Living in a Foreign Language (7 page)

BOOK: Living in a Foreign Language
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Jill's being on board for this adventure is not merely a piece of the puzzle; it's the whole deal. After years of energetically, passionately, doggedly chasing my own pleasure, I've come to realize that the only way for me to be truly satisfied is to give Jill everything she wants. Which doesn't mean, by the way, that I don't get to have my own dreams. She loves my dreams; they've often led us to fabulous times together. But if I get my eye so firmly fixed on the dream that I take it off her—even for a second—then I've blown the deal.

No, she definitely nodded to me back there under the pergola. She'd seemed to be saying that she wanted this. Why the change? Why this house? Why this moment?

“Because it felt like home,” said Jill simply, from the passenger seat.

Wait a minute. Was I talking out loud or was she reading my mind again?

“All those other places—in the south of France—they were vacation places. It was fun to go there for a week or two, but we could really live our lives in this house.”

I started shaking again. This was really happening.

“Can we afford it?” she asked.

“Not really.”

“Well . . . that's okay.”

And it was.

We were approaching Rome and the Grande Raccordo Annulare, which is the highway that circles the city. I took the exit heading south to Naples. All I could think of was that the Rustico was getting farther and farther away.

That night I called JoJo and let her know we were really interested. I told her I needed to run it by my brother. I told her that the dollar / euro exchange rate was particularly bad at the moment and I might want to wait a month or two until it calmed down. I asked her to find out how much Bruno and Mayes made from renting it out. This might make it easier to propose the whole idea to my brother—more like a business venture. I could just see Ed's eyes roll when I tried that one.

As I drifted off to sleep that night I ran images of the Rustico over and over on the screen behind my eyes—the little rooms, the pergola, the
forno
, the olive trees.

Sorrento was a bore. English tearooms and T-shirt shops. My mind was in Umbria. I couldn't focus on anything else. Except for the day we took a ferry into Naples and walked for two hours through the chaotic streets to search for the best pizza in the world. We found it; we tried it; it
was
the best pizza in the world—in a pizzeria called Trianon on the Via Colletta. I couldn't stop eating; I was in an altered state. The crust—charred, but still a little chewy; the sauce—fresh San Marzano tomatoes right from where they were invented; the sausage (because I love sausage on my pizza) filled with the taste of real Italian pork, so different from its tasteless American counterpart; mozzarella made from the milk of buffalo who were grazing right outside the window (well, you know—fresh). And the oven, which burned wood to temperatures of up to 1200 degrees, galvanized these tastes together into a hot, chewy, slightly
crunchy masterpiece. The only problem was that the people sharing the table with us said that there was another place across the street called Michele's that was even better. I tried to enlist Jill and Caroline in a bulimic ritual so that we could all have a second lunch, but they dragged me, kicking and screaming, back to the ferry.

JoJo called the next day with all kinds of news. Bruno and Mayes asked if we wanted to drive back and stay in the house—just to get a feel for it. It wasn't being rented out that week and they would be happy for us to be their guests. It seems they wanted us to be the ones who bought it. Bruno also offered a break on the price—he'd base the cost on a more reasonable dollar / euro conversion. Then Caroline chirped up with an offer to buy in for a share of the house. She, too, was caught up in the spell of the Rustico. Also, her adopted dad lives in Zurich and she liked the idea of having a base on this side of the Atlantic. Everything seemed to be lining up in favor of our buying the house.

The next day we left Campania and headed across the lower part of the Italian Peninsula toward Puglia. Birgit had arranged for us to stay in a bed-and-breakfast in a little town called Maritimma, which was all the way down near the southernmost tip of the heel of the boot of Italy. We were to stay in a convent that had been converted, Birgit told us, by Lord and Lady McAlpine. They were to be our hosts, which made me a little uncomfortable. It all sounded very starchy and proper and not at all conducive to the mood of our laid-back, Italian adventure. Birgit argued that they were very nice people, but the fact is Birgit can get a little starchy herself.

Then we got lost. The farther south we drove, the worse the signs were. We lost what highway there was and found ourselves dumped onto a country lane that puttered its way through an endless string of tiny bleach-white villages. And in every town, at the main piazza, there would be a pole with a list of arrows, pointing in various directions and providing the names of towns and the number of kilometers it would take to reach them. And none of the towns were on our map. Not one. And at the bottom of the list would be an arrow that said,
“Tutte le direzioni,”
which means, obviously, all directions, and every time we followed that sign, we hit a dead end. In Puglia, all roads lead to nowhere.

Pizza in Naples

It was now late in the day, and we were hot and thirsty and seemingly no closer to Maritimma than we had been hours before. Caroline started snarling from the backseat. This is something she does when her blood sugar drops. Jill, too, was getting testy. I, of course, was the target of both
their bad moods. We argued about whether to stop and get something to eat, but finally we decided to grit our collective teeth and just get there.

We finally stumbled onto Maritimma and checked our instructions from Birgit. She said the convent was on the road as you head out of town toward Castro Marina. By a miracle we found a sign that had that name on it—with an arrow and everything. We pulled up to an old church that we thought must be the place and I parked the car across the street from the chapel.

“Oh my God, there are dead people!”

Indeed there was an old cemetery next to where our car was parked. Caroline was having none of it.

“I'm not sleeping next to dead people. Call Birgit. We'll find another place.”

Jill tried to explain to Caroline that these dead people wouldn't hurt her, that they had been dead a very long time, but I knew this was just the blood sugar talking. I left them and went to find the convent, which I assumed was on the other side of the church. As I approached the door, it magically opened to greet me and a beautiful young woman in a white diaphanous dress with antique silver chains falling around her hips spoke to me in an impeccable British accent. “Mr. Tucker? We've been expecting you.”

