Nostalgia

by Jonathan Buckley

  2.2

  The Palazzo Communale of Castelluccio was built in 1232 as the Palazzo del Podestà, alongside the church of San Giovanni Battista, from which it was, and remains, separated by the width of a street. The market square, in the shadow of the Rocca, had previously been Castelluccio’s centre of gravity; now a shift began, and by the close of the thirteenth century the open area in front of the Palazzo del Podestà and San Giovanni Battista had acquired its current name, Piazza Maggiore.

  An almost cubic building, with walls of undressed grey stone that are punctuated irregularly with plain windows of various sizes, the Palazzo del Podestà is of no great architectural distinction, but the Piazza Maggiore façade is enlivened by the coats of arms – forty-one in total – of various men who held the post of podestà. The most decorative of these coats of arms are the eight glazed terracotta shields from the sixteenth century, but the largest (and the oldest) is a limestone disc on which two griffons support a spear above a barely legible inscription that reads: Ugo Bonvalori, MCCCLX.

  In addition to the podestà, the town’s governing council and the courts of justice were also based here. Nowadays, the building functions as the seat of the mayor and the offices of the local government, and only one part is regularly open to the public: the Sala dei Quaranta, once the meeting hall of the forty-strong Great Council. Unlike many other rooms in the Palazzo del Podestà, it was left almost unaltered by the wide-scale refurbishment that followed Unification; redecorated in the early sixteenth century, after Castelluccio had fallen under Florentine control, the walls of the Sala dei Quaranta are painted with maps of the major towns of Florence’s territory; some of the furniture is from the same period.

  Other sections of the Palazzo del Podestà are occasionally accessible to visitors, notably the small chapel below the Sala dei Quaranta, which dates from the thirteenth century, and the prisons, which are located two floors below the chapel. One cell still has an array of fifteenth-century locks and bolts on its massive oak door, and its walls are covered with prisoners’ graffiti. A large drawing, scratched into the stone with a nail, shows a man remonstrating with a devil; the name Daniele is visible above the man’s head.

  2.3

  Claire rings the entryphone at 1pm precisely and Gideon answers. He’s standing at the head of the stairs, beaming, sleeves rolled up, a kitchen knife in one hand and a couple of fat tomatoes in the other. ‘Come in,’ he says, stepping aside so she can precede him into the apartment. He sounds like a company boss welcoming a candidate for her second interview. ‘That way,’ he directs her, jabbing the knife in the direction of an open door, which turns out to be the door to a kitchen that’s more like a section of corridor equipped with a sink and cooker and fridge than a proper kitchen. But there’s a glass door at the opposite end of the room, and on the other side of it there’s a wide terrace, with a table and two chairs. Plates and glasses are in place on the table; a bottle of white wine and a bottle of water are standing in a glass bowl of half-melted ice cubes. An awning, winched out from the kitchen wall, keeps the terrace in shade.

  The view, in other circumstances, would immediately soothe: old red roofs in the foreground, the town walls beyond, and a procession of dusty green hills in the distance. Leaning on the railing, she can see, down to her right, a segment of Piazza del Mercato, its paving stones as bright as frost in the sunlight. Gideon puts a glass of water in her hand and points out the village of Mensano, and Cásole d’Elsa again.

  ‘So, sleep well?’ he asks, sitting down. With a grandiose wave of an arm he invites her to take the vacant chair.

  ‘Very well, thank you,’ she answers.

  ‘Good. Good,’ he says. He indicates the spread: a bowl of olives; slices of tomato; peppers; artichoke hearts; thick discs of moist mozzarella in dark green oil; a plate of other cheeses; ham and three kinds of salami; soft rolls. ‘I don’t mind what I eat,’ he says, ‘as long as it’s always the same thing. Habit – the key to success.’ This does not seem to be intended as a joke. ‘Please, help yourself,’ he says. ‘The ham is exquisite. And the salami—.’

  ‘I’m a vegetarian,’ she tells him. At this he raises an eyebrow and smiles quizzically, as if not eating the corpses of animals were a studied peculiarity, like eating only foodstuffs that are yellow or start with the letter V. ‘Oh well,’ he says. ‘The cheeses are fine too. You do eat cheese?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘OK,’ he sighs, hugely relieved. ‘Well, tuck in.’

