A Day Beginning in Modena and Ending Considerably Further South

We left the city of pale buildings late, which is to say at a perfectly reasonable hour for a country in which the afternoon does the work of the morning. The Master had walked me at a time only milkmen and Master ought to know about, and had returned afterwards to bed, the better to leave the rest of his day to drift. At the hotel's restaurant — which, in its own time, opened — there was coffee for both, and a cornetto al pistacchio apiece. The Master pronounced his a belter; the Mrs pronounced hers buono, twice, the second time more quietly than the first, which is, I understand, how the language is meant to be spoken.

The road south was a country road. Emilia-Romagna passed the windows of the rolling box at the pace, the temperature, and very nearly the cadence of an Italian afternoon. The Master at one point ignored the small glowing tile, which had its own opinions on the route, and turned us instead toward the sea. The tile — being, on reflection, both reasonable and well-employed — accepted this turn of events with the silent grace I have come to expect of it.

We stopped at the coast, at a bar named for a number. All the shade was taken; the Master, who is not easily deterred by direct sunshine, sat in it anyway. The Mrs ordered a bruschetta, which arrived under another name and in another form. The Master ordered a panino with three named ingredients and received it with two. This, I am given to understand, is how things proceed in Italy. The Italians at the next table did not comment, which is, I take it, the proper behaviour of those who have lived here long enough to know better than to ask. Sparrows came and went with the confidence of staff.

I was taken down to the sea. The sea, in this country, is the same sea but a different temperature, and altogether better attended. There was, in due course, a woman on a floating thing of the shape and seriousness of an apology — bright, somehow improbable, and the cause of some upward gestures on my part of which I am not, in retrospect, ashamed. The Italians applauded. I then — and I shall be brief, as the matter is under no further discussion — removed a single yellow object from the foot of a German gentleman of considerable seriousness. The German was unhappy. The Master was, observably and from a polite distance, the opposite of unhappy. There are foreign policies determined by less.

The road afterwards was a different road. We paused for coffee. I located, by means I have undertaken in writing not to disclose, a sandwich of indeterminate vintage; the Master removed it from me with the air of a man performing a sad civic duty, and one with no good ending. The country, however, was opening. Sunflowers stood in their thousands, all of them looking, with the calm certainty of a committee that has reached its agenda, at the same thing. Vines. Olives. Wheat. The Mrs said the old words on the subject of the hills, softly and at intervals; she had recognised them, with the quiet authority of one who knows her own business, as the country of Benedetta Rossi — the kind face from the picture-box, the Mrs's human authority on cooking, as the calm voice is her human authority on animals. We had, in a sense, been heading here for a long time. It was a courtesy, finally, to arrive.

At an agriturismo at the end of a road the rolling box did not enjoy, a lady showed us our room and very little else. The Master cooked: meatballs of rabbit; sausages in a red sauce with the name of a town; and a spaghetti that was, on closer inspection — and a dog has closer inspection than most — not round but square in section. The meal was a triumph not requiring speeches.

A walk afterwards, in the cooling hills. The Mrs drew her cardigan, even here, even now, against a draught only she could feel.

Even my own thoughts have, by this hour, acquired a slight accent. Tomorrow, the Master assures me, more.