Enzo held the key carefully in both hands and turned to Bob. “La cantina,” he said.
That word, cantina, wine cellar, made me realize there was no basement in this house. Where was the cantina? We stepped outside, under the archway that covered our tiny verandah and narrow stairs, and Enzo locked the front door. He presented Bob with the house keys. Bob passed me the cantina key, which weighed at least five pounds.
If I put this key in my pocket, I’d lean to one side as I walked. I carried it down the stairs in both hands, as if it was treasure, and then I turned to walk down the street to the Bar Italia where we’d parked the car.
“Aspetta,” said Enzo. “Wait.” He pointed to our house. The rain had stopped, but water still dripped through the holes in the eavestrough, down the walls past the rusted balcony railing, around the dingy arch of the verandah and down to the road, where it flowed along the gutter past two wooden doors. Enzo was pointing to these, at street level: double doors of thick oak planks tapered perfectly to fit the cement archway.
“Questa é la tua cantina,” announced Enzo, looking at me.
I lifted the key into the lock, as large as a dinner plate, and turned with both hands. The oak doors didn’t move an inch. Bob pushed on one door, Enzo pushed on the other, I held my breath. A wise move because the same sour smell was just as powerful here. Although the cantina may have held barrels and barrels of valuable wine at one time, now it contained nothing but shadows and spider webs. Enzo pulled on a chain and the cantina was flooded with light. The walls were perfectly smooth and white. Firewood was piled neatly along one wall, the other walls bare. The ceiling was decorated, not with rusty meat hooks, but with swirls of plaster. The cement floor was swept clean. In the back corner there was a window with vertical iron bars. Even though the cantina was not actually in the house, it was still the nicest room in the house.
“What do you use this cantina for?” asked Bob. “Perché?”
Enzo stared at him in disbelief, not because he didn’t understand Bob’s Italian, but because he couldn’t comprehend the question.
“Vino — wine,” he said, politely, but he shook his head a little. Enzo brightened, waved his hand toward the
Bar Italia and invited us to coffee. It was a Supinese tradition to make everything into an occasion, a ceremony. There was a certain prestige involved in bringing North Americans into the Italian coffee bar, especially since these Canadians liked the village so much they’d bought
a house. We accepted the offer of coffee, the same way we were going to have to accept a lot of things.
When we arrived at the Bar Italia, Rocco was waiting inside. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “I can tell by the look on Maria’s face. You’re disappointed. Maybe it needs a little work.”
Enzo carefully hung my knapsack on a hook near the cash register, ordered cappuccino for the signora, biscotti and espresso for signor Bob, and made a little ceremony out of pulling out my chair, sweeping some invisible crumbs from the tabletop. Rocco, not to be outdone, ordered espresso for everyone in the bar. Then came the introductions.
Rocco’s brother Pietro was a contractor — we might need to hire him. Every man in the bar turned out to be a relation of Rocco’s. They were all involved in the construction trade. We met Rocco’s cousin Paolo, the plumber, his brother Vincenzo, the painter, his brother-in-law Luigi, the floor sander, and Rocco’s father-in-law, Maurizio the tile man.
After an hour, Bob and I stood up, ready to leave, but Pietro suggested, since it had stopped raining, that we all walk back to the house together and make a list of what needed to be done.
Bob said, and I knew he wasn’t kidding this time, “You’ll need a long piece of paper.”
We left the bar deserted, except for Enzo. Apparently he felt that his job was done. Enzo stayed behind to play cards with Bruno, the owner. We were on our own, with five tradesmen and a travel agent.
Bob unlocked the front door and stepped back to let the tradesmen go in first. It was more than a polite gesture; we didn’t want to breathe that stagnant air any longer than we had to. Rocco took the newspaper that he always carried under his arm and crumpled it in the fireplace. He lit it and added thin twigs from a battered metal pail in the corner of the room. In a few minutes, the flames began to throw light and warmth into the room. Bob went down to the cantina and returned, carrying two beechnut logs.
