The Reluctant Tuscan (29 page)

Pia came trotting over from the sales office and greeted us with double-cheeked kisses. Before we could get to the reason we were here, she had to tell Nancy about yet another example of Rudolfo's
mammaiolo
ism. Every night this week, he had dragged her over to Mamma's house for dinner. She finally convinced him to take her out to a restaurant so they could be alone. But instead of paying attention to her, he acted as if he really wanted to be at Mamma's. He sighed all through his antipasti, and when the waiter came over to ask him about his main course, Rudolfo ordered the tortellini bolognese because that's what Mamma was making that night.

We expressed our sympathy for her being in love with a man who was attached to his mother in a preternatural way, but we really needed to deal with the issue of our car. After all, we were confused. We thought Auto Mundo had received a check from the insurance company and we couldn't understand why, after three weeks, nothing had been repaired.

Pia explained that they had only received a check for a very small amount, hardly enough to cover the towing and the storage fees. How could the amount be so small? Any idiot could see that it would take thousands of euros to fix it. But any idiot didn't see that, because not one single idiot from the insurance company had even shown up to look at it.

Once again we learned that, surprise, surprise, they do things differently here. In America, you hit somebody and the two insurance companies sit down, haggle over the damages, and the hitter's company cuts the hittee a check. The Italian way is for the hitter's insurance company, without any admission of guilt whatsoever, to send the other party a check for a rather paltry amount. The aggrieved party is then free to cash that check, without any admission that they have agreed to settle. They can either keep the cash and go away . . . or they can use the cash to hire a lawyer and sue the other party's ass off.

Guess which one we chose.

I called Avvocato Bonetti, and even before I could explain the situation, he was way ahead of me, predicting that in the next few days we'd be receiving another small check for our medical expenses and the rental car. He suggested that we come down to his office immediately, plan our strategy, and prepare to file the court papers as soon as possible.

Of course, as I explained earlier, the word
soon
can encompass any length of time from
right now
to
the twelfth of never
. Which is why we found ourselves standing in front of his darkened office, wondering why we were being greeted by a
Ritorno Subito
sign instead of Avvocato Bonetti himself. When I tried to reach him on any one of his many cell phones, all I got was a recorded message saying it was not in service.

There wasn't even a decent café to duck inside and get away from the heat, so we passed time squinting into a windowful of clocks in the shop next door. When we got bored with that, we switched over to the shoemaker's, where we were entertained by his skill at putting a tiny bunch of nails in his mouth, plucking out one at a time using a small hammer with a magnetic end, and driving it into a heel in one smooth motion without ever knocking out his front teeth. We were content to watch this for a while, but when the shoemaker heard the clocks from the clock store chime, he put on his hat, turned off the lights, and left, hanging out his own
Ritorno Subito
sign.

By now the midday heat was approaching the level of a blast furnace, so we decided to pack it in, go home, and soak our battered bodies in the pool. We had just gotten into our car when we heard a horn blasting and a frantic screeching of tires. We flinched, fearing that lightning was about to strike us twice, but were relieved when an orange Alfa pulled up behind us and Avvocato Bonetti popped out.

He never bothered apologizing for being late, but predictably, he launched into a monologue designed to elicit our sympathy for his misfortunes. Today's episode of the Bonetti family soap opera featured a frantic search for his teenage daughter, who had run away from her eating-disorder clinic, and a harrowing experience with his mother. They had finally convinced her that her Siamese cat was dead, only to have the elderly woman show up at their church and accuse the priest of poisoning it. Not to mention all the
ritardi
at Telecom Italia who had so screwed up his phone bill, he could no longer call anyone on any of his many cell phones.

So masterfully did he weave his
storia
that we wound up feeling bad for him, even though we were the ones who had been waiting for forty-five minutes in the blistering heat. But that didn't matter now. He was here. We wanted to get down to business.

