My Italian Bulldozer

  Anna turned to Paul. “Well, I can’t thank you enough.”

  He made a self-deprecatory gesture. “I couldn’t have left you in the ditch.” He paused. It was clear that she was keen to settle in and did not want him to linger.

  “I was…”

  She looked at him enquiringly.

  “I was wondering whether…perhaps…we might meet for dinner. Or rather, I could take you out for dinner. There are a few good places.”

  She looked at him thoughtfully. “I was going to sort things out and…”

  “Of course not tonight,” he said hurriedly. “Tomorrow?”

  She hesitated, and then accepted. “Tomorrow…yes, all right.”

  “We could go to the Stracotto,” he said. “Do you like mushrooms? They do some amazing things with mushrooms.”

  She nodded, but she seemed distracted. Her thanks—effusive and clearly genuinely meant—had been warm enough, but now she seemed slightly cool. She clearly wanted to see her apartment and he was going on about mushrooms. He smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, you have to get on with things and I don’t need to tell you about their mushroom risotto.”

  “No, it doesn’t matter.”

  He laughed nervously. “I’ve got a lot to say about mushrooms, but I won’t bore you.” It was an inconsequential thing to say, and he regretted it. He was the one who had rescued her; she was the newcomer who had very little Italian and who knew nothing of Montalcino, and yet here he was feeling inadequate.

  The landlord jingled the keys impatiently, and Paul took his leave. Rather than go back to the Fiore, he decided to drop in on the Fiaschetteria Italiana for a cup of coffee. He felt unsettled; there was elation—she had agreed to have dinner with him—but there was something else, a feeling of doubt, of uncertainty. Her acceptance of his invitation had seemed hesitant. But was that at all surprising? They had met only a couple of hours ago, and he had been driving a bulldozer at the time. What woman would accept an invitation to dinner from somebody who had simply appeared, quite without warning, on a bulldozer?

  He smiled at the thought. People often judged others by their cars: sporty types drove fast cars, timid types drove modest, under-powered cars, green types drove green cars, and so on. But who drove a bulldozer? He imagined her calling a friend to say, “I’ve been invited out to dinner with a man who drives a bulldozer.” And the friend would have to warn, “Be careful—just be careful. Don’t let him push you around…”

  Or was she married? Or had she a regular boyfriend? He had assumed that there was nobody, but on reflection he realised he had no grounds to make that assumption. It was perfectly possible that she was in some sort of relationship; she was attractive and interesting—why should she not be with somebody who was unable to come with her to Italy because he was working?

  He felt embarrassed by his gaucherie. He should have suggested something less significant than dinner—a coffee in the Fiaschetteria, for instance; that would seem less like an actual date. That’s what somebody who knew nothing about the circumstances of another should propose—and then use the opportunity to find out whether somebody was single or available. It was a matter of elementary social nous and he had failed to exercise it.

  —

  Onesto was in the café, sitting at the table at which they had met before, immersed in a copy of Corriere della Sera. As Paul entered, he laid aside his newspaper and gestured for Paul to join him.

  “So,” he said. “You’ve been off on your researches. I hear you went out to Tonio’s.”

  Paul was surprised that he should know. Had he said anything to Onesto about it? He did not think so. “You heard?”

  “Yes, of course.” It was as if it were the most natural thing that he should know. He went on to explain: “People round here—they like to know what’s going on, you see.” He was watching the effect of his words, and there was a note of satisfaction in his voice. “There are no secrets in Montalcino.”

  Paul signalled to the waiter. “Scotland is a bit like that—or parts of Scotland.”

  This seemed to please Onesto. “Perhaps we Italians are a bit like you.” He took a sip of his coffee. “And Tonio? What did you think of his place?”

  “He gave me a warm welcome,” said Paul. “He showed me round. We talked about everything. The wine. The place. His family history.”

  Onesto put down his coffee with a force that rattled the saucer. “His family history!” he exclaimed. “That nonsense!”

