The Reluctant Tuscan (20 page)

You also have to ask a waiter for your bill at least three times, until you're finally forced to get up, take out your credit card, and walk to the cash register. Italians restaurateurs consider it rude even to hint that you should leave, unlike some establishments in New York and Los Angeles, where they take away your silverware and the tablecloth while you're still sipping on your coffee.

We agonized over this problem for days before we finally spoke to him about it. And even though we did it in the most nonconfrontational manner, Umberto was an unsettling combination of vague and defensive when we tried to get him to explain why his bill was so much higher than his original estimate. Then it occurred to us. We were paying for his silence. The discomfort we had caused him by asking him to keep our secret was going to have to be compensated.

Okay, if this is how he wanted to play it, fine. In the immortal words of Joan Crawford when the board of directors at Pepsi tried to get rid of her, “Don't screw with me, boys, I've been to Hollywood.”

I went online and downloaded a picture of Tony Soprano and his crew. I printed it on photo paper and bought a frame. We found a prominent spot on the wall of Dino's living room, and after taking down a pinup of a topless blond and a rendering of Christ healing a leper, we hung the framed photo of the Soprano gang.

We invited Umberto over for coffee and when he arrived we seated him so that Tony and his goombahs were staring down at him. When Umberto asked about the photo, Nancy explained that they were her uncle Tony from New Jersey and a few of his business associates. In fact, Nancy added, she was so confused by Umberto's bill she had faxed it to Uncle Tony, who was in the construction business, among other things. Nancy emphasized the “among other things” part by putting her finger on her nose and bending it to the side.

Umberto smiled uncomfortably as Nancy went on to tell him that Uncle Tony had faxed her back, saying that he thought she was being overcharged and that somebody needed to talk to this Umberto. Umberto started visibly perspiring.

We were preying upon their common conception that all Americans, especially those of Italian descent, are gangsters. This stereotype is clearly fed both by the popularity of our movies and TV shows around the world, and by the images of cigar-chomping, Hummer-driving military personnel around the world. This gunslinger image the Italians have of us was brought home to me when I innocently visited a hardware store soon after I arrived in Cambione. As soon as the owner realized that I was American, he brought me over to the rack of guns he was selling, thinking that I would want to buy several.

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.

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.