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.
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