Under the Tuscan Sun (12 page)

That pure surge of pleasure, flash flood of joy—to find
the electric jolt of the outside place that corresponds to the
inside—that's it.

In San Francisco, I go out on the flower-filled tiny back deck
of my flat and look three stories down at the ground—a
city-sized terrace surrounded with attractive low-maintenance
flower beds on a drip system, cared for by a gardener. It does
not lure me. That the jasmine on the high fences has climbed to my
third floor and blooms profusely around the stair railing, I am
thankful for. At night after work, I can step out to water my pots
and watch for stars and find the tumbling vines sending out their
dense perfume. Such flowers—jasmine, honeysuckle,
gardenia—spell South, metabolic home, to my psyche. A
fragmental connection though—my feet are three stories off
the earth. When I leave my house, concrete separates my feet from
the ground. The people who have bought the flats on the first and
second floors are friends. We have meetings to discuss when to
repair the steps or when to paint. I look into or onto the tops
of trees, wonderful trees. My house backs onto the very private
gardens unhinted at by the joined fronts of Victorian houses in
my neighborhood. The center of the block is green. If all of us
took down our fences, we could wander in a blooming green sward.
Because I like my flat so much, I didn't know what I missed.

Was there really a
nonna,
a presiding spirit who
centered this house? This three-story house rooted to the ground
restores some levels in my waking and sleeping hours. Or is it
the house? A glimmer:
Choice
is restorative when it
reaches toward an instinctive recognition of the earliest self.
As Dante recognized at the beginning of
The Inferno:
What must we do in order to grow?

At home I dream of former houses I've lived in, of finding
rooms I didn't know were there. Many friends have told me that
they, too, have this dream. I climb the stairs to the attic of the
eighteenth-century house I loved living in for three years in
Somers, New York, and there are three new rooms. In one, I find
a dormant geranium, which I take downstairs and water. Immediately,
Disney-style, it leafs and breaks into wild bloom. In house after
house (my best friend's in high school, my childhood home, my
father's childhood home), I open a door and there is more than I
knew. All the lights are on in the New York house. I am walking
by, seeing the life in every window. I never dream of the boxy
apartment I lived in at Princeton. Nor do I dream of my flat I
am so fond of in San Francisco—but perhaps that is because
I can hear from my bed before I fall asleep foghorns out on the
bay. Those deep voices displace dreams, calling from spirit to
spirit, to some underlying voice we all have but don't know how to
use.

In Vicchio, a house I rented a few summers ago brought the
recurrent dream to reality. It was a huge house with a caretaker in
a side wing. One day I opened what I'd assumed was a closet in an
unused bedroom and found a long stone corridor with empty rooms
on either side. White doves flew in and out. It was the second floor
of the housekeeper's wing and I hadn't realized it was uninhabited.
In many waking moments since, I've opened the door to the stony
light of that hallway, oblong panels of sunlight on the floor,
caught a glimpse and flutter of white wings.

Here, I am restored to the basic pleasure of connection to the
outdoors. The windows are open to butterflies, horseflies, bees,
or anything that wants to come in one window and out another. We
eat outside almost every meal. I'm restored to my mother's sense of
preserving the seasons and to
time,
even time to take
pleasure in polishing a pane of glass to a shine. To the house
safe for dreaming. One end of the house is built right against
the hillside. An omen of reconnection? Here, I don't dream of
houses. Here, I am free to dream of rivers.

THOUGH THE DAYS ARE LONG, THE SUMMER IS SOMEHOW
short. My daughter,
Ashley, arrives and we have mad, hot days driving around to sights.
When she first walked up to the house, she stopped and looked up
for a while, then said, “How strange—this will become a
part of all our memories.” I recognized that knowledge we sometimes
get in advance when travelling or moving to a new city—here's
a place that will have its way with me.

Naturally, I want her to love it but I don't have to convince
her. She begins talking about Christmas here. She chooses her room.
“Do you have a pasta machine?” “Can we have melon every meal?”
“A swimming pool could go up on that second terrace.” “Where's
the train schedule to Florence? I need shoes.”

The minute she graduated from college, she lit out for New
York. The artist's life, the odd-job life, the long hot summer,
health problems—she's ready for the icy mountain-fed pool
run by a priest back in the hills, for trips to the Tyrrhenian
coast, where we rent beach chairs and bake all day, for strolls
in stony hill towns at night after dinner in a strictly local
trattoria.

The days stream by and soon it is time for both of us to leave.
I must be at work but Ed will stay another ten days. Maybe the
sandblaster will come.

F
estina
T
arde
(Make Haste Slowly)

WALKING OUT OF THE SAN FRANCISCO
airport, I'm shocked by cool foggy air, smelling of salt and jet fumes. A taxi
driver crosses the street to help with luggage. After a few
pleasantries, we lapse into silence and I'm grateful. I have been
travelling for twenty-four hours. The last leg, from JFK, where
Ashley and I said good-bye, to SF seems cruel and unusual,
especially the extra hour it takes because of the prevailing
wind. The houses on the hills are necklaces of light, then
along the right, the bay almost laps the freeway. I watch for
a certain curve coming up. After rounding it, suddenly the whole
city rises, the stark white skyline. As we drive in, I anticipate
the breath-stopping plunges over hills and glimpses between
buildings where I know there's a wedge or slice or expanse of
rough blue water.

