A Small Place in Italy (20 page)

That year the rest of the so-called holiday in Italy was a nightmare, and so were many succeeding ones, with Arturo passing in front of our house with his tractor dragging agricultural instruments, trailers full of manure,
bigonci
and sometimes jeering members of his clan, the tractor smashing the flagstones on which our table stood, which he always removed and never replaced. On one occasion he actually picked up the table while we were eating our midday meal at it. All we could do was inform our lawyer of the latest developments and keep the bloody diary. But we got bored with it after a year or so and gave it up. Meanwhile Arturo and his wife always used the other route to go down to their property and back on foot, as the distance was much shorter.

‘Et in Arcadia ego,’
was what Wanda said on one occasion when we were being further humiliated, practically blind with rage.

Years later, neither of us can now remember how many, a meeting took place at I Castagni at which were present the protagonists – the Newbys and Baldinis, a Sicilian judge, the two opposing lawyers and an impressive number of witnesses, those on Arturo’s side all testifying that the right-of-way in front of our house had always been open to agricultural vehicles, and this was the only way Arturo could get from his farmyard to his barn. Our lawyer chose this moment to produce the photographs we had taken of Arturo driving his tractor with a loaded trailer in tow up the other track. At the same time all the Dadà and Signora Angiolina testified to the fact that Arturo was not telling the truth when he said that the road down to our house had been bulldozed years ago by a man named Baretti who was from the Canis’ village, Castelnovo ne’ Monti. By this time it was obvious that the judge was not pleased at having such small fry attempting to pull the wool over his eyes, after having been used to dealing with rather more imposing characters in his native island, and we felt we had scored a small but important point and that far away on the horizon there was a glimmer of hope, but one much smaller than a man’s hand.

The following day Wanda drove to Castelnovo ne’ Monti. There she tracked down Signor Baretti, the driver of the bulldozer, who told her that he had only worked with it on the main road to Fosdinovo and had never set eyes on our house or the torrent in the whole of his life; and he said that he was willing to testify in Sarzana to this effect, providing someone paid his fare. We had to wait seven years before we could call him and it was lucky for us that after so long he was still alive.

Arturo’s rather unstrict regard for the truth even brought down a condemnation from Attilio. He made a pronouncement,
urbi et orbi
, to the effect that if this right-of-way for agricultural vehicles existed, and Arturo knew about it, and the owner of the house,
Signor Botti, knew about it, which he didn’t, why didn’t he, Attilio, know about it. After which he withdrew into one of his innumerable shells. Signor Botti then testified in a rather quavering voice, due solely to age rather than awe of the judiciary, that there never had been any such right-of-way.

One would have thought that Signor Botti’s testimony would have been enough to sink the opposition and bring the matter to a speedy conclusion but this was Italy where, at that time, the law was in a similar state of demoralization as it is in Britain today.

The next confrontation took place in the
Tribunale
, the Law Courts at Sarzana. Present at this meeting was another judge, the Sicilian having died from natural causes since our last coming together up the hill – a pity, we had rather liked him – and the two opposing lawyers. Present also were those witnesses who had not yet sunk into the tomb, or been so discredited that they were of no further use. Witnesses of any sort were becoming a bit thin on the ground. As we were setting off to drive to Sarzana for this meeting we were asked by a Signor Lazzari if we would give him a lift down to the
Tribunale
as otherwise he would be late for the proceedings. He and his wife had been among the guests at Wanda’s dinner party and up to this time we had always helped them with their
vendemmia.
It was only when we got to the
Tribunale
that we found out that the reason why he had been in such a hurry was because he was going to act as a witness on Arturo’s behalf.

This was the meeting, when Signor Lazzari had just finished testifying that a road across the torrent had been bulldozed by Signor Baretti, that Wanda’s star witness from Castelnovo ne’ Monti, Signor Baretti himself, was produced and any chance of Arturo winning this terrible case was finally extinguished.

After this it would not have been unreasonable to hope for a speedy conclusion to this Dickensian, Dodson and Fogg kind of
litigation: but although judgement was promised, and there was very little doubt about what the outcome would be, more years were to pass before it was actually handed down, in spite of the efforts of our lawyer who, with the passage of all these years, had become an old friend.

What was intolerable was that, without a judgement being handed down, Arturo still continued to exercise his right-of-way through our property.

Eventually, when we were in the depths of despair about
La Causa
, which was the Kafkaesque name by which we had come to know it, judgement was given against Arturo who had to pay all the costs of an affair which had taken fifteen years to resolve. We did not feel like celebrating what was a Pyrrhic victory if ever there was one.

