My Father Came From Italy

MAYBE IT NEEDS A LITTLE WORK

In May, Bob and I went to Supino to inspect our new house. We had the address, but first we had to stop at Enzo’s house, Raffaele’s brother, to get the key. There was a light rain falling when we arrived at Fiumicino Airport. We drove straight from the airport to Supino and knocked on the brother’s door just after one o’clock.

“You arrive already. Good. Sit. Eat,” said Enzo.

We were too excited to eat, but we didn’t want to insult him by refusing his hospitality. Already Enzo’s wife was gathering more plates and glasses from the sideboard. I explained to the woman with some hand gestures that we were very tired. I said, “Un’altra volta,” which I think meant “another time.” Covering Enzo’s dish of linguine with another plate, she motioned to her husband to take us to the house.

“It’s not necessary,” said Bob. “Non é necessario. You stay and eat your lunch. We have the address. Just give us the key.”

“No. No,” replied Enzo, shocked by the suggestion. “It is my pleasure, my honour, to show you the house of my brother. Then, I present you with the keys, my new Canadian friends, and we have a drink to celebrate.”

Five minutes later, we parked our rented car beside the Bar Italia and ran up Via D’Italia and onto Via Condotto Vecchio. It was raining fairly heavily now and water ran down the gutters of the cobblestone street. The stone houses that lined the street were joined in one long building, so we hurried past several doors until Enzo stepped under an archway. It was a small stone entranceway, about a yard by a yard, with two sets of stairways, one going left and one going right. The cement work on the left stairway was cracked and broken, but Enzo turned to the right, where the stairs were in excellent condition, and we followed him to the front door of our new home. The double wooden doors had long etched glass panels. Enzo took the key from his jacket pocket and slipped it easily into the lock.

“Ascolta,” he said, cupping his hand over his ear. “Uno, due, tre,” and we heard three little clicks announcing that the door was unlocked. Enzo stepped aside to allow Bob to enter first, but when Bob pushed on the polished brass door handle, nothing happened. He pushed again. Then, he leaned one arm on the door frame and gave a quick shove with his shoulder. There was a screech as the door scraped an arc onto the dirty cement floor. A foul smell greeted us and sent us reeling back down the stairs and into the street.

“Un momento, un momento,” instructed Enzo, as he raced through the house, opening windows and doors. With one hand masking my mouth and nose, I slowly paced the length of the main floor. Sixteen feet by ten feet of cold, damp, dirty floors and clammy walls festooned with crumbling paint chips. In the corner was a fireplace, decorated with dull mustard-yellow and turquoise ceramic tiles. Every tile was cracked or chipped. Some were missing altogether and in their place remained a streaky square of grey grout. On the walls above the fireplace were vertical charcoal streaks where the rainwater had seeped in. Plastered solidly into the cracked ceiling were three large, rusty hooks.

“What are these?” I asked, pointing to the hooks.

“Meat-a hook,” Enzo replied, happy to point out this added feature. “For hanging salsicce — how you say? — sausage.”

As I put my foot on the first step, I thought beneath the dirt there might be marble, but the steps were damp from the rain and I slipped. Reaching out to steady myself on the banister, I watched the whole railing fall slowly to the floor. Bob caught me under my arms. I went up the stairs slowly, balancing myself with one arm extended into the damp, musty air, the other pressed against the stairwell. As I climbed, bits of plaster crumbled beneath my fingers and trickled down the wall. With each step, I hoped for reassurance that the upstairs might be in better condition. The stairs ended where the front bedroom began. Its balcony doors were open and the wind carried the rain into the room. Water also overflowed a small pothole in the balcony floor, travelling along a crack and into the bedroom where it collected in a puddle around my feet.

“I think the air is fresher up here,” I said. “And when the sun comes out — the sun will come out eventually, won’t it? — that breeze will be refreshing, right? Bob? Right?”

“Let’s look at the third room,” Bob said.

The floor was dry and a little larger; it would likely accommodate a double bed. I opened the closet door to a tiny window. If we took out the broken toilet and wash basin someone had stored in there and added a clothes rod, this could be a handy little addition. It even had a light switch, but when I switched it on, nothing happened. Looking up to see if the bulb was burned out, I saw a rusted shower head in the middle of the ceiling.

Enzo squeezed between the cracked toilet bowl and the grubby sink and with a flourish turned on the tap. A few hearty sputters of protest and copper-coloured liquid spurted from the tap, for a moment. Enzo explained that we had town water access for an hour each day. On our street, Via Condotto Vecchio, we could usually get water from the taps between eleven o’clock and noon, most days.

“How do people manage the rest of the time?” I asked.

Enzo shrugged. “Fill pots,” he said.

Cold water ran from the second tap too, for a few seconds. “Where’s the hot water?” I asked.

“You require hot water too?” asked Enzo.

I walked the three steps to the back bedroom window. I was tired from the flight and the rain outside made things seem more dismal. The smell didn’t help either. From the balcony at the front of the house, I could see people heading up the hill to get water from the mountain stream, or down the hill to the shops of Supino, but the view from the back bedroom overlooked a ravine. Suddenly, I was in the country. The top half of the cracked glass framed a view of Santa Serena. The bottom half of the glass showed the valley of beech and hazelnut trees, shiny, yellow-green leaves and slender trunks bowing gracefully in the rain. Halfway up the hillside stood the farmhouse where my father was born. I could see the faded, clay tile roof through the spaces in the trees. I could see the farmhouse walls, shiny in the rain, the old wooden gate, the pathway edged with grapevines. I could pick out the three olive trees and the cherry tree that I knew would be in blossom.

“What do you think?” asked Bob.

I couldn’t think of one word to say, in English or Italian.

Back on the main floor, Enzo pushed one of the front doors closed and in the wall behind it was another smaller door. He opened it and stood with his hand extended revealing a tiny triangular closet with a slanted roof (created by the stairway), a wooden shelf, smoke-coloured cobwebs and four coat hooks. Enzo reached in and took an enormous key off the shelf. The key was 10 inches long, made of black wrought iron, with an ornate handle of loops and scrolls. A key designed for a castle.

Enzo held the key carefully in both hands and turned to Bob. “La cantina,” he said.

That word, cantina, wine cellar, made me realize there was no basement in this house. Where was the cantina? We stepped outside, under the archway that covered our tiny verandah and narrow stairs, and Enzo locked the front door. He presented Bob with the house keys. Bob passed me the cantina key, which weighed at least five pounds.

If I put this key in my pocket, I’d lean to one side as I walked. I carried it down the stairs in both hands, as if it was treasure, and then I turned to walk down the street to the Bar Italia where we’d parked the car.

“Aspetta,” said Enzo. “Wait.” He pointed to our house. The rain had stopped, but water still dripped through the holes in the eavestrough, down the walls past the rusted balcony railing, around the dingy arch of the verandah and down to the road, where it flowed along the gutter past two wooden doors. Enzo was pointing to these, at street level: double doors of thick oak planks tapered perfectly to fit the cement archway.

“Questa é la tua cantina,” announced Enzo, looking at me.

I lifted the key into the lock, as large as a dinner plate, and turned with both hands. The oak doors didn’t move an inch. Bob pushed on one door, Enzo pushed on the other, I held my breath. A wise move because the same sour smell was just as powerful here. Although the cantina may have held barrels and barrels of valuable wine at one time, now it contained nothing but shadows and spider webs. Enzo pulled on a chain and the cantina was flooded with light. The walls were perfectly smooth and white. Firewood was piled neatly along one wall, the other walls bare. The ceiling was decorated, not with rusty meat hooks, but with swirls of plaster. The cement floor was swept clean. In the back corner there was a window with vertical iron bars. Even though the cantina was not actually in the house, it was still the nicest room in the house.

“What do you use this cantina for?” asked Bob. “Perché?”

Enzo stared at him in disbelief, not because he didn’t understand Bob’s Italian, but because he couldn’t comprehend the question.

“Vino — wine,” he said, politely, but he shook his head a little. Enzo brightened, waved his hand toward the

Bar Italia and invited us to coffee. It was a Supinese tradition to make everything into an occasion, a ceremony. There was a certain prestige involved in bringing North Americans into the Italian coffee bar, especially since these Canadians liked the village so much they’d bought

a house. We accepted the offer of coffee, the same way we were going to have to accept a lot of things.

