I’ve asked Jan to tell the story of our meeting with the Count. She recalls it a little differently than I do, and probably much better. Remember, this is the woman who sacrificed a week of her honeymoon to wander with me around Verona, hunting up this house or this street or some underground ruin. I was in a daze, especially for our meeting with the Count. So she’s the one who tells the tale at dinner parties, and she tells it so well I’ve twisted her arm and convinced her to write it up.. She fought me, saying, “I don’t write like you!” I said, “Thank God for that, just write it!” She did, and I think it’s great. Thanks, honey.
This is the first part, starting just about where I started in my last post about the Count. Enjoy!
The afternoon before, we got the message:
“If you’d like to meet the Count, he’s available tomorrow afternoon– give him a call,” and she left us a number. The message had come from the Secretary of Culture in Verona– a lovely woman we had met a few days earlier and who had gotten us in contact with some fascinating experts on the history and culture of Verona. The first time we met her, she gave us a list of places to go, people to talk to, and, in passing, handed David a card saying, “And, of course, you’d like to talk to the Count of Serego-Alighieri – he still lives on the estate purchased by Dante’s son.”
Well, yes… of course we would… ummm… wow… the Count has a card. Ok.
So then we got the message.
And we sat on the bed in our hotel room debating just what one should say to a Count when one calls to set up a chat. Finally, deciding our natural paralysis was a bit ridiculous, David, in a burst of confidence and devil-may-care energy, called the number we had been given… and reached the Count’s teenaged daughter. She was irritated to be interrupted in her phone call to get her father, and groused to him audibly in the background as he picked up. In short sentences, punctuated by comments in the background of the daughter, it was decided that David and I would take a cab out to the estate the next day at 2 pm. “Ring the bell.”
That night, David and I had a wonderful dinner with a couple of college professors we had met in Verona… true academics and Marxists to the core. The meal was lovely – other than the argument we had when we mentioned our next day’s excursion: “Italy is a democracy! There are no Counts anymore!” Well, ok, then… but we were still set to meet the direct descendant of Dante Alighieri at the home and vineyard Pietro Alighieri purchased in 1353. Call us starstruck, but that was pretty cool in our minds. We whispered to each other in the cab on the way home from dinner “And he is SO a Count.”
The next morning we took a cab from our hotel to the address we had been given – many miles outside of the city down winding country roads. The cabbie stopped the car next to a rather nondescript 15 foot high stone wall. In garbled Itanglish, we asked “Is this it?” He nodded and pointed at the wall.
As we approached the place at which he had pointed, the cab drove away. David noticed that there were some buzzer buttons placed high on the wall – the kind you find at the front door of many Chicago 3 flat buildings, little white buttons with little white nametags made on a labeling machine next to them. They said things like "Vineyard Business Office" and "First Floor Office" – in Italian, of course – and one said "Count Serego-Alighieri." Giggling like five-year-olds, we pressed that button. After a moment, a low voice came over a small speaker, "Si?" Immediately sobering, David said, "Hello. My name is David Blixt and I have an appointment to meet with the Count." After a pause, "Si, yes, turn the corner and go in the Vineyard office."
About 20 feet from the little buttons, the wall made a turn. We walked to that point and saw that where the wall seemed to end was a door into a large, rustic, wood paneled and beamed room full of racks and barrels – the walls covered with bottles of wine and vinegar. There was a counter on one wall with two young women wrapping bottles for shipment and a desk near a door on the far side of the room with a young man who appeared to be doing accounts. David and I stood in the dim room nervously waiting – for what we weren’t sure. The workers in the room glanced up at us and returned to their work. A moment or two later, the far door opened and a man entered. He was of medium height, slight of weight, and had straight brown hair, greying at the temples, in an expensive cut. He was wearing a linen button-down white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows and open at the neck and grey linen trousers. He looked at the two of us and approached with a hand outstretched. “Hello, I am Piere-Alvins Serego-Alighieri and you must be David and Mrs. Blixt.” We nodded and smiled as David shook hands with him and he nodded in greeting to me.
“Why don’t we go into the house.” And he turned and walked towards the door from which he came.
