A Thousand Days in Tuscany

by Marlena de Blasi

  “Because I’m inviting you out to supper.”

  We drive south through the nearby villages of Piazze and Palaz-zone. Twenty minutes later, Barlozzo, navigating from the backseat, says “eccoci qua” as we round a curve on which sits a curious structure.

  Half hut, half rambling shed, its haphazardness is surrounded by grand magnolia bushes whose shiny leaves are strung with many-colored lights, their winking and shimmering making the only noise in the dark, silent night. Tomatoes and garlic are moving about together over some nearby quiet flame and the scents curl up to and mingle with the char of slow-burning wood. Leaving the car on the edge of a ditch and alongside a truck that Barlozzo says belongs to the cook, we push our way inside the place through a curtain of red plastic beads.

  Pinball machines, wine casks, a small bar, and the strangled air of fifty thousand smoked cigarettes fill the first room. There is no one about. A second red bead curtain leads to a larger room set with long refectory tables, each one covered in a different pattern of oilcloth. Announcing himself with “permesso,” Barlozzo walks through a small door at the end of the room, letting loose the steamy breath of a good kitchen. He motions us to follow.

  Slowly, rhythmically rolling a sheet of pasta on a thick wooden table is the truck-driving cook—a petite woman of perhaps seventy, her violently red hair pinned up under a white paper cap. She is called Pupa, Doll.

  We are interrupting the final scene of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which creaks out from a wall-hung television set. As though he were at mass, Barlozzo seems to know to wait for the film’s finish before speaking and so we stand, equally hushed, behind him. As Clint lopes out into the Maremma, Pupa—never once having broken her rolling stride—turns only her head to us and, rolling still, bids us good evening. “C’è solo una porzione di pollo con i peperoni, pappa al pomodoro, cicoria da saltare, e la panzanella. Come carne c’è bistecca di vitella e agnello impanato da friggere. There’s only one portion of chicken with peppers, there’s tomato porridge, chickory to sauté, and bread salad,” she tells us without being asked what’s for supper.

  “E la pasta? And the pasta?” Barlozzo wants to know, nodding toward the thin yellow sheet she’s been rolling.

  “Eh, no. Questa è per domani, per il pranzo di Benedetto. No, this is for tomorrow, for Benedetto’s lunch,” she tells him, slowly unfolding her torso from the rolling posture.

  “We’ll take a little of everything, then,” he tells her, and realizing he’d forgotten us, he says, “Scusatemi, siete i nuovi inquilini di Lucci. Excuse me, they are the Luccis’ new tenants.”

  Back out in the dining room, we wander about looking at the wall art—a serious collection of Daredevil comics covers, each one framed in bright blue enamel—while Barlozzo fills a ceramic pitcher from the spigot on a barrel of red and pours it into tumblers.

  “Aspetta, aspetta, faccio io,” says a voice from the other side of the red beads. It belongs to a young man of twenty or so who seems to have sprung from somewhere beyond the magnolia bushes, engulfed in Armani, jet hair gelled into curly Caesar bangs and giving up the scent of limes. Barlozzo introduces him as Giangiacomo, grandson of Pupa, and official waiter.

  He shakes our hands, welcomes us, gives Barlozzo a three-kiss greeting, seats us, pours wine, tells us the lamb is divine, and all of a sudden, here in the Tuscan wilderness, we could be tucked in at Spago. Even though this is a trattoria without a menu, a place where one dines on whatever it is grandmother has cooked that day, Giangiacomo insists on taking orders, writing them down scrupulously in a slow, labored hand, recounting each person’s wishes aloud several times, then racing off to the kitchen, carrying the news like hot coals.

  “He wants to be a waiter in Rome and he’s practicing here for a while before heading off to find his way,” says Barlozzo, as though waiting tables in Rome were the same as selling postcards in Sodom. Barlozzo tells us that hunters bring their quarry here for Pupa to clean and hang and then cook for them. One of the hunters is her amoroso, boyfriend, and during the season, he calls her on his tele-fonino from his truck each morning to give her a report on his bird pursuit. According to Barlozzo, Pupa says it’s carina, sweet, when he calls her from the road. She says she gets dressed, fixes her hair, sprays herself with perfume, and waits for the phone to ring. Then again, Pupa is always in a twitter over something. Anyway, she and her amoroso settle on a point of rendezvous and she drives to meet him so he can hand over his bag of birds, which she’ll cook for lunch, and so she can pass him a pair of panini stuffed with mortadella, an eight o’clock snack before he gets to work in his garden.

