I first got to know Lucky when he was begging at the entrance of Montanucci, shortly after I moved here in the fall of 2015. I liked him immediately, so would give him a bit of change daily. He would never look down to see how much I gave him. He’d make eye contact, smile, and thank me. Simple and dignified. Were I to pass again that day, he always avoided greeting so as not to be understood as asking again. “This guy’s got class,” thought I.
After several months in front of Montanucci, he transferred to the entrance of Metà on Corso. The guys there kept his backpack behind the counter so that Lucky didn’t have to worry about it, and when a large delivery arrived, or some other task requiring extra hands came along, Lucky pitched in.
The wineshop caddy-corner from the supermarket eventually started asking him to sweep and wash the pavement around the store from time to time, and I began to see him other places helping out on a casual basis. It was about then that we traded names.
At this point my memory grows fuzzy. Either I had the idea to have Lucky and a compatriot of his named Kingsley help me open my yard in the spring of 2018, or the idea was planted by my American friend Michael, who is also a full-time expat in Orvieto. I do recall at one point Michael and I discovered a shared respect for Lucky, but the order of events fades. However it happened, they showed up one afternoon and we worked together, washing and putting things in order. They talked nonstop. “How cool,” I thought, “I’ve got a couple of guys from Nigeria working in my yard speaking Yoruba; how international, how thrilling, how exotic the sounds!”
After a couple of hours of this, and eager to show off my knowing what the national language of Nigeria was, I asked if they had been speaking Yoruba. They paused and explained, “No, English. It’s the Nigerian national language.” They had wondered why I never contributed to the conversation. Separated by a common tongue.
Since then Lucky has come to clean my house and work in the yard on a regular basis. About two years ago, Michael, who also enlists his help, found Lucky a nice situation not far from town. A friend who lives on a sprawling property had recently lost her husband, was becoming increasingly isolated, and house and garden began to fall into neglect. They arranged a trade; the guesthouse for Lucky in exchange for his services as groundsman.
“This is great, Lucky! You’re becoming a part of the community.”
“I’ve always been part of the community,” he shot back with no hesitation.
Michael knows Lucky’s story, and has shared it with me, but I’m not about to repeat it in as public a forum as this. Suffice to say, it would be turned down as implausibly tragic by even the most sensational of film makers.
This year it has become obvious to me that I am not really up to working the garden anymore, at least not pleasurably, at least not for now. A slow spring allowed it to grow out of control, which placed my laboring in it even further beyond my reach. So I asked Lucky. He came over today. I took him through to explain what was and what was not a weed.
“If it blooms, leave it. Except for that, that, and anything like this, everything else can go. If you have questions, ask.”
“No problem, no problem.”
I went inside to finish a project, and came back out in an hour. Lucky works quickly and well, and except for the obvious perennials, had stripped everything down to bare soil. Including a clematis that was overflowing in blooms.
“It was all dead from this point on,” he explained.
“No, no it wasn’t. That’s just the way it looks this time of year. It was in bloom, remember?”
“Sorry. How about this?” and he waved at a bed of brilliant yellow-orange flowers.
“Leave them! They’re in bloom! But you can cut back the sage, even though it’s still got flowers.”
“Okay, will do.”
Lucky’s Italian has come a long way, and to circumvent the language barrier that English usually erects, I’ve begun to speak with him exclusively in Italian. Today, I forgot. I returned after a walk. He was sweeping up. The orange flowers had survived. The sage was untouched. And isolated under the apricot was a lovingly preserved, if scraggly, milkweed.
It’s okay. I’ve decided to look for a simpler place to live in Orvieto. The joy of the garden – the daily sweeping, the watering, the trimming, and weeding – has turned into a chore. I also no longer want to live on two levels. I’m ready to trade interesting for comfortable. The tabula rasa that Lucky organized will allow the next tenant a free hand to build his or her own garden paradise.
Being separated by a common language yields some inscrutable outcomes. Next time, let them be in Italian.