Every Day in Tuscany (10 page)

This is heady. A laundry room here, he points out, and a wine cellar. Then he delivers the coup d’état. “This law allows you to build a garage into the hillside at the top of the driveway.” He begins to sketch an extension of the stone wall, with an elegant iron and glass door into an underground room, which we see will be full of light because of the glass front. I don’t see “garage” but, instead, a luminous writing studio lined with books.

Ed shocks me with an immediate enthusiastic response. I’m asking the architect how long it would take, would the work destroy my garden, how much would it cost. Ed’s thinking of wine racks, creamy marble counters, and a grilling fireplace in the kitchen. I pore over the drawings Walter soon gives us. Yes, it would be astonishing to wrap the small upstairs terrace around the back. We could walk out into the olives and plum trees. I can’t believe we’re considering something so drastic. How do we bring forward all we’ve learned about Tuscan vernacular architecture without losing the individuality of the house? I have the irrational thought that the house will have an opinion.

After such remodeling, would it be the same house? Ed has a radical idea: “Maybe we should just sell instead. After Walter’s revelations, can we really just patch up the roof, put in new windows, and go on? Or wouldn’t it be easier to find another house already updated, made over, or ‘tarted up.’” He quotes the writer Ann Cornelisen’s expression, which she used so dismissively.

“Wait. Be serious. Could you ever leave Bramasole?”

He shrugs, making the Italian palms-up gesture, signaling “Who knows?” I smile and shake my head.

When I met Ed, I parted from my husband, Frank. He and I had a college-sweethearts connection, a child, graduate school, houses, moves back and forth across the country. We even loved Italy. I felt the Red Sea divide when our pact broke. Even now, after decades of happiness, I find that behind the intervening unpleasantness, I still feel an unbroken bond. The gold ring engraved
forever
lies among my earrings and bracelets. I think I once claimed to Frank that I’d thrown it off the Golden Gate Bridge, but I did not. Ties that bind. We can’t invent them or dissolve them. Circumstances may be devastating, but love refuses to budge.

How could we ever leave? Three summers ago, I was ready. Hurt. Indignant. Mad. In profound disillusionment, I thought,
Time to move on to an alluring Greek island or a beach house on North Carolina’s Outer Banks? A new place on the globe where we, blessedly, know no one
. Sartre is right, I thought: Hell is other people. Worse, I had to face that what I thought I knew, I did not know. Even now, I put off writing about that time.

I did not go, obviously.

Now a few more rolls of the scroll unfurl. New possibilities—Bramasole redux.

I’m tempted. This is scary. I’m not tempted. This is a relief.

B
EFORE
I
GO
to bed, I lean out my study window, a daily habit. I like to hear the night birds, but right now they are elsewhere. I lay my notebook on the stone sill and go back to my desk for a pen. When I return, a granddaddy of a black spider has settled in the crease between the pages. I blow on it until it rises on bent stilts and moonwalks into the folds of the white curtain. I write a few notes:
To taste the phases of the moon, to touch the aria floating down from a balcony, to smell the blond sunlight warming the child’s hair and to hear the grand opening of the
favoloso
Eden rose that scrambles along a stone wall. What do you sense is coming toward you?

T
HE NOTEBOOK LIES
open. Still no owls, but the voices of two University of Georgia art students float up. “That fart-sack. He doesn’t know shit about …” His voice is cut by a passing
motorino
.

Charming. As they pass, I hear, “Man, it was fuckin’ Pompeii, not Herculaneum.” The
motorino
is a wisp of white curling up the road.

Before I leave Italy this year, I decide, I will write about the tumultuous summer that had me looking at Portugal, at Sarasota, at Merida, at anywhere but here. Get it down. Get it out of the way. It’s history. Not that important, is it? Then it truly will be over.

I write in the notebook:
The White Vespa
. There, wet black ink. The top of a blank page.

T
ORTA DI
S
USINE CON
M
ANDORLE
Plum Tart

A dessert guaranteed to provoke extravagant praise, such as “This is the best tart I’ve ever tasted.” It’s equally as good with pears. This was inspired by a recipe in
Rogers Gray Italian Country Cook Book: The River Café
by Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray.

Makes 1 tart

PASTRY

½ pound very cold butter, cut into pieces

2½ cups sifted flour

⅛ teaspoon salt

1¼ cups powdered sugar

3 large yolks, beaten

FILLING

¾ pound butter

1½ cups fine sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups almonds, pulverized to fine powder in food processor

3 whole eggs

7 ripe but firm plums, pitted and halved

First prepare the pastry: By hand or in a food processor, mix the butter, flour, and salt until crumbly; then mix in the powdered sugar, then the yolks. When well combined and adhering together, roll it into a ball and chill thoroughly, about half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Remove the dough from the refrigerator. Slice it into pieces and press it into a large glass pie plate or a 12- to 14-inch tart pan. Chill about 10 minutes, then prick the pastry dough all over and bake it in a hot oven until slightly toasty, about 10 minutes. Lower the oven to 350 degrees F.