When we arrived at the Bar Italia, Rocco was waiting inside. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “I can tell by the look on Maria’s face. You’re disappointed. Maybe it needs a little work.”

Enzo carefully hung my knapsack on a hook near the cash register, ordered cappuccino for the signora, biscotti and espresso for signor Bob, and made a little ceremony out of pulling out my chair, sweeping some invisible crumbs from the tabletop. Rocco, not to be outdone, ordered espresso for everyone in the bar. Then came the introductions.

Rocco’s brother Pietro was a contractor — we might need to hire him. Every man in the bar turned out to be a relation of Rocco’s. They were all involved in the construction trade. We met Rocco’s cousin Paolo, the plumber, his brother Vincenzo, the painter, his brother-in-law Luigi, the floor sander, and Rocco’s father-in-law, Maurizio the tile man.

After an hour, Bob and I stood up, ready to leave, but Pietro suggested, since it had stopped raining, that we all walk back to the house together and make a list of what needed to be done.

Bob said, and I knew he wasn’t kidding this time, “You’ll need a long piece of paper.”

We left the bar deserted, except for Enzo. Apparently he felt that his job was done. Enzo stayed behind to play cards with Bruno, the owner. We were on our own, with five tradesmen and a travel agent.

Bob unlocked the front door and stepped back to let the tradesmen go in first. It was more than a polite gesture; we didn’t want to breathe that stagnant air any longer than we had to. Rocco took the newspaper that he always carried under his arm and crumpled it in the fireplace. He lit it and added thin twigs from a battered metal pail in the corner of the room. In a few minutes, the flames began to throw light and warmth into the room. Bob went down to the cantina and returned, carrying two beechnut logs.

Pietro said we must start at the top and work our way down. I thought the stench must be getting to him too, so I assured him the air was fresher upstairs. In the tiny front bedroom, a dingy rope hung from the corner of the ceiling. Why hadn’t we noticed it before? Pietro pulled the rope and down came a flight of stairs. Pietro snapped a brass hinge into place, put his foot on the bottom step to steady it and with a sweep of his arm and a formal bow, he said, “Eccola.” We climbed the ladder and found ourselves in a bright and airy attic, bright and airy because several roof tiles were missing. There was blue sky above us in several locations and underneath each opening, a puddle of fresh rainwater.

“Primo,” announced Pietro. “Il tetto nuovo.” A new roof.

“Certo,” agreed Rocco.

“Secondo,” decided Pietro. “Imbiancare — how you say? — paint the walls.”

“Certo,” replied Rocco.

“Terzo,” continued Pietro. “Le finestre nuove.”

“Certo,” said Rocco and so it went until we climbed down the ladder to the little closet that was the bathroom and Rocco’s cousin, Paolo the plumber, took over.

“What you like?” he asked. “New toilet — maybe clean up the sink a little?”

“No. Whole new bathroom.”

Paolo looked a little unsure. “You mean everything — new toilet, new sink, new shower head?”

“No. Whole new bathroom,” I repeated and I took his piece of blue chalk and marked off a corner of the second-floor bedroom. “Make a whole new bathroom and make it this big.”

“Mamma mia.”

Pietro brought out his list and started adding to it: plaster the cracks, fill in the pot hole on the balcony, paint everything. Vincenzo, the painter, interrupted.

“Colore?” he asked. “I paint light, or dark?”

“Light, certo,” responded Rocco and we trooped down the stairs to the main floor. It was Rocco’s brother-in-law’s, Luigi’s, turn; he sanded floors.

“But these floors are cement,” I said.

“No. No,” assured Luigi. “Marble. I sand. You see. É bellissimo.”

The fire had warmed the room and eliminated some of the smell. The sun was shining through the open door. Rocco’s father-in-law, Maurizio, tapped his finger against the grimy yellow tile that decorated the front of the fireplace.

“What you think?” he asked. “Maybe I replace one or two tiles — this one, she’s a little cracked.”

“Certo,” agreed Rocco.

But Bob intervened, “Take them all off — tutto — and make a brick fireplace with a wooden mantle.”

“Bricks? You want bricks inside the house?”

“Certo,” said Bob.

Pietro wrote down everything we needed, Rocco translated it for us and we signed at the letter X. Pietro assured us that work would start presto and we could stay in the back bedroom in the meantime. There was a bathroom at the Bar Italia, just down the street.

We said we would stay at the local pensione while the house was being renovated, confirming the villagers’ suspicions that we were ricchi e pazzi. Rich and crazy. We were the last ones to leave. I reached into my knapsack and brought out a wreath of grapevines, dried flowers and blue gingham ribbon and hung it on the front door. There was a little hand painted sign in the shape of a heart in the centre of the wreath: “Welcome.”

We walked down the cobblestone street to the Bar Italia where we had parked the car. Things were looking up; the house needed more work than we had thought, but we’d arranged for all the renovations in less than two hours. We could sleep for the rest of the day, at the pensione just outside of town, and tomorrow when we returned to the house it would be an Italian beehive of activity.

“I’m feeling better,” I began. “This village is....”

“There’s a parking ticket on our car,” said Bob.

The windshields of the other cars were bare. A trio of young men, lounging in front of the Bar Italia smoking Marlboro cigarettes and reading Lo Sport, laughed at us.

“Milanese,” they shouted, pointing to our licence plate.

“Why are we the only ones with a ticket?” asked Bob, as we got into our rented Fiat.

“No idea. We could ask the policeman who directs the traffic at the corner.”

Rocco had told us the village of Supino boasts three policemen: one sometimes directs the cars at the main intersection, the other two are on call for feast days, official visits and parades. Today there wasn’t anyone directing traffic at the corner.

“Do you want to stop at the police station?” I asked. “See if we can pay it there?”

“I guess. We’re going right by it to get to the pensione.”

The street seemed unusually busy for this time of day; no one was leaning on the fence posts chatting with their neighbour or napping under the grapevines with their handkerchief draped over their head. The day was still bright, yet herds of sheep crowded the road leading to the outskirts of town. The sign on the police station stated: OPEN: 16:00–20:00.

As we pulled into the driveway, a uniformed officer raced out and shooed us away with his white hat. “No. No. Calcio,” he yelled.

In his haste to close the wrought iron gates he scraped the front fender of the car. Bob had learned some Italian mannerisms. He blasted the horn, shook his fist at the policeman. He pointed to his watch and then to the sign.

“Calcio,” repeated the officer. Kicking his foot in the air, he wagged his index finger at us. “No. Assolutamente, no.”

At the pensione, the coffee grinder on the black marble bar whirred as it pulverized the beans for espresso. Ugo the waiter stood at the dining room door anxious to seat guests. It was six o’clock. We knew dinner was never served before eight.

“What’s going on?” I asked Ugo. “Che é successo?”

“Calcio,” he explained. “Foota-ball.”

“Soccer,” translated Bob.

Remembering the busy streets, the traffic jam of sheep, I realized the villagers were hurrying home to eat early so they could return to the coffee bars to watch the eight o’clock game.

“Ask him about the parking ticket,” said Bob.

“Why us?” I asked Ugo, pointing to myself and then to the ticket.

“Your machine,” he explained, “Milanese.” Calling to his father, Ugo took our parking ticket and laid it carefully in the palm of his hand. In a few minutes, the entire family had crammed into the lobby to examine the official paper. Even the chef scurried out of the kitchen, wiping bits of yellow egg dough on his apron. Although everyone crowded close to Ugo, no one actually touched the parking ticket. The grandmother started chattering and waving her hands toward a shelf above the cash register. There was a photo of the town’s patron saint, San Lorenzo, and a dried leaf from Palm Sunday that someone had fashioned into a cross. The grandmother made a little space between these treasures and held her hand out for our parking ticket. The father, Ugo Primo, stepped forward with a thumb tack in his hand. He dusted off a small section of the wood paneling behind the bar with his handkerchief. This was where he proudly displayed his postcards from former guests and his picture of the Lazio soccer team. Just as I was beginning to realize that we were not going to get our ticket back, the mention of soccer sent the family hurrying back to work. Ugo hustled us to a table. On his way he grabbed a bottle of Castelli Romani, a basket of bread.

“Mangia presto,” he announced. He was gone before the wine bottle settled onto the white linen tablecloth.

