The Reluctant Tuscan Read Online Free PDF

out.
    â€œOoops.”
    â€œDamn circuit breaker,” Dino muttered as he steamed toward the door to the cellar. “Of course, that’s Italian.”
    â€œHow soon can your son get over here?” Nancy asked.
    â€œOooofff!” Dino replied, as he barked his shin on a coffin-shaped coffee table.
    â€œWe’d like to bring our stuff over this afternoon,” I said, “if we can agree on a price.”
    â€œI can’t get ahold of Rudolfo till maybe Friday,” Dino said, rubbing his shin.
    â€œFriday?” Nancy said through chattering teeth.
    â€œHe’s up at his Buddhist retreat all week.”
    â€œTell you what,” I said. “Throw in a cord of firewood and a couple of miner’s helmets and we’ll move right in.”
    I was trying to lighten the moment, but Dino was not amused. He proceeded to share his bitter disappointment over a son who had turned away from the One True Church to become a Buddhist. The fact that Rudolfo was thirty-four years old, lived at home, and had no job or education didn’t seem to bother him. But this Buddhist thing . . .
    Dino broke down and wept, sobbing through his nose with big theatrical gasps like a clown in a Verdi opera. I was constantly unnerved by the penchant Italian men have for spontaneously bursting into tears. The last time I remember crying I was nine years old and Bud Thomas had just split my lip for calling his sister a skank. I didn’t even know what a skank was. It was something I had heard on Mod Squad .
    â€œLook, Dino,” Nancy said, as she rubbed his heaving shoulders, “we need to check out of our hotel. How much do you want?”
    â€œUn milione tre,” Dino said with sudden dry-eyed clarity, all thoughts of errant Buddhist sons forgotten.
    I winced at the word million , but Nancy explained that many Italians still give you a price in lira. She then countered, saying that it was a little steep for a house that was cold and dark enough to grow mushrooms. We went back and forth, and after half a bottle of Chianti, we agreed on a price.
    What seemed to cap the deal was Dino’s unexpected offer to pay for all the phone charges. And considering how much long distance and Internet we used, that could be considerable. We shook hands, and I counted out cash in the darkness. Dino handed us the keys and left, banging into the table he was born on with a painful yet cheery “Oooofff.”
    But as were gloating over the deal, we discovered that the house had no phone, nor any outlets to plug one in.
    â€œIt’ll be okay.” Nancy flashed her best Jiminy Cricket smile. “We’ll buy an Italian cell phone and use the Internet café in the piazza.”
    â€œYeah, it’ll be fine,” I said, casting a wary eye at Scheherazade, who had suddenly appeared in our doorway with a dead bird in his mouth.

4
    Castagne
    W hatever visions of sunny Italy you harbor, I humbly ask you to put them aside as I testify that in the days that followed, Nancy and I endured a bone-penetrating cold so relentless that no amount of wool socks, thermal blankets, or space heaters could make a dent in it.
    The house we rented from Dino was essentially an uninsulated stone box sitting on a concrete slab. Without central heating, the interior was a full fifteen degrees colder than it was outside. And even though it was the middle of May, it was plenty cold outside. I was uncomfortable but surviving, thanks to the ancestral layer of body fat gifted to me by my midwestern forebears. But Nancy was suffering. Growing up in southern California, her blood had turned to orange juice, and she was physically incapable of surviving cold weather unless she was on a ski trip.
    The nights were the worst. I awoke once at three in the morning with leg cramps from knotting myself into a ball. I looked over to Nancy, who was lying on her back. She had completely covered herself in a dense layer of blankets. The only