Living in a Foreign Language (22 page)

The next day, big earthmoving machines, cement mixers and power saws to cut the stones would move in for the better part of a year, and when they were done the house would be doubled in size.

“It'll be World War Three here when you come back in September,” said JoJo.

“We will seal the two connecting spaces with heavy plastic,” said Martin, “so you will be able to live in the old part while we're building the new. But there will be noise. And dust.”

This was actually helpful. It gave us a motivation to leave. Otherwise there was little reason for us to go back to Mill Valley. We felt like we'd be missing everything. We hadn't spent a summer here yet—only spring and fall. In a few weeks the Spoleto Festival would begin, filling the little town with dancers, musicians, actors and the tourists who would come to watch them. We would miss that. Then Umbria Jazz would start up in Perugia for two weeks. It was fast becoming one of the great jazz festivals in Europe. We'd miss that. The
Infiorata
in Spello was only a week away. Each year—on the feast of Corpus Christi—the eight thousand or so people who live in this beautiful medieval town decorate the streets with lavish “paintings” made of the petals of flowers. Then, in a day, it's gone. We would miss that.

And we'd miss our friends. On the Feast of San Lorenzo, otherwise known as the Night of the Shooting Stars, Bruce and JoJo, Martin and Karen, Bruno and Mayes, Sophie and Jeff, George and Mariane would all camp out in the Pian Grande and watch the meteor showers. Bruce would barbecue; George would bring the Prosecco. Oh God, would I miss that.

It's not that we didn't have things to go back to—Jill needed to visit her mom in Santa Barbara; we wanted to try to get our acting careers out of mothballs. We had things to do. It was just that Mill Valley—for all its natural beauty and creature comforts—wasn't the right place to do any of them.

. . .

Sophie

The day we left Campello it was pouring. We got up at 5 a.m. in order to drive the two hours to Fiumicino and catch a 9:45 flight back to the States. Caroline had a flight on another airline leaving about forty-five minutes after ours. I knew we'd hit traffic, so I left the appropriate amount of leeway to make sure we would get there in time. The car leasing company had a deal where it would meet us at the departures curb and take the car, so that would help.

We sleepily carted our suitcases through the rain and heaved them into the back of the car, locked the doors and the heavy wooden shutters of the house and silently said good-bye. Well, not completely silently. As we drove away in the dark, you could hear sleepy, sad voices counting off the treasures.

“Good-bye, olive trees.” That was Jill.

“Good-bye, little house.” Me.

“Good-bye, mortadella.” Caroline.

We hit the Grande Raccordo Annulare at full morning rush hour and came to a dead stop. The GRA is a highway that makes an enormous circle around Rome, and it's the only way I know to get to the airport. At 7 a.m. we patted ourselves on the back for having left a sizable cushion; at 8, after having moved perhaps five hundred meters, we vowed never to do it this way again—we'd come in the night before, get rid of the car and stay at the airport Hilton. At 8:30 Jill and I kissed our flight good-bye and concentrated on getting Caroline to hers. And still the traffic crawled. Jill used our cell phone to try to contact both the airline and the car rental company, but had no luck.

“First, there's that damn recording of that woman telling me there's no such number. Then I call again and get through—to the airline's answering machine. I guess they're not open yet.”

“Italians,” I mutter. “They're having coffee.”

“That poor car rental guy has been standing out in the rain for almost an hour.”

“Can you get through to the company?”

“That same lady telling me there's no such number.”

“That's bullshit; I got through on that number yesterday.”

“Italia.”

We fumed and inched our way toward Fiumicino.

Then at around 9 the traffic magically evaporated and we found ourselves speeding at eighty miles an hour, holding the merest wisp of a hope of catching our plane. We'd have to
get rid of the car, check four large suitcases and clear security—all in the thirty-five minutes before the plane would push back from the gate. Given that the airline asks you to be there two hours before, our hopes were not high.

We pulled up to the curb and our car guy, drenched to the bone, was waving us down. I barked at Jill to sprint for the airline desk—to let them know we were coming; Caroline would help me with the luggage. I gave Jill the wallet with the tickets and passports and she moved off through the crowd.

I signed the contract for the car, quickly detailing the various scrapes and dents that inevitably come with parking in Spoleto, and hauled the luggage out of the back. Caroline, in the meantime, had secured a luggage cart. When we got inside the terminal, we had to join a long line to clear security just to get to the airline desks. This was in addition to the regular security after check-in. There were the standard armed soldiers in camouflage who were demanding we show our passports to get through—the passports I had thoughtfully given to Jill. It was now 9:15.

“Mike, catch!”

This was Jill flipping the passports to me over the head of the security guard.

“They're trying to get us on but you've got to get through this line!”

I thought about how I was going to explain this to the Italian soldier blocking my way with an Uzi draped over his shoulder. I decided to just wait my turn.

We arrived at the airline ticket desk at 9:25. Caroline helped us get the luggage off the cart and then waved good-bye as she ran to catch her plane. I turned to the woman behind the counter, who was looking grimly at our luggage.

“I am very concerned that you will not make this flight,” she said. “It is very late for the bags.”

“What can we do?”

“Follow me.”

And with this, she hoisted the largest suitcase up onto her hip and headed through the crowd toward security. We grabbed the rest of the bags and followed. She cut us into the front of the line and helped us to lift the bags up onto the X-ray machine. Meanwhile our guardian angel was smoothing things over with another Uzi-armed soldier and with some airport security personnel—and also with the people we had cut in front of in the line.

