An Italian village, sucker-punched by COVID
/People warned me. The pandemic, they said, brought some…change, to Spello. But…ma dai. I’ve heard that refrain before. I remember when the trees got yanked from the piazza or when neighbors noted a new influx of expats. It’s true, the spirit of Spello did ripple to accommodate those novelties. But, ultimately, Spello was still Spello underneath and evermore.
So when people told me to be aware, things had changed, I took it with a grain of salt.
Not until I stepped out of our house after our release from quarantine did I realize the very obvious truth—a pandemic doesn’t cause a ripple one simply needs to smooth over like a mussed sheet. A pandemic throws the bed upside down, sheets be damned.
I noticed the first change the moment I crested the alley to stand on Via Giulia. The streets teemed with tourists. Like people everywhere, Italians have cabin fever after a particularly severe lockdown. With European borders largely open, their options, unlike Americans’, are robust. Yet Italians all seem to have decided to forgo travel to Greece or Switzerland. Instead, they seem to have decided, en masse, to come to Spello.
Perhaps because it seems safer. Italian rates of COVID are up some with all this movement, but they are still quite a bit lower than neighboring countries. With the uptick in other countries, quarantines are being implemented on arrival. It’s just easier to stay within the boundary of a country, rather than worry that by the time you’re packing to come home from Spain, there will be a mandatory quarantine in place. Also, I suspect it feels safer to be able to drive to a destination, rather than fly in case the pandemic has other plans for you.
We were warned about the crowds. But tucked away in our corner of heaven, it was hard to believe. The cackling hens create more of a hubbub than the tourists, and the only sound I hear as I type this is wind-chimes from a neighbor’s garden and the warble of doves. Yes, once-in-awhile I spot a tourist emerging from the ancient arch by Il Trombone, bringing a camera up to their open-mouthed face. But most tourists, it seems, content themselves with the view from Via Giulia. Leaving this corner of Spello serene as ever.
So not until I saw the filled streets with my own eyes did I understand. And even then, navigating through Spello, it was still hard to wrap my mind around. So many people. Un sacco di gente.
How was this possible?
Our friends sigh. Oh, it’s possible. It’s been like this for at least a month. They add that never, ever, in the history of Spello have they seen so many people over such an extended period of time. It’s like the Infiorata. Every day.
Maurizio at Bar Bonci told us that at lunchtime in August, there would be a line out the door of people waiting to enter the garden. The piazza-proportioned garden that we’re used to having practically to ourselves. He added that with so many tourists there’s no chance to regroup, to connect with people like he was able to do with us yesterday, now that the crowds are thinning. Instead, it’s been a constant stream of strangers. No chat, or chiacchiere, he laments.
That first day, I watched as Corrado at the Conad raced to toss out yet more packaging for the bottles of water he can’t keep in stock. A line formed outside his shop at lunchtime, too, with people shifting their weight in the heat, waiting for a panino. Corrado himself, the man who once left his shop when he heard our cat was trapped in his laundry room, now can barely look up from unpacking more boxes.
At night, when the streets sag in the half-light, bags of trash march wearily outside any food related shop, evidence of the vast quantities of product they’re all moving.
In some ways, that’s good, right? Everyone agrees. I mean, Italy, like everywhere else, has taken an economic hit with the pandemic. It’s great to get money flowing again. The thing is, the stress of the enormous influx of people coupled with the emotional toll I likewise didn’t anticipate…those two together have sent Spellani reeling.
I can see it in their eyes—the trauma of the pandemic. Almost everyone wears it like a scar, a purple heart medallion. These people saw a battle we in America only sort of understood. You see, it wasn’t until I got here, and saw the ground-in fear shadowing the expressions of people I would once have described as “tutto pepe”, all pepper, full of joy and vividness, that I began to realize.
Italy was on the front lines. You see, by the time the virus hit the United States in earnest, we had a roadmap for how to recover. We saw how in other countries, shutting down and social distancing and mask wearing got the virus under control enough to begin to open back up and experiment with living in a new reality. The US didn’t follow that roadmap in any cohesive way, of course, with states all taking a different approach based on (oddly, to my mind) their politics. But at least we knew what the map looked like should we choose to ask for directions.
That wasn’t true in Italy. Many people here must have that believed the world, their country, their community, was on the edge of a post-apocalyptic nightmare, where only a few survive.
It’s not just the anguish of the extended lockdown I see, stiffening the features of the usually ebullient. It’s the crisp edge of trauma, the pervasively long arms of fear, undulating and rippling even now.
Back in the States, many of us had yards so we could step out and breathe. We had zoom cocktail hours until we felt we could do socially distanced ones. We found safe ways to connect.
Logic says that’s just harder in a town that’s been around since Roman days. The houses are small, few have outdoor space. The average age of Spello, and I suspect many small towns in Italy, is older than in the US since they don’t squirrel away the aged in institutions with falsely cheery names like “The Collonades” and “Vantage Point”. Older folks in Italy largely live where they were born.
And, as far as I can tell, they don’t use Zoom.
Many don’t even have email. Why would they? When an hour of daily gathering around the intersection of the only two streets in Spello gives them all the information they may need. And more connection than most Americans often get in a week. Or a month.
