Under the Tuscan Sun (24 page)

“Yes,” she replies, “I was at Woodstock twenty-five years
ago. But now I handle labor disputes for this transnational
conglomerate .         .         . I'm not sure this makes
sense.”

“Well, does it seem that you'd be moving into a larger
freedom? I've had an incredible amount of fun here.” I don't
mention the sun, how when I'm away and picture myself here, it's
always in full light; I feel
permeable
now. The Tuscan
sun has warmed me to the marrow. Flannery O'Connor talked about
pursuing pleasure “through gritted teeth.” I sometimes must do
that at home but here pleasure is natural. The days right themselves
one after another, as easily as the boy holding up the jingling
scale easily balances the fat melon and the rusty iron discs.

I am waiting to hear if she took the clapboard cottage with
its own deep-water pier.

I see her blue bicycle leaning against a pine tree, morning
glories climbing up the porch railing.

BRAVE GIRL! PLACIDO IS WALKING WITH HIS DAUGHTER OUT
to the point.
She holds up the falcon on her wrist. Her long curls bounce as she
walks. Even something to fear is layering into memory; I'm going
to dream about this over the winter. Perhaps the falcon will fly
through a nightmare. Or perhaps it only will accompany these
neighbors in late afternoon as they walk up the cypress drive and
out to where they release the bird, allowing it to fly farther
each time. So much more to take home at the end of summer. “The
Night,” by Cesare Pavese, ends:

At times it returns,

in the motionless calm of the day, that memory

of living immersed, absorbed, in the stunned light.

G
reen
O
il

“DON'T PICK TODAY—TOO WET.”
MARCO
observes us
taking down the olive baskets. “And the moon's wrong. Wait until
Wednesday.” He's hanging the doors, two original chestnut ones he
oiled and repaired, and new ones, virtually indistinguishable from
the old, that he has made during the fall while we were gone. They
replace the hollow-core doors our great improver in the fifties
preferred.

We're already late for the olive harvest. All of the mills
close before Christmas and we've arrived with a week to spare.
Outside, a gray drizzle blurs the intense green grasses that thrived
on November rains. I put my hand on the window. Cold. He's right, of
course. If we pick today, the wet olives might mildew if we don't
finish and get them to the mill. We gather our osier baskets that
strap around the waist—so handy for stripping a
branch—and the blue sacks the olives are loaded into, the
aluminum ladder, our rubber boots. Still jet-lagged and dazed, we're
up early, thanks to Marco's arrival at seven-thirty when it barely
was light. He tells us to go make an appointment at a mill; maybe
it will clear up later. If so, the sun will dry the olives
quickly.

“What about the moon?” I ask. He just shrugs. He wouldn't
pick now, I know.

We feel like tumbling back into bed, having had no time since
arriving last night to get beyond the twenty-hour trip, with storms
buffeting the plane most of the way across the ocean. I felt like
kissing the ground when we stepped out on the tarmac at Fiumicino.
We crazily went into Rome to do a little shopping, then were really
beyond thinking as we drove to Cortona in a hilarious rented Twingo,
purple with mint green interior. We hit the
autostrada
in
a bumper car and in a state of exhaustion. Still, the wet and
vibrant landscape filled us with elation—that
lit-from-within green and many trees still twirling colored
leaves. When we left in August, it was sere and dry; now the
freshness has reasserted itself. At dark we finally arrived. In
town we picked up bread and a pan of veal
cannelloni.
The
air felt charged and invigorating; we no longer wanted to collapse.
Laura, the young woman who cleans, had turned up the radiators
two days ago and the stone walls had time to lose their chill. She
even had brought in wood, so on our first night here, we had a
little feast by the fire, then wandered from room to room, checking
and touching and greeting each object. And so to bed, until Marco
aroused us this morning. “Laura said you arrived. I thought you'd
want the doors right away.” Always, always when we arrive there
is something to haul from A to B. Ed helped him hoist the doors
and held them steady while Marco wiggled the hinges onto the metal
spurs.

The venerable mill at Sant'Angelo uses the purest methods,
Marco tells us, cold-pressing each person's olives individually,
rather than requiring small growers to double up with someone else.
However, you must have at least a
quintale,
one hundred
kilograms. Our trees, not yet recovered from thirty years of neglect,
may not give us that bounty yet. Many trees have nothing at all.

