Julia seems a bit shy. She’s examining the roasting meats in the fireplace and the coals hissing and popping from drops of fat. She has a questioning look. Camille looks around at everything. Her first Tuscan farmhouse. She compliments Annetta and Leo on the open room with the long table dominating all. “I can see your priorities!” she laughs. (I’ll be working double time tonight as interpreter.) She admires the casual comfort of six oversized armchairs arranged around a low round table heaped with magazines, books, yarn baskets, and fishing tackle. She says to me, “Hey, Ralph Lauren, heads up!” It’s true—plaid blankets, taxidermy owl, an upright piano, mismatched dining chairs.
They have brought flowers and wine and at Ikea today they have found an olive wood cutting board for Leo. (Were they subconsciously thinking of him beheading the chicken?) He turns it over and over, examining the work. (They will learn later that he makes better ones himself, along with carved napkin rings, walking sticks, and birdhouses.) Though it’s not our local custom, Annetta hands around glasses of prosecco because this is a special night. Usually we arrive at eight and sit down, with no preliminaries. “Benvenute, cin-cin!”
So here they are. Two days ago, they had their worlds. Now, rashly and happily, they have this new one. Can’t everyone envy them? Everything unfolding, everything new and shining. I like them immediately.
Annetta, sensitive to the language issue, seats the women together with me across from them. The men, as usual, are at one end of the table. Out comes the platter of antipasti: salumi olives, crostini, and pecorino. “You are in for a major treat,” I tell the women. “Annetta may be the size of a ten-year-old girl but she is a mighty cook.”
Leo asks about Villa Assunta. Are they comfortable? He volunteers to bring over fireplace wood. Annetta notices that they didn’t close the shutters at night and tells them they’ll be warmer in winter and cooler in summer if the shutters are closed. I rarely close mine and doubt if the women will either because the rooms become as black as inside a coffin, and it’s hard to wake up in the gloom. A cultural thing.
The baby is extraordinarily large for six months. She placidly sucks on a piece of bread. The mother, Margherita, looks wan, exhausted from hauling around such a hefty girl. Eugenio, the carabinieri chief, assures the women that he will do anything possible to make their stay pleasant. Handsome as he is, I imagine the women are each flashing on just how pleasant he could make their stay. No, surely I exaggerate; is that what I think instead?
Flavia and Annetta bring in a bowl of penne in what looks to Julia like a plain tomato sauce. Instead, it’s lively and complex. “This is delicious,” Julia marvels. “How do you make it?”
Annetta shrugs. “It’s simple.” She always says that. “I add two handfuls of herbs and parsley chopped finely, and my own tomato sauce. Some peperoncino, spicy hot. We grow them and I will give you some. It helps most pastas.” Julia notices that Roberto, husband of Flavia, is devouring his. And she does, too.
Everyone has advice. Where to buy electronics, gas, which vendors at the Thursday market have the best vegetables, what priest is the least boring. The women are asked where they plan to travel, if they’ve been to Sicily and Elba. They’re warned against Naples (one of my favorite cities) and given numerous recommendations for places to eat in the countryside. What does not come up, as it hasn’t ever come up for me either, is who they are, where they come from, what they do. I’ve never figured out whether my Italian friends are indifferent to my life away from here, or if, as written on early maps, a primitive there be beasties mentality exists beyond known territories. It’s quite odd. When I leave it’s as though I have dropped off the edge. When I return, everyone’s thrilled I’m back, but no one, no one, asks a question. Live in the moment? Yes, they do.
Flavia helps Leo dismantle the rotisserie and carve. The platter is unceremoniously placed in the middle of the table and soon the women get the idea: you lean in with your fork and stab the piece you want. Flavia’s rosemary potatoes, the bread, and wild salad greens similarly just arrive and casually travel around to everyone. The baby chews an olive. I see Camille staring. “Don’t worry, she’s loved them for weeks now. And she was born with three teeth,” the mother says.
