Yet the fact that Porto Quaglia did not conform to a touristic image of a fishing village was not exactly the reason for the feeling that the description was false. Had it looked like Collioure or Concarneau or Chioggia or Provincetown, there still would have been something wrong—indeed wronger. The inauthenticity of the description lay in the describers. That is, if a native of Porto Quaglia described his home as a fishing village, he would be telling the truth, but in the mouth of, say, a Milanese publisher these words became horribly fraudulent. To a local fisherman Porto Quaglia was self-evidently a fishing village, but to a Milanese publisher it was “un piccolo villaggio di pescatori.” Those quotation marks, which sprang up around the words quite without the publisher’s volition, were the source of all the trouble.
Similarly with the word “unspoiled.” It was true that Porto Quaglia was not yet spoiled, comparatively speaking, yet only a very unaware summer visitor, perhaps an Englishwoman, would try saying this to a native, whose whole interest lay in having it spoiled as fast as possible. There is something suspect in a laudatory remark that cannot be made in the presence of those being lauded. “Unspoiled,” moreover, had grown those quotation marks as the old women in Porto Quaglia grew tufts of iron-gray whiskers. But how else would you describe Porto Quaglia, without going into detail, except as a fishing village on the Ligurian coast that had not yet been completely spoiled by tourists?
This was the first slight embarrassment for the kind of person who came to Porto Quaglia—the difficulty of stating, in brief form, where he was going without making it sound like the kind of place that would attract someone quite different from himself—say, an editress of Vogue or another Milanese publisher. It was no solution to reply “I’m going to Porto Quaglia,” for this led to “Where is Porto Quaglia?” and “Should I know about it?,” all of which ended in a description of P. Q. as a simple fishing village on the Ligurian coast.
The only remedy, it was decided at lunch at the Buonsantis’ (he was a tall bald Italian employed at UNESCO in Paris; she was small and French and translated philosophic and economic texts), would be for Porto Quaglia to be “put on the map,” like Portofino or Portovenere or Port Said. But if your concierge or your hairdresser already knew about Porto Quaglia, so that the mere name produced a ready-made description like a pop-up toaster, then the reason for going there would have vanished. The reason for going there was that nobody knew about it. But of course everybody wants to go to a place no one knows about (except those in the know), though for varying motives, which is why the words “simple fishing village” have been as abused as a pinewoods in which there is now a Camping. Those who, like the Buonsantis and their guests, had been attracted to Porto Quaglia by the absence of yachts, luxury hotels, motorboats, water skiers, skin divers, golf, casinos, shops, cocktail lounges, night clubs, sports cars, and other amenities were refugees from a banal summer life, but it was impossible, they agreed, to escape from a cliché of action without being stamped with a cliché of speech, like an exit permit. The world will allow you to go to Porto Quaglia as long as it has Porto Quaglia’s “number.”
Fifteen people, the usual complement, were eating lunch at a long table under a trellis covered with trumpet vines in the Buonsantis’ garden, which looked out onto the main street and the river, where a few masts of small boats could be seen. The garden contained a flagged terrace of varicolored marbles, a grape arbor, a sour-cherry tree, some trampled lawn, two large ornamental palms, and two Christmas trees, symmetrically planted. There was also a “fantasy” table, made of stone in the shape of a large mushroom and surrounded by little painted stone toadstools. On the balcony rail of the apartment above, facing the river, hung some striped towels and damp bathing suits. In the green midday shimmer the luncheon party, which was still peeling figs and drinking wine, resembled a scene by Renoir, the more so because they were speaking French. French was the prevailing language among the summer people at Porto Quaglia, who were known to the natives as “i francesi,” whatever their nationality. Today the group included Mme. Buonsanti’s father, the two Buonsanti children, a French engineer, his wife—a child psychologist—and their three children, a Roman editor and his wife, a Livornese professor of history on loan to Columbia University, and an American journalist and his wife, who were staying at the inn. Three bicycles, a surf mattress, and a rubber boat leaned against the wall of the house, and some beach chairs were sprawled near the table; the double doors were open into the principal room of the Buonsantis’ apartment, where a great many straw hats were piled on top of the sideboard and a chessboard was set up for play on the glass-covered dining table. More “French” kept arriving and pulling up chairs. The women and girls were wearing summer cotton dresses, and the men striped jerseys with khaki shorts or long blue or white canvas trousers. They were still discussing what to call Porto Quaglia.