The mill smells thickly oleaginous and the damp floor feels
slippery, possibly oily. Rooms where grapes and olives are pressed
have the odors of time, as surely as the cool stone smell of churches.
The permeating ooze and trickle must move into the workers' pores.
The man in charge tells us of several mills that press small batches.
We never knew there were so many. All his directions involve
turning right at the tallest pine or left beyond the hump or right
behind the long pig barn.

Before we leave, he extols the virtues of the traditional
methods and to prove his point dips two tablespoons into a vat of new
oil and hands them to us to taste. It can't be poured onto the
floor; there's nothing to do but swallow the whole thing. I can't
but I do. First, a tiny taste and the oil is extraordinary, of a
meltingly soft fragrance and essential, full olive taste. The whole
spoon at once, however, is like taking medicine.
“Splendido,”
I gulp and look at Ed, who still hesitates,
pretending to appreciate the greeny beauty. “What happens to that?”
I ask, gesturing to troughs of pulp. Our host turns and Ed quickly
slips his oil back in the vat, then tastes what's left on the
spoon.

“Favoloso,”
Ed says to him. And it is. After the
first cold pressing, the pulp is sent on to another mill and
pressed again for regular oils, then pressed last for lubricating
oils. The dried-out remains, in a wonderful cycle of return, often
are used to fertilize olive trees.

As we start to drive away, we see that the doors of San
Michele Arcangelo, a church we've admired, are open today. The
threshold is scattered with rice
—arborio,
I notice,
the rice for risotto. A wedding has taken place and someone must
be coming to take down the pine and cedar boughs. The church is
almost a thousand years old. Just across the road from each other, the
church and mill have served two of the basic needs—and the
grain and the vine are not far away. The beamed and cross-beamed
ceilings of these old churches often remind me of ship hulls. I've
never mentioned this before but now I do. “The church structures
reminded someone else of boats, too. “Nave' comes from
“navis'
in Latin—ship,” Ed tells me.

“And what does “apse' come from then?” I ask, since the
lovely rounded forms remind me of bread ovens standing alone
in farmyards.

“I believe that root means a fastening together of things,
just practical, no poetry there.”

There is poetry in the rhythm of the three naves, the
three apses, the classic basilica plan in miniature. The lines
rhyme perfectly in their stony movement along such a small space.
The only adornment is the scent of evergreens. As much as I love the
great frescoed churches, it's these plain ones that touch me most
deftly. They seem to be the shape and texture of the human spirit,
transformed into stone and light.

Ed swings the car out onto what once was a Roman road.
Later it led pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. San Michele was
a place to rest and restore. I wonder if a mill stood here, too.
Perhaps the pilgrims rubbed oil into their weary feet. We, however,
are just searching for a mill that will transform our sacks of
black olives into bottles of oil. Two of the mills already have
closed. At the third, a woman in about six layers of sweaters comes
down her steps and tells us we're too late, the olives should
have been picked and now the moon is wrong. “Yes,” we tell her,
“we know.” Her husband has closed his mill for the season. She
points down the road. At a grand stone villa, we turn in. A
discreet sign,
IL MULINO,
directs us to the rear but when we
drive around, two workers are hosing off their equipment. Too
late. They direct us to the large mill near town.

Whizzing along, I look at the winter gardens. Everyone's
growing pale, stalky
cardi,
cardoons—called
gobbi
in the local dialect—and green-black
cavolo nero,
black cabbage, which grows not in a head
but in upright plumes. Red and green radicchio star in every
garden. Most have a few artichoke plants. Until winter, I never
knew there were so many persimmon trees. With the lacquered orange
fruit dangling in bare limbs, the trees look composed of quick
brush strokes, like Japanese drawings of themselves.

At the mill, everyone is so busy that we're ignored. We walk
around watching the process and aren't drawn to having our precious
olives pressed here. It's all quite mechanized looking. Where are
the big stone wheels? We can't really tell if they use heat, a
process that supposedly damages the taste. We watch a customer
come in, have his fruit weighed, then see it dumped into a large
cart. Maybe the olives are all the same and mixing doesn't matter
but somehow, this time, we would love to have the pleasure of oil
from the land we've worked on. We exit quickly and drive to our
last hope, a small mill near Castiglion Fiorentino. Outside the
door, three huge stone wheels lean against the building. Just
inside, wooden bins of olives are stacked, each one with a name
on it. Yes, they can press ours. We are to come back tomorrow.

