He’s dreaming of Italy again. A seductive CNN video and a Forbes article recently revealed that in Biccari, a small town in Southern Italy, houses are for sale for 10,000 Euro, about $12,000 USD. Biccari is in the mountains of Northern Puglia, and is a two-hour drive to the closest city and major airport (that would be Bari: population 325,000). Biccari itself only has about 1,200 residents, and is surrounded by mountains and lakes, where the residents like to picnic on local artisan wine, cheeses, meats and bread. Except for a short, sometimes snowy, winter, Biccari looks like a fantasy.
And that’s just what it is: a fantasy, though he could actually borrow the money from his retirement fund. (He’s always been better at fantasy than reality.) Still, it’s a long shot. He knows this, even as he cuts and pastes the mayor’s email address, composing a letter in his head. Senore, I am sure you’ve had thousands of inquiries, but I wonder, how does one go about acquiring a beautiful little casa in Biccari?
He remembers the trip to his grandparents birthplace in Corleto Perticara, how he took the train to Potenza, (not far from Biccari, really, nothing is very far away in Italy). How he rented a car and wore that cute new jacket with the hood, the one he had purchased in Amsterdam the year before. How he and his third cousin somehow managed to communicate, though his Italian was rudimentary at best, and her English was non-existent. They could have been siblings: the same light eyes, the milky skin, the wavy light brown hair.
He met the only other gay person in town (the florist, of course, it was a cliché made for an old movie), and he remembered how on his way back to Potenza he stopped to let a flock of sheep cross the windy road, led only by a dutiful border collie; in the distance he could see the nearby hilltop towns. Why would anyone ever leave here? he wondered. But then he remembered this rented Fiat, and his little jacket, and for the first time he understood that his grandparents had wanted more for him.
He thought of what it would be like to actually live there: six hours to Rome, one gay friend, his cousin’s beau working the swing-shift at the plastic bag factory. There was fresh pressed olive oil; they sent him home with that, and a big bottle of homemade limoncello, but how long could he be happy in such a place before getting bored or cynical, or becoming the subject of salacious gossip? Back then, he had wondered and worried over this, just as he did now, dreaming of Biccari. The quiet streets and the campanile with those dependable bells, the ubiquitous old men in the square, the promise of a quiet world with less traffic, less technology, less stress. Maybe a garden with a lemon tree. A little dog. And a cat who is good at catching mice.
The writing prompt that inspired this post is the poem, “Odessa,” by Patricia Kirkpatrick
The Catalyst 