Camille begins a list of what they need in town, but since what they need is everything, she starts to sketch the kitchen fireplace. She is already enamored with the house. Winter in this beamed room, she imagines, a fire popping, boiling pasta water steaming the windows…She has not thought of Charles since the plane touched down in Rome. Is he exiled from here?
“I let him out,” Susan is saying. “I should have used the leash but I thought he’d just pop out and back in.” She scoops up Archie and whispers in his ear, “You were very bad,” and poor Archie whimpers. He so liked the feel of feathers in his mouth.
* * *
—
“Hey, you two. Gianni is coming at nine. I feel like I’m going to the prom. Archie, my friend, you are staying here. You’ll be fine in the kitchen.” Susan walks him again, surveying the property as they stroll. A short distance downhill, she finds a stone building with a glass front, a structure she knows to be a storage for lemon trees over the winter. She’d seen one at the famous garden La Gamberaia when she traveled with Aaron years ago. The long room is full of pots, those gorgeous green glass demijohns you pay a fortune for at Restoration Hardware, spiderwebs spanning two yards, gardening tools (some perfectly good), and rusty iron chairs. Bulbs, she thought. I could plant them now for spring. She has no way of knowing that naturalized daffodils cover the entire hillside in early April. Over many years, Luisa added irises and tulips. Wild orange-spotted lilies thrive in bright clusters.
She circles the house. Fruit trees, a couple of lichen-etched terra-cotta olive oil containers, some roses still sputtering out a few blooms, and many boxwood domes. Gianni must know a good nursery. She visualizes the rusty chairs under the linden tree, and lavender and santolina along the drive up to the road. Around the front door spilling catmint, dusty miller, and verbena. Pale pink verbena. Water falling somewhere. Archie scratches in the dirt and begins to root. He looks up, guilty and frantic. “What is wrong with you, little one?”
Camille hangs her clothes in the looming armadio that squawks when she opens it. Her chest of drawers is freshly lined in blue and white fleur-de-lis paper. Because of her knee, she has the downstairs bedroom at the back of the house. Julia’s and Susan’s bedrooms are in the vast upstairs, where there are three others, plus a large room that’s used for storage. This house was built for a multigenerational family, not three lone foreigners.
Out the window, she sees Susan poking her head inside a stone building with arched glass doors. What a great studio, all that sunlight streaming in. She spreads her sweaters and tops around on the bed and begins rolling them, as her efficient daughter-in-law taught her to do. With only four drawers, she needs every centimeter of space. This must have been the dead couple’s room. It’s spare, the original minimalism, really, with walnut chest, armadio, and bed handsome against white walls. She runs her hand over the thick plaster, following the sweep of someone else’s hand as he’d smoothed the surface. (Her mother wielding the spatula, spreading the boiled frosting on her birthday cake. Her mother would admire the crocheted bedspread of hand-sized snowflakes.) For Camille, though she loved the carved bed, that scratchy spread will have to go. She’d also like some good towels. The aqua ones in the bathroom look new but skimpy. She looks around her room. By the bed stands a rickety floor lamp in lieu of a bedside table, and on the chest on the other side, an iron relic with a twenty-watt bulb. Don’t the Italians read in bed?
* * *
—
Cleaning supplies, Julia notes. Ammonia. Bleach. Ajax. Window cleaner. Scouring pads. The kitchen seems well scrubbed, but Julia has the urge to rub down every surface, especially the pantry where the shelves are slightly sticky under jars of honey and jams that will have to go. The fridge, closed since Tito died, smells like ozone. She looks up words and writes her list in Italian. Wonder if I could find a food processor? Or at least a stick blender? How to say that in Italian? She knows she is going to learn the language quickly. Susan has a feel for it, except for rolling r’s. When she reads passages aloud, she’s taught herself to race through. Her instinct is right. Even if she mispronounces, she speeds on. Tutor, Julia writes at the top of her list. She wants to start immediately. Today she is going to buy a cookbook in Italian. Outside her front bedroom window, the land steps down and down, with a few dots of farmhouses far below. The other window looks east; the full frame of it is filled with a glorious tree, bare of leaves but gaily hung with burnished and glowing yellow persimmons. Kaki, she learns. The first thing she will cook in the kitchen of Villa Assunta.
