. Some of the walls are missing too. The owner lives and works in Rome and he hired Mario, the contractor, to rebuild. That’s why you see the donkey every day. Taking the supplies up to the workers. When the house is finished, the family will spend the summers in Supino.”

  I had seen the donkey several times a day walking patiently along the street, carrying his load. If a Roman decides to rebuild the highest house in the village so the family can spend the summers in Supino, maybe it isn’t so unrealistic for a Canadian to open a summer bar.

  “There used to be a castle up on that hill,” said Joe. “Long time ago. Medieval times, you know. There are still a few rocks from one corner of the castle — bits and pieces like the tiles down near the hotel. Do you know about that? These two guys were digging for a lost city. Not a real city — a make-believe place. What do you call that? Mythical? So they started digging in the suburbs of Supino, where they thought this city named Ecetra was buried. They didn’t find it. Instead they found a Roman bath made of tiles. There’s the god Neptune on a cart with seahorses. He’s carrying a sceptre. You can walk right down the steps and see the mosaics. Historians and archaeologists from Rome all came to investigate and say they’re real. Authentic, I mean.”

  “When are they open?” I asked.

  “You go anytime. It’s in a field near the hotel.”

  “Is there an admission fee?”

  Joe just shook his head, but I heard him muttering under his breath, “Admission fee. Mamma mia!”

  I was telling Bob about this mythical city of Ecetra as we walked down the street that afternoon. A city truck was stopped on the road in front of the building just a few doors from the Bar Italia and workers were hanging a sign. Joe wasn’t around, so I couldn’t point out the sign to him: he’d say it was a waste of money anyway — “Everyone knows it’s the Supino library.”

  For years, this building had been sitting empty. There had been talk of opening an old folks home, but the Supinese couldn’t grasp the North American concept of putting their old people into a home. Any Supinese would say, “I already own a home. Why would I pay money to put my parents there?”

  It wasn’t just the money; the Supinese believe in family staying together in the family home, the more generations the better. What would people think if you abandoned your elders to a home with other people that no one wanted to care for?

  Beside the door of the would-be old folks home there was a smaller sign that gave the hours the library would be open. Inside I could hear the sounds of hammers and the rasp of handsaws cutting pine.

  “A library in Supino. Things are looking up,” I said.

  Between the jewellery shop and the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore is a little square. Workers were hanging another sign there.

  “What on earth?” I said. This sign was in English; it said, “Internet Café.”

  “Opening on Friday,” said the priest. “There’ll be a little festa after the six o’clock Mass and the blessing of the café.”

  If this wasn’t enough excitement for one day, when we arrived at the bar they had a new flavour of ice cream. Watermelon was in season. One scoop of juicy red watermelon beside a scoop of dark chocolate: I can still taste it.

  On the night before we left Supino, Peppe came to say goodbye and to remind Bob about the chestnut harvest in October. He brought us a very large and very heavy homemade pecorino cheese, which Bob wrapped carefully among his clothes in his suitcase.

  “I don’t think we’re allowed to take food on the plane,” I said.

  “It’s not really food,” said Bob. “And it’s in the suitcase, not our carry-on, so we’re safe.”

  “But I don’t think it’s allowed.”

  “Allowed?” said Bob. “That’s a North American idea. It’ll never catch on in Supino.”

  That winter Kathryn went to Lanciano to finish her last semester of high school, and the house in Toronto was lonely and quiet without her. Bob continued with his Berlitz classes and his meetings at the Supino Social Club, while I was working on the book. Then, in the spring, we flew to Lanciano to watch Kathryn graduate before driving up to Supino. Bob brough
t photos of the newly finished Toronto Supino Social Club to show to Joe and Peppe.

  “I told Peppe that it’s fine for Davide to stay with us in Toronto next month,” said Bob. “But Peppe stressed that it’s just for a two-week visit. He only has Davide and his sister. Eventually Peppe plans to move to his parents’ farm, and then Davide will live on one floor of the house next door and his sister will live on the other. The point is that they’ll all live in Supino.”

  “Maybe Peppe would like to visit Toronto?”

  “Peppe won’t fly.”

  I repeated this conversation to Kathryn. I said that Italians don’t share the North American idea that you can choose individuality over what’s best for the family. Personal desires are not important. It’s all about accepting responsibility and remaining true to the family.

  She said, “I know.”

  The house in the piazza was still for sale and I was still unsure. I’d had a few freelance pieces published in the Toronto Star and I was thinking of pitching my editor the idea of postcards from a small Italian village. The stories could be published weekly in the newspaper and I could write them during a six-month stay in Supino.

  “Should we make an offer on the place?” said Bob.

  “Not yet,” said Joe. “I told the German guy that no one wants a house with three rooms on three levels. I get a better price next year. What do you think about putting a few tables and chairs in front?”

  “I was thinking about that. Would we need to get a permit?”

  “I get the permit to sell drinks. What about the coffee?”

  “I was thinking of buying a coffee roaster. I can get a small one shipped down from Milan. That way I could roast a few pounds every morning. What do you think, Joe?”

  “I gotta get a permit for that. Like the peanut roaster or the chestnut roaster. Won’t cost too much.”

  “But do you think it’s a good idea? I want to make the bar a little different.”

  “Sure, it’s good. Where you going to get the green coffee beans? Africa?”

  “No, I’ll buy through my green-bean importer. Some Brazilian, some Colombian.”