Bella Tuscany (8 page)

The plump little boy leans against his mother's leg, pulling her skirt around him. The room empties, except for a man looking earnestly at Piero's San Giuliano, with his puzzled—or is it lost—expression.

Ed and I sit down in front of the famous
Resurrection.
Christ, emerging from the tomb, is draped in a chalky pink shroud, while below him, four guards are sleeping. The second one from the left, the security woman tells me, is a self-portrait of Piero. He looks the soundest asleep of all. “And look,” she points at his throat,
“gozzo
.
”
I have no idea what that word is but see immediately: goiter. I've always admired Piero's necks on women. Odd to see that his own had an unnatural bulge. When he lived, the local water lacked iodine. He must have been a man of no vanity not to have edited the disfiguring goiter from his portrait. Behind Christ, we see a landscape, sear on the left, and coming into spring on the right. The composition is simple, the power palpable. “His foot looks as big as yours,” I tell Ed. The body is lovingly painted. A muscular man in his physical glory. I wonder if T. S. Eliot had this image in mind when he wrote the line, “In the juvenescence of the year came Christ the tiger.” He has raised himself with force from the sepulchre. The pallor of the tomb is not on his flushed cheeks and sensuous lips.

Kenneth Clark's often-cited perception of this painting is close to the heart of its strange emotional magnetism: “This country God, who rises in the grey light while human beings are still asleep, has been worshiped ever since man first knew that the seed is not dead in the winter earth, but will force its way upwards through an iron crust. Later, He will become a god of rejoicing but His first emergence is painful and involuntary. He seems to be part of the dream which lies so heavily on the sleeping soldiers, and has Himself the doomed and distant gaze of the somnambulist.”

“He emanates the same mystery as his
Madonna del Parto
,” Ed notices. Yes, he's looking at what we can't see.

Driving home, the women along the road are still out, casing cars as they pass. I can read nothing in their eyes. The tragedy, surely there is one, does not show. We turn off to take a shortcut and are relieved not to pass these women again. There are violets, hawthorn, plum trees, and quince to see, spring waterfalls slushing over the rocks, and bare deciduous trees glowing red with buds. They don't erase the brutal fact of women for sale along the road nor do they erase the flip-side connection with the stations of the cross.

Ed zips around curves; we don't pass a car for miles. We're rushing back for the opening of our friend Celia's paintings at a gallery in Cortona. The small room is so packed with people that it's hard to see the bright blue and yellow paintings of flowers. Trays and trays of food go around, wine is flowing, everyone wishes Celia well. Vittorio, her husband, comes over to us with a plate of slivered truffle
crostini
. Ed asks him about the women on the road. “They're Nigerian. I know you are shocked. They are brought in by the Russian Mafia. They promise them modeling jobs, then this happens.”

“The Russian Mafia in rural Tuscany? You can't be serious,” Ed says. “Why don't the police round up the women, try to send them home?”

Vittorio shrugs. “Prostitution is not illegal. Pimping is but it's hard to catch them in the act. They know when the police are coming and scatter.”

“How?”

“Oh, cell phones. Some guy is probably in the village—sees who's heading down the road.”

“How do they have that much business on such a road?”

“I don't know but people say there's plenty.”

Antonio comes over and the subject shifts. I have questions. On the way into town, I saw a scrawled sign on the door to San Filippo announcing the blessing of the eggs from four to five at San Domenico, and five to six at San Filippo. Vittorio explains that Easter Breakfast is the one time a year when Italians abandon their quick espresso habit and prepare a huge, American-style breakfast. The day before, the eggs, as symbols of rebirth, are taken to the church to be blessed. “Easter week is also when the priest comes by to bless the house. Everyone does a gigantic cleaning for it. He will bless the eggs then, too.”

“We did that in Winona,” Ed remembers. “After my mother cleaned the house, she sprinkled holy water on the beds to protect us, then the priest came to bless the house.”

“Did you have your house blessed, Antonio?” He lives alone and his girlfriend refuses to stay there because of the
“confusione.”
He just smiles.

I never knew Ed slept in a blessed bed. Maybe that explains him.

 

Easter itself is a peaceful day. In my favorite church, San Cristoforo, a red basket of round buns is passed out to the twenty or so worshipers. Bread of life. The priest blesses and shakes a few drops of holy water over them. One woman brings her own basket of bread for her Easter dinner and asks for blessings on it, too.

Many who shouldered those figures through the town must be groaning under heating pads. We take pots of pink hydrangeas to Donatella and to Anselmo, and see to our embarrassment that they already have several, as well as mounds of chocolate.

