My Italian Bulldozer

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “Swallows,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Paul.

  He expected something more, but the other man seemed lost in thought.

  “I could have had a very different life,” said Tonio suddenly. “I could have lived in Florence or even Milan. I could have lived with people who understood, instead of which I am here, in this place, where I have only the company of people who look down on me.”

  Paul frowned. “Surely they don’t.”

  “Oh yes, they do,” said Tonio. “It is because I only produce Rosso di Montalcino. Many of them condescend to me.”

  “I don’t think they do,” said Paul.

  “You’re kind to say that,” said Tonio. “But the truth of the matter is that people who make mere Rosso di Montalcino are largely ignored. Everyone thinks only of their wine—their Brunello.”

  Paul found it difficult to decide what to say. “You have the consolation of knowing that you make good wine,” he said. “That’s important in this life, don’t you think? If you know you do something well, then it doesn’t matter what others think.”

  This seemed to cheer Tonio up. “You’re so right,” he said. “That is why the artist will always be happy—no matter how the world treats him. If he knows that what he creates is good, then he can bear the indifference of others.”

  Their inspection of the vines did not last long. The grapes were ripening well, said Tonio, and he expected a good harvest. He had a family from Buonconvento who always came to pick for him—solid, reliable people, he said, who had provided sons for the Italian Army for years.

  They returned to the house. Tonio announced that he had cooked lunch himself and had made a special effort, as he had heard from his cousin that Paul wrote on food as well as on wine. Paul found himself wondering whether Tonio had a wife; nothing had been said about this, and he had seen no sign of a feminine presence in the house so far. He decided to ask.

  “Will we be joined for lunch?” he enquired, as his host served him a small glass of his wine. He had asked for a small glass as he remembered the bulldozer outside. If it was socially irresponsible to drive a car after wine, then how much worse would it be to be in an unfit state in control of a bulldozer. He would ration himself, he decided: one glass on a stomach soon to be filled with a heavy Tuscan lunch would be perfectly safe.

  Tonio frowned at the question, and Paul wondered whether he had given offence. But when Tonio answered, he gave no sign of finding the question untoward.

  “I am by myself,” he said. “I was married—once, but that was some time ago.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “My wife went off with a communist,” said Tonio, losing his earlier cheerfulness. “It wasn’t easy for me.”

  “No, of course not…I’m sorry.”

  Tonio acknowledged Paul’s sympathy. “It could happen to anyone, you know.”

  Paul hesitated. His sympathy for Tonio had been building up. Poor Tonio, as Ella had said; he could see now why she called him that. He would confess that he was in the same position—or almost. “My girlfriend—well, she was more than that, really—we had lived together for some time…”

  “Your mistress?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t call her that. And I certainly don’t think she would. But anyway, she went off. In her case it was with her personal trainer.”

  Tonio shook his head. “That is very shocking. A personal trainer, you say?”

  Paul nodded. “A very fit man.”

  “We poor men,” said Tonio. “We’re treated very badly by women, I think. We do our best, but we cannot seem to do anything right.”

  Paul took a sip of his wine. He would try to cheer things up a bit. “Of course, there are other women. You might meet somebody—you never know.”

  Tonio looked at him incredulously. “Whom am I going to meet?”

  “Well, you never know…”

  Tonio interrupted him. “I very rarely get invited anywhere.”

  Paul persisted. “But you never know. If you ask people where they met their wives or partners or whatever, they’ll often say they just bumped into them.” He paused. “Perhaps you could join something. If you joined an organisation of some sort, then you might meet somebody.”

  Tonio thought for a moment. “But no organisation has asked me to join them.”

  “Perhaps you have to ask yourself. What about…” He tried to think of something. He knew that the Italians were keen on tennis. There were tennis clubs all over the place, and he had seen one, he seemed to recollect, just outside Montalcino. “What about a tennis club?”

  A shadow seemed to pass over Tonio’s face. “I don’t play.”

