The Reluctant Tuscan (30 page)

Nancy and I left her with the assurance that we would do our best to comply, even though we had little intention of taking this seriously. To a pair of natural-born cynics like us, the idea of apparitions and miracles seemed like a lot of hooey.

And yet, I couldn't help thinking that perhaps it would be best not to tempt the fates, now that things were going well. After all, if one of Vesuvia's
malocchi
could cause our car accident, what would happen if we flaunted the words of a saint? I'm not religious, and despite my best intentions, I'm not even very spiritual. But I am highly suggestible. I can't even watch TV for any length of time without ordering a set of Ginsu knives.

So I found myself trying to convince Nancy that maybe we should urge Umberto to pick up the pace so we could move in sooner rather than later. Not for any of Annamaria's superstitions, of course, but if we were going to get remarried in the house, wouldn't it be great to do it as part of the
festa
for the olive harvest?

Nancy looked at me as if I had just told her that I was running off with the Moonies, but for reasons more secular she also felt that it was a good idea. We were both anxious to move out of the place we were renting from Dino, and it would be good to be in the
rustico
before winter set in. With us living there, we could better pressure Umberto to finish before the rain and cold weather halted all work and we'd have to live in a half-built house until the spring thaw.

When we approached Umberto with the idea, he was noncommittal. There was no way, he felt, that the house would be completed, but it might be habitable enough for us to move in, if we didn't mind them continuing the work while we lived there. Nancy and I had lived in houses that were under construction and found it to be a particularly unpleasant circle of hell. It's a life lived with the constant noise of power tools, clouds of plaster dust in your eyes and hair, and workers staring at you at six in the morning while you're having an argument with your wife in your underwear.

But the prime reason for moving in as quickly as possible would be that by legally taking occupancy, we would force the Comune to make their final inspection and sign off, which would unfreeze our bank account. So we told Umberto that we wanted to get in as soon as possible. When he passed the word down to his guys, they reacted along predictable lines. Va Bene thought it would be no problem for the house to be ready, Problema thought there was no way this was going to happen in time, and Vagabondo was frankly disappointed to learn that we were not going back to California for the winter, where he had hoped to come visit us so we could introduce him to some rich American women.

The last obstacle to our move was the installation of our electricity. This had to be done by a professional
elettricista
. Remarkably, Dino did not have a cousin who served in this capacity, so we had to rely on the recommendation of our crew, and even though they agreed on little else, they were all in accord that the best person for the job was Riccardo.

So Riccardo came up to the house and surveyed the job. He presented us with his bid, which seemed reasonable, so we agreed to engage him. Then, we timed our move to coincide with the completion of his work. This was all fine and dandy until the actual day he was to do the work arrived, and he didn't. When we called around and finally got his wife on the phone, she offered up the mother of all excuses, namely that Riccardo's mother had died and today was the funeral.

We were of course sorry, we explained, but we had made arrangements to move in. No problem, she said, giving us the phone number of the only other good electrician in town, Alessio. When we finally got Alessio on the phone he told us that he would be pleased to do the job, but he couldn't start today because he was digging the grave for Riccardo's mother.

Faced with funeral arrangements that were tying up every
elettricista
in the region, we now understood that we needed to wait until the proper period of mourning was over. Riccardo finally did show up. When he started the work, he was quick, efficient, and gave me an object lesson in yet another difference between their culture and ours.

It has been my experience that every Italian house I have ever been in is chronically short on electrical sockets. So when we were walking Riccardo through the room that would serve as my office, I made sure that Nancy accurately translated the idea that we would be running a full array of electronic equipment here. Computer, printer, stereo, TV, VCR, DVD, PDA, phone/fax/answering machine, and so on down the list of every gizmo and gadget one needs to survive nowadays, at least in the States.

We wanted a lot of plugs, I stressed, and I thought he understood. But when he finished, there was only one socket in the room. I tried to keep from getting angry as I asked why he hadn't put in more. He patiently explained that I should start with one socket, then, using a surge protector that has six outlets, I should see if that worked before spending any more money. If it didn't, he would come back and put in another socket.

I felt like a typically wasteful American, oblivious to how expensive electricity was here. In fact, throughout Western Europe there is a marked scarcity of such energy wasters as electric clothes dryers and hand blowers in public bathrooms. I tried to apologize and he told me not to feel bad. The number of sockets I wanted really didn't matter because Italy has its own system of guaranteeing no one uses too much power. As soon as you plug in more than three things, all the lights in your neighborhood go out and all your neighbors start screaming at you.

 

 

We moved in
on Election Day, piling up the car with load after load of our stuff amid the hoopla and chaos that Italians always manage to manufacture on occasions like this. The town was plastered with posters and draped with banners, but their preferred manner of electioneering were the sound trucks that drove up and down the narrow streets of the village, blaring out a candidate's name and extolling his virtues. Though we obviously couldn't vote, I did manage to make myself a player by getting involved in Marco Mucchi's campaign for the Comune board.

I came up with the slogan
“Marco Mucchi, il Magnifico!”
Besides the alliteration it had a resoundingly regal, if not imperial, tone, designed to overcome what a mild-mannered little bean counter he was. Marco loved it, so it was headlined on all his campaign material and screamed relentlessly by sound trucks all over town, with the result that he won in a walk. He probably would have won anyway, but my contribution did give us a bargaining chip to play when we needed a friend at the Comune to get our paperwork processed sometime before the coming of the next Ice Age.

 

 

To our delight,
the
rustico
was up and running, with a fully functioning bathroom, a kitchen where almost everything was operational, and, thanks to Riccardo, electricity that worked at least as often as it did in the homes of people who had been living in them for years. Most of the outside construction had been completed at this point, so what the guys were focusing on now were those indoor jobs that kicked up more dust than a sandstorm and created enough noise to drown out a Hell's Angels convention.