  “During hunting season, there are more wild hare and boar and deer, pheasant, woodcock, thrush inside her kitchen than are left in the woods. All the hunters bring their booty here and then take turns ordering big feasts for their family and friends, for each other, but it’s always Pupa who does the cooking. This is the sort of place where one can phone in the morning and order a fried rabbit and a dish of stewed beans for his supper,” Barlozzo says as though it’s his own habit he’s talking about.

  “When a man finds himself alone, through death or some other interference, he simply joins the ranks here at lunch and supper. Even the widows come, but mostly they stay in the kitchen helping Pupa before they all eat together and watch Beautiful. Then they walk in the hills, gathering wild grasses for salad and telling their own stories. Until it’s time to start cooking again,” he says.

  Barlozzo is proprietary, as if we are sitting at his own table. There is a great wedge of bread, which he tears at, passing crusty chunks of it to us before serving himself. This is how I’ve always served bread at my table, but it’s the first time anyone has ever served it to me this way. We begin with that last portion of chicken with red peppers, which, once Giangiacomo sets it on the table, he spritzes with a few drops of the same white wine in which it was braised. There are just two or three lush bites for each of us. Now Giangiacomo brings out a bowl of bread salad. It’s a wonderful Bordeaux color, very different from the usual look of panzanella. Here, lost bread, rather than being moistened in water, has been doused with red wine, then mixed with chopped tomatoes, shreds of cucumber and tiny green onion, whole leaves of basil, tossed about with oil, and set to rest while each perfect element becomes acquainted with the others. There are small dishes of fresh tomato soup, thick with more bread and gratings of sharp pecorino, before a platter of the thinnest lamb chops, breaded and fried, is served with leaves of wild lettuces. There are charcoaled veal steaks set down with wedges of lemon, a bottle of oil, a pepper grinder, a dish of sea salt. Pupa herself rushes out with an oval copper pan of bitter greens sauteed with garlic and chile.

  To finish, there is ricotta di pecora, ewe’s milk ricotta, served in tea cups. Pupa goes around the table pouring espresso over the ricotta from a little pot she’s just brewed. She sets down a sugar bowl and a shaker of cocoa. We watch as Barlozzo mixes in a little of this and some of that, stirring the potion in his cup and eating it like pudding. We do the same, and I want to ask for more, but I fear Pupa will think me gluttonous. Soon enough she’ll know it’s true.

  While we dine, the room fills with several other small parties. I notice how Pupa has been fretting over them, apologizing that there’s nothing much left in the kitchen at this hour but bread and salame and prosciutto, some cheese and honey, a little salad. Of course none of them seems to mind—one couple with Florentine accents, which can sound almost Castilian as they say certain words, and another couple, decidedly English in their smart, perfectly wrinkled linens. Each couple has a child: the Florentines a daughter, probably not yet four, the English, a boy of six or seven. The handsome blond boy seems to have caught the eye of la fiorentina. Walking sideways across the room toward the English table, hands stuffed deep into the pockets of her white dress for courage, she stops in front of the blond boy’s chair. “Come ti chami? Io mi chiamo Stella.”

  Sufficiently embarrassed by her brazen presence, the boy i
s doubly befuddled, since he hasn’t understood her. His dad rescues by saying, “She wants to know your name. She’s called Stella. Answer her in English.”

  “My name is Joe,” he says without enthusiasm.

  Now it’s Stella’s turn not to understand. Or is it? In any case, I think it’s difficult to perplex a Florentine. Dispensing with all other preliminaries, she says, “Allora, baciami. Dai, baciami, Joe. Forza. Un bacetto piccolo. Well then, kiss me. Come on, kiss me, Joe. Try. Just a small kiss.” Stella has learned young to ask for what she wants.

  The Holy Ghost’s Cherries

  Choose fruit that is glossy, ripe but not overripe. A mix of cherry varieties also works nicely—those that are dark and sweet as well as those that are scarlet and sour.