  “But you don’t have to be a player to join a tennis club. You can join as a spectator. I’m sure plenty of people do that.”

  “No, I doubt if they’d want me.”

  Paul bit his lip. This was discouraging. “Well, there are plenty of other things. What about Internet dating? Plenty of people meet other people that way these days. It’s quite standard, you know—at least where I come from. I’m sure Italy’s the same.”

  Tonio looked dubious. “I’m not very good with computers.”

  “But do you have a friend with a teenage son? They’re the experts in working computers. He could get you online.”

  Tonio looked sad. “All very unlikely,” he said.

  It seemed to Paul that Tonio’s animation and enthusiasm had been replaced by the earlier air of slight sadness. Now he invited Paul into the dining room. Seating his guest at one end of the table, he retreated into the kitchen to retrieve the first course—a Tuscan bean soup. There then followed a pasta course, heavily flavoured with garlic.

  This soup was straightforward Tuscan fare, but a perfect illustration, Paul thought, of the merits of simple recipes. The key, he imagined, was the stock.

  “Your stock?” he asked.

  “Not necessary,” said Tonio. “Traditional Tuscan bean soup has only white beans, parsley, garlic and olive oil. We use water. With us, the really important thing is the beans.” He paused. “Do you know that famous painting of the bean eater? By Annibale Carracci. It’s in Rome somewhere. I have a picture of it in one of my recipe books.”

  Paul shook his head.

  “He sits at the table,” said Tonio, “with a spoonful of beans poised to go into his mouth and a plateful in front of him. He has a rather sharp face, our bean eater, but his look of anticipation is very striking. He’s really looking forward to his beans.”

  Tonio tasted the soup. “Yes,” he said. “My own garlic. You can never eat enough garlic, you know.”

  “Keeps vampires away,” said Paul.

  “Keeps people away,” muttered Tonio, and then laughed at his own joke.

  The next course was wild boar served with fennel.

  “Wild boars can be very dangerous,” announced Tonio from his end of the table.

  Paul had heard a great deal about wild boars, but had seen no sign of them. “I imagine they are,” he said. “Do you have many on your property?”

  “No,” said Tonio. “This was the only one. Now there are none.”

  Paul looked at his plate. He felt bad about eating it now; it was almost as if he were eating the last of a species, a dodo, perhaps, or an impossibly rare antelope.

  Very little was said for the rest of the lunch. At the end of the meal, Paul thanked Tonio for his hospitality and explained that it was time for him to return to the village.

  Tonio’s mood seemed to have picked up again. “I hope you’ll come back,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed your visit.”

  As he led him to the door, Tonio mentioned that he had a brother in the village. “He’s the priest,” he said. “He is my younger brother, and a very interesting man he is—very well educated; he was at the Gregorian in Rome, you know. I’m sure you’ll meet him. He often goes to the Fiaschetteria Italiana. You must know that place.”

  “I do,” said Paul. “I shall look out for him.”

 
“He is called Stefano,” said Tonio.

  They went outside. Tonio escorted Paul to the bulldozer and watched, smiling, as he climbed into the cabin.

  “Perhaps you’ll fix my road on your way out,” shouted Tonio, as Paul started the engine.

  Paul laughed. “Stranger things have happened,” he shouted back. “Arrivederci!”

  “Ciao!” shouted Tonio, waving. “Ciao, ciao!”

  Paul looked over his shoulder as he moved off, and saw Tonio standing there, his arm half-raised in a wave, an isolated figure, he thought—a man wanting something that he could never have.

  —

  He was becoming accustomed to the bulldozer and its ways by now—so much so that he did not mind its slow pace or the throaty noise made by its diesel engine. The edge was off the afternoon sun, and a pleasantly cool breeze had blown up from the west. He was in no hurry to get back to Montalcino, and when he came to an unmarked turn-off, an unpaved road that dropped down to a small valley, he decided that he would make a brief detour. He suspected that this side-road made a loop and then rejoined the main road back into the village—he had looked at a map and thought he had seen it. He had not explored in this direction before, and he had the time; he might even park the bulldozer and go for a walk if he found a suitable path.