Unfortunately, he didn't have time to meet with us, because he was late for a luncheon date at a restaurant up the street. He would cancel it, of course, but the man he meeting was someone who could help his chronically unemployed brother-in-law get a job. And it was a government job, so secure that even a
cretino
like his brother-in-law couldn't get fired.

But he invited us to walk with him to the restaurant, and perhaps we could settle some of our business on the way. He said
walk
, but we were really doing a brisk trot as I cursed my bum ankle and tried to keep up with the one guy in Italy who was actually in a hurry to get somewhere.

“It is important we go on the offense,” he said to us over his shoulder as we struggled to keep up with him. “Attack them with a barrage of medical bills, X rays, and sworn statements from doctors.”

“Well, I was examined by the staff surgeon at the hospital,” Nancy said.

“And the paramedics checked me out in the ambulance,” I added, limping at a pace that put a sheen of sweat on my brow.

“That's not enough,” he announced. “We need specialists. People who are the best in their fields. In fact, there's an excellent clinic in Geneva where I . . .”

“Geneva?” I said. “That's ridiculous.”

“Don't worry, we'll bill them for the trip,” he said in a voice as precise as a trial lawyer's. “And you will go first class.”

“We don't want to rip anybody off,” I said.

“Who is ripping anybody off?” he said. “We just want to be compensated for our suffering.”

“Well, I can't work.” Nancy cradled her broken arm. “I guess there's loss of wages involved.”

“And they've got to cover the repair of our car, and pay for the one we're renting,” I said.

“Of course they will,” he said as we reached the restaurant. “But it's the medical bills that will make this case. The higher the better.”

“Nancy was injured and they should pay for whatever surgery or therapy she's going to need,” I said. “But I'm really okay and I don't need—”

“How can you say you're okay?” he said. “Look how you are limping. You should be on crutches or in a wheelchair.”

I chuckled at myself as Avvocato Bonetti opened the door of the restaurant and peered inside.

“Look, signore,” I said. “I'm limping because—”

“Uh-oh, he's angry I'm late. Okay, I'll fax you a list of doctors and clinics and we'll talk.
Ciao,
” he said, with a nod in our direction, before he disappeared into the darkness of the restaurant.

 

 

We never went
to Geneva, but for the next few months we did go to Lucca twice a week, so a team of physical therapists, under the supervision of Dottoressa Mancini, could care for our injuries. Nancy was guided through a series of exercises designed to repair her torn rotator cuff without surgery, and my neck was treated with muscle stimulation and chiropractic adjustments.

Every few weeks we had a consultation with the
dottoressa
. She was an attractive woman in her late thirties with hair and eyes the exact same color brown. After she'd reviewed our X rays and charts, her tawny brown eyes would twinkle and she would declare the progress we were making to be
squisito
, exquisite, even though both she and Avvocato Bonetti were somewhat disappointed when I held firm that my ankle injury was self-inflicted.

The waiting room of the clinic was constantly filled with people from all walks of Italian life, sporting all kinds of broken and misaligned pieces. Since there was a great deal of waiting around involved, I took the opportunity to practice my language skills, which were now at the point where I spoke Italian about as well as Desi Arnaz spoke English. I was usually in the wrong verb tense and I comically mispronounced a lot of words, but I was pretty much able to make myself understood.

I was also able to understand so much more that I could tell Nancy, when she came out of her therapy, how the housewife next to me had said to her mutinous three-year-old,
“Stai ammazzando il tuo papà”
. . . that his unruly behavior was killing his father, even though daddy was back at his office.

One day I struck up a conversation with one of my fellow patients, and he gave me an idea on how to cut through the morass of insurance-company bureaucracy that had ensnared us. His name was Andrea, which is a girl's name for us but not for them. Andrea drove a bakery truck, and he spent his days delivering the most outrageously delicious pastries to an assortment of stores and markets.

