On the bottom floor, the line of rooms is not that convenient. When we first saw the house, I'd said airily, “We can knock these walls out and have two big rooms down here.” Now our geometra tells us we may open the walls only about six feet because of earthquake precautions. Staying here has given me an inner sense of the construction. I see how the first floor walls bow near the floor, accommodating the large stones in the foundation. The house was built in a way not unlike the stone terraces, without mortar, stones stacked and wedged. From the depths of the doorways and windowsills, I see that the walls thin as they go up. The yard-thick walls on the first floor are maybe half that on the third. What holds the house together as it goes up? Can inserting a few modern I beams of steel in those openings do the job of stones I couldn't even reach around?
When the great dome of the duomo was conceived in Florence, no one knew the technique for constructing so large a half sphere. Someone proposed building it over an immense mound of dirt piled in the cathedral. Money would be hidden throughout the pile and, on completion of the dome, the peasants would be invited to dig for coins and cart away the dirt. Fortunately, Brunelleschi figured out how to engineer his dome. I hope someone built this house on solid principles also but still I begin to have misgivings about taking out the fortress-thick walls on the first floor.
The geometra is full of opinions. He thinks the apartment's back staircase should come out. We love it, a secret escape. He thinks we should replaster the cracked and crumbling stucco facade, paint it ocher. No way. I like the colors that change as the light does and the intense glow of golds when it rains, as though the sun seeps into the walls. He thinks our first priority should be the roof. “But the roof doesn't leak—why bother it, when there are so many other pressing things?” We explain to him that we won't be able to do everything at once. The house cost the earth. The project will have to be spread out. We will do much of the work ourselves. Americans, I try to explain, sometimes are “do it yourself” people. As I say this I see a flash of panic cross Ed's face. “Do it yourself” doesn't translate. The geometra shakes his head as though all is hopeless if he has to explain things as basic as these.
He speaks to us kindly, as if through precise enunciation we will understand him. “Listen, the roof must be consolidated. They will preserve the tiles, number them, place them again in the same order, but you will have insulation; the roof will be strengthened.”
At this point, it's either the roof or central heating, not both. We debate the importance of each. After all, we'll be here mostly in the summer. But we don't want to freeze at Christmas when we come over to pick the olives. If we're ever going to put heat in, it needs to go in at the same time as the water system and plumbing. The roof can be done anytime—or never. Right now, water is held in a cistern in the farmer's bedroom. When you shower or flush, a pump comes on and well water gurgles into the cistern. Individual hotwater heaters (miraculously, they work) hang above each shower. We'll need a central water heater, a large cistern connected to it so that the noisy pump isn't continuously working.
We decide on the heating. The geometra, feeling sure that we will come to our senses, says he will apply for a roof permit as well.
At some low point in the house's life, someone madly painted the chestnut beams in every room with a hideous vinegar varnish. This unimaginable technique once was popular in the South of Italy. You paint over real beams with a sticky goo, then comb through it to simulate wood! Sandblasting, therefore, is a top priority. An ugly job but fast, and we'll do the sealing and waxing ourselves. I once refinished a sailor's sea chest and found it fun. We'll need door and window repairs. All the window casements and interior shutters are covered with the same faux wood concoction. This genius of the beams and windows is probably responsible for the fireplace, which is covered with ceramic tiles that resemble bricks. What a strange mind, to cover the real thing with an imitation of something real. All this must go, along with the blue tiles covering the wide windowsill, the butterflies in the bathroom. Both the main kitchen and the farmers' kitchen sport ugly cement sinks. His list is now three pages long. The farmers' kitchen has floors made of crushed marble tiles, super ugly. There are a lot of ancient-looking wires coiled near the ceilings on white porcelain knobs. Sometimes sparks come flying out when I switch on a light.
The geometra sits on the terrace wall, mopping his face with an enormous monogrammed linen handkerchief. He looks at us with pity.
RULE ONE IN A RESTORATION PROJECT: BE THERE. WE WILL BE seven thousand miles away when some of the big work is done. We brace ourselves for bids for the work.
Nando Lucignoli, sent to us by Signor Martini, drives up in his Lancia and stands at the bottom of the driveway, looking not at the house but at the view of the valley. I think he must be a deep admirer of landscape but see that he is talking on a cellular phone, waving his cigarette and gesturing to the air. He tosses the phone onto the front seat.
