Under the Tuscan Sun (20 page)

Henry James records walking this road in his
The Art
of Travel.
He “strolled forth under the scorching sun and
made the outer circuit of the wall. There I found tremendous
uncemented blocks; they glared and twinkled in the powerful light,
and I had to put on a blue eye-glass in order to throw into its
proper perspective the vague Etruscan
past         .         .         .” A blue eye-glass? The
nineteenth-century equivalent of sunglasses? I can see Henry
peering up from the white road, nodding wisely to himself,
dusting off his uppers, then, no doubt, heading back to his
hotel to write his requisite number of pages for the day. I take
the same stroll and attempt the same mysterious act, to throw
the powerful light of the long, long past into the light of
the morning.

R
iva,
M
aremma:
Into Wildest Tuscany

FINALLY, WE'RE READY TO LEAVE BRAMASOLE
, if only for a few days. The floors are waxed and gleaming. All the furniture
Elizabeth gave us shines with beeswax polish and the drawers are
lined with Florentine paper. The market supplied us with antique
white coverlets for the beds. Everything works. We even oiled the
shutters one Saturday, took each one down, washed it, then rubbed
in a coat of the ubiquitous linseed oil that seems to get poured
onto everything. The can of mixed garden flowers I flung along the
Polish wall bloom with abandon, ready to bolt at any moment. We
live here. Now we can begin the forays into the concentric circles
around us, Tuscany and Umbria this year, perhaps the south of
Italy next year. Our travels are still somewhat housebased: We
are ready to stock a wine cellar, to begin to build up a collection
of wines associated with places where we have enjoyed them with
local food. Many Italian wines are meant to be drunk immediately;
our “cellar” under the stairs will be for special bottles. In
the cantina off the kitchen, we'll keep our demijohn and the cases
of house wine.

Along the way we plan to taste as much of the Maremma cuisine
as possible, bake in the sun, track down other Etruscan sites. Ever
since reading D.H. Lawrence's
Etruscan Places
years ago,
I have wanted to see the ancient diving boy, the flute player in his
sandals, the crouching panthers, to experience the mysterious verve
and palpable
joie de vivre
hidden underground all those
centuries. For several days we've plotted our route. This seems like
a journey into the far interior, though, in reality, it's only about
a hundred miles from our house to Tarquinia, where acres and acres
of Etruscan tombs are still being explored. Time keeps bending on me
here. The
density
of things to see in Tuscany makes me
lose sight of our California sense of distance and freeway training,
where Ed drives fifty miles to work. A week will be short. The area
called the Maremma, moorland, is no longer swampy. The last of the
marshy waters were long since drained off. Its history of killing
malaria, however, kept this southwestern stretch of Tuscany
relatively unpopulated. It's the land of the
butteri,
cowboys, of the only unsettled piece of coast along the Tyrrhenian,
and of wide-open spaces interrupted only by small stone huts where
shepherds used to shelter.

Soon we arrive in Montalcino, a town
built for broad views along a bony ridge of hills. The eye seems to
stop before the waving green landscape does. Small wine shops line
the street. A table with white cloth and a few wineglasses waits
right inside each door, as though inviting you in for an intimate
drink with the proprietor and a toast to the great vintages.

The hotel in town is modest, indeed, and I'm alarmed that the
electrical switches for the bathroom are located in the shower. I
aim the showerhead as far into the opposite corner as possible and
splash as little as possible. I do not want to fry before tasting
the local wines! Compensation is our panorama of the tile rooftops
and into the countryside. The
belle époque
café in the center of town doesn't appear to have
changed an iota since 1870—marble tables, red velvet
banquettes, gold mirrors. The waitress polishing the bar has
cupid-bow lips and a starchy white blouse with ribbons on the
sleeves. What could be more sensuous than a lunch of
prosciutto
and truffles on
schiacciata,
a flat
bread like
focaccia,
with salt and olive oil, along with
a glass of Brunello? The utter simplicity and dignity of Tuscan
food!