“The cloth’s still damp,” Bob pointed out. “And why are we eating so early? The table’s not even set.”

“Buona sera,” said Rocco, as he rushed into the dining room.

“We haven’t ordered yet and Ugo says our food will be here soon,” complained Bob.

“There’s a soccer game tonight,” reminded Rocco, as he pulled over a chair.

“We got a parking ticket,” continued Bob.

“Yes. I heard. Let the management keep it.”

“Can we pay it without the original?”

“No one pays tickets in Supino,” explained Rocco. “Most people have never seen one. The police don’t know you’re Supinese because your licence plate says Milanese like all Italian rental cars. They figured you’re lost tourists.”

“Do you mean if they knew we’d just bought a house in Supino they wouldn’t have ticketed us?” I asked. “That’s very neighbourly.”

“It’s nothing to do with being neighbourly. If a policeman gave a ticket to a villager, they’d be outraged. So would their family. They’d seek revenge.”

“What revenge? They’d have to pay, wouldn’t they?”

“Sure they’d pay. But the policeman would pay too,” Rocco assured us. “One day one of the policeman’s chickens would go missing, or a bushel of grapes would disappear.”

“But the police would know who took it. It wouldn’t be worth a stolen chicken or a few grapes — everyone in Supino has those things anyway.”

“That’s not the point. The villagers would be insulted by the betrayal of one of their own.”

“Even so, the police know the guilty party, or at least the guilty family.”

“The villager’s friends would get involved. It’s a small village. The policeman’s probably related to the family through blood, or marriage, or....”

“Ahhh, our fettuccine is here,” announced Rocco, as Ugo arrived carrying three plates. Apparently Rocco was eating dinner with us.

“Buon appetito.” Lifting his wine glass in a toast, Rocco said, “Welcome to Supino.”

We were too tired to sit in the bar and watch the soccer game with the rest of the villagers. We worked our way through the crowd and the smoke, heading for our bedroom on the second floor. Beside the elevator was a six-sided rack on a swivel base, filled with postcards. One card showed an aerial view of the village, lying peacefully in the valley under the shadow of the Santa Serena mountain. Another was of the war memorial in the main square, built in the 1950s. The last was a view of the main street with the Kennedy Bar in the corner.

“Buon giorno,” we said to the town official, seated at the desk, reading Il Tempo.

“Un momento,” he replied, without looking up.

Several momentos passed before he folded his newspaper, straightened his tie and removed his uniform jacket from the back of the chair. We placed our letter of purchase, our passports and our “official request to install a water tank” on the desk and waited. This was our fourth trip to City Hall. The first time, we’d received the official form, but when we’d returned the next day, City Hall was closed for lunch, for three hours. We came back again after lunch, but they were still closed. Then on Saturday, and Sunday, and Monday, but the doors were still locked.

“Maybe they’re closed on Monday,” I said to Bob, but really I had no idea why the doors were locked. We’d been in Supino for six days now and all we’d accomplished was signing the renovation contract.

The City Hall employee stood up, put on his uniform jacket and left the room. In a few minutes, we heard the front door open and close, followed by the sound of whistling. We rushed to the open window just in time to see our man strolling down the street, whistling happily, heading to the Bar Centrale.

“Darn,” groaned Bob. “It’s ten o’clock. Cappuccino break.”

We walked down to the Bar Centrale too. Our town official was arguing politics with some friends at a nearby table. Every few minutes he banged his hand emphatically on the metal table top, the glasses rattled, the cups clanked, but the conversation carried on. Rocco came whistling up the street, newspaper under his arm. He veered off as soon as he saw us and pulled a chair up to the table.

“How are you making out with the lawyer?” Bob asked.

“Which lawyer is that, Bob?” replied Rocco, as he signalled to the waiter, waved to a friend whizzing by on a motor scooter.

“The lawyer who’s supposed to register the deed of our house.”

“Oh, yes, of course. There’s no lawyer in Supino, you understand, Bob,” Rocco explained. “We’ll go to Frosinone.”

“Not enough work for a lawyer here?” asked Bob.

“The Supinese don’t trust lawyers. They think they’re thieves — charging for advice you could get free at any bar in town.”

“Don’t they appreciate the educational costs, the time involved in becoming a lawyer?”

“Time. That reminds me,” Rocco replied, looking at his watch. “Be in Frosinone tomorrow, Via Margerite #7, at one o’clock. We have an appointment.”

The Supinese have a different concept of time. They say one o‘clock, but they show up two hours later.

“Do you mean one o’clock? Sharp?” I asked.

“Sí. Sí,” Rocco nodded, then sighed. “That’s the other reason a lawyer can’t practice here. The Supinese are suspicious of people who are obsessed with time.”

That morning in the piazza the sun was strong. Our town official took off his jacket. Since I didn’t think he’d be returning to City Hall soon, we left the Bar Centrale and walked down the hill to the Kennedy Bar where they sold ice cream: lemon to pucker your mouth, hazelnut to sharpen your taste buds and peach to seduce you. We sat at a small white table beneath the shade of a quince tree and watched a city employee plaster a yellow poster to the side of the bar. When he finished he came over to speak to Bob.

“Caffé?” asked my husband.

“Sí. Grazie,” replied the stranger.

Bob signaled the waiter, held up his thumb and index finger to indicate two.

“Who is this man?” I asked.

“It’s the street sweeper. You see him every morning at the Bar Italia, leaning on his broom, talking to the policeman who sometimes directs the traffic.”

The three of us sat comfortably in the eleven o’clock sunshine, drinking espresso, exchanging a word or two. With my glasses and my dictionary, I translated the poster. It was an announcement of the activities surrounding the feast of San Cataldo. We’d been invited to participate in the official ceremonies at City Hall. I thought it was because my husband was a politician. The villagers love titles: professore, dottore, consigliere, especially if it’s a local made good. Partway through my translation I discovered a line in English.

“Bob, listen to this. Official visit of signor Robert McLean, Alderman City of York (Toronto) four o’clock Tuesday, May 8th at City Hall. That’s today,” I said. “What time is it?”

“Eleven. We’ve got lots of time. Four o’clock in Supino probably means six.”

Before heading back to the pensione to change, we stopped again at the Bar Centrale. Our city official had removed his tie, loosened his collar, rolled up his sleeves and was still deep in conversation. We knew there was no way he was going to return to his duties at City Hall today. The ten o’clock cappuccino break had stretched almost to lunch time. We carried on up the hill to our house to see how the renovations were progressing. The workers were also on a break, sitting beneath the willow tree in the empty lot up the road, drinking beer and eating cake, supplied by signora Francesca who lived across the street. They jumped up when they saw us approach. Not to work, but to tell us Gino’s brother had just returned from Toronto with pictures of the CN Tower.

“Isn’t it strange how fascinated the villagers are with the CN Tower?” I asked.

“Isn’t it strange that no one’s working?” responded Bob.

Our house was locked, tools, paint cans, plaster neatly piled in the cantina. The workers gathered up their sweaters and their caps and headed home.

“See you later,” they claimed. “Ci vediamo.”

“They accomplish a lot when they’re working,” I said.

“Sure,” agreed Bob, “when they’re working. They stop for the strangest reasons. What about last week? The whole town shut down to hike up the mountain for an afternoon picnic. And why? Because the wild roses were in bloom or the cherries were ripe. What kind of a village is this anyway?”

“My father’s village,” I replied.

We passed the house again, just before four, en route to the official ceremonies. I assured Bob we’d see workers in action. The street was deserted. We drove to City Hall without passing a single car or person. The doors of the municipal building were locked.

“We’ll try the Bar Centrale,” suggested Bob. “Maybe the owner, Carlo, knows something.”

The piazza was empty. The bar was closed. Even our town official had gone.

“Interesting way to hold an official opening.”

“Let’s go sit on our balcony,” I replied. “I think the workers will be back from their lunch break soon.”

On our narrow balcony two cane chairs, left in the attic, fit side by side, but we had to climb over their wooden ladder backs to sit down. There was nowhere to put our legs. For a few minutes, we sat folded like jackknives, until we traded the chairs for empty plaster pails. Perfect. From up the mountain, a soft thumping noise grew louder, approached the curve of our street. As we turned toward the sound, a brass band appeared around the bend, horns shining in the sunlight, drums beating brightly. When the band passed the houses along Via Condotto Vecchio, the villagers spilled from their doorways. Dressed in their Sunday clothes, mothers pushed strollers, children skipped, men straightened their ties and their collar bands; the street joined in a parade. When they passed our balcony, we deserted our plastic pails and joined as well.