I followed her inside—I would have followed her anywhere—and it was as if I had fallen into a dream. The inner courtyard was like a Moorish castle, elegantly decorated with antiques, richly colored carpets on the walls and floors, oceans of deep pillows to sit on, and a low round table filled with fresh figs, cheeses, raw vegetables (a specialty of Puglia), breads, cakes, a pot of herbal tea and decanters of enticing, cool, fruity liquids.

“Leave your bags in the car and come sit and unwind.”

I gestured that I would find the ladies and be right back. I saw them standing over by the dead people and I waved to them to come over.

“Caroline really doesn't want to stay here, honey.”

I waved again.

“You're not going to believe this. Come on!”

Something in my tone got their attention and they walked across the road, shooting me hateful glances.

An hour later we were sprawled out on pillows, sipping a lovely local white wine, deep in conversation with Alistair and Athena McAlpine, who weren't starchy in the least. Alistair McAlpine is one of the world's great collectors: of antiques, paintings, sculpture, furniture, books, manuscripts—and beautiful wives. He had been treasurer in Margaret Thatcher's government and a master fund-raiser for the Conservatives. He wrote a book about those experiences titled,
Once a Jolly Bag Man
. Never had I so enjoyed a Conservative.

Athena is Greek, but educated in London. She is the most relaxed, elegant and thoughtful hostess one could ever hope for. By our beds were books hand-selected by Athena that she'd guessed might be of interest to each of us. She'd guessed right in every case.

Now that we were properly and comfortably housed, we approached the birthday week with renewed energy. Birgit is a master organizer, and she had us hopping all over this extraordinary region of Italy, with parties every night and sightseeing every day. The highlight was an outdoor party at a wonderful inn way out in the country. It was a night of dancing—featuring the tarantella, which is danced to the folk music of Puglia, called
pizzica-pizzica
. To start the dancing, a young woman with long curly hair, a flowing
skirt and bare feet demonstrated the tarantella on the cool stone floor of the patio. She was irresistible. Soon we were all up and dancing on into the night.

Birgit's Italian friends were eager to advise us about buying real estate in Italy. They thought we were lucky to have found Bruno's place. Apparently an old stone cottage that's been renovated, that's private and that sits on a nice piece of land is what everyone is looking for. I called JoJo every evening before dinner, working out various scenarios. Finally, I told her that we'd have to wait until we got back to the States before we made a final decision. I needed to run it through the older-brother test, and I also thought it would be better to be away and out from under the spell of Italy before I committed myself to anything I might regret.

The night we got back to California, I nervously called my brother and spilled the whole story to him. Without the slightest pause, he said, “We'll take the last two weeks in September. Does it have a pool?”

Eight

T
WO WEEKS LATER
I
WAS FLYING
across the ocean—on my own—to buy the house. JoJo, who was quickly becoming invaluable, had set up everything in advance of my arrival. She had instructed me to hand-carry certified checks that would allow me to open an Italian bank account, purchase the house and pay the
notaio
, who would give the law's blessing to our transaction. She set up an appointment for me to get a
codice fiscale
, which is the Italian equivalent of a social security number. She had found me the best deal on home owner's insurance. She'd transferred the billing for gas, electric, water and phone into my name. All of this is part of the deal when you buy a house through JoJo.

I was too excited to sleep on the flight over. I was a man on a mission. The only flight I could get on such short notice had me changing planes in Amsterdam, with a four-hour layover. I toyed with the idea of checking my bag and heading to the nearest “coffee shop” to try a little legal marijuana, but then I remembered the few hundred thousand dollars of certified checks in my pocket and thought better of it. I
found a little commuter airline that was leaving for Rome immediately and managed to get myself on it.

Since I was carrying very little—it was only a three-day trip—I sped through customs and immigration, got my rental car and was heading to Umbria by about two o'clock. The plan was to call JoJo on my cell phone when I reached Spoleto and she would meet me at the house to open the gate. I would be spending that night in the house—as a guest of Bruno and Mayes—and the next morning we would all meet at the
notaio
to transfer the title.

On the drive up, I tried to picture the house as I remembered it on that first day. We hadn't been able to take Bruno up on his offer to come back and stay there, and I realized I hadn't really paid attention to any of the details. I had been swept up in the general romantic feeling of the Rustico and had never checked things like water pressure, signs of termites, leaks, settling—all the things you're supposed to look for when you buy a house. I couldn't remember where the steps were to get upstairs. Was there a window on that far wall in the living room? Was there any light in the living room? Did the fireplace work? Well, I thought, I have this afternoon and tonight to check it out. I could still back out. Suddenly, the cold wind of doubt blew up my pant leg. I shivered. It was at least 90 degrees outside.

Also, there was an issue over the building permit for the addition. I had asked JoJo to make sure I had the actual permit in my hand before we signed the papers and, after some frantic e-mails back and forth between Bruno, the architect, the
comune
, JoJo and me, no one had yet been able to assure me that I would have it in time for the signing. This could be a real problem.

JoJo had stocked the house a bit—a bottle of Grechetto
in the fridge, some cheese and salami, some ground coffee, sugar and cream for the morning.

“I thought we'd meet you for dinner tonight at the Palazzaccio. You'll get to meet Bruce. The best thing for you is to stay up this afternoon, come out and have a great dinner, drink some wine, and get to sleep as late as you can stand it. That way you'll turn it around quicker.”

BOOK: Living in a Foreign Language
9.18Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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