Lucca

(Pay attention)

Damiano is waiting for us – his motorcycle and his gun steal the boys’ attentions, his tight pants and high leather boots steal mine. It’s an unexpected encounter with a member of Italy’s polizia, and when he offers his hand and welcomes us in halting English, only Shannon is able to speak coherently. Introductions are made, then Damiano ushers us into his pride and joy.

The apartment is disappointingly modern.

‘You are the first to stay here,’ he says, after we’ve carefully placed our packs on the polished timber floor. ‘I hope it is as you like.’ His smile is that of a child offering you the first taste of a cake he’s made himself.

‘It’s perfect,’ I say, casting an uneasy eye over the black leather couch and the metallic blue bedspread shining beyond the bedroom door.

‘In the cupboards is everything you need. But if it is not, you must telephone me and I will bring it.’ The cupboards are white and glossy, and he opens each in turn to reveal a coffee machine, a food processor, a juicer and various appliances I can’t identify. I see my scowling face reflected briefly as he closes the last door.

What complicated standards I have, I think. I’m thrilled to have an ensuite and a coffee machine, but I want it all wrapped up in stone and terracotta, not brick veneer and stainless steel. An image of refugees bathing at a drinking fountain slaps away my complaint.

‘It’s perfect,’ I say again to Damiano, and I mean it this time. He’s delighted, and we hand over a week’s rent.

The boys have a different aesthetic to me. When the front door clicks shut, they marvel at the fridge hidden so cleverly inside a cupboard; the bathroom so big and bright-red; the floor so slippery they can slide across it in their socked feet. Then there’s the television, wide and flat, and the large remote control perched precisely on the square arm of the black couch. With exaggerated sweetness they appeal to us for permission to press its red button.

Since leaving Australia, a television has become a cause of celebration for the boys. They don’t seem to miss it when we’re on a farm – it’s out of sight and out of mind – but when they see one, the possibilities for colour and comedy and the contained chaos of make-believe are too much to resist. When the screen lights up, Shannon and I retreat for a nap.

We wake to find the boys watching Wacky Races.

‘I found an English cartoon channel,’ Aidan tells us, bouncing up and down in the way he does when delighted.

We squeeze in between them on the couch and spend the next couple of hours steeped in the programs of our own childhoods. We watch Scooby-Doo then Road Runner. Between The Jetsons and The Flintstones I hand around what’s left of the biscuits we packed for the train. When Wacky Races comes on again we all start laughing like Muttley, the dog. It’s a bonding experience, one of the reasons we came to Italy, but I never thought it would happen in front of a screen. I can’t work out if this is a triumph or a failure. Josie and the Pussy Cats comes on and I suggest a walk. The boys have no interest in shapely cartoon women dressed in skimpy cat suits, so they agree.

There’s nothing really to see in Lucca, but everything to notice. The town is wrapped in a thick cloak of stone, protection against admirers from the sixteenth century. These walls were impenetrable then, but are inviting now, having been transformed from a battlement into a boulevard.

We circumnavigate the four-kilometre wall and introduce ourselves slowly to the city within. Nothing stands out. Like so many Italian cities, Lucca is a patchwork of terracotta and stucco broken only by the varied green of private gardens and the occasional public park. Her buildings sit comfortably side by side – the grand not too grand, the humble not shy. When the sun falls behind the Apuan Alps the boys become silhouettes against the paling sky.

~

With no chores or masters, our first few days in Lucca have been passed in slow motion. Today we let the children lead the way, and they take us along the canal that divides Via del Fosso. There are no footpaths here, we share the road with bicycles and a few cars, and everything moves at human pace. An old man – white apron over a Buddha belly – sweeps the road outside his alimentari, and I’m struck by the fastidiousness of his shopkeeping. How often does he tend to this part of the road? I think. Is it boredom or pride, or is it the need to be convivial?

‘Buongiorno, signora.’ He straightens and leans on his broom. There’s no pile of dirt that I can see.

‘Buongiorno, signore,’ I respond. The shop behind him tempts me in. I ask the boys if they’re hungry, they nod and I steer them through the doorway.