“You French are so frightfully analytical,” said an English labor lawyer, who was opposed to what he called “blood sports” and had appeared at the end of lunch, in cleated shoes and with a sweater tied round his hips, to take the Buonsanti children on a mountain hike. “My wife and I don’t find it at all embarrassing to say we’re going to a fishing village. I mean, why not face facts?” He then translated his remarks into French.
“If you faced facts,” said the Roman editor tartly, “you would say you were going to a summer resort.”
“Une petite station balnéaire,” agreed Mme. Buonsanti, laughing.
“Plage modeste,” added her husband.
Everyone laughed, thinking of the dusty town beach where none of the “francesi” swam except when the sea was rough and a boat could not land at the White Rock or Raven Point or one of the many coves and grottoes farther up the coast. One reason that Porto Quaglia remained “unspoiled” was that the snobbish casual tourist saw only the plage modeste at the end of the village and immediately turned his Alfa Romeo around and shot off to Lerici or Forte dei Marmi. To sit in the café outside the inn and watch this happen while eating an ice-cream cone was one of the children’s amusements on dull mornings when the boats had not yet come to take them bathing and the family outboard motor was “en panne.”
The White Rock was the chief lure and secret beauty of Porto Quaglia. Parties of bathers were taken there every morning by the fishermen in little yawls with inboard motors; informal excursions ran several times before noon from the pier in front of the inn, and regular passengers were picked up at the rickety little wooden landings along the river, off the single main street. Starting at ten o’clock, cries began to ring out from the bank as the fishing boats with little triangular colored flags in their rigging were sighted. “Pierino!” “Paolo!” “Romeo!” “Venga, venga!” Or “Wait, wait! I am coming. Aspetti! Wait for me, Pierino!” Or “Jean, où est Jean? Où est le matelas?” “Irene, have you got the basket?” “My glasses! I forgot my glasses!” “Carlo! Dov’ è il tuo cappello?” “Dov’ è Michel? Où est Marc?” “Son già partiti? Con Romeo?” With thermos bottles of cold water, baskets of cheese and fruit, baskets and bags of bathing equipment, with surf mattresses, pails and shovels, yellow and red and white and blue inflated tubes, beach umbrellas, nets containing books and newspapers, the boats were finally packed and headed for the White Rock. Fifteen minutes later, the landing was accomplished, the older children swimming to shore and returning like a school of fish to hover alongside and seize the bags and baskets as they were lifted over the bow and offer a hand to the women in their dresses and beach gowns as they climbed down the unsteady ladder, while the men, having leapt to shore, formed a human chain along which the younger children were passed. Nearly every day someone or something fell overboard in the excitement of landing: a straw hat, a book, a pair of glasses, shoes, a middle-aged newcomer—or all of these together in one parcel. This had happened yesterday morning to the whiskered American journalist, thought by the children to resemble Uncle Sam, and François, the twelve-year-old Buonsanti boy, had jubilantly taken a picture of it w
ith his new camera.
Starting at one o’clock, the boats reappeared at the White Rock, at Raven Point, at the various scogli and small pebbly beaches, to bring the bathers back for lunch. Naturally, irritations sprang up from time to time between the boatmen or between the boatmen and the passengers, who would complain that Romeo or Paolo had forgotten them and taken a party of new people in preference. But those who were left behind on the jetty would always appear at Rocca Bianca, rowed by an old man or a little boy, and some came in the old man’s rowboat by preference, disapproving of the motor sailboats and the oil they spread on the water. Some of the young people came by threes and fours in rowboats rented for the summer or given them for Christmas or a birthday, and one family had an outboard motor. Sometimes the older children, in pairs or accompanied by François in his rowboat, would swim back to Porto Quaglia and arrive late and panting for lunch, or they would walk back in a party over the marble cliffs, though this was considered dangerous by their parents.