“I am sorry, but we have to inspect the inside of this bag.”

This was a very stern-looking security woman who seemed to be well connected to the guy with the gun.

“There is a large metal object. . . .”

I realized that she was concerned about the five-liter can of extra virgin olive oil that I had packed carefully between my socks and underwear.

“Oh, that's olive oil.”

“Scusi?”
said the Uzi.

“Olio”
I translated.

“Da dove?
He was suddenly very interested. He wanted to know where the oil came from.

“Trevi. Da un frantoio locale
. Extra virgin. This last phrase needed no translation, as it's become adopted as an Italian phrase, very much like “al dente” has become American. I explained as best I could in my broken Italian that this
frantoio
still used the cold process of extracting the oil.

“That's difficult to find these days,” he said in Italian. “You must be very careful where you buy or you could end
up getting Spanish oil.” He said these last two words as if he had said “cancer.”

He started to unscrew the top to have a little taste—just for security reasons, of course—when Jill blurted out, “Leave it, we've got to go!”

And four jaws simultaneously dropped open in disbelief—our airline lady's, the security lady's, the soldier's and mine.

“Leave it? You want to leave
this
olive oil?” the security lady said in disbelief, her finger shiny with a taste of oil on it.

The soldier with the gun licked his finger again and threw a scornful look at Jill. He was thinking perhaps that he might have to waste her. Our airline lady saved the moment—and Jill's life, maybe—by quickly explaining, in Italian, our dire situation.

They nodded and handled the can of oil like a religious relic as they tucked it back into its nest. We still had to get a shuttle train that would take us to the departure gate. It was 9:38—the plane pulled back in seven minutes. We shook the hands of all the security people, with whom at this point we felt a bond, and went for the train, our airline lady clearing the way for us like a downfield blocker. We still had all the luggage.

We bolted off the train and headed down an escalator, following our lady, who was still carrying the heaviest bag: she wouldn't let me take it from her. Then we hand-carried the luggage into the plane and gave it to the stewards, who in turn handed it through a special door to the luggage handlers. We'd made it.

Our airline lady was flushed with excitement. I grabbed her and hugged her with all the enthusiasm of the moment. Then Jill hugged her very emotionally and we both started
to thank her as best we could in Italian. She looked at me very intently.

“You are Italian.” It was a statement.

“No, American.”

“But I mean your parents. . . .”

“Actually, no. Lithuanian Jewish.”

She beamed at me like a headlight.

“Before I die, I move to Israel. And become Jew.”

Jill and I stared at her, nodding, not knowing quite what to say.

“I move to Israel. And become Jew. Before I die.”

We continued to nod and say that it was incredible. We were witnessing a religious conversion and—even though the stewards were in a hurry to close the plane door—we didn't want to rush her through it. After a proper pause, we hugged her again and then waved her all the way down the exit ramp.

We would miss Italy.

W
E RETURNED IN
S
EPTEMBER TO
C
ONSTRUCTION
chaos. A gaping hole had been dug for the pool; septic line trenches snaked their way through the former orderliness of the olive grove as if a gigantic gopher had run amok. There were ugly piles of building supplies—broken concrete block, unused rocks, wooden pallets that had held the roof tiles—and, dominating the front yard, a construction trailer and strips of bright orange-red plastic tape acting as a fence to keep us out of the danger area.

On the good side, the roof was on the new addition and the stones were being cut and secured into the walls. There's a tradition:
“Tetto sulla casa; pasta sul piatto,”
which means, “When the roof goes on the house, you owe the workers a pasta dinner.” We talked to Nicola, our contractor, and decided to schedule the dinner after Caroline arrived a week or so later.

They were building in the old style—so that the walls of the addition would be as thick as those on the old Rustico, providing the same quality of natural insulation. The house
was framed in concrete block, not wood. Then, on the outside, stones were set in stucco to form a second layer, and the inside was covered in several coats of plaster. So the walls are two and a half feet thick—a veritable brick shit-house. Nicola showed me how he had chosen local stones that had the right color and feel for this part of Umbria. I asked him if he thought he could visually match the new addition to the old house.

“Sará uguale?”
I asked him. Will it be the same?

He looked at the old house for a long time, smiled and said,
“Meglio”
Better.

It was true—the old house had been built centuries ago by very poor people. They used whatever they had—rocks, bricks, mud and then, later, cement to patch up cracks caused by the many earthquakes in the area. Looking up close, it was a three-and-a-half-century hodgepodge of building materials—but from ten feet away, it looked like the picture-perfect stone cottage you've always dreamed of. A little ivy crawling up a wall helps a lot.

The addition, however, was being built with beautifully matched rocks—all at least eight inches in girth—and a stucco (pronounced “stooko”) that had been subtly colored with ground-up stone from the local hills. Enzo, Nicola's brother, called Jill and me out one day to help choose the color for the stucco. Enzo is brother number two.

“This is the one Nicola and Martin have chosen,” he said, pointing to one batch of tinted mortar, “but you have to make the choice. You are the owners.”

Damn straight.

“But be careful. The color becomes darker when it dries.”

Jill asked if we could do test areas on the actual wall,
then wait until they dry to make the choice. Enzo thought this was a great idea and mixed two other batches—one lighter in color, one with more of the reddish dust. We picked a wall on the back of the house where our test strips wouldn't show so much, and Enzo applied the three different stuccos between the rocks with his mason's trowel. A mason in Italian is called a
muratore
, and Enzo is a master.