Palladian Days (8 page)

Although Ilario and I are the same age, our experiences have been very different. Genuine hunger was a part of everyday life in
the Veneto following World War II. Ilario's older brother Mario left Piombino Dese for Australia in the late 1950s to harvest sugarcane in the province of North Queensland. Ilario followed in i960, remaining four years before he returned to Piombino Dese. He met Giovannina the following year and they were married soon after.

Ilario looks like a very, very thin Mel Ferrer, with a narrow, angular face and high forehead. He is a gentle man who speaks softly and with great patience for us not blessed with life as Italians. He loves all life, cares lovingly for his cows, disdains chemical pesticides. His mild manner and slight build contrast sharply with Giovannina's robust energy and rapid-fire speech. She works with him in the fields, accomplishing almost as much as he.

“Why Australia?” I ask Ilario, as Giovannina clears the dishes again and brings on the
spezzatino
(stew) with polenta and a platter of succulent grilled
peperoni rossi
(sweet red peppers).

Australian recruiters traveled across southern Europe in the 1950s hunting strong, healthy men to cut sugarcane, Ilario explains. The recruiter would not even waste time in conversation with a prospective recruit until he had examined the man's hands to confirm that they were covered in calluses, a test Ilario easily passed. Examination by a dentist was next; serious dental problems would be a disqualifier also. Finally, a medical doctor verified Ilario's general good health. Ilario was ready for the Antipodes.

“Buona sera, signora Sally, signor Carlo!”
Silvano Mariotto appears in the doorway, interrupting Ilario's quiet discourse. The cows have not warned us of his arrival. Silvano is Ilario's younger brother, a bit taller, not quite as thin. He nods to Carl and apologizes for his late arrival; he has finished milking his
mucche
(cows) and must leave shortly for a choir rehearsal at the church. He pours himself a glass of homemade red wine, fills his plate, and begins his supper. Silvano usually says little, though he happily joins in when we discuss early life at the villa or the postwar history of Piombino Dese.

Under my cross-examination, Ilario continues his Australian
saga. He was transported to Australia in a small ship, along with other recruits. Sailing from Venice, they rounded the Italian peninsula to Genoa, then returned south to Naples, picking up more workers at each stop. They proceeded across the Mediterranean and through the Suez Canal, paused at Port Said and Aden, then crossed the Indian Ocean to Fremantle, Melbourne, and finally Sydney. From Sydney they completed their odyssey with a plane flight to their final destination in North Queensland. There Ilario worked for six months each year in cane fields and then six months in tobacco fields. In the cane fields, three days of the week were spent cutting cane, followed by three days loading the harvest onto trucks for transport.

Hard work, Ilario admits, but he won't dwell on the hardship. “We were paid by what we cut, so we could set our own pace,” he says. Ilario, I am sure, set a torrid pace.

Ilario eats so slowly! And Giovannina so fast! Before Ilario has finished his
spezzatino
, Giovannina begins slicing the pear torte I brought as dessert.

For a young man whose whole life has been consumed in cultivating a single circumscribed parcel of land, the wrench of leaving the land and boarding a ship and then a plane en route to a remote country on the opposite side of the globe must have been excruciating, the anxiety belied now by Ilario's calm in speaking of it. In fact, Ilario's father had made a move different in scale but perhaps comparable in emotional impact. Ilario's family lived and worked first in Loreggia, about four miles away from Piombino Dese. By researching in the parish records of Loreggia, Ilario has established that his family had lived there from at least as early as 1636. The family probably spent all those centuries as
mezzadri
, sharecroppers, working a single plot of ground. In 1938, however, the landowner, Mario Vianello—who also owned Villa Cornaro and its surrounding land—asked Ilario's father to remove his family to Piombino Dese to take over farming a parcel that had become available here. Ilario's father bravely accepted the offer, impelled perhaps
by having too many children to survive on the parcel in Loreggia. While a farmhouse was being built for the family in Piombino Dese, they lived upstairs in the
barchessa
of the villa, approximately in the section where Marina Bighin now lives above her beauty shop. And it was there, above the stable, that Ilario was born.

“Will your grandchildren continue to farm the land?” I ask Ilario.

“Perhaps,” he replies. “But they must attend university first.”

What did the Rushes eat in Piombino Dese?