* * *
—
At nine, Gianni knocks. He will drop them at the town gate and all morning they can explore San Rocco. He recommends Trattoria Stefano for lunch, and then he will return them to Villa Assunta because of the jet lag. Tomorrow, he has suggested a trip to Ikea, near Florence, since they will need supplies for the house, with a stop afterward at his cousin’s organic restaurant, Verde. By then, Grazia’s mother’s Cinquecento will be ready and they are on their own.
* * *
—
Just inside the gate—they marvel at the medieval arch and the vast doors—Julia spots the fresh pasta shop. “Let’s get some on the way out—go all the way into town and start at the far point so we don’t have to lug everything.” That was hard. They want to stop at the forno, at the gelato shop with the tempting linen store next to it. They pause for cappuccino and meet Violetta, who offers the coffee at her bar. Small streets drop downhill off the main street. They wander in galleries and jewelry shops as wide as an arm span. At the end of the street, they find a cookware store and indulge themselves in a food processor and a good coffee machine with pods. Julia selects three spatulas and some ice trays. They don’t yet know that Italians think iced drinks cause stomach problems, hence no trays in the home fridge. They buy a steam iron to replace the relic they’d seen in the pantry, and three hair dryers. Martino, the owner, introduces himself and offers to deliver. “Of course I know where you are living,” he tells them. “Una bella villa. You honor us with your choice of San Rocco.”
The second coffee they take at the smaller Piazza XX settembre, overlooking the public rose garden and a view of the agricultural valley below. This barista, Paolino, bows as they enter, smiling as though they are long-missing cousins. He, too, offers the coffee. “What is this?” Camille wonders. “Do they always do this?”
“Bizarre. I imagine it’s because of Grazia’s family, the house…I don’t know but it’s great.” Umbrellas are put away for the season. At the outdoor tables, the women turn their faces to the midmorning sunlight. They forget about exposure and skin cancer and just bask in the warmth, consulting their lists and staring at windows, a balcony still dripping with pink geraniums, shiny paving stones, and people going about their daily lives. They feel they are walk-ons in a play and, of course, they are, the ongoing drama of life in a small town. Internet images of San Rocco occupied them over the months of planning, but they were in no way prepared for the limpid light bathing the renaissance façades of ochre, rose, sunflower yellow, and cream. The white marble steps leading up to the piazza’s church have over centuries worn to the soft gleam of soap, and the tower bells ringing the quarter hour, the half hour, and the hour gong so resoundingly that their bones reverberate. “That’s the nanny-goat bell.” Paolino nods toward the bell tower as he gathers their cups. He’s worked on cruise ships for years and speaks English. “Every church gives a different sound. Santa Catarina, the struck dishpan; San Fillipo, the goose honk; Sant’Anselmo, the leper’s bell. You know, the lepers had to warn that they were approaching.” Susan is transfixed by Paolino’s thick hair—cut close on the sides, with a frothy top that makes her want to say pompadour. It sweeps up and back, a glistening tar-black surfer’s wave about to break. Julia thinks the croissant, called a cornetto, is terrible, the dough all wet and wadded in the middle. Camille imagines a straggling leper ding-a-linging across the piazza
followed by a cavorting goat and a goose. Jet lag, major jet lag.
Paolino waves as they gather their bags. “A domani.” See you tomorrow.
* * *
—
“I’m going to the bookstore where they sell art supplies. Meet you in an hour on the church steps?” Camille has a large tote she intends to fill.
“Yes, I’ll get groceries,” Julia adds. “And the bread.”
“I’m just going to wander around.” Susan hoists her bag onto her shoulder. “Every street looks tempting.” Susan, used to engaging with strangers, introduces herself at Anna and Pietro’s frutta e verdure. The outrageous display of citrus lured her. How many kinds of tangerines are there? What’s that? Cedro, huge and rippled. Lemons, some large and bumpy, some small and smooth. What’s that? Bergamotta. The fragrance meets her as she leans over to see the labeled crates. Used in tea, she remembers. Whatever else it is, she thinks, it smells like lemon blossoms and oranges; something I’d like to spray on myself. What a beautiful word, arancia. We must have the blood oranges. Julia will be thrilled. Anna and Pietro pick out prime fruits for her, and Anna describes an insalata, Susan understands that, with oranges and fennel. Anna also gathers a bunch of beets. She looks equivocal but holds out the three together. Susan buys the beets, too. Usually indifferent to cooking, she wants to carry half the shop home—the enormous funghi porcini, shiny chestnuts, and huge leafy wings of something called gobbi. “Dialetto,” Anna says. “È il cardo.” Well, I’ll puzzle through that later, Susan thinks. Anna chooses a cedro as a gift to her. Julia will figure out what to do with it.
