Palladian Days Read Online Free Page B

by Dick's ebullience, reflects some resentment of the new American villa owners as economic imperialists. A quick memory of Dick's kidnap insurance flashes through my mind. As we gather our bags and move toward the cars for the twelve-mile trip ahead, Dick assigns me to ride with Giacomo, on grounds that Giacomo speaks only Italian (when he speaks at all, I say to myself) and that I need real-world practice for the Italian that I have been studying in Atlanta. Carl and Ashley travel with Dick.
    My conversation with Giacomo begins on a high note: Giacomo says something about what a beautiful day it is, and I understand it! I begin burbling sentences that I've rehearsed in my mind about how happy we are to have become owners of Villa Cornaro, how beautiful the colors of the fields are, the things we hope to do during our current two-week stay.
    But a note of mystery pervades the dialogue. To almost everything I say, Giacomo responds quietly,
“Va hayn, va hayn.”
I frantically search my memory of all the Italian words with which mytutor in Atlanta has armed me, and I can find nothing similar. What is this short, pithy comment that Giacomo is flinging back at everything I say? Julie Rush unravels the mystery for me later in the day after we've arrived at the villa. Giacomo's
“va hayn”
was actually
va hen’
, a Venetan dialect corruption of the common Italian phrase
va hene
, which figuratively means “good” or “okay.”
Note to diary: Buy Venetan-Italian dictionary
.
    The twenty-minute ride introduces me to the forthrightness that I soon conclude is characteristic of Venetans. If there's something on their minds, they'll speak it. No squirrelly beating around the bush.
    Giacomo asks how old I am. I tell him.
    He asks how much we paid for the villa. I respond that my husband would not want me to say.
    He asks when we are going to sell the villa to someone else, how much money we will make, and whether the buyer will be German or Japanese. I reply that we don't intend ever to sell the villa, that we hope to pass it on to our children, the way the Cornaro family passed it on from generation to generation for 250 years.
    “Va hayn,”
he responds.
    Life is opera, as every Italian knows. And if ordinary routine does not provide the requisite drama, then drama must be contrived. These are truths that Giacomo well understands. Accordingly, he is not satisfied to park the car just inside the villa's side gate, as good practice would dictate. He swooshes the car into the villa's front garden, narrowly avoiding uprooting a long row of very old and carefully manicured boxwoods, so that I can step directly from the vehicle onto the broad front steps of the villa. This is the way a true Cornaro would have arrived. With Giacomo's guidance, the new owner will receive no less.
    I ascend the steps with all the emotion that Giacomo could possibly have imagined, the effect undiminished by the overloaded tourist handbag that I am carrying, so weighted that I am listing to one side.
    The opera continues. In Act II Carl must carry his demure
moglie
(wife) across the threshold of their newly acquired villa. With aggressive pantomime Giacomo conveys to Carl a sense of his ceremonial obligations. In a twinkling, Carl scoops me up, handbag and all, and deposits me across the threshold and into my new life—oblivious of the fact that we don't even know the Italian word for “orthopedist” in case he throws out his notoriously quirky back.
    Not at the moment, but later, I am reminded that Giorgio Cornaro, who built the villa, brought his new bride to it as soon as it was substantially completed. Would Giorgio and Elena have engaged in such frivolity if Giacomo had been there to instigate it? In those stern times I doubt that even a rich and influential Cornaro would have dared have fun in public.

6
Transition
    The Rushes have timed their final departure from the villa to overlap our arrival by a few days. They want to pass along some of the