The afternoon warms and clears. Marco gives us the O.K. to
begin. Moon or no, we start picking. It's fast. We empty our baskets
into the laundry basket and, as that fills, pour the olives into the
sack. Few have fallen though they yield easily to our fingers. A
strong wind could cause a lot of damage unless one had spread nets
under the trees. The shiny black olives are plump and firm. Curious
about the raw drupe, I bite one and it tastes like an alum stick.
How did anyone ever figure out how to cure them? The same people,
no doubt, who first had the nerve to taste oysters. Ligurians used
to cure them by hanging bags in the sea; inland people smoked them
over the winter in their chimneys, something I'd like to try. We
peel off jackets, then sweaters as we work, hanging them in the
trees. The temperature has climbed to about fifty-five degrees and
although our boots are wet, the air feels balmy. Off in the distance,
we see the blue swath of Lake Trasimeno under an intense blue sky.
By three, we have stripped every single olive off twelve trees.
I've put my sweater on again. Days are short here in winter and
already the sun is headed for the rim of the hill behind the house.
By four, our red fingers are stiff and we quit, hauling the sack
and basket down the terraces into the cantina.

Not for the first time in our history here, my body is jarred
into awareness. Today: shoulders! Nothing would be nicer than a long
soak in a bubble bath and a massage. I have left my body oil to warm
on the radiator in anticipation. But with only twenty days here
every minute counts. We force ourselves to go into town to stock
up on food. My daughter and her boyfriend Jess arrive in three days.
We're planning several major feasts. We drive in just as the stores
are reopening after siesta. Strange—it's already dark as the
town comes back to life. Swags of white lights strung across the
narrow streets swing in the wind. The A & O market, where we
shop, has a rather ratty artificial tree (the only tree in town)
outside and big baskets of gift foods inside.

From our brief Christmas visit last year, we know that the
focus of the season is twofold: food and the
presepio,
the
crèche. We're ready to launch into one and are intrigued
by the other. The bars display fancy candies and that lighter
Italian parallel to our ubiquitous Christmas fruitcake, the
panettone,
in colorful boxes. A few shops have distinctly
homemade wreaths. That's it for decoration, except for the
crèches in all the churches and in many windows.
“Auguri, auguri,”
everyone says, best wishes. No one is
rushing about. There seems to be no gift wrap, no hype, no frantic
search.

The window of the
frutta e verdura
is steamed.
Outside, where we're used to seeing the fruits of summer, we find
baskets of walnuts, chestnuts, and fragrant clementines, those tiny
tangerines without seeds. Maria Rita, inside in a big black sweater,
is cracking almonds.
“Ah, benissimo!”
she greets us.
“Ben tornati!”
Where there were luscious tomatoes,
she has piled stacks of
cardi,
which I've never tasted.
“You boil it but first you must take off all the strings.” She
cracks a stalk and peels back the celerylike filaments. “Throw it
in some lemon water quickly or it will turn black. Then boil. Now
it's ready for the
parmigiano,
the butter.”

“How much?”

“Enough, enough, signora. Then the oven.” Soon she's telling
us to make
bruschetta
on the grill in the fireplace and
pile on it chopped black cabbage cooked with garlic and oil in a
frying pan. We buy blood oranges and tiny green lentils from a jar,
chestnuts, winter pears, winy little apples, and broccoli, which
I've never seen in Italy before. “Lentils for the New Year,” she
tells us. “I always add mint.” She piles in our bags all the
ingredients for
ribollita,
the wintery soup.

At the butcher's, new sausages are in, looped along the
front of the meat case. A man with a sausage-shaped nose himself
elbows Ed and acts out saying the rosary, then points to the long
links of fat sausages. It takes us a moment to make the connection,
which he thinks is very funny. Quail and several birds that look
as though they should be singing in a tree lie still in their
feathers in the case. Color photos on the wall show the butcher's
name written on the backsides of several enormous white cows,
source of the Val di Chiana steak that Tuscany celebrates. There's
Bruno with his hand possessively around the neck of a great beast.
He motions for us to follow him. He opens the freezer room and we
follow him in. A cow the size of an elephant hangs from ceiling
hooks. Bruno slaps a flank affectionately. “The finest
bistecca
in the world. A hot grill, rosemary, and a little
lemon at the table.” He turns up both hands, a gesture that adds
“What else is there in life?” Suddenly, the door slams shut and
we are locked inside with this massive body encased in white
fat.

“Oh, no!” I flash on the three of us caught as in the child's
game of Freeze. I swing around toward the door but Bruno is
laughing. He easily opens the door and we rush out. I don't want
any steak.