Down the hill we proceeded, gathering neighbours as we went, past the Bar Centrale, still closed, and up the hill to the City Hall where red and yellow banners fluttered from its second story windows. The doors stood wide open with a uniformed policeman at each end. The crowd gathered outside the doorway and waited. Another policeman stepped out. He held a bugle to his lips and played a few notes.

“This must be something really important. All three Supino policemen are here.”

Dignitaries in black suits filed out of the building. The last man wore a red, white and green sash tied diagonally across his chest. The mayor made a fine speech about something, speaking so quickly I couldn’t decipher enough words to create a sentence. Then he spoke in English, “Signor Bob, welcome. Missus Bob, welcome home.” The mayor placed a bunch of red roses in my arm, shook my hand and kissed me on both cheeks. Even though it was my father’s birthplace, my father’s country, my father’s language, it was the moment I felt I belonged.

The next day, as we drove down Via Condotto Vecchio, Bob checked the gas gauge. It was almost empty.

“Is there a gas station in Supino?” he asked.

“Isn’t there one near the Kennedy Bar?”

“You’re thinking of the phone booth. I’d better stop and ask. I don’t think we have enough gas to get to Frosinone.”

Attached to the Kennedy Bar is a pizza parlor. The woman who makes the pizza doesn’t speak English, but she has a pleasant face and like all the Supinese, she’s anxious to help. We can look up the phrase “gas station” in the dictionary and ask her. That’s the easy part. The hard part is the answer. Someone always has a better way of getting there and every heated conversation always ends with the question, “Understand?”

Bob memorized the words for “right” and “left,” copied down the words for “where,” and “gas station” and was back to the car in a few seconds.

“That was almost too fast,” I worried. “What’d she say?”

“Quattro Strade — the four streets, we know where that is. Turn right and boom! That’s it.”

So we drove with Bob watching the gas gauge all the way and turned right and boom! There it was. We waited in the car for a few minutes, Bob tapping his fingernails on the dashboard, but no one came. Bob suggested, “Maybe it’s self-serve.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the word ‘self-serve’ in Italy,” I said, but no one was coming and we had to be in Frosinone in 20 minutes. Bob opened the car door and stepped up to the pump. He squeezed the gas pump, but nothing came out.

“Ey!” called a voice from the window above the gas station. “What you do?”

Bob began a pantomime, holding up the pump, pointing to the car, asking me, “What’s the word for empty?”

“Come back Thursday,” said the man in the window. “I get gas on Thursday.”

“You have no gas?” asked Bob. “You’re out of gas?”

“Just until Thursday,” the man repeated. “Come back Thursday.”

“I have to get to Frosinone, today,” explained Bob.

“You got some gas?” asked the man, sticking his hands out the window and lifting them up and down, as if he was comparing some invisible weights.

“Yes.”

“Then, you got no problem, signor. You Americano?”

“Canadese ,” said Bob wearily, as he screwed the gas cap back on the car’s almost empty gas tank.

“Oh, the Canadese . To Frosinone, go straight,” instructed the gas man. “Why you look so worried? It’s all down the hill from here.”

We drove down hill until we got almost to the autostrada. Before the car could begin to cough and sputter and announce it was completely out of gas,

I pointed to a battered blue tin sign, stating chiuso, hanging on a chain across the gas pumps. A young boy on a two-wheeler came racing out of nowhere and braked in a spin beside Bob’s window.

“Signor Canadese ?” asked the boy.

“Sí.”

“Aspetta,” the boy replied, as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring of keys. Quickly, he unlocked the chain, unhooked the gas pump and filled the tank. He pointed to the total showing on the gas pump and put his hand out to Bob. Bob counted out the lire, asking, “How did you know who we were?”

“Telefona,” he said, pressing his thumb to his ear, his baby finger on his lower lip. “Canadese . No gas. Frosinone.”

“The guy at the other station must have phoned ahead,” I said to Bob.

“Supinese,” the boy explained. “Like you.”

Bob drove like an Italian maniac all the way to Frosinone. We got there with 10 minutes to spare.

“Bet we’re waiting here for over an hour,” I said to Bob.

“Not a chance. Lawyers are the same everywhere. Time is money.”

There was something about the traffic, the people, even the heat of this small city just 30 minutes from Supino that suggested business and industry. Rocco pulled up five minutes before noon, jumped from his car, raced

to the building. It was the fastest we’d ever seen him move. By the time we reached the front lobby Rocco was already at the top of the stairs. He motioned us to hurry.

“Number 27. This is it,” said Rocco. “Good luck.”

“Aren’t you coming with us?” I asked.

“No need. You have your papers, right? Everything’s all set. No problem,” assured Rocco. Then, he added, “Don’t worry, Maria, the lawyer speaks perfect English.”

“We’ve heard that before,” I declared, but Rocco was gone with a wave of his hand and a “Ciao, bella.”

After the midday heat of Via Margarete, the lawyer’s office, with grey marble floors and rich green plants, was cool and peaceful. The receptionist looked up for a moment when we entered and waved us toward the open door of the lawyer’s office. No buon giorno. No handshake. Not even an enquiry. The lawyer, in his Armani suit and Versace tie, was just as businesslike.

“Sit,” he instructed. We pulled out the soft leather seats and sat.

“Sign here,” he said.

“These are the same papers we signed at the lawyer’s office in Toronto,” began Bob. “Why do we have to sign them again?”

“This is Italy,” the lawyer replied, so we took the fine-tip fountain pen and signed.

The lawyer placed a small wooden box on the table, opened the lid and from a bed of burgundy velvet, took out a block of dark blue sealing wax and a metal seal. With his cigarette lighter, burnished silver with his initials discreetly engraved in the bottom-left-hand corner, he lit the wick and dripped wax onto the official documents. Then he pressed the seal down firmly on the melted wax and waited a few seconds, tapping his manicured fingertips on the mahogany table. Lifting the seal he said, “You are now official residents of Supino. Auguri. Any questions?”

“Our water tank,” began Bob.

“Municipal business. Go to the City Hall in your village.”

“Our house has several different numbers painted on it,” Bob explained. “Six. Ten.”

“Ask your neighbours.”

He checked his Rolex watch. “Anything else?” he asked and stood up to indicate that the appointment was over. He walked over to the sideboard. A bottle of amber-coloured liquid and several glasses waited on a silver tray. Were we going to drink a toast to our official status?

He returned with one last document, opened the folder carefully, turned the paper toward us and, keeping his hand outstretched, waited.

“And this is?” Bob asked.

“My bill,” said the lawyer, in his perfect English.

We were out on the street before Bob spoke again. “It’s 253,000 lire. That’s $253 for who knows what? Advice that you could get for free at any bar in town.”

We took the shortcut back to Supino. It’s a shorter trip if you avoid the rush hour when the sheep, walking 12 abreast, jam the roadway between the green pastures, ripe with clover and the stone building at the rear of the shepherd’s home. It was hot. Beneath the chestnut and fig trees that dotted the countryside, instead of the usual dark patches of shade, circles of white woolly mounds rested in the shadows. We drove along the bridge, built with wooden planks and low rocks, around the bend by the ancient chestnut tree and onto the smooth paved road that runs parallel to the autostrada. Bob slowed the car and pulled over.

“What’s wrong?”

“Let’s get out for a minute. I want to show you something.” We stood at the side of the road, the sun beating strongly on our shoulders. “You know how the village’s two main streets intersect like a cross? Even though you can’t see your father’s farmhouse because of the trees, if you imagine a body lying on the frame of the cross, his home is at the heart of Supino.”

We were anxious to get back to our balcony, to buy sandwiches at the porchetta stand near the autostrada. We laughed at the crooked blue sign with its arrow pointing upwards and the white letters that spelled: SUPINO. This was the spot where some kind of magic always began to take hold. We roared up the narrow street, sounded the horn as we entered the one-lane bridge under the piazza Umberto, swerved round the quince tree and the two shoe store ladies who were always sitting beneath it crocheting. We zigzagged past the Bar Italia, up the mountainside to

Via Condotto Vecchio and home.