Families are gathering around long tables and someone—not I—is bringing out the platter of lamb ringed with rosemary. I'm happy not to have cooked all day, happy not to serve forth, happy not to have so many dirty dishes that they must be taken outside and stacked on the wall. Another time,
va bene
. Tonight, we're alone. Because they are so fresh, we have a bowl of peas with plenty of pepper and a hunk of butter melting into them. A lovely first course. A bottle of clean white wine, veal chops, and a salad of wild greens “married,” as the Italians say, to our oil and a little fifty-year-old balsamic, so precious that I sprinkle the elixir onto the lettuces with an eye-dropper.

Since Ed is Catholic, I expect him to know everything about the liturgical year. “What does ‘Maundy' mean?”

“Um . . . I think mandate comes from the same Latin root.”

“What was the mandate on Thursday?”

“To wash the feet of the poor? Seems like that was it. From Mary Magdalene washing Jesus' feet.”

“Remember that small, intense Piero della Francesca fresco of her with her hair still wet in the Arezzo cathedral? It's as intimate a look at her as his Jesus just rising. Too bad it doesn't hang near his
Resurrection.
”

“Mary Magdalene comes to mind when I think about that music in the procession Friday night.”

“Why?” I'm waiting. Having grown up in a very Polish Catholic church where he served as an altar boy for years, Ed isn't as mystified by rituals as I am.

“Well, the word ‘maudlin' comes to mind—and ‘maudlin' comes from ‘Magdalene.”

“Those cross-bearers from Friday night probably could use some attention to their feet about now.” I think of the displaced women on the road to Sansepolcro. “Were there the same number of prostitutes as there are stations of the cross?”

Ed shakes his head. “I'm glad Easter is over. Now it can just be spring.”

Following Spring:
The Watery Veneto

INFATUATED WITH ITALIAN SPRING, WE FOLLOW
it north to the Veneto in April. I am returning to Venice, after an absence of twenty-five years. As we drive into the flat, big-sky landscape, I'm reeling through my earlier visits. Slippery, slippery time—the interim slides away; Venice lives close in memory. I am puzzled by the long interval, equally puzzled by the particular allure of Venice. I've read that bees, their stomachs full of nectar, have magnetic forces in their brains which lead them to the hive—I feel that way toward Venice. Flamboyant and decadent, it is still to me a sacred city. I'm a fool for beauty, and its poise on the edge, facing the exotic east, with its back turned to the rest of Europe, adds to the attraction. I had not meant to stay away so long. There's more to the allure—something I've never been able to articulate for myself, something I've never seen or read, out of all the books and images of Venice. What is it?

 

Only a few hours northeast of Cortona we are entering a different spring. People with seasonal allergies must go mad here. If we park the car for an hour, we find it covered with yellow, sticky pollen. Whorls of airy white puffs blow across the windshield and tractors spume dust in the fields. Breezes send clouds of gold dust from the pines' white candles and cones. The new green of leaves and crops seems to reflect in the air, giving it a watery tinge; we are driving through an aquarium light.

Near the port of Chioggia, south of Venice, the land turns marshy. Reedy shores wave and blur into water. I always have loved the smell of marshes. My early summers were spent on the Georgia sea islands, still one of my favorite landscapes. Grasses growing out of the sea. Land that is tidal, the slick creatures of both land and water, the thrill of what looked like a log suddenly coming alive and opening hilarious jaws. A salty, iodine, rotting, fresh smell signaled summer and freedom. Packed in the Oldsmobile with my two sisters, Willie Bell, records, toys, clothes, and my mother (my father was driven separately by an employee so as to avoid our chaos), I leaned out the window like a dog, my hair springing into curls, waiting for the first scent. No one seem enchanted in the least when I began to quote the Georgia poet Sidney Lanier's “The Marshes of Glynn,” which we were forced to memorize in endless stanzas in the fifth grade. I imitated the declamatory style of my teacher Miss Lake:

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God.
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and
the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.

“Can't you make her stop,” my sister said. She was turning down page corners in
Mademoiselle,
already planning her clothes for college in the fall. Louder, I shouted:

How still the plains of the waters be!
The tide is in his ecstasy.
The tide is at his highest height:
And it is night.

I loved that chopped-off last line. My other sister remembered that the Marshes of Glynn ran red with blood in some war. My mother began to sing “You Are My Sunshine,” which I hated. I rolled down the window again and let the smell wash my face until we entered the sulphur stink of the paper mills.

