Canals for wire must be dug in the stone walls before the plastering. The plumber must move the radiator we had installed when the central heating went in. I've changed my mind about the location. So much action. If they hadn't had days of excavating those levels of stone floor, the primary work would be finished. The Poles, who were in Italy working the tobacco fields, now have gone home. Only Stanislao stayed. Who will move all those great stones? Before the masons leave, they show us a neatly woven swirl of grass and twig they found in the wall, a nido di topo, so much nicer in Italian than rat's nest.
They're slinging the base for the plaster, literally slinging so it sticks to the wall, then smoothing it out. Primo brought old cotto for the floor from his supply. Between his and ours, we must have enough. Since the floor is last, surely we're nearing the end. I'm ready for the fun part; it's hard to think of the furniture when the room looks like a gray solitary confinement space. Finally, we're treated to the first machine noise of the project. The electrician's son, with some uncertainty, attacks the walls with a drill, making channels for the new wiring. The electrician himself left, after receiving a shock when he touched one of the frayed wires. These must be among the sorriest wires he's ever come across.
The plumber who installed the new bath and the central heating sends out two of his assistants to move the radiator pipes they disconnected last week. They, too, are extremely young. I remember that students not on an academic track finish school at fifteen. Both are plump and silent but with ear-to-ear grins. I hope they know what they're doing. Everyone talks at once, most of them shouting.
Maybe all will come together quickly now. At the end of each day, Ed and I drag in yard chairs and sit in the new room, trying to imagine that soon we will sit there with coffee, perhaps on a blue linen loveseat with an old mirror hanging above it, music playing, discussing our next project. . . .
BECAUSE THE UNDERCOAT FOR THE PLASTER HAS TO DRY, Emilio is working alone, scratching off the old plaster in the back stairwell, carting off fuming loads of it to the rubble mountain.
The electrician can't finish until the plaster is on. I can see the boon of the invention of wallboard. Plastering is an arduous business. Still, it's fun to see the process, which hardly has changed since the Egyptians slathered the tombs. The plumber's boys didn't cut off the water line as far back as they should have and we have to call them to come back. To escape, we drive over to Passignano and have an eggplant pizza by the lake. The five-day estimate! I'm longing for days of dolce far niente, sweet to do nothing, because in seven weeks, I must go back. I hear the first cicada, the shrill yammering that alerts us that deep summer is here. “Sounds like a duck on speed,” Ed says.
Saturday, and a scorcher. Stanislao brings Zeno, who recently arrived from Poland. They dispense with shirts right away. They're used to heat; both are laying pipes for methane during the week. In less than three hours, they've hauled away a ton of stone. We've separated the flat ones for paths and for large squares of stone around each of the four doors along the front to prevent tracking in. They set to work after lunch digging, laying a sand base, chipping and fitting stone, filling in the cracks with dirt. They easily pull up the puny semicircles we laid out last year from stones we found on the land. The stones from the floor they're choosing are as big as pillows.
I'm weeding when I brush my arms against a patch of nettles. Those plants are fierce. They “sting” immediately, the hairy leaves letting out an irritating acid on contact. Odd that the tiny ones are good in risotto. I run in the house and scrub down with a skin disinfectant but my arms feel alive, as though hot electric worms are crawling on me. After lunch, I decide to bathe, put on my pink linen dress, and sit on the patio until the shops open. Enough work. I find a breeze there and pleasantly waste the afternoon looking at a cookbook and watching a lizard, who appears to be watching a parade of ants. It's a magnificent little creature in sparkling green and black with deft and intricate feet, palpitating throat, and an inquisitive head that jerks. I would like for it to crawl on my book so I could see more, but my every move sends it scuttling. It keeps coming back to look over the ants. What the ants watch, I don't know.
In town, I buy a white cotton dress, navy linen pants and shirt, some expensive body cream, pink nail polish, a bottle of great wine. When I get back, Ed is showering inside. The Poles have slung the hose over a tree limb and opened the nozzle to spray. I glimpse them stripping down for a rinse-off before changing their clothes. The four doorways are now protected by well-fitted entrances of stone.