  Paul shrugged. “I suppose he’s proud of who he is…”

  Onesto did not let him finish. “Pah!” he spat out. “Pah! Pah!”

  Paul studied his companion’s expression. The Italian left could express itself forcibly, and of course one might expect a provincial teacher, schooled in the tradition of Gramsci, to have strong views on the vestiges of the aristocracy.

  “It’s all dreamed up,” Onesto continued. “He has no more family history than I do, and I’m as proletarian as they come.”

  “So he’s bogus?”

  “Of course he is,” said Onesto. “Listen, I like Tonio well enough—I’ve got nothing against him. But do you know who his people were? A few generations ago they were charcoal burners. They used to live in the woods down near Sant’Antimo—they had a shack down there. Then they rose a bit, but were still contadini like the rest of us. Tonio’s father had a brother called Ernesto, who had one exceptional talent, and he knew how to use it.”

  The waiter came to take Paul’s order. Before he moved off, Onesto said to him, “Domenico, have you heard this? Our friend here went over to Tonio’s place—you know, down near Sant’Angelo, that place, and met His Excellency.”

  Onesto and the waiter both burst out laughing.

  Onesto turned to Paul. “You see?” he said. “Everybody knows that it’s nonsense. I don’t know how he thinks anybody will be taken in—apart from foreigners. But this Ernesto, you see—Tonio’s uncle—he was a very handsome man. Some said the best-looking man in Italy.”

  “That was the talent you mentioned?”

  “Well, being good-looking is not necessarily a talent—but using your looks, now that is a talent, I think.” Onesto now gave Paul an apologetic glance. “Ernesto Poggio—that was their family name, by the way—none of this Bartolo del Bosco nonsense—he knew how to get the ladies excited, if you’ll forgive the expression. They took one look at him and they became…well, quite aroused. Their eyes took on this strange look. It was amazing.”

  “A great gift,” said Paul.

  Onesto nodded. “There are many men who would have given everything to have that, but…” He broke off, to make one of those Italian gestures that expresses acceptance of the way the world is.

  “And so?”

  Onesto was gazing across the café, out through the door to the square beyond. The afternoon light was gentler now, and the sky, just visible above the roofline, was taking on the soft tones of evening. “What happened?” he mused. “Ernesto was no slouch: he had a very good look round—went to Siena to see if he could find a wealthy woman down there, but finally decided that the best prospect was right on his doorstep. There was that nice little place down near Sant’Angelo where the owner was getting on a bit—his mind was wandering—and there were no sons to make trouble, just a daughter. Land, you know, means more to these people than anything else. Money in the bank is just money in the bank—land you can touch, you can plant things in it, you can stand on it. That’s what they understand. That’s the peasant mentality, you see. And so he set to work, and he and this daughter married and that was that. The charcoal burners from Sant’Antimo had done rather well for themselves.”

  Paul pointed out that things like that happened.

  “Of course they do,” said Onesto. “But plans can go wrong, can’t they? That was back in the late nineteen thirties. Ernesto should have kept his head down—concentrated on improving the place − but he didn’t. He became a Fascist—a very prominent, noisy Fascist. And then, when the Germ
ans retreated and the whole thing collapsed, he and his wife were captured by partisans, and I’m afraid that justice was summary in those days—scores had to be settled. They were strung up—upside down, like Mussolini and his mistress—and that was it. That was the end to the uniforms and the high life.”

  Paul winced. He found it hard to think of Italy as a brutal country—but it had been.

  “And so after they had disposed of them, you might have thought that the farm would have been confiscated, but there was too much going on and nobody was interested. There were no children, and so it was taken over by Ernesto’s much younger brother, who was not much more than a teenage boy at the time. That was Tonio’s father, Alfonso. When he died, Tonio took over. A few years later he changed the family name and started calling himself Bosco. I suppose if you’re descended from charcoal burners, then you may as well call yourself wood.”

