Read Online A Small Place in Italy by Eric Newby - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Eric Newby
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house in it for the first time, ‘la mia padrona’, my boss.
The descent to I Castagni round the bend below Signora Angiolina’s house turned out to be fraught with difficulty, even with a short-wheelbase Land Rover. It was a very tight and narrow bend with a tree on its inside edge which stood in relation to the bend itself as the central support does in a spiral staircase, while the outside edge of the bend overhung a steep bank about twenty feet high. At the foot of it there was a vasca , a common object in rural Italy, a large rectangular basin lined with cement, used for rinsing clothes, with an inclined marble slab at one end to squeeze and wallop them on. Its water supply came from a spring and was brought to it by a pipe in the bank which had a cork in it to conserve the supply. Whether it belonged to Signora Angiolina or someone else was not clear; but at this time, so far as we were concerned, nothing connected with I Castagni was clear.
On this first descent to the house in the Land Rover, trying to keep as close as possible to the inside of the bend, I contrived to get the rear hubcap hooked on to a stump on the side of the treewhich made it impossible for me to go either backwards or forwards, or to open the door on the driver’s side sufficiently for me to get out. A ludicrous mishap, of a sort I am peculiarly prone to, but not so ludicrous as the one that befell me the time I was driving from Milan to Venice in a jeep in thick fog and the accelerator pedal fell off.
‘What has happened?’ Wanda demanded in her best Slavonic imitation of the Marx Brothers’ Margaret Dumont, one that for me always spells trouble.
‘We’re hooked on a tree,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to get out, otherwise I can’t get out either.’
She got out, rather reluctantly, I thought, as if she was doing me a favour.
‘What I need is a saw,’ I said, after a closer inspection of what had happened.
‘You can’t cut it down, it may not be ours.’
‘I don’t want to cut it down,’ I said. ‘I just want to cut a small bit off it.’
‘Well, ask Signora Angiolina for a saw.’
‘I don’t want to ask Signora Angiolina for a saw,’ I said. ‘If it’s anyone else’s tree it’s probably hers. It would be the worst possible thing to do, tell her I want to cut a bit off one of her trees, especially when we’re getting on so well. You know what contadini can be like. Anyway we’ve got a saw of our own.’
‘Where is it?’ she said.
‘I put it behind the front seat, the one you’ve been sitting on. You remember you told me not to bring it so I hid it.’
‘I never told you not to bring it.’
‘Well, that’s what I thought you told me.’
‘The trouble with you is,’ Wanda said, ‘you never listen.’
So I cut the offending protuberance off the tree with our saw and covered the scar with a bit of damp earth that was handy.Then, in what looked like unpropitious circumstances as far as our personal relationship was concerned, we drove on down to claim our property across the torrent, by which time the old I Castagni magic had re-asserted itself and we had become friends again. It had been a close thing as to whether we had a row – what Wanda calls a ‘rowl’ – or not and I promised myself that I would make it a priority to reinforce this crumbling outside curve by driving stakes into it with a sledge hammer and ramming in some hard core.
‘Remind me to buy a sledge hammer and a crowbar when we go shopping,’ I said to Wanda.
But of course she didn’t and I never did reinforce the curve even though, although I didn’t know it, there were already a number of hammers, some of them sledge, and a selection of crowbars on the premises. More urgent matters were to claim our attention, anyway, without bothering about a lump of stump the size of a matchbox.
When we arrived at the house a large frog was sunning itself on the wet grass in front of it, completely unafraid. It seemed to
The descent to I Castagni round the bend below Signora Angiolina’s house turned out to be fraught with difficulty, even with a short-wheelbase Land Rover. It was a very tight and narrow bend with a tree on its inside edge which stood in relation to the bend itself as the central support does in a spiral staircase, while the outside edge of the bend overhung a steep bank about twenty feet high. At the foot of it there was a vasca , a common object in rural Italy, a large rectangular basin lined with cement, used for rinsing clothes, with an inclined marble slab at one end to squeeze and wallop them on. Its water supply came from a spring and was brought to it by a pipe in the bank which had a cork in it to conserve the supply. Whether it belonged to Signora Angiolina or someone else was not clear; but at this time, so far as we were concerned, nothing connected with I Castagni was clear.
On this first descent to the house in the Land Rover, trying to keep as close as possible to the inside of the bend, I contrived to get the rear hubcap hooked on to a stump on the side of the treewhich made it impossible for me to go either backwards or forwards, or to open the door on the driver’s side sufficiently for me to get out. A ludicrous mishap, of a sort I am peculiarly prone to, but not so ludicrous as the one that befell me the time I was driving from Milan to Venice in a jeep in thick fog and the accelerator pedal fell off.
‘What has happened?’ Wanda demanded in her best Slavonic imitation of the Marx Brothers’ Margaret Dumont, one that for me always spells trouble.
‘We’re hooked on a tree,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to get out, otherwise I can’t get out either.’
She got out, rather reluctantly, I thought, as if she was doing me a favour.
‘What I need is a saw,’ I said, after a closer inspection of what had happened.
‘You can’t cut it down, it may not be ours.’
‘I don’t want to cut it down,’ I said. ‘I just want to cut a small bit off it.’
‘Well, ask Signora Angiolina for a saw.’
‘I don’t want to ask Signora Angiolina for a saw,’ I said. ‘If it’s anyone else’s tree it’s probably hers. It would be the worst possible thing to do, tell her I want to cut a bit off one of her trees, especially when we’re getting on so well. You know what contadini can be like. Anyway we’ve got a saw of our own.’
‘Where is it?’ she said.
‘I put it behind the front seat, the one you’ve been sitting on. You remember you told me not to bring it so I hid it.’
‘I never told you not to bring it.’
‘Well, that’s what I thought you told me.’
‘The trouble with you is,’ Wanda said, ‘you never listen.’
So I cut the offending protuberance off the tree with our saw and covered the scar with a bit of damp earth that was handy.Then, in what looked like unpropitious circumstances as far as our personal relationship was concerned, we drove on down to claim our property across the torrent, by which time the old I Castagni magic had re-asserted itself and we had become friends again. It had been a close thing as to whether we had a row – what Wanda calls a ‘rowl’ – or not and I promised myself that I would make it a priority to reinforce this crumbling outside curve by driving stakes into it with a sledge hammer and ramming in some hard core.
‘Remind me to buy a sledge hammer and a crowbar when we go shopping,’ I said to Wanda.
But of course she didn’t and I never did reinforce the curve even though, although I didn’t know it, there were already a number of hammers, some of them sledge, and a selection of crowbars on the premises. More urgent matters were to claim our attention, anyway, without bothering about a lump of stump the size of a matchbox.
When we arrived at the house a large frog was sunning itself on the wet grass in front of it, completely unafraid. It seemed to
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