Captivated By Her Italian Boss. Rosanna Battigelli

to the baggage claim area. She looked eagerly for a middle-aged man holding a sign with her name on it, as Lucia Michele had indicated in her email, and when she had spotted him, she waved and walked briskly toward him. He welcomed Neve in Italian and introduced himself as Tomaso Rocco. She smiled back at him and thanked him in Italian for having come to the airport to pick her up and drive her back to her employer’s house.

      Neve noticed that his eyebrows had lifted at the word casa. Maybe he was surprised that she could speak Italian. She had studied it since her trip to Italy as a teenager, and made it a point to use it with her Italian landlady and landlord, so she felt fairly comfortable communicating right away with Tomaso. Strangely enough, he switched to a faltering English after she had spoken.

      “Would you care for a refresh before we proceed?” Tomaso pointed to a nearby kiosk. “Or a panino?”

      Neve smiled. “Grazie, Signor Tomaso, but I had a nice meal on the plane. I wouldn’t mind finding a ladies’ room, though.”

      He nodded and once she returned, she positioned herself near one of the conveyors to scan the moving luggage. A few minutes later she spotted the suitcase with two extra-large stickers of the Canadian flag and the Italian flag placed side by side. Tomaso deftly grabbed it and a few moments later they were driving south along the coast. Neve was glad that Tomaso was not a man of many words, as the view around her had her total attention. She caught her breath at the shimmering expanse of the Gulf of St. Euphemia in the Tyrrhenian Sea, and the pastel-colored facades of villas and apartments. The familiar sight of oleander trees, with their profusion of white, pink and fuchsia blooms, growing not only around homes but also along endless stretches of railroad tracks, made Neve think of an impressionist painting, with its mesmerizing combination of multicolored strokes.

      Despite the stifling heat of the afternoon, Tomaso had opted to roll the windows down instead of putting on the air-conditioning, and Neve actually didn’t mind as she breathed in the sweet scent of the oleander blossoms perfuming the air.

      Before long Tomaso had changed direction and was heading inland. The view changed from seascape to hills and valleys, with miles and miles of olive groves. Neve loved the look of the olive trees, with their gnarled branches and silver-green foliage. She started as the vehicle jerked to a sudden stop, and Neve, turning her head, discovered the cause: a herd of goats crossing the road. The goatherd ambled by, waving at Tomaso, and he gave a resigned wave back. “People not like to hurry here,” he said to Neve in his broken English. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “You understand? Sometimes is like a thousand years ago.”

      “I understand.” Neve stifled the urge to chuckle. “It’s like time standing still.”

      Tomaso gave her a baffled look and then exclaimed as some of the goats started to backtrack. He gave a quick blast of the horn and the goats finally crossed over. Neve settled back to enjoy the magnificent views as the road snaked its way through what she discovered as she checked her map, was the Aspromonte mountain range. The Bitter Mountains.

      She couldn’t help a slight shiver as she recalled reading about some of the nefarious happenings within the dark recesses of the heavily wooded slopes. Stories of bandits, or briganti. Some had been the Italian counterpart to Robin Hood, but others were immortalized in folk songs for their notorious deeds.

      Neve marveled at some of the hamlets perched on top of a hill. Some had been abandoned for years, and the houses were crumbling in areas. But even these ghost towns, with their borders of cactus pear plants and hillsides of golden broom, had a mysterious and romantic air about them, conjuring all kinds of stories in her imagination.

      Totally absorbed in the mountain landscape, with its dark gullies and sheer cliff sides with often no guardrails, Neve found herself holding her breath. It was like seeing everything with new eyes. Perhaps at eighteen she had had other things—or people—that had grabbed her attention, but now the mountains, trees and the scintillating waters were even more majestic and striking than she remembered.

      Tomaso started whistling an old folk tune; she had heard it at a festival during her last trip to Italy. She knew the title, Calabrisella Mia, and if her memory served her right, it was about a young man who spotted a young lady washing clothes at the public fountains and was captivated by her. Well, maybe nobody went to do laundry at the fountains or by the river anymore, but Valdoro still celebrated the chivalry of the “old days” at their annual summer festival, the Festa della Calabrisella