A friend sent me a notice. There will be a spontaneous concert at 18:00. All of Italy will go onto its balconies and serenade itself for fifteen minutes, sort of a national flash mob. I got the message at 17:57, had just come home from shopping, just taken off my shoes, just taken out my hearing aides, and was emotionally prepared for not going out again until my late night walk. And my section of town absorbs sound into its crooked, narrow lanes, so even the closest church bells sound like a Vespa with a bad muffler if my windows are closed. And it seemed ingenuous to go into the street with the single purpose of listening for evidence that others were not going into the street. But it was the most exciting thing that had happened all day, so I pushed in one aide, put on my jacket, and went through the gate in my slippers.
We had three very windy days about a week and a half ago. So windy that it blew the extra key I hide (I won’t give details, I’m naive, but not that naive) out of its spot and… where? No idea. Even suggesting that wind was responsible seemed a bit too innocent. When I discovered it was gone, a week ago, my next door neighbors, Renzo and Patrizia happened to be passing. Renzo knows about the key, so I asked him if he’d seen it.
“Somebody probably took it. Might have to change locks.”
That fed my paranoid instincts perfectly. For the past week every time I couldn’t find something, I imagined a lurking presence with the stolen key – then I’d find the misplaced item and blush.
So, I went through the gate in my slippers, and there, across the way, hanging on a nail that looked almost like it were placed there specially for the purpose, was my extra key. By chance, Renzo was arriving home. We greeted each other two meters apart.
“Look what I found!”
“Where was it?” I pointed. “Well, I guess it was the wind, after all. How’d it get on that nail?”
“Someone must have found the key and hung it there.”
“And it was there for two weeks?”
“I guess.”
Renzo shrugged and laughed in Italian, shook his head. “That was some wind.”
“How’re you doing through all this?” I asked.
“I’m going to the store, the most exciting event of the day.”
We chatted some more, didn’t shake hands or clap each other on the shoulder, rotated around an invisible axis so as not to violate the two meter rule, and went off to our respective evenings. I’d already made two trips to the store, so there was only this blog post to look forward to. Renzo had chitchat with the guys at Metà (PAM) to entertain, still ahead. I half envied him.
By then it was too late for the flash mob, so I turned around and took myself inside.
I had gone once to the Metà on Corso where, having spoken not a word all day in any language, I found myself unable to banter even our simplest routine with Corrado. It was like being in high school again and botching a once-a-week chance to impress the cool kid you wanted as a friend, with the difference that Corrado seemed more disappointed that I was. Home, unloaded, off to the Metà on Via Signorelli for a few things only stocked at that location.
There was a ticket-your-turn machine outside at the door, and three other people waiting to enter. We greeted, I took a ticket (E31) and looked around for a now-serving display. Nothing. I held the ticket up to the couple closest to the door and twisted my face into the “what’s this about” gesture. They shrugged in Italian. Someone came out, the couple went in. More people arrived, asked who was last in line, and happily waited. Standard procedure, all three; the ticket machine, the absence of a functioning number display, the informal and non-linear line self-created by order of arrival.
I spent far too much time this afternoon reading news and posts on Facebook. A couple who had been due to arrive in Orvieto for a month’s stay on Tuesday coming, got stuck behind the lockdown in Lecce where they had been staying for the past several weeks. (If you have to be stuck somewhere, I hear Lecce’s a nice spot for it.) They posted a story of going out for a walk and being told by the police they had to return home. That, too, fed my paranoid instincts perfectly, and I imagined two weeks ahead of not being able to take long walks, a circumstance that would render my body a twitching blob of nerves and locked muscle. Fortunately, Orvieto is not Lecce. Orvieto was a part of the Papal States, and unhappily so, for too long to be that draconian. More significantly, perhaps, it has only two streets wide enough for police to effectively patrol. But the dystopian vision painted kept me indoors for hours. When I finally left the house at 16:00, just to make sure I looked sanctioned, I carried, rather than pocketed, my shopping bag. An afternoon patrol slipped past me and a number of others (who were not brandishing shopping bags) without so much as a turn of the head.
I did take a walk this morning though, almost entirely alone on the streets. I passed Rafaele at the hardware. They were open. Why?
“We sell cleaning and disinfectant products, deemed essential, so are not allowed to close,” he said from two meters away, slipping his mask down from his forehead. That explained why the soap and toothpaste store is open, too.
I walked on Corso Cavour, the shopping district, alone, past businesses with everything in place as if they had been abandoned in too much of a hurry to do more than turn the key. Which is pretty much the case.
I have been saying I wanted to take more meals at home, but I didn’t mean that all restaurants and bars and pizzerias and gelato stores should close. I’ve been wishing there were fewer cars in town, but I didn’t mean people should go away with them. I’ve known that February and March were quiet times for Orvieto, but…
First virus-related death in Umbria today, not the hospital nurse in Orvieto. I trust (and pray) she is improving.