Why do people live in cities? The Man poses to me this morning. We are walking side by side through the beige streets of Lecce, a university city in the south, to one of the twenty-two chiese1 to sit in and think about things other than Catholicism. When I let myself think about Catholicism and the structures it engenders, I find my head hurts in the same way as when I think about out of space, which is to say there is an incomprehensibility to it all I can’t wrap my head around. Though I enjoy sitting in them all the same. So does The Man, who poses the question a second time. I suppose people usually move for easy access to employment, school, university, and social support. Exactly, he says. Then: how many of those things are relevant to us right now?
There are only two people inside the large baroque structure: an outdoorsy French couple who move around the space seriously. It is a relief, I think, to be off the tourist trail, and move around a city in which people’s lines of work do not concern the tourist exclusively. I hear a shutter going off and look around to see the French man is in possession of a digital camera, which has a lens that seems excessive for a holiday. Though maybe this is the kind of camera you need to capture the ornateness of these spaces, I reason. I slide into a pew, so my head falls back, and my mind wanders to the time my feet were the itchiest they’d ever been. It is stability, permanence, and connection I crave this morning. We have one month here, a breathing period, in which we will hopefully find a place to live. This is what we have said we will do all along only now it is upon us, I cannot see how it will be executed.
Em calls. I tell her five minutes, pull on some clothes, and disappear to the local park. I have not stepped out of the house today and I notice the sun, for the first time since we stepped off the aeroplane, is strong on my body: too strong for the pants and thick jumper I am wearing. All nine of the benches I can see are occupied by people basking in the novel heat. There is an occasion of thawing in this small urban garden today as if we have all gathered to witness the ushering in of primavera2. Meanwhile, Em speaks of home: of Autumn, Daylesford, and the pine mushrooms she pulled out of her own garden this morning. The park is divided into aisles. In the aisle I am sitting, schoolchildren who look the same age as Em’s son are being taught road safety by teachers and policemen. It is the same demonstration I recall sitting through when I was in primary school. I’m not sure why I am surprised by this. It is as though up until this moment, I have failed to recognise living in this country involves the same tedious processes and protocols as living in my home country, or any country for that matter.
The Man sits down opposite me with an omelette and declares he is not eating carbohydrates for the next few days. It’s 11.30 in the morning, and his shirt is still wet from exercise. It is true to say our days have developed a degree of asceticism in contrast to the months of tourism whereby we practiced a kind of abject hedonism. I do not pay much attention to his comment for two reasons: to notice it might mean I might accidently internalise it but also because The Man renounces things often, too often for me to take seriously anymore. A phone alerts and we both reach for our respective devices. Since our Road to Damascus moment regarding city living, we have been inquiring about rentals along the coastline. Tomorrow, we will walk 2.5 kilometers to the most inexpensive car rental dealership in the area and move along the coast to inspect seven potential homes.
I step out in my walking clothes just in time for the city’s glory hours: a two-hour window when the two-story limestone buildings turn gold under the low sun. I move slowly through the old town, and the masses of people taking passeggiata3. This is the last passeggiata I will take here as tomorrow we will move to our new home: a coastal town of only 2400 people. While I walk, I rehearse grammar with Paul Noble. I am trying to put into practice all I have learned up until now. There are many errors, which Paul assures me is okay. I stop when I reach the Piazza Sant’ Oronzo because of a group of almost adults performing a choreographed dance. They are indifferent to passers-by. Instead, the group engages with a camera held by their friend. They are capable dancers; every move is perfectly synchronised. I watch, for four minutes, their bodies move through the complicated sequence and marvel at their capacity to remember it all. When they finish, they receive a small round of applause from the ten or so of us who have gathered to watch. I wonder if the other audience members feel as awe-struck and incompetent as I presently do. I continue on my walk, this time dragging back to the beginning of the Paul Noble chapters I just fumbled through half-heartedly.
The weekend is spent collecting, organising, and signing all the things required of two people moving into a new home. As the house is temporary, we must be considerate about what we acquire. Only things we really need, The Man says repeatedly while we navigate the aisles of Happy Casa4. And, checking out, I recognise we really do not need much beyond the basic items our landlord has provided. We buy a salad spinner, a good knife, a yoga mat, a wine knife, and a dry-goods pantry. Our first evening at la nostra casa5 is strange: different from how I imagined it would be. There are no paintings on the walls, soft linen, or cushions. There is no bath, daybed, or indoor plants. But there is space, and there is time. When I put my suitcase away, I am reassured by the fact I will not be reaching for it for six whole months. I step out onto the narrow street and follow the sound of people until I am standing in the local piazza6. I walk to its edge and am confronted by a panoramic view of the Adriatic Sea. The sight of the broad, blue horizon is pacifying but also, I think I am only just now comprehending what we have achieved. We raise our wine glasses at a bar owned by a man named Antonio, they touch, and I can’t help but wonder what it is we are toasting, what it is these next months have in store for us.