A short time later Arturo died and it was not until then that we discovered the reason why he had been so keen on acquiring the right-of-way. Apparently, he had had the intention of getting permission to knock down his barn and build a house which would require a right-of-way to get to it. Arturo’s own right – of – way included a section which was not his property and the owner of it was not prepared to cede the right-of-way to him. And there was no other route available to him.

Eventually, the barn was converted into a house and the whole business of the right-of-way showed signs of starting up again; but by that time we no longer owned I Castagni. So passed Arturo.

It was one spring, the day after we arrived at I Castagni from England, that Signora Dadà died. She was the wife of Signor Settimo Dadà, the ex-member of the Alpini who had fought in the First World War. It was he who, together with Attilio, had set up the pergola outside our house which now, with wild vines proliferating over it at a tremendous rate, provided us with blessed shade when we ate outdoors. Trying to separate one lot of Dadà from another was like being in a hall of mirrors.

The Signora died at the age of eighty-six after a long illness. And when we asked Signora Angiolina what would be the most appropriate way to pay our respects to her – this was the first death of anyone in the neighbourhood with whom we were acquainted – she said that our presence would be much appreciated at the
veglia funebre
, the vigil or wake, that would take place that evening, the night before the funeral, and would last the entire night, to
‘benedire la defunta’,
to ask God’s favour for the dead woman, was how she put it.

It was quite dark and beginning to rain when we crossed the torrent which separated our property from that of Signor Settimo and went up towards his house by a succession of steep, winding paths through a series of minute fields, most of which were planted
with vines and vegetables. Tonight the light in the yard had been turned on to guide any mourners to it who were coming to pay their respects and it was now visible as a blur in the general murk overhead.

When we finally reached the house and gained admission it was so full of people that it looked as if it was about to burst at the seams. Besides Signor Settimo, Signora Maria, Signor Settimo’s eldest daughter, who was married to Signor Orfeo, the one who had been in Russia with the Alpini in the Second World War, there was Signora Anna, Signor Settimo’s youngest daughter, and large numbers of relatives and close friends; and as a very wetting rain was now falling no one wanted to be left outside.

This was the first
veglia
I had ever attended, whereas Wanda had been to many, and although of course I didn’t know it at the time, it was to be an almost uncanny facsimile of those that took place when, some time later, a contemporary of Wanda’s mother, in Slovene Nunča Pahorča, pronounced Nunsa Pahuzza (Nunča in English being Aunt), died in what was an Italian part of the Carso – the limestone country inland from the Adriatic – at the age of ninety-three. And it was more or less identical, apart from the singing, which was much better in the Carso than here in Italy, with my own mother-in-law’s
bedenje
, the Slovene equivalent to a
veglia
, when she died at the same age, some years after that.

The Signora, dressed in deepest black, from black lace
velo
to black felt slippers, was laid out in an upstairs bedroom in a black wooden coffin of the sort that was still being turned out on the production line in the
pompe funebri
at Fivizzano. She lay in it on her own linen sheets, part of her dowry some sixty years previously which she had kept unused in a bottom drawer ready for this particular eventuality; in her crossed hands a rosary, her features waxen white, like those of the lace-makers at Lucca.

At each of the four corners of the bed on which the coffin
stood, a tall candle was burning, and at the foot of it there were sprigs of box and a receptacle containing holy water. Around the walls, sitting on benches and chairs, a tight fit, were a number of women, old and young, and a few elderly men, one of whom, wearing a black tie, was Attilio. The women were reciting the rosary and, when they had finished, they talked about the deceased and her virtues and good things they remembered about her, some of which were funny and made them laugh. And from time to time they had a little drink of good white wine. And this they would continue to do, in relays, for a great part of the night.

And now, to pay our respects, we each took a sprig of box and dipped it in the holy water and sprinkled it over the corpse, and then after a bit we went downstairs to clasp the hands of the bereaved and have a drink from a bottle of Scotch malt whisky which Signor Orfeo had bought in Sarzana for the purpose.

The following morning, which was cold and clear, the coffin containing the body of Signora Dadà was carried up to the road from the house by a party of four men who were either relatives or friends, and there it was loaded into the van, all that the
Municipio
of Fosdinovo seemed able or willing to offer for the funeral of a lady of modest circumstances.