Still, imprinted on my eyes are the stone towns, mown fields,
and sweeping hills covered with vineyards, olives, sunflowers;
this landscape looks exotic. I start to look for my house key,
which I thought was in the zippered inside pocket of my bag. If
I've lost it—what? Two friends and a neighbor have keys
to my place. I imagine getting their answering machines, “I'm
out of town until Friday         .         .         .” We pass Victorian
houses discreetly shuttered and curtained, porch lights shining on
wooden banisters and pots of topiary. No one, not even a dog
walker or someone running to the store for milk, is out. I feel
a pang for the towns full of people who leave their keys dangling
in their locks, for the evening
passeggiata
when
everyone is out and about, visiting, shopping, taking a quick
espresso. I've left Ed there because his university starts later
than mine and the sandblasting still is a dream of accomplishment
for the summer. The taxi lets me out and speeds off. My house
looks the same; the climbing rose has grown and tried to wind
around the columns. Finally I find the key mixed in with my
Italian change. Sister comes to greet me with a plaintive meow
and a quick brush of her sides against my ankles. I pick her up
to smell her earthy, damp leaf smell. In Italy, I often wake
up thinking she has leapt on the bed. She jumps on top of my bag and
curls down for a nap. So much for having suffered in my absence.

Lamps, rugs, chests, quilts, paintings, tables—how
amazingly comfortable and cluttered this looks after the empty
house seven thousand miles away. Bookshelves, crammed, the glass
kitchen cabinets lined with colorful dishes, pitchers,
platters—so much of everything. The long hall carpet—so
soft! Could I walk out of here and never look back? Virginia
Woolf, I remember, lived in the country during the war. She rushed
back to her neighborhood in London after a bombing and found
her house in ruins. She expected to be devastated but instead
felt a strange elation. Doubtless, I would not. When the earth
quaked, I was shaken for days over my whiplashed chimney, broken
vases, and wineglasses. It's just that my feet are used to the
cool
cotto
floors, my eyes to bare white walls. I'm
still
there,
partly here.

There are eleven messages on the answering machine. “Are you
back?” I need to get your signature on my graduation
form         .         .         .” “Calling to confirm your
appointment         .         .         .” The housesitter has left a
list of other calls on a pad and stacked the mail in my study. Three
kneehigh stacks, mostly junk, which I compulsively begin to go
through.

Because I have stayed away as long as possible, I must return
to the university immediately. Classes begin in four days, and
regardless of faxes from Italy and the good offices of an excellent
secretary, I am chair of the department and need to be bodily
present. By nine, I'm there, dressed in gabardine pants, a silk
print blouse. “How was your summer?” we all say to one another.
The start-up of a school year always feels exhilarating. Everyone
feels the zest in the air. If the bookstore were not crowded
with students buying texts, I probably would go over and buy a
supply of fine-point pens, a notebook with five-subject index,
and a few pads. Instead, I sign forms, memos, call a dozen
people. I go into racing gear, ignoring jet lag.

Stopping for groceries after work, I see that the organic store
has added a masseuse to the staff. I could pause in a little booth
and get a seven-minute massage to relax me before I begin
selecting potatoes. I'm temporarily overwhelmed by the checkout
rows, the aisles and aisles of bright produce and the tempting
cakes at the new bakery just installed in the front of the store.
Mustard, mayonnaise, plastic wrap, baking chocolate—I buy
things I haven't seen all summer. The deli has crab cakes and
stuffed baked potatoes with chives, and corn salad and tabouli.
So much! I buy enough “gourmet takeout” for two days. I'm
going to be too busy to cook.

It's eight
A.M.
at Bramasole. Ed probably is
chopping weeds around an olive tree or pacing around waiting for
the sandblaster. As I turn in my garage I see Evit, the
one-toothed homeless man, rifling through our recycle bin for
bottles and cans. My neighbor has posted a
VISUALIZE BEING
TOWED
sign on his garage door.

The last message on the machine starts with static, then I
hear Ed's voice; he sounds raspy. “I was hoping to catch you,
sweetheart; are you
still
at work? The sandblaster was
here when I got home from the airport.” Long pause. “It's hard
to describe. The noise is deafening. He's got this huge generator
and the sand really does
blast
out and fall into every
crack. It's like a storm in the Sahara. He did three rooms
yesterday. You can't believe how much sand is on the floors. I
took all the furniture out on the patio and I'm just camped in
one room, but the sand is
all
over the house. The beams
look
very good;
they're chestnut, except for one elm.
I don't know
how
I'm going to get rid of this sand.
It's in my
ears
and I'm not even in the room with him.
Sweeping is out of the question. I
wish
you were here.”
He usually doesn't speak with so many italics.

