The Reluctant Tuscan (25 page)

“You okay?'

“I drank that water too fast,” she said. “I'm queasy.”

“Should I call . . . ?”

“No, I'm okay.” She straightened up and blew out a breath. “It's getting a little better.”

We sat for a moment in silence. My nerve endings were electrified and my skin felt transparent. I was intoxicated by the smell of my own burning bridges. Strange and radical thoughts were bubbling up inside of me, and they all seemed right.

“Let's get married.”

“What?”

“I'm proposing to you. Let's get married again.”

She stared at me. “You're serious.”

“Yeah! You know how we're always joking about what a farce our wedding was.”

“Okay, the boat was my idea, but you're the one who found Reverend Elvis.”

“Let's do it right this time. Here in Italy. Maybe the house'll be ready and we can do it there.”

“I was the one who got hit on the head, wasn't I?” she said.

“Look, coming this close to death or whatever made me see how I'm wasting my life obsessing over all the wrong things. The only important thing I've got is you.”

“Oh, God, I can't believe you're saying this!”

“So what's your answer? Will you marry me? Again?”

“I'll think about it,” she said, as her voice broke and she hugged me.

I started to cry as I blubbered over and over that I loved her. My nose was running, tears were streaming down my face, and my shoulders were heaving with each sob.

I felt her heaving, too, and I thought we were both crying. I didn't realize it at the time, but she was heaving from nausea, and when I squeezed her, she threw up all over me.

Love is a many splendored thing, isn't it?

I
talians have so much empathy for suffering that instead of saying “Emergency,” their ambulances and hospitals are usually printed with the word
misericordia
, which, if not by dictionary definition, then at least by common usage, means “mercy for the miserable.” And that certainly described us as we took a taxi home from the hospital the following day.

After examining her, the orthopedic surgeon saw evidence of a separation in Nancy's shoulder, and even though her MRI was clear, the neurologist who was brought in for consultation felt she had suffered a slight concussion. Her doctor wanted her to stay longer, but she wanted to go home. So, he agreed to discharge her if she promised to get plenty of rest. Above all she needed peace and quiet.

And that was precisely our intention until our taxi pulled up in front of the house we were renting from Dino and we discovered that there was a party going on. The living room was filled with flowers and baskets of food from our neighbors and the many well-wishers in the town we didn't know we had. The kitchen was gridlocked with women who included Dino's wife, Flavia, Mrs. Cipollini from next door, Mina (whom we had heartlessly dubbed Mean Girl, from the hardware store), and those ancient aunts: Nina, Nona, and Nana. All of them were jockeying for position around the stove as they clashed over how best to make
polenta con gorgonzola
and
zitti alla pinzimonio
.

We heard hammering and cursing coming from the bathroom where Dino and his cousin, the fabled plumber Turrido, were tearing up our shower to finally determine why we weren't getting a sufficient supply of hot water. Additional ruckus was being raised by the pack of dogs and the flock of chickens scattered inside and out who, for our sake, had struck an edgy détente where no blood was shed, but they continually growled and clucked as they spent the afternoon circling each other.

Added to that, our phone was constantly ringing with an endless succession of callers. Signor Tito Tughi called to tell us that our car had been towed to his lot and he was working up an estimate of the damages. As he told me this, I pictured him holding the phone with one hand as he stuck out the thumb and pinky of his other hand, making
le corne
, that horn-shaped gesture meant to keep our misfortune from spilling over onto him.

Umberto called to inform us that the lady he had hired to help his wife with the housework while her broken foot was mending would be coming over this afternoon to do our laundry. Father Fabrizio called to praise God that our lives had been spared, thanks to all the holy work our little VW had been involved in.

Next came a call from the mayor's office. Over the jangling of African jewelry, his assistant informed us that even though His Honor was tied up all day in a conference (presumably with a particularly irascible jigsaw puzzle), he wanted to express his concern for our well-being and offer anything he could to help. That was followed by a call from the mayor's wife, who whispered into her cell phone that she was just about to light a candle for us at the side altar of Santa Ursula, the Patron Saint of The Miraculously Not Killed.

One of the unexpected consequences of our crash was to swing public opinion in our favor. Many Cambionese felt that our accident had been caused by Vesuvia Pingatore's casting an overzealous
malocchio
on us. And whatever her grievance, the town felt that this was much too harsh. In fact, it was gratifying to learn from Dino that the official odds, as posted by the patrons of Lucca's Barbershop, had dramatically shifted to where we were now slightly better than even money to hold on to our
rustico
.

Much of this largesse was due to the general kindness of the Italian nature, but a good deal must also be attributed to their deep affection for the people of the United States. I know this seems odd in the wake of so much anti-American feelings throughout Europe—and the world, for that matter—but many Italians really do like us. And not just our movies, our music, or our leggy supermodels.

Just as there are parts of the American South where the Civil War is very much alive, people living in this corner of Tuscany still have a tremendous sense of gratitude for how we saved them from the ravages of Fascism. And at no time of year were those feelings stronger than at the time of our accident. By sheer coincidence we were coming up on the Festa della Liberazione (the Festival of the Liberation), a holiday celebrated every year by the Cambionese, and marking the day the American army liberated their town. Each year a few of the surviving GIs from that detachment of soldiers came to Cambione to make speeches, drink wine, and reminisce with the grandmothers they once tried to seduce with chocolate bars and nylons.

 

 

I was helping
Nancy toward the bedroom, thanking everyone I encountered for their kindness, but gently imploring them to leave because of how badly she needed to rest. They, of course, insisted on staying, promising to make the others, who were thoughtlessly making so much noise, be quiet. Besides, there was no way we were going to get past Flavia without eating first, since she was implacably blocking our path like the Praetorian guard protecting Caesar. So we sat down to an eleven-course lunch containing the twenty-six thousand calories Flavia felt every human body needed to maintain good health.

