Living in a Foreign Language (23 page)

“In tre giorni, vedremo
—we will see,” he said.

As we got closer to study the different tints of mortar, Enzo suddenly stopped and took Jill's arm.

“Guarda!”
he said, and pointed to the sky.

The clouds had thinned and shafts of sunlight were streaking through the orange and purple sky onto the hills of shimmering olive trees—like in a painting by some Renaissance master. Better. We stopped in our tracks and stared. We were quiet for a long time.

“Bella, no?”
he whispered.
“Bella Italia”

“Yes.” We nodded. Very bella, indeed.

The next day we were talking with Ivano, brother number three. Ivano is the youngest, the only bachelor of the family and quite a nice-looking fellow.

“Nicola is the smart brother. He is the one with brains. Enzo is
caporeparto
, the foreman.”

“And you?” we asked.

“Schiavo,”
he said with a big grin. The slave.

The three brothers come from Naples. They are here in the north because there's not enough work to sustain their families in the south. Nicola and his wife, who is a teacher of special education, have moved here permanently and just had their first baby. Ivano decided to follow his older brother to see what life was like in the north, and Enzo, whose wife and kids are still living in Naples, commutes
back home every weekend. The three brothers have a close family tie, which, in Italy, is redundant.

“Vi piace la bandiera?”
Ivano was asking if we liked the flag that was flying high over the new roof.

We said that we were very happy with it. Martin had e-mailed about a month earlier, saying that there's another tradition—of raising a flag once a new roof is completed. He told us that the workers didn't think it made all that much sense to use an Italian flag and asked if we wanted to raise the American flag. We nixed that idea because the U.S. had just invaded Iraq and we weren't feeling very identified with our country.

“Nicola asked if you would like the peace flag,” e-mailed Martin.

We thought that was a great idea, and so did all the workers. It's still flying over the house.

We noticed that Vittoria, our cleaning lady, would bring out a thermos of hot coffee for the workers at around four in the afternoon. They really appreciated it, so Jill and I started to do it as well. The first time we had only three takers because it was during Ramadan and our workers from Tunisia were not allowing themselves any stimulants. One day I brewed a pot of American coffee—just to see how everybody liked it. Ivano sipped it and said, unenthusiastically, “
É buono—ma non é caffe.”
It's okay, but let's not pretend it's coffee.

Vittoria came once a week—to clean, to bring us fresh eggs from her chickens and to brighten our day. She has an extraordinary vitality that perks us up every time she comes. Vittoria was born and raised in the neighborhood, but—because she had spent her working years in the employ of the Agnelli family, of Fiat fame—she had traveled all over
the world and lived, for the most part, in Rome until she retired. Now she cleans for us because she's loved the Rustico since she was a little girl and loves to spend time here. Which makes us very lucky.

“Domenico wants to speak with you. About the olives. He'll come later today—
dopo pranzo”
After lunch.

Domenico—nephew to Vittoria, husband to Laura, who owns the fresh pasta shop—is retired from his job as foreman of a large plant in Terni. He's still a young man (well, younger than me), and he's agreed to take care of our garden and grounds. At the moment, he is in a waiting mode while the construction crew rips up the site, but—along with Sophie, our landscaper—he's been making plans for when the house is completed.

Later that afternoon, the five of us (Vittoria stayed around to supervise) walked around the construction site, imagining how our garden would be situated the following summer when everything was done. We decided to have a separate herb garden just outside the kitchen, along the east wall of the
forno
. The vegetable garden would be down below the pergola—near where the parking area is now. We'll have tomatoes, eggplant, peppers—both hot and sweet—zucchini, beans, lettuces and
rucola
. Since we were changing the entrance and parking area to the other side of the house, the old parking area would become the site of our
bocce
court. No Italian villa is complete without a
campo di bocce
. Then Domenico suggested that he plant artichokes all along the perimeter fence below the
bocce
court. They would take a couple of years to develop, but eventually we would have our own
carciofi
—and enough for all our friends—every spring. Then Domenico made his proposal about the olives.

“Since you are leaving in the middle of October, you
will miss the olive harvest, which takes place from the end of October to the middle of November. So, I propose to harvest all the olives for you, take them down to the local
frantoio
and then put your very own oil into five-liter cans, which will be waiting here for you when you return. You should have at least thirty liters, maybe more.”

Vittoria beamed. She had obviously been in on this plan.

And I'm thinking the perfect rejoinder to this incredible act of generosity would be the old Hollywood line, “Oh yeah? What's in it for me?” But they wouldn't have gotten it.

The dance between Martin and JoJo continued throughout the building process—although we experienced most of it by e-mail. This didn't really bother us because they seemed to be competing for the job of who would protect us better. At one point they were in deep disagreement over the moving of the electric gate and finally decided to confer with us—the clients—about our opinion. Martin assumed we wanted the electric gate at the new entrance for a number of reasons—security, privacy and convenience, to name a few. JoJo hated the electric gate and thought Martin was being obsessive.

“. . . as to the electric gate, here's my concept” her e-mail read. “You get another gate, a pretty gate—
senza elettricità
(without electricity)—not necessarily immediately—and when you arrive, say in September, you open the gate—and when you leave, say in October, you close the gate. If you leave for a couple of nights in Roma, you close the gate when you leave and open it when you get back.