Pietro said we must start at the top and work our way down. I thought the stench must be getting to him too, so I assured him the air was fresher upstairs. In the tiny front bedroom, a dingy rope hung from the corner of the ceiling. Why hadn’t we noticed it before? Pietro pulled the rope and down came a flight of stairs. Pietro snapped a brass hinge into place, put his foot on the bottom step to steady it and with a sweep of his arm and a formal bow, he said, “Eccola.” We climbed the ladder and found ourselves in a bright and airy attic, bright and airy because several roof tiles were missing. There was blue sky above us in several locations and underneath each opening, a puddle of fresh rainwater.
“Primo,” announced Pietro. “Il tetto nuovo.” A new roof.
“Certo,” agreed Rocco.
“Secondo,” decided Pietro. “Imbiancare — how you say? — paint the walls.”
“Certo,” replied Rocco.
“Terzo,” continued Pietro. “Le finestre nuove.”
“Certo,” said Rocco and so it went until we climbed down the ladder to the little closet that was the bathroom and Rocco’s cousin, Paolo the plumber, took over.
“What you like?” he asked. “New toilet — maybe clean up the sink a little?”
“No. Whole new bathroom.”
Paolo looked a little unsure. “You mean everything — new toilet, new sink, new shower head?”
“No. Whole new bathroom,” I repeated and I took his piece of blue chalk and marked off a corner of the second-floor bedroom. “Make a whole new bathroom and make it this big.”
“Mamma mia.”
Pietro brought out his list and started adding to it: plaster the cracks, fill in the pot hole on the balcony, paint everything. Vincenzo, the painter, interrupted.
“Colore?” he asked. “I paint light, or dark?”
“Light, certo,” responded Rocco and we trooped down the stairs to the main floor. It was Rocco’s brother-in-law’s, Luigi’s, turn; he sanded floors.
“But these floors are cement,” I said.
“No. No,” assured Luigi. “Marble. I sand. You see. É bellissimo.”
The fire had warmed the room and eliminated some of the smell. The sun was shining through the open door. Rocco’s father-in-law, Maurizio, tapped his finger against the grimy yellow tile that decorated the front of the fireplace.
“What you think?” he asked. “Maybe I replace one or two tiles — this one, she’s a little cracked.”
“Certo,” agreed Rocco.
But Bob intervened, “Take them all off — tutto — and make a brick fireplace with a wooden mantle.”
“Bricks? You want bricks inside the house?”
“Certo,” said Bob.
Pietro wrote down everything we needed, Rocco translated it for us and we signed at the letter X. Pietro assured us that work would start presto and we could stay in the back bedroom in the meantime. There was a bathroom at the Bar Italia, just down the street.
We said we would stay at the local pensione while the house was being renovated, confirming the villagers’ suspicions that we were ricchi e pazzi. Rich and crazy. We were the last ones to leave. I reached into my knapsack and brought out a wreath of grapevines, dried flowers and blue gingham ribbon and hung it on the front door. There was a little hand painted sign in the shape of a heart in the centre of the wreath: “Welcome.”
We walked down the cobblestone street to the Bar Italia where we had parked the car. Things were looking up; the house needed more work than we had thought, but we’d arranged for all the renovations in less than two hours. We could sleep for the rest of the day, at t
he pensione just outside of town, and tomorrow when we returned to the house it would be an Italian beehive of activity.
“I’m feeling better,” I began. “This village is....”
“There’s a parking ticket on our car,” said Bob.
The windshields of the other cars were bare. A trio of young men, lounging in front of the Bar Italia smoking Marlboro cigarettes and reading Lo Sport, laughed at us.
“Milanese,” they shouted, pointing to our licence plate.
“Why are we the only ones with a ticket?” asked Bob, as we got into our rented Fiat.
“No idea. We could ask the policeman who directs the traffic at the corner.”
Rocco had told us the village of Supino boasts three policemen: one sometimes directs the cars at the main intersection, the other two are on call for feast days, official visits and parades. Today there wasn’t anyone directing traffic at the corner.
“Do you want to stop at the police station?” I asked. “See if we can pay it there?”
