‘O Dio!’ Rita says coolly. I close my eyes. This is it. Eviction.
‘It means she’s guilty!’ Lucilla is winding herself up into her usual semi-hysteria. ‘Guilty, guilty, guilty! It means she knows she can never win in court. Because the flat is mine. It’s mine. It was built with my money and the professore left it to me, if only they hadn’t destroyed his will. È mio, mio, mio!’
If she switched some of the time and resources presently allocated to cleaning to dental care, it would be much easier to talk to Lucilla at moments like this.
‘So what did you do?’ Rita asks.
I hold my breath.
‘Le ho detto mai — never. Mai mai mai mai. Because she is evil. Maligna! Una carogna!’
And we are safe again. You can rely on Lucilla.
Upstairs my frate indovino tells me that I must be ‘parsimonious with hatred’, as hatred nourishes itself with my blood, my hopes, my life. I also notice that every single page of the calendar carries an ad for a book called ‘Cara Mamma …’ written by none other than the frate indovino himself. On the page for May it says:
‘Looking for a present for your sweetheart and mother-to-be … why not give her the fantastic, CARA MAMMA … It’s worth more than any gold ring … and it costs much less.’
34. Giugno
THE MONTH OF June is breathtaking, mainly because of the poppies. The corn stands thick in the broad fields of the pianura, or bristles in undulating strips between rows of cherry trees and vines up on the hills. It is light green at first, turning a duller, denser colour through May as it grows. Until, with the first truly hot days around the beginning of June, the green is suddenly transformed into a sizzling carpet of red, laid by some magical hand (while you were having your siesta it seems) to usher in the summer. It’s quite overwhelming. We walk for hours up the valley to absorb field after field of it. Or we cycle southwards into the plain. The dazzling, dazzling red stretches majestically away, waving above the corn, miragelike, desperately intense, seductive, screaming life as colours will.
Giuliano and Girolamo are not impressed. It’s a great pity these scientists haven’t found a good spray to get the poppies without damaging the corn, they say. Or I think they say. I can never be 100 per cent sure I have understood these two old farmers. We find them up on the hill with their tractor, dousing the cherry trees one last time before harvest. The marginally younger Girolamo is at the wheel, steering between the terraces; bent forward at 45°, Giuliano stumbles along beside him. From a tank trailed behind the tractor, clouds of filthy-smelling chemicals steam up into thick foliage where here and there ripe cherries peep. I ask Girolamo how he measures the dosages he’s giving. He shrugs his shoulders. He just sprays a lot, he says. They need a lot of spray to keep the maggots out. He comes down with us to mix the next tankload in the farmyard and it’s clear he does so ad occhio, by guesswork. I remind myself I must tell the ecological Giampaolo just to see him shake his head. Giampaolo has now collected a huge number of snails from our sad lettuce patch and imprisoned them in a bucket with a pane of glass on top, but can’t decide if it’s worth the effort to wash and eat them.
Ciliegge avelenate — Poisoned Cherries — proclaim crudely daubed notices in all the orchards from Montecchio to Mizzole, trying to scare off scavengers by warning of noxious spraying. From the sound of giggling children in the leaves, the ruse would appear to be no more effective than the empty tin cans and strips of plastic strung up against the birds. Ciliegge avelenate — when Rita points it out, I am delighted to notice that the dialect-speaking locals have no better grasp of the use of double letters than I do. It should be, ciliege avvelenate.
Bepi doesn’t stock cherries in his shop, because everybody, he says, either has a tree in their garden or steals from the orchards. As usual, his reflection comes complete with a tone and expression which suggest his disillusionment at the local situation (beneath contempt) and his confidence that he is smart enough to keep a step ahead all the same. Indeed, very few of the shops sell cherries. The farmers, it seems, mostly export their fruit to Austria and Germany. They have quotas to meet and the harvest was bad this year, thanks to that late flurry of snow. With the result that, despite all these hills upon hills of orchards, I personally end up eating very few cherries indeed. There are none at Via Colombare 10 of course, because fruit trees are very much a peasant thing, not part of a city person’s garden …
‘How long is it now?’ the woman with the twig broom rushes out to ask, as we return from a shopping expedition. Everyone wants to talk to Rita. There is a ground swell of solidarity which rises with the curve of her belly. We are just a few yards from where the Madonnina is clutching her own son. Beside the statue, a notice has gone up to tell us the name of the builder who will be converting the orchard behind into terraced housing. Like all notices in Italy it gives the reference number, section and paragraph of whatever law it is sanctions whatever is being announced.
‘Another two weeks,’ Rita says. ‘Election day more or less.’
This stout zitella’s brow knits as she thinks and calculates. ‘The full moon won’t be until a week after that. The third I think.’
I smile politely.
Lucilla and Vittorina are disappointed because they are going to be away. Their annual holiday. They have us over to say goodbye and show us photographs of a multi-storied modern hotel on the Adriatic coast north of Venice where they go every year. No more those magnificent adventures — Vienna, Prague — with il professore. Lucilla’s wistful face is clownish this evening behind approximate make-up. The photo shows miles of beach and the usual evenly spaced rows of brilliant sunshades, ten deep, all the same green and purple pattern, like soldiers on parade. ‘The sea air is so good for one’s pressure,’ Lucilla is confiding to Rita. ‘That’s why we go.’ Vittorina, with her rather dazed post-ictus expression and ever thinning hair, manages a faint, squeaky laugh, twisting her mouth. ‘Lucilla only goes for the men,’ she croaks. ‘Sitting in the bar chatting up men in the evening. And wearing her bikini on the beach naturally.’ The image is so bizarre one would like to ask for confirmation. But how? Far from chiding her sister-in-law, Lucilla grins a grin of unqualified self-satisfaction. She has invested a lot in this image of herself as femme fatale. She and Vittorina are a good act.
But on popping downstairs to enquire of Giampaolo whether I can start opening my prosecco bottles yet, it is to find the Visentinis seriously concerned. And precisely about the question of Lucilla and Vittorina’s holiday. Because, yes, sea air is good for high blood pressure, since the atmospherics tend to lower it, so the sea suits Lucilla and always has, but it is most definitely controindicato, i.e., a bad idea, for low blood pressure, which is Vittorina’s more serious problem. Vittorina should really go to the mountains, since atmospherics there tend to raise pressure. Orietta can’t understand why the doctor, who came today, hasn’t explained this to them. There is general agreement that the man just takes his money and runs.