Under siege

When we first bought this apartment with its three fairly large balconies, I imagined breakfasts on the terrace with a cup of tea listening to the church bells toll and looking out toward the Alps (OK, you have to stand on your tippy toes since we are on the first floor), outdoor dinner parties with a long table of friends and breezy summer weeknight aperativi, sharing a glass of wine with Cristiano. Now when I first mentioned the three balconies to Italians, they all clucked their tongues and said pretty much the same thing: “Three balconies? Oh, the work you have ahead of you. I pity you having to sweep and mop and clean those balconies day in and day out.” I had forgotten that for Italian women, daily balcony maintenance was as important as the other cleaning obsession I find bizarre, which is airing out the bedclothes each morning.

The balcony thing has not exactly gone the way I imagined and not because I’m out there on my hands and knees with a scrub brush hand polishing each tile. The main problem are the friggin mosquitoes! The only way we can sit on the main balcony off the kitchen (sometimes even during the day) is if we’ve surrounded the perimeter of the balcony with those citronella candles and coils, which then means we are basically sitting in a mosquito-killing fumigation chamber. And that’s not exactly appetizing or a nice accompaniment to your morning Corn Flakes or after-work glass of wine. When I go out in the morning to water the herbs I have growing on the balcony, I have to move quickly to close the door behind me for fear of letting swarms of them in the house. Italian homes, you see, don’t have screens. This means we are basically prisoners in our own home.

The mosquitoes annoy me but often my desire for fresh air outweighs my fear of them and so I crack a window or two, though I can only do this when Cristiano is not home because he absolutely freaks if even one gets in the house and will not rest until he has tracked it down and killed it. We can be in the bedroom in bed but if he even suspects he hears the telltale buzzing of a mosquito in some other room of the house, he will have to get up and dispose of it. We do have one of those wall air conditioners in the living room, but I’m one of those “weird” Americans who absolutely hates air conditioning (and ice – though, that said, I do like my drinks cold and not at room temperature).

Last night I went out on the balcony to bring in the laundry and noticed it was a gorgeous night with a soft breeze. By comparison, in the house it was hot and stuffy. Without saying a word (because typically if I even attempt to open a door or window at night, Cristiano will make us turn off all the lights and TV and sit in the dark and silence so as to not attract the mosquitoes), I began quietly opening a few windows. As I moved toward the bedroom, a voice stopped me dead in my tracks: “Don’t even think about it!”