After one week, I feel the outside world dissolve and I come to see what we were toasting is a period of disengagement. I go to sleep and wake up turning over what I will do with all the space and time now it is here in my lap. I am seized by competing desires to master the language, explore the region, integrate into the community, cook slowly from scratch, read all the pages, and write that book. There is a sense, a deeply held belief, that there should be an output of some kind, something to prove and show of our time here. Gradually, people notice us and wonder why we have not moved on like the tourists we look like. These people approach us on the street, at the bar, and in the supermarket. It becomes clear few speak English and despite prefacing we speak little of their language, they resume, expecting us to magically gain comprehension if only they speak a little quicker, gesticulate a little more, and grip us a little firmer by the shoulder. These people do not seem to care for the same luxuries as those back home, which is to say fine dining, lengthy university degrees, and large insular homeownership. It is the interpersonal and mundane details that matter here: the small canvas in-betweenness of being alive. I come to learn there is a term, Campanilismo7, which describes the mood I often feel while moving around our cittadina8. The product of Campanilismo is a sense of comradery in the most basic of tasks including walking down the street, filling a shopping trolley, watering plants, or, simply, occupying a bench in the piazza.
One morning, after a swim, a dainty leathery man engages me. He tells me his name is Mario and he has seen me here often, that he and his friends admire my backstroke. Mario is a retired economics professor and lives in that pink house over there, he says pointing to the only pink house in the distance. It becomes clear to me that Mario knows everyone and everyone knows Mario. When I order my caffè con ghaccio9 next to Mario, I feel the waiter’s approval on my body and understand from this moment on my experience at this café will be fundamentally changed. Each day, Mario and his friends occupy the same concrete step at the local marina. Next to them, I watch the day unfold from my towel and I am reminded of the many occasions I sat in front of the fire of my family home with a glass of wine in hand flicking through blown-up photos of Slim Aarons’ Italy whose pages I now feel immersed in. It is difficult to read amidst the chaos of people catching up, and I give in. I am impressed by the bold bright male costumes and the way people don’t look twice at large or old bodies in tiny bikinis. Behind my sunglasses, I wander my gaze over the disposition of the skin containing these people. There are so many scars and stretch marks as well as bright blue maps of varicose veins. It’s the scars that interest me most: the way they reference something that was for a time so central to the person’s life. A time, I imagine, when they were in pain and maybe quite afraid.
I come to know, from a distance, a group of men who conglomerate in our local piazza from morning until evening. They range from middle-aged to elderly. When I am sitting at Antonio’s bar, I postulate, either to myself or The Man, what it is they are talking about, and why they conglomerate here each day. Eventually, we secure a car, an old Fiat Punto, which belonged to a member of the Carabinieri10. The tires are bald, the boot doesn’t open, and the power steering fails often, though we love the Punto for what it opens to us. Each week we climb in and explore another one of the region’s peculiar, forgotten towns where I am presented with similar scenes to our own piazza. There is always a group of men occupying benches, smoking cigarettes, and anticipating -or digesting- the next or last meal presented to them. It is not uncommon to see some of these men with a tracheotomy pipe where their larynx used to be. These towns are different from the images people readily associate with this country, which is to say the La Dolce Vita captured by Slim Aarons. Instead, the images are reminiscent of the working-class Rione Luzzatti.11 In these towns, the homes contain not much, the dinners plated are simple and seasonal, and the days are as long and slow and interpersonal as they are repetitions of one another.
