A Thousand Days in Tuscany (2 page)

I move toward the edge of a small group that is complimenting the farmer from whose patch the lovelies were harvested this morning. He’s saying he’ll have more tomorrow, that he’ll drop a bushelful off at Sergio’s by seven if anyone desires a few. Here ensue three separate and simultaneous discourses on the best way to cook squash blossoms. To stuff or not to stuff them? To stuff them with mozzarella and a salt anchovy, to stuff them with a tiny slice of
ricotta salata,
to stuff them with fresh ricotta and a few leaves of basil, to blend the batter with beer or white wine, to add olive oil to the batter, to leave the oil out? And the biggest question of all—to fry the blossoms in peanut oil or extra virgin? Distracted by these contentions, I don’t hear my name called out from across the short expanse of the piazza.

“Chou-Chou,” says Bice, stamping her left foot exasperatedly in the doorway of the bar, her arms stretched out with another tray.

This time, careening through the crowd more nimbly, I dispatch the scorching flowers in record time. Though I’ve neither actually met nor been introduced to most of these people, all of them seem to know that Fernando and I have just moved into the Lucci place down the hill. This intelligence is but a first whiff of the mastery of the intravillage broadcasting system, activated, no doubt, by the small battalion of San Cascianesi who gathered in our driveway to welcome us earlier in the day. And one thing led to another, but still, how did a thank-you
aperitivo
turn into a supper party, and why am I holding so tightly to this empty tray?

W
E HAD LEFT
Venice behind in the pale purply hour of first light and followed four Albanians, variously piled into and piloting the big blue Gonrand truck that ported our every material asset. We’re moving to Tuscany. Eleven kilometers from our destination, a team of spiffy, high-booted, automatic weapon–toting carabinieri invited our meager convoy to halt on the cusp of Route 321. We were detained and interrogated and searched for nearly two hours. Two of the four Albanians were arrested, aliens without papers. We told the military police that we were intending to move into one of the Luccis’ farmhouses and that we needed all of the collected muscle
and manpower to do so. They settled themselves in their van and talked on their radio. They stayed a very long time. They got out of the van and parleyed again, roadside.

Some say the carabinieri are selected for their physical beauty, that they represent the glory of the Italian state. Surely these do it honor, their dark brows and pale eyes an aesthetic diversion during the wait. At last one of the booted gentlemen said, “Fine, but it’s our duty to accompany you.” A much grander colonnade now, we inspired intrigue in the trickle of farm traffic we passed along the way until the big blue truck and the police van came to rest behind our old BMW in the back garden of the house. Let’s get to work.

There had been a well-defined agreement with Signora Lucci that the house would be clean and that it would be empty. Neither is the case. As the clandestine Albanians begin to carry in our goods, I requisition the carabinieri to help me carry out the signora’s tokens of welcome, all in the form of irrefutable junk. There are armoires with crushed-in doors and tables and chairs that, in order to stay upright, are cunningly leaned up against each other. There are six sets of bunk beds. We heave it all into the barn. In our bedroom, I’m dusting a handsome print of a cypress-lined lane framed in hammered copper. It swings on its wire hanger and behind it I find a wall safe. This house, this barely restored stable of a house, which has no
central heating and no telephone and electrical wiring sufficient for a blind hermit, has a safe. Not the little hotel-room sort of safe, this is a grand, official-looking thing with two levels of knobs and a clock, and I call Fernando to come look at it.

“It’s obviously new, something the Luccis installed during the renovation. I don’t think it’s meant for our use,” says Fernando.

“But why would they need a safe here? Wouldn’t one in their villa suffice? I think it must be for tenant use. Let’s see if we can open it.”

We fiddle with it, twirl and push at the knobs, until Fernando says, “It’s locked, and without the combination, we’d never gain access. If we want to use it, we’ll have to ask for the coordinates. Besides, what would we possibly put in it?” We each think for half a minute and begin laughing at our dearth of riches: documents tucked inside a whiskey-colored leather portfolio, a rosary that belonged to Fernando’s grandmother, his father’s pocket watch, my son’s and daughter’s birth bracelets, a few jewels.

