Palladian Days by Sally Gable Page B

crashing noise, we hear a new sound: a siren has begun to wail, loudly and nearby.
    “That's the burglar alarm,” Carl deduces at last. “The thunder set it off by rattling the windows.” Reflexively he leaps from bed, only to be confronted by three problems. First, he's completely underdressed for the temperature of the villa; second, the room is inky black and he can't find the light switch; and third, he has only the vaguest idea of where the burglar alarm controls are located, much less how to turn them off. By patting the wall frantically he at last locates the light switch several inches below the lowest point at which he thought it could possibly be. I gallantly find and hand him his summer bathrobe and send him shivering on his way down the circular wooden stair. We think the controls lie tucked away on a landing halfway between the ground floor and the
cantina
. Wishing him the best of luck, I immediately pop back into bed and pull up the covers.
    Is it fair that Carl be sent off shivering into the night while I snuggle in bed? I ask myself. Of course it is, I respond. Who cooked dinner? Thunder hammers the villa, rain beats loudly against the
halcone
, and the burglar alarm strives to waken any neighbors whom the storm has left asleep. I now recall that the alarm system is also programmed to launch a series of three telephone calls immediately, first to the Miolos, then to the Battistons, who live next door, and finally to the local office of the carabinieri. I quickly review the possibilities. The Miolos, I am sure, will understand; I can explain it all to the Battistons in due course. But I am praying fervently that Carl finds the turnoff switch before the call is made to the carabinieri! I picture myself spending the rest of the night giving statements and filing official reports. Tension mounts. I concludethat Carl is lost, wandering around somewhere in the
can-tina
. Suddenly, with all hope gone, the alarm ceases its wail, and Carl returns to bed triumphant, cold, and grumpy.

16
Gli Scquizzato
    We do not meet the Scquizzatos all at once. We meet them at different times, in pairs or one at a time. The parents Memi and Francesca, a daughter, a suitor, a son, a daughter-in-law and her father and sisters, granddaughters, sisters and brothers, cousins of undefined distance. And one who looms largest in their own minds we never meet at all.
    Memi is a short mass of a man. He would be called rotund if it weren't that all his bulk appears to be muscles built and tempered by a life of farmwork. Memi is an ebullient, gray-haired meso-morph, happy with life and dedicated to ensuring that everyone around him is also.
    Memi is a major landowner with extensive acreage at the west edge of town, an unschooled man of assets and substance. His large henna-colored house sitting along Via Roma contains three commodious apartments: one for his son, Ottorino, Ottorino's wife, Michela, and their young daughters, Giulia and Elena; one for his bachelor brother, Livio; and one for himself, Francesca, and their daughter Wilma. Livio and Ottorino share in the farmwork.
    During breaks in his farm routine, Memi bicycles slowly through Piombino Dese, ostensibly for exercise, but really for company and conversation. Occasionally he bicycles to our front gate bearing a large branch broken from one of his trees and clustered with dark crimson cherries; or he will have a bag of fresh eggs or a jar of golden peach
marmellata
that Francesca has just prepared. Memi and I have enthusiastic conversations despite the fact that I don't understand much of what he says. Memi is not troubled bypetty differences between Italian and the Venetan dialect and doesn't see why anyone else would be. If it becomes clear that Carl or I will never understand some particular point he is trying to make, he moves easily to another subject, realizing that it is only the conversation that matters, not the content.
    Memi always seats me beside himself at dinner,