San Donato

A stay in Italy, so peaceful that I made up some excitement. The detail the avatar are real but the adventure is not.

 

 

 

It was May in the Tuscan village of San Donato.  Giovanni had had a good day, clearing ditches  and bringing his vineyard up to that delicious measure of untidiness that the small growers achieve.  The sun was still warm and he looked forward to a time of wine and conversation with his friend Luigi, and anyone else who dropped by.  The casks were full and the wine was good.

 

‘A beautiful time’ said Giovanni to himself, looking out of the pick-up toward the ranks of his vines rising out of a foaming sea of wild flowers. The wild flowers were everywhere. He passed the water tank with its goldfish, caught sight of the tower of his farmhouse, then rounded the bend past the irises and the wayside shrine he himself had built, crossing himself as he drove. Giovanni was a religious man who loved his home, his family and his church, which lay four kilometres down the road.

 

Luigi, his friend waited at the gate. ‘What’s going on down at the Chiesa?’ He asked as Giovanni stepped from his ancient pick-up.

 

‘Nothing to my knowledge, come on, let’s have a glass of wine’. He drew it from the immense barrels in the cellar under his house.

 

They settled to chat in the late sunshine as colour deepened around them, saying nothing, just savouring the good life they had in this beautiful place.

 

 

‘What d’you mean about the Chiesa?’

 

Startled from his reverie, Luigi told him of two men and a truck he had seen near the church, a kilometre off the road he had just travelled.

 

‘C’mon,’ said Giovanni. They rose as one and drove to the track leading through the fields to the church.

 

Any threat to Giovanni’s church, rich in fresco, portraits and holy objects was threat to him. It was a beautiful place, reached through the village and over the bridge under which swallows flit each year and on which old men stand to reminisce.

 

They reached the junction and studied the church through Giovanni’s binoculars, always in the pick-up. Two figures walked in and out, loading articles into the truck.

 

‘God! They’re stealing the Holy Relics and there goes the cross from the altar,’ Luigi exclaimed.

 

Giovanni had already rung the Carabinieri at Poggibonsi in the valley but it would be some time before they arrived.

 

These men were tough, resourceful farmers. In the back of the truck was the portable mechanical digger Giovanni used to dig drainage ditches, light enough to transport, but able to be unloaded and start digging in no time. It was at work across the dirt road in seconds, joining the side ditches with a half-metre trench, then hidden in the vines with the truck. The sound was subsumed in the ambient noises of the countryside and before long the track had re-acquired its normal appearance with the use of sheets of light plywood and a sprinkling of loose dirt, which rapidly dried in the evening sun.

 

‘Behind these vines, quick.’ Giovanni dragged Luigi aside as the sound of the truck coasting downhill on an idling engine drifted toward them. They were a hundred metres nearer to the church than the trench and as it passed, they allowed a little distance then ran out shouting and gesticulating. 

 

    The engine sprang into life as the driver jammed his foot down to escape the running pair. There was no escape. The two thieves were not looking ahead as the front wheels dropped into the ditch, two heads making starred patterns on the windscreen.

 

‘Tut tut, said Luigi, No safety belts!’

 

They reached the truck and as one thief seemed asleep, they caught the other as he staggered out of the cab swaying drunkenly. He was wrapped in a mist net bought that very morning. The ‘sleeping’ one was wrapped as he sat.

 

The Carabinieri arrived in a welter of bravura – sirens blaring, lights flashing.

 

‘Let’s have the nets back when you’ve finished, boys, said Giovanni, we’ve a Chiesa to put together.’

 

By now the priest had arrived. The three transferred the load to Giovanni’s truck and restored the artefacts to their rightful places.

 

Late into the night, farmer, friend and priest sat laughing in Giovanni’s courtyard under a starry sky, retelling in more and more exaggerated detail, the tale of San Donato’s Chiesa, under the benevolent eye of the illuminated shrine in his wall, the Patron Saint of Donato and the magnifying influence of Giovanni’s wonderful wine.

 

The End

 

 

 

All the people are real, Giovanni being my landlord; all the relationships were as stated and I watched the swallows, and drank his wine from the great barrels, and sang duets with him in the courtyard. The church had wonderful frescoes (in Tuscany, you often find frescoes just as good as, though less well known than those in the tourist centres; you sit in quietness and really take in the message, the beauty and the atmosphere) and the priest was a great character – ah, happy days. The church (Chiesa) and the setting are absolutely authentic but of course the tale itself is a total fabrication. JLB.

 

Reviews

[Emily Elizabeth]

Another beautifully- written peace. You have such love for the finer things in life, and this really shows! I love how you describe things, like the prettiness Giovanni's vineyard, and your use of textures and colour. You really can create an image of Italy, in all it's delicate yet prominent features.
I especially loved the end-

'Late into the night, farmer, friend and priest sat laughing in Giovanni's courtyard under a starry sky, retelling in more and more exaggerated detail, the tale of San Donato's Chiesa, under the benevolent eye of the illuminated shrine in his wall, the Patron Saint of Donato and the magnifying influence of Giovanni's wonderful wine.'

What a dear little image! Especially as they are from different walks of life. You really have excelled with this story. However, I think the dialogue in the beginning had a few too many commas. But that's just me being tedious. You should enter some competitions with this story!

[Gary H]

You have painted a really loving picture here of Italian village life. This is interesting as I'm taken out of the metropolitan world I expected and taken to somewhere more peaceful where the characters actually live and breathe pure air. Definately something that is much more difficult in the UK to write about, maybe as the world changes so much, this picture will be swallowed up in Italy as well. I hope not as I really enjoyed your work.

[Fabian G. Franklin]

This made me long for a glass of Sangiovese. I'm off to Little Italy! Great story.

[RHEA CROSLEY]

Interesting story. It is enjoyable to see the perspective of being inside a working vineyard . I did have a little trouble following how we got to the wine in the cellar from the truck. That was a cleaver trick on the two idiots that robbed the church. Any way good write thanks.