  As he waits for her, he makes his fingers rise and fall in waves on the tabletop, as if playing a keyboard. His hands are stiff, he explains; he’s been drawing all morning. A pianist must practise his scales; an artist must draw; drawing, as Ingres said, is seven-eighths of what makes up painting. ‘And what about you?’ he asks. ‘What did you do with your morning?’

  ‘Strolled around. Got my bearings.’

  ‘OK,’ he responds, encouraging her to go on; it is taken for granted, she can tell, that she’s been to the town hall.

  ‘And I looked at the exhibition.’

  ‘OK. And what did you think?’

  ‘Interesting. A lot to take in,’ she says. ‘I’ll have to go back.’

  ‘First impressions?’

  ‘Interesting,’ she repeats, but with a more considered inflection.

  ‘Go on.’

  But she doesn’t have much more to say. She makes some observations – inane, she knows – about the pictures of the chapel, their precision and the quality of the light. These remarks seem to satisfy him – or not to irritate, at least. As first impressions, it seems, they will pass. He tells her about the chapel: what it is, where it is, how he found it. He talks as if it had been the building’s ultimate destiny to be discovered by Gideon Westfall.

  A raised voice from the street interrupts their conversation. A man can be seen on Piazza del Mercato, apparently haranguing someone who is out of view. ‘What’s he saying?’ she asks.

  ‘I’m not absolutely sure,’ he answers. ‘I think he’s arguing about a car.’ It’s not an argument; ten seconds later the man smiles and raises a hand, departing with: ‘Ciao Marco. Ciao ciao.’ Gideon does a mock-embarrassed cringe. His Italian, he admits, is deficient – shockingly so, for a man who’s lived here for so long. But Max Beerbohm – ‘You know Max Beerbohm?’ he asks, and has the good grace to betray only the slightest dismay at her ignorance – lived in Italy for more than forty-five years, and in all that time he hardly learned a word of the language. ‘I’m not that bad. Not quite,’ he says, beguiled by his own incorrigibility.

  Coming to Italy, he tells her, was a ‘test of solitude’. The insularity of Castelluccio had been a significant part of its appeal, but he hadn’t been sure that he was equipped for such isolation.

  ‘But when you walk down the street a dozen people say hello,’ she points out.

  It took a long time to reach that stage, he answers, and even now he’s not really integrated into the town, certainly not as much as Robert, and even Robert can never become a native. ‘If you can’t trace your roots back to the Etruscans,’ he says, ‘you’re an interloper. That’s the attitude round here.’ He is an exile, he tells her. England, the English art scene, the ‘art racket’ had become inimical to him; he had felt obliged to leave.

  ‘Well,’ she says, ‘it’s a comfortable kind of exile.’

  Surveying the hills with a philosophical gravitas, Gideon agrees that it is.

  Claire reaches into her bag. ‘I have things for you,’ she says. ‘This is the sketchbook I mentioned in my email. And I came across some pictures of you and my father, when you were boys. I had copies made. I thought you might like them.’

  She seems hopeful that the gift will please. ‘Thank you,’ he says, and he puts the sketchbook and the wallet of prints on the floor, beside his chair. Her eyes twitch, as though struck by specks of grit.

  ‘Aren’t you going to look at them?’ she asks.

  ‘Later,’ he says. ‘We’re talki
ng. It wouldn’t be very interesting, watching me looking at old photos.’

  He smiles, but there is a coldness that the smile does not obscure, the coldness of a man who has detected a trap and is refusing to fall for it. He looks at her and blinks, and there is something so smug in that blink, so domineering, that she is instantly angry. ‘You know,’ she says, making every effort to speak evenly, ‘the last year of my mother’s life was horrible. Really horrible. Indescribable. She knew she was dying, and we knew she was dying, and my father was in despair—’

  ‘Of course. And I’m very sorry—’

  ‘Let me finish. He wrote to you, telling you she wasn’t going to pull through. You remember that?’

  There is contempt in the question; she could be addressing a man she believes to be feigning feeble-mindedness. ‘Yes, I remember,’ he replies.

  ‘And you replied. Remember?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I can remember it as well. A single sheet of paper; a few lines.’ She can see that he’s recalling it; he may actually be having a moment of guilt.