“Bella posizione.” He waves his Gauloises again as he shakes hands, almost bowing to me. His father is a stonemason and he has become a contractor, an extraordinarily good-looking one. Like many Italian men, his cologne or aftershave surrounds him with a lemony, sunny aura only slightly dispelled by the cigarette smoke. Before he says anything more, I'm sure he's the contractor for us. We take him on a tour of the house. “Niente, niente,” he repeats, nothing. “We'll run the heating pipes in channels on the back of the house, a week; the bathroom—three days, signora. One month, everything. You'll have a perfect house; just lock the door, leave me the key and when you come back, everything will be taken care of.” He assures us he can find old bricks to match the rest of the house for the new kitchen in the stall. The wiring? He has a friend. The terrace bricks? He shrugs, oh, some mortar. Opening the walls? His father is expert in that. His slicked-back black hair, wanting to revert to curls, falls over his forehead. He looks like Caravaggio's Bacchus—only he has moss-green eyes and a slight slouch, probably from leaning into the speed of his Lancia. He thinks my ideas are wonderful, I should have been an architect, I have excellent taste. We sit out on the stone wall and have a glass of wine. Ed goes inside to make coffee for himself. Nando draws diagrams of the water lines on the back of an envelope. My Italian is charming, he says. He understands everything I try to say. He says he will drop off his estimate tomorrow. I am sure it will be reasonable, that through the winter Nando and his father and a few trusted workers will transform Bramasole. “Enjoy yourself—leave it to me,” he says as his tires spin on the driveway. As I wave good-bye, I notice that Ed has stayed on the terrace. He's noncommittal about Nando, saying only that he smelled like a profumeria, it's affected to smoke Gauloises, and that he didn't think the central heating could be installed that way at all.
Ian brings up Benito Cantoni, a yellow-eyed, solidly built short man who bears a strange resemblance to Mussolini. He's around sixty so he must have been a namesake. I remember that Mussolini actually was named for the Mexican Benito Juárez, who fought French oppression. Odd to think of that revolutionary name travelling through the dictator and into this quiet man whose wide, blank face and bald head shine like a polished nut. When he speaks, which is little, he uses the local Val di Chiana dialect. He cannot understand a word either of us says and we certainly can't understand him. Even Ian has trouble. Benito worked on the restoration of the chapel at Le Celle, a nearby monastery, a solid recommendation. We're even more impressed when Ian drives us out to look at a house he's restoring near Castiglione del Lago, a farmhouse with a tower supposedly built by the Knights Templar. The work looks careful. His two masons, unlike Benito, have big smiles.
Back at Bramasole, Benito walks through, not even taking a note. He radiates a calm confidence. When we ask Ian to request an estimate, Benito balks. It is impossible to know the problems he might run into. How much do we want to spend? (What a question!) He is not sure about the floor tiles, of what he will uncover when he takes the bricks off the upstairs terrace. A small beam, he n
otices, needs replacing on the third floor.
Estimates are foreign to builders around here. They're used to working by the day, with someone always at home to know how long they were there. This projecting is just not the way they do business, although they will sometimes say “Under three days” or “Quindici giorni.” Quindici giorni—fifteen days—we learned is simply a convenient term meaning the speaker has no idea but imagines that the time is not entirely open ended. “Quindici minuti,” we'd learned by missing a train, means a few minutes, not the fifteen it indicates, even when spoken by the train conductor about a departure. I think most Italians have a longer sense of time than we do. What's the hurry? Once up, a building will stand a long, long time, perhaps a thousand years. Two weeks, two months, big deal.
Removing the walls? He doesn't advise it. He makes gestures, indicating the house collapsing around us. Somehow, Benito will come up with a number and will give it to Ian this week. As he leaves he flashes a smile at last. His square yellow teeth look strong enough to bite through brick. Ian endorses him and discounts Nando as “the playboy of the western world.” Ed looks pleased.
Our geometra recommends the third contractor, Primo Bianchi, who arrives in an Ape, one of those miniature three-wheel trucks. He, too, is miniature, scarcely five feet tall, stout and dressed in overalls with a red kerchief around his neck. He rolls out and salutes us formally with an old word, “Salve, signori.” He looks like one of Santa's workers, with gold-rimmed glasses, flyaway white hair, tall boots. “Permesso?” he asks before we go through the door. At each door he pauses and repeats, “Permesso?” as though he might surprise someone undressing. He holds his cap in his hand in a way I recognize from my father's mill workers in the South; he's used to being the “peasant” speaking to the “padrone.” He has, however, a confident sense of himself, a pride I often notice in waiters, mechanics, delivery people here. He tries the window latches and swings the doors. Pokes the tip of his knife in beams to check for rot, wiggles loose bricks.
He comes to a spot in the floor, kneels and rubs two bricks that are a slightly lighter color. “Io,” he says, beaming, pointing to his chest, “molti anni fa.” He replaced them many years ago. He then tells us he was the one who installed the main bath and that he used to come every December and help haul the big lemon pots that lined the terrace into the limonaia for the winter. The house's owner was his father's age, a widower then, whose five daughters had grown and moved away. When he died, the daughters left the house vacant. They refused to part with it but no one cared for the place for thirty years. Ah, the five sisters of Perugia I imagine in their narrow iron beds in five bedrooms, all waking at once and throwing open the shutters. I don't believe in ghosts, but from the beginning I sensed their heavy black braids twisted with ribbons, their white nightgowns embroidered with their initials, their mother with silver brushes lining them up before the mirror each night for one hundred strokes.
On the upstairs terrace, he shook his head. The bricks must come up, then an underlayer of tarpaper and insulation installed. We had a feeling he knew what he was talking about. The central heating? “Keep the fire going, dress warmly, signora, the cost is formidable.” The two walls? Yes, it could be done. Decisions are irrational. We both knew Primo Bianchi was the right man for the restoration.
