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1
Vicola della Mura
It’s June and sweltering. In Pisa airport I pick up the hire car, a
cherry-red Fiat Uno, and place my two beloved cats, Billy and Gertie, on
the back seat in their VIP box. My small case goes in the boot; all my
worldly goods hopefully coming on later in the removals van from England.
Important to get the feel of the car, I tell myself, jiggling the
gear-stick and flashing the lights. Skirt Firenze, head for Siena, take
the A1 for Perugia – Roma. Simple. Now, if I can just find my way out of
the airport. I ease the car out of the parking lot, through the exit gate,
out on to the main road and enter the great Italian unknown.
Hardly unknown, though, I have done the journey often enough in the past
with Richard. Only then I’d been the passenger, happy to sit back and
enjoy the scenery, thinking of the things I would do when we arrived. Add
sand to the paint to create my special textured finish for the walls, buy
acid to clean the ancient floor tiles while he built the bathroom and the
kitchen. We worked well together, pausing every so often with a mug of tea
to look round with pleasure at what we were achieving. But that was then.
Now I have the present to deal with.
At the toll station I take my ticket and continue on in the direction of
Perugia. I’ve got this far, I reassure myself, things are going well. And
after an hour and a half of steady driving I think I recognize several
landmarks, the group of ochre-coloured houses in a field to my left form a
triangle and I’m certain I’ve seen them before. The house with the turret
on the hill; that too looks familiar. And when, after another half-hour, I
see the sign for Valdiciana I know I’m on the right road. I put my foot
down and overtake several cars at a stretch, the indicator light flashing
until I’m safely past.
This is the way to drive in Italy. Like the Italians, swoop up their bums,
overtake, and streak on ahead. I give a hoot of laughter and the
cherry-red car flies as if on wings along the superstrada. Windows open,
warm air whipping hair off my face, I’m free, I’ve given him the slip and
I burst into song. I’ve done it. Survived the endless doubts and sleepless
nights and come to Italy to start a new life on my own.
I adjust the rear-view mirror. Soon I’ll be climbing the street steps to
my little apartment. From the bedroom window I’ll see the chapel bell
across the terracotta roofs to three cypresses sticking up like dark green
paintbrushes. And standing on the roof, if I have a mind to, I’ll look
into the carabinieris’ bedroom window opposite, pale defenceless creatures
they seem in their Y-fronts. And the church bells clanging bing-bang-ding-dang,
up in the piazza; making enough noise to raise the dead and make them
laugh.
And I’m laughing, with relief, as I turn off at the Valdichiana sign. Not
long now. Ornelia, in the downstairs flat, will be watering her pots of
geraniums, Sergio in the upstairs flat, playing his tango music, which can
be heard all the way down the street to Martino’s alimentari. “Ahhhh,”
he’ll shout, sweeping his imaginary partner around the sofa, sliding and
bending and stamping his heels, mouth in an oooh of pleasure, and “ahhhh”
again as he collides with the lamp. Nothing will have changed. Happily,
nothing seems to in Sinalunga’s Centro Storico.
Keep well to the right side of the road, I remind myself, as ten minutes
later, light-headed with heat, excitement and exhaustion, I travel up the
familiar hill opposite the station.
But halfway up the hill I hear a sudden bang and the car stops with a
shudder. I stare ahead in shocked disbelief. What happened? Everything was
fine a minute ago. The cats howl; I swivel round to lift their box back on
to the seat. Then turn the key in the ignition. Dead. Now what? Better not
to attract attention. The last thing I want is to become a spectacle for
everyone to point at. I open the car door and the heat hits me like a
furnace. At least the car’s not in the middle of the road. And as far as I
can see, no real damage has been done, though the bonnet does appear
somewhat closer to the ground than before. Later I am to learn that the
whole of the front suspension has dropped out. I stare appalled at the
white car behind, the door dented and scraped. It’s obvious what’s
happened. In keeping so well to the right I’ve veered into a parked car. I
feel sick with disappointment. Why does this have to happen when I’m
almost home? Shaking, I lift the cat-box and suitcase out of the car and
sit on the hot pavement waiting for inspiration.
People are gathering from nowhere. They stare dubiously at my red car,
then at me. An old man mumbles something. I smile apprehensively and say,
buongiorno, it being the only Italian word that springs to mind at the
moment. People move closer. They point at my car, then at the white one
behind it. Several people are shaking their heads and tut-tutting. Then to
my alarm the carabinieri pull up in their dark blue car and park alongside
my car blocking the traffic, causing even more people to stop and stare at
the pink-faced English woman melting with her cat-box and suitcase beside
her on the pavement.
