The wind screamed around the house and the single lamp to my right flickered for a moment. I dropped my hands, resting them and the work in my lap, as I took a mental inventory of what else might be flickering in the house.

It is not an unusual thing to do with the delicate balance of power that is typical of an Italian house. I must always remember that the microwave cannot run on a certain setting for more than 7 minutes, or when the oven is on. This I learned after blowing out the power breaker in that corner of the kitchen. Luciano always asks if I need to use the oven before he starts up the washing machine or we might blow out the entire first floor. And we all remember the evening when I plunged both our house and the one next door into darkness while drying my hair with the American blow-dryer with an Italian “adapter”. In fact, I am always amazed on our trips to the US that one can run the television, oven, blender and microwave all at the same time. But when you think about it, why would you really need to?

It is not that the Italian electrical systems are dated or slow; there is just no perceived need to operate all that electricity at once and so it is organized with this simplicity in mind. And it is the simplicity of my life now that makes it so full.

The storm was certainly an impressive one, with the horizontal rain cracking against the windows and the shrieking wind tugging at the shutters. Luciano was taking a nap and with Giancarlo and Anna Maria away visiting friends in Santa Lucia, I was virtually alone in the early darkness, snug in Maya the armchair and the solitary lamp which now seemed to be holding steady. Basking in the extreme coziness, I picked up the embroidery work from my lap and began again. Giù e su, giù e su.

~~~

I had asked Anna Maria to teach me the punto finestra or window stitch, an elegant way to finish a hem. She had shown me a tablecloth she had finished before getting married, a sturdy cloth edged with tiny stitches, as uniform as a machine. A skill she had learned from her mother, I was determined to learn how to do it myself and asked her for lessons.

“You know I can just do it for you so we can finish these napkins faster.”

“But then I would still not know how to do it. Please put me to work.”

“Ok, you need to hold the edge like this and then go from below on the first stitch, then from above on the second. Giu e su. Down and then up. Try it and I will be back in a minute.”

I sat in the warm kitchen, the clock ticking loudly, and struggled to move the needle as deftly as she had. It just did not look the same; something was off. Giancarlo sat calmly in the corner reading the latest John Grisham novel as I broke into a sweat. Wasn’t it up and down? Or down and down? Why didn’t it look right? Anna Maria blurted back into the room and I looked up in panic.

“Let’s see…Ok, this is a mess. What are you doing? Well, ok, if it is perfect, no one will believe it is handmade, right? Look, you are going su e giù. You have to think of a mountain climber, but instead of going up and then down, you are going down the mountain first. Giù e su. Again, again and again. Now, give me back my needle, go home and practice.”

Anna Maria puts a great deal of stock in the belief that if you give someone a needle or a knife, it could cut the friendship and so with that last comment, she threw me out to walk back next door with my ageless homework wadded up in my hand, needleless.

~~~

For as long as I have lived here there had been a ragtag collection of cracked pots and rotting plants in the corner of the garden. I asked finally if I could take it over. Giancarlo immediately said yes, so I promptly cleared it out and planted what Luciano calls the world’s smallest vegetable garden. After a satisfying afternoon of heavy digging, pulling and carrying away carcasses to toss in the campo, we now have lettuce, basil, radishes, mint and hopes for leeks. When the lettuce plants had just cleared the dirt Anna Maria commented that they were almost ready for dinner. I get a lot of this teasing because I am, after all, the crackpot American. I am used to it, but it was a sweet moment when I caught Anna Maria headed out to the garden with a bowl. She stopped short.

“Oh, I was going to get some basil, but of course I would ask you first…if I saw you.”

I grinned with victory, “Please help yourself.” And I did too. This is the spring of fresh basil, fat sweet tomatoes and slices of creamy mozzarella di bufala on a bed of delicate baby lettuce. We can’t get enough of it.

Cousin Paola parked her car and, while unloading her kids for a visit, laughed at my plot. “That is the smallest garden I have ever seen,” she roared.

Luciano told me later to ignore her. “Your garden may be the size of a bathmat, but it is feeding four people.”
So I take my mini-shovel and head out to put in a new crop of lettuce. We are using a rotation method to maintain a constant harvest. It is a very old and simple system…

“Hey Luciano, there is no water!” I called this bit of information up the stairs yesterday afternoon without too much concern. They seemed to often be monkeying about with the water here in Mareno and it never lasted long.

“Really? I’ll check.” Luciano shuffled next door to get the low down on what was happening and returned a few minutes later. “It will go on at ten o’clock tomorrow morning,” he reported. They always knew what was going on next door. How did they do that?

“Tomorrow morning?” I gazed at the mountain of dishes, a result of baking a cake.

“Yeah, they were doing repairs and someone broke a pipe. I’m going back upstairs, ok?”