Inside seems dark after the bright of day, and the small space is filled with the colours and textures of pasta, bread, cured meats and fresh sauces. They obscure the windows and crowd the floor. The old man squeezes his belly past us and stands behind the counter, waiting while the boys make up their minds. They ask in timid voices for panino – Riley wants formaggio dolce con prosciutto. Aidan wants morta’della, ‘without the peppercorns,’ he says in English.

They’ve tried, and are rewarded with a stream of words, incomprehensible but all turned up at the edges like audible smiles. They accept the praise and watch as their panini are expertly split and filled with more than they can safely hold. An origami wrap, then I’m asked for three euros. Not enough, I gesture. More than enough, smiles the Buddha. He follows us out of the shop, broom in hand, and we continue along the canal.

‘Listen,’ I say, and we all stop walking. A soprano is scaling the alphabet.

La, la, la, la, la, la, la. Then, silence.

We keep walking, but before we’ve reached the end of Via del Fosso, we hear her again – one long note, five shorter notes. It’s a familiar beginning, even for someone who’s never been to the opera. We stop and lean against the low brick wall of the canal. I wonder if she knows we’re listening, if she’s looking out of her window like Madam Butterfly looked out of hers. We stay to listen to every note, barely moving, even when she wavers. I imagine all the others, in their kitchens and their bedrooms in the apartments either side of hers, our Buddha sweeping the road that doesn’t need sweeping. All of them listening. I bow my head and wait for her voice to come high and strong along the canal, and when it does, my breath catches unexpectedly in my chest. The longing in the final drawn-out notes is so familiar.

‘Mum’s crying!’ Riley announces.

Startled, I wipe at my eyes. ‘I’m not crying, I’m just moved,’ I say, as Shannon puts an arm around my shoulders. Before he can ask anything I change the subject. ‘Maybe we can go to an opera recital while we’re here, after all, this is where Puccini was born, and you kids really should know more about music than you do.’

‘That would be very … educational,’ Shannon says, giving my shoulder a playful squeeze. ‘And not at all boring for the boys.’

‘Who’s Puccini?’ Riley asks.

I give Shannon the smuggest look I can muster. ‘Puccini was a composer, and in 1904 he wrote the music we were just listening to.’

‘How do you even know that?’ Shannon asks.

‘I read it in the guide book this morning.’

‘If you didn’t know it when you were our age, why do we need to know it now?’ asks Aidan.

I look to Shannon for backup. He gives me the smuggest look he can muster.

We take a serpentine route to nowhere in particular and end up on Via Sant’ Andrea.

‘Wow, how cool is that?’ Aidan has stopped walking and is looking up. He’s noticed, high above us, a tower topped with trees. We can’t find anything about it in our travel guide, but it’s open to the public and can be climbed for a few euros. The boys aren’t interested in the climb: it’s enough for them to crane their necks and marvel at the garden in the sky from below. A brief tussle ensues where I metaphorically shove them up the steep stairs of the tower towards some nebulous educational experience, and they metaphorically shut their eyes and stick their fingers in their ears. I lose this battle of wills. The winners get gelato, while Shannon and I tuck the tower away for a child-free afternoon.

~

A few days later and we’ve left the boys in the very capable hands of Nanny (our affectionate name for the television) and a box of biscotti. They were thrilled, and so were we. All this family time is interfering with their screen life, and our love life – we all need an afternoon to rediscover the magic.

Shannon and I hold hands along the canal and take the same circuitous route as the other day.

‘What do you love most?’ I ask.

‘About Lucca?’

‘Yes.’

‘The separate bedroom.’

‘We could have that anywhere.’

‘We could, but we don’t, so that gets all my votes.’ He exaggerates a wink. ‘What about you?’

‘I love watching all the people go about their lives – there’s none of the agitation you get in other cities. Lucca’s like a happy hive. I reckon I could live here.’

‘You just want to be one of those worker bees who flies out each day in search of the best coffee shop then goes back to tell the rest.’