“I’d put chocolate in it. Not just any kind of chocolate, but my stash of ninety-percent cacao. And my fifty-year-old balsamic vinegar,” I say, but my plan is interrupted by one of the Albanians, the one who keeps moving boxes from room to room, seemingly at will. Once again, I tell him about the numbering system and then go back downstairs to see how the rest of the crew is faring. One of the carabinieri seems to be without a job, so I ask him to help me move an
undesired sofa out to the barn. Fernando shoots me evil looks that say you can’t just tell an Italian military policeman to hoist up one end of a molding brown velvet sofa that weighs two hundred kilos and pull it backward down a narrow, curving staircase while you push the other end with all your might, causing him to totter and lurch on the heels of his shiny black boots.

I remember my first sight of Fernando’s apartment on the Lido. Scoured of all vanities, it was the lair of an ascetic, the mean hut of an acolyte. Savonarola could have lived there, all of it bespeaking reverence for a medieval patina, undisturbed by the passing of time or someone’s riffling about with a dust cloth. This is already much easier.

By now, a small, trawling knot of townspeople has gathered in the garden, hands behind their backs or folded across their chests. After greeting them and introducing myself, saying how happy we are to be new San Cascianesi, I approach the only woman with hands on her hips. She looks ready to pitch in. I ask if she might recommend someone who would have time today to give us a hand.
“Buongiorno, signora. Sono molto lieta di conoscerla.
Good day, madam. I’m very honored to know you,” I say, extending my hand to her.

“
Il piacere è mio. Mi chiamo Floriana.
The pleasure is mine. My name is Floriana.”

“Ci serve un pò di aiuto.
We could use a little help.”

“
Ci mancherebbe altro.
It’s the least we can do,” she says, as though helping us was already her plan.

We have two new brooms, a plastic bucket, a squeeze mop, and at least one specimen of every gel and foam and spray and wax that promises pine-scented refuge from household dirt. This is a pittance. Our neighbors disappear and soon return with their own arms. Liter-size plastic bottles of pink alcohol, plastic bags full of what seem to be filthy rags, industrial-size mops and brooms.

Soon there are three window washers, a sweeper on each floor, with moppers at the ready. The restoration of the house had been completed less than a month before and the disorder is mostly cosmetic. In less than four hours, things have definitely improved. Windows sparkle, floors are somewhat cleaner, appliances are scrubbed, walls dusted, bathrooms shine. The carefully numbered boxes are piled in their correct rooms. Floriana snaps fresh, lace-trimmed burgundy sheets into place on our pale yellow wooden
baldacchino,
lately assembled by Fernando and the two carabinieri. And all the squad has had to sustain it were paper cups of warm Ferrarelle, imported from Venice.

Fernando and I conference and, since it’s nearly six, we invite the crew to join us in the village at Bar Centrale for
aperitivi.
By this time, the policemen are in it for the long haul, demonstrating not a
whit of rush to depart. Only the Albanians seem furtive, signaling escape routes with their eyes. The now-mellowed policemen let this play out, having already decided they’ll be looking the other way when the crew drives off. We trudge up the hill into town, some of us walking, some of us riding, all of us exhausted and satisfied, each in his own way. We’ve had a barn raising, a quilting bee, and we’ve all earned our thirst and hunger.

Campari and soda gives way to white wine after which someone begins pouring red. And what better after bowls full of fleshy, salty black olives than a great heap of
bruschette
—bread roasted over wood, drenched in fine local oil, dusted in sea salt and devoured out of hand? Still, no one seems ready to say
arrivederci.

More conferencing ensues, this time among Fernando and I and the two cooks, Bice and Monica, who work at the bar’s restaurant. Our numbers have grown to seventeen. Can they feed us all? Rather than giving a simple yes or no, Monica reminds us that each of these seventeen people is related to at least one other person, and that all of them are expected home to either sup or cook within the next half hour. But I needn’t have worried. Floriana, formerly with hands on hips, has taken over here just as she did back at the house. Some women scatter. Others move out onto the little terrace, push tables together and spread plastic cloths, set plates and silverware and glasses, plunk down great jugs of wine. More tables are unearthed
from the cellars of the nearby city hall and soon the whole piazza is transformed into an alfresco dining room.

