Chapter 1: Caffé Dei Costanti
It was four o’clock one sunny afternoon in the ancient Tuscan city of Arezzo when the four of us met; Elia, Claudio, Fabrizio and me, Giorgio — all close friends. The meeting took place in Caffé Dei Costanti, which was just below my apartment and located a few steps away from the Basilica of San Francesco.
It was not just any old meeting, nor was it a business meeting. It was at this location that we had been meeting for nearly thirty years.
For us, Dei Costanti was not just a coffee shop; it was an institution. It was like entering a library or a museum, where you immediately lower your voice and pay homage to the place and its visitors. This had been true of the place since 1805.
The large open spaces, domed ceilings, marble-tiled floor with diagonal stripes of white, brown and black, and antique furniture; all these caused you to even use the lavatories with utmost respect.
At first we hugged, then were remained standing for a while, talking and laughing excitedly. We found a table outside and sat down. Our conversation immediately turned to our childhood memories and the mischief we had caused. We laughed a lot. Claudio and Fabrizio smoked, and I occasionally stole a cigarette from one of them. Three of us had an espresso while one ordered just plain mineral water.
Claudio, the loudmouth in the group, signaled to the waitress to come over to our table. Per favore,[1] can we have two more regular espressos and one ristretto,” he asked, while giving her a friendly wink.
Che bella gnocca[2], she must be new here.”
The noise of the passersby on the pedestrian zone was very loud, as our table was actually located there, so we decided to move inside the café. We chose a quiet and remote corner inside the wine-tasting room, so as not to disturb the other guests.
“Whom we are missing now is Il nostro dottore del culo,[3]" one of them remarked with noticeable nostalgia.
“What about the Romanian? Should we ask him if it suits him for all of us to come to visit him?”
“And the fool from Australia, do we not have to invite him? Who knows if he will come at all?”
“I would prefer it if he doesn’t come,” I answered.
“Too bad we don’t have a friend in New York. I would gladly go there,” growled Claudio, impatient and irritated from not being able to smoke inside.
Our conversation lasted for several hours, during which we brought up memories of our youth. To an observer listening from the sidelines, it would have seemed that the language spoken was not Italian. He wouldn’t have understood what we were saying, but we understood each other very well, and any mention of an incident or name was followed by a roar of laughter.
Permit me to first introduce you to my friends, not exactly in the order they first joined our group long ago. As for myself, I will introduce myself at the end of the list, and not necessarily because I came last, or one before the last. Who remembers? It happened some forty years ago.
Our fathers had all survived the war, though many of their companions didn’t return, frozen to death in the vast open spaces of Russia. Of those that returned, some had no homes as a result of the destruction left behind by the Allied bombardments of towns and villages. Few of the homes that survived the bombing and remained intact, were burned down by the retreating Nazi army.
Everywhere there was devastation with little left undamaged. Everybody had to begin rebuilding amid the ruins. We were born to a reality of hope and the building of a better world.
Our childhood was happy and content. Our parents were busy working two jobs in order to feed the family, while we roamed around, free as birds.
Our friendship was close: we trusted and supported each other. Not a day passed that we didn’t meet and tell each other about the hug or kiss that we had received from one of the girls.
We would go together to summer camp in Chianciano terme[4], where we would climb the surrounding hills and ride our bikes on the path of Sentiero della Bonifica[5]from Arezzo along the entire length of the Canale Maestro of the Chiana valley until the Lake of Montepulciano, where we briefly bathed in the nude. What a pleasure that was, after that sixty-kilometer ride.
Although our lives took different directions when we became adolescents, we still saw each other as much as possible. In the late sixties when each household had its own telephone, that became our main mode of contact, although we would meet from time to time and update each other.
[1] Italian: “Please”
[2] Italian slang: What a beauty
[3] Vulgar Italian: “Our ass doctor” proctologist
[4]Thermal village in south of Tuscany
[5] Known trek and bike trail from Arezzo to Chiusi in Tuscany
