Incontinent on the Continent by Jane Christmas

Author:Jane Christmas
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: TRV010000, TRV000000
ISBN: 9781926812137
Publisher: Greystone Books
Published: 2010-03-31T23:00:00+00:00

9

Castel del Monte, Potenza

HAD WE stayed in Alberobello a few more days, I might very well have called a real estate agent. I had become quite attached to the area—to the hobbitlike trulli, the low dry-stone walls embracing broad fields, the quiet, simple rural life, and the ancient olive trees with their gnarly trunks and sprawling limbs. It seemed an easy sort of place, an authentic place; the kind of place that might show patience to a newcomer.

The next morning, with rain shelling our car like gunfire, we bade a final farewell to our trullo and set our sights northward to Castel del Monte, between Bari and Melfi. I wasn’t entirely certain where we would be spending the night, but based on my map, Melfi looked as good a destination as any.

Our first stop was a gas station.

I had developed a fondness for Agip gas stations. I’m not sure why—perhaps it was their medieval-style logo of a fire-breathing wolf with six legs, or maybe that their corporate colors of red and yellow reminded me of the gas stations I frequent at home.

“Il pieno, per favore,” I said to the gas jockey.

A chuckle came from the passenger seat.

“What’s so funny?” I asked Mom indignantly. I mean, had she bothered to learn a word of Italian?

“What on earth did you say to that man?” she giggled, trying unsuccessfully to restrain her mirth.

“I said, ‘Il pieno, per favore.’ It means ‘Fill it up, please,’ and before you start criticizing my pronunciation may I remind you that . . . ”

Mom clutched my arm and, her eyes brimming with tears of laughter, gasped hysterically: “I’m . . . sorry . . . but to me . . . it sounds . . . like you’re saying . . . ‘I play . . . piano . . . for a whore’!”

Well, we had a good laugh about that one. I almost joined her in the incontinent department.

Thereafter, on a couple of occasions when I was feeling cheeky, I would quickly mutter my mother’s English version to the gas jockeys, and without so much as a raised eyebrow they dutifully filled up the tank. Mom and I would crack up like schoolgirls.

We followed the highway north to Bari. I had considered taking a brief tour of the city, but the amount of traffic turned me off the idea immediately, and I decided we would simply press on.

“Look! IKEA!” said Mom with the same sort of excitement Columbus probably displayed when he first set eyes on North America.

“You aren’t serious about stopping at ik ea,” I said.

“Why not?” she pouted. “My friend Kitty’s daughter is a buyer for IKEA; I could take a photo of the store for her. Besides, I like IKEA.”

I felt it best to ignore her.

The rain had finally subsided and the sun was doing its best to apply some much-needed heat to the air. We turned off the E55 and followed the signs to Bitonto, which was en route to Castel del Monte, one of the homes of Frederick ii.

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