At Home : Letters from Italy at the time of Coronavirus. Story Four : Furore.

“It is such a delicate moment”.

So wrote me this evening Debbie. I had said to her earlier how I felt that life had, in just a week, altered to the point of unrecognizability, and that surely we must emerge from this with the opportunity to have learned great lessons. I said it was our species’ last chance to get it right. She agreed that this was the frightening truth.

Two days ago I spoke of the three daily customs that many Italians can now set their watches to : the noontime applause for health care workers and the 6 PM bulletin from the Ministry of Health with the newest coronovirus figures candidly reported. Each extra death feels like a nail through the heart of Italy. And then the spontaneous evening concert, also at 6 PM, provided from windows, balconies, terraces, roofs and gardens. Upbeat Volare was last night’s musical selection, and when at seven I called a friend in Emilia Romagna to invite her for a virtual aperitivo, she was still singing this evening’s choice, Tanto pe canta’ (1970, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMSOLwv3ZOU), a song that is engaging and fiercely cheerful. Her son, six, accompanied her with a tamburine, and they sang out the window of the family’s aceto balsamico storeroom.

She refused to despair, she said, despite the fact that many people she knew were in Intensive Care at the Parma hospital. “We’re praying.” And “let us finishing our singing and then I’ll call you back. You get the wine bottle ready in the meantime”.

There is a fourth daily custom, a new one, and my friend Lucy, a journalist who is both Italian and American, described it to me like this : “Just now at 9 PM we all went out on the terrace or balcony with flashlights and made as much light as we could. I think the whole neighborhood does this, all coordinated, to make the darkness seem less dark. It was very moving !”

She continued : “You know, in a country known for its non sai chi sono io <trying to pull rank over others>, the complete civil obedience of Romans and Italians is truly amazing.” And then : “I agree it’s time for a virtual glass of wine together.”

Wine brings to mind Giocondo, mentioned in yesterday’s story, a 62 year old from Furore on the Amalfi coast. Giocondo is normally a mountain goat when, several times a day, he sprints up and down the 192 stairs from the road to his house.

Except that these days he is not often running up and down the steps. He has no need to, since when the self quarantine began, he carefully stocked his larder with provisions gifted by his neighbours across the stairs, Cristina and Uberto, and to these added a few purchased items. He also ensured that his own olive oil and wine were readily accessible in liter bottles to take directly to the kitchen and table.

Uberto and Cristina are just a bit older than Giocondo. They are close to entirely self sufficient, working their garden for 12 months of the year, keeping a pig and a group of very sociable chickens. Their sons have lived in Australia and Florida, but Cristina and Uberto have told me that they would never make their homes anywhere but Furore.

Giocondo agrees.

During the quarantine he has written me most days, including a photograph taken from his terrace, where he enjoys a glass or two of his own wine with each lunch and dinner.

Today he sent a picture at lunchtime and another at sunset.

And told me about the lunch he had prepared for himself.

“Aperitivo: Aperol mixed with my own white wine with a slice of chinotto <myrtle leafed orange tree> accompanied by a pizza made for me by Cristina. To follow, arborio rice which I prepared with my red wine. I went foraging today for wild asparagus but I am just a bit too late in the season, or perhaps someone got to them before I did. Marjorie, such a shame that you are not here. You would enjoy it !”

Then : “when I was a little boy, everyone was a peasant by day and a fisherman by night. That is how men supported their families, and their eight children. They operated in harmony with nature, and never took too much. They gave back to the earth just as much as they took from it. They followed the cycles of the moon. Without knowing what it was, they respected biodiversity.”

Giocondo has numerous brothers and sisters, and could have chosen to quarantine with any of them, but selected to spend these weeks on his own.

I asked him this evening, at the end of day six, how things were going.

“Oh, excellently. I am enjoying the absolute silence, the freedom from noise. The sound of the sea that I can hear all the way here because no one is driving, no one is using electrical machinery. The depth of the horizon.

You can live like this still, I have learned, and it is a discovery for me. It makes me think of my childhood, when my mother would milk the cow that we kept on one of the garden terraces. That cow was the central part of a woman’s dowry, and my mother cared for the cow with great love and care. She was the creatura cara, the adored creature, because she gave the milk that made her children grow strong. When I was little, and my mother would milk the cow in the evening, I would follow her and take a long stick and try to touch one of the hundreds of bats that would circle high above the great pile of cow manure. That manure was precious, the elixir that made our tomatoes so good.

and nourished the grapes, olives, potatoes, artichokes, fava beans, the many salads, the onions, garlic, peas and all of the other goods of God.

Environmentally sustainable agriculture. The principle element though was that manure, and only now do I realise how important it was. Not today’s manure but that of a cow who was nourished with excellent food. I remember what milk was like then too, its goodness and the perfume… As time went on, manure was considered dirty, something to stay away from, and was substituted with chemicals. Can you hear me screaming out Mamma Mia ?”

Today was not a good day statistically. There are 27,980 diagnosed cases of coronavirus in Italy, 13% more than yesterday. Threehundredfourtynine Italians died yesterday, and 2749 recovered. 1851 persons are in Intensive Care, a jump of 10%. This is still a virus whose full force is focused in the north, with for example only two deaths in Sicily but 1420 in Lombardy.

Tomorrow Italians go into their seventh day of at-home-quarantine. We will be in touch with Nicoletta, who lives in the Lazio countryside, and trains truffle dogs. Her dogs, Grifo and Nebbio, are going out of their minds, she says. Like all Italians, they are not used to strict confinement within the walls of home. She tells them regularly: “Forza e coraggio !” Strength and courage.