The Other Language(42)

And so was Lara. Not only to share with them that gift but also, she realized, to be rid of them, even if only for an hour.



They entered Mina’s breezy room with the cat and the flying wisps of thread. She was sitting on a tiny chair with her reading glasses perched on her nose, intent on stitching something. She stood up immediately the minute she saw Ben and Leo.

“Come in! Welcome! Please, sit down!” she said, grabbing a chair and a stool. “And who are these nice giovanotti? Are they both your brothers?”

Lara had never seen her so excited before. Oh, the presence of men, she thought. The difference it always makes.

Leo shook her hand, yes he was Lara’s younger brother, and Ben introduced himself as Beniamino, un amico. He handed Mina a couple of shirts and patted his stomach.

“I’m afraid I’m bigger now,” he said in his broken Italian.

“He means he’s put on a little bit of weight, since he bought those,” Leo intervened.

Mina took a professional look at the shirts and at Ben’s waistline. She grabbed a measuring tape.

“Lift your arms, please,” she ordered.

Mina looked like a dwarf hugging a giant as she slid the tape around him. She scribbled measurements with her childish handwriting on a scrap of a used paper napkin.

“Now your shoulders. Turn around.”

Clearly she had no idea who Ben was—his films were a bit too highbrow for the local cinemas—and this seemed to relax him.

“I guess I’ll leave you two in Mina’s hands,” Lara said, relieved. “I’ll be home if you need anything.”

The introduction had been a success. She ran back to the house and turned up the volume of the radio, just in time to catch the tail end of her favorite show.



In the days that followed Mina must have been working nonstop because the packages kept coming. She knocked at the door twice a day to summon Ben or Leo for yet another fitting. She had needles already threaded pinned to her shirt, scissors in her pocket, strands of fabric stuck to her skirt and she always looked frantic, as if high on something. Ben and Leo kept ordering more clothes and buying more fabric. Mina knew of old shops in the nearby villages that still had great leftover cloth from the seventies, or stalls that sold bolts of material at wholesale prices at the farmers’ markets. They got in their car and drove incessantly following the directions she drew on her paper napkins. They always came home with rolls of soft percale cotton, pure linen, light cashmere wool under their arms, exultant and rewarded as if they’d been on a great outdoor adventure.

A few days later Lara came home from her midmorning swim and found the house empty. She set up the table for lunch, mixed a couscous salad with eggplant, fresh mint and fennel. Two hours later Leo and Ben came back, Ben waving enthusiastically and mouthing a hello, phone glued to his ear, as he went up the stairs leading to the roof in search of the fourth bar. Leo placed a woven basket filled with muddy potatoes and zucchini on the kitchen counter.

“This is from Mina. She has an amazing vegetable garden in the back of the house. Have you seen it?”

“Nope.”

“Ben had a go at digging out the potatoes. It was hilarious.”

He went straight to the fridge and poured himself some water. He glanced at the table.

“Don’t bother with food, we just had something to eat at Mina’s.”

“Did you? Did she make you lunch?”

“Yes. Supplì di riso with saffron.”

Lara cleared away the plates, napkins and her tastefully constructed salad.

“… and carciofi fritti.”

“Wow, pretty fierce, cholesterol wise. And what did you talk about?”

“Lots of stuff. That woman is so much fun. The stories she tells. She told us about an old house right outside the village, past the railroad crossing. Nine rooms, vaulted ceilings, a huge lemon orchard.”

“Really?”

“Some relatives of hers want to sell it. She said she could get it for us for something like two hundred.”

“Us?” Lara stopped putting the plates away and turned toward her brother. “I had no idea you were interested in real estate, Leo.”

“Well, Ben is.”

“But why?”

Leo looked at his sister, surprised, then his tone shifted as if he were trying to handle someone irrefutably obstinate.

“What’s so strange? He likes it here.”

“He hasn’t seen anything. All he’s done is run back and forth from here to Mina’s or up on the roof to talk on the phone.”

“Ben has traveled all over the world. He can tell pretty quickly how he feels about a place. And nobody knows who he is here. That’s a big plus for him.”

Lara sat across from her brother at the kitchen table, discouraged. This little vacation wasn’t going at all the way she’d hoped.

“It could be a good investment as well. Ben is pretty shrewd when it comes to business.”

“Is he?” she asked, trying to sound neutral.

“Of course. His father was a mega investment banker. Ben has learned a thing or two from him.”

“How convenient.”

Leo ignored her sarcasm.

“We’re going with Mina to look at the house later this afternoon,” he said, without inviting her.