Roberto lunges for a sausage. “I don’t think he’s eaten for weeks,” Camille laughs. Flavia compliments the wine the women brought, but to me it tastes strangely metallic. I may be coming down with something. I’m usually ravenous, especially at this table, but tonight I feel abstemious and unattracted to the savory meats. Susan reaches for seconds.
* * *
—
Now the apricot crostata, my own pear tart, the bitter little glasses of digestivi—Leo drinks only grappa—and the fire burned down to coals. “That is one of the best meals of my life,” Camille says. She’s had her back to the fire all night and is about to melt. Rather late for a hot flash.
Colin must be late. Poor babe, he’ll be stuck with some leftover lasagne.
“Una bella cena.” I start the good-bye kissing rounds.
“That was a beautiful dinner?” Camille repeats. “Una bella cena, Leo, Annetta. Flavia.”
* * *
—
The four of us walk out together. Annetta calls and runs to them with a jar of her hot pepper flakes. “We are lucky to have them as neighbors,” Julia says. “Do they know that their food is better than any multi-starred restaurant in the U.S.?” I suddenly feel elated that the women are among us. Each one has the spark of curiosity. I remember well that heightened sense of arrival. In many ways, I still have it. They all three speak with southern accents, but Julia’s is the melodious English-tinged coastal Georgia one. I would like for her to sit by my bed and read to me. Susan I recognize as a straightforward person. She’ll get a lot done. Camille—my impression is that she’s the most protean at this moment. Ready to change whatever needs changing. They’re nothing like Margaret.
“Yes, the Bianchis. They’re the best of the best. But you’ll find that the everyday food here knocks you sideways all the time. The standard is impossible to grasp unless you live here.”
“I didn’t catch your last name, Kit,” Camille says. “And do you work here? How long have you been here? Gianni says you are a writer?”
“Raine. I’m from Coral Gables but I’ve been here twelve years. Seems like forever.”
Julia shines her flashlight in front of their feet. “Kit Raine! Oh, I read a book you wrote on Freya Stark!” she remembers. “It was on the shelf at Hugh’s,” she explains to Camille and Susan. “I loved it.”
“I’m amazed.” I’m always amazed when someone reads anything I write. “That’s so cool to hear. No, I just work at my desk, nothing else, though I do some research for Colin. I think I fell for him because I always wanted to be an architect myself. Just in a nutshell, before I came here, I taught at UC Santa Cruz—catching waves, as I now think of that year. Then I got a full-time job at the University of Colorado but I had to quit. I spent four years taking care of my mother in Coral Gables. She had MS. Then melanoma. I taught part time and tried to convince myself to marry my high school love. After she died, way too young, I made my great Houdini escape to Italy. This place has given me the big blank space to write plus an exciting fallback when I’m looking for diversion.” No car parked on the road. Colin must be delayed along the way. “You’ll have to meet my partner, Colin.” I explained that he works here at home and in London, always juggling luggage and plane tickets.
“What a life. And you’re still young. And gorgeous, I might add.”
“Susan, you’re a principessa to say so! I’m forty-four. But I’m one of those old souls. I’ve always been forty-four.”
Julia. Camille. Susan. All settled in well and happily after a week. The three bought down duvets at Ikea and replaced Grazia’s heirloom coverlets. They brought home wineglasses, new shower curtains, spatulas, bath mats, and a soft dog bed for Archie. T
hey forgot to look for towels better than the skimpy new ones in their bathrooms. No one wanted to go back to Ikea’s vast parking lot and endless aisles. Camille found it annoying to be there at all, though Gianni insisted it was the only place to stock up on practical items. Camille thought it was depressing that someone could furnish an entire apartment in an afternoon and have a pleasant place with absolutely no dimension at all.