“Soooo, instead of having to open and close the gate every single fucking time for every person who comes and
goes which, by the way, does nothing to protect you since, if it's broken which, by the way, happens continuously, people just have to climb over the little fence next to it to get in—you'd just leave the pretty new gate open.
Capito?
(understand?) I say get rid of that massive hunk of junk with its dreadful flashing lights, so you don't have to worry about who has the clicker and if the clicker's batteries are working and if there's a thunderstorm, has it shorted out and stopped working and will the olive grove neighbor be calling and cursing our name? etc. etc. etc. Do you sense how much I hate that huge, ugly piece of shit?”

Martin just sighed—if you can sigh in an e-mail—suggesting we do what we want—and not be swayed by any “outside influences.” He agreed that Italians, historically, were overly concerned with walling themselves in and that a closed gate didn't offer us any actual security. In general, he was in agreement with JoJo about the gate, and his only problem was that he didn't want to appear like he was in agreement with JoJo.

Vittoria took us on a little walk around the property to show us the bounty of wild herbs and greens that grew under our feet and along the roadside. We had noticed local women (and occasionally men) dotted along the shoulder of the road—some with baskets, some just stuffing their pockets—gathering greens for dinner.

Cicoria
—wild chicory—is everywhere. Vittoria pointed it out and we collected a fair amount of it. We also picked some wild oregano, which she said would make a good
tisana
—herbal tea—that was especially good for colds and sore throats.

Back in the kitchen, we washed the
cicoria
to get the dirt and sand off and then dropped it in boiling water until it was tender. This is crucial to get rid of its bitterness. Then Vittoria demonstrated how to drain it and sauté it in garlic and olive oil. She told us we could add some white beans at this point and have a classic
cicoria e fagioli
—greens and beans—or make a chicken soup with
cicoria
, pecorino cheese and a scrambled egg or two floating in it, like
stracciatella
soup.
Cicoria
was a staple at this time of year and all we had to do was walk out into the front yard and pick it.

That night, we met all the regulars at the Palazzaccio to catch up on the gossip. When we came through the door, Danila greeted us with a big hug and we fell into conversation with her before we joined the crowd at “expat table.” We'd noticed that we'd been speaking nothing but Italian for the last few days—to Nicola, Enzo and Ivano; to Vittoria and Domenico—and we were able to communicate with Danila on a higher level than before. We still weren't discussing literature or anything like that, but the knot of tension in the back of my neck—which I got whenever I entered into an Italian discussion—was considerably smaller. We realized that we actually
preferred
to speak Italian. Walking around the property with Vittoria, arguing with Ivano about American and Italian politics, wading through Domenico's strong Umbrian dialect to finally discover the meaning of his words and the generosity of his heart—we started to realize that the only way to know Italians was to speak Italian.

So we decided to plunge in more deeply. My birthday was coming up in February—my sixtieth. Jill had wanted to throw a party with friends from all the different parts of our lives congregating in Umbria. But February wouldn't be a good time to do that. So we decided to put the party off until summer and celebrate my birthday by enrolling in a language intensive for two weeks in Rome, studying Italian all morning and playing in Rome the rest of the day and evening. Then we'd come home to Campello on the weekends to be with our friends. We'd also never been in Umbria in the winter, and the locals had been telling us it's really the best time—quiet and cozy, and the winter truffles are far superior to the summer ones. I e-mailed our travel agent and booked a three-week trip in February and called and enrolled us in the language school in Rome.

Home

W
E STARTED FISHING AROUND
the expat community for the real story on JoJo and Bruce's Mexico plans. Were they looking to spend a few months of the winter down there? Or were they actually thinking about transplanting themselves—and the party that always surrounds them—down to the Yucatán Peninsula? It was hard to think about losing them so soon after having found them.

Sophie was over to check on the three almond trees behind the house. They were being seriously threatened by the construction and she wanted to make sure they would survive. After she reassured us that at least two of the three trees would make it, we asked her what she knew about Bruce and JoJo's plans.

She was quiet for a while, which made me think there was a secret she didn't want us to know. Then she shook her head.

“I'm not sure. I think they're telling people a little bit at a time, so that nobody panics. You know, JoJo's made herself completely indispensable to a lot of people here. She
has a secret weapon: Bruce. He can fix anything, cook anything, build anything, find anything. And with her managing skills, they offer an unbeatable service.”

It was true; we depended on them a lot. JoJo paid our bills and taxes; she was the liaison between us and all the Italian tradespeople. She knew the intricate workings of the Italian bureaucracy and how to maneuver through it. Both she and Bruce translated the culture for us as well; they knew where the best
sagras
—festivals—were, the hidden treasures, the best food sources. Bruce was my mentor with the wood-burning oven, my grill-master.

“But you don't need them for any of that, do you?” I asked Sophie. She and Jeffrey and their son, Elias, had been living here for thirteen years and spoke Italian perfectly.

“No. We'll just miss them. They're our best friends.”

A couple days later, we got a call from JoJo, inviting us over for dinner. Bruce was doing his famous lasagna and they said they needed some good eaters. She acted as master of ceremonies in the kitchen as we watched Bruce do his thing.

“Yeah, he's good with all that flour stuff. He can make anything.”

JoJo waved her hand vaguely toward Bruce, who flashed his Cheshire cat smile and blushed. He was feeding fresh-made pasta through an old hand-crank machine that was bolted to the edge of the kitchen table, kneading and smoothing it. We had just watched him make the dough from scratch in no more time than it took us to walk across the room. He had mounded some “0” flour on the table, created a little well in the middle and put three very fresh eggs into it. Then he took a fork and deftly combined the flour
into the egg until he had a ball of bright yellow dough with a satiny texture that just begged to be touched.