When he calls next, he's on the
autostrada
near
Florence, en route to Nice and home. He sounds exhausted and
elated. The permits have come through! The blasting is over.
Primo Bianchi, however, won't be able to do our work because he
must have a stomach operation. Ed met again with Benito, the
yellow-eyed Mussolini look-alike, and has worked out a contract
with him. Work is to start immediately and to finish in early
November, easily in time for Christmas. The clean-up goes slowly;
the sandblaster says to expect sand to trickle down for five
years!

Ian, who helped us with the purchase, will oversee the work.
We left diagrams of where electrical outlets, switches, and
radiators should go, how the bathroom should be laid out, how the
kitchen should be installed—even the height of the sink and
the distance between the sink and the faucet—where to pick
up the fixtures and tile we selected for the bathroom, everything
we can think of. We are anxious for word that work is under way.

The first fax arrives September 15; Benito has broken his leg on the first day of the job and start-up will be delayed until he is able to walk.

FESTINA TARDE
WAS A RENAISSANCE CONCEPT: MAKE HASTE
slowly. Often it was represented by a snake with its tail in its
mouth, by a dolphin entwined with an anchor, or by the figure of a
seated woman holding wings in one hand and a tortoise in the other:
The great wall of Bramasole in one, the central heating, kitchen,
patio, and bathroom in the other. The second fax, October 12,
warns that “delays have occurred” and that “some changes in
installation can be expected” but he has full confidence and not
to worry.

We fax back our encouragement and ask that everything be
covered well with plastic and taped.

Another fax, just after, says the opening of the
three-foot-thick wall between the kitchen and dining room has begun.
Two days later, Ian faxes us the news that when a very large boulder
was pulled out, the whole house creaked and all the workers ran
out because they feared a collapse.

We called. Didn't they brace the rooms? Had Benito used
steel? Why hadn't they known what to do? How could this happen?
Ian said stone houses were unpredictable and couldn't be expected
to react the way American houses react and the door is now in and
looks fine, although they didn't make it as wide as we wanted
because they were afraid to. I vacillated between thinking that the
workers were incompetent and fearing that they might have been
crushed by an unstable house.

By mid-November, Benito has finished the upstairs patio and
the opening of the infamous door, plus they've opened the two
upstairs doors that connect to the
contadina
apartment.
We decide to cancel the opening of the other large door that
would join the living room to the
contadina
kitchen.
The image of all Benito's men fleeing the premises does not
inspire confidence. The next delays Ian mentions concern the
new bath and the central heating. “Almost certainly,” he
advises, “there will be no heat when you come for Christmas.
In fact, the house will not be habitable due to the fact that
the central heating pipes must be inside the house, not on the
back as we were originally told.” Benito asks him to relay that
his charges are higher than anticipated. Items listed on the
contract have been farmed out to electricians and plumbers and
their overlapping bills have become incomprehensible.
We have no way of knowing who did what; Ian seems as confused as
we are. Money we wire over takes too long to get there and Benito
is angry. What is clear is that we are not there and our house's
work is done between other jobs.

HOPING FOR MIRACLES, WE GO TO ITALY FOR CHRISTMAS.
Elizabeth has
offered us her house in Cortona, which is partly packed for her
move. She also wants to give us a great deal of her furniture,
since her new house is smaller. As we drive out of the Rome
airport, rain hits the windshield like a hose turned on full
blast. All the way north we face foggier and foggier weather.
When we arrive in Camucia, we head straight to the bar for hot
chocolate before we go to Elizabeth's. We decide to unpack,
have lunch, and face Bramasole later.

The house is a wreck. Canals for the heating pipes have been
cut into the inside walls of every room in the house. The workers
have left rock and rubble in piles all over the unprotected
floors. The plastic we'd requested was simply tossed over the
furniture so every book, chair, dish, bed, towel, and receipt
in the house is covered in dirt. The jagged, deep, floor-to-ceiling
cuts in the wall look like open wounds. They are just beginning on
the new bathroom, laying cement on the floor. The plaster in the
new kitchen already is cracking. The great long sink has been
installed and looks wonderful. A workman has scrawled in black
felt-tip pen a telephone number on the dining room fresco.
Ed immediately wets a rag and tries to rub it clean but we're stuck
with the plumber's number. He slings the rag onto the rubble. They've
left windows open all over and puddles have collected on the floor
from this morning's rain. The carelessness apparent everywhere,
such as the telephone being completely buried, makes me so angry
I have to walk outside and take gulps of cold air. Benito is at
another job. One of his men sees that we are extremely upset and
tries to say that all will be done soon, and done well. He is
working on the opening between the new kitchen and the cantina.
He's shy but seems concerned. A beautiful house, beautiful position.
All will be well. His bleary old blue eyes look at us sadly.
Benito arrives full of bluster. No time to clean up before we
arrived, and anyway it's the plumber's responsibility, he has
been held up himself because the plumber didn't come when he said
he would. But everything is
perfetto, signori.
He'll
take care of the cracked plaster; it didn't dry properly because
of the rains. We hardly answer. As he gestures, I catch the
worker looking at me. Behind Benito's back he makes a strange
gesture; he nods toward Benito, then pulls down his eyelid.