The Reluctant Tuscan (22 page)

I turned the wheelbarrow around and pointed it downhill. I had to dig in my heels to keep it from dragging me headlong as sweat, mixed with sunblock, ran into my eyes and stung them. My sunglasses slid down my nose, and I had to squint because the day was as blindingly bright as an overexposed photograph.

I was feeling as oppressed by my worries as I was by the fierce Tuscan sun. I hated the idea of struggling this hard at my age. I felt that after a lifetime of work, things should have been easier. But here I was, bedeviled by financial worries due to the fact that we hadn't saved enough because I thought I would keep working forever. I knew that once I got to a certain age and my pension kicked in, we'd be okay, but the trick now was to live long enough to collect that pension before this house killed me.

I hit a bump in the heavily rutted road and the wheelbarrow swerved to the left. I tried to jerk it back on course, but my hands were so raw, I lost grip of the handles. The whole thing pitched over and started to fall. I lunged after it, but I couldn't hold on. I fell to my knees and could only watch helplessly as the wheelbarrow tumbled down the side of the hill, spewing its contents along the way.

I looked up to see Nancy and the guys laughing. She called out to see if I was okay, but I was so pissed, I couldn't even answer. I started to climb down to fetch the wheelbarrow. She yelled to me to let the guys help me get it after lunch. I hollered back that I didn't need any help as I half stumbled down the hill and retrieved the wheelbarrow.

My anger kept festering as I pushed the wheelbarrow back up the hill. By the time I reached the top, it was all I could do to look at them. I picked up the water bottle, chugged down a long gulp, and then poured the rest over my head. I wanted to go inside the
rustico
, curl up in some dark little corner, and lose myself in the smell of cool, wet stones and cobwebs.

But I didn't want the guys to think I was upset, so I plunked down next to Nancy under the dappled shade of an ancient olive tree. I was hungry but the sandwich she handed me felt heavier than a shotput. I held it in my hands, trying to muster the strength to bring it to my mouth as Nancy and the guys ribbed me about the wheelbarrow. They were chattering in that high-speed, back-street Italian that I always have trouble following, but I did manage to hear that my wife had anointed me with a new nickname, Goffo, “clumsy.”

I wanted to crack some kind of self-deprecating joke to let them know I was being a good sport, but my brain felt spongy and my tongue lay in my mouth like a cinder block. Plus, my stomach had started to reel as the fumes from Umberto's lunch engulfed me. In spite of the heat he was eating
zambone
, a heavily spiced pork sausage encased in the skin of a pig's foot.

Nancy was on a roll, as if inspired by this incident to recount every klutzy thing I had ever done in my life. The guys were howling with laughter as she continued her monologue. The comedy writer's wife. Years of living with me and she could certainly hit a punchline. I just smiled and nodded, trying to mask my seething rage. I knew the guys couldn't wait to repeat her stories to all their friends until the whole town was laughing at me.

How dare they laugh at me? Here I was, a fifty-something guy, a lifetime office worker, busting my hump in this heat to keep up with guys in their thirties who did this every day. And they were laughing at me.

 

 

I spent the
rest of the day sulking. Nancy knew I was upset and made a special effort to be loving, but I didn't respond. I just pretended to be busy and answered her questions with one-word answers. As soon as the guys left and we were alone, she cornered me and tried to apologize.

I heard her say that she had just been kidding around and that she had only done it to amuse the guys and take their minds off the heat, and what was the matter with me anyway? I used to have such a good sense of humor.

That did it. As difficult as it is for me to express my anger, I exploded. The gall of her accusing me of not having a sense of humor! It was that very sense of humor that had gotten us almost everything we had in life. Why, because I wasn't making any money at it now, did that suddenly mean I no longer had a sense of humor?