In the cheese shop, she buys a large wedge of sweet Gorgonzola, tiny black olives, and a jar of truffle butter.
At first Camille doesn’t see the bookstore owner crouched in the back of the shop. She is reading in a low chair covered in a ragged Oriental rug. Signora Bevilacqua unfolds herself and rises. She is both stooped and tall, her hair clipped up in gray loops, and her ivory face gently wrinkled like crêpe paper. Her eyes are clear and dark amber.
Every Italian word she’s memorized flies out of Camille’s head and she’s reduced to pointing to the tubes of oil and acrylic paint, the brushes, and rolled linen for canvases. The shop cat twirls around her ankles, then the ankles of the signora, who opens drawers and points to brushes with delicate sable tips, to watercolor sets that cost a fortune, and to rolls of tracing paper. Tape. Pencils, erasers. Tubes of raw sienna, raw umber, burnt sienna, and terra verte, a muddy green for this landscape. A color wheel. “Sì,” Camille agrees over and over. Her bag loaded, she thanks the signora and remembers what Paolino said. “A domani.” See you tomorrow.
She runs into Julia, emerging from the grocery store. “Guess what? They deliver! This is the most civilized place. They stock all the local wines, too, and I bought a mixed case. The store is minute but everything you need is right there. Makes our giant stores at home seem a bit silly. And they were lovely people. There’s Cinzia, her husband Quinto, and their son Tommaso.”
Julia did not say that Cinzia’s oval face and perfectly straight nose reminded her of Lizzie. Momentarily, she had the familiar nightmare feeling of being trapped in an unmoored bathysphere. Lizzy. Dizzy. But Quinto handed her a slice of San Daniele prosciutto and, concentrating on the buttery taste, she righted herself.
Early in the day for it, but Susan orders a hazelnut gelato. The girl seems surprised that she only chose one flavor. With a medium, she said, holding up the cone and raising three fingers, you can choose three. Susan smiles and holds up one finger. Down to basics, she thinks. Holding up my finger like a one-year-old. I’ve got to study now.
Susan sits on the lip of the fountain, enjoying one of the pleasures she almost always denies herself. A fabulously gorgeous young woman strolls by, wheeling twins, both smiling. “Buon giorno, Signora,” the young woman calls, as if they were neighbors. Her life, Susan thinks, her amazing, beautiful years of life in this place. She catches herself; the woman’s life might be horrid. But the dreamy one tosses back her thousand ringlets and steps away, who knows, back into the pages of Vogue. Susan thinks she might cry.
Twelve fifteen. They are early for San Rocco trattorias. Lunch starts at one. But the door is open at Stefano’s. “Okay. We’re in a film. The waiter is too gorgeous.” His shaved head shines like a polished pecan. He sports a soul patch and a pointed, highly styled beard. The fitted gray shirt and tight jeans leave no doubt about his lean and muscular body. He is Stefano, son of Maurizio, whose family flung open the doors sixty years ago and have been cooking pasta and mixed grill ever since. Stefano, thirty, insists on new ideas. Not just traditional Tuscan food but innovations, too, especially on the dessert list which previously had been only panna cotta, tiramisu (which he loathes as an American invention), and crème caramel. Now there are seasonal fruit roulades, vin santo cake, and in autumn, fig and walnut tarts. Maurizio is fine with this, as he’s overheard local expatriates sigh over the “same old menu.” Chief cook Zia Valentina, Maurizio’s sister, feels fiercely partisan toward what her grandmother cooked. Good enough for the family for centuries, good enough for badly dressed tourists. Thus, eruptions of shouting and clattering pans in the kitchen, often causing diners to look at each other in alarm.