  Two pounds cherries, unpitted, rinsed, and dried with paper towels; stems trimmed or left long

  1 quart of kirschwasser (cherry-flavored eau-de-vie) or a fine-quality grappa (one from Nonino in the Friuli, for example, which is widely exported to the United States)

  1¼ cups granulated sugar

  Wash, rinse, and thoroughly dry two 1-quart jars. Place half the prepared cherries in each jar. Mix the kirschwasser or grappa with the sugar, stirring well to dissolve the sugar. Pour half the mixture into each jar, over the cherries. Cover the jars tightly and store in a pantry or a dark, cool place. Shake the jars vigorously once a day for two weeks and then let them rest, undisturbed, for another two weeks. At this point the fruit can be stored for as long as a year before using, but once the jars are opened, store the remaining fruit in the refrigerator.

  The same procedure can be used with other small stone fruits, such as apricots and plums. Raspberries, blueberries, and gooseberries are delicious preserved in this way. Experiment with other flavors of eau-de-vie, such as framboise with raspberries, or mirabelle with plums.

  Wonderful as these are when used as a garnish for gelato or any creamy dessert, they are astonishingly good served with roasted or grilled meats. My favorite use of them is to accompany fresh or pungent cheeses. In this last case, serve a tiny glass of the preserving liquors alongside.

  3

  The Valley Is Safe, and We Will Bake Bread

  A ten o’clock breeze is sending up the greenish scents of new wheat and Fernando croons out over the meadows, “Ogni giorno la vita è una grande corrida, ma la notte, no. Every day life is a grand battle, but the night, ah, the night.” I swear the sheep listen to him, so still are they during his morning Neopolitan concerts. I listen, too. And I sing with him. “Già il mattino è un po grigio se non c’è il dentifricio, ma la notte, no. Already the morning is a bit gray if there’s no toothpaste but, the night, ah, the night.”

  Barlozzo is late for work, but after less than a week of his patient instruction, Fernando is sailing through the cement mixing—spreading-troweling-leveling—brick laying maneuvers of building up the wall that will eventually enclose the wood-burning oven. Some days, he doesn’t come at all, and it’s clear that his absence is calculated, that he senses Fernando’s possessiveness about this, the first truly artisinal project of his life. Proof: I’m hardly welcome on the building site, my participation having been relegated to fetching and hostessing while my husband discovers his hands and how beautifully they can create. Lovely for him, I think, but I grow weary of standing or crouching, waiting for the next command for lemonade or paper towels. And so I gift myself these hours each day to spend on my own.

  First thing I’ll do is to shed my Tuscan uniform. Since we’d arrived, I’ve worn nothing but work boots, khaki shorts, and my daughter’s abandoned Cocteau Twins T-shirts. Though I am flourishing in this country life, it’s not country clothes that suit me. I am Private Benjamin longing for sandals and a lunch date. Better, I want my bustier and a skirt that rustles. My summer closet looks like Mimi’s wardrobe for La Boheme. Taffeta and lace and tulle, crinolines, a blue linen jacket with a peplum, the same one done in chocolate silk, hats to pull down tight over my too-thick hair. A romantic collection mostly from Romeo Gigli, the delicateness of these things is balanced by some forties-style vintage pieces from Norma Kamali. My few token civilian dresses I choose to overlook. Venice animates all appetites, not the least an impulse for costume. It felt right there to wander through a shadowy calle in a ruffled lace skirt, its baroque fullness tempered by a skinny, high-necked sweater, my hair tamed into a tight chignon and pinned low on the nape of my neck. And on the deck of a boat, plunging the starlit waters of a midnight, past marble palaces sprung, tottering, from a lagoon, a woman can feel delicious in a velvet cloak with a hood that flutters in a cold black wind. Shimmying up to the bar here at the Centrale in that same velvet cloak could only rouse scandal and feel like Halloween. Yet the straight, polyester, just-below-the-knee skirt, square overblouse and sling-back pumps of my feminine neighbors is not a mise I can adopt. Nor will I spend my country life safely packed into jeans, accommodating other people’s comfort.