“I guess. We’re going right by it to get to the pensione.”
The street seemed unusually busy for this time of day; no one was leaning on the fence posts chatting with their neighbour or napping under the grapevines with their handkerchief draped over their head. The day was still bright, yet herds of sheep crowded the road leading to the outskirts of town. The sign on the police station stated: OPEN: 16:00–20:00.
As we pulled into the driveway, a uniformed officer raced out and shooed us away with his white hat. “No. No. Calcio,” he yelled.
In his haste to close the wrought iron gates he scraped the front fender of the car. Bob had learned some Italian mannerisms. He blasted the horn, shook his fist at the policeman. He pointed to his watch and then to the sign.
“Calcio,” repeated the officer. Kicking his foot in the air, he wagged his index finger at us. “No. Assolutamente, no.”
At the pensione, the coffee grinder on the black marble bar whirred as it pulverized the beans for espresso. Ugo the waiter stood at the dining room door anxious to seat guests. It was six o’clock. We knew dinner was never served before eight.
“What’s going on?” I asked Ugo. “Che é successo?”
“Calcio,” he explained. “Foota-ball.”
“Soccer,” translated Bob.
Remembering the busy streets, the traffic jam of sheep, I realized the villagers were hurrying home to eat early so they could return to the coffee bars to watch the eight o’clock game.
“Ask him about the parking ticket,” said Bob.
“Why us?” I asked Ugo, pointing to myself and then to the ticket.
“Your machine,” he explained, “Milanese.” Calling to his father, Ugo took our parking ticket and laid it carefully in the palm of his hand. In a few minutes, the entire family had crammed into the lobby to examine the official paper. Even the chef scurried out of the kitchen, wiping bits of yellow egg dough on his apron. Although everyone crowded close to Ugo, no one actually touched the parking ticket. The grandmother started chattering and waving her hands toward a shelf above the cash register. There was a photo of the town’s patron saint, San Lorenzo, and a dried leaf from Palm Sunday that someone had fashioned into a cross. The grandmother made a little space between these treasures and held her hand out for our parking ticket. The father, Ugo Primo, stepped forward with a thumb tack in his hand. He dusted off a small section of the wood paneling behind the bar with his handkerchief. This was where he proudly displayed his postcards from former guests and his picture of the Lazio soccer team. Just as I was beginning to realize that we were not going to get our ticket back, the mention of soccer sent the family hurrying back to work. Ugo hustled us to a table. On his way he grabbed a bottle of Castelli Romani, a basket of bread.
“Mangia presto,” he announced. He was gone before the wine bottle settled onto the white linen tablecloth.
“The cloth’s still damp,” Bob pointed out. “And why are we eating so early? The table’s not even set.”
“Buona sera,” said Rocco, as he rushed into the dining room.
“We haven’t ordered yet and Ugo says our food will be here soon,” complained Bob.
“There’s a soccer game tonight,” reminded Rocco, as he pulled over a chair.
“We got a parking ticket,” continued Bob.
“Yes. I heard. Let the management keep it.”
“Can we pay it without the original?”
“No one pays tickets in Supino,” explained Rocco. “Most people have never seen one. The police don’t know you’re Supinese because your licence plate says Milanese like all Italian rental cars. They figured you’re lost tourists.”
“Do you mean if they knew we’d just bought a house in Supino they wouldn’t have ticketed us?” I asked. “That’s very neighbourly.”
“It’s nothing to do with being neighbourly. If a policeman gave a ticket to a villager, they’d be outraged. So would their family. They’d seek revenge.”
“What revenge? They’d have to pay, wouldn’t they?”
“Sure they’d pay. But the policeman would pay too,” Rocco assured us. “One day one of the policeman’s chickens would go missing, or a bushel of grapes would disappear.”
“But the police would know who took it. It wouldn’t be worth a stolen chicken or a few grapes — everyone in Supino has those things anyway.”
“That’s not the point. The villagers would be insulted by the betrayal of one of their own.”
