Living in a Foreign Language (21 page)

“I asked her to tango,” said Martin. “And that was it. The moment I touched her and we began to tango, I knew that my life had changed forever.”

Karen had to return to her dance company in Philadelphia; Martin followed and stayed as long as he could. They
both shed their other relationships. For a year they carried on a long-distance romance and one day—in a moment of reckless frustration—he proposed to her. They were married in Philadelphia and then continued their bicontinental existence, with Martin's work keeping him in Germany.

He asked her if she would ever consider moving to Europe so that they could be together.

“I told him that I had three more pieces I wanted to create with my company,” Karen said. “Then I'd be ready to retire from dance.”

So Martin left his architecture firm in Germany and came to the States to be with her. He found a job in Philadelphia and finally moved in to live with his wife.

“I was known as ‘Mr. Bamonte' in Philadelphia,” he told us, referring to Karen's last name. “She was well-known there and I was the husband. I liked it, actually.”

After Karen had finished the work she had committed to do, they looked about for a place they wanted to live. Karen didn't want to settle in Germany, which was fine with Martin. They were both drawn to Italy, where Martin had lived for a time, becoming fluent in the language. A friend suggested Umbria, which they visited, staying at the very same Castello di Poreta that had enthralled us on our first visit. They stayed; Martin found work; Karen plunged into ceramics, which she had studied in college, and eventually turned to sculpture. Her current pieces—stunning heads made of wire mesh that seem to float through space—reflect back on her dance background.

Art is a big connection for these two, as much as the romantic side of things. Martin is an abstract painter as well as an architect; he is also a fine classical pianist. They share a taste for music, painting and theater, although frankly, I find
them both a bit weighted toward the dark side. If anything has a light, uplifting theme, a visual image that one might be able to recognize or, God forbid, a happy ending, they're instantly bored with it. It occurred to me that this elevated attitude toward art is one of the things about Martin that gets under JoJo's skin.

Speaking of JoJo, she called just before we left to get Caroline at the train station.

“Are you guys still speaking to us?” she croaked over the phone.

“Of course. Why?”

“Well . . . sometimes the grappa makes us do funny things. We didn't do anything funny, did we?”

I suppressed the image of the Lindy.

“Funny? No, I don't think so. I don't really remember much, to tell you the truth.”

“Oh, that's a relief. How ‘bout Jill?”

“Jill remembers everything. Want to talk to her?”

She passed, discretion being the better part and all.

We collected Caroline, who seemed very happy to be back in the bosom of her family again. She was adamant about the fact that no one could ever be as exciting, entertaining or just plain fun to be with as us. We agreed and noted that it was nice to have her off with friends every now and then, as she always came back appreciating us all the more.

Because of our hike commitment, we decided to simplify lunch by stopping at one of the
porchetta
stands along the Via Flaminia. As we speak, the powers that be are building an autostrada, or superhighway, that will run north from Spoleto to Assisi and Perugia and take all the tourist and truck traffic off the Flaminia so that the road can return to
its more local, rural personality. But for now the big semis roll along it pretty continuously day and night—except for a break at lunchtime, when they pull off to the side and partake of the delectable offerings of the many
porchetta
stands along the route.

The
porchetta
vendors are actually trucks themselves, but all rigged up to be rolling delicatessens. You can get salami (or
salumi
, which is kind of the plural of salami) or tuna or sausage—all decked out on a fresh, crusty
panino
. But the star of the show is the
porchetta
, which is an entire pig that has been slow-roasted the night before and carved generously before your eyes onto the
panino
, salted and wrapped in a piece of butcher paper so that half of it is temptingly hanging out the end, then handed to you out of the back of the truck so that you can eat it leaning up against the guardrail while watching the traffic zip by.

A porchetta truck

Making panini

Our favorite
porchetta
truck is usually parked on the west side of the Flaminia just past the entrance to the Tempieto di Clitunno—an ancient Roman temple marking the source of the Clitunno River. Its proprietress is known locally as Miss Tunisia because that's the country from which she hails. But moments after she crossed the border she fixed herself up with a dye job, pierced various parts of her anatomy and, in the Italian style, exposed her belly button for all the world to see. She is a caution, and she knows it. She has a sly, sexy sense of humor and uses it to flirt outrageously with her customers—including me—and she slices a mean pork sandwich in the bargain. No surprise that she has the truckers lined up for kilometers all along the Flaminia.

One thing the drivers stop for—besides the chance to peek down Miss Tunisia's tank top—is a quick shot of
caffé corretto
to help them cope with the morning traffic. This can
be literally translated as “corrected coffee”—the correction being a healthy shot of grappa poured into the brew. So keep this in mind the next time you think about swinging out into the passing lane on an Italian highway.