  Heavy rain earlier on in the summer had created corrugations in the surface of the road to the extent that in places the verge had been eroded. In a car it would have been an uncomfortable ride, in parts requiring some caution, but on the bulldozer he felt complete confidence. Untidy woodland bordered the road on either side, with patches of scrub bush and, here and there, small, stony fields that had been cleared a long time ago and ignored for years. Many of the trees were young oaks, but a number of trees were far older and provided pools of shade. He passed a farmyard set back from the edge of the road—a rambling house with dark windows like watching eyes, a barn in the entrance to which a cart appeared to have been abandoned, a shed with a door hanging at an angle. Beside the shed, immobile in the shade of a spreading oak, a pair of white Chianina oxen were tethered to a feeding trough. The heads of the oxen drooped, their unnaturally large ears flopping across their brows, only the slow twitching of their tails showing that they were awake, or even alive.

  He slowed down as he passed the farmyard, and wondered what it would be like to live in such a place, well out of the village, with no neighbours, and with only olive trees and vines to worry about, and perhaps the oxen and the few sheep that might graze the stony fields. People had lived in that spot, he imagined—in that very house—for centuries. They had survived the conflict of warring principalities, invasion, the heartlessness of landlords, Fascism; they would have been as indifferent to all of these as the countrymen, the contadini, always were to the perturbations of the outside world. What would have counted were things far more elemental: the spring rain, the winter frost, fire, the failure of crops. That is what mattered.

  For some reason he did not quite understand, he was suddenly gloriously, almost deliriously, happy. It was a physical sensation as much as an emotional one, and he felt as if he were suddenly lighter—able, if he wished, to float upwards and look down on the track, the trees, the farmhouse, the cluttered yard. It was a form of intoxication, a relief from self, a feeling of a sort to accompany being picked up by the wind and effortlessly borne away to a place that it alone decided.

  He closed his eyes momentarily, and the wave of elation died away. Opening them in time to prevent the bulldozer wandering off onto the verge, it occurred to him that he felt so happy simply because it was right for him to be here, under this sky, embraced by this warm and scented air, with this hillside slowly rising before him. There was no traffic, no bustle of commerce, nothing in any way redolent of the sleepless hive that cities have become; there was no sense that if human activity suddenly ceased, then everything would clog up and collapse.

  He steered the bulldozer round an approaching corner. As he did so, he saw that not far ahead of him a car had left the road and landed in the ditch alongside it. The small red car was nose down, its rear in the air, its back wheels clear of the ground and undergrowth. The front door on the driver’s side was open, and he was at once certain that there was a person still inside who, as he approached, stepped out onto the road ahead of him. It was a woman, and she was waving at him.

  He brought the bulldozer to a halt, switched off the engine, and climbed out of the cab.

  “Are you all right?”

  The woman took a few steps towards him. She seemed unharmed, and soon confirmed this.

  “Yes, I’m perfectly all right. This all happened in…”

  Her Italian was correct, but hesitant, and Paul finished her sentence for her in English: “…in slow motion?”

  She smiled. “Exactly. May we carry on in English?”

  “Of course.”

  He took in the details of her appearance: the casual but expensive clothes; the shoes, with their neat leather tassels; the overall good taste. She was about his age, he thought—perhaps slightly less—and judging from her accent she was American, or, of course, Canadian. She was typical, he thought, of the sort of North American visitor who ventured away from the usual haunts of Florence or Siena, out into Tuscany—there for a reason. He noticed the high cheek-bones and the delicate features—an intelligent face.

  “I think I might have dropped off,” she said. “I don’t know otherwise why I should go off the road like that. It just…just suddenly happened.”

  “You went to sleep?”

