Rewind and Play

2013

---

Alice

When I wake up, I struggle to get my bearings.

Ah, this is my old room, and I am in bed with Laura, my sister, in Castelnuovo, Italy, a couple of thousand kilometres from Madrid.

I did sleep a lot.

Last night, I stayed up until around midnight and caught up with Laura.

She is not doing great in secondary school, but she is doing well enough. She is cruising through and she doesn’t want to think about what she wants to do when she’s finished. For now, she is happy not engaging with Anna, because our mom seems to be dead set to have both her children with a degree, and she is not one to be easily swayed. The problem is, Laura seems to be thinking more along the lines of a professional career of some depiction, nothing to do with college.

Laura and myself are quite different, at least from the outside. I was a very nerdy and closed-up teenager. Laura, at sixteen, is already a force of nature: headstrong, decisive and chatty.

Basically, me plus the chattiness.

Laura just happens to be there already and I can’t be happier for her, because she’ll never know what it is to be awkward and, maybe, a little lonesome. My sixteen-year-old self would have never admitted to it, but I do thank that person who helped me blossoming, on my second year of secondary school. Fleetingly, I think about Samuel Marchetti: I hope he’s doing ok.

My sister is still sleeping next to me; after I moved to Madrid, Laura put what used to be our separate, single, beds, together, creating one enormous bed. I can now confirm I am very envious of that. Especially if you consider that, until two days ago, I have been sleeping on a single bed in a tiny room, next to a window from which the smell of fried garlic used to waft through constantly from the restaurant below. Don’t get me wrong, I love garlic. But I don’t love it that much.

I get up, careful not to wake Laura, and tiptoe to the kitchen.

I put on some coffee and check my phone.

First things first, Jon:

ALICE: Cari, I’m here, alive and well. Just needed a 15-hour sleep, is all

ALICE: Gonna check the town this morning, see if anything has changed in the last few years.

ALICE: Will send pics of hot Italians, if any

Jon replies instantly:

JON: Please do, I am aggressively bored at the office today

The coffee gurgles his good morning from the moka, and I get out some bread and some Nutella. When I sit down at the table with the book I am currently reading, a sigh of pleasure escapes me. I’m ready to enjoy my favourite moment of the day.

“You up already?”

Well, that didn’t last long.

Anna is leaning on the door, a cigarette between her lips.

I hate, hate, hate, when someone talks to me while I’m having breakfast: it’s the only moment in the day when I allow myself to truly relax. My brain needs that little time to function properly. I am a morning person, but a morning person who needs a half-hour to turn on the brain.

Anna knows it, and yet…

Trying to be polite, I hum and then I bring myself to form one full sentence: “Yes, I want to unpack and go to the restaurant before lunchtime”.

“Ah well, it’s not like there’s going to be many people there”.

“Be nice. Also, if there’s anything I can do, I want to start straight away”.

“Fine.” She puffs out a cloud of smoke, and stares into the distance, narrowing her eyes.

Uh-oh.

“So, what’s happening with your boy, what’s his name… Pablo?”

“Pablo? Ah, he is gone, months ago.”

A small smile: “Ah, that’s good. I know that love is blind but…”

“Mother!”

“Well, he wasn’t an Adonis, now, was he? Anyone else on the horizon?”

“I have seen this guy for a couple of months; his name is Miguel”.

“What does he think of you coming here and leaving everything behind?”

“We are not very serious.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Well, I told him my plan and he told me to call him back whenever I was back in the city. Happy? Can I have my breakfast now?” My patience is already slipping, and it’s been exactly thirty-five minutes since waking up.

“Sure, sure”, Anna says, and turns around to go back to her lair.

Anna and Luigi are now retired, and that makes them even nosier than before. To be fair, my poor father just wants to watch sports on TV, and maybe have a debate about who’s the next best fencer in the world at dinner.

With a huff, I open the book, trying to quieten my thoughts and concentrate on reading.

---

Auntie Daniela’s restaurant lies on the outskirts of Castelnuovo, and the village is small enough that I can walk there on my big-city feet (not big feet, those are average to small-sized).

I take out my phone to select the music for the commute, a habit I’ve never lost.

I slowly make my way onto the cobbled main street of the village, taking some time to re-acquaint myself with the place.

There are some people walking around, but it still feels a little empty, tired. Castelnuovo is one of those places that have been on a slow but steady descent into being forgotten, and it always makes me a little sad. I am one of the ones who left too, after all.

