A Thousand Days in Tuscany (3 page)

Her whole creation couldn’t weigh more than a pound or so, and I am preparing myself for a loaves-and-fishes event when two of the other women uncover their own version of
polpettone.
Each slices hers thin as leaves, then passes the plates around. Still, we are thirty at table. But soon enough other dishes are introduced.

Faraona,
guinea hen roasted with black and green olives, is offered by the baker’s wife. There is an
arista,
a loin of pork stuffed with herbs and roasted on branches of wild fennel, a casserole of tripe, its cover still sealed, which had been set to bake with tomatoes and onions and white wine in a slow oven the whole day long. There are all manner of little stews and braises, each of a moderate portion, a dose meant to sustain two, perhaps three, restrained appetites. Yet the crowd ogles and groans and protests.

“Ma chi può mangiare tutta questa roba? Che spettacolo.
But who could eat all these things? What a spectacle.”

Each person eats a bite or two from the dish that is closest to him, takes a slice or a morsel of whatever is passed before him. Chewing and mopping at jots of sauce with their bread, sipping wine, arms in
allegro
postures of discourse—I wonder if this is a Tuscan reading of
The Emperor’s New Clothes.
Are they truly convinced this collection of their suppers to be
la grande bouffe?
How careful they are to pass the plates and dishes, how they ask, check, ask again who would like some more. Many here seem beyond fifty, some twenty or thirty years more. Those who are younger echo their elders’ kindnesses and somehow seem older than their years. There is less distinction among the generations. A girl of perhaps seventeen gets up to fix a plate for her grandmother, telling her to watch for the bones in the rabbit stew, asks her if she’s taken her pills. A boy, not more then ten, slices the bread, telling his younger brother to stay clear of his work, that he should never play where someone is using a knife. A suggestion of calm and small graces wash the tableau in long ago. 1920? 1820? How is this evening different from an evening in June when the oldest man here was young, I wonder. I ask the question of Floriana, who is of a certain age, though hardly old. She’s quiet for a bit before she puts the question to the table. People answer but more to themselves than to the assembly.

Up from the din, Barlozzo says, “No one’s going to bed without his supper tonight.” Shifting the great bony length of himself to sit
sideways in his chair, he crosses his legs, lights a cigarette. The laughter that follows is thin and sounds like memories.

Wearing a rumpled face and a stiffly starched shirt, one bumptious man redeems the mood, “Whoever cooked the lamb stew is the woman I’ll take for my next bride.” Now the laughter is refreshed and Floriana looks at me, nods toward the rumpled face, “He’s ninety-three and has buried four wives. There’s no one left who’ll take a chance with him. The last one was only sixty-three when she died. She was a bit fat but in perfect health. One day Ilario, here, went mushroom gathering, came home and cooked a frittata for his wife’s lunch. She was dead in an hour. Some say it was her heart, but we all know it was the mushrooms.”

“Did Ilario eat the frittata, too?” I want to know.

“Only one alive who knows the answer to that is Ilario, and he’s not talking.”

I sit breaking my bread into pieces, dipping them into my wine. I notice three people. I look at Fernando sitting across and halfway down the table from me, smiling, holding court, it seems, among the men and women around him. They are comparing dialects, the Tuscans trying to mimic Fernando’s slippery Venetian cant but managing only what sounds like an underwater lisp. They applaud and laugh with each new phrase he offers. His voice is in symphony with his face, which is beautiful, pink-cheeked from the wine. Floriana
stands up, putters about the table, adjusting things, sweeping crumbs with the side of her hand, scolding, teasing as she goes. I catch her eye or she catches mine and she nearly whispers, as though there are only two of us,
“Tutto andrà bene, Chou-Chou, tutto andrà molto bene. Vedrai.
All will go well. All will go very well. You’ll see.”

Barlozzo stands behind Floriana now, smoking and sipping wine as though his watch is finished for the evening, as though, now, he can stay a little apart from things. From everything and everyone except Floriana, that is. Nowhere has he fixed his eyes but on her for more than a few minutes at a time all evening. A discreet chatelaine? A gallant lover? Surely he’d heard Floriana’s affirmation to me. Surely he never misses a beat. I look at him. I watch him. And he doesn’t miss that either.