The White Rock was really a mass of rocks and cliffs of pure milk-white marble that formed a towering point jutting into the sea. Above it, on a steep mountain flank, grew ilex and pine and wild olive trees. The water around it was a pale green and exceptionally clear. If you swam way out beyond your depth you could still look down to the white marble shelving that extended along the sea floor like a vast bath for sea horses or Tritons. Along the shore it formed deep caves. The sea at this point was seldom quiet and gave the impression of washing itself, like laundry, by beating against the rock and rinsing itself as it ran in and out of the cool caves. Blue-green and violet marbles were not uncommon along this stretch of coast, but white was freakish; it was as though a vein of sculptor’s marble had escaped from its mountain prison miles off in the Apuan Alps and raced underground to burst into the sea in a great release of energy, so that this marine spot was like an inchoate museum or temple or workshop haunted by glistening forebodings or polished memories of statuary—nymphs and dolphins and Venuses rising from the spray. For some reason, doubtless connected with the marble, the water here and in the nearby coves was cooler than is usual in the Mediterranean, and there were no jellyfish.
Farther along, at the beach called Raven Point and at the lonely beach called Judgment Day by the summer people, because it looked like the scene of a Tintoretto “Last Judgment,” there were mussels and purple sea urchins clinging to the dark rocks. The children collected them; the men opened them with pocket knives, and the bathers shared them at midday, along with the cheese, figs, grapes, pears, peaches brought in the individual baskets, to stave off hunger, before Pierino or Romeo or Paolo came to take everyone home for a two-o’clock lunch. Like a backdrop to this watery, summery scene bobbing with small craft and bright swimming tubes, the Carrara mountains came into view as the boats rounded into Porto Quaglia’s harbor—pale brown, like canvas, in the blue distance, patched with what appeared to be snow fields, streaked with crevasses and awesome glaciers, all made of white marble—a realm of Titans, Michelangelo Land. In the intermediate distance, in the green-forested hills above the Quaglia, were belfried Tuscan hill towns that caught the gold of the afternoon sun in their medieval clocks, towers, and ramparts. It was like an illustrated history lesson: the children’s eyes travelled thoughtfully from the remote white fissures of the quarries, which had been opened in Roman times, down to picture-book Castelnuovo, where Dante had stayed, down to the stone artillery nests, so near you could almost touch them, that the Germans had made in the last war.
Except on Sundays, when trippers came from Sarzana and Acquafredda, the “French” usually had the White Rock to themselves, and the strangers, principally English, who from time to time “discovered” Rocca Bianca while staying at the inn or in a pensione, were adopted by the “French,” offered fruit and cheese, the loan of a child’s pail or surf mattress, invited to play chess in the evenings or join in political discussions in the café outside the inn. The English, henceforth known as “francesi” to the boatmen and shopkeepers, reciprocated with ice creams, lifts to Sarzana or Marina di Massa for shopping, invitations to drive to Lucca or Pisa. Sometimes, when the “French” went to Raven Point or Judgment Day, a smart motorboat with water skis would come whizzing up from Lerici, disgorging Roman writers, society women, publishers, who were staying at the Hotel Doria or the Hotel Byron or the Hotel Shelley e delle Palme. A different world, as different as the blue Lerici waters from the green waters of Porto Quaglia, a world of palms, villas, and esplanades, but this world too was accommodated. Joint dinners were arranged at a mountain inn known for its prosciutto and sheep cheese or else in the port of Lerici, where the guests would eat spaghetti alle vongole or plates of datteri, those brown polished date-shaped mussels that grew only on the soft stone of Portovenere, where they were said to burrow holes like cliff swallows. Or the Roman writers and publishers would come to dinner at the inn at Porto Quaglia, telephoning ahead of time to the posto pubblico to order muggine ai ferri and to recommend that the waiters wear jackets. But the boy waiters in the inn at Porto Quaglia did not have jackets; the only smartening up they could do was to roll down their shirtsleeves and take the pencil from behind their ear. “Un piccolo villaggio di pescatori,” the host at dinner would explain to the troop he had brought with him, bestowing a tender, fatherly smile on the café where the “French” were playing chess as if nothing had happened.
