Genova's Witness

I bought a small piece of land in the mountains between France and Italy last summer. It’s a place to go when the heat and scourge of mass tourism make Nice unbearable. It has an overgrown, neglected garden and a small orchard. The house is an old schoolhouse.

Views of Prato Nevosa ski area and Cima Durand

Well it’s not summer and there aren’t many tourists in Nice. Yet here I am in the mountains in winter, making lists of my enemies and nursing grievances. I’m here because it’s where I’ve got the tools to cope with the string of related professional, emotional and psychological crises that have struck in the past three weeks.

By tools I mean spades and hoes, loppers and axes. The land demands attention, but the tasks don’t require much in the way of thought, only persistence and heavy gloves. Sleep comes hard at night; there’s more work to do the next day.

Because it’s in Italy, Italian is what we speak. It’s a borderland so there are also Piedmontese and Occitane speakers around. Some folks can pull out a few words of French in a pinch. But rarely any Anglese. The hamlet is tiny and the American signora is known to all. Neighbors are chatty and curious, even when the only response they receive is a smile and some gibberish.

If, on a sunny afternoon, a couple of guys walk up the lane, smiling and waving, any signora working in her garden would stop pulling out ivy long enough to respond in kind, if only to practice saying “no parlo Italiano!”

By way of contrast, if we were just 150 kms away in France that madame would remain focused on ripping out ivy. She might even concentrate on different ivy, some distance away from the road, to avoid an interaction demanding more than “bonjour.” In France, those two guys would uphold the social contract, offering a polite “bonjour, madame” and walk on. Let the great world spin, as it does in France after minimum social obligations have been met.

But odds are two guys walking up my rural mountain lane are from a neighboring hamlet. Also, I haven’t spoken to anyone in person, in any language, in several days. And this is not France. Everyone involved is going to want to talk it out.

I have been studying Italian. If someone says something I (think I) understand, I can respond with illogical combinations of the 75 or so words I know. The guys told me they were from Genova (Genoa, a city about two hours away). I responded. Sono Americana. Vivo a Nizza. Parlo Francese. They told me again, Genova.

You guys are from Genova. I get it. I’m not an idiot.

One guy gave me his card, with no name, just a QR code and JW.com. I was confused. He pulls it up on his phone.

Jehova. Not Genova.

I never received the rebranding memo, ok? Faster-thinking me would have said “tell me more about Genova while you help pull up some ivy.” Then, not converted.