“Here’s the plan,” I said to Bob. “Tomorrow we’ll go back to City Hall — well before the ten o’clock cappuccino break — and arrange for a water tank, a hydro meter and an official street number.”

“You’re #10,” said a voice from below, a voice that spoke English. We looked down and saw a short, white-haired man.

“What you eat? Sand-a-wich?” asked the man. “That’s no good. Come. The wife — she feed you.”

Bob looked at me and said, “What do you...?” but I was already heading for the stairs. I’d seen the stranger’s watery blue eyes, his shy and gentle smile.

“My name, Giuseppe. Call me Joe. I been working in Frosinone. The wife she tells me you were arrived. You, famiglia Mezzabotte, no?”

We could smell roasted chicken, with rosemary and garlic, from the kitchen window of Joe’s house. Bob would have said he was related to anyone just to get a taste of that chicken.

Joe hustled us into the house, calling to his wife as we entered, “Angela! The neighbours — they sit alone on the balcony. What’s a matter with everybody? Where’s Marco? Why you didn’t call them over, introduce them to your mother, practise to speak the English to them? Sit. Sit. Angela you gonna let these people eat buns. No pasta? No wine? What’s a matter with everybody?”

Bob was eating his third piece of roasted chicken when he broached the subject of the water tank.

“Joe we need a water tank for our house. We can put it in the cantina. I understand I have to fill out an official form, apply to City Hall.”

“I get the tank for you this afternoon, Bob. We go after lunch.”

“I don’t think City Hall opens until four o’clock. Even then, it doesn’t seem to be a definite thing. Sometimes they don’t open at all and....”

“Angela. What you call Bruno’s cousin? You know, the one who likes to wear the uniform, sit at the desk, read the newspaper.”

“Luigi.”

“Sí. Sí. Luigi. Today’s Wednesday. He’s at the Bar Italia. Plays cards. We go after lunch. You and me Bob. You brought some coffee from Canada, right?”

“Yes, but how did you...?”

“You’re in the coffee business, no? Sixteen employees. Four delivery trucks. And you drive a good car, Lincoln Continental, right? Everybody knows. You bring some coffee for Luigi. He make the papers for you.”

It was almost dark when Bob returned to the pensione, face flushed, laughing and talking so quickly I could barely understand him.

“Where have you been all this time?” I asked. “Stop waving your hands all over the place. I can’t listen and follow your hand gestures at the same time. Do you want some coffee?”

“Please. I already drank four, no five, espressos, none of which I paid for. These paesani of your father’s! They all talk at once. Faster than I can translate. They fight over who’s paying for my coffee. I thought they were going to come to blows at one point. And they expect me to know every relative that ever emigrated from Supino to Toronto. But wait until you hear this.”

“What’s the house number situation?”

“The house is #10, just like Joe said. Here’s how it works: after the First World War, they numbered all the houses in order, then after the Second, so many buildings were abandoned, deserted, they renumbered, but just the houses where people were living. Are you still with me? The empty houses had no numbers. Every decade, they repaint the numbers. Our house has been empty for 15 years, so no need for a number, right? But now that we’ve bought it, more renumbering. We’re #10.”

“Who told you all this?”

“Joe, of course. Who else? There’s more. The water tank’s coming. Just like he said. Two pounds of Canadian espresso coffee, one water tank.”

“How did you arrange that without going to City Hall?”

“No idea. Joe did it all. I just handed over the coffee when he told me to. And get this, Joe says the empty place next door to ours has been sold — the backyard too. The new owner — his name’s Sam — wants to buy our woodshed. We talked it over at the bar. Well, mostly the neighbours argued with Joe about how to handle the sale.”

“We’re going to sell our woodshed?”

“No. Joe’s going to fix it up. He said he’ll put on a new roof. Everyone here has pleasant memories of your father’s family, they call them famiglia Mezzabotte. They all have a story to tell about your grandparents, your father, Aunt Regina. They want to watch out for us, make sure no one cheats us, because they think we’re rich. We just bought a house, without seeing it, because it’s in your father’s village. We’re spending as much on renovations as we did to buy the house in the first place. We’re flying back and forth to Italy twice a year. We rent a car while we’re here — half the people who live here don’t even own a car. We stay at the pensione. We’re buying furniture, as soon as we find the furniture store. Face it. By their standards, we can only be ricchi o pazzi. Take your pick.

“So, Joe fixes the roof of the woodshed, not because we’re using it, not because the roof’s leaking, but because it makes it look like we’re using it and taking care of it, like the woodshed is important to us. We own the woodshed, even though it’s attached to Sam’s house next door, but we don’t own the backyard to our house, right?”

“Right. Except that never did make any sense to me.”

“Joe explained that to me too. Years ago all the houses on our side of the street that are attached, four or five of them including ours, used to belong to one family. They had a lot of children. When the parents died, they divided the house into a series of little houses so that each of the children would have an equal share — three rooms for one daughter, two rooms and a cantina for another, two rooms and the woodshed for another. That’s how the empty house next door got the backyard and our house got the woodshed that’s attached to the empty house.”

“Do we own the land that the woodshed’s on?” I asked hopefully.

“Joe says no. But — here’s the good part — the woodshed stands between Sam’s empty house next door and signor Mario’s woodlot, right? The only way into the backyard of the empty house is the few inches between the woodshed and signor Mario’s fence. That’s okay if you want to walk into the backyard. But say you want to take a wheelbarrow, a backhoe, or a very small dump truck back there. You can’t do it. The woodshed blocks the way.”

“Sam could drive around our woodshed, through signor Mario’s woodlot and get into his yard that way.”

“No. He can’t,” explained Bob. “Joe says signor Mario won’t let him.”

“Signor Mario’s the sweetest guy. He’s always giving me a rose from his garden, some rosemary from the bush. Why wouldn’t he let Sam drive through his empty woodlot to get into his backyard and do his renovations?”

“In Supino, a house is no good without land. Where are you going to plant tomatoes, grow grapes, roses, maybe an olive tree? If signor Mario won’t let Sam drive on his woodlot, Sam will have to find another way to get into his backyard. The only other way is to knock down the woodshed. Then, he’ll have a good wide path to drive his backhoe and dump truck and.... Joe told him we might want some land behind our house. Said he’d try to convince us to trade the woodshed for a piece of property behind our house.”

“You mean we’re going to get a backyard?”

“Posso,” replied Bob.

The ravine behind the house is a field of buttercups. Tall, slender wildflowers nod elegantly to each other, chatting in the early morning breeze. Down the hill a little, the poppies raise their heads. Yesterday they were dark, heavy droplets bent low on slender furry stems, but today their heads are held high reflecting golden sunlight.

“There’s a bunch of people in front of the cantina,” called Bob, from the front bedroom. “What do they want?”

“No idea. Ask Joe. He speaks English.”

Joe reminded me of my father. His answers were always simple, direct, but with a hint of disbelief. Like my father, he was patient. The balcony doors in the front bedroom were open. I could hear Bob speaking to Joe in the narrow street.

“Joe. Who are all those people in front of our cantina?”

“The neighbours. They wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“It’s Friday.”

“What happens on Friday?”

“Bob. What’s the matter with you? The new water tank comes today, no?”

In half an hour, we hear the rumbling of the city truck travelling the new road that circles the ravine as it curves past the water fountain and rambles down the hill to the top of our street. Signor Mario’s empty woodlot is two doors away from our house and that’s where the truck stops. As the driver reaches for the door handle, the crowd of neighbours surrounding the truck are already inspecting and commenting. Everyone discusses the tank’s beauty; the colour, not blue but azzurro, is bellissimo. They are accustomed to using town water for an hour or two each day, so the real beauty is the size of the storage tank. “Magnifico,” they declare.

The shape, stout and low to the ground, becomes a joke, “Come Mezzabotte,” they say to me. “Like your father.”

Mezzabotte is a Supinese family nickname. It means half a barrel, like the shape of my father. It was true, but the family of Mezzabotte never knew such luxury; they carried their water from the mountain stream.

