“The weather’s an aberration,” he said, anticipating my question when I joined him on the patio later. His brown, short-spiked hair was damp. “You should have been here a week ago.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said.
“How’s your mum doing?”
“Not so well,” I said. “She has a really bad cough. The trullo is freezing.”
“Did you crank up the heat?” he asked.
“I wasn’t sure whether that was something I should tinker with,” I said. “Are there any more blankets?”
“Loads more,” he said. “I’ll show you where they are. And let’s get the heat going.”
I received an unnecessary primer on the workings of the thermostat—honestly, I know how they operate—and was shown the stash of blankets piled in the cupboard that was under lock and key—a key that was, incidentally, not among the half-dozen or so Chris had given me.
The sound of Mom’s coughing came from behind the bedroom door.
Chris looked at me with alarm.
“I really should get her some cough medicine,” I said. “Is there a pharmacy nearby?”
“Let me drive you,” he said. “I’ll show you a shortcut.”
I was grateful to be a passenger for once and let someone else do the thinking.
As for shortcuts, well, call me a pessimist, but they do not exist in Italy. Chris’s “shortcut” turned out to be a more circuitous and convoluted route than I could imagine. By the time we reached the pharmacy—and I could not tell whether we were in Martina Franca or Locorotondo or even Italy for that matter—I was thoroughly confused and disoriented. Had Chris asked me to find my own way home, I might still be driving.
The farmacia was a snug, rather precious shop with a white marble counter that spanned the width of the premises. Behind it small glass bottles and boxes and jars of every size and shape were neatly arranged on a wall of white shelving. A brass scale and a white marble mortar and pestle sat on the counter. I wasn’t sure whether those items were there for show or for actual use, but it was all charming nonetheless.
In front of the counter there was just enough space to accommodate a handful of people, and several were there when we walked in, waiting impatiently for their prescriptions to be filled. They hurriedly shuffled closer to close the gaps in the queue. Judging by the looks on their faces I would say they all had something terminal.
When our turn came, Chris spoke softly in Italian to the pharmacist, asking for cough syrup. I nudged Chris and asked him to add some Vicks VapoRub to the bill, but the pharmacist appeared to understand, because he produced a jar immediately. I paid the bill and we left.
“I’ve got to stop off and get some nappies for our baby,” said Chris as we exited the farmacia. “Do you mind?”
“Absolutely not,” I said. It would give me a chance to pick up some groceries. I hastily assembled a list in my head, beginning with wine.
Once the errand was accomplished, we left the town and drove back to the trullo, passing dozens of these adorable abodes along the country road. There were stucco-clad trulli and tufo stone trulli; some domes sported finials in the shape of a ball, while others had a more fluted shape. Some trulli were close to the road; others were situated in distant fields.
Thousands of these adorable buildings dot the countryside of Apulia (it’s actually called Puglia now, but I prefer the more historic appellation), and they have been under unesco’s protection since 1996. Recently, some of the restrictions governing trullo restoration and renovation have been lifted. I thought back to the Scottish women we had met in Locorotondo, and wondered how they would fare with their Italian trullo.
I asked Chris about the hobbitlike homes.
“Oh, they’re popular with the Italians, too,” Chris said. “They’re just waking up to the fact that trulli are a part of their heritage. Nobody ever takes their history seriously until people from another country come and snap up the real estate.
“In fact,” he continued, “people in this area tend to use the trulli as holiday homes. Believe it or not, some people have a holiday home only a few miles from their regular home. If you see a lot of trulli boarded up, it’s only because it’s early in the season. Even the locals find them damp and cold at this time of year. But by summer—and believe me, the heat is hellish around here—a trullo is the coolest place to be.”
Chris returned me to our frigid trullo, which was looking more like an igloo to me than a Mediterranean home.
“I brought you a treat,” I said to Mom when I returned to her bedside.
“Oh goody! What?”
I placed the Vicks and the cough syrup on her pine bedside table. With a jazz-hand flourish I gave a little “ta-da!”
She looked profoundly disappointed.
“Did you have fun?” she asked.
“Well, as much fun as you can have buying cough syrup and Vicks VapoRub in an Italian pharmacy,” I said.
She sat up in bed, and I plumped the cushions for her.
“I’m amazed how you go out and just get things,” she said.
“Well, I didn’t this time,” I said. “Chris drove me. And he spoke Italian in the pharmacy on my behalf.”
“Tell me about the pharmacy. What was it like?” she gushed excitedly, as if I had just returned from an expedition to Katmandu.
“It was what you’d expect. It was small and had lots of bottles and potions. It wasn’t like our drugstores in Canada.”
“Oh,” she said blankly. I got the impression that she was hoping it might have provided a potential shopping excursion for her later in the week.
“Did you have a sleep while I was gone?”
“Not really; I was lying here thinking about when I was a little girl, about when I was a rebel.”
“A rebel? You?”
My mother’s idea of rebellion is wearing white before May 24 or having a shot of sherry before noon.
“Once upon a time I was,” she said. “As a teenager. Oh, I was a bad girl.”
This should be interesting, I thought.
“Being a rebel doesn’t make you bad,” I offered as I sat on the edge of her bed. “What made you a rebel?”
“Well, I rebelled about joining Hungarian social activities and about dating Hungarian men,” she said. “I refused to date a Hungarian, and my parents got so upset with me.”
Mom had immigrated to Canada from Hungary with her parents when she was a youngster. By the time she hit her teens, her mind was made up that she was going to be part of wasp society, and that meant marrying a wasp. All her friends were Anglo-Saxons; she had no time for the marriageable sons of her parents’ friends.
“One day, a Hungarian couple dropped by—they were friends of my parents—and they demanded that my parents force me to date or at least talk to their son, who was about my age. I was so angry and I refused to go out with him.”
“What did Granny and Grandpa do?” I asked.
“My dad, luckily, forgave me, but my mother wasn’t so easy,” said Mom. “But I didn’t care—that was her problem. I was set on marrying