After siesta, we walk to the fourteenth-century
fortezza,
now a fantastic
enoteca.
In the old
lower part, which used to store crossbows and arrows, cannons
and gunpowder, all the wines of the area are available for tasting.
It's brilliantly sunny outside. In the
fortezza,
the light
is dim, the stone walls musky and cool. Vivaldi is playing while we
try a couple of good whites from Banfi and Castelgiocondo
vineyards. Appropriately, the music changes to Brahms as we taste
the dark Brunellos from several vineyards: Il Poggiolo, Case Basse,
and the granddaddy of all Brunello, Biondi. Brilliant, totally
evolved wines that make me want to rush to a kitchen and prepare
the kind of hearty food they deserve. I can't wait to cook for
these wines—rabbit roasted with balsamic vinegar and
rosemary, chicken with forty cloves of garlic, pears simmered in
wine and served with mascarpone. The man serving us insists that
we try some dessert wines. We fall for one called simply “B”
and another Moscadello from Tenuta Il Poggione. The enologist must
have been a former perfume maker. No dessert would be needed with
these, except perhaps a white peach, just ripe. On second thought, a
lemon soufflé might be just the touch of heaven. Or my
old Southern favorite, crème brûlée. We
buy a few bottles of the luxurious Brunellos. Just the memory of the
price at home makes us indulgent. At Bramasole, we have good wine
storage in two spaces under the stone stairs. We can shove cases in,
lock the door, and start taking them out in a few years. Since
long-term planning is not a strong suit of either of us, we buy a
couple of cases of less costly Rosso di Montalcino, drinkable now,
in fact, smooth and full bodied. I doubt if the dessert wines will
be around by the end of summer.

In late afternoon we drive the few miles to Sant'Antimo, one
of those places that feels as if it must be built on sacred ground.
From a distance, you see it over in a field of manicured olives, a
pale travertine Romanesque abbey, starkly simple and pure in style. It
does not look Italian. When Charlemagne passed this way, his
soldiers were struck by an epidemic and Charlemagne prayed for
it to stop. He promised to found an abbey if his prayer was granted
and in 781 he built a church. Perhaps it is the heritage that gives
the present church, built in 1118, its slender French lines. We
arrive as vespers begin. Only a dozen people are here and three of
these are women fanning themselves and chatting just behind us.
Usually, the habit of regarding the church as an extension of the
living room or piazza charms me, but today I turn and stare at
them because the five Augustinian monks who strode in and took up
their books have begun the Gregorian chant of this hour. The lofty,
unadorned church amplifies their voices and the late lambent sun
turns the travertine translucent. The music is piercing to my ear,
as some birds' songs that almost can hurt. Their voices seem to
roll and break, then part and converge on downward humming tones.
The chanting disengages my mind, releases it from logic. The mind
goes swimming and swims through large silence. The chant is
buoyant, basic, a river to ride. I think of Gary Snyder's lines:

stay together

learn the flowers

go light

I glance at Ed and he is staring up into the pillars of light. But
the women are unmoved; perhaps they come every day. In the middle,
they saunter noisily out, all three talking at once. If I lived
here, I'd come every day, too, on the theory that if you don't feel
holy here, you never will. I'm fascinated by the diligence of the
monks performing this plainsong for the six liturgical hours of
every day, beginning with
lodi,
prayers of praise, at
seven
A.M.,
and ending with
compieta,
compline,
at nine. I would like to come back for a whole day and listen. I
see in the brochure that those on spiritual retreat can stay in
guest quarters and eat at a nearby convent. We walk around the
outside, admiring the stylized hooved creatures supporting the
roof.

A cool evening to ride over dirt roads admiring the land,
sniffing like a dog out the window the fresh country smells of dry
hay. We arrive at Sant'Angelo in Colle, a restaurant operated by
Poggio Antico vineyards. A wedding party is in uproarious progress
and all the waitresses are enjoying the action. We're put in a
back room alone, with the rousing party echoing around us. We don't
mind. A stone sink is piled with ripe peaches, scenting the room.
We order thick onion soup, roast pigeon, potatoes with rosemary,
and what else, the house's Brunello.

WILDEST TUSCANY IS SOMEWHAT OF AN OXYMORON.
The region, as a whole,
has been tamed for centuries. Every time I dig in the garden, I'm
reminded of how many have gone before me on the land. I have a big
collection of fragments of dishes, dozens of patterns, so many that
I wonder if other women fling their dishes into the garden. Crockery
colanders, edges of lids, delicate cup handles, and assorted pieces
of plates gradually have collected on an outdoor tabletop, along
with jawbones of a boar and a hedgehog. The land has been trod and
retrod. A glance at terraced farming shows how the hills have been
reshaped for the convenience and survival of humans. Still, the
Maremma area remained, until less than a hundred years ago, a low
coastal plain inhabited by cowboys, shepherds, and mosquitoes. Its
mal aria
was definitely associated with chills and fever.
Farmhouses are occasional whereas the rest of Tuscany is dotted
with them. The Renaissance touched lightly here; towns, generally,
are not permeated with monumental examples of architecture and
adorned by the great names in painting. The bad air, now soft and
fresh, probably kept the extensive Etruscan tombs safer. Although
many were recklessly pillaged, an astonishing number remain. Were
Etruscans immune to malaria? All evidence shows that the area was
quite populated in their time.