FRANCO BEGINS THE SMOOTH FINAL COAT OF PLASTER. THE owner of the plumbing company, Santi Cannoni, arrives in blue shorts to inspect the work his boys have done. We have known him since his company installed our central heating—but only fully dressed. He looks as though he simply forgot his pants. His hairless, moon-white legs so far below his pressed shirt, distinguished tanned face, and gray coifed hair keep drawing my eye. That he has on black silky socks and loafers contributes to his obscene look of undress. Since his boys moved the radiator, the one in the next room has begun to leak.
Francesco and Beppe pull up in the Ape with their weed machines, ready to massacre wild roses and weeds. Beppe speaks clearly and we understand him better, mainly because Francesco still refuses to wear his teeth. Since he loves to talk, he gets mad when Beppe interprets for him. Naturally, when Beppe sees that we don't understand, he explains. Francesco starts calling Beppe maestro, teacher, with heavy sarcasm. They argue about whether Ed's blades need to be sharpened or turned over. They argue about whether the stakes in the grape stones should be iron or wood. Behind Beppe's back, Francesco shakes his head at us, eyes turned to heaven: Can you believe this old coot? Behind Francesco's back, Beppe does the same.
A load of sand arrives for the floor but Primo says his old bricks are not the same size as ours and that he must locate another fifty before the floor can be laid.
Piano, piano, the watchword of restoration, slowly, slowly.
More plastering. The mixture looks like gray gelato. Franco says he has a tiny old house and it's all he wants; these big houses, always something wrong. He patches the walls upstairs that cracked when the living room stones were removed, and I ask him to break the plaster and look at what holds up the doors Benito reopened. He finds the original long stones. No sign of the steel I-beams he was supposed to install. Franco says not to worry, stone is just as good on a regular-sized door.
The walls look dry to me but not to them. Another day off. We're anxious to get in there, scrub down the walls, stain the beams, scrape and paint the brick ceiling. We're ready, past ready, to move in. Four chairs have gone to the upholsterer with yards of blue and white checked linen my sister sent for two, and a blue and yellow striped cotton I found in Anghiari for the others. We have ordered the blue loveseat and two other comfortable chairs. The CD player has been in a pile of boxes and books, the chairs and bookcase stuffed into other rooms. Will this go on forever?
During the Renaissance, it was a custom to open Vergil at random and place a finger on a line that would foretell the future or answer a burning question. In the South, we used to do this with the Bible. People always have had ways to grasp for revelation: The Etruscans' haruspication, reading omens from sacrificed animals' livers, is no stranger than the Greeks' finding significance in the flight patterns of birds and the droppings of animals. I open Vergil and put my finger down on “The years take all, one's wits included.” Not very encouraging.
TUSCANY IS A XERIC LAND IN SUMMER BUT THIS YEAR IT IS deeply green. From the patio the terraces seem to ripple down the hill. No use moving today. Under the barbed sun, I'm reading about saints, admiring especially Giuliana Falconieri, who asked, when dying, to have the host placed on her breast. It dissolved into her heart and disappeared. A pheasant is pecking away at my plot of lettuces. I read on about Colomba, who ate only hosts, then vomited them into a basket, which she stored under her bed. I'm enchanted with Veronica, who chewed five orange seeds
in memory of Christ's five wounds. Ed brings up enormous sandwiches and iced tea with a little peach juice in it. I'm progressively more fascinated with the women saints, their politics of denial. Perhaps it's a corrective for the voluptuousness of Italian life. There's always a mystery within a sudden attraction to a subject. Why is one suddenly lugging home four books on hurricanes or all the operas of Mozart? Later, much later sometimes, the reason for the quest emerges. What will I come to realize from these quirky women?
Primo arrives with still more old bricks and Fabio starts cleaning them. He's working in spite of toothache and shows us the rotting lower left area of his mouth. I bite my lip to keep from looking startled. He's having four pulled next week, all at once.
Primo's tools for laying out the floor are some string and a long level. His skill is sure and quick; he knows instinctively where to tap, what fits where. After all the stone is hauled out, the floors between the two rooms are almost even; he builds in a slight rise, barely noticeable, in the doorway. They begin tamping down and leveling. Fabio cuts through bricks with a high wheezing machine that sends up a cloud of red dust. His arms are brick-colored up to his elbows. Laying brick looks fun. Soon the floor is down, matched to the interlocking L pattern of the adjoining room.