  ‘It was more than a few lines,’ he states.

  ‘One piece of paper. One side of writing.’

  ‘You read it?’

  ‘No, I didn’t read it. I saw it, and I saw it go into the bin.’ To this, there is no discernible reaction.

  ‘But he told you what I’d written?’

  ‘No. It was never mentioned again.’

  ‘Do you want me to tell you what I wrote?’ he asks, as if offering a trivial favour.

  ‘No. I think I can imagine.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘I think I can.’

  ‘So you just want me to know that it was thrown in the bin?’

  ‘No,’ she says.

  ‘I have taken note of the information. I’m sorry your father reacted as he did. Did you ask him why he threw it away?’

  ‘No,’ she replies. ‘Of course not.’

  She looks up at the sky, to arrest the tears that are forming. ‘I don’t know what else I can say,’ he says.

  Gideon is gazing at her; the expression, it appears, is an attempt at empathetic sadness; the wisdom of his gaze, he seems to think, should be enough to console her. ‘I suppose I want to understand,’ she says.

  ‘Understand what?’

  ‘What happened with you and my father, mainly.’

  ‘Nothing happened.’

  ‘That can’t be true. How did things get to be so bad between you?’

  ‘We didn’t like each other. As I’m sure he told you.’

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘Well then.’

  ‘But you were brothers,’ she objects, as if their antipathy were a conundrum as perplexing as God’s permission of suffering.

  ‘A biological fact, but nothing more than that. We were never close. Never.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ she says. ‘I know that’s not true.’

  ‘Sorry, but it is.’

  ‘The photos suggest otherwise.’

  ‘What photos?’

  ‘The ones I’ve just given you.’

  He glances at the ground, and for a moment it seems that he’s going to take a look. Instead, he purses his lips, then says: ‘Photographs aren’t necessarily true.’

  ‘I think these are. You’ll see.’ He smiles, indulging a baseless but endearing optimism. ‘And he said you used to get along fine, when you were kids,’ she adds.

  ‘Not as I recall,’ he says. ‘We were on diverging paths from the start. Further and further apart with every year. In the end the gap became too wide,’ he says, ploughing the air with separating hands. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘But it wasn’t a gap, was it? We’re not talking about a gap. Something had happened before that letter. Afterwards, your name was banned. But even before it, he didn’t want to talk about you.’

  He looks away; perusing the roofs, he smiles as if in bittersweet recollection. ‘Not much more I can say,’ he says, then he turns towards her again, and leans closer, hands pressed together, prayer-like, with the fingertips to his lips. He squints at her, as if peering through a slit. ‘I am not the bad guy,’ he tells her. ‘Your father didn’t like me, and I didn’t like him. The older we got, the more we disliked each other. There were arguments. I said things I shouldn’t have said, I’m sure. And things were said to me. But it doesn’t matter. Blood is sometimes thinner than water, that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘OK,’ she says.

  ‘Do you believe me?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answers.

  Gravely he looks at her; she does not believe him, he knows. But he smiles, and replenishes her wine and his water, and slumps back in his chair. Gazing into the sky, he breathes out deeply, consigning the topic of his brother to the air. ‘What plans for the afternoon?’ he asks.

  ‘Nothing in particular,’ she says.

  He lists for her the sights of Castelluccio, such as they are; he offers her the use of his car.

  ‘Perhaps another day,’ she says.

  ‘But you’ll join us tonight, yes?’ he says, rubbing his hands to signify that this conversation is reaching its conclusion.

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Robert’s easy company,’ he says. ‘It’ll be more relaxed with him along. You might find me a bit too gristly on my own. Robert will make me more palatable. He’s a very nice chap.’

  ‘I’m sure he is.’

  He checks his watch again. ‘A table is booked for 8.15, so we’ll call for you at ten past.’ This is later than she would prefer, but the arrangement, clearly, is not negotiable. ‘And now,’ he concludes, standing up, ‘I must get back to work.’ It’s as if she’s a guest who hasn’t noticed that everyone else has left.

  He escorts her into the kitchen, leaving the sketchbook and the photos beside the chair. ‘So,’ he says at the door, ‘am I what you expected?’