For the filling, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy, add vanilla, mix with ground almonds, then add eggs one at a time, beating well.

Arrange the plums over the baked pastry shell, pour the filling over them, and bake until set, about 30 minutes.

The White Vespa

A PHOTO BOOK FROM SOUTH AFRICA, A POUCH
of paprika from Budapest, a ceramic angel from Poland, Christmas ornaments from Germany, wildflower seeds from Provence, landscape sketches from everywhere, maple leaf tie tack from Canada, honey from Estonia, wine, lots of wine, T-shirt from Brazil, even hand towels monogrammed with a
B
for the house: Many gifts are left at Bramasole. And so I thought nothing of picking up the small parcel wrapped in newspaper, left on the grass just inside the gate.

I came down the steps first. We’d just finished taking photos: Ashley, Ed, and I, dressed in summer best—Ed in his white suit, Ashley in aqua chiffon, and I am wearing a green and hot-pink silk shirt and linen pants. We were going to a party for Ed—a big surprise. Who took the picture? I don’t know; probably Willie’s babysitter. Next, suddenly I am walking down alone, trying not to catch my high heels between the stones and crack my ankle. Maybe Ashley went back inside to kiss Willie good night. Maybe Ed went back to pick up his cell phone. I start down to the road—wanting to hustle everyone along because surely the guests had gathered. Just inside the gate, a “present” lies in the grass.

We were en route to Corys, just up the road, for the celebration. Because Ed gave pints of blood to the reconstruction of the fallen stone walls at Bramasole, with many mighty frustrations, and also to the restoration of Fonte, I had planned a party for him—twenty of our closest friends for a feast. He thought we were meeting four friends for a quiet dinner. Instead, Chiara and I had been to Arezzo and bought a retro-style white Vespa, straight out of Fellini. We hid it all week in the horse corral at her house. At dinner, we planned to hand Ed a tiny box holding a key. Chiara bought him a key ring. Resplendent with bows, the white Vespa would be moved out front by Simone just as Ed was led outside. He had
no
idea.

The narrative at this point always will replay as present tense.

I
PICK UP
the package wondering if I should wait to open it until we return. But there’s no ribbon or string. A note flutters to the ground and I glimpse crude handwriting as it falls. I unfold the colored newspaper, the pink sports section.

I am holding a grenade in my hand.

I stare only for a moment before I lower it softly to the ground as if it were an abandoned kitten. I run fast, back to the house.

“Ed!” I call out. “There’s a grenade in the driveway. It was wrapped … like a present…. I opened it.”

“Holy shit, what are you talking about?” He grabs my arm and steadies me.

“It’s real. Call Claudio.” He’s our friend who is the
maresciallo
, marshal of the
carabinieri
.

“Wait a minute. This must be some idiotic joke. Let’s start over. What …” This is the first of many times that I will hear the word
joke
.

“Look, Eddie, I
know
what a grenade looks like. This is not plastic. It’s real,” I shout. “If I’d dropped it I might be up in the pine trees now.”

“This is impossible.”

“What’s going on?” Ashley comes out of the house looking fresh and lovely. I don’t want to say anything—also a reaction that reoccurs—but I tell her.

“Get inside,” she commands us.

“Claudio’s sending a car.” Ed stares at his phone, as if there were someone else to call. He leans over the wall and looks down at the square of newspaper on the grass.

“This can’t be happening.” Who says this? We all say this.

Very soon, the
carabinieri
pull up in the driveway and Ed asks me, “I just told Claudio that we needed him. What’s the Italian for
grenade
?” Neither of us knows, but we do know
bomba
. Ed calls down,
“Claudio, stai attento, c’è una bomba
.
“
Be careful, there’s a bomb. They pause in the act of closing the car doors.

“Che cosa, Edoardo?”
What? Claudio then spots the crumbled newspaper and they stop. Claudio takes out his phone. The three men step inside and regard the grenade silently. We venture down the steps. I explain what happened. Visions shoot through my brain—the Red Brigade, the Mafia, the progressive mayor of Naples gunned down. My fear slides toward anger.

Claudio looks serious but says, “This must be a joke.” The heavy gray ugly weapon in the grass does not look like a joke.

“Maybe it’s not real,” says the muscular one, who looks as if he could bite open a grenade.

“It’s real,” the third affirms. “But maybe it’s stripped. I think it’s stripped?” His question-mark inflection defeats his opinion.

Even in this crisis, I can’t help but notice how sharp they look in their summer blue shirts, black pants, with big guns strapped around their waists. Their presence comforts me. It seems that the grenade is not going to explode in our faces.