As the driver tries to unload the water tank from the truck, Joe shouts orders, “Peppe, Sam. Lift the tank down to Marco and Angelo. Antonio, get out of the way. Let the men do it. Antonio, hold the cantina door open. Okay. Get Luigi to help you. Get this dog out of the way. Wait. Wait. What are you saying? No. We can’t put the water tank there. Just a minute. Who’s blowing that horn? Who? Il postino. Tell the postman he has to wait same as everybody else. Mmm beh! Is it my fault he’s early today? Tomei. Chi Tomei? Tell him they just moved into the third floor, above the tabacchi store. Ring the bell. I know the bell says Volpone. So what? It’s Tomei. It’s Mario’s niece. She married the engineer from Frosinone. I don’t know how long. Get your car out of the way, then we can move the truck. This is an official city truck. You think he’s going to move for you? I got no time to talk to you. Where’s Luigi? Don’t leave the tank there. No good. No good, I said. It’s got to go in the corner.”

Joe says we must put the water tank in the back corner in order to leave room for the wood storage and the conversion of the cantina to a garage, for our macchina.

“Macchina? What macchina?” I ask, but no one answers. “Bob. What car?” Bob shrugs his shoulders, palms upwards, with a look on his face that says, “How would I know?”

I sit on the stoop of Joe’s house with Angela and watch them unload the water tank. When they finish, the city truck rumbles down the street and the postman slings his leather satchel over his shoulder and zigzags his way up the hill, whistling and slipping letters into mail slots as he goes.

I hear applause coming from my cantina and Angela stands up, saying, “They’re finished. Bravo. I make the coffee.”

The neighbours head to Joe’s garage, laughing and talking. I see Bob in the crowd. Someone pats him on the shoulder and says, “Good, Bob.” I see Joe’s brother, Benito, smile and give Bob the thumbs up sign. Even Benito, who can neither speak nor hear, knows what is going on and I am left to wonder what new decision has been made without me.

Joe stops at the doorway and says, “What’s the matter Maria? Why you don’t come for coffee? You want to see where we put the water tank, first?”

“No. I’m sure you picked a good place for the tank, I was just....”

“Good place? The only place. Back corner, under the window. You see, Maria, in that way, we leave room for the woodpile and in the middle...” and here Joe paused to get the full effect, “space for the Fiat!”

“Fiat?” I shout. “What Fiat?”

“Doesn’t have to be a Fiat, Maria, if you don’t want,” suggests Joe. “Any small car will fit in that space. It is perfetto.” And then he is gone.

Everyone has espresso and biscotti in Joe’s garage. Soon the speed of conversation becomes too fast for me. By the time I translate one word, the speaker is five sentences ahead of me. I go back and sit on the front stoop beside Angela.

“I had a dishwasher once,” she says.

The first time Angela left the village, she was 19. Her parents sent her to Toronto to visit her aunt. In Toronto many people who had been born in Supino, or whose parents had been born there, came to the aunt’s house to greet Angela and hear the news of the village. Joe had been one of the visitors, but a reluctant one. Joe was on his way to a party at a friend’s house and said he’d just drop in to appease his mother and be on his way. He never made it to the party. Three weeks later, Angela and Joe were engaged and by Christmas they were married. Joe had a good job working construction. They bought a bungalow near St. Clair and Dufferin and filled it with furniture and wedding gifts from the villagers. Joe bought a dishwasher. Angela cut out a picture of the dishwasher from the Eaton’s catalogue and sent it to her mother in Supino who stuck the picture up in the Bar Italia so everyone could see it. The picture hung there for years, until the sun turned the newsprint yellow. Even then the villagers talked about the white, shiny machine that washed dishes automatically. “Mamma mia,” they said. “Automatico!” They also had a colour television with a 26-inch screen and every afternoon Angela watched soap operas to learn to speak English. After nine years they had a son and a daughter and a good life.

Then came a letter from Joe’s mother saying she was getting old and tired, the house too big — too many stairs and too much work. She was worried about Benito, Joe’s brother who had a good job at the post office, sorting mail. He never missed a day of work, never missed mass on Sunday, but Benito was deaf and spoke with his hands. Joe’s mother worried that she and the priest were the only two in the village who understood him and both of them were getting old. Who would care for him, speak to him? It was time to come home, live in the house, take care of Benito. Angela and Joe packed up their belongings and shipped them back to Supino. The colour television and the dishwasher were given to her aunt. When they arrived in Italy Angela said, “Even after flying into the night and out of the morning and landing with a bump at Leonardo da Vinci aeroporto, I was still crying. I didn’t want to leave Canada.”

Joe had returned to the garden to pick the endive flourishing after the recent rain. I had heard their story, now I wanted him to hear mine. I told him I didn’t want to buy a car now; the house was expensive enough. I wanted to wait.

“You spend money to rent a car, but you don’t want to buy one? Maria, what’s a matter with you? Why you want to give money to some rental guy in Roma, every time you come? Those guys — all thieves. Anyway, we gotta buy. We got nothing to trade, except the cantina, but then, where you going to park the car?”

My father had always encouraged me to buy rather than rent, own something rather than “throwing money out the window.” I was undecided. The neighbours were discussing who would be in charge of the car when we were away. Everyone had a lead and a price: 1,000 Italian lire was worth a Canadian dollar, so everything sounded expensive — the figures were in the millions. I kept saying to Bob, “How much is that? How much is that?” but he just shrugged and walked back to our house, shaking his head.

We were employing half the town, but not much work had been done. Although I appreciated the friendliness of workers and villagers, I wished they’d socialize on their own time. Though Joe spoke English, we had language in common but lacked understanding. Joe used Supino reasoning and that didn’t help me sleep at night.

“We’re going back to Toronto soon, Joe,” I reminded him. “When we come back in August, with my father, we want to be able to stay in the house.”

“Good. I look forward to seeing Mezzabotte again. All the old people, they remember your father. His father was esperto — what you call it? — expert at pruning the grapes. Every year, Domenico’s grapes grow the most. Pretty soon other people ask him to come and trim their vines. Next year, more grapes. All along the road, where your father’s farm is, you see the best grapevines in the village. When your grandfather died, nobody knows his secrets, how to cut the branches just right. Some people they cut too much — others not enough — never like Domenico. He was perfetto. But your father, he tells you this, no? Lorenzo, down at the bar, he knows. Come. I buy you coffee. Lorenzo, he tells you the story.”

Joe and I walked across the street, through Mario’s woodlot, to find Bob. He was standing among the crowd of buttercups in our backyard.

“I made a list,” Bob began. “The hydro meter, the plasterer, the handyman, the floor-sanding man, the plumber, the carpenter, the painter, the electrician, the....”

“Bob,” asked Joe, “you got the contract from Pietro?”

“Yes.”

“You signed?”

“Yes.”

“He signed?”

“Yes.”

“Bob. You got no problem. When you come back in August with Mezzabotte, everything, she’s fine.”

At the Bar Italia, Bob had just finished helping Bruno set up the tables and chairs on the outdoor patio. The cracked cement square holds four tables and ten chairs. Yesterday, a city truck had delivered planter boxes to different public sites around the village. The planters were full of flowers. But most of the villagers held the same opinion as my father — you can’t eat flowers — so the flowers have been replaced. On the counter inside the bar are velvety blue petunias deposited unceremoniously in a recycled milk carton; outside the bar in the planter box on the patio are three small tomato seedlings.

We were arguing about who would pay for the coffees when Pietro came into the bar. I asked him why he and his contractors were all working next door at Sam’s house, when we had hired him just last week.

“Maria,” responded Pietro patiently, “Mezzabotte doesn’t arrive until agosto. Look on the calendario. It’s only maggio.” He added, almost involuntarily, “Mamma mia.”

Pietro explained that he’d run into a little problem: our attic window was going to look right into Sam’s new bedroom. Problema. Grande problema. Without exchanging a word, Bob and I knew we were entering into trade number three.

Joe folded his hands on the table, tapped his thumbs together. “What you going to do?” Joe asked, leaning forward to hear Pietro’s answer. “You already said you’ll put in the new window glass. Bob sign; you sign. Problema, Pietro, grande problema.”

“Fill in the window with cemento. Perfetto,” declared Pietro. “You don’t need two windows, Bob. You already got one window at the back. Basta. That’s enough, no?”

“I like that little window,” claimed Bob.

“Mamma mia. I pay you for the damn window,” yelled Pietro. “Bruno, bring me birra. Presto.” Bruno brought a pitcher of beer with several glasses and some advice for Pietro.