I look around. Not much has changed in the years I’ve been abroad. Time has barely touched Castelnuovo since its inception, I fear.

The village is not big enough to have an actual town centre, only one main road, Via Roma. The street opens up to a small square (also cobbled), where a tiny palace sits overlooking the array of shops that line it: a hairdresser, a newsagent, a pharmacy and two bars, one of them with tables neatly laid outdoors.

The small palace has an historical plate placed importantly in front of its main door. I’ve never even gotten close to it, because if you are from Castelnuovo you know that the palace is only painted on the outside and it’s, basically, an empty shell which has never seen any visitors.

I get a taste of village life, the life I’ve run away from as soon as I was finished college, by the time I am halfway through Via Roma. I get stopped three times: by the grocer, who tells me that he likes my new hair (I cut it short some time ago, not knowing if that was a good idea. It turns out, it was, at least for Giorgio) and that he’s happy I’m back; the second time by Sonny (whose father was a big Miami Vice fan, yes, really), who’s the town hippie; he hugs me and tells me I should go have a look at Bar Sport, Una Rossi made it the best place in town.

The last one to interrupt my walk (and at this point I am positively exhausted), is my auntie Maria, who asks, in the space of two minutes:

“How long are you planning on staying?”

“How is your boyfriend?”

“Who’s your new boyfriend?”

“Have you found a new job yet?”

“How is your sister doing?”

“Your uncle is making me crazy”

The last one is definitely not a question but it still rains on me with the force of a hurricane.

Why am I even bothering with the fucking earphones.

This, right here, is why that hint of sadness I feel about town is normally batted away in favour of happiness at being away.

Everyone knows everything about everyone in Castelnuovo.

And while some might love it, I actually find the anonymity a big city provides quite calming.

Here, it’s mostly gossiping and bad mouthing what everyone else is doing.

By the time I am through the village main square, my social battery has already run out.

Besides the shops in Piazza Garibaldi, there aren’t many others left along Via Roma that have remained consistently open throughout the years. A second pharmacy, another bar, an optician, a clothes store (selling mostly underwear for old folks, of which there is an abundance in town).

That’s why, when I spot the tattoo parlour, I am immediately intrigued.  

Black Star is the name of this very new looking shop, its curtains currently drawn down.

Admittedly, I have not actually walked through town in the last, what, five years, maybe?

When I come for a visit, I normally stay with the family and meet up with Clara and Marta, and the visits never last long.

The place doesn’t seem open at the moment, but that is hardly surprising: my tattoo artist in Madrid never opens before one in the afternoon.

Intrigued, I make a mental note to investigate it. It might be a nice thing to get inked in Castelnuovo, if the artists here are any good.

Fortunately, no one else stops me after I’m gone through the square.

It is a bright September morning and it still feels like summer. The road out of town winds through cornfields waiting to be harvested, yellowing leaves undulating in the light breeze. The flat expanse of the plain ends on the horizon, where some hills and, behind them, the Alps, are barely visible. It’s, objectively, a lovely view. Much as I enjoyed my time in Madrid, there’s not much green to be appreciated in the city or in the surrounding areas. After one last bend in the road, Il Cavallino slowly comes into view.

What had clearly been a small farmhouse in another lifetime, at some point was repurposed into something quite different. The exterior walls were kept; they are gorgeous, all in stone with vines creeping up to partially cover the building. A couple of plastic tables stand quietly under faded umbrellas on either side of the entrance door.

There are a small garage awning and a small cottage-like house with bright red geraniums on its window on the other side of the yard Il Cavallino is perched on. On the remaining side there is a newer building, built roughly following the same style as the main one and which now hosts rooms that seasonal workers rent out in summer.

From the outside, the place is charming, decrepit in an almost bohemian way.

Unfortunately, the charm stops at the door.

I open it with a (far too loud) squeak and bells chime.

The walls are painted a horrific shade of orange. Why did my aunt and uncle think it was a good idea is beyond me. This is the only recent change I can be sure of. It is clear that nothing and no one has touched anything else in the place for at least ten years. The floor is stone, and that is good. But the tables scattered in the two rooms that make up the serving area of the restaurant are covered with magnolia paper tablecloths that look as defeated as the bar fronting the entrance, with its seventies look.

Behind the counter, a beaded curtain (in bright blue, which does not help) leads into the kitchen area.

A mass of white shoots out of the kitchen and barrels into me, enveloping me in a suffocating hug.