Bice sets down a small plate in front of me, a fine-looking
panna cotta,
cooked cream, unmolded and sitting in pool of crushed strawberries. I’m about to excavate it with my spoon when a man who introduces himself as Pioggia, Rain, comes to sit by me and asks if I’ve yet met Assunta.

“No, I don’t think so,” I tell him, looking about.

“Well, she’s Piero’s”—he points to a burly, youngish man in jeans and a T-shirt—“finest cow. And she’s blue-eyed. Assunta is the only blue-eyed cow I’ve ever seen,” he says.

He reads my open-mouthed stare as disbelief and so he softens the story of Assunta’s astounding loveliness.

“Well, her eyes aren’t exactly blue, but they’re not brown either. They’re gray and brown with little blue spots in them and they’re wonderful. So after I milked her this morning, I brought the milk directly up here to Bice. I do that only with some of Assunta’s milk, all the rest of it goes to the co-op to get pasteurized and ruined. Can’t make a decent
panna cotta
with pasteurized milk. At least that’s what Bice tells me, and so I bring her a six-liter jar of Assunta’s morning milk at least three times a week, whenever she tells me she needs it.
Prova, prova.
Try it,” he urges.

I shrink for a moment under this revelation of Assunta’s most private ministrations. From her teats to my spoon with only Pioggia’s jar and Bice’s pot in between. These facts redraw my concept of “fresh.” And so I eat blue-eyed Assunta’s milk, coaxed from her by a man called Rain, and it’s delectable. I lick both sides of my spoon and scrape the empty bowl, and Piogga beams.

Una crostata,
a tart, sits within reach, but Pioggia is watching me and, if I touch it, I fear he will somehow anthropomorphize the apricots that sit, crowded in their own treacly juices, on a palette of crust. I just know this fruit will have been plucked from the only tree in Tuscany where druids live.

• • •

A
S WE
’
RE SAYING
buona notte,
we notice the carabinieri bending over maps with flashlights, giving the Albanians directions back to Venice. The Albanians are going back to Venice. But we’re not.

Over these past three years that Fernando and I have been together, our journeys have always ended with our coming back over the water to our funny little house by the sea. But there’s no more beach house waiting for us now. We’ve exchanged a beach house for a stable. And though the warm welcome offered us this evening seems a fine forecast of life in these hills, what could truly measure up to those last thousand days we lived in Venice? It’s still unclear to me
why
we let go of the Princess’s skirts,
why
we left behind her glories for a leap onto dry land to dice with yet another beginning.

I know this launch is different. This time our collective stakes have been pulled. We have neither a home nor jobs, and no more than the sheerest notion of how we’ll whittle out the next era. Much about this new life suggests a reassertion of our vows—“for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer.” Fernando remains giddy with anticipation and unmanaged expectations. He’s a child who’s run away from home, a man who’s run away from disenchantment, from the torpors of an unexamined life and from old, still tortuous pain.

As we climb the steep stone stairs to our new front door, I am quiet, taking in his joy but resonating little of my own, save a giggle
every once in a while when I think of Assunta. I delight in Fernando’s pleasure at this fresh new gambol, yet I wonder about the Homeric me. Can I kindle her another time? Is she still supple, will she fit lissomly into her old mettle?

I stay outside alone for a moment playing games with my longing for Venice. I tell myself, “Look at that Tuscan landscape. This is where everyone in the world would like to live. There are no cypress trees in Venice. And no olive trees in Venice, either, no vines, no sheep, no meadows, no fields of wheat, no sunflowers, not even one poppy field. Nor a thatch of lavender high enough in which to hide.” I try not to think about the sea and the rosy light and the beauty of Venice that, not for a day, failed to astonish me. This starting place is good, this place among two hundred souls, they and it and now us, lost in time. They and it and now us clinging to a patch of ancient earth where Tuscany and Umbria and Lazio collide. I hear Fernando rummaging about, tripping over what remains of the packing crates. He’s singing, and his sounds are so sweet.

I head indoors and directly to the puce-tiled bath to fill the tub. As we sit there in the vanilla bubbles, I want to know, “Is it possible to
paint
ceramic tile?”

“Cristo,”
says Fernando. “We’ve just arrived and you want to paint over brand-new tiles. What
is
this fire in you to always be changing things?”