Houseguests arrive, despite the plastic-covered piles of lamps, baskets, books in the hallways, the living room furniture scattered around the house. Simone, a colleague of Ed's, is celebrating her Ph.D. with a trip to Greece, and Barbara, a former student who is just finishing a two-year stint in Poland with the Peace Corps, is en route to Africa. I suppose Italy always has been a crossroads. Pilgrims to the Holy Land skirted Lake Trasimeno in the Middle Ages. Latter pilgrims of all sorts traverse Italy; our house is a good spot to rest for a few days. Madeline, an Italian friend, and her husband, John, from San Francisco are coming for lunch.
We're running back and forth between guests and decisions that need to be made. The workers are finishing today! The well-timed lunch is a double celebration. We've ordered crespelle from Vittorio, who makes fresh pasta in town. His crÊpes are air. Though we are only six, we've ordered a dozen each of the tartufo (truffle), the pesto, and, our favorite, piselli e prosciutto (peas and cured ham). Before that, caprese (tomato, mozzarella, and basil salad dribbled with oil) and a platter of olives, cheeses, breads, and slices of various local salami. We're able to make the salad from the arugula in our garden. The wine we bought at Trerose, a chardonnay called Salterio, may be the best white I've tried in Italy. Many chardonnays, especially California ones, are too oaky and syrupy for my taste. This one has a peach-tinged, flinty taste with just a faint hint of oak.
The long table under the trees is set with yellow checked linen and a basket of sun-colored broom. We offer wine to the workmen but no, they're pressing into the final hours. They've spread cement over the floor to fill in the narrow cracks between bricks. To clean up, they wash down the floor, then sprinkle sawdust and sweep. They build two columns against the outside of the house for the stone sink we discovered in the dirt. It has rested these two years in the old kitchen. Primo calls to Ed to help move the monstrous stone. Two men “walk” it across the front terrace and up the three steps into the shady area where we are having lunch. Our guest, John, jumps up to help. Five men lift. “Novanta chili, forse cento,” Primo says. The sink weighs around two hundred pounds. After that, they load their cristi, their tools, and that's it—the room is finished. Primo stays to make a few repairs. He takes a bucket of cement and patches minor cracks in the stone wall, then goes upstairs to secure a few loose floor tiles.
Doesn't everything reduce in the end to a poetic image—one that encapsulates an entire experience in one stroke?
Not only this project but the whole major restoration that has stretched over three years is ending today. We're entertaining friends in the sun-dappled bower, just as I envisioned. I go into the kitchen and begin arranging a selection of local cheeses on grape leaves. I'm flushed and excited in my white linen dress with short sleeves that stand out like little wings. Above me, Primo is scraping the floor. I look up. He has removed two tiles and there is a hole in the ceiling. Just as I look back at my cheese platter, Primo accidentally kicks over his bucket and cement pours onto my head! My hair, my dress, the cheese, my arms, the floor! I look up and see his startled face peering down like a cherub in a fresco.
The humor is not entirely lost on me. I walk out to the table, dribbling cement. After dropped jaws and stunned looks, everyone laughs. Primo runs out, hitting the heel of his hand to his forehead.
The guests clear up while I shower. With Primo, they're all sitting along the sun-warmed wall when I come down. Ed is asking about Fabio's dental surgery. He only missed two days of work and will get new teeth in a month. Now Primo will join us in a toast. The guests are toasting an amusing day and the end of the project. Ed and I, having been literally doused in this restoration, raise our glasses, too. Primo just enjoys himself. He launches into a history of his own teeth and shows us big gaps in his mouth. Five years ago he had such a toothache—he holds his head and leans over moaning—that he pulled out his own tooth with the pliers. “Via, via,” he shouts, motioning the tooth out of his jaw. Via somehow sounds more emphatic than “go.”
I DON'T WANT HIM TO GO. HE HAS BEEN SUCH A CHARMER and so careful as a muratore. The work is impeccable as well as miraculously reasonable. Yes, I do want him to go! This project was estimated to last five working days; this is day number twenty-one. No way, of course, to predict three levels of stone floor and a rotten beam. He'll be back next summer—he will retile the butterfly bathroom and repoint the stones in the cantina. He hoists his wheelbarrow into the Ape. Those are small projects, cinque giorni, signori, five days. . . .