There was no fear that these Romans would “discover” Porto Quaglia, for they believed they already knew it, like the inside of their pocket. Still, word was getting around, as Mike, the American journalist, was saying to Hélène Buonsanti, lowering his voice slightly, as though passing on a piece of confidential information.
“Qu’est-ce qu’il dit, maman?” said Laure, the fourteen-year-old Buonsanti girl alertly. All the children were on the qui vive for any threat to their summer home, and they understood by instinct when it was being talked about, even in a foreign tongue.
Mme. Buonsanti’s father, Dr. Bernheim, shook his gray head and checked his granddaughter with his eyes, which were generally half closed, as if inattentive, like the ear of a confessor. His lids now dropped again, and his hand cradled his chin, but the tilt of his head betrayed the fact that he was following closely what the American said.
“Yep,” continued Mike, “the word’s getting around, I’m afraid, Hélène.” He coughed and moved his chair closer to his little hostess, still talking under his breath, but since he was in the habit of raising his voice when speaking English to a foreigner, the effect was of an arresting stage whisper. Everyone at the table turned to listen. “I read about it in New York,” he shouted, sotto-voce. “Last winter. In Harper’s Bazaar. A highbrow fashion magazine. They said Porto Quaglia was where the French left-wing intellectuals went for the summer.”
“How stupid!” said Hélène Buonsanti coldly. “The French left-wing intellectuals! Ecoute, Arturo. Figure-toi.”
“Mais c’est vrai, maman!” said Laure. “C’est vrai, maman,” said François, grinning. “C’est vrai, n’est-ce pas, Catherine?” He turned his bright, demure black eyes to the engineer’s oldest daughter, who was fifteen and humorless.
“Tais-toi, François!” flashed his mother. The children made fun of spectacled Catherine, because in her lycée she had organized a circle of Filles des Obscurs Intellectuels de Gauche. “C’est dégoutant,” Hélène burst out, banging her fist on the table.
“Why does it make her so mad?” demanded Mike, of the table at large. “Why does it make your daughter so mad?” he added, shouting at the doctor.
Hélène calmed herself. “It is the same as ‘fishing village,’ ” she explained in her slow English. “It is true when the children say that we here are intellectuals of the left. But if someone says it in a fashion magazine it is a silly lie.”
Arturo Buonsanti was laughing. “Mais c’est merveilleux!” he cried. “Eh, Hélène? Next summer when your hairdresser asks you where you are going for your vacation, you can ans
wer that naturally you are going where the French intellectuals of the left go.”
“Et les juifs, et les juifs, papa!” chanted Laure, jumping up from her place and putting her arms around her father’s neck. A few days before, someone had noticed that the greater part of the summer people were either Jewish, half Jewish, a quarter Jewish, or, like Arturo Buonsanti, married to someone Jewish. This trouvaille still enchanted the children, like a meadow full of four-leaf clovers. “Pauvre papa,” murmured Laure, hugging him. “Tu n’es pas juif; mais moi, je le suis!”
Arturo Buonsanti was chuckling. “Modeste station balnéaire, très frequentée par les juifs.”
“Oh, I say,” protested the British lawyer, “that would be liable to misinterpretation, wouldn’t it?”
“Gives the wrong picture, I agree,” said Mike. “Sort of a Miami Beach.” He laughed nervously. Both he and the Englishman were embarrassed by the children’s freedom with the “racial” topic, which their parents seemed positively to encourage, like premature talk about sex. Mike, in particular, had an uneasy notion that he was being led on by this permissive atmosphere into making what might sound (to Jews) like an anti-Semitic remark. The other day at the café, for instance, they had teased him without mercy because he had refused to believe that everyone present was Jewish. “But you don’t look Jewish, any of you.”
Mary McCarthy Page 106