by Phil Doran
Umberto fumbled with his bill and suddenly remembered that perhaps he had failed to tell us that this was the amount if we paid him by check, because then he’d have to report it. But since we were dealing in cash, it would be less. A lot less.
Some months later, on a Sunday night in the fall after the house was finished, Nancy and I were preparing our snacks for the premier episode of The Sopranos. The series had been heavily promoted. Tony, Carmela, and the gang could be seen scowling from bus benches and billboards all over the country, so we had little doubt that by now, Umberto knew we had bamboozled him. You can well imagine our dread when, right before the show was to start, we heard the unmistakable sound of his truck chugging up our driveway. Was this just a strange coincidence? Or had he come here with a sawed-off shotgun to extract some measure of revenge?
Nancy turned off the TV. As I opened the door my trepidation increased when I saw how upset he looked. And he was holding a sledgehammer. Nancy and I looked at each other apprehensively, but after he asked us for “permesso” to enter, we had no choice but to let him in.
Once inside, his demeanor changed into profound sadness as he poured out the story of his missing wedding ring. This ring, the sacred symbol of his twenty-two-year marriage, had gotten lost some time ago, causing him and his wife no end of agony. After months of racking his brain he finally realized that he had last seen it when he was working on our house. Specifically, on the wall near the crack. It seems that he had taken it off and placed it on a crevice in the wall, and in the rush to patch it up, the ring must have gotten sealed up inside the crack. So he had come to ask if he could hammer open our wall and try to find it.
As Nancy and I exchanged amazed looks, he assured us he would try to be careful not to hit a water pipe that might result in somebody from the Comune having to come over and then, by seeing the inside of the wall, discover how old our house was.
“How much do you think the ring was worth?” I asked in Italian, which by now had gotten pretty good.
Umberto’s face grew long and grave. “Oh, one can never put a price tag on such an object.”
“Two hundred euros?” Nancy suggested.
“It means so much to me,” he said looking sorrowfully at his empty ring finger. “It would be more like a thousand. . . .”
Nancy and I stepped aside and indicated for him to begin hammering apart our wall.
“But it was an old ring,” he said. “Maybe not worth more than five hundred.”
I went to get my checkbook with the realization that even though Nancy and I had still come out ahead financially, Umberto had left knowing that when it came to outsmarting each other, we were dead even.
20
Zum Zug
I like ice. I really like ice. One of my favorite things to do when I’m in the States is to go into a 7-Eleven, get a Super Quencher-sized cup, and fill it up with ice, which I suck on and chew all day long. My dentist also loves ice, since he was able to buy himself a new Volvo (which is also good on ice) for all the fillings I have cracked.
The last time I was in the States I was thrilled to discover that my favorite convenience store was now dispensing two kinds of ice, either minicubes or crunched. Or, I could have a combination of the two.
Is America a great country or what?
Italy is also a great country, but they have no ice. Well, they have it and it’s called ghiaccio (gee-ACH-ee-o), but when you ask for some in your drink on the hottest day of the year, they’ll plop in one dinky cube that melts down to the size of a baby aspirin by the time it gets to you.
Making ice at home is no easy matter either. If you want a built-in ice maker, you have to finagle your way into a PX at one of the military bases and buy a huge double-door frigo Americano that’ll take up so much room in a typical Italian kitchen, there won’t be any room for your sink. The only option left is to fill an ice tray like some pre-Betty Furness housewife and slide it onto a narrow shelf in the tiny freezer without dribbling half of it on the floor. My best efforts to make homemade ice cubes resulted in slopping so much water on that shelf that the entire freezer locked up in a sheet of ice and the fridge started making a noise that I think was originally developed by the North Koreans to torture downed American pilots.
Much has been written about the legendary heat of the Italian summer, and the Italians really do love to complain about it, but any attempts to cool themselves off are greeted with outright suspicion. They’ll go the beach but avoid the water. They despise air conditioning and have no qualms about sipping a steaming cappuccino on a day hot enough to boil you inside your own natural juices.
But their worst fear is about moving air. You can be on a crowded train where the inside temperature could fuse glass, but if you dare crack open a window, someone will invariably say, “Scusi, signore, mal aria, mal aria.”
It means “bad air” and it’s the origin of our word malaria. Their request for you to shut the window is usually accompanied by pointing to their throats, their sinuses, their kidneys, or any other vital organ threatened by the insidious movement of air. So intense is their fear of it that their houses, cars, and offices are all but hermetically sealed. It may be a fiery cauldron of a summer day, but the most an Italian driver will do is roll down his side window just wide enough for him to dangle his hand out, so that to the uninitiated, it looks as if the country is full of people driving around drying their nails.
It was on such a hot day that Nancy and I went to the bank to withdraw the money to pay Umberto. The bank was crowded and stifling, full of heavyset, perspiring women and their crying children. There was a floor-standing fan off in the corner, but it was not turned on out of fear that it would stir up the air and disperse the cigarette smoke that was so thick, I could barely make out the No Smoking signs on every wall.