At the Saturday antique market, Susan found romantic crystal sconces—twenty euros!—for her bedside. Camille spotted a brass library lamp with sufficient wattage. Julia moved a marble pedestal lamp from the back hall chest to her room. Julia chose place mats in town and Camille selected a couple of soft throws for reading by the fire. Susan began to keep flowers on the kitchen table and on the broad stone sill in a living room window. They equipped each bath with a small space heater to take off the morning chill. The villa’s thermostat must be pre-programmed but they haven’t yet figured out how to override the settings. Heat goes off totally at midnight and back on at six, not fast enough to warm up the house by the time they get up.
Wi-Fi works better than at home in North Carolina, but somehow the phones, with new chips Gianni bought, have low signals. Only messages marked TIM come through.
“Who is this Tim who keeps calling?” Camille wonders.
“We don’t know any Tim,” Julia agrees. When Gianni explains that TIM is not a strange man but Telecom Italia Mobile, they startle him as they whoop with laughter, get caught up with it, and can’t stop. Uncontrolled laughter, the kind that hurts, catapults them to the next stage, the one where they fully realize how little they know and how much they want to find out.
The delivery of the blue Cinquecento feels like a milestone. Wheels. Grazia adds the car price and insurance to their lease and retains the ownership papers. “This way it’s yours; I hold it for you until you are residents,” she explains. The women don’t fully understand but go with it. Though the backseat requires contortion, the front is roomy. Being the smallest, Julia isn’t happy about her fate to fold into the rear. Susan already has admired the Italian driving skills and is anxious to practice. As soon as Gianni and his cousin deliver the car, she takes off. “Where are you going?” Camille calls out to her.
“I’ll try to find that nursery we passed. Hyacinths and crocuses would look pretty along the drive. I wonder if anemones will grow. I’ve never had luck with them.” She grinds the gears, backs into the turnaround, and shoots up the hill. She opens the ragtop just as Luisa did in all kinds of weather.
* * *
—
Julia studies her new cookbook, The Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well, a classic by Pellegrino Artusi. Since it was published in 1891, she thought it would be only a launching pad for her, the recipes antiquated and calling for many ingredients no longer available. From her publishing job, she’s familiar with metric measures in the kitchen, but they by no means are second nature as are ounces and cups. He’s casual anyway about measuring. Pugno, she reads, a handful. Quanto basto. Just enough. Nice! As she laboriously translates recipes for ragù, risotto, ravioli, she realizes how much of the traditional cuisine carries over intact. Except nowhere does she find a recipe for pasta; Artusi assumed everyone knows that. She bought a Lorenza de’ Medici cookbook, too, and tags every other page. So simple, the ricotta crostini, even the osso bucco. Julia hits on the idea of keeping a good log of what she cooks. Then she wonders if she could tie her cooking adventures to her learning of Italian. She has a flash—a book published by Mulberry Press! Learning Italian. Oh, brilliant. This would double the fun of learning both. About everything served at the table, there must a story, an anecdote, something to learn, and obviously, new words.
* * *
—
This morning, Camille sets up a place to paint in the room opposite hers. By rearranging the daybeds and cane chairs, she clears a spacious corner where she shoves a desk under the window. Gianni is bringing a rectangle of wood two feet longer than the desk. He’ll help her cover it in canvas and place it over a layer of felt on top of the desk. This will protect the tooled leather insert as well as give her a good work surface. She longs for the light of the glass-fronted limonaia, but that will have to wait until spring. She plans to start with still lifes, maybe à la Giorgio Morandi. She’s found a book on him in one of the bookcases, along with a two-volume set on the history of frescoes and a stack of paperback art books on Tiziano, Pontormo, Sassetta, and Bronzino. She could, she realizes, study just that bundle all year. Pontormo’s favorite color, and hers, an icy apricot. He favored mauve, ash, washed-out blue, but also aqua and plum. Bronzino, such stark clarity; Tiziano, those heartbreaking, immortal faces; Sassetta—how he cleverly worked landscapes into the backgrounds of the religious subject matter. She pores over the Morandi paintings. Bottles, bowls, pitchers, essential shapes pared into abstraction. Even his landscapes were all about volume. If she painted as many repeats as he did of the same chalky-colored cylinders she’d go crazy. Same with Cézanne and those endless Mont Sainte-Victoire landscapes.