“Canadese sono ricchi, no?” Pietro smacked his head with the palm of his hand and said nothing.

“I have a plan,” said Joe, as if he had just thought of it while Bruno was getting the beer. “We make a trade. You take out the kitchen window. Cut the wall down to the floor. Put the door for the backyard. In return, Bob gives you permission to fill in that nice little attic window with cemento.”

“Sí. Sí,” agreed Pietro, who hurriedly pushed his pen and a napkin toward Joe. Joe drew out the deal and we signed at the X.

On the way back to the house, we’d picked up several extra people. There were two men who sat on the bench at the water fountain every day and waited for a stranger to stop at the fountain who thought he or she could get water from it. The men directed the newcomer up the hill, past our house, to the pisciarello where the cold water from the mountain stream ran continuously. But today they gave up their chance to give directions and followed us up the hill. Some children, who were playing soccer, stopped their game and joined us. Angela was just coming out of the tabacchi store, pasta and cigarettes in hand, so she joined us too. Christina, who owns the store, was left alone leaning in the doorway, so she locked the door and came along as well.

“What if someone wants to buy something?” I asked Joe.

“They wait. Or they come to the house. Maria, why do you worry so much?”

The villagers had mixed opinions about cutting the doorway. They weren’t sure about using the door that Joe had found in the woodshed. It wasn’t a sturdy outside door with a solid lock and a heavy metal doorknob; it was an inside door with a frosted glass panel and a slender silver door handle. Joe said it would do for now. He had found a better one, a solid wooden outside door with a good sturdy lock, on the house next door to ours. No one was living in the house, but surely eventually somebody would and they would need a door.

“Bob, you buy this house. No cost too much money. We take off the door. She looks good, no? We put it for the backyard. What do you say, Bob?”

“Buy the house? To get a door? Joe, we can just buy a new door.”

“What’s a matter with you, Bob? Pietro already told you this at the bar. You’ve got to pay attention. Luigi he makes shutters and doors. Made to measure. Not like Toronto where you go to Canadian Tire and buy a door. This is Italy. Luigi can make the door for you. Measure nice. Special wood from Abruzzi region. Strong nails imported from Milano. He sands very smooth, even makes the picture on the door. What do you call that? Woodcarving. He puts stain and wax and polish. Nice, nice. But Luigi — he takes a lot a time. Sure, sure. Luigi tells everybody, ‘Sono artiste, grande professore.’ Bigga head, that guy. What a thief! If Luigi’s going to make the door for you, Bob, you’re going to pay a lot of money. It’s much better to buy the house. The house, she’s little. Just two rooms, one up, one down. Nothing special. But the door — bellissima. You and me, Bob, we knock out the wall between the two houses and presto, you have a five-room house. What do you say?”

“Perfetto,” the neighbours said. “Bravo.”

“Perfetto?” I shouted. “To buy a house to get a door? Not perfetto. Pazzo.”

“Is the two-room house for sale?” asked Bob. “There’s no sign.”

“Sign? Why you want to waste money on a sign? I already tell the owner nobody want that house. It’s too little. Who’s going to buy a two-room house? It’s a no good for nothing. That guy who owns the house — he lets it sit here empty while he pays rent for an apartment in Roma. His mother, she lived in the house 37 years. Now she’s dead. The son wants to sell. He doesn’t want to live here. Thinks he’s a bigga shot, live in Roma. Even when the mother was living, the son never came to visit. Just phone sometimes on Sunday. Better if the guy think that no one wants a two-room house. We get a better price that way. For now we put the door I found.”

As the increasing numbers of villagers joining the debate added their voices, the conversations grew louder and faster and we were left out of the argument. The noise level escalated. The discussion switched from using the found door to how to grade the yard. The backyard is about 10 feet long, before it plunges down the ravine, so Sam was going to dig out the earth, starting at the back wall of the house, and push the excess soil down the hill. How many steps did we want from the door down to the yard? The lower Sam dug the earth the more steps we’d need to get into the yard. The more earth Sam dug out, the longer the yard would be. The backhoe was poised, in the narrow driveway, ready to dig.

I walked 10 steps, yelling out the numbers, “Uno, due, tre… dieci,” and slapped my hand on the wall of the house and shouted, “See this white line? Ten feet. Our house is 10 feet wide, so the backyard is 10 feet wide too.” I marched toward the ravine, to where I had stuck the dead tree branch into the earth. I stamped my foot. “Right here. Dieci e dieci. That’s the yard. Eccola.”

But signor Mario reminded us that we needed a foot or two extra for flowers and Enrico suggested we should build a low wall because the flowers could go in pots and Joe declared, “No flowers, you can’t eat flowers.” He claimed he was bringing a cutting from his grapevine to grow over a lattice roof he planned to make from branches and twigs and Francesca said no grapevine, it would make too much shade and Angela reminded us we’d be happy to have the shade when August came around and Bob looked at me and shrugged his shoulders and asked, “Lunch?” and we headed down to the restaurant in the woods and no one missed us. During an early lunch at the outdoor restaurant I told Bob my plan for our backyard. “Picture this — red impatiens that I can plant every summer and wild yellow buttercups that will appear each spring and Joe’s grapevine, the shade will be good in the summer when we get the afternoon sun, a terracotta patio....”

We timed our return to Via Condotto Vecchio for after two o’clock when we knew everyone would be home, eating pasta and drinking wine. The backhoe still sat in the driveway of Sam’s house next door where our woodshed used to be. All was quiet on the street. Bob opened the front door and we were met with a blast of sunlight. Instead of a kitchen window there was monstrous hole in the back wall and a panoramic view of the ravine behind our house. Wall to wall. Bright yellow-green trees, the kind you see only in the early spring before the heat and the dust of summer powder the leaves, anchored in a base of yellow buttercups.

“Good grief,” I exclaimed. “Why would they knock out so much of the wall to put in one door?”

Joe’s voice, from his garage across the street, answered, “The neighbours — they can’t agree. Where you going to put the door? Pietro makes the doorway in the corner. Out of the way there. But Enzo, he thinks right in the centre looks better. So, we make the hole a little bigger. Then Mario says beside the fireplace, in line with the front door, to catch the breeze. It seems like a good idea. Then Angela calls, it’s time for lunch, so....”

Guido surprised me one Sunday with a knock on the door and the news that he had moved from Roma to Supino for the summer. I didn’t have wine, or coffee, or even a chair to sit on. I dug around in my knapsack, produced a package of cherry Lifesavers and offered him one of those.

“What’s this?” he asked sweeping his arm across the area where the back wall used to be.

“New door,” explained Bob.

“The hole — she’s too big.”

Guido held a rectangular cardboard carton whose contents rattled and clinked. It was a light fixture with a long silver chain and the whole apparatus unfolded to three tiers of cut-glass crystals, candle-shaped lightbulbs and silver beads. It was elegant. It was beautiful. It was enormous. We thanked him profusely and then, because Guido wasted no time, he told us he needed a ladder as he was walking out the door, down the stairs, on his way to the cantina. Bob followed with the key. The villagers kept wine in their cantinas. Ours contained the water tank, a woodpile and some waiting construction supplies. The cantina was at street level and there was no space between the door of the cantina and the street itself, so if a car was passing, you had to wait a few seconds before you could get the key into the lock and open the door. This has two purposes: it saves you from getting brushed by a car and it gives the neighbours time to come over and see what’s going on. Bob unlocked the cantina door and Joe came hurrying across the street. After the introductions, Joe and Guido chatted rapidly in Italian, while Bob searched for a ladder.

“Sorry, Guido. No ladder — no scala.”

“Bob, what’s a matter with you?” asked Joe. “The ladder is right there, on top of the woodpile,” and he grasped a thick branch of wood in each hand and lifted five sturdy logs strapped to long poles of hardwood.

At the house, Joe propped up the ladder and Guido installed the light fixture. I flicked the switch, but only to show Guido that the hydro was not connected.

“No wall and no elettricitá? Mamma mia.”

Then Guido told Bob he’d found a car for us to buy. I think his exact words were, “Una macchina — perfetta e cheap-o.” Before Bob had a chance to respond, Angela was tapping on the door, carrying a tray with coffee and biscuits. I flipped over the cardboard box to act as a table. Bob brought the two plastic pails from the balcony and the other pail from the backyard. As hosts, we sat on the hard marble steps, with the cardboard table holding the coffee tray in the centre. We laughed and drank and ate together, as happily as if we were sitting at the finest restaurant in Rome.