We finally reached a teller, and you could imagine our delight when she told us we couldn’t have our money, because the Comune had frozen our account. I heard the word ghiacciato (to have frozen) and I got excited. I thought she was telling us that we had won a free ice maker and I couldn’t understand why Nancy was getting so upset. But as the conversation between them grew more heated, they kept saying “bloccato,” which I recognized as the word used by the Italians use to describe the stoppage of anything from bowel movements to bank accounts.
I then got the picture and joined Nancy in pressing our teller for the reasons. She claimed to have no further information. For that we needed to speak to the bank’s vice president, Marco Mucchi.
This being the middle of the business day, Signor Mucchi was not in his office and the teller didn’t know where he was. But we did. We promptly marched out of the bank and went across the street to the café, where we found the vice president sipping on a steaming cappuccino on a day so hot, you could fry a frittata on the pavement.
Marco Mucchi was of slightly less than normal height, but he was thick and wide, with a big man’s head sitting close to his shoulders. His finely groomed black hair, slicked down and combed straight back, combined with a pair of no-nonsense wire-rimmed glasses to give him an air of gravitas far beyond his years.
“Buon giorno, Signor Mucchi,” Nancy said, apologizing for our interruption as we approached his table.
Signor Mucchi half rose out of his chair and invited us to sit, never once taking his eyes off the clingy tank top Nancy was wearing. I’m not the jealous type, but I never cease to marvel at how Italian men will ogle a woman with a blatancy that would get you hauled into court on sexual harassment charges in America.
“Caffè per te?” he asked, beckoning a waiter. He had shifted into the informal tense, letting us know that whatever business we were here to discuss could be done on a friendly basis.
“Troppo caldo.” Nancy explained that it was too hot for coffee, then turning to the waiter, she told him that she’d love some bottled water.
“Per me, una Coca-Cola con ghiaccio, per favore.” I cupped my hands in abundance to show him I wanted lots of ice.
“Molto ghiaccio.”
Without even the prerequisite chitchat required by Italian law, which dictates you must ask about the health and happiness of every member of a person’s family, we launched into the inquiry about why our funds had been blocked by the Comune. Signor Mucchi responded with a well-practiced vagueness, intimating that the Comune felt we had not honored the spirit of our agreement. We prodded him for details, but he sidestepped our every inquiry.
I was running out of ways to ask the same question when I realized that Nancy had not been saying anything for a while. I looked over and saw that her face was contorted in agony like a Greek mask of tragedy. Her lips were quivering and she began sobbing as huge tears flowed down her cheeks.
“Honey?” I said, concerned.
“I don’t know what to do,” she blubbered in Italian. “My mamma’s coming to spend her last days here and I have no place for her! Is that what the Comune wants? For me to put my poor, sick mamma in a hotel?”
Signor Mucchi was distraught. He handed her his handkerchief, patted her on the arm, and signaled for the waiter to hurry up with our drinks.
“We’ve followed their instructions to the letter.” Nancy sobbed. “No matter what it cost us, no matter how difficult it was.”
The waiter arrived with our drinks. My Coke had one little piece of ice floating on the surface about the size of a ladybug.
“What do they want from us?” Nancy wept, her bare shoulders heaving. “We’re at the end of our rope!”
“Let me see what I can do,” Marco Mucchi said, rising. He stood over Nancy, telling her that he was going to call a friend of his at the Comune as he lingered for a moment to stare down her cleavage.
“Grazie, signore,” Nancy said in a trembling voice as she looked up at him with tear-sodden eyes.
He went off to use the phone, and I turned to her, frantic to know what had upset her enough to make her cry.
“Oh, relax,” she said, all dry eyed and chipper. “I’m fine.”
I stared at her in disbelief.
“Italian men really relate to tears.” She craned her neck to make sure he was talking on the pay phone inside the bar. “And if a mamma’s involved . . .”
“I can’t believe you were faking that.”
She gave me a cryptic smile, and for the first time in our relationship, I found myself wondering about orgasms.
Signor Mucchi returned a few moments later. He apologized for having taken so long, but he had been finally able to find out what the problem was, although he warned us that what he was about to say was off the record. We drew near in anticipation, and he revealed that the Comune had blocked our funds because they had heard that we were putting up a three-story aluminum-and-glass California beach house.
That’s preposterous, we sputtered. Except for making it slightly larger, we were spending a fortune trying to preserve the traditional stonework of the rustico. All they had to do was look at all the schematics and blueprints we filed with them, which their own architects had approved!
“What you file and what you build may be two different things,” Marco Mucchi said, giving Nancy a look that was both admiring and a little flirty. “Everybody knows how clever you Americans are.”
“We’re not that clever,” Nancy said indignantly. “I mean, we love that old house and we want to honor it.”
“It’s a rumor,” I added, happy to finally be able to use the word chiacchiera, even though I probably mispronounced it.
“Well, there’s a little more to it than that,” he said, nodding gravely.
“Such as?”