Start simply. Three kumquats on a blue plate. Even that isn’t simple, not if you want to capture in paint the essence of kumquats, something like that scented mist they emit from the skin when zested. On a small table raided from the pantry, she arranges her supplies. When will she pick up a brush, uncap a tube of zinc white, and begin?
Julia leaves a note on the kitchen table: Walking into town and will stay through lunch. She tucks her camera and her thick five-subject notebook into her bag. Off to see the wizard, she used to say to Lizzie. Alive somewhere, Lizzie. Probably fuzzy and sick and full of blame. Wade. Four in the morning in Savannah and where does he lay his head? No, no, not now, she said to the surging memory of his solid, comforting presence in the bed beside her, his even-breathing self. She forced his silhouette onto a view of blue hills whose undulations resembled the contours of a sleeping man under rumpled sheets.
* * *
—
A stooped woman in one of those print housedresses, or are they some kind of wraparound apron, straddles a ditch and parts the weeds. Julia looks at the weedy plants piled on newspaper at her feet. “Buon giorno,” she calls, startling the woman. “Mangia questa insalata?” You eat this salad? she manages.
“Sì, la nostra insalata del campo.” Our field lettuces, but Julia understands nothing after that. The woman holds up a curly handful she’s just cut, then tosses it onto the paper. From her basket, she takes a porcini mushroom as large as a fried egg and offers it to Julia. Crudo is part of what she says. Raw. Only parmigiano and oil. Julia gets this. She’s exhilarated to have her first conversation in Italian.
“Sono Julia,” I’m Julia. She extends her hand. “Abito…” She couldn’t think of what to say after “I live” so she pointed behind her. “Villa Assunta.”
“La casa di Luisa,” the woman says. Her smile reveals gaps where incisors should be. “Sono Patrizia.” She points to a square smudge of house down below in the valley. Julia assumes she’s saying that they’re neighbors.
“Grazie, Patrizia, ciao.” She does not yet know that one doesn’t just say ciao to someone you’ve just met.
“Arriverderla,” Patrizia responds formally.
Julia folds a tissue around the prize porcini and carefully places it in her bag. A raw salad of shaved porcini sprinkled with olive oil and parmigiano. How simple can food get?
In town, she stares at stone crests above doors, slashes of light down the alleyway streets, the row of slender marble columns on a long balcony, a glimpse of a frescoed ceiling in an upstairs apartment, a boy who stepped out of a Piero della Francesca painting. (If she stays a dozen years, she still will see something new every time she enters San Rocco.) She reads all the posted menus and takes a few notes—ribollita, pollo al diavolo, stinco di manzo, zolfini. The Trattoria Danzetti’s door flies open and she sees a chef eating his early lunch with the staff.
She would like to join them. A waiter steps outside to smoke. At the pastry shop she admires the woven tops of the fruit crostatas, like Annetta’s. What a skill with dough, although she didn’t like them very much. Such a difference—American pies are piled with sweetened fruit whereas these favorites are just a rather thin layer of fruit jam. She selects some raisin pastries for tomorrow’s breakfast, then at Anna’s buys artichokes just arrived from Sicily.
Macelleria. Butcher shop. She steps in and gasps. An enormous cow stripped of hide hangs from a chain in the ceiling. A paper towel on the floor catches the last drops of blood. A small crowd seems to be admiring the haunches. Covering her mouth and nose, discreetly she hopes, she turns to the glass cases. As she catches the butcher’s eye he laughs and winks, recognizing immediately the American’s squeamish reaction to his prize from the Chianina beef auction. Julia bites her lip and tries not to turn away from the lolling head of a rooster and his flopping red comb. She manages to order three thick veal chops. At the doll-house-sized grocery, she stocks up on supplies and asks for delivery. They can take home her veal, her prized porcini, and pastries, too. Dinner is shaping up nicely. But it’s time for lunch now and she returns to Stefano’s trattoria.
Women in Sunlight Page 11