Since I had a brush with death a couple of years ago, I have often wondered who my far younger wife, Carla, might marry after she has buried me.
When I was out for the count in intensive care in Ravenna, the hospital’s duty priest, an Argentinian, even administered the last rites. “They do it just in case these days,” Carla told me, as if it had all been a bit of a laugh, which I suppose it may well be if you believe, like her, that death is the prelude to eternal life.
The other day, a herd of donkeys came charging into our garden out of the blue and I soon put two and two together They belonged to our nearest neighbor, Gianni, a farmer. Though rather on the short side for a cowboy, Gianni does look and behave like one, with his Stetson hat and red handkerchief tied around his throat.
Gianni not only saves life, he enables it. How could any woman resist such a man?
The five donkeys made a beeline for our donkey, Peppa, who — poor thing — lives all alone. Just like Gianni. Even though separated from her unexpected guests by an electric fence, Peppa was as happy as Larry, swishing her tail and fluttering her eyelashes.
Soon Gianni arrived in his white Suzuki Samurai jeep and jumped out to swagger about with a halter and rope and demonstrate his corralling skills. “Someone must have let them out,” he said. “Who might that have been?” I asked. “I have no idea.”
Within minutes he had the halter on the boss donkey and off he went with the other four obediently following. He would be back later for the jeep. Call me paranoid but I believe he let his donkeys out knowing very well that they would end up paying Peppa a visit and he could ride to the rescue.
It is all part of a pattern. Why, for example, does he spend so much time at the wheel of his jeep processing back and forth along the dirt road outside our house? Or else, worse, prancing up and down on his prize mule, which he won in a game of poker?
What’s that all about? It is not as if the track goes anywhere except to two more houses a mile and half further on. No, he is just setting out his stall, biding his time, waiting for the inglese to kick the bucket.
Another of his donkeys has just given birth to a beautiful baby donkey which the youngest of our six children adore. “If I had not stayed up all night and pulled her out myself,” he announced, “she and her mother would both be dead.”
Gianni not only saves life, he enables it. How could any woman resist such a man?
There are many other candidates on my list of suitors, such as Gabriele, a traveling salesman who lives in Lido di Dante on the coast a mile away. He is popular with women because he is fun and as Carla says: “He listens to them — or pretends he does.”
Lido di Dante has a famous nudist beach and nudists have many sub-species, including voyeurs and swingers, and Gabriele is the expert on what they all get up to. He is the pied piper of Dante’s Beach and able to guide anyone through the circles of hell should they so desire — the closest thing we have to the great poet who, exiled from Florence, wrote The Divine Comedy in these parts.
Carla is a devout Catholic, which offers some protection. She became one only after exposure to me and then insisted I become one too, which I did. Lately, she has been attending quite a lot of funerals as if they were rehearsals. “I love funerals,” she says. “Surely not, why?” I ask her. “They give me hope — or rather what Don Mauro says at them does.” Ah yes, portly Don Mauro, our parish priest. He is the person who perhaps more than anyone knows best — better than me, her husband — what Carla is thinking as he hears her confession. She also communes with him via WhatsApp.
At mass on Sunday, he presided over a beautiful baptism: the parents were an Italian man with a pigtail and a statuesque West African woman. Their two other small children were also present. The church was full but theirs and ours were the only children. Their new child was christened “Dillon.”
The church is a 1970s concrete version of the nearby basilica of Sant’ Apollinare in Classe, which is famous for its sixth century Byzantine mosaics. Don Mauro has been transferred here from there and we have followed him.
The building’s rear entrance is a glass wall and, at a certain point, I and those members of the congregation with plenty to feel guilty about noticed over our shoulders a navy-blue carabinieri patrol car pull up and park just outside. Thoughts of imminent arrest and earthly castigation now competed with those of birth and death, eternal salvation and damnation.
Don Mauro finished the baptism. The congregation applauded. Mass ended after Holy Communion and his concluding words: “Go in peace.” While he held the baby Dillon in his arms for the family photo two carabinieri officers came into the church — but only to say hello to the organist, who was a retired colleague, I found out later.
If it really must happen, it’s a pity it can’t be Don Mauro Carla hooks up with, I thought.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.