‘I reckon I’d be good at that job.’

‘I reckon you’d be brilliant.’ We stop walking and Shannon points up, ‘There it is.’

The Torre Guinigi is one of just a few remaining towers in Lucca. At the time of its erection (there really isn’t a better word for it) there were two hundred and fifty similar towers of various sizes, commissioned by the alpha males of 14th and 15th century Lucca. Torre Guinigi was impressive, even back then. The Guinigi family had seven sons and topped their tower with seven oaks.

The tower is a sight, of sorts, but it’s no Colosseum – more a quirky landmark that asks for no more than a pause and a comment from its visitors. But like the city’s wall, it invites you up to share the view. It’s this gentle drawing-in that I love about Lucca. Unlike Rome, where the sites have celebrity status and demand to be seen, there’s no insistence here, no bragging, no vanity. Lucca is accessible, and if you smile at her, she’ll smile back. It’s impossible to be disappointed.

The ascent is dizzying. Hundreds of stairs spiral up through the centre of the redbrick tower and I’m thankful for the occasional landing, each with its own unique view of the city. A ladder takes us the last few metres and we emerge into what could be a courtyard garden. The trees we’re standing under aren’t the ones planted by the Guinigi family, but my pamphlet tells me they’re hundreds of years old. Shallow soil and exposure has kept their trunks thin, but they create a dense canopy, and I enjoy the shade.

‘I like this garden. You could plant seven fruit trees, instead of seven oaks, and it wouldn’t take much effort to weed,’ I say.

‘That’s true. But it wouldn’t feed you much, and it certainly wouldn’t make you a living.’

‘Do you think that’s a real possibility, making a living off our land?’

‘I think it is, if we both give it our full attention.’

I’ve heard this before, and it doesn’t bode well. The last time Shannon suggested that all I needed to do was give something my full attention was when I called him at work and asked him to ‘remind me what is so fucking good about slow living’. He fumbled with his phone, not because of my language but because his hands were numb from cold after a morning of gardening in the rain.

I’d negotiated to work from home every Monday and found myself in a weekly struggle with our fireplace, my only source of heat during the chilly Hills winter. My approach was characteristically efficient, or so I thought. I’d start with a layer of scrunched-up newspaper, carefully arrange twigs on top in a crosshatch pattern – multiple layers for maximum ignition – then I’d add larger and larger sticks until finally I’d place a good-sized log on top. Only then would I take my match and strike. Ah, the joy of seeing the flames leap up. For a minute I’d sit and watch them grow, then I’d begin my day’s work. This process took about five minutes if all the bits were waiting in the basket by the fireplace (and a little elf always ensured they were), and for me, five minutes was a small price to pay for the comfort and aesthetic of a crackling fire and that primal satisfaction of having created heat from the basic material offered up by our land.

But it was not a fairytale with a happy ending. I’d tell myself to check the fire in a few minutes, then let an hour pass into the black hole of email before jumping from my chair in panic. In retrospect this part of my morning replays in slow motion. The anguish shows on my face as my head slowly turns towards the fireplace; it changes to despair as I realise there’s no flame, then anger at my neglect and, finally, resignation as I pull on my gumboots and beanie and head out to the wood shed to saw up wood. I can’t say I conducted myself with grace at these times: I’d swear and kick things, and in my darkest moments I’d devise ways of smuggling an energy-hungry electric radiator into the house for my own personal use – it could be my dirty little secret.

Some time later, cold and damp, I’d stagger back into the house with an armful of wood, kneel down at the fireplace and practically sob when it was clear I’d used up all my kindling. Bits of paper would be twisted into twig-like shapes and I’d pile them in, add the wood and strike a match. When it caught I’d sit vigilant until the larger logs had succumbed to the flame. Only then would I return to work – two hours after I’d built the original fire.

On the day I called Shannon, the wood had been too damp and my second fire had smouldered and gone out. I was ready to give up on the whole thing.

‘You’re rushing it,’ he said. ‘You need to give it all your attention until it’s blazing. Believe it or not, you’ll waste less time if you go slowly.’

