My Father Came From Italy by Maria Coletta McLean

Author:Maria Coletta McLean [McLean, Maria Coletta]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: memoir, italy
Publisher: Raincoast Books
Published: 2012-06-18T19:25:24+00:00

*****

Guido surprised me one Sunday with a knock on the door and the news that he had moved from Roma to Supino for the summer. I didn’t have wine, or coffee, or even a chair to sit on. I dug around in my knapsack, produced a package of cherry Lifesavers and offered him one of those.

“What’s this?” he asked sweeping his arm across the area where the back wall used to be.

“New door,” explained Bob.

“The hole — she’s too big.”

Guido held a rectangular cardboard carton whose contents rattled and clinked. It was a light fixture with a long silver chain and the whole apparatus unfolded to three tiers of cut-glass crystals, candle-shaped lightbulbs and silver beads. It was elegant. It was beautiful. It was enormous. We thanked him profusely and then, because Guido wasted no time, he told us he needed a ladder as he was walking out the door, down the stairs, on his way to the cantina. Bob followed with the key. The villagers kept wine in their cantinas. Ours contained the water tank, a woodpile and some waiting construction supplies. The cantina was at street level and there was no space between the door of the cantina and the street itself, so if a car was passing, you had to wait a few seconds before you could get the key into the lock and open the door. This has two purposes: it saves you from getting brushed by a car and it gives the neighbours time to come over and see what’s going on. Bob unlocked the cantina door and Joe came hurrying across the street. After the introductions, Joe and Guido chatted rapidly in Italian, while Bob searched for a ladder.

“Sorry, Guido. No ladder — no scala.”

“Bob, what’s a matter with you?” asked Joe. “The ladder is right there, on top of the woodpile,” and he grasped a thick branch of wood in each hand and lifted five sturdy logs strapped to long poles of hardwood.

At the house, Joe propped up the ladder and Guido installed the light fixture. I flicked the switch, but only to show Guido that the hydro was not connected.

“No wall and no elettricitá? Mamma mia.”

Then Guido told Bob he’d found a car for us to buy. I think his exact words were, “Una macchina — perfetta e cheap-o.” Before Bob had a chance to respond, Angela was tapping on the door, carrying a tray with coffee and biscuits. I flipped over the cardboard box to act as a table. Bob brought the two plastic pails from the balcony and the other pail from the backyard. As hosts, we sat on the hard marble steps, with the cardboard table holding the coffee tray in the centre. We laughed and drank and ate together, as happily as if we were sitting at the finest restaurant in Rome.

Bob asked, “How much is the car? Quanto costa?”

“Five millioni lire.”

“Guido,” I said, “we’re only here five or six weeks of the year. We don’t need to spend $5,000 for a car.

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