Even now, writing this, my heart starts to thud. I feel breathless. I keep writing “they” where I mean “we,” still trying to distance myself.

Claudio picks up the note. He shows the others, then hands it to me.

Wait, wait
, I think.
Fingerprints
.

“Qualcuno che è maleducato,”
he says.
“Brutta figura.” Maleducato
doesn’t just mean “badly educated.” It means “crude,” the opposite of
bella figura
.

“Al meno,”
I reply. At least.

“See,” the stocky one says, pointing to the signature.
“Ragazzi
.
“
Kids.

My Italian is not up to this discussion at this time.
“No. Non sono ragazzi,”
I insist. Not kids. Not.

Ed is shaking his head. “This is not the writing of a young person.” He points to the penmanship.

“Look at the crossed-out word
diga
.
Diga
means dam; kids writing about a pool would not confuse pool and dam. Makes no sense.” What seemed probable to me was that the hired thug who wrote the note was confused as to what his purpose was. He certainly did not know how to spell our name.

This is what the note says:

Signori Maier and the other neighbors

Don’t block the construction of the dam public swimming pool

Otherwise 5 hand grenades

Will be placed in your house

UNDERSTOOD

Young people of Cortona and Camucia

Signed GB

A few months ago, we circulated a petition among our neighbors, a protest over the approval the town had given for a private recreational complex at the end of the Strada della Memoria, the road Bramasole overlooks. While we were in favor of a pool somewhere, the location made no sense at the dead end of this undeveloped, residential road where local people take their daily
passeggiata
, bike, and jog. It’s narrow. We feared increased traffic in a
Zona del Silenzio
, totally unsuitable for the memorial road planted with cypresses, one for each local boy who died in World War I. This is a designated
belle arti
zone where nothing can be built. Nothing even can be altered without a full-court review. Woe unto you if you’d like to install a window in your dark bedroom. We’d offered to help raise money to replace the copper plaques with the name of the soldier under each tree.

When we’d circulated the petition, we were amazed that only a few of the Italians would sign, even though they agreed with the petition and did not want “the wild side” of Cortona developed at all. I was stunned. In America, if you don’t agree, you do something. You speak up. You organize. You make signs. You write to the paper. You band together and make common cause.

I learned new Italian words—
ritorsione, punizione, castigo, rappresaglia
. All of which, essentially, seemed to carry a heightened fear of reprisal. As Fulvio explained to me when I expressed amazement that the Italians wouldn’t sign: “It’s ancient history,
cara: You kill one of mine, I kill ten of yours
.”

“My taxes will go up.”

“Signora, I’ll get my new car damaged.”

“They’ll set my fields on fire.”

“My business will be investigated.”

And most primitive of all, “Signora, put a lock on your well,” said Pietro, whose wife would not let him sign. My well!? What!?

Bizarre. You’ve got to be exaggerating, we thought. A simple petition is just a way of banding together to make a point. How strange—these boisterous, opinionated Tuscans. Cautious. Afraid!

The foreigners signed, a few younger Italians signed, and two business owners, too, which I by then recognized took guts.

We turned in the petition and I shortly got a big dose of what my neighbors knew. The editor of the little local news—he was also the person spearheading the development of the private pool complex—wrote an article about my interference. He said I had no right and that before Cortona gave me my books I was just an obscure poet. It went on and on, slamming me personally. Classic argument
ad hominem
, full of errors and brimming with vitriol. The upshot was that foreigners are guests and should be grateful for that privilege.

Since I’d lived there seventeen years at that point, I was short on sympathy for that position. I’ve loved the place and have made my contributions. Even if I had not, I believe that someone who lives in a town has every right to participate, even if the family has not been around since the fifteenth century.

I wrote back explaining my position, not to his paper, because I thought I might be edited, but a personal letter circulated around town. I was in California, so it all seemed quite distant at the time. I was incredulous, miffed, and, mostly, shocked.

When I returned in the spring, I was nonplussed to be greeted like the prodigal daughter. Though no one had written a public protest to the article, not even our closest friends, it seemed that I could not go twenty steps down the street without someone stepping out of the doorway, whispering to me,
“Che vergogna,”
what an embarrassment,
“Typical of someone from the south,”
shaking a finger,
“You know he is not Cortonese,”
even telling me how much everyone loved me. Other stories,
sotto voce
. I didn’t want to hear them. I really was not interested in this bad actor in the piazza’s latest play. I wanted to close it off, like white cells around an infection.

Everyone mentioned the editor’s origins.
“He’s Calabrese—they’re like that. We are not.”
Ironically, trying to comfort me, they reinforced the existence of xenophobia.
They are like that. We are not
. The editor had more in common with the foreigners than he dreamed.