  There was no note of reproach in his tone, but when she replied it was apologetically. “I’m afraid so. I remember feeling tired—I’ve just arrived, you see, and I’ve driven up from Rome. I was on the wrong road for ages. All my fault.”

  He sought to reassure her. “No damage done—that’s the important thing.”

  She gestured to the car. “Except for this.”

  He glanced at the car. “Rented?”

  She bit her lip. “Borrowed.”

  Paul wanted to smile, not from Schadenfreude but out of sympathy, because he could imagine the embarrassment. That car you lent me—well, there was a ditch, you see, and…

  “Oh dear.”

  She nodded. “Yes.” She looked at him helplessly. “What do I do now?”

  He moved over to her car and peered through the rear window. Luggage and personal effects were strewn across the seat—a suitcase, an airport bag, a couple of bottles of water, books. He turned to her. “I could try to pull you out.”

  She glanced at the bulldozer. “With your…with that?”

  “With my bulldozer—yes. There’s a rope. I even seem to have a chain in the back of that thing.”

  Her relief was evident. “It would be very kind of you.” She paused. “I must be holding you back from your work.”

  Paul shook his head. “No, I was just driving back to Montalcino. I opted for the scenic route—this road doesn’t really go anywhere very much.”

  She explained that she had been making for Montalcino too, but had taken the wrong turning. At the end of her explanation she asked him why he was driving a bulldozer. Did he live nearby? Was he building something?

  He met her gaze. “Actually, if I tell you—will you laugh?”

  She seemed surprised. “Of course I won’t laugh. Why should I?”

  “Because people don’t drive around on hired bulldozers—or not normally.”

  She conceded this. “Maybe not.” She added, “And I suppose they normally don’t go to sleep at the wheel and drive a borrowed car into a ditch.”

  “Possibly not.”

  She grinned, and he was struck by the way her face lit up. He liked her. “But rather than standing round talking about bulldozers,” he said, “I’m going to get that rope out and see what I can do.”

  It did not take him long to tie the rope round the blade of the bulldozer and then fix it to the upended rear of her car. Then, while she stood nervously to the si
de, he started the bulldozer, engaged the reverse gear, and disengaged the clutch. He had intended to move slowly, but his unfamiliarity with reverse meant that he moved faster than he had anticipated. This led to the car being dragged out of the ditch with some suddenness. There was dust and a wrenching, and what sounded to him like the groaning of metal. He stopped, wincing at the violence with which the car had been plucked from its resting place.

  Getting out of the cab, he strode over to the car to inspect the damage. The bumper to which he had attached the rope had been bent, but otherwise the car looked unharmed. He turned to her apologetically. “I didn’t mean to force it,” he said.

  She showed no sign of reproach. “But you had to,” she said. “And you’ve done it. You’ve got me out of the ditch.”

  “Well…”

  She was already getting into the driver’s seat. “I’ll see if it starts.”

  The car’s engine sprang into life, and, leaving it running, she leapt out, took the few steps to where he was standing, and kissed him on the cheek.

  “You hero,” she said.

  He blushed, and she drew back. “I haven’t even given you my name,” she said. “And yet I’m showering you with kisses. I’m Anna.”

  “And I’m Paul.” He pointed to the car. “Just give it a try. Drive over to the other side of the road. See if everything works.”

  She got back in and took control. The car moved forward, but with a screeching sound. Applying the brakes, she opened the door and looked anxiously at Paul. He came over, took her place at the wheel, and engaged the gears once more. As the car inched forward, he realised that there was something wrong with the steering, which was stiff and unresponsive. And then the engine stopped.

  He tried the ignition again, but with no result. He looked at her and shrugged. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It must have taken more of a hammering than we thought. The steering’s not working and the engine too…It looks like you’re going to have to be towed.”

  She had buried her head in her hands. “This is ghastly,” she said. “The car belongs to a friend who’s been staying in Rome. She’s in Paris for a few months, and she said I could borrow it when I came over. Now I’ve wrecked it…”