Extra Virgin by Annie Hawes

Author:Annie Hawes [Hawes, Annie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141942063
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-04-27T04:00:00+00:00

*

The Diano boys, like Mariuccia, also find the presence of a male in our household most comforting. In fact, they have developed an annoying tendency to address all their remarks to our brother Rob, even though he can’t understand what they’re saying since he doesn’t speak more than two words of Italian, and we sisters have to translate it all anyway. Now, they tell us to tell him, as if it was all nothing to do with us, is the time to get on with concreting our downstairs floor, damp-proofing it as we go, and building the partition walls to create our bathroom and our two bedrooms below. Now that sweltering high summer weather is here, we have discovered that it is a good ten degrees cooler down there at night, half-built into the earth as it was by the great foresight of Pompeo’s forebears, and we’ve moved our beds down here well away from the oven-like upstairs, which we have kindly left to the brother. Who, having as little training in such matters as he does in the language, will doubtless never guess at the superior sleeping conditions below stairs from which he is excluded. Least said…

Still, as everyone points out, we can’t go on sleeping down there with nothing but a dirty old earthen floor. So Ciccio, Paletta, and Mimmo the master-builder sweep Rob off in a wave of manly lorry-driving camaraderie which knows no linguistic barriers, while we move our beds out under the roofed-over bit of the patio, and hang our mosquito nets for protection. Sunday morning, and a wave of wild activity begins. Wheelbarrows of gravel, sacks of cement, hillocks of sand sprout all around our home, while more and more boys and young men whose faces we only vaguely know, protégés, it appears, of Ciccio, Paletta and Mimmo, appear and heave everything along our winding path. They mix and shout all afternoon to the accompaniment of a large ghetto blaster which roars out football commentaries hour after hour. Nobody wants paying: they all, apparently, meet up anyway on a Sunday to listen to the football – there being a countrywide ban on live TV transmission of Sunday matches, aimed at keeping stadium attendances up – and they may as well have something to do while they listen, they say. Our house and lands are the ideal Sunday afternoon spot, plenty of room for everyone and no parents around to complain about noise and chaos. Of course: we’d forgotten that they all had to live at home till they got married. As the concrete goes down and we start getting to know our crowd of helpful youths, it is borne in upon us that Iron John is alive and well and living in Liguria. No shortage of role models for young males here. Paletta, Mimmo and Ciccio each have their own band of youthful followers. Paletta’s collection is the largest: he was a footballing hero in his early twenties, played for the Imperia team in

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.