  ‘I didn’t expect anything,’ she replies.

  He smiles at what he pretends to be her slyness, and almost shoves her out onto the landing.

  2.4

  On the Tuscan flank of the Apennine mountains there are three distinct areas of isolated upland, which – like other similarly detached outcrops – are classified as Anti-Apennines: the Chianti hills, Monte Amiata and the Colline Metallifere. Castelluccio (pop. 5,300) is located on the northern edge of the Colline Metallifere, a little over twenty kilometres to the north of Montieri; it is not to be confused with the hamlet of the same name in the southernmost part of Tuscany, near Scansano, nor with another tiny Castelluccio, more properly known as Castelluccio di Pienza, which is situated not far from Chianciano Terme.

  Encompassing the comuni of Montieri, Monterotondo Maríttimo, Massa Maríttima, Follónica, Gavorrano, Scarlino and Roccastrada, the Colline Metallifere rise to a maximum altitude of 1,059 metres at Le Cornate di Gerfalco, a short distance to the northwest of Montieri. Since the Etruscan era these hills have been mined for metals: iron, copper, silver, lead, nickel, zinc and mercury have all been extracted here, and the area is also rich in deposits of alum, gypsum and borax. The Parco Nazionale Tecnologico e Archeologico delle Colline Metallifere Grossetane has been instituted to conserve and promote the mining heritage of the Colline Metallifere.

  The name of the small town of Montieri is derived from Mons Aeris, meaning Copper Mountain. The Etruscans and the Romans dug mines here, and the castle of Montieri, which dates back to the eleventh century, was as much a factory as a defensive structure, enclosing as it did a mint for the production of silver and copper coins: in Via delle Fonderie you can see the remains of some eleventh-century foundries. More conspicuous remnants of Montieri’s industrial history are to be found outside the town, in the valley of the Merse, where there are several disused mines, such as the Campiano pyrite mine, which closed in the mid-1990s. The valley is best known, however, for Le Roste, huge red mounds of scoriae which are heaped beside the main road from Massa Maríttima to Siena.

  Monterotondo Maríttimo, to the west o
f Montieri, is dominated by the cooling tower of its power station, which generates electricity from the steam produced by the stratum of hot granite that lies beneath the town; the area named Le Biancane, on the north side of Monterotondo, is renowned for its boracic fumaroles and springs. The geothermal field of this area is known as the Larderello geothermal field, after the nearby town of that name, around which several craters have been created by volcanic activity; the largest of these, some 250 metres in diameter and now filled by a lake known as Lago Vecchienna, was formed by a phreatic eruption that was described in 1282 in Restoro d’Arezzo’s Della composizione del mondo con le sue cascioni (On the Composition of the World, with its Reasons), the first scientific book to be written in vernacular Italian. Geothermic power generation was pioneered at Larderello, which was given its name in 1846, in honour of the French businessman and engineer François de Larderel, whose factory – built to extract boric acid from volcanic mud – formed the nucleus of Larderello. Steam is expelled from the earth here at temperatures as high as 220 °C (396 °F). Using a steam vent to drive a small turbine, electricity was first generated at Larderello on July 4th, 1904, in an experiment conducted by Prince Piero Ginori Conti; enough power was produced to brighten four light bulbs (or five, according to some sources). Seven years later, the world’s first geothermal power plant was built in Larderello’s Valle del Diavolo, or Devil’s Valley, so called because of the sulphurous fumes that seep from it. Until 1958, when a similar plant was inaugurated in New Zealand, this was the only such facility in the world.

  2.5

  Returning from Fausto Nerini’s workshop, Robert passes the alimentari on Corso Diaz. Giovanni Cabrera is outside, lounging against the wall; in one hand he has a cigarette, and in the other he’s holding one of his crutches, with which he’s jabbing at a lad who’s brandishing a flagpole at him. Alessandra Nerini is there too, standing on the other side of the shop window, arms folded, gazing down the street with wearied eyes. Giovanni’s father comes out, to take a couple of boxes from the van that’s parked opposite; the van drives off, and Alessandra lifts a hand a few inches off her forearm, by way of a wave to the driver. Noticing Robert, Giovanni assumes a sneer and lowers the crutch; the lad with the flagpole turns, to see what’s changed the mood.