Relics of Summer
THE FONTS IN ALL THE CHURCHES ARE DRY. I run my fingers through the dusty scallops of marble: not a drop for my hot forehead. The Tuscan July heat is invasive to the body but not to the stone churches that hold on to the dampness of winter, releasing a gray coolness slowly throughout the summer. I have a feeling, walking into one, then another, that I walk into palpable silence. A lid seems to descend on our voices, or a large damp hand. In the vast church of San Biagio below Montepulciano, there is an airy quiet as you enter. Right under the dome, you can stand in one spot and speak or clap your hands and far up against the inner cup of the dome an eerie echo sends the sound rapidly back. The quality of the sound is not like the hello across a lake but a sharp, repeated return. Your voice flattened, otherworldly. It is hard to think a mocking angel isn't hovering against the frescoes, though more likely a pigeon rests there.
Since I have been spending summers in Cortona, the major shock and joy is how at home I feel. But not just at home, returned to that primal first awareness of home. I feel at home because dusty trucks park at intersections and sell watermelons. The same thump to test for ripeness. The boy holds up a rusty iron scale with discs of different sizes for counterweight. His arm muscle jumps up like Popeye's and the breeze brings me a whiff of his scent of dry grasses, onions, and dirt. In big storms, lightning drives a jagged stake into the ground and hailstones bounce in the yard, bringing back the smell of ozone to me from Georgia days when I'd gather a bowlful the size of Ping-Pong balls and put them in the freezer.
Sunday is cemetery day here, and though our small-town Southern plots are austere compared to these lavish displays of flowers on almost every grave, we, too, made Sunday pilgrimages to Evergreen with glads or zinnias. I sat in the backseat, balancing the cool teal vase between my knees while my mother complained that Hazel never turned her hand to pick one stem and it was her own mother lying there, not just a mother-in-law. Gathered around Anselmo Arnaldo, 1904–1982, perhaps these families are saying, as mine did, Thank God the old goat's lying here rather than still driving us crazy.
Sweltering nights, the air comes close to body temp, and shifting constellations of fireflies compete with stars. Mosquito nights, grabbing at air, the mosquito
caught in my hair. Long days when I can taste the sun. I move through this foreign house I've acquired as though my real ancestors left their presences in these rooms. As though this were the place I always came home to.
Living near a small town again certainly is part of it. And living again with nature. (A student of mine from Los Angeles visited. When I walked him out to the end of the point for the wide-angle view of lake, chestnut forests, Apennines, olive groves, and valleys, he was unprepared. He stood silently, the first time I'd known he could, and finally said, “It's, uh, like nature.”) Right, nature: Clouds swarm in from over the lake and thunder cracks along my backbone, booms like waves boom far out at sea. I write in my notebook: “The dishwasher was struck. We heard the sizzle. But isn't it good, the gigantic storm, the flood of terror they felt beside fires in the cave? The thunder shakes me like a kitten the big cat has picked up by the neck. I ricochet home, heat lightning; I'm lying on the ground four thousand miles from here, letting rain soak through me.”
Rain flays the grapes. Nature: What's ripe, will the driveway wash away, when to dig potatoes, how much water is in the irrigation well? Early life reconnects. I go out to get wood; a black scorpion scuttles over my hand and suddenly I remember the furry tarantulas in the shower at Lakemont, the shriek when my barefooted mother stepped on one and felt it crunch, then squash up soft as a banana between her toes.
Is it the spill of free days? I dream my mother rinses my tangle of hair with a bowl of rainwater.
Sweet time, exaggerated days, getting up at dawn because when the midsummer sun tops the crests across the valley, the first rays hit me in the face like they strike some rock at Stonehenge on the solstice. To be fully awake when the sky turns rose-streaked coral and scarves of fog drift across the valley and the wild canaries sing. In Georgia, my father and I used to get up to walk the beach at sunrise. At home in San Francisco what wakes me is the alarm at seven, or the car pool horn blowing for the child downstairs, or the recycle truck with its crashing cascade of glass. I love the city and never have felt really at home there.
Under the Tuscan Sun Page 26