A BENCH FOR VECCHIETTA - PART 1

Image:  Laviniapaola De Naro Papa   



It is five years, my Vecchietta, since you left me and six since you gave me a gift that you yourself said I did not want. But now I, Cicciu the carpenter, am making a gift for you.

We were very different, you and I, Vecchietta and when I first came to your house to put up bookshelves – you were always in need of more bookshelves - I had never met a British person, let alone one like you. Fascinated, I asked if I could also come to you for some English lessons, for I had long dreamed of wider horizons. I found you attractive from the beginning but there was an 18-year age gap and when I started inviting you to the bar after our two-hour lessons it was genuinely to get to know you better. And soon I became entranced by your independence, your humour and your deep cultural knowledge and  yes, I started to imagine what it would be like to hold you in my arms.

How, I wondered at night, could a woman from a large city in a country like yours leave everything and come, alone, to live in a small town in Sicily? You spoke the language and had even taught it in your own country and when we went out you tucked into our scacce and arancini* like a local. But I also came to realise that at times you became frustrated, Vecchietta and I wanted to help you.

We are not used to fiercely independent women in Centochiese, Vecchietta and it took me, in turn, a long time to get used to you. You swore like a man when things went wrong and I found it disconcerting at the beginning.

“It's only a word”, you would say and then you would launch into one of the linguistic theories you liked to expound and I was hooked. I hadn't been around people who'd read much, you see.

And the lessons: I continued with them because my life was falling around my feet and I needed a distraction; my marriage was failing and I spent much of the working week living apart from my wife and children. I didn't want to lose them but I longed for someone who would listen to me. As we spent more time together, I began to realise that the someone was you.

Oh, Vecchietta – if only I'd been content with that; if only I hadn't pushed for a physical relationship.... You resisted for months, citing the age difference, my marriage, the fact that you enjoyed my company as a friend. But you felt the attraction too and sometimes, Vecchietta, there is nothing the two people involved can do about such a matter, except the obvious.

*scacce - focaccia bread (plural)
arancini - rice balls 

To be continued

Location: Sicilia, Italia

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE WEDDING PARTY GIRL

Image
The Wedding Party Girl A story for New Year I would see her four or five times a year, usually in summer, as I sat writing in the bar on the corner of my street in Centochiese. Once, I saw her in the hairdresser's, on a Saturday like all the other times, and once in the run-up to Christmas – always with the same group of friends and even in winter, when it gets cold and windy in Sicily, seated outside the bar where those who wished to could smoke. She had the kind of easy elegance that every woman secretly covets and I noticed her first not for the beauty she undoubtedly had, but for this. When she moved she glided, her long dark hair seemed effortlessly in place and her clothes, simpler in style than those of her friends, seemed smarter because of the way she wore them; few, but perfect, accessories, make-up applied by a painstaking beautician to look as if it wasn't there and, most importantly, she wore them with confidence. Beauticians do rather well in Centoc...
Read more

A BENCH FOR VECCHIETTA - PART 6

Image
And so it was that I went on reading, Vecchietta – reading to learn, reading to improve my English but most of all, reading to find, as you had once told me I would, that I was not alone in my sorrow – that others had experienced what I was feeling, lived through grief and regret and found their way through it. I did not go to your funeral, Vecchietta – I knew you wouldn't have wanted me to, for you always said that love should be shown towards the living. But I knew that, one day, I had to go to England, to embrace the land that had made you, to understand what had drawn you back to it and finally, to talk to your sister. She and your brother-in-law were not particularly pleased to see me but they were hospitable and polite. It was far more than I deserved. I saw the garden your room had overlooked, I heard the raindrops on the window and remembered you saying that people would come from all over the world to see sparrows if they were rare. Well, this Sicilian...
Read more

A BENCH FOR VECCHIETTA - PART 4

Image
I had been working on a large and lengthy job in Milan when your long message came, Vecchietta and I read it in the airport just before boarding my flight back to Sicily. Never had a 90-minute flight seemed so long! When I picked up my van at Catania, I decided not to go and see relatives there as I usually do when returning from a trip, but to make straight for Centochiese – and you, Vecchietta. Why, I asked myself on the journey, had I left it so long? Becaue I'm a fool, Vecchietta – yes, I, Cicciu the carpenter, who can fix anything, except my own heart, at last admit I'm a fool. When I left you, my love, I didn't think it would be for all these months – just long enough for us both to cool down, I thought, for my fear to subside. I honestly expected you to call or message me, ask for my help with things – which I would willingly have given – but I'd reckoned without your British pride and your sense of dignity. You once told me that a British per...
Read more