Next, Papi descended into the old city of Feltre, which sits in the lower stretches of Val Belluna, a valley guarded by a large castle in the Alpine foothills. (Several coronavirus patients in Lombardy had contracted the virus from a local bar.) Da Cecco was closed, so Papi met up with a friend-another man in his seventies who has lived in Feltre for his entire life and is unconcerned about the outbreak.
His first stop was at the nearest village bar, Da Cecco. That day, when Papi left the house, I skulked out behind him, trailing him down the mountain. For that reason-and for so many others-it’s difficult to tell him what to do. Before we moved to Feltre, he had been living in the house alone, and, though we’d partly moved there to be closer to him, it often felt like we were guests in his home, passersby in his established routine. “Everyone’s saying don’t go on unnecessary outings, and he’s doing exactly that,” my wife complained to me recently, once we were safely out of earshot, on the top floor of the house-which Papi rebuilt, in the nineties, and has lived in ever since. My wife and I constantly worry about where Papi’s going and who he’s with. Then he wrapped a dingy brown scarf around his neck. “There are real concerns about the virus,” he said, the other day, over coffee and biscuits. He was spitting every few feet-another important part of the routine-and coughing, loudly. Stumbling about outside, in the early-morning fog, was my father-in-law, Papi, who, for decades, has begun each day by hiking a circle around the house. One recent morning, after waking up and checking the patient count, I walked over to my bedroom window, which has a view of a nearby hiking trail. The order has been easier for some to follow than others. “Avoid contact with people-especially during this time when we don’t really understand the virus.” (After publication, a representative of the Local Health Authority sent the New Yorker a statement clarifying that there are no confirmed cases at Feltre hospital and that steps have been taken to limit visitors.) “Don’t go to the hospital in Feltre, to avoid contagion,” she said, as there would be a higher risk of contamination there. Nevertheless, one local doctor told me that our commune has probably been exposed to the virus since January. Unlike Codogno, the center of the outbreak-which has been dubbed, by the Italian press, the “Wuhan of Italy”-Feltre is not yet within the red zone, where supermarkets limit the number of customers allowed inside at once and roads are patrolled by the carabinieri, who keep residents in and visitors out. The main thing, though, is to avoid going into town.
In Feltre, my family has quickly grown accustomed to our new routine: wake up, check the local coronavirus-patient count, take our temperatures, then wash our hands. La Repubblica reported, “Ours is a country in nervous breakdown.”
“We need to stop the panic.” That night, the number of cases hit four hundred-a twenty-five per cent surge in twenty-four hours. “It’s time to turn down the tone,” Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said to La Repubblica, Italy’s second-largest newspaper, on Wednesday. The virus had travelled nearly a thousand miles in five days. By Tuesday evening, there were cases reported down in Sicily, off the toe of the Italian boot. One patient died, then another, and as our concerns grew so, too, did the virus’s reach, spreading east to the Veneto region, in which Feltre is situated. Europa League soccer matches and Ash Wednesday events were cancelled. Over the weekend, twelve towns-more than fifty thousand residents-were placed under quarantine. Last Friday, there were fourteen cases of the COVID-19 virus identified in Lombardy, where Fashion Week was being held in Milan. As coronavirus sweeps through Italy at an unprecedented rate, residents of several northern regions, including Lombardy (the most populous region in the country) and Veneto (the fifth-most populous), have been advised to isolate themselves as much as possible. On Wednesday, local health officials recommended that we do exactly that. It’s the ideal place for those who are interested in shutting out the rest of the world. My family lives in a house on top of a mountain, and few people are around. (Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where we lived before, was more than double the size.) Tourists aren’t too common artists and recluses are. The city, my wife’s birthplace, sits at the foot of the Dolomites and has a population of about twenty thousand. If there were ever a place designed for a quarantine, it would be Feltre, in northern Italy, where I’ve been living with my family for the past six months.
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