“Ok.” I contemplated the predicament and with a shrug of resignation, I picked up the bucket by the back door and went across the street to the aqueduct that gurgles past our house. I stood in the soft light of the summer evening, barefoot in the grass, and filled my bucket to soak the cooking pots. Were I in Berkeley I might have been on the phone, losing my temper and tranquility on a hapless employee at the water company. Instead, I leaned down, letting the cool water rush over my hands for a moment, then shut it off, lifted my bucket and carried it back inside.

Giù e su.

The tenuous-no-simpering arrival of spring has quite suddenly transformed into Summer, like a blow to the head with a large, soft overheated hammer. I am back to dodging the sun, skipping from shadow to shadow while crossing the baked town in the hopes of remaining un-melted. Yet, I seem to survive year after year, but I don’t know how…and sit down once again to find a story in it all.

My mother Cynthia reads my stories, but only after she has cajoled me into printing them out for her. She just does not want to mess with her computer. Listening to her describe the process, I don’t blame her. In order to do such a thing she must apparently climb under the table and flip some kind of switch, wait a period of time for the thing to “warm up” and then the keys do not correctly respond to her commands but, once warmed up, take on a life of their own, spitting microscopic gibberish upon the screen. All this goes on in a room the size of a closet…which is in fact a closet, with a row of dresses framing the monitor. Not wanting to wish this horror on anyone, I print out the stories for her.

After years of this, I have finally taken a grown-up step and, ostensibly for my mother, compiled the first year of my stories and recipes (2006-2007) and published them. The book is titled Stories from Italy, News of Mareno. Not terribly original, I know, but simple, to the point and poised for sequels. With a full color cover, drawings, 167 nicely bound pages and a tempting low price, it is an appealing little book, truly created for those people who read my stories here. Should anyone buy one, I’ll even happily autograph your copy if I run into you. To do such a thing, look on the “published work” page where Luciano has placed a handy-dandy “Buy now” button from the publisher, www.lulu.com. The book can also be found on Amazon…imagine that?