Not much, I conclude, peering into the large, grim room masquerading as a kitchen. A propane stove with two burners squats forlornly along the south wall, flanked by a primitive refrigerator. There's no sink or running water; that's in the adjacent laundry room. The west wall is filled by a hovering terra-cotta hood from the early 1900s. Below the hood is the masonry work for the low counter that Julie once commissioned but abandoned before completion. With the shutters closed in the evening, rays from the single bulb of the hanging central fixture struggle to light the long, narrow table directly below and are frustrated completely by the gloomy shadows that shroud the pale blue walls. Yet against the north wall, serene and magnificent, stands in unlikely contrast an eighteenth-century French armoire, its beauty and dignity undi-minished by having been turned to use as a dish cupboard.

Since the propane stove would be challenged to cook a midsize hamburger patty, it is obvious that Julie and Dick looked elsewhere for nourishment. Silvana confirms to me that she and Elena Marulli frequently prepared dishes for the Rushes at their own
homes and brought the meals to the villa. Julie also relied on takeout items from Alimentari Battiston next door. Julie just didn't cook.

I, on the other hand, like to cook. Visions of grand feasts of Italian cuisine color my dreams. Raising three children makes any mother a master of spaghetti; now I'm poised for grander heights. I buy every Italian cookbook I can find, feeling that my skills are increased each time I add a new volume to the shelf.

The kitchen actually illustrates the difference in the way Carl and I propose to use the villa as compared with Dick and Julie. For them the villa served primarily as a pied-a-terre for quick stops—three days to two weeks—during the course of their travels around Europe. We, on the other hand, envision a European family home with frequent visits from our three children and friends.

So the kitchen is my Project No. 1. Buying the villa itself was a stretch, but we've known all along that we would have to stretch a little farther and install a modern working kitchen to make the villa the livable home we want it to be. During the winter in Atlanta I begin by roving the aisles of Barnes & Noble. I finally settle on two books to help me focus on kitchen issues in general. I talk with friends who have redone their kitchens to get tips on any mistakes I should avoid, but this proves to be a blind alley: Either there were no mistakes, or my friends have simply learned to live with them and keep quiet. I never imagined there were so many magazines on kitchen design. I collect stacks of them. The cashier at our local pharmacy begins to point out new issues as soon as I walk through the door. I'm not surprised that there is no ready-made plan for an Italian Renaissance kitchen but, insofar as I can find, no one's ever attempted to put a modern kitchen and eating area of any sort into a large rectangular room with an eighteen-foot ceiling. Nonetheless, I begin to identify elements that appeal to me. Courtesy of Barnes & Noble again, I find a new kitchen book with cutouts of various appliances. Like a young girl with her first paper dolls, I
punch out, stick down, pull up, shift around until, finally,
Eccola!
the perfect kitchen. At least I've settled on the main working elements.

Back in Piombino Dese in the spring, things go badly before they go well. The obvious starting point is Mobilificio Roncato, a mammoth furniture outlet and factory west of town toward Loreg-gia. Giacomo introduces us to the proprietor, Remo Roncato. The retail outlet alone seems as big as the Georgia Dome, but broken into dozens of rooms, all rigged so that the lights turn on only when someone enters the area. Behind the retail building is a factory that manufactures furniture for sale to dealers throughout the Veneto and adjacent regions. Remo has a major business, and he and his wife Maria are there from morning to night, supervising every detail from the sale of a single chair to the largest wholesale transaction.

Remo's success story is repeated over and over in the Veneto. His father was an artisan woodworker, specializing in marquetry finishes on handmade furniture. Remo joined his father in the trade, bringing the new drive and ambition—fueled by the poverty and hunger rampant in the Veneto in the early years after World War II—that seem to characterize his whole generation of Venetans. Today the single most prosperous province in all of Europe is not in Germany, as I have been conditioned to expect—it's the Veneto. But it would be hard for me to name as many as five companies that are really household names. The whole economic machine is built on thousands of commercial success stories like Remo's.

Nonetheless, Remo strikes out on my kitchen. I start to learn that I am not going to find ready-made cabinets and counters for a kitchen twenty-three feet long and eighteen feet wide. Not only is Remo's stock designed for apartments and small houses, the pieces have no symmetry. I'm convinced that if we install something asymmetrical, Palladio's ghost will rise from his grave in Vicenza and find a new home at Villa Cornaro, stalking around the kitchen
every night, rattling pots, and moaning like the wind in agony from the injury to his spirit.