  “And the Bartolo?”

  Onesto shrugged. “That came out of the air somewhere. He must have come across the name in the newspaper somewhere. There was a famous jurist called Bartolo—if I remember correctly. Down in Perugia, I think. People laughed, but he didn’t seem to care, and he even put it on a sign outside the property. Somebody painted inverted commas round the name—you can still see them—but that didn’t put Tonio off. Everybody laughs, of course. They think it’s the best joke for a long time. In fact, they’d be disappointed if he started calling himself Poggio. People need somebody to laugh at, don’t you think?”

  Paul found his sympathy for Tonio was growing. He recalled the rather lonely figure standing there, waving goodbye to him as he drove off on his bulldozer. What would it be like to be an object of ridicule? People survived, as they always did. Social outcasts lived through their oppression, somehow got over the exclusion with which they were visited. He remembered a boy at school, a boy called Macdonald, who had been effeminate in his manner and had been mocked as a result. He remembered a conversation he had had with him when he was nine or ten, and Macdonald had said to him, I’m not a girl, you know—they call me that, but I’m not, you know.

  He answered Onesto’s question. Yes, people needed their targets.

  “Not that I laugh at him myself,” said Onesto quickly. “As I said, I rather like him. Poor Tonio.”

  But you did laugh, thought Paul, remembering the exchange with the waiter. But he said nothing about that, and the conversation moved on to what he had been writing.

  “This book of yours,” said Onesto. “What is it? A book for the kitchen? A cookery book?”

  Paul did not want to sound presumptuous, but he was not a writer of cookery books, even if his books did contain at least some recipes. “A bit more than that. It’s about food, rather than how to cook it.”

  Onesto nodded. “Philosophy? That sort of thing?”

  Paul felt that he could not dignify his work quite that much. “Only in a very general sense,” he said. “I suppose the way that people treat their food is a philosophical question. But it’s also an aesthetic question.”

  Onesto mulled this over. “Like the Futurists?” he asked. “Marinetti and his friends?”

  Paul smiled. “They were pretty extreme. And I don’t think I’d agree with them, anyway. For one thing, I like pasta.”

  It was clear that Onesto was pleased that Paul had picked up on his reference. “I used to be interested in Futurism—when I was at college. Futurist literature. Futurist art. I thought it exciting.”

  Paul agreed. “Well, it must have been. Everything they proposed was against the established order. They stood things on their head, and when you’re that age, that can be attractive.” He thought of how he had been when he was nineteen. He had looked for something to revolt against, but it had been hard.

  Onesto had grinned at the mention of pasta. “They actually argued that pasta made the population lethargic. A heavy, pasta-dominated cuisine created a slow, heavy people; that’s why pasta had to go if Italy was to regain her energy.”

  “Bizarre.”

  “But not as bizarre as their Futurist banquets,” said Onesto. “They went in for strange combinations. Meat and pineapple. Dishes with scents piped over them.” He paused, remembering something else. “And they teamed up with the Fascists, who tried to get people off pasta because the wheat had to be imported. Rice was more Italian, they said. More virile and altogether heroic. Anything about that in your book?”

  “No,” said Paul. “I tend not to write much about new ways of eating.”

  Onesto was interested. “Why not?”

  “Because they don’t last,” said Paul. “The food people eat here—anywhere in rural Tuscany, for that matter—is much the same as the food their grandparents ate. The same mushrooms. The same cheeses. The same sauces. These things last. Futurism didn’t. The anti-pasta movement didn’t get far—the mangiamaccheroni, the macaroni eaters, triumphed in the end.”

  “So they did,” said Onesto. “Thank heavens. Perhaps people started to look at the Futurists’ manifestos and read their claims that museums and art galleries should be demolished because they glorified the past.”

  Paul said that it was always a good idea to read any movement’s manifesto before supporting it, although few people did. “Politicians rely on that,” he said. “They prefer people not to examine Plan A too closely, let alone Plan B.”