As is so often the case when you get mad at somebody, they get mad at you for getting mad, so the argument escalated. She glared at me in a way that instantly trivialized everything I was saying. Then she accused me of secretly wanting us to fail so we could go back to L.A. and I could resume killing myself trying to worm my way back into show business. I told her I didn't have to go all the way back to L.A. to kill myself, because this house was doing a pretty good job of it right here. We started screaming at each other and I wound up saying some things I really didn't mean, like how she dragged me here so she could finally be in control of everything.

Her cheeks went crimson, and she told me that if I really felt that way maybe I should go back! I told her that maybe I would, and if there was one thing I was grateful for, it was that I hadn't let her talk me into selling our house in Brentwood, because that's exactly where I wanted to be right now!

N
ancy was already in the shower by the time I staggered into the bedroom and stripped off my muddy clothes. I was in the process of kicking the whole sweaty mess into a corner when I noticed a pair of tickets sitting on our nightstand.

A few weeks before, when we were getting along much better, I had seen a billboard for a concert in Fiesole, a dramatic little hill town on the outskirts of Florence. It was an evening of love songs performed by a cast of popular Italian singers in an outdoor amphitheater originally built by the Romans. It had all the makings of a wonderfully romantic evening, except that tonight we happened to hate each other's guts.

Nancy was just coming out of the shower when I walked into the bathroom holding up the tickets.

“That's not tonight?” she said, wrinkling her nose.

“Uh-huh.”

“I'm in no mood. You go.”

“Oh, like I'm going to drive two hours to sit there by myself and listen to an evening of love songs.”

“I don't care, do whatever you want.”

She reached up and began towel-drying her hair. I sighed in full knowledge that it's hard for a man to be angry at a woman when she's standing in front of him naked.

“I'll call Rudolfo and see if he wants to take Pia.” I went back into the bedroom and picked up the cell phone. “Maybe it'll light a fire.”

She popped her head out of the bathroom door. “How much were they?”

“Forty euros apiece.”

She clucked at the waste of money.

“I'm not going to give 'em away,” I said as I dialed. “I'll sell them to him.”

“You can't call up somebody last minute and
sell
them tickets.”

“They're great seats.”

“Whatever.” She withdrew into the bathroom.

“He's not answering,” I called out as I redialed. “I'll try him at his parents'.”

“While you're at it, tell Dino we're out of hot water.”

“Again?” I stormed into the bathroom, stuck my head in the stall, and turned the faucet. Icy cold water splashed on my hand, and as I waited and waited it didn't get any warmer. “Aw, man . . .”

“I had just finished rinsing off when—”

“Oh, thank you.”

“Think I did it on purpose?”

“Obviously, you weren't going to mention it until I got in there, all set for a nice hot shower, only to—”

“Oh, shut up!” she screamed.

“You shut up!!” I bellowed.

And on that convivial note we threw on some clothes, piled into the car, and roared off for an evening of love songs in Fiesole.

 

 

Even though it
was over a hundred kilometers away, and there was lots of traffic, we weren't overly concerned about being late. The concert, like most operas and theatricals in Italy, was scheduled to begin at 9:15 P.M. This odd starting time is due to the fact that Italians must eat before a performance, and of course, the only time they can possibly have dinner is at eight o'clock. Now, there's no way that any restaurant in Italy is actually ready to seat you at eight, since the waiters have just finished
their
dinner and they're still enjoying an espresso and a cigarette.

You're finally shown to your table at about eight-twenty, where you sit sipping bottled water and sucking on a bread-stick until somebody deigns to take your order, so realistically, it's coming up hard on nine bells before any food ever arrives. Given time for your
primo
, your
secondo
, and your
dolci
, washed down with a glass of grappa of course, it's now well after nine-thirty by the time you've signaled your waiter a half-dozen times for the check. Then there's the driving to the theater, the nightmare of parking, the confusion of finding your seats, and the meeting and greeting of all your friends and neighbors in the audience. This explains why if any curtain in Italy ever goes up before ten o'clock, it's a miracle on the magnitude of changing water into wine.

