For Keith, my silver and green
Cast of Characters
Main Characters
Chiara · The owner of Bar Birbo, she therefore hears all the rumors and secrets.
Edo · Chiara’s nephew who works at Bar Birbo
Luciano · A retired schoolteacher.
Massimo · The women in his life are Anna, Margherita, Giulia, and Isotta.
Anna · Massimo’s mother.
Elisa · An 11-year-old girl who struggles in school. She is Fatima’s best friend.
Fatima · A 12-year-old immigrant girl from Morocco. She is Elisa’s best friend.
Magda · Moved to Santa Lucia from Germany years ago with her husband who has since disappeared in Thailand.
Isotta · A transplant to Santa Lucia from Florence.
Fabrizio · A mysterious stranger.
Patrizia · Chiara’s best friend who helps her husband, Giuseppe, in his butcher shop.
Villagers
Ava · Santa Lucia’s guerrilla gardener, perennially unlucky in love.
Bea · Santa Lucia’s source of fresh eggs and fresh gossip.
Giuseppe · Patrizia’s husband and the maker of Santa Lucia’s famous chicken sausages.
Sauro · Santa Lucia’s baker.
Giovanni · The joke-telling owner of the little shop on the piazza.
Concetta · Elisa’s mother, married to Carlo with two sons, Guido and Matteo
Arturo · Older villager who is sure his French wife is cheating on him.
Rosetta · The school principal.
Paola · The owner of the fruit and vegetable market.
Marcello · The town cop.
Dante · The mayor.
Stella · The mayor’s wife and Chiara’s childhood friend.
Vale · The town handyman.
A Note on the Italian
Italian words in the text are followed by the English translation or can be understood by context. For interested readers, there is a glossary in the back of this book.
The Last of September
On the crest of a hill, surrounded by glimmering olive groves, lies Santa Lucia. It is a typical Italian hill town, if smaller than those on the tourist trail. Even if you have never traveled to Italy, you no doubt have seen enough movies with lush soundtracks and sweeping camera work to have an instant picture in your mind—imagine stone arches framing panoramas, exuberant locals fiercely debating the chance of rain, and the scent of rosemary floating high above ancient streets. As you stroll through flower-lined alleys, it is easy to assume that Santa Lucia is as serene as it appears. But life here is like life anywhere, and the town’s idyllic facade masks love, betrayal, scandal, innuendo, mystery, romance, and heartbreak.
Rest easy, none of that will mar a passing visit to Santa Lucia. Those travelers who merely stop by will notice the light before anything else. Of course, there aren’t all that many visitors to a village this removed from Rome or Florence, so rarely will you hear voices raised in wonder at the shimmering air. Only one tourist has gone home and attempted to describe the light: “like sky warping upon meeting land.” He rubbed his temples and abandoned the attempt, as well as his fledgling dream of writing poetry.
The villagers themselves stopped remarking on the heavy, churning light generations ago. Nowadays, their voices intertwine with its fluctuations without their awareness. In the morning, the cadence of their greetings rises with the honeying of the golden air. They pass each other on their way to their jobs as gardener, teacher, baker, and shopkeeper, their voices lifting, “Buongiorno!” The lilt on that second o. They knot together in the street, gesturing at the billboard in the town comune announcing another possible strike, before separating with a staccato, “Ciao! Ciao! Cia-o!” Honestly, they sound like Bea’s clutch of chickens celebrating the approach of a food pail. Meanwhile, the glow pools in alley corners and gleams from the alabaster stones tugged from the Apennine mountains.
The light swells and shifts throughout the day, until it is a rich blue in the late afternoon, almost navy. As if the ink of night were dipped onto a paintbrush and touched to the watery air of Santa Lucia. Conversations mute, as the cobalt sheen sinks into the town. Even when the old women gather on their plastic chairs under stone arches while sorting greens, their voices blur, in time to the gathering blue of night.
Yes, the opalescent light certainly makes dusk a stirring time to visit Santa Lucia, but it must be said that Santa Lucia is at her best, her most tourist-ready, in the mornings. Especially if you stand right here on Via Romana. From this spot you can watch as the painter and the butcher meet in the street and angle into Bar Birbo. As they continue their debate on the proper care of olive trees during this unseasonable drought, they fishtail their hips to create space at the bar. Chatter continues to the beat of shaking sugar packets, with a final plunk as Chiara serves each espresso with a smile and an “Eccolo,” here it is. Her crescendoing welcome twines with the luminescent morning. With a nod, they acknowledge the arrival of white cups of dark and nutty coffee before resuming their discussion. In mere moments, the new arrivals transform into scenery, as the next pair or trio of villagers meet in the street and nod into Bar Birbo.
It is like this every morning. Every morning save Mondays, when the bar is closed. Bar Birbo has always been closed on Mondays, ever since Chiara’s great-grandfather converted the downstairs of their ancient palazzo to serve coffee. What had been a desperate attempt to resolve his family’s financial crisis became the jewel of Santa Lucia (after the falls, of course). Bar Birbo, the villagers crow at any opportunity, had the distinction of being the first bar in the zona. Yet, even though the bar’s giorno di chiusura hasn’t changed in almost 100 years, the people of Santa Lucia still stop and gape, confused, as they propel a friend by the arm toward the waxed wooden front of Bar Birbo, only to find the door shut tight. Their eyes drift upward to the open window of the residence above the bar, where Chiara is undoubtedly making