  Onesto picked up his newspaper and glanced at the headlines. Then he made a gesture that Paul was not entirely sure about. He understood the common Italian hand gestures, but this one, a twirling movement followed by a quick flick of the wrists was new to him. Dialect, he thought.

  —

  After he left the café, Paul decided to walk a complete round of the village before returning to the Fiore. The heat of the day was now almost entirely dissipated, and the air was limpid and cool enough for comfort. The visitors who descended on the village during the day—bus parties from Siena and Florence—had disappeared, and only a few stragglers, who had made their way there by car, remained. He walked along the path on top of the outer town wall until he reached the church. From the churchyard a path descended the hill through an olive grove. On impulse he followed this along the contour of the hillside, reaching at length another, much smaller church, deserted now and overgrown with creepers, its roof collapsed in places, its windows long since stripped of their glass. In the doorway of the church, carved into the stone of the jamb, was a small slot, like a letterbox, above which was incised the word eleemonsyna, alms. The letters were worn with the effect of the weather, and the slot itself was blocked with the detritus of the trees above—dried leaves, blown seeds, the charity of the winds.

  He touched the stone lettering, and when he looked at the finger with which he had traced the letters, it was brown with dust. Leaning forward, he peered through the split timber of what had once been the heavy wooden door, now thin with rot. He felt the touch of cool air wafted out from the interior of the church—the feeble breath of a dying building.

  The growth around the windows, the intrusive ivy, made it dark inside, but as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he was able to make out the shape of old pews, some upended, others still where they would have been before the last congregation deserted. A cupboard stood against the wall, its door open at a drunken angle. And there was the stone altar, covered by the remnants of a cloth, now no more than disjointed fragments, like thick cobwebs.

  He drew in his breath sharply. There had been a movement—so quick, so brief he could not make it out, but something had moved. He drew back. It could have been anything—a bird, a bat, perhaps even a cat that had wandered down from the village and become feral. And then he heard it. It was a cough.

  Paul turned on instinct and retraced his steps down the path. There had been somebody in the church, and this person, whoever it was, had been aware of his presence. He looked over his shoulder. There was no sign of life, but something made him want to get back up to the village as quickly as he could.

  He thought:
It could be anything. It could be lovers, disturbed in their meeting place, not expecting that somebody would come and peer through the door. It could have been children—boys finding somewhere secret to carry out their boyish plans. It could have been a hiker who had been attracted to the cool interior of the church to catch up on sleep. It was ridiculous to take fright over what was merely an unexpected human encounter, but the desire to get away had been too strong. He wanted now just to be back within earshot of the village, back in the light, away from this place of ancient stone and shadows.

  I Have Deleted the Word Love

  He did not sleep well. The room had wooden shutters, but even when closed these allowed a chink of light from the street to penetrate the darkness, throwing delicate tracings across the room. At three in the morning he was wide awake, staring up at the patterns of light along the ceiling. He was still unsettled—the feeling of unease he had experienced on his walk had lingered, but now this was mixed with a strange sense of anticipation, an excitement at the prospect of seeing Anna again. He had thought about her frequently since they had parted earlier the previous day. He had gone over in his mind everything she had said about herself. He had pictured again the car and her possessions and the way she had looked at him when they had been travelling together on the bulldozer. He tried to remember the exact colour of her eyes—that green, flecked effect—and the way she held her head. And then he sat up in bed—bolt upright—and thought: I’ve fallen for her.

  Paul turned on his light. The finding of a word for an emotion may sometimes help to defuse the emotion, may help to deprive it of its power. If we know we are angry, and find the words to express our anger, our temper abates. If we know we are in love, then that self-knowledge may take the edge off love’s itch. But the words themselves—the words we use in our mind—determine the shape of the thought. I’ve fallen for her is different from saying I’m in love with her.