Marshes, islands, lagoons—the smell of old landscapes where water will have its way. These marshes, too, probably have run red with blood from time to time. Those Doges of Venice did not govern with peace in mind. Chioggia doesn't rate much mention in the guides. We take to it immediately as a racy, working-class version of Venice. Like its elegant cousin, Chioggia stands on low land with canals and medieval rabbit-warren
vicoli,
narrow streets, leading to arching footbridges. Flag-bright colors of fishing boats repeat in the waters. People crowd the wide main street's cafés and shops. The decline of the birth rate currently experienced in Italy must not apply here. Out for afternoon shopping, many young women push strollers, sometimes with two tiny children in tandem. I hope they rotate who's first in the stroller. I would hate for my first world view to be the back of my little brother's head. Fish restaurants cluster near the harbor. How fresh can fish get? We see a man carrying two buckets, fish on top still flapping their tails. Lines of bright laundry string across canals: yellow-striped towels, turquoise blouse, red pants, flowered sheets, quite colossal bras, and a few sad pairs of graying panties. Through a kitchen window I see a woman moistening her hands with olive oil so working with the pasta will be easier.

After cross-checking the Veneto in several Italian guidebooks, Ed has pinpointed a lauded restaurant with rooms upstairs. We're delaying Venice, saving it for last. The restaurant is in the village of Lorregia, our headquarters for a couple of days. En route from Chioggia, the brakes start to grate. Not a good sound. At the hotel we ask about an Alfa dealer but it is late in the day. Unfortunately, tomorrow is Sunday. Ed asks if he could call, just in case someone's still there. If we can't take the car until Monday, we'll be stuck and all we can do is eat in the lauded restaurant. “Bring it over
subito.
I'll take a look at it,” the mechanic responds.

The woman at the desk, one of the owners, becomes concerned. “How will you return? That's thirteen kilometers from here.” Ed asks if there's a place to rent a car if he needs one. “Closed. They close at five on Saturday. You call me from the mechanic. I'll see.”

Where cars are concerned, my participation in the equality of women stops. I want a car to turn on, go. I don't like looking under the hood. All that convoluted metal and the battery that could send you over the moon if you touch the wrong plugs. I trail upstairs and Ed takes off.

The room is severely plain but immaculate. Checking into a hotel, sometimes austere as a monk's cell, sometimes grandly luxurious, I always revel in an anonymous sense of freedom, particularly if I am alone. I take off the bedspread, turn back the sheets, look out the windows, open the drawers and minibar, feel the towels, examine the lotion and shampoo, the glass jar of cotton balls, or whatever amenities are offered. I'm the opposite of my fastidious aunt Hazel, who travelled with her own pillow and a spray can of Lysol disinfectant. She held it over her head, dousing every available surface, backing out of the room for an hour while all the germs died. I like the leather folders of nice writing paper, the pad by the phone with the pencil just sharpened, the slick magazines about the town, the terrycloth robes. This room, however, has few of these checkpoints to explore. It does have a good shower, and I have a good book.

Where is Ed? An hour goes by, then another. Finally, he comes in and tosses keys on the bed. “We now have a Fiat Panda until Tuesday morning. The Alfa's brakes need parts and the mechanic will have to find them in Treviso Monday.”

“What was wrong?”

“Nothing drastic. Wear and tear. He can finish early Tuesday morning. You would not believe how nice the
signora
was. I called the hotel and she came and got me,
then
she drove me umpteen miles, at least ten, in the other direction where she arranged for me to rent a car from the Fiat dealer. It was in some industrial zone. We'll probably never find it again.”

“How incredible.”

“She drives like a real Italian,” he said with admiration. He opens the window and the earthy aroma of
funghi porcini
sizzling in hot oil causes him to shower quickly and change into his blue shirt. We descend to the dining room. Because of the adventure, we are treated like old friends. Everyone in the family knows about the
problema
with the Alfa. Glasses of
prosecco
are brought to us and everyone agrees that the Alfa is a fine car, that Italian cars are superior in design to any in the world.

“We're totally in your hands,” Ed tells the waiter. “Bring us your favorite local wines, the specialties of the house.” This is Ed's favorite way to dine, to give the chef the compliment from the outset of selecting our menu. A more trepid diner, I'm not always thrilled when the sliced
lardo,
basically a buttery fat, or sea urchins are presented. I hope we will not be served the
medaglioni d'asino,
which I spied on the menu. Medallions of donkey I can live without.

The waiter invites us to follow him downstairs. Their wine cellar is an arched brick cave filled with racks of wine. He pokes around and pulls out a bottle of Amarone, one of my favorite wines for its dark taste.