Unfortunately, Andrea had a sweet tooth. So for every dozen
biscotti di nocciuoli
he delivered, he ate three. For every
tiramisù
he handed over, he kept one for himself. Eventually, Andrea had blossomed to three hundred pounds, and when the bakery discovered that a sizable portion of their production was winding up inside the person in charge of delivering it, they were righteously pissed. Naturally, they wanted to fire him, but the union prevented that.

Not only did he manage to keep his job, but Andrea was able to petition the Servizio Sanitario Statale (National Health Service), claiming that his obesity was work related. As a result Andrea was sent, all expenses paid, to a health clinic, meaning a fat farm, for a month and a half.

When I met him he had managed to lose about forty pounds, but the excess weight he had been carrying had caused him to suffer back pain. So he had petitioned the
Servizio
again, and they were now paying for him to be seen by the staff of Dottore Mancini's clinic. And it wasn't costing him a
centesimo
.

We began chatting about America's reputation for having the highest medical prices in the world, and how, in such a rich nation, many of our citizens have no health insurance at all. Andrea then told me that it was both our lack of a national health plan and the astronomical costs of medical care in America that kept many Italians from immigrating there. Thousands of Italians, he felt, would love to move to the United States. But the thought of having to pay a fortune for basic medical services and prescriptions keeps them right where they were. And what if they needed an operation? Mamma mia!

It was then that I realized we were sitting on the best weapon we had. Nancy and I did have health coverage back in the States, but the Italian insurance company didn't know that. I grabbed my cell phone and called Avvocato Bonetti, and after I explained my idea, he quickly agreed. He got on his cell phone and called the insurance company, telling them that I was so frustrated by the lack of movement on our claim, I had decided to take Nancy back to America and have her surgery done in the best hospital in Los Angeles . . . on their dime.

Two days later a claims adjuster came out to look at our car and wrote Signor Tughi a check for the entire amount of the repair. And when we finally finished our physical therapy, it was paid in full without a squawk.

God bless America.

A
s summer sputtered to a close, each day became distinctly cooler and the very fragrance of the air changed. Summer smelled heavy, and soggy with humidity and perspiration, but the aroma of
autunno
was light, crisp, and laden with the scent of burning leaves in a thousand backyards. The pearl-gray mist of the
sfumato
that had greeted us every summer morning was scattered by the winds, so the surrounding hills were sharp and no longer looked as if they were dissolving into the sky.

Umberto and his guys had finally finished Vesuvia's wall, and we now had all four of them working full-time on our house. Pyramids of sand and gravel became concrete, which turned into staircases and archways under the pounding of jackhammers and the screaming of power saws. Progress was steady, and each day we'd cheer some small accomplishment, like the glazing of a window or the installation of a toilet. Knowing that it was always dicey to make plans for the future in this society, we cautiously hoped to move in around Thanksgiving, God willing and the creek don't rise.

Ironically, it was God, or a manifestation of Him or Her, who accelerated this plan. We were taking the back road into town one day, when we came upon our neighbor Annamaria and her goats. She looked distressed and, in halting, nervous fragments, she told us that for the last three nights she had seen visions of Santa Fabiola in her dreams.

We nodded, not knowing what to say, as she went on to tell us that in last night's dream, she'd seen Santa Fabiola hovering over our
rustico
, warning us that we must move in
before
the harvest. When we tried to suggest that perhaps it was only a dream, Annamaria spat on her fingers and quickly made a cross between her eyes.

To ask what would happen if we didn't move in before the harvest would be to beg the very question of Santa Fabiola's existence. She was the patron saint of Cambione, born here in 1866, and performing at least four of her eleven certified miracles within the city limits. Santa Fabiola grew up in abject poverty and endured one of those childhoods straight out of a Dickens novel. The eleventh of twenty-six children, she was blind, crippled, epileptic, and covered with grotesque open sores. But her simple faith and pious soul soon earned her a following, and as Annamaria pointed out, Fabiola was canonized at a time when it was a lot harder for a woman, alluding to the existence of a glass ceiling even in the saint business.