IF THE GUN IS ON THE MANTEL IN CHAPTER ONE, THERE MUST be a bang by the end of the story.
The former owner had not just affirmed the bounty of water, he had waxed lyrical. It was a subject of great pride. When he showed us around the property's borders, he'd opened a garden faucet full blast, turning his hands in the cold well water. “This was a watering spot for the Etruscans! This water is known to be the purest—the whole Medici water system,” he said, gesturing to the walls of the fifteenth-century fortress at the top of the hill, “runs through this land.” His English was perfect. Without doubt, he knew about water. He described the watercourses of the mountains around us, the rich supply that flowed through our side of Monte Sant'Egidio.
Of course, we had the property inspected before we bought it. An impartial geometra from Umbertide, miles away over the hills, gave us detailed evaluations. The water, he agreed, was plentiful.
While I am taking a shower after six weeks of ownership, the water slows, then trickles, then drips, then stops. Soap in hand, I stand there without comprehension for several moments, then decide the pump must have been turned off accidentally, or, more likely, the power has gone off. But the overhead light is on. I step out and rub off the soap with a towel.
Signor Martini drives out from his office bringing a long string marked with meters and a weight on the end. We lift the stone off the well and he lowers the weight. “Poca acqua,” he announces loudly as the weight hits bottom. Little water. He hauls it up, black roots hanging off, and only a few inches of string are wet. The well is a measly twenty meters deep, with a pump that must have ushered in the Industrial Revolution. So much for the expertise of the impartial geometra from Umbertide. That Tuscany is in the third year of a serious drought doesn't help either.
“Un nuovo pozzo,” he announces, still louder. Meanwhile, he says, we will buy water from a friend of his who will bring it in a truck. Fortunately, he has a “friend” for every situation.
“Lake water?” I ask, imagining little toads and slimy green weed from Trasimeno. He assures us it's pure water, even has fluoride in it. His friend simply will pump umpteen liters into the well and it will be adequate for the rest of the summer. In fall, a new pozzo, deep, with fine water—enough for a swimming pool.
The swimming pool had become a leitmotif while we were looking for houses. Since we are from California, everyone who showed us a house assumed that naturally we would want a pool first thing. I remembered that years ago, while visiting in the East, I was asked by the pale-faced son of a friend if I taught my classes in my bathing suit. I liked his vision. After owning a pool, I think the best way to enjoy the water is to have a friend who has a pool. Dealing with overnight neon green transformations of water is not in my vacation plans. There is trouble enough here.
And so we buy a truckload of water, feeling half foolish and half relieved. We only have two weeks left at Bramasole and paying Martini's friend certainly is cheaper than going to a hotel—and not nearly as humiliating. Why the water doesn't just seep into the dried-out water table, I don't know. We shower fast, drink nothing but bottled water, eat out frequently, and enrich the dry cleaners. All day we hear the rhythmic pounding of well-drilling equipment rising from the valley below us. Others, it seems, don't have deep wells either. I wonder if anyone else in Italy ever has had a load of water dumped into the ground. I keep confusing pozzo, well, with pazzo, crazy, which is what we must be.
By the time we start to get a grasp on what the place needs—besides water—and who we are here, it's time to go. In California, students are buying their texts, consulting their class schedules. We arrange for permit applications. The estimates are all astronomical—we'll have to do more of the work ourselves than I imagined. I remember getting a shock when I changed the switchplate on an electrical outlet in my study at home. Ed once put his foot through the ceiling when he climbed into the attic to check for a roof leak. We call Primo Bianchi and tell him we'd like for him to do the main work and will be in touch when the permits come through. Bramasole, fortunately, is in a “green zone” and a “belle arti zone,” where nothing new can be built and houses are protected from alterations that would change their architectural integrity. Because permits require both local and national approval, the process takes months—even a year. We hope Rizzatti is as well-connected as we have heard he is. Bramasole must stand empty for another winter. Leaving a dry well leaves a dry taste as well.
When we see the former owner in the piazza just before we leave, he is congenial, his new Armani tossed over his shoulders. “How is everything at Bramasole?” he asks.
“Couldn't be better,” I reply. “We love everything about it.”
Odd, to pack a bag and drive away, just leave the house standing there in the early morning light, one of my favorite times, as though we'd never been there at all.
We head toward Nice, across Tuscany toward the Ligurian coast. The toasted hills, fields of drooping sunflowers, and the exit signs with the magical names flash by: Montevarchi, Firenze, Montecatini, Pisa, Lucca, Pietrasanta, Carrara with its river milky with marble dust. Houses are totally anthropomorphic for me. They're so themselves. Bramasole looked returned to itself as we left, upright and contained, facing the sun.
I keep hearing myself singing, “The cheese stands alone” as we whiz in and out of tunnels. “What is that you're singing?” Ed is passing cars at 140 kilometers an hour; I'm afraid he has taken rather naturally to the blood sport of Italian driving.
“Didn't you play The Farmer in the Dell in first grade?”
Under the Tuscan Sun Page 4