‘So what am I supposed to do now?’

‘Put on an extra jumper.’

When he got home that night, I watched him light the fire – three bits of paper and a handful of salvaged twigs, then strike. There was no inferno, just a small flame, but Shannon watched it, nurtured it, gave it his full attention. In about six minutes it was blazing. We could forget all about it while we got dinner ready and by the time we sat down to eat, the house was toasty.

Now I turn away from the oak trees and look out to the hills rising up beyond Lucca’s walls. Shannon’s right: we can make it work if we give it our full attention. But my mind has always been inclined to wander, and right now I can’t keep the life we’ve planned in focus. I feel the emotion of hearing the opera singer the other day tightening my chest. Puccini’s music and an image of a woman waiting for her life to begin have roused a longing, and a fear. Neither of which I want to examine right now.

‘Remind me, have we got the time and money for a glass of wine and a plate of cheese before we relieve Nanny of her duties?’ I ask.

‘You’re dreaming if you think we can afford cheese,’ says Shannon. ‘But I can offer you a glass of wine and a beautiful view.’

‘That’s good enough,’ I say, and I lead the way back down to earth.

~

Chiesa di San Giovanni is built of white marble, and we enter through detailed brass doors. The interior is cool, as with all these old churches. Stories of Christ colour the walls, there’s a frescoed dome and a ceiling of golden honeycomb. But where the altar once stood, there’s now a grand piano on factory-cut terracotta pavers, and images of Christ are hidden behind images of Puccini, printed in black and white on larger-than-life banners. He’s sacred to the Luccans, and makes this deconsecrated church a place of worship again.

We’ve come early so we can see the Roman ruins that this church was built on. We walk around the rows of plastic chairs set out for the recital and descend a metal staircase to the archaeological site. Below the precisely cut marble columns of the 12th-century church are 1st-century pillars of roughly hewn stone. A mosaic floor emerges from the sediment, as bright and beautiful as the day it was laid. The blue of the larger tiles is the same as some of the tiles we collected on the beach in Calabria. I wonder if objects can capture time, if they can store traces of life, like memories, in their molecular structure. It’s not the first time I’ve heard the breath of history whispering in my ear. I feel her hand guiding mine as I reach beyond the metal bars to stroke the surface of a tile that I’m sure, in this moment, a woman of Rome once absently stroked to calm her troubled mind. The tiles are smooth and cold; if there’s life in them they’re reluctant to share it. Shannon and the boys tread heavily on the metal walkway that hovers above the mosaic, and I can feel the vibrations of their footsteps through my whole body. Someone starts warming up at the piano.

Puccini features heavily in our musical hour. A male pianist accompanies two sopranos: one young and promising, the other mature and accomplished. Surprisingly (satisfyingly) the boys are as transfixed as we are. It’s the closeness of the musicians, and the occasional frailty of the young woman’s voice, her brow creasing in moments of anxiety. We all want her to reach and hold the higher notes. Aidan wonders if she’s the one we heard practising the other day. ‘Maybe,’ I say. She bows, her smile more relaxed now that her solo is over, and the older woman returns.

She sings ‘Un bel di vedremo’ from Madam Butterfly. Riley recognises it, and in my peripheral vision I see him turn to search my face for confirmation. But I can’t look away from the woman singing. I’m trying to slow down every note. I want to turn the minutes into hours and the hours into days. I realise that I’ve found that part of Italy I could easily call home, and if I thought even one of my boys would agree, I would suggest we stay a while longer, rent an old apartment on Via del Fosso, and get used to the music of Puccini. I struggle to make sense of the desire I have for this city. It feels as if it’s directed towards a person. Lucca has done nothing to deserve my adoration – she’s like a beautiful woman who doesn’t care how she looks, and barely notices the attentions of others. Maybe this is her secret, and her charm: she knows herself, and is authentic.

If I look at Riley, or move to wipe the tear that traces mascara down my cheek, it will all end too soon. Riley takes my hand and squeezes it. This is our farewell.