“Nipotina! You have arrived!”

“Ciao zia!” I manage to squeak to auntie Daniela, who is wearing her chef whites, bright white hair kept at bay with a blue hair net, combining suspiciously well with the above-mentioned beaded curtains.

“How is my favourite niece doing? Come here, have a coffee.”

Daniela pats one of the rickety stools in front of the bar and then goes behind it, fussing with the coffee machine.

It’s always been a mystery to me how my grumpy (but good hearted, in fairness to him) uncle managed to catch this small ball of energy and sunshine. Uncle Giovanni and my mother are very alike; both Anna and Giovanni share a healthy distrust towards everything and everyone and a stubbornness that could break Carrara marble. Tough love is the only love they know.

Daniela is short, in her sixties, and still bounces everywhere she goes, instead of walking. Of course, Anna doesn’t like it and for that reason she does not trust her, despite having known her since they were teenagers.

Of course, I adore her. She is one of the few people in the village who smiles more often than not, and who doesn’t seem to be affected by the doom and gloom that seems to envelop Castelnuovo. Here in the middle of the plains there aren’t many jobs; even farming is not that profitable anymore.

Despite everything, and the situation she is in, Daniela is smiling broadly while preparing coffee.

“Did you miss proper coffee in Madrid?” she is now asking.

“Oh, yeah. I kept asking for an espresso after lunch in restaurants, and they make one coffee and split it between two cups. And it tastes like burnt rubber, it’s horrible”.

Smiling, she clicks a button on the coffee machine: “And how are you feeling, Alice?”

The sudden question hits me heavily.

Daniela is the first person to ask in the scarce day I’ve been here, and I take a couple of moments to give her an honest answer.

How to summarise the years abroad, especially the last one or so? The start had been fantastic: Madrid won me over immediately with its inherent happiness, its lovely people. I have never felt like a foreigner there. The jobs were a constant issue, though. I have been unable to find something I could stick with, even when the positions I was applying for were getting better and better paid, growing with my experience.

In the last five years or so I started feeling like I was stuck. Work-wise, I am none the wiser about what I’d like to do in life. I am not too worried yet, but I am starting to feel tired from all the job-hopping.

And let’s not even consider my love life, if you could even call it that. I have only dated lunatics in the city. What is wrong with men, these days. My last serious relationship was Javi, a goofball of a programmer who, during the course of our two-year relationship, introduced me to Jon. Jon stayed, Javi didn’t. Neither did Pablo, Miguel, or… you get the gist.

The one good thing about living on my own is that I got to recognise that I am smart, capable and funny, and that I like the person I am. Which, I suppose, is something?

A couple of months back, during a phone call with Anna, it transpired that my auntie was looking for someone to help with the restaurant, but she could not really afford to pay them because their financial situation was less than ideal. I saw the perfect opportunity to take a breather, go back home, take stock and come back refreshed and (hopefully) with clear ideas on how to live my life. I have some money saved from previous jobs, so I won’t be broke anytime soon.

I am only spending time, and I have at least nine-ish months of that, until my welfare payments run out.

I suppose it should feel humiliating, coming back. However, it would have been far more humiliating to keep working, a hamster in a wheel, going nowhere. I am quietly proud of myself for taking the plunge and deciding that a sabbatical was what I need now.

So I give my aunt the short version of it: “I am happy to take a break and to be here to help you.”

Daniela gives me a look, knowing me too well. But she won’t push me to talk until I’m ready.

“Come, let’s go inside so you can see the place.”

---

We make our way into the corridor that leads to the kitchen, which is a big enough space, as was, most likely, the kitchen in the once farm house. It also looks like the kitchen in an old farm house: a far cry from the chrome one might expect in a professional environment, with a big wooden table in the middle of the room, a stove on the right, and an oven, which in fairness actually looks recent, on the left-hand side. There’s some steel to be seen near the sink area, and a prep table near the hob.

“Welcome where the magic happens” says Daniela, with a flourish (you gotta love the enthusiasm).

There are two more people in the kitchen at the moment: a woman of a similar age to Daniela’s, her “sous-chef”, Anita. We met during one of my recent visits, and I am delighted she is still around. It’s hard to come by good personnel these days. The other person is a young man who looks like someone could blow him away if they were to breathe too hard on him.