“Even so, the police know the guilty party, or at least the guilty family.”
“The villager’s friends would get involved. It’s a small village. The policeman’s probably related to the family through blood, or marriage, or....”
“Ahhh, our fettuccine is here,” announced Rocco, as Ugo arrived carrying three plates. Apparently Rocco was eating dinner with us.
“Buon appetito.” Lifting his wine glass in a toast, Rocco said, “Welcome to Supino.”
*****
We were too tired to sit in the bar and watch the soccer game with the rest of the villagers. We worked our way through the crowd and the smoke, heading for our bedroom on the second floor. Beside the elevator was a six-sided rack on a swivel base, filled with postcards. One card showed an aerial view of the village, lying peacefully in the valley under the shadow of the Santa Serena mountain. Another was of the war memorial in the main square, built in the 1950s. The last was a view of the main street with the Kennedy Bar in the corner.
*****
“Buon giorno,” we said to the town official, seated at the desk, reading Il Tempo.
“Un momento,” he replied, without looking up.
Several momentos passed before he folded his newspaper, straightened his tie and removed his uniform jacket from the back of the chair. We placed our letter of purchase, our passports and our “official request to install a water tank” on the desk and waited. This was our fourth trip to City Hall. The first time, we’d received the official form, but when we’d returned the next day, City Hall was closed for lunch, for three hours. We came back again after lunch, but they were still closed. Then on Saturday, and Sunday, and Monday, but the doors were still locked.
“Maybe they’re closed on Monday,” I said to Bob, but really I had no idea why the doors were locked. We’d been in Supino for six days now and all we’d accomplished was signing the renovation contract.
The City Hall employee stood up, put on his uniform jacket and left the room. In a few minutes, we heard the front door open and close, followed by the sound of whistling. We rushed to the open window just in time to see our man strolling down the street, whistling happily, heading to the Bar Centrale.
“Darn,” groaned Bob. “It’s ten o’clock. Cappuccino break.”
We walked down to the Bar Centrale too. Our town official was arguing politics with some friends at a nearby table. Every few minutes he banged his hand emphatically on the metal table top, the glasses rattled, the cups clanked, but the conversa
tion carried on. Rocco came whistling up the street, newspaper under his arm. He veered off as soon as he saw us and pulled a chair up to the table.
“How are you making out with the lawyer?” Bob asked.
“Which lawyer is that, Bob?” replied Rocco, as he signalled to the waiter, waved to a friend whizzing by on a motor scooter.
“The lawyer who’s supposed to register the deed of our house.”
“Oh, yes, of course. There’s no lawyer in Supino, you understand, Bob,” Rocco explained. “We’ll go to Frosinone.”
“Not enough work for a lawyer here?” asked Bob.
“The Supinese don’t trust lawyers. They think they’re thieves — charging for advice you could get free at any bar in town.”
“Don’t they appreciate the educational costs, the time involved in becoming a lawyer?”
“Time. That reminds me,” Rocco replied, looking at his watch. “Be in Frosinone tomorrow, Via Margerite #7, at one o’clock. We have an appointment.”
The Supinese have a different concept of time. They say one o‘clock, but they show up two hours later.
“Do you mean one o’clock? Sharp?” I asked.
“Sí. Sí,” Rocco nodded, then sighed. “That’s the other reason a lawyer can’t practice here. The Supinese are suspicious of people who are obsessed with time.”
That morning in the piazza the sun was strong. Our town official took off his jacket. Since I didn’t think he’d be returning to City Hall soon, we left the Bar Centrale and walked down the hill to the Kennedy Bar where they sold ice cream: lemon to pucker your mouth, hazelnut to sharpen your taste buds and peach to seduce you. We sat at a small white table beneath the shade of a quince tree and watched a city employee plaster a yellow poster to the side of the bar. When he finished he came over to speak to Bob.
“Caffé?” asked my husband.
“Sí. Grazie,” replied the stranger.
Bob signaled the waiter, held up his thumb and index finger to indicate two.
“Who is this man?” I asked.
My Father Came From Italy Page 4
