Living in a Foreign Language (8 page)

She told me how to get to the Palazzaccio, which was a trattoria down on the Flaminia about ten minutes away. She said it was their favorite place—a kind of hangout for the expat community that made up their circle of friends.

“Have a nice afternoon,” she said, and clapped me on the shoulder with a reassuring smile.

“Oh, and I think we have the building permit. Martin, the architect, is at the
comune
this afternoon and I'm pretty sure he'll be able to walk away with it. If not? Hey, you'll have a three-day vacation in Italy.”

And with that, she left so that the Rustico and I could spend a little one-on-one time together.

I flushed the toilets, ran the hot water, checked the lights—all that kind of stuff. It was as solid as a rock. I climbed the steep wooden stairway from the kitchen to the bedrooms. Our room was to be the bigger one to the left. There's one step up from the wooden landing onto the brick-tiled floor of the bedroom and the bricks—the
pianelle
—had been worn down by God-knows-how-many years of footfalls on that step. It was U-shaped from wear. I couldn't get over that. I sat on the bed and stared at the doorway for a long time, thinking about the history of the little house, sitting in the middle of this field, surrounded by miles of olive trees in every direction.

I drove down to the Palazzaccio around eight-thirty. JoJo
and her husband, Bruce, were sitting outside in the back of the restaurant at a long picnic table with Martin—the architect who had done the design for Bruno—and his wife, Karen.

“Tomorrow morning, before we head into town for all the legal stuff, I arranged for Martin to meet us at the Rustico for a little meeting,” JoJo said.

“Did we get the permit?”

“Not yet—but tomorrow, for sure,” said Martin, a little nervously. “I'll bring it when we meet in the morning.”

I explained that we weren't sure we wanted to get into a whole construction thing anyway—that maybe the house was perfect the way it was now.

“Why don't we talk about it tomorrow,” said Martin, who, although he comes from Germany, is perfectly fluent in English as well as Italian. “Tonight is to relax, have a nice dinner and get a good night's sleep.”

“The Palazzaccio is a typical family-run Umbrian trattoria, Michael,” said Bruce quietly from the other side of the table. He seemed as quiet and contained as JoJo is outspoken and brash.

“About thirty-five years ago, Piero was a truck driver who loved to entertain his friends. His wife was, and still is, a wonderful cook, and he had the kind of personality and generosity of spirit that regularly pulled in a large and fun-loving crowd. Eventually, they opened up this place and served simple food and local wine to other truck drivers and their families—and the Palazzaccio was born. Now their three daughters run the place, and you can't find a more honest meal.”

Danila, one of the daughters, brought menus out and everyone started making recommendations as to what they
thought I should eat.
Ravioli Letizia
—named after one of the granddaughters—was a specialty, filled with an eggplant mixture and sauced with tomato; so was
ravioli carciofi
, made with the fresh artichokes that were just arriving in the local markets.

“But if you've never had
strengozzi al tartufo
, there's no better place to try it than here,” said Bruce.

“Then maybe some lamb—you like lamb?” asked JoJo.

I nodded.

“Have the
castrato
. Don't be put off by the name—it's lamb grilled over wood; very simple and good. And have the fried potatoes—they're the best in the world.”

“We'll get an order of the spinach as well—for the table,” said Karen. She's an American, a modern dancer who had her own company in Philadelphia. I asked her what had brought them to this little area of Umbria and she explained that they, too, had been searching for the perfect place to start their new life together. Martin had heard that because of the damage from the great Umbrian earthquake in the late eighties, there was a dire need for architects in the area. Like JoJo and Bruce, their move to Umbria had involved a reinvention of themselves—both as people and as artists.

We ordered tons of food—they wanted me to try everything. Bottles of water—some with bubbles, some without—were brought to the table, along with carafes of wine—
rosso
and
bianco
—that were drawn from huge vats that stood in the backyard. There were toddlers chasing a family of kittens around the outdoor patio, older kids doing homework at another table, a baby clinging to her mama's dress as she carried food out from the kitchen. The other tables started to fill up—Italians don't even think about having dinner until nine o'clock at the earliest. Our table's conversation bounced easily from American politics to Italian politics to a history of the expat community here in the valley—which really started with Bruce when he came to the Spoleto Festival in the early sixties as an actor with La Mama.

Nicla and Danila welcoming us to the Palazzaccio

The pasta came and everyone insisted I try everything. And as wonderful as the various ravioli were, the
strengozzi al tartufo
was a veritable revelation.

Strengozzi
—or
strangozzi-
—is a round noodle, a little thicker than spaghetti, with a more handmade feeling to it than the pasta you find in a box. It's the local choice in this part of Umbria. In this dish, it's tossed in the best olive oil, which has been flavored with a chopped clove of garlic and a chopped anchovy, then liberally showered with fresh-grated black truffles. That's it. You should use enough garlic-laced
oil so that there's a little pool of it left in the bowl when the last al dente strand of pasta has been scarfed down. This you mop up with a piece of traditional unsalted Umbrian bread. Ideally, you should have a little trace of the oil still visible on your chin by the time the
secondi
arrive. This indicates a properly eaten bowl of
strengozzi al tartufo
.