Today all’s calm. Like everyone, Stefano knows they will live at Villa Assunta. He even knows that one is or wants to be an artist, as he has met signora Bevilacqua in line at the post office. He will hear later this morning of the extravagant purchase of the food processor, a two-year-old model that Martino was delighted to sell. He suggests the pici, the preferred pasta in San Rocco. Susan wants hers with big garlic, Julia chooses wild boar sauce, and Camille decides on spicy tomato sauce. They love the pici, rolled long and thin, like a thick spaghetti. After they decide not to have wine, Stefano brings over a liter anyway and they surprise themselves by finishing it with their second course, the mixed grill with roasted potatoes. The meats are lean, almost stringy, but richly flavorful. The local bread has a fine texture but since the cuisine is a salty one the dough is mixed without salt. This will take some getting used to.
They don’t want it but Stefano brings them Mont Blanc, a swoon of a dessert made from puréed chestnuts and whipped cream. “Very special. For special guests.”
* * *
—
Luckily, the fresh pasta shop is still open. They’d decided on a long rest followed by an early night, with a simple dinner. Susan remembers the tagliatelle and the jar of truffle butter in her bag but picks up some ravioli as well.
Shop owners have locked up and headed home for pranzo. Smells of long-simmered sauces and roasts drift from upstairs windows. “I don’t want to eat for days,” Susan moans. Just outside the gate, they spot Gianni’s van. “How do you like our San Rocco?” He slides open the door and they pile in with their packages.
“Paradiso!” Julia says.
“Ah, no, Signora, but maybe close.”
“What does gobbi mean, Gianni? And dialetto?” Susan asks.
“Hunchback. Dialect. You have bought gobbi? It’s like the artichoke but more difficult. You could call it cardo.”
“And why hunchback?”
“Non lo so. Perhaps because the leaves curve?”
Julia gets it. “Must be cardoon. The most difficult vegetable on earth. I’ve never met one in person.”
As Gianni turns down the drive the harmonious house fills the windshield. Camille rolls down the window and breathes deeply. She turns and looks at the others in the backseat. “We’re home.”
* * *
—
As Susan carries into the dining room the bowl of truffle pasta redolent of loamy woods and parmigiano, she pauses in front of the fresco. It’s dark in the garden now but she noticed earlier the conceit of the house’s view reappearing on the wall—the garden foregrounded, rose arches, the two distant volcanos. She feels a prick of joy: she gets to look a
t this for many fabulous dinners. I’m going to check all the outbuildings, she thinks. I wonder if those iron arches in the painting might be rusting away somewhere.
Camille, bringing in a pitcher of water, joins her. “Isn’t this just too much to bear?” She also has spent a half hour looking at the fresco. She found herself smiling the whole time. “There was a big spirit at large here, wielding the brushes! I wonder if she—surely it was she—was the owner, or the daughter. Look at that sharp little bird!”
I arrive a few minutes early at Leo and Annetta’s for the dinner cooked in honor of the murdered hen. If he’s home on time, Colin may join us. He does not like to miss a meal at Casa Bianchi. I’m bringing a pear tart, although I know that Annetta also will serve her apricot or plum crostata. My Italian friends instinctively distrust foreigners’ cooking. They’re always telling me how to do the simplest things, as though we in America have no idea how to stuff a tomato or chop an onion. When they like something I serve, they express genuine delight and surprise, as if they’re witnessing a dog performing a smart trick.
As I unburden my tart and wine on the kitchen counter, Annetta and her sister Flavia are setting the table. At one end they’ve plopped a tall vase of autumn leaves and rose hips. Usually they don’t bother with decoration. This is a special occasion. The chief of the carabinieri, his wife and baby have arrived, along with Flavia’s husband, Roberto, who remains in the family although Flavia left him years ago and moved in with her sister and Leo. The hen and rabbit turn slowly in the fireplace, along with skewers of sausages and pork liver.
Enter the three women. Camille, Susan, Julia, they say, and I rush to introduce myself. They’re flushed from the chilly walk. My first impression: very American. What is that giveaway that most cultures have? Why don’t Americans look Swiss, or English, or Germans look American? Well, the one with cropped gray hair, Susan, could be French in her bias-cut skirt, stack-heeled boots—did she walk up the hill in those?—and asymmetrical red and gray sweater. She cocks her head slightly, letting me know that she is appraising us. Not in a bad way, just aware. All three look clean, scrubbed really, with shiny hair and open faces, all smiling with their great American teeth. Innocence? Is that the dead giveaway for American women? (But Margaret never looked innocent.) Just as baggy pants are the hallmark of American men?
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