“I don’t like puce,” I tell him.

“Che cos’è
puce? What is puce?”

“It’s the color of these tiles. Puce is brown and green and purple. And I hate brown and green and purple all stewed together. Actually we could just take the tiles down and replace them with some sort of deep, toasty terra cotta. Or we could do a reprise of our black and white in Venice. That’s what we’ll do. Tell me true, you ended up loving that bathroom, didn’t you? Come on. It will make us feel more at home here. Say yes. We can put up the baroque mirrors and sconces, hang the small lantern that was in the entry, and, with baskets of beautiful towels and soaps and candles, this could be luscious.” But my voice already sounds of defeat.

“Why must a bathroom be luscious? Luscious is for cakes with cream. Luscious is for beautiful women,” he says, pulling hard with both hands at the damp hair about my temples.

The bed doesn’t feel right. It seems crooked, as though the canopy frame is higher on one side. But the sheets and my husband both feel cool and smooth. How delicious it is to rest after such a day. To lay down blood and bones in a place, almost any place, where someone waits to hold what’s young of you and what’s old of you. What’s just happened to you and that which has happened so long ago to you. All of you.

While Fernando sleeps, I lie there and think of our little dawn hegira,
which already seems part of another lifetime. Was it only this morning? I miss the sea. I wish for a single blue velvet caress of thick salt air. And for a walk, a half-loping run over damp sand at land’s end, icy seafoam purling round my ankles. It’s no use. I can’t sleep. I get up, pull on Fernando’s robe, and go to sit on the terrace.

Even the sky is different here, I think. The lagoon sky is a cupola, softly hung and barely out of reach. This one is farther away, as though the night roof was raised a million miles. A boat horn’s wail was my Venetian lullaby. Now it’s made of newborn lambs bleating.

The village church bells ring quarter past midnight. My first Tuscan friend is a bell who will make himself heard four times an hour, every hour. Loyalty. And what else is there in my thin store of assets? Besides the bells and the sheep and the big sky, I have my own history. I have the love of my children, as they have mine. The man whom I love with my whole heart is inside sleeping in the yellow wooden bed. I have my two hands, which are older than I am. And I have that quiet frisson. An undine’s hissing near my ear, part threat, part invitation, it penetrates me with some unclassifiable hunger. A thistle fallen back somewhere in my mind, gently, urgently rasping, it keeps me curious, keeps me new. These are the things I can count on. These are my comforts. My charms.

Deep-Fried Flowers, Vegetables, and Herbs

1½ cups all purpose flour

2 cups beer

½ cup cold water

2 teaspoons fine sea salt

3 ice cubes

Peanut oil or extra virgin olive oil for frying

Zucchini blossoms, nasturtium flowers, and borage flowers, rinsed, dried, and stems trimmed

Celery leaves cut in branches, rinsed, and dried

Whole sage leaves, rinsed and dried

Tiny spring onions or scallions, stems trimmed to about 4 inches in length, rinsed and dried

Warm sea-salted water in a sprayer

In a large bowl, beat together with a fork the flour, beer, water, and sea salt to form a thin batter. Let the batter rest for an hour or so, covered and at room temperature. Stir in the ice cubes and let the batter rest for an additional half-hour. Stir the batter again. It should now be smooth and have the texture of heavy cream. If it’s too thick, add cold water by the tablespoonful until the “heavy cream” texture is achieved.

Over a medium flame, heat the oil in a deep fryer or a heavy pan to a depth of 3”. The more slowly the oil heats, the more evenly it will heat, helping you to avoid hot and cold spots and unevenly fried foods. Test the oil by dropping in a cube of bread. If it sizzles and turns golden in a few seconds, the oil is ready.

Drag the flowers, herbs, and spring onions through the batter, shaking off the excess. Place them into the hot oil and let them bob about for half a minute or so, allowing them to take on a good, dark crust. Turn them with tongs, to finish frying, then remove them with a slotted spoon to absorbent paper towels. Using a virgin plant sprayer, spray each batch immediately with warm sea-salted water and keep them in a 100-degree oven while you fry the next batch. Better, gather people around the stove and eat the things pan to hand to mouth. A very informal first course.