Bob asked, “How much is the car? Quanto costa?”

“Five millioni lire.”

“Guido,” I said, “we’re only here five or six weeks of the year. We don’t need to spend $5,000 for a car. Most of the time it will just sit in the cantina. It doesn’t make sense.”

But Bob argued, “Look at it this way. Every time we come here we rent a car. It works out to $1,000 a trip — more if we stay longer than two weeks. In a couple of years, we’ll have spent $5,000 and we won’t have anything to show for it. If we spend $5,000 now we’ll have the car for years. Joe can use the car while we’re in Canada. It’ll be good for the car to have someone drive it now and again. Joe can come and pick us up at the airport. He’d be doing us a favour by driving it.”

The car would be a way to pay Joe back for all his help negotiating house renovations. Joe wouldn’t take money.

Guido reassured me, “No hurry, Maria. My son doesn’t bring the car until dopo il pranzo — how do you say? After lunch. Mia moglie waits for us. You eat lunch at my house.”

The villagers’ concept of invitation did not include the idea of choice. There were a few excuses that were acceptable: a wedding, baptism, First Communion, lunch at a mother’s or mother-in-law’s. But Guido’s my only relative in Italy, except for the second cousins who live in the big house beside my father’s farm. Guido is my oldest relative in Supino. Guido is my first cousin. Therefore, we were eating lunch at Guido’s house today.

Just past the Bar Italia is a flower shop. Usually the store is locked and if you want to buy flowers you go up the hill to the bar, where the owner is playing cards with the man from the dry goods store. But today was Sunday; the store was open. The traditional hostess gift is flowers, a tray of pastries, or a box of chocolates. The stores that sold these items were usually open Sunday morning, because the villagers were definitely going to take a gift when they went to someone’s house for Sunday lunch, but they weren’t going to spend their money a day before they had to.

The hostess would always object, chastise us for bringing anything at all, but then display the flowers in a big vase that was waiting on the dining room table and show them to every neighbour who dropped in for coffee, every day, for the next week. If I brought candies they’d go into her best crystal bowl and they too would be displayed, usually on the sideboard. After everyone had taken one, they waited on the sideboard for the neighbours to admire and share. If I brought pastries the shopkeeper would have already arranged them on a foil-covered cardboard tray and they’d become part of the dessert.

Today, I chose a pot of yellow flowers that looked like chrysanthemums. I took the pot inside the store to pay for it and the owner said, “No.” At first I thought I’d offered the wrong amount of money, but the owner took the money and put the pot of yellow flowers back outside. Then he selected a dozen velvety red roses and several sprigs of baby’s breath from a large plastic bucket beside the counter. He slipped the bouquet into clear plastic and tied the whole thing up with a few yards of white crinkle ribbon. He presented it to me, the ribbon hanging down in curls and the flowers upside-down.

I accepted the bouquet and said, “Grazie.” The flower man responded with an expression I’d never heard before, and when I translated it, I was glad I hadn’t made a fuss. He said, “Buon pranzo.” Good lunch. The walk to Guido’s house was a long and winding route uphill. We stopped several times to greet neighbours; all the women looked at the bouquet and commented, “Bella.”

The front door of the house was propped open with a pot of flowers: yellow margheritas. Guido’s wife, Luigina, hurried into the yard, kissed us and hustled us toward the house. She clucked at us along the way as if we were a small group of chickens late for dinner. She was a tiny, energetic woman with curly hair. She wore a flowered dress and, of course, an apron. She smelled of tomato sauce, basilico and the scent of fresh air and sunshine. In the dining room there was a china cabinet, a big wooden table and many chairs. I gave Luigina the flowers and she crushed a rose petal under her nose and pronounced the bouquet, “Bellissimo.”

“Grazie. Grazie mille,” she said as she kissed me again. Guido pulled out a crystal vase from under a dining room chair and filled the vase with water. He put the bouquet on the dining room window ledge where they blocked the view. The fragrance of roses, the scent from the egg noodles, the herbs, the spices, the woody red wine: it was indeed buon pranzo.

We were sipping espresso, thick and sugary sweet, when a horn tooted. Guido rushed out to open the gate; Luigina hurried into the kitchen to bring out a fresh plate of fettuccine.

I peeked out the dining room window, making a little space between two roses. “Bob. A taxi’s here. And there’s no one in it.”

“It must be Peppe, Guido’s son, the one who’s bringing our car.”

“Yes, but he’s driving a taxi. Bob, Guido’s son is driving a taxi, not a car, Bob, a taxi. Look at it. See the sign on the roof? It says Taxi and it’s yellow. The taxi is yellow, Bob. And look how big it is. Never mind that. Look how old it is. I don’t believe it. We’re buying a taxi. We’re not....”

“Grazie. Grazie,” said Peppe as he shook Bob’s hand. “Thank you from my wife, from my children. Already I have picked a new taxi. I am just waiting for someone to buy this one. And you buy it! Bob, my Canadian cousin. Perfetto. Grazie. Grazie.” He stopped to kiss Bob on both cheeks, “You are a good man, a good cousin. Grazie molto.”

Guido was taking a silver tray with shot glasses and a bottle of whiskey from the china cabinet. I knew he’d been saving that bottle for a special occasion. I could see it in his smile, in the way he lovingly broke the seal on the whiskey bottle with his thumbnail. Luigina was standing at the table with her hand on her son’s shoulder.

“Auguri,” I said to Bob. “Congratulations. We just bought a taxi.”

When we drove the taxi back to the house later that afternoon we were met by Joe and a new set of problems.

“You see this cantina, Bob?” asked Joe.

“Of course.”

“You see the taxi you bought?”

“Of course.”

“You see a problem, Bob? Grande problema?”

“The car won’t fit in the cantina?”

“Of course.”

“We just make the door of the cantina a little wider,” I said confidently.

“Maria. Look at the arch. 1926. This arch is history. You can’t knock it out. We have a law in Supino, remember? Bob, you remember the guy who owns the house next door? The two-room house with the good door. That guy — thinks he’s a bigga shot. Likes everything big. All show. No sense, that guy. Rents in Roma, when the house he owns in Supino sits empty. Mamma mia. He’d buy this car. Only one problem. That guy — he’s got no money.”

“Joe. That is a problem. Un grande problema.”

“Bob, what’s the matter with you? We make a trade. The big shot and me. The empty two-room house and the door!” exclaimed Joe.

“Wait a minute. Joe, you can’t trade a taxi for a house. That just makes more problems. If you take the door off the little house, Pietro, or someone, has to fill it in with cement. Someone has to knock out the wall between the houses, so we can get back and forth. Then Vincenzo has to paint the place. And the floor will need to be patched. It’s crazy — all that work for a house we don’t need.”

“Why you worry so much, Maria?”

To avoid another thwarted decision Bob and I jumped in the car and drove to Santa Serena, a mountain rooted in Supino, but with its head in the clouds. “Serena” means clear, but to me it also meant serenity, escape. After a few hours basking in its views and sunlight we headed home. Partway down the mountain, a herd of sheep climbed out of the pasture and crowded onto the road. Beside the road was a stone building and a man painting at his easel. He put down his paintbrush and walked to our car.

“Lost?” he asked, looking at the licence plate.

“No,” I assured him. “I belong here.”

I asked him about his work. Immediately he revived and offered to show us his studio. He painted ceramic wall tiles using the colours of the coast: white sand, blue sky, yellow sun and, sometimes, a splash of red. Propped on the windowsill were samples of his work. I asked if I could buy two.

“Two tiles? I give them to you.” The man clicked on the light, wiped a brushstroke on one tile, swirled a circle on the other. The numbers looked like melted sunshine. We arrived home at twilight, but even in the shadows, we could see no more work had been done. We left our two ceramic tiles, wrapped carefully in brown paper in the attic, and drove to the pensione to pack for our return trip.

The plain brown paper wrapper held more than our new ceramic house numbers. It represented my faith in our neighbour who speaks English, in the workers who would finish the renovations on our house by August and in my ability to bring my father back to his birthplace. On Santa Serena earlier that day I had prayed to the Saint of Special Favours that I was not asking too much.