 

 

Fiesole was founded
by the Etruscans seven hundred years before the birth of Christ, making it far older than its larger and more celebrated neighbor, Florence. From the beginning the famous and the affluent have flocked there to seek comfort in its cool, steady breezes and sweeping views of the countryside. So renowned are the vistas that if you look closely at many of the masterpieces of Renaissance painting, you will recognize Fiesole's lily-speckled meadows in the background.

Kings, bishops, popes, and pop stars have all owned villas in Fiesole, which has been especially receptive to the creative community, housing everyone from Boccaccio and Marcel Proust to Gertrude Stein and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Architecturally, there is nothing spectacular about its cathedrals, museums, monasteries, or civic buildings, save for how they are clustered upon a series of hilltops so that the entire
centro storico
(historic center) of the city has views to burn. There is, however, one edifice in Fiesole worth writing home about, and that is the Teatro Romano, the Roman Amphitheater. Actually, it's a complex of structures built at the beginning of the Imperial Period in the first century A.D. and featuring, in addition to the outdoor theater, one of the earliest Roman baths ever built.

Originally ordered by Augustus, the baths were remodeled two hundred years later by Hadrian. In its expanded version you can look at the skeletal walls and easily imagine fleshy patricians steaming in the
caldarium
, then cooling off in the
frigidarium
, before oiling up and donning their togas for the Saturday-night orgy at Octavius's pad.

 

 

Luck was with us
when we pulled into the Piazza Mino in the heart of Fiesole, as we found both a parking space and a table for two at a restaurant called Il Lordo, which means “the filthy person.” Apparently, giving something an unsavory name doesn't diminish the commercial appeal of a place in Italy, because I've eaten at a restaurant called Puzzadolce (Sweet Stink), which that day was serving
sformati di verdure
, or as we would translate it, “deformed quiche.” I've gotten a haircut at a unisex salon called I Piccati (The Losers) and spent the night at a popular hotel in Florence called Malaspina, which means “bad back,” causing me to wonder if anyone has ever said, “Say, how are the beds at the Malaspina Hotel?”

After dinner, we crossed the cobblestoned piazza, passing the Bandini Museum, which does not showcase the history of fertilizer, but rather a fine collection of thirteenth-to-fifteenth-century religious art and a splendid sampling of Byzantine miniatures.

 

 

We entered
the amphitheater as it was filling up with the three thousand people it holds. Most were season ticket holders who each year purchase seats for the annual Estate Fiesolana (Fiesolian Summer), a series of musical performances featuring everything from Sicilian folk dance to a stageful of Italians phonetically belting out a selection of Broadway showstoppers.

But tonight it was Italian love songs. And, oh, what love songs.
“Nessun dorma,”
trilled the lyric soprano, her eyes closed in rapture.
“Che bella cosa 'na giornata è sole,”
sang the baritone, his powerful voice caressing the opening stanza of the famous “O Sole Mio.” Romance was in the jasmine-scented air as men put their arms around their women, and a plump white moon rose over the hilltop that Leonardo da Vinci had once used to try and launch one of his flying machines.

“Caro mio ben, credimi almen, senza di te languisce il cor,”
the tenor crooned.

I looked over to Nancy, who seemed lost in the dream of love. I felt bad that I was somehow less than she wanted me to be. After all these years together it was sad how little we understood each other's needs. She wanted me to be committed to our life in Italy, heart and soul, while I longed for her to understand how hard it was for me to feel intensely about anything now that I no longer had my career.

But it seemed the more we talked, the less we knew each other. I kept trying to tell her how I felt, and she kept saying that she understood, but how can anybody really get it unless they've been as fervently committed to their work as I have? How can you make another person comprehend that when your whole being has been defined in a certain way for twenty-five years, you can't suddenly say, “Okay, I used to be powerful and important, but now I'll just tootle off to the shed and build a birdhouse”?