Somewhere between a warmly comforting
timbalo di riso
and a nutty-tasting
agnello al rosmarino
, the doorbell rang. I went to the front door and opened it to the signora from the news kiosk. She had come on her lunch hour to make sure I got today's
Herald Tribune
. I felt guilty that she had walked all the way over here in the heat just so I could check the ball scores and read “Doonesbury,” so I thanked her profusely, and in my clumsy Italian, I pointed out a number of articles on the front page alone that could well change my life.

When I dug out some coins she told me that it was
un regalo
, a gift. I invited her to join us for lunch, but she insisted she couldn't stay, so I handed her a couple of sweet potatoes from a box of fruits and vegetables given to us by our friends from the Alimentari Brutti. She thanked me for the potatoes and left, being far too polite to mention that the produce I had handed her was crawling with aphids.

I had just gotten back to the table when, once again, the doorbell rang. I turned my head too fast and I had to clutch my neck in pain. The bell kept ringing, so I pulled myself up and trudged back to the door, opening it to the self-satisfied visage of Dottore Spotto. Even though I hadn't seen him since that dinner at Dino's some months ago, he embraced me and firmly kissed me on both cheeks, as if we were on the verge of picking out furniture together.

He had rushed over as soon as he had heard about our accident, he said as Nancy translated. He had come to offer his professional services, but Nancy told him that we had already been examined by just about every kind of doctor one could think of, and as kind as his offer was, we were okay.

But what about
psychologically
? It turned out that Dottore Spotto was an eminent psychologist and he had come to treat us for post-traumatic stress disorder. This was an insidious malady, he explained, as he sat down at our table and helped himself to a heaping portion of
baccalà fritta
. Between mouthfuls of fried cod,
il dottore
cautioned that we could be cruising along months after such a collision, thinking that everything was fine, when suddenly we could start experiencing night sweats, heart palpitations, sexual dysfunction, and even regressive bedwetting. I saw his point, and as Mrs. Cipollini brought out a chicken cacciatore that looked suspiciously like it had been sacrificed from one of her brood, I began sharing with Dottore Spotto how I had sucked my thumb until the age of six because I was improperly breast-fed.

 

 

If I live
here forever I'll never get used to how Italians will come over to your house at any time of the day or night. In L.A., the last person to drop in on anybody unannounced was the Hillside Strangler. And from practices such as these I have come to understand how much a sense of place can shape a person. How the “where you are” ultimately becomes the “who you are.” And from what I have so far observed, there is no greater difference between Italy and America than our relationship to our natural surroundings.

One of the more enduring axioms in literature is the idea that life in an American suburb is sterile and emotionally desolate. This is a theme that has been well explored by writers and poets from T. S. Eliot to John Updike, and in popular films from
The Graduate
to
American Beauty
. And I must admit that before I lived in Tuscany, I never really understood what they were talking about other than venting some Bohemian contempt for middle-class values.

But I now understand that in creating our man-made environments, we have distanced ourselves from the primary experience of reality. Tuscany is far older than America, but ironically, it is more unspoiled. Tuscany is the reality, where our suburbia is the re-creation of that reality.

Think about it . . . our neighborhood park is really a re-creation of a meadow. A mall is a re-creation of a village and a swimming pool a re-creation of a pond. The net effect is to make one's experiences a step removed from the immediate impact of life. Our lives in the 'burbs are clean, efficient, well organized, and essentially soulless. And I would have never understood that if I hadn't come to live in Italy.

 

 

Most of our well-wishers
had gone home and I was helping Nancy on with her nightgown when we heard a tapping on the bedroom window. I peeked through the shutters and spotted Mario Pingatore.

“I say, old trout, hope I'm not knocking you up too late,” he said to my eyeball.

“No, no, not at all,” I said.

Nancy threw a robe over her shoulders and I opened the window.

“I was gobsmacked when I heard the news. Frightful business, eh what?” He held up a cardboard-boxful of vegetables and started hoisting it through our window.

“Please, signore,” I pleaded. “We have so much food.”

“But they're fresh from my garden,” he insisted.

“Thank you, that's very kind.” I took hold of a box filled with fat carrots, dewy tomatoes, and shiny scallions. Mario was paying us the highest compliment one Tuscan can give another . . . vegetables from one's garden so newly picked, the dirt was still on them.

“This is very generous of you,” I said, shooing one of Signora Cipollini's chickens off the bed so I could put the box down.

“Coo, look at you with the wonky arm,” Mario said as he regarded Nancy's cast.

“It's just a slight fracture,” she said. “But the doctor didn't want to take any chances.”

“And how are you feeling, dear boy?” he said to me, his face a cameo of concern.

“Well, I got a little banged up,” I said. “But, thank God, it turned out to be nothing serious.”

“Ave Maria,” he said, momentarily forgetting his English affectations and crossing himself like a real Italian.

“We just need rest. Lots of rest,” Nancy said, hoping he'd get the hint.

“What a terrible thing to happen here,” he said ruefully. “Our hospitals are so
primitivi
. Nothing like you have in America.”

“I thought the hospital was excellent,” Nancy said. “And I was very pleased with my doctor.”

“Well, the beastly way these cheeky buggers around here drive, you'll need him,” he said.

“Yes, well, we'll just try to be real careful from now on,” Nancy said, wondering where all this was going.

“And the red tape.” Mario slapped his forehead for emphasis. “Wait till you try to settle your insurance claim! It's nothing short of a flippin' nightmare.”

“Whatever it is, we'll deal with it,” I said.