Chapter 57
MARCELLO SLOWED THE CAR, and before I knew it, we were pulling up to a small duplex that sat close to the road.
There was no real yard to speak of and not much in the way of a driveway, but someone had gotten creative and converted what little yard there was into a parking pad for a couple of cars, then buttressed the house with some nice landscaping—licorice plants and sour figs and pretty flowering bushes that reminded me of our azaleas back home but were actually myrtle-leaved milkwort.
I stared at the house through the windshield of the car, already a little in love with the place.
It was totally unassuming but so quintessentially Italian that I could almost convince myself I’d dreamed it up.
The exterior had been painted an almond white that had bleached in the sun, and the roof, which sloped gently in our direction, was surfaced with those barrel-shaped terra-cotta tiles that were ubiquitous on the island.
“It’s cute,” I said, but Marcello didn’t hear me because he was already out of the car and making his way up the path.
“That tree there,” he said, pointing at a small tree with a broad canopy of leaves, “is an apricot tree. Next month, the fruit will be everywhere.”
“That sounds great,” I said, and he laughed.
“Tell me how you feel after you’ve cleaned up the rotten fruit for a year or two.”
I followed him up to a small uncovered porch where two doors with tempered glass windows stood side by side.
Marcello rapped on the second door, and a few moments later an old man, whom I could only assume was Giovanni, threw it wide open. I say old man only because I was twenty-three, and anyone over forty seemed ancient by comparison.
The two men greeted each other like old friends, and Marcello confirmed that I was indeed meeting my prospective landlord. “This is Giovanni Chirri,” he said, and then for Giovanni’s benefit rather than mine, he added, “Mi conosceva quando ero giovane e stupido.”
The only word I could puzzle out was stupid, but I plowed ahead. “So nice to meet you,” I said as effusively as I knew how, and Marcello translated.
“è molto giovane, vero?” said Giovanni, and Marcello told me that he was pleased to meet me, too.
Giovanni beckoned us to follow him inside, where the tour was apparently going to begin in the living room, a small room that faced the street.
He spoke quickly, and I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, so I just grinned at him like a fool, then spun around, taking in the whitewashed walls and terrazzo floors.
I didn’t think the place looked half bad. I mean, sure, there were cracks in the plaster, and I could hear a toilet running down the hall, but I was in no position to be choosy.
There were a couple of pieces of furniture in the living room—a lumpy-looking sofa and a vinyl-clad chair and a floor lamp with a missing shade.
None of it was spectacular, but I knew what was wending its way to us from Charleston, so I asked Marcello if, by any chance, the furniture stayed.
There was some back-and-forth, and Marcello said yes, it could—if Giovanni decided to rent the place to us.
It sounded like the word if was doing a lot of work, so I tried to adjust my expectations accordingly.
Marcello was an unreliable translator. As we toured the apartment, I got the distinct impression he was withholding information I might not want to hear, but then there were times he paused to give me background that Giovanni probably assumed I understood.
Marcello explained, for instance, that because the winters in La Maddalena were so mild, very few of the houses on the island had central heat.
“What do we do when it gets cold?” I asked.
“Put on a sweater,” he said, and I laughed a little nervously.
“A lot of people buy stufette. They’re small portable heaters. Don’t sleep with one on, but they can be good if you want to take the chill off.”
After that, I didn’t bother asking about air-conditioning.
The kitchen, which sat in the middle of the apartment, was nothing like the one I’d grown up in.
There was next to no cabinetry, which meant there were no real countertops.
Everything in the room was freestanding: a teeny-tiny fridge, a stove, and a sink, which had a wall-mounted contraption above it that turned out to be a drainboard and cupboard in one.
I thought of the Christmas china my mother had foisted on me and realized that if we got this place, it was never going to come out of the box.
Off the hall was a small bathroom that boasted a tub—with the same bendy nozzle I’d become so attached to at the hotel—and a bidet, which Paul and I still hadn’t figured out how to use.
The walls were clad in a cornflower-blue tile that was badly cracked and missing in some places, and the caulk around the tub was discolored and peeling.
I was pulling the toilet chain, trying to get the water in the tank to stop running, when Marcello popped his head into the room. “We can get him to fix that,” he said.
As I continued to explore the house, Marcello and Giovanni remained behind in the kitchen, where I could tell Marcello was making our case.
Occasionally, I heard words I recognized or at least thought I recognized: marina americana and turisti and contratto.
By this point, I’d been on the island long enough to know the arguments for and against renting to American military personnel and their families.
We were loud and had a reputation for being slobs, but we paid on time and in cash and had access to imported goods.
More than one American family I’d met paid at least a portion of their rent in cartons of Marlboro cigarettes purchased at the commissary.
There were two bedrooms at the back of the house, with views of the same rugged terrain I had seen on the drive over here. Both rooms were tiny, but one bedroom had a sliding glass door that led to a small garden, and as soon as I saw the garden, I knew that I wanted the house.
The garden was a little oasis tucked between a couple of granite boulders, and when I slid the door open, I was immediately greeted by a fat orange cat who had been sleeping in the shade of a fig tree.
“Hey, you,” I whispered as I closed the door behind me. “You want to show me around?” He stretched, like he was working up to it, and allowed me to run my knuckles along his spine.
Whoever had planted this garden had spent serious time on it.
There were creepers and trailers, big blooms and tiny sachets of color.
I was particularly drawn to an outcropping of bright orange lantana, which was cozied up next to some wild peonies with these gorgeous hot pink flowers.
If I blurred my eyes, I could almost convince myself I was staring at a tin of watercolors.
The cat and I had sat on the patio, warming ourselves in the sun, for maybe ten or fifteen minutes when I heard the glass door slide open. I turned to find Marcello making his way toward me. “It’s beautiful, no?”
“Beautiful doesn’t begin to describe it,” I said. “I could live out here.”
He laughed. “Maybe not in January or February, but the rest of the year, yes.”
By this point, the cat had crawled into my lap and fallen asleep. “I don’t know anything about gardening,” I admitted as I stroked the cat’s ears. “What if I kill everything?”
“Oh, there’s a gardener,” Marcello said, and I immediately loved the place that much more.
“Is Giovanni going to rent to us?” I asked.
“He’s thinking about it. I wanted to come check in with you and make sure the place is what you want.”
“Definitely,” I said without so much as a moment’s hesitation.
“Paul will be okay with it?” Marcello asked, and it’s funny how, until he asked about Paul, I had almost completely forgotten that I was making this decision for two people.
“I think so,” I said slowly. Paul wasn’t going to like the kitchen or the bathroom, and I wasn’t sure how he’d feel about the house being so far from town. But he had made it abundantly clear that he wanted out of the hotel.
“Is there a phone line?” I asked, remembering Mary Lou’s phone tree.
Marcello shook his head. “And I’m not going to ask him to install one. You’ll lose the place for sure.”
“Oh, okay,” I said quickly. “Yeah, don’t do that.”
Giovanni joined us on the patio, and he said something to Marcello about the gatto. I waited for a translation, and when it came, I couldn’t help but smile. “He says that cat doesn’t like anyone.”
I looked down at the warm ball of fluff in my lap. “This guy? No way. He’s a doll baby.”
Marcello shrugged. “Not according to Giovanni.”
“What’s his name?” I asked.
Marcello humored me and said, “Vuole sapere il suo nome.”
“Miele,” said Giovanni.
Marcello was enjoying himself, maybe even knew the way this would go. “Miele means honey,” he told me.
Giovanni was gesturing at the cat and me, then said something to Marcello in a soft voice.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He says if you promise to feed the cat, the place is yours.”