Matelda cupped her hands and sipped the icy water that flowed down the mountain to ancient cisterns. The spigots were attached to the hands of carved angels whose faces had been worn away by time. The water was loaded with precious minerals that shored up the people who drank it. Matelda thought of her mother as she dried her hands on the handkerchief she kept in her pocket. Not only had Domenica Cabrelli insisted her children drink the water for their health, she also taught Matelda how to count as they passed a series of angel fountains on her way to school. Viareggio had also been her first primer.
Matelda opened her purse to pay the fruit vendor as he selected six unbruised golden apples from his display and gently placed them in a paper sack.
“How’s business?” Matelda asked as she paid. “Buona festa?”
“Not like the old days,” he complained.
Matelda passed a team of six men on Via Firenze as they folded an enormous blue-striped tent corner to corner like a bedsheet. The Cabrelli cousins had occupied the brightly painted houses that lined the street, stacked one on top of the other, like books on a shelf. Matelda had learned the homes of her relatives by the color of their front doors: rosa for the Mamaci cousins, giallo for the Biagettis, and verde for the Gregorios. Color also signaled retreat. Matelda was not welcome at the house with the porta azzurra because of a long-standing feud between the Cabrelli and the Nichini families, calcified in history long before she was born. The standoff continued after the Nichinis moved to Livorno, leaving the house with the blue door behind. Matelda remembered the summers of her childhood when she stood at the bottom of the hill and whistled to gather her cousins to go to the beach. The front doors would snap open at once, creating a colorful enfilade as the children ran down the street to join her.
For fun, Matelda put two fingers in her mouth and blew. The loud trill got the attention of the tent folders on the street, but not a single door flew open. Sadly, her cousins had migrated to Lucca too. Matelda and Olimpio were now the old timers in the village. The last of the Cabrelli-Roffos of Viareggio.
Matelda’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She stopped to read the text.
Happy Birthday Matelda! Thank you for the lovely visit.
She texted her sister-in-law, Thank you. It was fun. Not long enough!
Matelda genuinely liked her sister-in-law, Patrizia. She was a peacemaker and had encouraged Nino to get along with Matelda; after all, they only had each other. Matelda hadn’t had a single argument with her brother when he and his wife last visited.
Can you ask Nino if he remembers Nonno Cabrelli’s elephant story? Matelda texted.
Patrizia sent back an emoji of a winking face.
Matelda hated emojis. Soon enough, human beings would not need language to communicate, animated small heads with bug eyes would do the talking for them.
Matelda stopped at the gate of the communal garden planted a hundred years earlier by the Boncourso family. Decades later, the lot remained in their name even though the family had died out after the First World War. The fallow garden was carpeted in muck. A few perennial plants were hooded in burlap to protect them against the frost. The white pergola stood alone in the center of the garden like a bridal carriage marooned in mud.
Matelda remembered her first kiss under the pergola. It was summer; she had closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of the grapes that draped over the arch. Rocco Tiburzi took that as a sign and stole the moment to kiss her. Matelda was fourteen years old and thought that nothing more wonderful would ever happen to her again; she practically floated home. When Matelda arrived, her grandmother Netta reprimanded her because she’d forgotten the sack of chestnuts she had been sent to collect. Tenderness and shame would remain closely tied in Matelda’s heart until she learned the combination blocked her ability to truly love.
The chestnut trees that lined the back wall of the garden still bore plenty of fruit. Her neighbors continued to collect them in burlap sacks during the harvest, but Matelda chose not to take her share. She had eaten enough chestnuts in pastes, fillings, and dough when there was a scarcity of food after the war; she’d promised herself she would not eat another when she grew up and was in charge of the family kitchen. The current popularity of Italian dishes made with chestnuts befuddled Matelda and reminded her how quickly people forgot hardship and suffering once they’d moved through them.
Matelda and her husband, Olimpio, lived in the attico of Villa Cabrelli angled in the crook of Viale Giosuè Carducci. The Roffos were the third generation to live in the family home. After Matelda’s parents died, and her grown children had moved out, she and Olimpio reconfigured the house. They took the penthouse apartment. “We finally made it to the top,” Olimpio would joke, “but we had to lose everyone we love to do it.”
Matelda had experienced life from every view from Villa Cabrelli. It was too bad that generations no longer lived in one house separated by a few steps between floors. Her own children had moved out as soon as they married. Her daughter lived in nearby Lucca, and her son was farther up the coast. For many years, they were close enough, but not anymore. Matelda wished her entire famiglia had remained under one roof.
The village evolved as the families changed over time. Most of the neighbors who owned homes with a view of the sea had them repurposed into apartments as their owners died and their heirs, intent to hold on to the family homes, found much-needed income in lucrative summer rentals. Villa Cabrelli had been broken into apartments to rent too, but this was more a function of the aging Roffos needing less space to look after than it was financial need. The renovation included the installation of the building’s first elevator, which Olimpio insisted they would need one day. He was right. A house renovation at the age of sixty should keep an eye on eighty. It came around quickly.
Once Matelda reached the top of the hill, she fished inside her purse for the key. Arancione meant she was home. The orange door had not changed since she was a girl.
“Signora! I have something for you.” Giusto Figliolo, Matelda’s white-haired neighbor, waved to her from behind his gate before joining her. “My daughter took a drive to Pietrasanta.” He gave Matelda a large triangle of parmesan cheese wrapped in waxed paper. “I have more when you need it.”