In anticipation of summer guests, I arrange to have my legs waxed. Manuella, the beautician on our street, is a taut, petite woman of indeterminate age. I study her three visible tattoos while she works, specifically: the thin chain around her middle finger, from which hangs a cross. Next to this is a real ring, a gold band. Manuella must see me studying the rings as she offers information, unprompted, regarding its significance. She does this via her Google Home Device, which we have to rely on for our small staccato conversations. Every time she wants to communicate something to me, Manuella declares ‘Hey Google’ as if Google is a teenager in a room above us she is summoning downstairs for dinner. She tells me her husband and two sons live in Milan, that she also used to live and work there but she has returned to the cittadina to be close to her parents, who are old now. We take turns making the commute up and down – down and up – to see one another, she says. I study her, trying to discern if this arrangement is a point of pain for her or if she enjoys the geographical space from her husband. I ask her if she prefers the cittadina or Milano more and she sighs heavily, giving the impression this is something she has been contemplating a great deal in isolation. She tells me she used to prefer Milano but as she accumulates more years behind her, the cittadina seems to increasingly offer her what she needs. Milano non è tranquillo12, Manuella says. Up in the north, people are constantly planning, worrying, and working. The days churn you over and out as if you’re in an overfilled washing machine. Whereas down here, people value the most mundane aspects of daily life. What’s shocking is I used to resent it and I went to great lengths to get away from it, but now here I am looking at real estate, the Google Home device repeats aloud in an Americanised English.
Heat occurs in a wave that does not feel like it will ever lift. The media dons the extreme period of heat: Dante’s Inferno13. We have an air conditioner, though I can’t bring myself to turn it on. Not after standing on our terrazzo and watching the Vigil del Feuco14 collect Adriatic water in its belly to drop on millennium-old olive groves across the valley. Instead, we turn off our hot water system and get used to cold showering, assembling and eating dinner in our underwear, and retrieving a rotating towel from the refrigerator to drape over ourselves. Mario et al disappear from the marina, telling us they will return in September. Their absence, along with the peak of estate15, gives way to hundreds of holidaygoers. I venture down to the marina between the hours of seven and nine only, then again after six. It is difficult to get a seat at Angelo’s bar, to order an ice cream from Martinucci, or to swim a lap without encountering a body on an inflatable. I observe a stark difference in the conduct of the locals compared to the tourists who move through holding a phone or looking up a restaurant. The tourists appear to approach various aspects of the town as a creative opportunity, I think, to further their self-creation online. The Man disagrees and says I am too cynical, that it is not our town to territorialise. I think of Mario and friends, and the lady who knows I like the piccolo pomodori16 still hanging on the vine and the butcher who sells me thirteen uova17 and bistecca spessa18, but also of my suitcase under the bed.
When I wake this morning, it is the first day of Autumn. We are now in our fourth month and the bare walls no longer perturb me. In fact, they feel normal. So do our basic living spaces, which we have found small ways of making our own. I bob a teabag in boiling water and consider if Mario might have returned. I open the daily forecast and am pleased it offers a reprieve: it will be a top of just thirty-one. On my descent to the water, I pass a sun-kissed gentleman in a dirty white singlet selling his produce on a corner. I stop and ask if he will be here much longer. He shrugs and tells me he moves to a different spot when this one dries up. Fair enough, I think. Further down, I pass another one. Their trays display similar items: cime di rapa, pumpkins, kales, table grapes, persimmons, and pomegranates. The trays, I realise, are a visual display of autunno19. A man who I often see sitting waist-deep in the water insists I have one of what he calls caramelli di mare20 today. I oblige and try not to gag on the salty muscle as it moves down my throat. You can eat the urchins too, he tells me, but only the females because the males are vuoto21. I laugh at the allegory, but he just looks at me blankly. I thank him and dive underwater before I am subject to another. On my way back, the trays have reduced dramatically in size. A domani22, I say to the sunkissed gentlemen hopefully. I continue the uphill walk home and experience a sharp pang of Campanilismo knowing that most people in this town are cooking with these ingredients tonight. Why do people live in cities? I wonder.
- Churches ↩︎
- Spring: March, April and May ↩︎
- A leisurely and destinationless stroll, usually taken in the evening, with the intention of socialising and street bathing ↩︎
- A large homewares store, which sells everything ↩︎
- Our home ↩︎
- A public square or marketplace, they are considered the center of public life ↩︎
- Derived from the old notion: ‘our campanile (belltower) is taller than yours’. The term speaks to a sense of collective pride about one’s habitat. ↩︎
- A place bigger than a village but smaller than a city ↩︎
- Espresso with ice ↩︎
- Police force ↩︎
- The working class zone where Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend is set. ↩︎
- Milan is not calm ↩︎
- Named after Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century epic poem The Divine Comedy, which descibes Dante’s journey through hell under the guidance of Roman poet Virgil. ↩︎
- Firefighter aircraft ↩︎
- Summer: June, July and August ↩︎
- Baby tomatoes ↩︎
- Eggs ↩︎
- A thick cut of steak ↩︎
- Autumn: September, October, and November ↩︎
- Sea caramels: a non-typical form of mollusk found on the rocks of the local marina ↩︎
- Empty inside ↩︎
- Until tomorrow ↩︎
Yellow Days 