The
fornaio,
the baker, had been summoned and, like some sweat-glistened centaur, peaked white hat floured, bare knees poking up from his aproned lap, he pumps his bike up the hill into the village, alternately ringing his bell and blowing his horn. I watch him and the others and I think how so simple an affair can inspire their happiness.

He unloads rounds of bread big as wagon wheels from his saddle baskets, lays them on the table, stands back to admire them, telling us one was meant for the
osteria
in Piazze and the others for the folks in the castle up in Fighine. “Let them eat yesterday’s bread,” he says remounting, yelling over his shoulder to save three places for him at table. After brief raids on their own kitchens, fetching whatever it was they had prepared for their family supper, the scattered women reconverge at the bar. Their mothers and children and husbands in tow, they come toting pots and platters under an arm, a free hand tucking drifting wisps of hair under their kerchiefs. Like a gaggle of small birds, their high-pitched patter pierces the soft ending of the day. Flowered aprons tied—at all times of the day or evening, I would learn—over navy tube skirts, their feet slippered in pink terry-cloth, they move easily between their private spaces and the public domain of the piazza. Both belong to them.

A man they call Barlozzo appears to be the village chieftain, walking
as he does up and down the tables, setting down plates, pouring wine, patting shoulders. Somewhere beyond seventy, Barlozzo is long and lean, his eyes so black they flicker up shards of silver. Gritty, he seems. Mesmeric. Much later I see the way those eyes soften to gray in the doom just before a storm, be it an act of God or some more personal tempest. His thick smooth hair is white and blond and announces that he is at once very young and very old. And for as long as I will know him, I will never be certain if time is pulling him backward or beckoning him ahead. A chronicler, a raconteur, a ghost. A
mago
is Barlozzo. He will become my muse, this old man, my
ani-matore,
the soul of things for me.

F
RESH FROM THEIR
triumph of the squash blossoms, now Bice and Monica come back laden with platters of prosciutto and
salame—cose nostre,
our things, they say, a phrase signifying that their families raise and butcher pigs, that they artisinally fashion every part of the animal’s flesh and skin and fat into one sort or other of sausage or ham. There are crostini, tiny rounds of bread, toasted on one side, the other side dipped in warm broth and smeared thickly with a salve of chicken livers, capers, and the thinly scraped zest of lemon. Again from the kitchen, two large, deep bowls of
pici,
thick, rough, hand-rolled ropes of pasta, are brought forth, each one tucked in the crook of Bice’s elbows. The
pici
are
sauced simply with raw crushed green tomatoes, minced garlic, olive oil, and basil. Wonderful.

Many of the women have brought a soup of some sort, soup, more often than pasta, being the traditional
primo,
opening plate, of a Tuscan lunch or supper. No one seems concerned that the soups sit on the table while we work at devouring the
pici.
Soups are most often served at room temperature with a thread of oil and a dusting of pecorino, ewe’s milk cheese. “There’s more intensity of flavor
quando la minestra è servita tiepida,
when the soup is served tepid,” says Floriana to me across the table, in a voice both pedantic and patient. “People who insist on drinking soup hot burn their palates so they must have it always hotter yet, as they search to taste something, anything at all,” she says as though too-hot soup was the cause of all human suffering.

There is a potion made of
farro,
an ancient wheatlike grain, and rice; one of hard bread softened in water and scented with garlic, oil, rosemary and just-ground black pepper; another one of fat white beans flavored with sage and tomato and one of new peas in broth with a few shreds of field greens.

The second courses are equally humble. Floriana uncovers an oval cast iron pan to display a
polpettone,
a hybrid meat loaf/paté. “A piece of veal, one of chicken, one of pork, a thick slice of mortadella are hand ground at least three times until the meat is a soft paste. Then
add eggs, Parmigiano, garlic, and parsley before patting the paste out into a rectangle, laying it with slices of
salame
and hard-boiled eggs, then turning it over and over on itself, jelly-roll fashion. Bake it, seam side down, until the scent makes you hungry. You know, until it smells done.” Floriana offers this information without my asking, talking about the
polpettone
as though it was some local architectural wonder, looking down at it with her head cocked in quiet admiration.