Modest or not there were a lot of people ready and waiting to take part in the procession up to Fosdinovo where the funeral service was to take place. The men were all wearing black ties and many of them were dressed in black, as were the majority of the women. Almost everyone we knew around I Castagni was there, including Attilio, and as soon as the coffin was loaded into the makeshift hearse everyone fell in behind it. The priest who was leading the procession was the good-looking young man whom we had never seen before who had succeeded the old one with whom we had careered round the ramparts on our first Good Friday at Fosdinovo, and who had recently retired.

Now, flanked by a couple of acolytes who had been given special leave of absence from their school down at Caniparola so that they could perform their functions, he took up his station in front of the hearse and gave the signal to advance.

And now we were off with the van, which seemed to have a wonky clutch and to be on its last legs, juddering up the hill in first gear, and behind it, stretching away down the hill and around one of the hairpin bends, the column of mourners, like a long, black, undulating snake.

About half-way up the hill from I Castagni to Fosdinovo the van gave a final shudder and conked out completely, emitting a strong smell of burnt clutch. It was a grotesque thing to happen on what was otherwise a dignified, solemn and moving occasion, although it was difficult to expunge the memory of another disastrous rural funeral in the film
Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday
.

But no further grotesque happenings were allowed to mar the occasion and the four men who had carried the coffin from the house to the hearse now slid it out of the vehicle, lifted it on their shoulders, and carried it up the last half-mile or so to the Church of San Remigio, with the women reciting the rosary and the men the
Requiem Aeternam
, in low, rumbling voices that sounded like distant thunder:

dona eis Domine

et lux perpetua

luceat eis …

Up through what had been the Porta Genovese, the lower of the two gates of the town before it was destroyed in the last war; up past the Signora’s hotel and the butcher’s shop and the Oratorio dei Bianchi, from which we had set out with Attilio; and up to
San Remigio with a big bell tolling overhead, the number of those taking part in the procession increasing all the way to it.

There in the church the young priest conducted the service in a manner which everyone agreed was both
solenne e familiare
.

After this the final journey began: with the priest and his acolytes still out ahead of the coffin which by now had a new band of bearers – as a hernialess male I had rather expected to be recruited into it myself; then up through the town, along the foot of the walls of the Castello and out through what is known as the Porta Fiorentina, the main gate, so called, rather confusingly, because it actually led out to the road that eventually took you, not to Florence but to Fivizzano, which was originally in Florentine territory, hence the name. We then crossed a causeway to the junction of three roads: the road from Caniparola, the one leading to the Foce il Cuccù and Fivizzano, and the Strada della Spoverina which wound its way from Fosdinovo through the steep, densely wooded foothills of the Apuan Alps to Carrara.

Near the meeting place of the three roads was the cemetery and there, after a brief service of committal, the remains of the Signora were finally laid to rest in one of a series of what looked like giant marble filing cabinets which enclosed the cemetery and which had other parallel avenues of them leading off on either side. In them every occupant had his or her allotted space, the length and breadth of a coffin, one above the other and cheek by jowl, and into one of these the bearers now slid the coffin containing the Signora. And so that there could be no confusion, the details of who was in a particular file were carved on the marble door in black lettering and a photograph depicting the deceased was reproduced on a porcelain plaque.

And there she was left with the flowers and a little oil lamp that would burn as long as anyone who knew her was left alive
to keep it alight. And that night there would be hundreds of these little lights burning in the cemetery to keep her company.

Although none of us knew it at the time this funeral was an historic event. It was the last time that a procession on foot would accompany a coffin up to Fosdinovo. From now on, if anyone died, those who followed behind the hearse did so by car.

The following week the priest came down the hill and blessed all the houses and their occupants, including I Castagni, which was the custom once a year. Afterwards he always stayed on to have a drink and a chat. This, he said when we first met him, was his first command as a parish priest but although he had been full of trepidation about how he would be received, everyone had been very kind to him. The only thing that was really troubling him was not important but he intensely disliked the cold blue-grey colour of the interior of his church, San Remigio, which he described as
molto triste
, a judgement with which we were both inclined to agree.

However, he went on, when it came to choosing another, warmer colour, although the funds were available for what was a badly needed re-painting whatever colour was chosen, various factions declared themselves, each of which had a different colour scheme in mind, and this did not take into consideration the quite large number of his parishioners who liked the colour it was painted and appeared to be ready to fight to the death against any re-painting at all unless it was carried out in the same shade. Subsequently, it was Kenneth Rowntree, the painter who had attracted the derisive laughter of Arturo, and his wife, Diana, who devised a colour scheme for the church at Fosdinovo which delighted the priest and satisfied everyone else.