So imagine being flooded with fear that this pandemic may well destroy your life, the people you hold dear. Now imagine that your usual way of decompressing from stress—walking with friends, bantering across a counter that is older than your grandfather, sitting beside neighbors and watching the world go by while the sun soaks into your bones—have vanished. With no way to release the pressure, you would have no option but to soak in that fear.
I hope I’m not implying that the pandemic has ruined Italian village life. It hasn’t, I just think it’s going to take time to recover, emotionally, from the kind of emotional taxation this virus has wrought.
In fact, given all that, it’s kind of astounding that, while I see the echoes of the trauma in individuals, in general, life here is still…life. Yes, people do elbow bumps instead of cheek kissing (well, most people—Angelo grabbed each of us in turn to pull us toward him and luckily we were just out of quarantine so I didn’t worry about infecting him; and some would rather nod than participate in a paltry mimicry of their age-old tradition), but it’s clear that people have rolled with the sucker punch of the pandemic and, like they rebounded from falling empires and world wars, they’ve dusted themselves off and gotten back up again.
It’s extraordinarily heartening. Because what it means is that the outside of life might look different, with all the masks and with hand sanitizer perched at the entrance of every establishment, and the number of people within shops being limited, the inside of life looks much the same.
I’ve thought a lot about this, and I’ve come to the conclusion that part of this is due to what I alluded to before—this isn’t Italians first battle with a life-changing paradigm shift. So rather than rant and rail about what they deserve, what they are entitled to, they shrug and say “boh” and…adapt.
Italians, like, I suspect, many countries, rally and they rally together. They unify around a common antagonist and they wait out the oppressor as they did in the middle ages, uncomfortable but safe behind their walls.
In the United States, we can’t even agree on the problem. It’s impossible to describe how liberating it is to be in a country where everyone knows we’re living through a global pandemic. Where everyone takes that seriously. Not only is it relieving to not have to defend against gas-lighting at every turn, there are practical implications. Think about it, if American can’t agree on the problem, how in the world will we ever find a solution? It blows my mind when I see Americans still insisting that the pandemic is overblown, that it’s just a cold, that people are colluding to make the virus seem worse than it is for political reasons.
IT’S A GLOBAL PANDEMIC.
Why is anyone calling it “the China virus” or “bragging” that the WHO initially had it wrong about asymptomatic carriers when PEOPLE ARE DYING. And speaking of, why are Americans talking about death rates like it’s the only negative indicator of the virus? Of the dozen or so people I know who got coronavirus, almost all of them could be classified as having “long-haul COVID” (meaning their health is significantly impacted even months later); one of them is my 13-year-old and one of them is a friend who is like a sister. Why is it so hard to agree that what we know about this virus is dangerous and what we don’t know is even more dangerous so we really need to protect each other from getting it as much as we can until we have more answers?
It drives me batty.
Meanwhile, Italians are telling me, with a sad shake of their head, that they are glad we here, safe. That the situation in the United States is dangerous. True, not all Italians are wearing masks when they say this, but, we’re outside; plus, and this should come as no surprise, Italians have turned masks into fashion, propping them around their arm in a jaunty way. Masks are the new moda, and no post-pandemic routine like mask-wearing can undercut their sense of style.
I feel the toxicity of the US climate around the pandemic leeching out of me with every day we’re here. It’s being replaced with something softer, more genuine. A rallying around each other, a leaning in, together.
Today, the mayor of Spello posted on Facebook that here is a confirmed case in Spello and he wants everyone to be careful, to follow the guidelines, to take care of each other. I tensed, reading those words. In the US, it would be followed with comments about how the numbers are inflated. Or that the doctor was forced to confirm the case. Or that it wasn’t a big deal, it’s just a cold. Or that once the election was over, nobody would care anymore. Or that all that person needed was a good dose of a medicine that no science actually endorses. I read those indignant remarks all the time, and not just from randos on social media. From people I know.
Not here.
Instead people posted comments of concern for the person, with thanks to the mayor and his work, with reminders of how to be safe.
Can you imagine?
I wake up every day in a house that shares a wall with what was once the defensive armor of Spello. I can see the ancient gate from my bedroom window. When invading armies arrived long ago, people tucked safely behind what is now my bedroom wall. They counted their chickens and rationed their arrows. They didn’t quibble about whether that invading army came from Perugia or Rome or if the army was a hoax, a Trojan horse to weaken them. No, they nodded grimly at what they could see plainly in front of their eyes and they handed their neighbor a handful of wheat or clutch of eggs.
I’m not worried about the fate of villages like Spello. Spello will recover. Of this I feel sure. It may take time for the faintness around Spellani eyes to grow vital again. But people here, people all over Italy know one thing—crisis is inevitable and the only way out is through. Railing and defensiveness and shouting about rights are all jester’s garb meant to distract from the truth. We are in a pandemic, and we must ban together. Italians may be genetically unable to form a line, but they know by instinct that strength comes from community. As we sit together on the intersection of Spello’s only two roads, it’s our job, all of our jobs, to care for each other.
There’s so much love here, and that will be the thing that bolsters Spello until she can stand again, chin up and ready for whatever what-will-one-day-be- history can dish out.
Postscript: Today as I walked down to the centro, I saw Corrado making a delivery on his Vespa. He beeped as he passed, and for the first time since our arrival, he sported a grin so broad, not even his mask could contain it.
