The Third Shadow

Thirty-nine

I sprayed my armpits frozen with deodorant, splashed a palm's worth of aftershave over my jaw. For the first time got out the iron I'd somewhat optimistically bought soon after my arrival in Italy, straightened out one of my old workshirts. The bottle of wine wasn't a problem of course, but as I got into the van I wondered if I should take something else too. A selection of  sugary bite-sized treats from a pasticceria, yes; for lunch guests in Italy, it seemed this was as much an obligation as a Brit turning up to a barbeque with a four-pack of beer under their arm. And what about flowers? Might that be a little over-the-top? Deciding that probably it wasn't - not there in the land of grand, sweeping gestures - I made a second stop, this time at the town's cemetary. A huge, high-walled affair, on Sundays its entrance was cluttered with hawkers of gaudy relegious objects and impromptu back-of-van florists. In southern Italy, death is big business.

Upon ringing Nuzzo's doorbell It would immediately become clear I'd made the right decision, the proffered bunch of pink and yellow chrysanthemums provoking a smile which, though not exactly pearly white, was wide and disarmingly genuine. The old lady gushed with an avalanche of indecipherable local dialect - hers the last generation to have grown up without TVs and post-14 education, and thus having had a limited exposure to and need for standard Italian. I was glad when Nuzzo appeared behind her, was  able to provide a translation: "She says I didn't tell her that my English friend is a so perfect a gentleman."

"And you didn't tell me your mother could easily pass for your sister," I replied, this heralding a second wide beam, another unfathomable succession  of Puglian. She turned then, waddled off to put the flowers in water, check on the lasagna which was already wafting an irrestible aroma through the flat. Hers wasn't a frail figure exactly; there was something to her movements which suggested a residual inner dynamism, that she was the sort it was best advised to keep the right side of. She was slight though, slender; her back a little stooped and her legs noticeably bowed. It was difficult to imagine that the barrel-shaped mound of her son could possibly have once emerged from such a flimsy-looking frame.

"Welcome, welcome." The commander's hand wafted an invitation to step through the hallway and into the living room/ dining area. I'd never seen him out of uniform before: it felt almost as strange as seeing someone in a swimming costume for the first time. Like me, he'd plumped for jeans and a tieless shirt, his however salmon pink to my mundane white. Italian men are in general much less reticent about wearing bright, what might be deemed 'feminine' colours than we Brits. Until my recent emigration, I don't think I'd ever before seen a man wearing orange trousers. Out here, it's as common a sight as a palm tree.

Unburdening me of wine and patisseries, he steered me towards the table, this already laden with a groaning selection of antipasti - hams and salamis, various different cheeses, olives, bruscetta toast, anchovies, russian salad, fresh and dried tomatoes. There was enough to feed an entire rugby team right there, and somewhat ominously this was only the start.

The flat was reasonably spacious, the furniture principally of an ornate mahogany style which though now hopelessly dated would have probably have been all the rage sixty-odd years ago when the old lady had been a twenty-something newly-wed. Amid the clutter of paintings and photos which were hung around the walls I spotted several of what appeared to be the same male face at various stages of life: a still boyish-looking teenager; a more manly twenty-something dressed in some type of military uniform - this the same face belonging to the groom in a nearby wedding shot; in his thirties he seemed to have grown a moustache, the shot in colour now rather than monochrome; by his mid-forties the moustache, like much of his hair, had gone. Noticeably rounder of face, this was the shot where he most resembled the man his son would become. This, tellingly, was also the final shot. The Lord had called for Nuzzo senior at the still premature age of forty-eight, I would learn over our lasagna. Testicular cancer.