“You already know Anita” (I get a smile and a wave from Anita) “and this one is Mirco, Anita’s son. He is here while he finishes university. He normally helps around in the kitchen and waits the tables, if necessary, which I hear is helping him with his shyness. As you know what with our… Recent lack of customers, we have let go everyone bar Anita, Mirco, myself and uncle Gio.”

Il Cavallino has been lacking customers for a while now.

“I am sure the customers are not lacking; they just don’t know we are here. We will get the fuckers in soon enough, don’t worry,” I say. The other three giggle, if only because I am being brash. Living in Spain has not helped. They all swear like sailors in that country.

“Do you have any experience working in hospitality? I can’t remember if you have worked in a bar when you were in college…” asks Daniela.

“Well, it depends what you want me to do… I worked in a pizzeria and in a bar all right, but I think I am not fantastic at making coffees, so maybe I would need some practice with that first.”

“Ah don’t worry dear, Gio can man the bar and the till if you wait the tables… It will be more than enough for now anyway; it’s not like we are super busy.”

Her chipper demeanour seems to be dimming a little, and I don’t like it one bit.

“We will be soon enough!” I exclaim over-enthusiastically, not really sure how I can help but trying to keep it positive. I don’t want to give up five minutes after having started.

“Where can I find an apron? Am I dressed ok?” I ask, pirouetting coquettishly, to everyone’s laughter. Even Mirco chuckles, and then goes very red in the face.

Daniela studies the black jeans and black Strokes t-shirt I’m sporting and nods, a small smile back on her face.

“Aprons are in the pantry, there is a small chest of drawers there, first drawer from the bottom.”

I make myself shimmy as stupidly as possible towards the pantry, giggles following my swaying hips.

When I get back, apron in hand, I clash against a mountain. Two strong arms catch me bouncing off and envelop me in a bear hug.

Uncle Gio’s crushing me for just one second, then releases me, keeps me at arm’s length, and exclaims:

“My, Alice, you look great! I love your hair! Welcome!”

Giovanni is not exactly a teddy bear, but he is as close to it as allowed in the hard-ass Tofoli, Anna’s family name, clan. Possibly because he looks like one: curly hair now going white, pushing two meters of height, with a big round belly and arms like tree-trunks, his appearance is what’s most threatening about him. If you look closely, however, you will notice that his eyes are surrounded by a web of wrinkles, coming from bouts of booming laughter.

Currently, his eyes are all but disappearing in his face, he’s smiling so hard: Giovanni gives me a look-over and clearly approves of what he’s seeing, because he is beaming.

“Ciao zio, here I am for my first shift.”

“Don’t worry, you are not going to tire yourself too much” says Giovanni, smile disappearing instantly.

“We will see, I am sure things will improve. Leave it with me.”

“Love the optimism”, he replies, sombre.

Aunt Daniela asks me to write the daily menu on an old plastic board and I comply readily, trying to be as artistic as possible (that is to mean, very little, but I try my best).

There is no amount of optimism that can prepare me for the lunch shift, however.

Barely three people walk in, all of them working nearby on a construction site.

One of them orders a toasted sandwich, while the other two, who come together, request a beer and a tomato sauce pasta to share.

A couple more people walk in to order coffee when the lunch shift is basically over, and a decrepit man comes in to sit at one of the poker machines parked in the corner, playing exceedingly slowly, while we work around him to clean the place.

The most food aunt Daniela prepares is for the staff’s lunch.

While we sit at the table, I try my best to cheer everyone up with funny stories about Madrid, and for a bit I do manage to lift everyone’s spirits.

However, after a while, I also feel compelled to ask: “So, this is what a lunch shift looks like every day?”

Giovanni replies: “Pretty much. On the weekends it’s better, there’s more turnaround. Often lunches are better than dinners. But normally yeah, it’s quiet. There are some people showing up for breakfast, because I make a mean cappuccino,” a half a smile creeps up when he says that, eyebrow lifted, “but dinner is our best shot at getting people in. We used to have a pizzaiolo, but at the moment Daniela manages it, while Anita gets the normal stuff out.”

“I see.”

“Anyway, how are you finding Castelnuovo?” Asks Anita, clearly wanting to give everyone a break too.

“Same as it was the last time I was here, really,” I reply, stuffing my mouth full of delicious agnolotti: “the only place I don’t remember from my past visits is a tattoo parlour. Since when good old Castelnuovo got a place like that? And one that has not shut down yet, at that.”

Daniela smiles and pats my hand: “Since the place is Samuel Marchetti’s. Do you remember him?”