Today I didn’t inform her of my arrival, I know how much she loves surprises and so I wanted to wait until the last moment to see the weather before getting to the street. Once I arrived at the main street, the first one to welcome me were two hens that had escaped from who knows which henhouse. These animals always make me laugh, always upright and unwieldy. As soon as their squawking goes away, I start to hear the smooth sound of shoes on the road with the light echoing between the empty and silent houses. The sun begins to warm walls and my gloveless hands. When I reach her house, at the bottom of the dark staircase without a front door, I overhear her voice in the distance and the sound of the rolling pin that hits the marble countertop. Today it must be the fresh pasta day, something that makes her very happy and so, between this and that rolled crust, she enjoys singing herself old songs and changing the words she doesn’t remember here and there. As I am coming up the stairs, trying not to make any noise, her voice becomes more and more warm and solid and replaces my café memories printed in my mind until that very moment. This place has the ability of making me forget everything else. A bit like becoming a child again, without big worries apart from having a bit of bread and freshly brewed gravy between this and that game. For a second I even had the will of going back to the street and chasing those two smug hens in their escape, to scare them a bit and to fulfil my ears with the
sound of their uncontrolled bickering.
Arrived at the front door, I stood for a moment in order to catch my breath after these steep and slippery stairs in the darkness that pulls the morning light away behind me. The door is open, as it is still a habit in the small villages, and behind a thin colourful plastic door curtain I discern her, inside with her apron on and her sleeves rolled up, going from one side to the other of the big kitchen in the hallway. What I love about her is that her smile is always ready to welcome you. I sneak into the room without making any noise whispering “Mum…”
as if it was a magical and untouchable word. While she suddenly turns, I see in her eyes a mix of surprise and endless joy, so we end up hugging as if we didn’t see each other for such a long time. As if I was still a child, she kisses my cheeks over and over again, in that soft embrace of hers from which I don’t want to loose. Curious about my arrival, she makes me sit down beside her while she starts to make coffee and puts on the table biscuits, a pie, and a bunt cake that has already be tasted, all of them rigorously hand-made by her. As she doesn’t receive a lot of visits, every time that I arrive she has to catch up with all that she has to offer me at home and I know perfectly well that even a slight refusal could be taken as an offence. So I started to eat a piece of pie with orange jam, my favourite one. While she tinkers with the small coffeepot for two, she starts to tell me all the gossip of the area: from the arrival of the new country priest, to the multiple births of the two foals on the next-door farm.
She has such tender manner of speaking that it seems like she is still singing, and I stay there, listening without blinking an eye, wrapped up in that atmosphere that is completely out of this world.
Today I feel in the mood for sharing, so I tell her about my mysterious café woman. She sits down and, placing her arm on the wooden table, listens to me as if I am telling a fairy tale. She doesn’t interrupt me and as soon as I stop talking she remains silent for a few seconds, undecided whether to comment on this absurd non-affair of mine or to remain silent. Then she stands up, smiles at me, and goes to the coffeepot that started to puff and to throw some spatters of coffee on the cheap white and spotless stove. After this endless silence she asks me if I was here for that reason and whether she had to tell me what she wanted me to do… Because in her opinion every love affair, even the crazy ones like mine, must take their own course without anyone putting their nose in, risking changing the right course of things. While she is pouring me some coffee in the china teacup that is so fine that it looks fake, I answer that I just wanted to share my life with her as I have always done, without wanting anything more. She caresses my face, smiles, and starts to tell me how she and dad had met. A story I was already so familiar with but that I love to hear from her. Her eyes glisten, for the first time since my dad died I see in her the melancholy of the solitude and the absence and I realise that I must treasure these moments together, to remember them forever, recording them in my memory, hoping that they can be played forever. After taking the package prepared with fresh hand-made pasta, a piece of every dessert and fresh eggs and vegetables from the garden, I step back on my way towards the car. The wind has now weakened and the higher sun warms my face.
You can begin to smell the first scents of lunch, in some house they are roasting pepperoni. From an open window you can smell the
perfume of a cake right out the oven, and the whole village participates with those scents that blend in such a beautiful way that only small villages can give as a gift to their visitors. I stop by the baker to buy white pizza, always warm and freshly baked. I already know that I am going to regret this purchase because anytime that I eat it I feel bad because it is well seasoned and slightly heavy. But if I don’t eat it, it doesn’t feel like I have been here, between the little mountains of Lazio. To break this blissfulness made of hands greasy with oil and of mouths satisfied with pizza and rock salt, there is the ringing of my mobile phone that makes me wince and breaks the spell. Next time I must remember to turn it off. Like an equilibrist, I manage to take it out of my pocket without dropping my pizza and I succeeded in not breaking the eggs wrapped in journal papers in my package. On the screen I see the picture of my ex-girlfriend Lucia but as soon as I answer the call, it stops ringing. I’ll call her later. I spent the most amazing years of my life with her, in a unique harmony that lasted six years, until she accepted a job abroad and I refused to follow her. It was then that I realised it wasn’t the major love that we thought, a mutual awareness that makes us still bounded today. During this time, she has come back to Italy, so we are more in touch, and not only with messages and e-mails. Seeing her again is always great, for a few seconds I even thought that letting her go has been a mistake but then I realise it was only a purely egoistic matter, and now I have accepted our long-distance friendship that gets stronger every day. Tonight, we are going to see each other again, finally alone, to tell each other face-to-face about this year spent apart.
I got into the car and after placing the package on the back seats I
drive towards the Capital with my lungs full of fresh air and my shoes dirty with soil. Today I would really like to see her but I perfectly know that I must wait until tomorrow morning for our usual eye contact. During the drive I call Lucia back and I tell her about my rural morning. We decide to meet in the evening and she says goodbye to me by telling me that she has some good news to give me. Her voice is full of enthusiasm, she looks like a child standing by a Christmas tree full of presents for her. Maybe she’ll come back to Italy? The idea bodes well for me and I start to get the idea of having her near me again, also work-wise. We are both free lance photographers or it is better to say that I am still one, while she works for a famous slick photographic magazine in France. Almost at the gates of Rome, I stop to take a few pictures of the bales of buckwheat well spread on the field all around the highway, taking advantage of a little rest area in which I could stop the car. It makes you want to gallop towards the fence and run around them, before throwing yourself to the ground to catch a bit of that sun that transforms that wheat into gold threads. It would be pleasant to lie with your back on the freshly cut grass and then sitting up with pieces of straw stuck between your hair. In the distance, two horses standing just before the sun allow some lively shots. It seems exactly like they are running in its beams, you are almost afraid they will get burnt and that their running back and forth could be a challenge to that fireball. Then they disappear in the horizon and the sun loses his aspect that strikes fear and it goes back to be just the background of a scenario between lovers. Lost in thousands of thoughts and with a few photos shot, I realise that I am running late and in spite of myself, I must go back to the big city in order to be
swallowed up by my evening commitments before reaching the long-awaited evening meeting.
CHAPTER 2
Glances at the bar