The secret of the
porchetta
sandwich—besides the consummate freshness of the pork—is the crackling that gets doled out meticulously onto each sandwich. Crackling is, of course, crisp-yet-juicy, intensely flavored pieces of pork skin. Yes, we are talking about fat here; I won't deny it. But this is the kind of fat that's very good for you. At least emotionally.

We parked on the other side of the road because the big trucks had cornered all the space both north and south of Miss Tunisia. We patiently waited in line and watched her flirt outrageously, carve meticulously and dole out with a generous hand the grappa that goes into each small cup of the truckers' espresso. When it was finally our turn, she greeted us with the enthusiasm of a long-lost family member and took our order. We watched her carefully pile a good half-pound of fresh-sliced roast pork, laced with crackling, onto each crispy roll, wrap them in paper and hand one out to each of us. She told us to pay her later because she knows you need both hands to handle the sandwich. Then we tucked ourselves in protectively between two huge semis and had the best lunch money can buy. Fast food Italian style.

We picked up Martin and Karen around three and headed up the steep, narrow road toward Pettino, which is a charming but tiny village—small enough to qualify as a
borgo
, except for the fact that it has a quaint trattoria cut into the hillside that apparently attracts quite a good crowd on weekends. Martin directed us past Pettino, which sits at 1,000 meters above sea level, up the hill toward Monte Serano, which was where we'd be hiking. Monte Serano reaches 1,429 meters at the summit. I asked Martin if we'd be needing oxygen at this level and he answered me quite seriously that we wouldn't, my attempt at irony sailing right past him.

Karen

We parked the car to the side of the road and climbed over a barbed-wire fence, trespassing onto a cultivated field, and started hiking up toward the summit of Monte Serano. It was a serious climb and my thighs rebelled almost immediately. I also had trouble catching my breath, the second bottle of grappa taking its toll on me now. Caroline, of course, leapt ahead with Martin, who looked very professional in his hiking boots and shorts, while Karen hung back generously with Jill and me. We schlepped up the hill for an hour or so, with Martin calling back to us the names of the
flowers, which were incredibly beautiful. It was like an endless carpet of color.

“Do you see the orchids?” called Martin, who is an amateur botanist as well as a mountain goat.

And indeed there were orchids everywhere. Yellow, purple and pink orchids, and in between them were blue flowers with tiny petals in the shape of a sphere.

“Globularia!”
cried Martin from above. “The Latin name for the blue flowers is
globularia!”

As if I gave a flying fuck what the Latin name was.

We caught up to Martin about twenty minutes later at a particularly steep section, where he and Caroline were staring at something on the ground.

“I am very excited, I must tell you,” said Martin, his face flushed with the fervor of discovery.

“Tulipa sylvestris!
It is a wild tulip that I have never actually seen before except in a book!”

We looked at the flower, which had six pointed petals, yellow inside and brown outside. It looked like a tulip. Mostly, I was thrilled to be able to stop climbing.

“And look at this!” cried Martin, truly enthused.
“Fritillaria!”

He was now poking around in a shrub, separating the leaves so that we could see a little flower inside.

“In Germany it's called the checkerboard flower. They are extremely rare.”

The flower, which was exquisite, had a bell-like shape with beige and purple sections that indeed looked like a checkerboard. Jill and Caroline were cooing over it like girls and asking Martin the names of everything, when Karen—who admitted she wouldn't know a daisy from a gladiola—tapped me on the shoulder and pointed out to the horizon.
We had all been looking down so intently at the flowers that we had forgotten where we were.

Mountain after snowcapped mountain stretched out as far as we could see, making our little Monte Serano seem like just a bump. And dominating them all was Monte Vettore which, at 2,476 meters, was the highest peak in the Sibilini chain. Directly in front of us, framed by the mountains, was a small incline that led down to a flat meadow, filled with flowers.

“Oh God,” said Jill, “I've always wanted to do this.”

She stretched her arms out and ran down the hill to the meadow, and as she reached the bottom, she whirled around and around and starting singing, in her exquisite lyric soprano, “The hills are alive with the sound of music. . . .”

Julie Andrews, eat your heart out.

T
HE DAY BEFORE WE LEFT
we met with Martin, JoJo, Nicola our contractor and Sophie, who would be doing the landscaping when all the construction was finished. We sat under the pergola, went over the budget and looked at the little Rustico for the last time. Nicola had brought some samples of
pianelle
for us to choose from.
Pianelle
are brick tiles that are the traditional flooring in Umbria. He showed us a brand-new one, then a new one made in the old manner so that it looked antique and, finally, a real antique. There was no question what we wanted—the antique tile had rich red and ocher running through it that simply couldn't be duplicated. He said he thought he could find enough to at least do the new entranceway and
salotto
.