Grilled lamb was next for me, along with the spinach with garlic and the fried potatoes. Then a salad, some cheese and, finally, grappa. By the third glass of this lethal potion, I felt I had known these people for years. Karen and Martin told a story about how their gas man had backed his delivery truck over the cliff when he'd tried to turn around on their very precarious road. And Bruce became mellower, more loquacious, with each refilling of the grappa glass. He gave an elegant lecture, I believe, on the various species of birds in the Yucatán. JoJo was in deep Italian conversation with Danila about their respective children and the differences between Italian and American kids. And I actually understood them. The more grappa I drank, the better was my comprehension. I felt I was ready to run for the Italian parliament by the time we teetered out of there.

They all walked me to my car and I carefully made my way up the dark country road and back to the Rustico. Minutes later I fell into the old iron bed that stood on the ancient brick tiles and slept like a migrant worker.

W
E BOUGHT OUR LITTLE HOUSE IN
I
TALY
in pretty much the same way we'd done everything else in our life together—hand in hand, headlong over the falls in a barrel, and then on the way down looking at each other and wondering whether this was really a good idea.

We arrived at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Airport—known to the locals as Fiumicino—on the first of September for a six-week get-acquainted stay in our new, very old house. We had stuffed our suitcases with pots and pans, bed linens, silverware, picture frames—I don't know why I thought I wouldn't be able to find cooking implements in Italy, where they have been known to cook every now and then. I guess I wanted the security of my familiar sauté pans, knives and spatulas.

Our son, Max, had been traveling through Europe with a friend and they met us at the airport. They had just been in Barcelona for a week and Max was eager to check out what his crazy parents were doing. He liked the idea of having a place to crash in Europe. Max is a jazz drummer and his
friend, Isaac, is a guitarist. They had been checking out the opportunities for jamming in Amsterdam, Paris and Barcelona, where there's a much wider audience for jazz than there is in the States. With their backpacks, Isaac's guitar and our excessive luggage we had to trade up for a larger car—a station wagon, which wasn't really big enough either. It was a stick shift with a propensity to stall coming out of first gear. With severely limited rear vision because of the bags piled up in the back, we coughed and sputtered our way onto the highway and headed north.

Two hours later, when we turned off the main road, bumped down the little rutted path to our front gate and drove into the Rustico, all the tensions and anxieties that I had been carrying drifted away in the warm breeze that wafted through the olive trees. The boys jumped out of the car and parked themselves at the table under the pergola as if waiting for someone to serve them lunch. Jill went right to the
orto
, the vegetable garden Bruno and Mayes had planted and graciously maintained for us to enjoy. There were still vines of cherry tomatoes, zucchini, beans, hot and sweet peppers,
rucola
and big, bushy bunches of basil.

I started unloading the car and hauling the luggage into the house. I wrestled with the lock on the
persiane
, the heavy wooden shutters that covered all the doors and windows, and finally got myself into the kitchen. There, in the middle of the floor, were eight giant cardboard boxes that we'd shipped over the month before. More pots and pans, exercise equipment, blankets and comforters, underwear and socks, hiking boots. We had a lot of unpacking to do.

That's when the idea of garbage came up. What do we do with it? Do they pick it up? Do they recycle? Do they separate? Does some guy come by in a truck? The house is
way out in the middle of nowhere. And if he does come by with a truck, how do I know which day?

Garbage is big for a guy. I think it goes way back, maybe all the way to the hunter / gatherer time. You gather; there's garbage. And you can be damn sure the little cave woman isn't going to help you schlep anything out to the curb. I called JoJo.

“No. Nobody's gonna come by and pick up the garbage. You take it to these bins—they're all over the place, you can't miss 'em. Green for bottles, blue for plastic, gray for everything else. Just take it with you every time you leave the house.”

All right. Cool. They recycle, they separate—this is not an alien planet, after all. I felt a tingle of imminent masculine achievement coursing through my loins. Yes, my Italian was limited to words like “pencil” and “banana”; admittedly I lacked the courage to venture out into the passing lane on the autostrada—but I knew where our garbage was going, and that was enough to awaken in me a sense of competence, of leadership, of, dare I say, power? Garbage is big.

I did a reconnoiter. While Jill was putting the clothes away in tiny wardrobes that tried to pass for closets, I snuck out in the car to pin down the location of our bins. And they were everywhere! About a mile down the road, just off to the side next to a field was a gray one. That's for food scraps and the like. But a little farther down—right as I got to our little village—was a veritable gold mine. A blue one, a green one and two gray ones—all lined up on the back side of the church, which, by the way, dates all the way back to the thirteenth century. This was the place. This was my local.

When I got back to the house to announce my discovery,
I found Max and Isaac zonked out on the couch in the living room. For the past three weeks, they had been on a strict regimen of partying and club hopping and then using the daylight hours—much like vampires—to regenerate themselves. I'd just gone into the kitchen and opened one of the boxes containing my beloved pots and pans in order to get them organized when I heard Jill's voice calling from the bedroom upstairs.

“Honey, could you help me for a minute?”

I climbed the tiny stairs from the kitchen, taking care not to bump my head on the steel girder cleverly tucked behind the ancient wooden beam that made the kitchen so authentically seventeenth century. Bruno had subtly retrofitted the whole cottage for earthquakes. That we were now splitting our time between Northern California and Umbria, two of the world's more active fault areas, seemed somehow appropriate.

Jill was making up our bed and wanted me to help. As I fitted the corner of the bottom sheet onto my side of the mattress, I felt her eyes on me. I looked up and saw she had that expression on her face—the one that said we weren't just making the bed, we were
making the bed
.

“How many houses now?” she asked softly.

And we both started to count silently the places we had lived, the beds we had made together since that first little apartment in Washington, D.C.