My Italian Bulldozer Read online

  It was a wise choice. As he approached the village he was struck by its tranquil air. There was not much to see—a small piazza, dominated by a public building, a Baroque church, far grander than the size of such a place would normally justify, and a row of tiny shops made up the heart of the village. The trattoria was in the main piazza, its few tables sheltered in part by a couple of rickety umbrellas and in part by a couple of shaped pine trees. From the piazza several narrow alleys led into a warren of old stone houses, while behind the village groves of gnarled olive trees, bordered by the green stripes of a vineyard, stretched up to the ridge of the horizon.

  Paul manoeuvred his bulldozer into the piazza, parking it in a convenient empty space beside the church. As he lowered himself out of the cab, he had the feeling that eyes were upon him, as all visitors to a village will feel, whether they arrive by bulldozer, by more conventional transport, or even by foot. Of course, if they come by bulldozer, then they must expect curiosity to make the eyes upon them wider than normal, and this was certainly the case here. Paul’s arrival reminded several inhabitants that they had been intending all along to leave the house to perform some urgent errand, and out they came, shading their eyes against the light of noon, glancing at this unconventional visitor with as much directness and frank interest as good manners allowed. In the principal shop, the alimentari, the owner decided that this was exactly the moment when she should give her display window a wipe and check on the state of the open boxes of tomatoes she had laid out beside her front door; from the calzolaio, the shoe repair shop that had long since devoted itself to the selling of newspapers, notebooks, and children’s toys, the proprietor emerged on the pretext of getting a much-needed breath of fresh air. Even the village cats, tortoiseshell wraiths belonging to nobody but themselves, seemed vaguely aware that something significant was happening in the human world, and that this might even lead to that most important event in their lives—the arrival of the fishmonger’s van with its candy-striped awning. These cats appeared at the same time as did the people, and it was under all these eyes, feline and human, that Paul crossed the square, pausing only briefly to admire the facade of the Baroque church.

  He sat down at one of the outside tables. From within the trattoria there came the sound of a radio, but this was abruptly switched off as the owner made her appearance. She was a generously proportioned woman, somewhere in her forties, wearing a faded apron. Her hands, he noticed, bore traces of flour, which she dusted off against the apron as she approached his table.

  Paul greeted her, and she returned the greeting before showing him the menu. He looked at it, quickly realising that the choice, however presented, was soup, pasta in various guises, or a single meat course.

  “Of course you don’t need to use the menu,” said the woman. “I can make you other things. We’re not very busy today.” She sighed. “Or ever.”

  Paul smiled, and asked for a caprese salad and a bowl of pasta prepared in the manner of the region.

  She nodded, and then looked over towards the bulldozer. “Working?”

  Paul followed her gaze. “Just driving it,” he said. It would be too complicated to explain, he thought, and nobody would believe him anyway.

  The woman retreated inside, and Paul sat back in his chair, enjoying the silence. The bulldozer had been noisier than he expected, and he was pleased to have a break from the constant thudding of its diesel engine. He looked up at the sky, pale and cloudless, and saw a swallow darting against the blue, a tiny speck of air-borne energy. He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. He was in Italy; he was in a tiny village; he was far away from his normal world and its demands; nobody knew him here; he was free.

  He heard voices, and opened his eyes. Two middle-aged men, dressed in the high-waisted trousers and rough open-necked shirts that served as the uniform of the Italian countryman, had appeared and were seating themselves at the table next to Paul’s. They were followed within a very short time by two women, one of them the owner of the alimentari and another, much younger, from the vegetable shop on the opposite side of the piazza. Paul was aware that everybody was staring at him. They were doing this not in an unfriendly way, but with what seemed like a puzzled curiosity, politely restrained, but insistent nonetheless.

  Paul inclined his head in recognition of their interest. “Buon giorno,” he said, not directing the greeting at anyone in particular.

  This elicited a chorus of buon giornos, followed by a clearing of the throat by one of the middle-aged men. “Travelled far?” he asked, pointing in the direction of the bulldozer.

  “Pisa,” replied Paul.

  There was an exchange of doubtful looks. “On that?” asked the man.

  Paul nodded.

  Further looks were exchanged. Then the other man spoke. “Building something?” he asked.

  “No,” said Paul. “Just passing through.”

  The alimentari woman leaned forward. “You’re not from round here, are you?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “From Rome?”

  Paul shook his head. “Not Rome.”

  “Because we’ve been waiting a long time to get people from Rome,” she said. “They say they’ll come and help us, but do they? They do not. They’re too busy being bureaucrats.”

  “And worse,” said one of the men.

  “And worse,” agreed the woman.

  “Are you sure you’re not from Rome?” asked the vegetable woman.

  The other woman nudged her. “He said he wasn’t. Didn’t you hear him?”

  “He’s not from Rome,” said one of the men.

  “Definitely not,” said the other.

  They lapsed into silence. After a few minutes, the elder of the two men said, “You see, we get hardly anybody coming here to see us. Nothing happens here—nothing, from one year’s end to another.”