He unhooked the wire-rimmed glasses from around his ears, and as he wiped off the sweat with a paper napkin, he looked around to make sure no one was listening. “Well, for one, why does Umberto get so mysteriously quiet when anybody asks him what’s going on up at your house?”
Nancy and I looked at each helplessly. We had gotten trapped in the irony of trying to cover up one thing, only to have it come back at us in another form.
“I think he’s just tired,” Nancy said. “You know the heat’s been so—”
“On any other topic you can’t shut him up.” Marco Mucchi held his ears to indicate being barraged by a torrent of Umberto’s words. “But when it comes to your house . . .” He zipped his lips shut.
“Chi sa?” I said, showing off my fluency. Who knows?
“And what about Vesuvia Pingatore?” Marco Mucchi asked. “Why does she suddenly decide, after all these years, to make her stone walls so much higher?”
“She hates us and she doesn’t want to look at us,” Nancy countered.
“Or . . . maybe she doesn’t want to look out her window every day and have to stare at a three-story aluminum-and-glass California beach house,” he said.
“Look, signore,” Nancy said, reverting to the formal tense to let him know that this was all about business. “We have been nothing but nice to that woman. And you cannot believe how rude she’s been!”
Marco Mucchi shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
“Weeks ago we offered to buy that small olive grove at the top of our hill,” she told him as he nodded. “And she never even had the decency to respond to our offer!”
“Actually, she called and asked if I would tell you that she respectfully declines your offer. She wants to keep that land in her family.”
“And what about the bas relief Nancy made for her?” I asked indignantly. “Did she also want to keep that in her family?”
Marco Mucchi shrugged. “Boh.”
“Signor Mucchi,” Nancy said, fighting back the tears like Meryl Streep in every movie she’d ever been in, “if we wanted a three-story aluminum-and-glass California beach house, we would have stayed in California. We love it here and we love our piccolo rustico. And we would never do anything to violate the tradition of that house. How can we prove that to you?”
Unfortunately, we couldn’t. The only way we could prove we were honoring the house was to finish it and the only way we could finish it was for the Comune to unblock our funds, which they refused to do. The term zum zug came to mind. It’s a German expression that’s used in chess, and it means every way you move, you lose.
21
Zizzania
“O ooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmnnnnnnnnnnnnn.”
I was meditating. Yeah, really. Sitting cross-legged on the floor with my eyes closed, I was concentrating on closing off my mind to everything but the flow of my own breathing. And according to this book I had ordered through Amazon UK, Meditation for Morons, I was well on my way to aligning my chakras, resonating my prana, and wandering serenely through the landscape of my own consciousness. Except the left side of my butt had gone numb, and there was a bird in the backyard making a constant, and I mean constant, Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo sound.
I’ll admit I don’t know much about wildlife, but from watching things like Animal Planet I’ve learned that ninety-nine percent of everything that animals (and presumably humans) do is to either catch food or procreate. In my wildest imagination I couldn’t imagine anything that would allow this damn bird to get close enough to eat it or screw it when he kept going Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo 24/7/365.
Did I mention that I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about anything?
“Oooooooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmm nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.”
Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo.
Aw, the hell with it. This was hopeless, I realized as I unknotted my legs and got up. Look, it’s not as if I wasn’t trying. I had gotten into this meditation thing when I started going to a yoga class taught by a Swiss lady. Her class was quite popular with Cambione’s yuppies (or, as they pronounce it: YOU-pees), and on any given night you might find as many as twenty-five people there. But much to the dismay of our Swiss professoressa, the Italians approached this discipline with a rather cavalier attitude. While I was sweating and grunting in a comic attempt to twist my creaking body into shapes that would only be desirable if you wanted to have sex with
yourself, the Italians were acting much as if they were in a café, laughing and chatting throughout the entire session. I half expected them to light up cigarettes and start sipping cappuccino.
My best efforts to view life through the tranquility of my third eye had been singularly unsuccessful, and I found myself increasingly stressed out over our situation. As if that weren’t bad enough, I was also feeling guilty for not being as happy as a loon because I was living in a place that most people can only dream about. Even in the best of times I’m about one broken shoelace away from a nervous breakdown anyway, so this was really taking a toll on me.
You see, the issue of money was ever on our minds, creating a state of zizzania (discord) between Nancy and me. With the Comune blocking the funds we had earmarked for remodeling, we had no other resources to draw from. We did our best to shield Umberto from our situation, so he and his guys would keep working as Nancy and I scrambled to turn up some cash.
I barraged my agent with e-mails and kept dreaming up more and more macho catchphrases. He wrote me back with the usual platitudes about being out there every day trying to sell my script, but how tough the market was these days.
The only encouraging thing he ever said was how much he enjoyed that e-mail I had written to him about Tuscany. In spite of the fact that I had chronicled all the charming ways things don’t work around here, it made him and his wife even more eager to come. Unfortunately, he was so busy at the office (presumably with the clients he could find work for), they probably wouldn’t be able to get here until late in the year. And by the way, did I know a cozy little B and B in Siena where he and his wife could enjoy a romantic Christmas?