The courses start to roll out. Fortunately, we're served pasta with vegetables, ordinary enough but special because the pasta is made here and the vegetables are perfectly cooked. The waiter comes around with
gnocchetti,
little
gnocchi,
also with vegetables, to give us a taste. The provincial dining room fills with local people dressed out of designer shops. The prosperity in the Veneto, even compared with the high standard of living in Tuscany, is simply astonishing. I've never seen a general population so well-off. A movement has been long simmering to separate this area from the rest of Italy. Economically, it is a country apart, light years from Sicily. I wonder how many of these Gucci- and Escada-clad women have ordered the donkey. Roast rabbit, the next course, is cooked in wine and tomatoes, pine nuts, and currants. The slight raisiny taste just matches the wine. The family makes all the desserts and they look tempting but we order a selection of local cheeses. At the next table, one of the lovely couples is dining with their son, perhaps nine or ten. We'd noticed him examining the menu carefully and asking questions of the waiter. The parents looked bored. He ate with gusto, looking at the plates each time the waiter passed their table. His father poured him a half-inch of wine, then added mineral water to the glass. Now we watch him examine the peach bavarian, the strawberry pie on the dessert cart then plop back in his chair and order the cheeses. We're impressed. A natural gourmand.

Since we're near the source, Ed has a glass of
grappa.
How divine to hoist ourselves upstairs to bed.

 

I could move today into the Villa Barbaro, one of Palladio's happiest moments. The garden is bare, mostly just a stretch of lawn, but the house remains felicitous, with its playful Veronese frescoes and intimate rooms. The exterior invites you, unlike some of Palladio's dour houses which seem swamped by architecture with a capital A. This one sings. Scuffing through in the felt slippers provided for visitors, I see that the house is actually still lived in. Two roped-off rooms are filled with family photos and reading lamps beside capacious chairs. Could that be the electric bill on the desk? How odd to vacate on Sunday afternoon, so that we teeming hordes can gaze on their frescoes, admire the view, imagine ourselves penning a note at the gilded secretary.

The Panda seems to know the roads. Somehow we don't get lost. Bassano, Treviso, Castelfranco. We don't encounter any of those mysterious signs we face so frequently in Tuscany that say
tutte le direzioni
—all directions—and point both right and left. We park outside Asolo and walk in because cars aren't allowed to enter this fantasyland, home of one of my favorite writers. No, not Robert Browning, who immortalized the town in his poem, “Asolando,” but Freya Stark, who lived here when not on her adventurous travels in Iraq and Persia. What a contrast to her journeys; Asolo makes no demands. I feel that I'm in an older, Italian version of Carmel, California, with many secret gardens, vine-covered gates, and charming houses. A place you could imagine retiring someday, if only you had tons of
lire.
Roses are tumbling in Asolo. Every few steps, new soft fragrances fall in your face from the walls above. I don't look for her house or grave. I am just curious to see where she walked during her many last years after writing her books. Surely she took her tea near the fountain. I'm quite certain she shopped at the paper store in town. I don't emerge until I have bought my next blank book, a yellow one to replace the blue book, where I wrote about our first experiences in Cortona, and a photograph album with a cover of painted wildflowers.

I resist the tiny bottles of lavender, indigo, and green ink sealed with wax, and the rows of expensive pens. The sensuous pleasure of good writing materials is like no other. The attraction links to the excitement of school supplies purchased every year for so long. Few things I've bought exceed the delight of yellow legal pads, spiraled and colored index cards, five-subject notebooks, and leather three-ring binders. And if there's a red satchel with compartments and zippered pockets, so much the better.

The first experience of these joys comes back—the supply cabinet at my father's mill office. He let me take stenographers' pads with a line down the middle, a red pencil that could be sharpened right there in a machine with a dial which rotated to accommodate different pencil sizes. On one of those Saturday mornings when I rode out to the mill with him, I became fascinated with a large gray staple gun. I liked the ka-clink sound it made. My teacher had told our kindergarten class that hair and nails have no feeling, so I put my left thumb in place and pressed hard, sending excruciating bolts of pain through my thin nail. I was stapled. My father said some horrible words and pried out the staple with a screwdriver. The body remembers everything. I still can shudder at the pain. “See this thumbnail?” I hold it up for Ed.

“Yes—what?”

“Can you see the break in the crescent moon?”

He holds it next to the other one. “I guess so.” I tell him the story. “Ouch. You make my knees weak. What made you think of that here?”