  “We harvest the grapes,” said the alimentari woman. “We have an olive crop too, although sometimes that fails.” She shrugged. “Apart from that, niente—nothing.”

  “So a visitor is always welcome,” said her friend.

  “Yes,” said the first man. “Very welcome.”

  The caprese salad arrived, and Paul began to eat, watched silently by those at the neighbouring tables. It was a strange feeling—having his lunch under the eyes of this audience—but there was nothing threatening in the situation and he did not feel uneasy. He ate the pasta in similar conditions and then signalled to the owner of the trattoria that he was ready to pay the bill.

  He stood up. “Well, I must continue with my journey,” he said.

  “One never gets anywhere unless one leaves,” said the alimentari woman.

  This was the signal for all four of his companions to get to their feet. As Paul made his way across the piazza, they walked beside him, as if they were a group of friends seeing off one of their number. When they reached the bulldozer, the alimentari woman reached into a bag she was carrying and took out a small cake, wrapped in muslin cloth.

  “This is for you, signore,” she said, pressing the gift into his hands. “For your journey, in case you should feel hungry.”

  Paul put the cake into his pocket. “You’ve been so kind to me,” he said.

  And suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, he began to weep. He felt the tears welling up and knew that he could not stop them. There was no reason for him to cry—but often our tears have no particular justification; they are tears for something larger about the world than any private sorrow. So now he wept for the whole notion that there should be a tiny village that nobody visited, and that there should be people there who should be kind to a stranger. He wept for the bigger, louder world that shouted such places down; for the loss of the small and the particular, the local and the familiar. He wept for people who had restaurants in which few people ate their lunch, for people who sold cheap toys and newspapers and combs, for people who grew olive trees that failed to give a crop, for people who thought that Rome did not really care about them
. He wept too because he had not really wept over the loss of Becky to the personal trainer, and now at last he could do that.

  And, remarkably, they understood, and the vegetable woman put her arms about him and embraced him and said, “Come back and see us one day.”

  He wiped his tears away, burning with embarrassment over his display. It had been a complete over-reaction to a moment of emotion, and he felt ashamed of himself. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was thinking of other things.”

  “We all cry,” said the alimentari woman. “There is so much to cry about.”

  He tried to smile. “Thank you. But I feel very stupid.”

  “You’ve lost something,” said the woman.

  He started to reply, but became silent, and simply nodded. She was right; he had lost something—something that he had thought he had possessed, but had not. And now a stranger—somebody he had met only minutes before and whom he would not see again—had pointed it out to him.

  They stood and watched as he started the bulldozer. Then they waved as he reversed, turned round, and began to make his way out of the square, back towards the road that led eventually to Montalcino and the room awaiting him at the Albergo il Fiore—the Flower Inn, perched on a ridge at the edge of the village, looking down the hillside to the plains far below. He had not stayed there before, but had walked past it once and had been intrigued by the vision he had been vouchsafed, through the open front door, of two women making pasta in the kitchen beyond, rolling out the long strips of dough, stretching them between their hands like great white rubber bands. Love of what you do is unmistakable in the care with which you do it, whether it is seen in the way in which an artist applies the final touch of paint to his canvas, a master carpenter sands the last touch of roughness from the surface of the wood, or a woman making pasta kneads the compliant dough, draws it out, coaxes it to the right consistency. One day, he thought, I shall come back to this place and stay here. I shall sit in that briefly glimpsed dining room and look out through the window so high on the hill that flying birds are looked down upon from above, as angels and air travellers will see them.

  Shaky and Impermanent Alliances

  He narrowly avoided taking a wrong turning, just in time seeing the road sign pointing off to the right. A motorist sounded his horn and flashed his lights in protest at the suddenness of his manoeuvre, but was silenced and slipped off apologetically when Paul slowed down as if to take issue; such was the advantage of the size, weight, and brute force conferred by the bulldozer. Paul smiled; he had always been a considerate driver, patiently yielding to pushier motorists, allowing others to cut in in front of him rather than insist on his rights. Now, though, he felt tempted to assert himself and claim that priority he had never sought: a fleeting temptation, though, that did not last more than a few seconds—he could never be a convincing bully, even on a bulldozer. And so, as he made his way up the winding road to the hilltop town, he slowed down to let those behind him pass and hugged his side of the road to allow oncoming cars as much room as possible.

  Through the dusty screen of his cabin, he looked up towards the cluster of buildings on the ridge of the hill. Italian hill towns are hill towns with conviction; in other places human habitation may cling to the skirts of a hill, may climb up the lower slopes while leaving the top untouched. Here the Tuscan landscape was dominated by villages and towns that had long ago chosen to occupy the most commanding available positions. The world in those days was a place of shaky and impermanent alliances; the smaller sought protection of the larger, but even the strong being subject to the vagaries of fortune, protectors might not be at hand when most needed. On a hilltop, height conferred military advantage: attackers could be seen a long way off, and could be repelled with the assistance of that most reliable of allies, gravity.

