A couple of hours later, having reached the top of the ridge above the village, the whole fantastic landscape to the north opens up before us. Range after range of hills rise one after another to blue mountains. The panorama is vast, hugely open, intensely exhilarating. We stop and gaze. Two rapid reports from a shot-gun, then two more tell us hunters are about, although we have seen not a single wild animal along the walk, heard not a rustle. Bang bang, go the guns. Presumably aimed at some fluttering uccellino. Poveretto, says Vittorina, who enjoys cooking them so much. And, having absorbed the view, we press on toward the little village of Cancello.
When Lucilla retired she sold her cleaning company to a bigger one, but Marisa and husband Leone still work on in a management role. With the decent incomes these two no doubt deserve they have built themselves a house up on the hills. They would have liked to be nearer Montecchio but, unusually for Italians, they chose not to accept the offer of the flat immediately below Lucilla’s. It is to this perversity that the Visentini owe their good fortune in occupying Flat 2.
At first sight, Marisa and Leone’s villetta looks like an English bungalow, for local zoning forbade them to build over a certain height. However the attic is abitabile — liveable — and opens on to a most attractive terrace cut in the roof. The ground floor is spacious and luxurious: tiles, parquet, rugs, two bathrooms, three bedrooms. But this wasn’t enough for Marisa and Leone. Unable to build upwards, they decided to go down. The hills are limestone and easily cut. So there is a basement dug into the rock, comprising a garage for the Mercedes and then a huge taverna with absolutely all mod cons: TV, well-stocked bar, second dishwasher, fireplace of medieval castle proportions (including spit), etc. etc. And still it wasn’t enough. For below that again, two floors beneath the rosemary, chives and minty grass of the hillside above, is the cellar. With bare rock walls, it is clammy, cool and abundantly stocked with wines labelled and labelless, alongside a variety of hams, salamis and sausages suspended from hooks in the ceiling.
Stiff Giampaolo is most impressed by it all. Validissimo, this idea of a second basement beneath the first. The temperature is just perfect. And the wine selection is certainly discreto. Whatever the inevitable ‘relativity’ of the situation may be, he chooses not to mention it in deference to our host.
We climb back up to the taverna. In bright and fashionable halogen lighting hidden in the false ceiling over the bar, I find myself surrounded by antlers, boars’ heads, stuffed grouse and the like. And fleetingly I wonder what the same kind of people in England would aspire to. Perhaps the sort of showhouse I blundered into in South Wales on holiday last year: a simplified, wood-frame copy of some grand Victorian original, with twee furnishings, imitation Laura Ashley curtains, glass-covered bookshelves boasting leatherbound editions (surely fake) of Shakespeare and Dickens, and very sophisticated naughty underwear laid out on the pink silk lookalike counterpane in the masterbedroom.
But Leone and Marisa do nothing to hide their humble origins. They speak a broad dialect which I can’t always follow. They have no cultural pretensions. If the floor is paved with a warm red cotto, it is because they like it. Likewise the designer tiles in the bathroom. They happen to like them. They have the money. And they are incorrigibly jolly as they serve us the usual abundant Sunday lunch of a pasta dish (al pesto), followed by various boiled meats and fatty red, quite delicious cotechino with polenta and salad. Then the inevitable tiramisù. And cheeses. A piece of Parmesan to sweeten the mouth? A piece of seasoned Piave? Or would you like some sheep’s cheese? And now fruit of course: uva moscata, kiwis …
We are sitting around a table designed for thirty odd. There are photographs of big parties on the wall. But Leone’s booming voice and merry stories make up for the lack of numbers. The wines come and go in the usual sequence, as they must: a Bardolino novello for the aperitivo, sharp and fresh from the vines, a smooth Barbera to bring out the flavour of the meat, a blood-red sickly Recioto for the sweet. And now a glass of grappa appears beside your coffee. There’s giggling, backslapping. Even Vittorina is light-hearted, despite, at one point, some low-voiced conversation with Marisa about a Madonna who has been seen to cry recently in a church at Colognola Veneta. ‘What about some chestnuts,’ booms the incorrigible Leone. ‘Chestnuts, chestnuts.’ He’s gathered them himself in some wood further north. Italians have always been off gathering or picking something for themselves. The chestnuts are placed over the grate on a sort of frying pan with holes, then wrapped in cloth in a basket and handed round. No salt. That would push the pressure up terribly. But another cork is pulled. It’s all hugely pleasant and at the same time far far far too much.
‘Troppo, troppo gentile,’ Lucilla says at the door, appearing to forget that this is the girl she brought up as her daughter. Troppo gentile. Buxom Marisa in Sunday best winks at the others. Leone goes down to get the Mercedes.
But surprisingly, the seventy-year-old ladies are all for walking back. They don’t want to be taken in the car. So we set out mid-afternoon in an atmosphere of dazed merriment and with a great deal of extra ballast to work off.
There is a lot more traffic about now as people return from their Sunday lunch in the surrounding trattorias. But not everybody is going straight back to Verona. Here and there, as we cross the road to follow the path, we find cars have pulled off the tarmac to park in the fields, and, while mother and children walk about looking for mushrooms, flowers and herbs, papà sits in the driving seat listening to the radio and nervously cracking his knuckles. Or alternatively, papà does go off walking with his wife and children, but all the while holding a tiny transistor to his ear, cracking his knuckles against his thighs. An elderly and very well-to-do couple stroll by: distinguished, snooty almost, arm in formal arm, mohair coats, traditional hats. But the man has his trannie at his ear. And he is biting the corner of his lips.
They are listening to the local football game. Across fields and slopes, it comes from behind, in front, above, below you — the sound of a nasal voice commentating play with the very same pomposity Lara is presumably supposed to bring to La verità nella filosofia, nella matematica e nella fisica. I overhear something like: ‘The dynamic oscillation of mid-field deployment with interchangeable roles in zone configuration is indubitably sound when considered from an exclusively tactical perspective, but perhaps the precariously semi-advanced position of the two centre backs which this inevitably entails is not entirely suitable to the psychological tension in which players understandably though, it must be agreed, regrettably, approach a game that could prove the watershed of this intriguing championship.’ It’s bewildering and I for one certainly haven’t the faintest idea what it means. But people are listening intently enough. After all, this is the place where the choice of referees for next week’s games is announced together with political scandals and spiralling national debt on TV news headlines. The little radios hiss and crackle between the olives. Sunday afternoon. Verona are losing. Faces are long and severe.