Of course, Remo manages to sell us two sofas before we leave his store. “The villa has over a hundred chairs,” Carl grumbles, “and not one of them is comfortable to sit in.”

We visit two other kitchen stores, also in vain. Giacomo comes to our rescue. He suggests we talk with Renato Rizzi about something custom-made. Renato is the architect and interior designer from Mirano who designed Giacomo's Caffe Palladio. Naturally Carl's first reaction is that we can't afford it. After discussion (Carl's) and threats (mine) we have a meeting with Renato.

“We can always say no to what he proposes,” I maintain.

“I've already said no, but it didn't take,” Carl responds.

Renato is somewhat awed to be working in Palladio's footsteps, but he is up to the task. Carl and I both like him immediately. He is a sticklike figure at least six foot four in height, with the air of an artist. Carl is relieved to see a calculator among his gear.

“Whatever you do here must be very big,” Renato says wisely, looking around the room for the first time. He likes the clippings I show him, particularly photos for a freestanding island with a glass vitrine on the front, rising nearly four feet and screening behind it my working counters, sink, stove, microwave, and dishwasher. Carl is mollified when Renato says we should retain the kitchen table that we already have, as well as the French armoire. To our even greater surprise, he says we should also retain the large terra-cotta hood. For a new light fixture, he joins us in a trip to the attic, where he inspects an old eight-armed ceramic chandelier that Dick Rush bought in Bassano and then found no use for. “Perfect!” Renato exclaims. In fact, we end up needing just three custom items in addition to the new appliances themselves: the vitrine-cum-screen, a sink and cooking counter to fit below the terra-cotta hood, and a giant freestanding cupboard-cabinet-refrigerator unit along the south wall. He sketches them quickly. They're beautiful! Moreover, they're symmetrical! Palladio's ghost can relax.

“Use the calculator,” Carl suggests politely. He wants to hear numbers. Renato works with a firm that can build the custom pieces. Within a few days he's back with final drawings and a firm price quote. Carl has always told me that the way to arrive at the true cost of a project is to double the architect's estimate. He calls it his “Architect's Rule of 2.” So he's moderately surprised to hear that the quoted price from the builder is only 20 percent above the figure that he told Renato was our absolute maximum price. Then he becomes almost pleased when further bargaining reduces the quoted price by 10 percent. Renato promises that everything will be completely installed by September 1, in time for our fall return to Piombino Dese.

Meanwhile, for the remainder of our spring visit, all I have to do is learn to cook
scaloppine di vitello al marsala
on a two-burner propane stove.

“It's bigger than the Doge's Palace, Mom!”

That's Jim's first impression of the villa. Jim is our youngest child, about to start his sophomore year in college. He has never seen Villa Cornaro, even though we have bedeviled him with photographs for the year we have owned it. On a scorching August morning he and I, newly arrived from the Treviso airport, are standing in Piazzetta Squizzato, across the street from the villa. The dry summer dust that clings to the storefronts along Via Roma might seem dreary elsewhere, but here in the Veneto I decide that it's a picturesque cinnamon drape.

The new kitchen is to be installed in the coming week. Jim and I have flown over from Atlanta to witness the process and be sure that nothing goes terribly wrong. Carl and I at first feel uncertain whether the expense of a special trip is justified, even though I find a bargain plane ticket. The thought that Jim has never seen his parents’ folly tips the balance. Jim has ten days open between the end of his summer job and the start of his college year, so we manage to fit in a whirlwind trip.

Giacomo has decided that a young man of college age might
need a special incentive to return often to Piombino Dese. Late in the afternoon he arrives at the villa with two very pretty young women, one a short, blond, curly-haired high school student who speaks excellent English, the other taller, with dark auburn hair. They want to practice their English, Giacomo explains transparently. I think his true agenda is to have Jim fall madly in love with a Venetan girl. Jim, the most gregarious of our children, soon wanders over to Caffe Palladio with the girls to meet other young people. His high-school Spanish helps bridge the language gap and his new friend Betty translates what he doesn't understand. In the evening he, together with Giacomo's son Leonardo and others, is off to a disco. Jim feels at home in Piombino Dese as quickly as I did.