Our next base is a villa, now a small hotel, on the Acquaviva
vineyard property outside Montemerano. Ed has cased the
Gambero Rosso
guide and spotted this tiny village with
three excellent restaurants. Since it is central for most of what
we want to see, we decide to stay put for a few days rather than
checking in and out of hotels. A tree-lined drive leads to a
park-sized garden with shady places to sit outside and look over
the rolling vineyards. We have a room right on the garden. I push
open the shutters and the window fills with blue hydrangea. We
quickly unpack and take off again; we can relax later.

Pitigliano must be the strangest town in Tuscany. Like
Orvieto, it sits on top of a tufa mass. But Pitigliano looks like a
drip castle, a precipitous one looming above a deep gorge. Who
could look down, while trying to see the town and the road at
the same time? Tufa isn't the strongest rock in the world, and
sections of it sometimes weaken, erode, or veer off. Pitigliano's
houses rise straight up; they're literally living on the edge. The
tufa beneath the houses is full of caves—perhaps for the
storage of the area's Bianco di Pitigliano, a wine that must derive
its astringent edge from the volcanic soil. In town, the bartender
tells us that many of the caves were Etruscan tombs. Besides
wine, oil is stored and animals are housed. Medieval towns have
a dark and twisted layout; this town's feels darker, more twisted.
Many Jews settled here in the fifteenth century; it was outside the
realm of the Papal States, who were busy persecuting. The area where
they lived is called a ghetto. Whether there was a strict ghetto
here, as there was in Venice, where Jews had to keep to a curfew,
had their own government and cultural life, I don't know. The
synagogue is closed for reconstruction but it does not appear
that anything much is happening. Almost everything seems to be for
sale. In this life or the next, some of the rim houses are going
to find themselves in the gorge. Perhaps this contributes to the
gloomy feel the town gives me. On the way out, we buy a few bottles
of the local white for our growing collection. I ask how many Jews
lived there during World War II. “I don't know, signora, I'm from
Naples.” Winding downhill, I read in a guidebook that the Jewish
community was exterminated in the war. I'd never trust a guidebook
on a fact and hope that this is wrong.

Tiny Sovana, nearby, has the feeling of a ghost town in
California, except that the few houses along the main street are
immensely old. People are outnumbered, it seems, by Etruscan tombs
built into the hillsides. We spot a sign and pull over. A path takes
us into a murky wooded area with a stagnant stream just made for
female anopheles mosquitoes. Soon we're scrambling on slippery
paths, up along a steep hillside. We begin to see the
tombs—tunnels into the hills, stony passageways leading
back, probably to vipers. The entrances in that wildness look
undisturbed for the centuries. Nothing is attended—no
tickets sold, no guides waiting; it is as though you discover
these strange haunted sepulchers yourself. Vines dangle, as in the
Mayan jungles around Palenque, and the eroded carvings in the tufa
also have that strangely Eastern aspect that many of the Mayan
carvings have, as though long ago art was the same everywhere.
It's very clear that becoming an Etruscan archaeologist is a good
move. Endless areas are awaiting further investigation. We climb for
hours, encountering only a large white cow standing up to its knees
in the stream. When we emerge, I have bleeding scratches on my
legs but not a single mosquito bite. I have the feeling that this
is a place I will think about on nights of insomnia. Down the road,
we see another sign. This points to the remains of a temple, which
looks carved out of the tufa hillside. We walk among eerie arches
and columns, partly excavated and looking quite abandoned. Those
Etruscans are going to stay mysterious. What did they do here? An
Art in the Park summer concert series? Strange rites? The
guidebooks refer to this as a temple, and perhaps here in the
center a wise person practiced haruspication, the art of divining
by reading a sheep's liver. A bronze model of one was found near
Piacenza, with the liver divided into sixteen parts. It is thought
that the Etruscans similarly divided the sky, and that the way the
liver was sectioned also determined the layout of Etruscan towns.
Who knows? Perhaps the forerunners of talk shows held forth here
or it was the market for seafood. In places such as Machu Picchu,
Palenque, Mesa Verde, Stonehenge, and now here, I always have the
odd and somber consciousness of how time peels us off, how
irretrievable the past really is, especially in these hot spots
where you sense some matrix of the culture took place. We can't
help but push our own interpretations on them. It's a deep wish
of philosophers and poets to search for theories of eternal return
and time past being time present. Bertrand Russell was closer
when he said the universe was created five minutes ago. We can't
recover the slightest gesture of those who chopped out this rock,
not the placing of the first stone, the lighting of a fire to
make lunch, the stirring of a pot, the sniffing of an underarm, the
sigh after lovemaking,
niente.
We can walk here, the
latest little dots on the time line. Knowing that, it always amazes
me that I am intensely interested in how the map is folded, where
the gas gauge is pointed, whether we have withdrawn enough cash,
how everything matters intensely even as it is disappearing.