I was in Padua in June 2001, intent on visiting the family in Vada, the seaside town where they have an apartment. I should have booked a train ticket in advance, because there was no possibility of a connection on the Sunday I had chosen for my visit. Every Eurostar train was full. So my last sight of my beloved friend of thirty years was in his room, with the game show in the background.
‘Ha lasciato,’ said Noris, his mother, when I phoned in December to ask how he was faring. ‘He’s left’ – it’s a touching euphemism for ‘dead’.
In January 2002, I was in Rome for a week, meeting up with two Romanian friends. I went to Florence, and bought twelve gladioli – Noris’s favourite flowers – before going to the familiar apartment. Noris took four of the gladioli and put them in a separate vase. They were for Vanni’s room, she said. Would I take them in? Vanni’s books were on the shelves, and on his desk was a framed photograph of him at the age of thirty or so, when he had the world before him.
I chatted with Noris as she prepared lunch. I was offered a glass of wine. There was a grande vuoto (a great emptiness) in their lives, Noris said. Noris and Piero had cared for their demanding first-born – with some necessary assistance from nurses – for five loving years.
I sat down to lunch with Noris, Piero, Dario and Dario’s daughter, Martina. We reminisced and smiled at happy, and indeed silly (the dish of ciondolone) memories. Dario speaks with a thick Florentine accent, and Noris interrupted him once, requesting him to translate what he was saying into Italian for my benefit.
After lunch, I sat with Piero, while Noris – who had been a teacher of Italian, Latin and Greek in liceo – helped Martina with her studies in the dining room. Martina was required to learn a passage of Dante by heart, and Noris was now correcting her mistakes and prompting her when she faltered. Piero and I stopped talking, only to hear the sixteen-year-old reciting the heartbreaking words of the doomed Francesca from the fifth canto of Inferno:
Nessun maggior dolore
che ricordarsi del tempo felice
nella miseria…
(There is no greater sorrow than to remember in misery the happy time…)
As we listened to her bright voice, I looked up to see Piero weeping softly. He was remembering, he said, Vanni the brilliant schoolboy learning those very lines at the same table where Martina was sitting.
Giovanna’s Marshal Tito
Circe was not afraid of other dogs, even those who were obviously untrained or vicious. A snarling Staffordshire bull terrier was less terrifying than its belligerent owner, who threatened to knife me for releasing her into the Dogs Only area while his pet was exercising. I explained, temperately, that I hadn’t seen either him or his dog when I had opened the gate. (I refrained from adding that I had not anticipated meeting two such ferocious beasts in my local park.) I withdrew Circe from the area, as the latterday Bill Sikes, whose beefy arms were lavishly tattooed, continued to abuse me in brutally basic language.
Only Giovanna’s cat had the power to instil terror in the otherwise fearless Circe. This mountainous tabby, whose name was Marshal Tito, first startled her when she was a few months old by suddenly dashing out of Giovanna’s front garden, arching his back, exposing his claws and hissing loudly. Circe let out a yelp and immediately backed away from the angry Tito, who seemed to be defying us to pass. From that day onwards, Circe always came to a determined halt some yards ahead of Tito’s home. I had to lead her across the road – she led me, actually – to the pavement opposite, where the tom cat seldom lurked.
Tito’s life was charmed, as his size testified. He was the most pampered animal in the neighbourhood, often to be seen spread out on the central windowsill, sleeping the sleep of the glutted. Giovanna fed her beloved tabby whenever he indicated that a meal would be welcome, his raucous miaowing silenced with offerings of freshly cooked fish or chicken. Marshal Tito was a gourmand, thanks to her tender solicitations.
I came to know Giovanna in a curious manner. A friend, who lived two doors along from her, told her of my interest in Italy, which I visited as often as I could, and that I spoke Italian. I was putting the rubbish out one morning just as Giovanna was turning the corner, walking stick in hand. ‘Buon giorno,’ she called out to me, and I replied in kind. Then she stopped at the gate and said something truly alarming to me, a stranger. ‘Mio marito non mi chiava adesso,’ she confided. Had I heard correctly? I stared at her in astonishment. ‘Davvero?’ I asked. ‘Si, davvero,’ she responded. ‘Certo.’ She was telling me what I didn’t wish to hear – that her husband no longer fucked her. She had chosen the verb chiavare rather than the more sedate fare l’amore, which would have suggested a falling out of love instead of a refusal to satisfy her physical needs. I was embarrassed by this revelation, though I did not say so. In the years of our friendship, she never repeated it. We talked of different, infinitely sadder, things.