Return to Valetto

thought of Luigi Barzini writing about the Italian family, where, he said, you could always turn for consolation, help, advice, provisions, loans, weapons, allies, and accomplices. There was something primal and unconditional about Italian familial love,

The bell ringer’s green walnut liqueur was famous in Valetto for its ability to strip paint and dignity.

I read aloud from my phone. “‘A cappuccino with low-quality milk … the only good things is the kindness of the bartenders…’” “Are you reading the online reviews?” “Of course. This is a good one. ‘What is gruesome is the disorganization and rudeness of the staff.’ And here’s another. ‘Business lunch with pork sandwich, dirty toilets, and hallucinating prices.’” Elisa let out a laugh. “Internet translations have made Italians sound like lunatics.” “Or like a nation with a head injury. Here’s my favorite one: ‘The collation leaves it to be desired and the girl was alone and in trouble to manage everything. Sandwich was inexplicable.

What other half-buried things did I know about my own grief and wife that, if asked about directly, I could surrender? That for several years I kept Clare’s mobile phone active because I didn’t want anyone else to take her phone number. That during the time before I released the number, I sent her texts from work, only to come home and read them on the phone that was always charging by her side of the bed.

Susan is the opposite,” I said. “She’s big on feelings and insights, though she has an economist’s way with words. When she asks why I’m walking through an abyss of loneliness it sounds like she’s reading a nutrition label.

Was this where my fascination for documented history came from? From a family so afraid of earthly erasure that they couldn’t discard the transcript of ordering two pounds of prosciutto on June 15, 1988?

So much of Valetto is negative space, I thought as I walked along, the conjuring of imaginary forms, but then you turn a corner and see the curled Cs of a dozen sleeping cats in the piazza, the clay-potted geraniums on the edges of stone stairs, the winter rooftop gardens, or the old man in a leather apron walking to the church every hour to ring the bronze bells, and you feel certain that this town of ten will be here forever.

The skyline is beautiful but also desolate and otherworldly. It comes at you by degrees, as you descend the hill, and then suddenly you’re a diver coming upon the hulk of some ravaged galleon at the bottom of the sea.

Milo still sported the same mustache I remembered from my childhood visits—a big swooping throwback to nineteenth-century lumbermen and prospectors. Now speckled gray and white, it curled down to enclose his small, thin-lipped mouth parenthetically. This had always made sense to me, since Milo spoke in asides.

We want history to be a unified narrative, a causal, linear plot that cantilevers across the centuries, but I’ve always pictured it like the filigree of a wrought iron gate, our unaccountable lives twisting and swooping against a few vertical lines.

To set her mind at ease, I looked up from my book and into her Old Testament face. Mia figlia, I said, my daughter. For good measure, I told her in Italian that I was a widower, that it had taken me the better part of five years to remove my wedding band, that Susan was getting her Ph.D. in economics at Oxford, and that I was very proud of her. This information passed through her like a muscle relaxant as she returned to knitting a tiny mauve sock.

in bocca al lupo!, into the mouth of the wolf!

Come see me again. It’s almost my birthday. I’m turning one thousand.

I recommend the habit of eating everything to avoid becoming a burden to your family.

It was wild boar hunting season, when the cinghiali gorged themselves on truffles and teams of dogs and men pursued them through the Umbrian countryside. I had eaten Donata’s wild boar many times over the years; it was marinated in red wine and herbs overnight and then stewed with tomatoes, lard, olive oil, and spices.