  From my closet, I choose a thin silk dress, a little print thing scribbled all over in orange and pink roses. Bias-cut, clinging gently to the derrière, its skirt widens below the knees and stops midcalf. I like how it moves as I do, as though it’s part of my body. I decide I’ll wear it with the old work boots, mostly because I desire to preserve my ankle bones on these hills but also because I like contrast. In the mornings, I’ll grab a cardigan and a big straw hat, my old Chanel dark glasses. Later on I’ll wrap myself in a long white apron for cooking and baking. In the evening, I’ll tie up my hair, add a necklace and Opium. And before getting ready for bed, I’ll slip the dress over my head, liking the smell of the sun and how it mixes with my own, and toss it in the bathroom sink, rinsing it like lingerie, in a drop of musk-scented bath soap, pressing the water from it and draping it on the last of my satin hangers. It will always be dry by morning. I like the idea of not having to think about what I’ll wear, knowing that the dress with the roses is the best dress of all for me during these summer days.

  The next entry on my private agenda asks for a work plan. As much as we want to bolt the stable door on such imperatives and mandates as those which tortured Fernando’s life as a banker, I must submit to some sort of discipline. It’s my turn to work now for a while so that he can luxuriate in his fresh status as a pensioner. My first book, written in Venice, is a volume of memoirs and recipes, scenes from my travels through ten of Italy’s northern regions. Since it’s buried in the production process, due to be published in late autumn, there’s nothing more I can do to help it along right now. Meanwhile I have a contract to write a second book, this one with much the same format but focusing on eight regions of Italy’s south. The eighteen months I’ve been given to research and write seem to stretch out like forever before me, yet I know what a trickster time is. It’s now that I must begin writing outlines, planning the journeys.

  I look forward to the whole process, yet, at least for this moment, I’d rather tuck it all under the yellow wooden bed and just live this Tuscan life. But I can’t. Even though I want to be true to our rebellion against structure, there are also several monthly assignments from clients still clinging from the states—a newsletter for a small group of California restaurants, some menu and recipe development for another, and, most recently, concept and development for a start-up project in Los Angeles. The deeper-down truth is that I luxuriate in all this, am grateful for these opportunities that will sustain us, keep our hands out of our own thin pockets.

  I begin setting up an office of sorts in a space across from the fireplace in the stable. And like a hound on the scent of a hare, Barlozzo angles his bony self halfway inside the door. “Ti serve un mano? Do you need a hand?” he wants to know, looking at the great snarl of computer wires in my hands. The duke already understands I submit to only the smallest doses of the twenty-first century. “I thought you’d be writing your books and stories with a quill on sheepskin,” he tells me as he takes over.

  “I use the computer as a word processor. Only a word processor.
Its more complex wiles, I leave to Fernando. But how do you know so much about such things?” I ask.

  “I’m not so sure I do, but I must know more than you do,” he says. “Besides, all the instructions are in Italian and I do read. You just go on with your work as a tappezziera, upholsterer. There must be something left in the house that’s not yet been draped or swaddled.”

  Why must he stick fast to this sham scoundrel’s behavior? Shaking my head and muffling a laugh at his nearly constant need to hide his kindness behind that Tartar face and voice of his, I pull curtains out of a trunk. Of heavy yellow brocade, they’d once hung in some theater or chapel, according to the merchant from whom I’d bought them at the fair in Arezzo. I push them onto the black iron rod with the wooden filials carved like pineapples that fits across the top of the stable doors. The fabric glides into place. Three panels, each about six feet wide, twice again as long, the lush length of them pours down into great buttery puddles over the stone floor. I fix one panel off to the side with a long piece of red satin cord, tying it into a perfect Savoy knot. The thick cloth restrains the sun but still the sun exalts its color, drenching the little room in gold. The duke hasn’t said a word through all this, and even now, sitting back on his haunches looking at the effect, only his smile tells me he thinks it’s lovely.

  AS THE CONSTRUCTION of it proceeds, there is much daily pacing round and round the oven site by the village men. There are mutterings and whistles, some saying it’s formidabile. The ones who pull their hair and screech “madonnina” say we’ll blow up the whole damn valley the first time we light the thing. As Fernando nears the finish—rallied now by technical contingents both official and voluntary—people from nearby villages drive by in the evenings, leave their cars roadside and come to visit the oven like a shrine. Our wayward humor prompts us to call it Santa Giovanna, St. Joan. Nearly everyone who comes wants to talk about the oven of their childhood, what auntie roasted on Sundays, what never-to-be-forgotten loaves mama baked. Part baptismal font, part beehive, it’s so large I won’t be able to heave anything into its chamber without standing on the wooden box Barlozzo has fortified with a slate top for the purpose of elevating me.