One tall, one short, fat carabinieri saunter towards me, not so
defenceless now with submachine guns stuck in their belts. I stand up and
offer my passport.
“Dove abita?”
“Vicolo della Mura.”
“But that is Italia,” the fat one says, loudly, glancing round at the
people, making sure they can hear him speaking English.
“I know, I’ve come to live here.”
“But where you live in England?”
“I don’t anymore.”
“Uh?” he turns to his tall companion who is writing in a thick black book.
“No understand. You must.”
“What must I?”
“You must to live in some place in your country.”
Realising there is no point in explaining, I give him my English address
even though I no longer live there. I hold out my hand for my passport and
at this point the cats howl again and all attention turns to the VIP box
at my feet. “Micio, micio,” squeals a hefty woman, poking her finger
through the mesh door. She draws back hastily at the hissing inside. The
fat carabiniere hands me a document which is incomprehensible. I sway
slightly with the heat and hold onto the tall carabiniere’s arm for
support. Everyone watches avidly. A young woman watches from her car, one
of a line moving slowly up the hill with all faces turned towards me. I
wave and gesture that I need a lift. She nods, I lift the cat-box and
suitcase onto the back seat and in less than five minutes we are crossing
the Piazza Garibaldi and turning left down the Via Ciro Pinsuti.
News travels fast here, it seems. The first person I see as I emerge from
the car is Lionello Torossi, my elderly neighbour from the end of the
street, who speaks fluent English, German, French and Spanish. “I have
heard of the accident with la straniera,” he explains. “And I guessed it
was you and now I have come to help. You have announced your arrival
extraordinarily well,” he says, chuckling. “Now everyone knows you are
here.”
“Unfortunately, yes,” I say. “I had hoped to arrive quietly and
anonymously.”
“My dear young lady, no one arrives anonymously in a place like this. The
people are delighted to see you; they want to be entertained. You are
their portable theatre.”
Thanking the woman, whose name I didn’t catch, I carry the stricken cats
and my suitcase up the street steps, trip over one of Ornelia’s pots of
geraniums, round into the alleyway, smelling richly of garlic and soap
suds, only to find, to my alarm, my front door wide open.
“Tonina,” I call.
“Madonnasanta!” Brandishing a key, Tonina, who looks after the place,
hurries down the stairs to meet me. “Signora, signora.”
“What’s happened?”
“Niente acqua, non c’e il tetto - ” Tonina bursts into an excitable flow
of Italian, ‘no water’, ‘no roof’, being the only understandable words.
Struggling through the narrow front door, I stagger up the flight of stone
stairs to the bedroom, plant the case on the floor and the cat-box on the
bed. I stare at the window, at a man wearing a pork pie hat. “I spik
Inlish,” he says.
Then a man’s voice behind me, from the stairs. “Signora!”
Tonina, almost hysterical, throws up her hands as she enters the bedroom.
“Madonnina, Sergio vuole parlare dell’acqua.”
“Oh no, please…not now,” I beg. “I can’t talk to anyone now, about water
or anything else. I’m exhausted.”
Sergio, my upstairs neighbour, hovers outside the bedroom. “Signora,
possiamo parlare?”
I force a smile. “Buongiorno. I am very tired. I have not slept. No sleep?
We talk domani?”
Tonina understands, if not all the words, the intentions behind them. She
pushes Sergio firmly back down the stairs with a final “Non, non, non!”
But the man with the hat, he’s still there. “Sono Domenico. I make new
roof. You Inlish lady?”
Tonina closed the shutters in his face. “Cara Signora Lorri,” she says,
clasping her hands to her chest. “Non si preoccupi. I am sorry because of
la situazione con Ricardo.”
I collapse on the bed. In the shadowy light I watch Tonina pile clean
linen from the chest of drawers onto the mattress. It’s impossible to
explain right now that sometimes one can feel less sorry being alone than
with someone who makes you unhappy. So I nod in agreement and said
nothing.
“Ah, la vita.” Tonina sighs with resignation, blows a kiss, and promises
to return later with buckets of water.
An acrid stench fills the bedroom. Closing the door, I ease the
long-suffering cats from their box, and taking a pillowcase, the nearest
thing to hand, dry their damp fur and offer biscuits from my pocket, which
they refuse. Am I crazy to come here? Hardly any grasp of the language,
three years off fifty, alone and with virtually no money? Many would think
so. But I do at least own the roof above my head, even if it is half off,
and that’s, after all, the main reason for coming.
The cats reach up to sniff the shutters, where I think I see Domenico
peering at me through the slats.
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