  The bulldozer was slow on hills, and by the time he reached the road’s last hairpin bends, he was crawling along. It was five years since he had last been there—it was just before he met Becky—but he thought he remembered there was a car park just below the town walls. As he crested the ridge he found that his memory had served him well: the car park was exactly where he had hoped it would be. There would be no point in trying to drive the bulldozer through the narrow streets around the Albergo Fiore: these were challenge enough for the tiniest of Fiats, let alone for a large piece of earth-moving equipment.

  The absurdity of his situation now came home to him. On his journey he had been preoccupied with the novelty of driving the bulldozer; now the implications of what he had done dawned on him with alarming clarity. He had come to Italy in pursuit of a period of freedom, and he had lumbered himself with a ridiculously inappropriate vehicle. Had he really imagined that he could use it to visit the places he wanted to see? Had he really seen himself driving off for lunch at some neighbouring village in this yellow monster, with its throaty diesel engine and its great heavy blade? As mistakes went, it was difficult to imagine anything more ludicrous.

  But it was done. Pisa was a long way away now, and he was responsible for the bulldozer until such time as he could return it to Claudio. He could take it back, of course, but that would eat into his working time, and so it made more sense to park the bulldozer and forget about it until it was time to return. He imagined that it would be safe enough: After all, who would be interested in stealing a bulldozer? Car thieves snatched cars, preferably high-powered ones, and drove them off as fast as they could, merging—they hoped—with the traffic; a bulldozer thief, if there was such a person, would have to make a very slow escape and would hardly be inconspicuous…It would be an easy chase for the police, thought Paul—and for a moment he saw the bulldozer with a line of police cars behind it, sirens wailing and blue lights flashing, all proceeding at bulldozer pace. The comic image cheered him, as did the thought that his situation could be far worse. He remembered the Professor’s encouraging words: the important thing was that he was here, exactly where he wanted to be, in a place blessed by everything benign that Tuscany could offer. He would put the bulldozer out of his mind and concentrate on what he had come for.

  —

  The road to the parking place ran down past a bank of modern houses, an afterthought to the ancient town. There were a few cars already parked, and Paul was relieved to see that there would be space. But then he saw the sign, prominently displayed a few yards inside the entrance, with its information about parking charges and the location of the ticket machine. Temporarily abandoning the bulldozer, he walked over to the notice. Immediately he saw that he was faced with a problem. According to the list of charges, a ticket would last no more than three hours, and this meant that between the hours of eight in the morning and six in the evening, he would have to come down to the parking lot several times to feed coins into the machine. And it was far from cheap, the main point of the charges being to swell the coffers of the local commune at the expense of those wanting to park there, almost all of whom would be visitors rather than local residents.

  Paul turned away from the notice in disgust. Tuscany was spacious, and there was no justification for this restrictive attitude towards parking. On his earlier visits to Italy, he had observed that people parked their cars wherever they liked—under trees, on pavements, on the side of the road; now, it seemed an altogether more orderly, somewhat more controlling attitude was making itself felt. This, he thought, must be the influence of Northern Europe, expressed through the diktats of Brussels, where the relaxed Mediterranean approach to life was frowned upon. Northern Europe liked order; Northern Europe wanted people to give receipts, to observe the law, to pay for parking—in short, to do everything that Italy had never really had the inclination to do. Italy got by on centuries-old understandings, on unwritten codes of who owed what to whom, on practices that may have been difficult to identify and explain but that worked. He sighed, and then he noticed something that he had missed when he first arrived. This was a sign, fixed to a pole rooted in a small block of concrete, saying Paid Parking Bey
ond This Point.

  He stared at the notice for a minute or two. If paid parking started beyond it, then, by perfectly reasonable inference, parking on this side was free. There was not much room before the point at which paid parking began—indeed, although there was room for motorcycles, there was not enough for a car…unless, of course, the paid parking notice were to be pushed a bit further into the car park. That would create space for a couple of cars—or one bulldozer—to park free of charge in the now-expanded unregulated zone.

  His eyes moved down to the concrete block. It was not small, and would certainly be far too heavy for anybody to lift. Even two or three men, he imagined, would find it hard to shift; but if one were to have a bulldozer…

  He climbed back into the cab. Looking about him, he saw that he appeared to be on his own. A man who had just parked at the other end of the car park was now walking off towards the town centre; a small van, laden with vegetables, laboured up the approach road, going in the opposite direction; somewhere in the distance, perhaps in one of the olive groves, a buzz saw whined. There was nobody about.

  He reached forward to switch on the ignition. Always have the engine running when you operate the blade…He remembered the gist of Claudio’s advice. He had said something about hydraulics too, but that was just by way of explanation. The main thing was to have the engine running, which he now had.

  He put his hand on the lever that operated the blade. Towards me, up…But the blade was already up, and had been in that position all along. Forward, then…He eased the lever. At first it did nothing, but when he increased the pressure, it started to move. There was the sound of whirring somewhere—perhaps from the hydraulic pump, he decided. This sound increased, and then, very slowly, the blade began to descend towards the ground. He took his hand off the lever and it stopped. Gently he pushed again and it moved once more.