One particular nasty piece of work was the reconstruction of our fireplace, which began with the ripping out of a section of wall and all the dust, rock, and debris that went with it. Each morning we rose at dawn, gobbled down breakfast, and covered the kitchen with a thick plastic tarp. Then we proceeded about our usual business, trying not to be distracted by a chorus of power tools loud enough that we half expected calls from the Pisa airport complaining about the noise.

As their daily work began, I realized that all the other times we had lived in a house while it was under construction, I hadn't thought it was so bad because I could go to work and hide out in my office until it was safe to go home. Now, there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

But somehow we found ways to get through the ordeal. Nancy strapped on a Walkman and donned earphones to escape into the ethereal world of Enya and Tangerine Dream, as she painted in watercolors with her one good arm. I packed up my laptop and left every morning for the village, where I sat in a café, presumably to write but more accurately to sip cappuccino, schmooze with my fellow Cambionese, and check my e-mail.

I was doing just that when I saw that there was yet another message from my agent. He was writing me regularly now, but unfortunately not a word was about selling my script. This particular e-mail was for one of his clients who wanted to rent a villa in Chianti. Of course, this villa had to have an Olympic-sized swimming pool and a fully stocked wine cellar. And, oh, yes, was there a way to arrange for a couple of mountain bikes? I could see now that in his eyes, I had descended from being a working writer-producer to his own personal concierge.

I had to remind myself that this relationship, as demeaning as it was, was better than that enjoyed by many of my peers, who had reached the age where their agents either no longer called them back, or had outright released them. And on the plus side, I could tell that my e-mails were making him laugh because he occasionally commented on some of the things I had said, like how in Italy nobody ever uses the address of anything, so when you ask for directions you get something like “Turn left at the house with the three gray cats until you come to the café with the ugly waitress.”

I wrote him back promising that I'd make some calls, and before I sent it off, I made sure my e-mail had a few new jokes in it, because in Hollywood you're always auditioning. It may look personal, but everything is always about business. A classic Hollywood joke best makes this point.

An actor was in his car when he heard sirens and saw smoke coming from the direction of his neighborhood. He rushed home, and sure enough, there was a cordon of police cars, fire engines, and ambulances surrounding his house. He jumped out of his car, screaming, “Oh, my God, what happened?!” After the cops managed to calm him down, they told him that apparently his agent came to his house, murdered his wife and family, and then set fire to the whole block.

The actor shook his head in disbelief. “My agent came to my house?”

 

 

The weekend finally arrived,
and the timing couldn't have been better. The fireplace had been finished earlier in the week, giving the mortar ample time to cure so that it was now ready for our first fire. We went to bed that Saturday night aglow in the expectation of spending Sunday curled up in front of a roaring fire, listening to nothing louder than the crackle of burning logs.

But Sunday dawned to a racket that all but jolted us out of bed. It was the first day of hunting season, and the hills were alive with the sound of gunfire. There was so much shooting going on, it sounded like the Tet Offensive was raging in our backyard. From all over the area, it seemed, hunters had gathered in the woods behind our house to gun down songbirds and bunny rabbits.

But this was not just thrill killing for the sake of sport. This was the serious business of putting food on their families' tables. Ammunition was expensive, and if these hunters were going to shoot something, they were damn well going to eat it, which explains why the aroma of a gamy concoction that was euphemistically referred to as
stufato alla cacciatora
would soon be wafting from the hearths of our neighbors' homes. This stew was allegedly made with rabbit, but I strongly suspected its ingredients were any furry critter unlucky enough to have wandered into the crosshairs. Another delicacy I would never get used to during hunting season was that plate of tiny dead birds served as antipasti with wine. You're supposed to just pop them in your mouth, beak, feather, and all, and crunch down on them as if you were snacking on some form of rustic popcorn with eyes, once again reminding me that it's not all one world.

But the prize catch of the hunting season was
cinghiale
, the wild boar that Tuscans love either as roasted meat or in a thousand varieties of sauces and sausages. From this day on I would never be able to pass our local butcher shop, where they proudly hang a leg so fresh the
cinghiale
's fur is still on it, without thinking of the carnage it took to get it there.

Anyway, it was far too noisy to enjoy our fireplace, so we spent the day trying not to flinch every time a shotgun discharged and crouching low whenever we passed a window. Our only hope was that the poor pigs would soon give themselves up so all this racket would stop.

Then suddenly it did. Just like that. Around four o'clock it grew silent as a tomb. Not even the chirping of a bird, most of whom had been either been driven off or now resided at the bottom of a hunter's sack. We wasted no time taking advantage of this respite, lighting our fireplace, uncorking the wine, and plopping slabs of bread on our Tuscan oven to toast for bruschetta. The wine had scarcely had a moment to breathe when we heard a knocking on our door. It must be a neighbor, we figured, because we hadn't heard a car pull up. Perhaps Annamaria had come to tell us how pleased Santa Fabiola was that we had moved in before the harvest?

Nancy opened the door and there was Rudolfo, accompanied by a tall, pale-skinned young man with sandy brown hair. They were both carrying suitcases and overstuffed back-packs. Rudolfo looked disheveled, bleary eyed, and his normally well-groomed beard was scruffy and overgrown. Nancy greeted them, and there was a long moment of awkward silence as Rudolfo stood there, blinking in adolescent confusion.

“Rudolfo?” I called out from the living room.

“I'm sorry to bother you, but . . .” He dropped his suitcase and his chin began to tremble.

“What's the matter? Are you okay?” Nancy said, putting her arm around his shoulder.