Tired Brain

As we enter the last week in August I can feel the summer slip away like sand through the fingers.  Feragosto has come and gone and on Sunday our neighbours returned to their apartment in Bari after three weeks in the country.  Erminia refers to them dismissively as "u barese", the people from Bari, foreigners.

Yesterday evening she stumped round, plastic bucket in hand, intent on collecting figs from the Bari people's neglected trees.  There's this one tree that has fruit that's especially good for drying she tells me.  I remark that I can see she has lost weight.  Actually she looks fitter and seems more mobile.  "Yes" she says with a frown, "I don't feel like eating anything.  I don't like this heat, it's bad and my brain is tired.  Know what I had to eat last night?  Bread and figs!"  Then she said "when I feel like this I used to go round to see Yanni."  Another frown as she shrugs petulantly.

Suddenly, I feel very sad for her - Yanni was our neighbour up the road who died a few months ago.  She was a beautiful white-haired old lady who was Erminia's best friend and contemporary.  Seeing them together was like looking at two near ninety year olds going on sixteen.  I kept meaning to take a picture of them together, but I never got round to it, another reminder to take your opportunities when you can.

A few minutes later Erminia stumps back from our neighbours overgrown and tinder-dry field with a bucket full of figs.  They look a bit manky to me, some beginning to open and reveal the red scabby flesh beneath, like wounds.  "Can I give you a hand with those?" I say.  "If I can't carry these home I might as well be dead already!"  She says defiantly, banging her walking stick down with a crack and heading for our front gate.

The stones of Matera

Our friend Rosemary came to visit last week so I've been doing the tourist rounds, finishing yesterday with a trip to Matera, the ancient town in Basilicata often used as a set for biblical epics because of its resemblance to old Jerusalem we are told.  It is quite a sight, a vast collection of medieval stone houses carved into a bowl of rock and criss-crossed with alleys and stairs.  It does look like my idea of the Holy Land, especially in August, as the surrounding country is empty, dry and dusty, the houses are made of sandstone and the Sun is pitylessly hot.


Actually I was reluctant to go, I think because the last time I visited, several years back, I was feeling very depressed and so the place is associated for me with bad thoughts.  In the end I was glad we went, it is very beautiful, Rosemary loved it and I amused myself taking pictures of old doors.

I waved Rosemary goodbye at Bari Airport earlier today, so now I'm back on my own in our little corner of paradise.  She and I were married for a long time and separated twenty five years ago.  I'm pleased we are good friends now, comfortable in the knowledge that our marriage was doomed from the start and ended about as well as it could have.

But as well as good companionship there is a sadness involved in spending time with her, I guess because our marriage began with optimism and ended with dashed hopes and disillusion and now we are old.  Unlike my black thoughts tramping round Matera a few years ago I think this can be called "ordinary sadness" and not "neurotic despair" as the therapists might say.

Yes Matera is definitely a better place now.