And it’s much easier to read than climbing under a table.

~~~

This year I have stumbled upon another writer in the form of my student Sabrina and she has graciously allowed me to practice my skills on teaching creative writing on her. As my guinea pig, she has not only gamely endured odd assignments that sometimes pop into my head moments before she arrives, but attacks them with a ferociousness that leaves me feeling both honored and cowed. Sabrina has written a story from the point of view of a 65 year-old barfly, a 9 year old child and as her best friend. She has listened to a cassette of an elderly South Caroline gentleman, complete with thick accent, telling ghost stories, transcribed all his tales and then wrote her own. When handing me assignments she will sometimes curl her lip with distaste,” I hated that” or grin large and wide over something she feels good about. We have had long discussions about words and the often delicate veils of differences in meanings, something we both love.

As an end of the year project, and to thank her for her enthusiasm, I would like to post a few of her pieces here. What follows is a story, a result of the Southern storyteller assignment, that follows the theme of the site: Italy and the characters who live here.


The Way of Bread
Sabrina Segato

May 20, 2009

Agnes had always been a spell-binding story-teller.
In spring, we would spend most our afternoons walking in the woods around our village, looking for mulberry tree leaves for our silkworms.
Ours must have been regarded as a quirky match: an old woman, deep in her eighties, a witch-like character, and a girl about six, tiny and graceful; the two of us always together and surprisingly having a great time.

The afternoon when we walked up to S. Maria di Paninsacco, Agnes was on a particularly joking mood. As we entered the wood, following the track leading to the top of the hill where the sanctuary rested, she looked grim and disquieting.

“Beware of the duke’s dogs, my darling” she said whispering and ending the sentence with an ominous sneer. “They’re still here, hiding behind the trees and in the deep caves, still craving tender flesh and warm, sweet blood.”

As Agnes started telling the story she staged the drama, her appearance adding much to the atmosphere of the story. Indeed, she was dressed in rags and wore shapeless slippers, had dishevelled hair, thin lips hiding toothless gums and an upper lip streaked with long, dark and fluffy moustache.

“Listen to me, deary, here is a scary story.” And in saying this, she plunged into the darkness of an ageless past.

“The duke living up on that hill had a gorgeous, sweet daughter whose mother was found mysteriously stabbed in the heart, floating on the lake we’ve just passed. After that, the little daughter had grown restless and could no longer bear being confined in the castle with her overbearing, draconian father.

She had never been allowed to go beyond the precincts of the castle till, one evening, her father being drunk in bed, she wrapped herself up in her tabard and walked down the track to the village.”

“It was this same track we’re treading now, my dear,” Agnes whispered. Then she went on.

“Her sensitive heart was deeply affected by the poverty of the people living there. No sooner did she realize that the riches her father squandered came from the wild taxation he levied on them, than she set on helping her fellow-citizens and making up for her father’s injustices. She took to walking every night to the village toting a bag full of bread she stole from her kitchen; occasionally, she would steal also silverware or other valuable items.

It was not long before a servant working at the castle discovered her secret and, in the attempt to win his favour, told the duke and decided her fate. The duke flew into a rage. ‘How long has she been cheating me?” he screamed. ‘I knew it, I knew it, she took after her mother, a rebel, and she’s just like her. And, like her, she’ll pay the price!’

That same night the duke feigned sleep and as soon as he heard the latch click, he stood up and followed his daughter in the distance, but not before freeing his starving watchdogs and setting them upon her. When he reached the spot where she lay dying, the sight was dire but with her last breath she begged God to save her father’s soul. The duke’s rage drained away leaving him emptied of any strength and purpose.

Before piercing his own heart, he had his castle pulled down and a sanctuary erected in memory of his late daughter. His last will was to name the sanctuary after the bag full of bread his daughter had been carrying to the village every night for months on end. Her soul still inhabits these woods and chases after the ghosts of her father’s dogs, which are as ravenous and bloodthirsty as ever.”

Agnes came back to me with a broad, unadorned smile. She knew she had conquered me and let her story sink in. We walked up to the top of the hill in silence while I mused on the wonders of Agnes’s imagination.

Last weekend we went to the spring sagra in Costa. For years Luciano had translated the word sagra as a local fair. I have since found out that it means “village feast” and in that moment the significance of this annual spring event changed completely for me. Tucked in under the medieval church, we entered the drafty tent and I could see in my mind the groaning table laden with suckling pigs, chunks of coarse bread and tankards of mead. In fact the tent is filled with raucous locals and the smell of grilling meat. We stood at the entrance and talk to friends as our annual group gathered. Overhead the full moon sailed behind the scattered clouds and as I leaned on Luciano’s back to watch it, I could feel his laughter vibrate though his body.

Soon we were squeezed onto a bench shouting out our orders for braciole, costicine, salsicce, patatine fritte, formaggio cotto and pasta e fagioli. A feeding frenzy ensued while a cold breeze sliced through the joint in the tent. Loud arguments broke out on the eccentricities of English pronunciations and I laughed so hard that my cheeks hurt. Still I pulled my coat closer about me when we slip out into the dark. It was not spring yet.

I spotted Armida’s husband at work painting another figurine for their garden down the street. Armida is the mother of the local veterinarian and she sits rocking on her porch gazing upon her garden populated with plaster animals and out-of-scale gnomes. There is a blue-eyed German Shepherd, a full size cow, a penguin and now a gaily painted little man. When I asked if I could photograph his work she hustled off the porch, removing her apron on the way, to join in on the tour, squinting into the still thin sunshine as she explained the history of the faded parrot and the scattered Madonnas.

Friday morning we went for the May 1st Gara delle Lumache, or the Snail Race, in Montaner, a tidy village in the foothills whose housewives bake cakes to sell at the finish line. I am not sure why it is the gara delle lumache …I have never seen a snail anywhere, only rolling lush hills, dozens of gurgling springs, and lots and lots of children and dogs. A fat, effusive Chihuahua drops to his back as I scratch his ears.

“How do you do that?” Luciano asks.

May 1st is a national holiday in Italy (Labor Day) and friends call to wish me happy birthday and thank me for organizing the day off for the event. This race is a perfect enough celebration for me. The trails thread between ancient houses and up slick hills where the churned mud sucks at my shoes. I must dig my fingers into the dirt to avoid sliding to the bottom. I trot along the trail cut into the hill that leads us right into a medieval locanda, or roadhouse, where we run past an entire suckling pig roasting on a rotating spit powered by a water wheel. The aroma of roasting meat fills the garden and mixes with the scent of the wisteria that hangs low on the trellis overhead. It is all as if ordered up by central casting for an overly romantic film for which they just rolled in the set of a “beautiful Italian countryside”.

Giancarlo, as usual, gently brings me back to earth when I later enthusiastically described the scene to him. It seems after all that in a town full of streams, it just makes sense.

“Oh, yeah, the old waterwheel system. Well, Serena, that’s how they do it.”

“Oh”, I said, feeling a little embarrassed, as if I had just pointed out the quaintness of electricity.

I saw the first of the psychedelic red poppies swaying above the rye grass in our field. Makeshift tents with narrow wooden pews have been set up at our neighborhood Madonna. May is her month and mass comes to her amidst the newly sprouting corn, murmuring aqueduct and thickening grapevines. The sun is stronger…less capricious. I am still wary.

But yesterday, on a hunch, I walked over the fat pipe jutting out from the aqueduct across our little lane. It is turned off and on with the seasons and I felt that there might have been some activity. I turn the spigot and cool, clear water gushed onto my hands and onto the suddenly vivacious green grass.

Ok, now it is spring.