Bella Tuscany (12 page)

 

In the morning, we awaken to the grinding noise of a truck coming up the drive. Anselmo is directing as it swings backwards up our lane. We get downstairs in time to watch two men unloading the
torchio
, the great wine-press Anselmo showed us in his barn.
“Un omaggio,”
he says briskly. The gift is left in the middle of the front yard. We thank him profusely, wondering where this huge piece of equipment is going to live. He launches into instructions on the mechanism and then moves into the details of
vin santo
. That we are not here in fall, that we do not yet have many grapes does not seem to matter. When we first saw the house, one room was strung with wires overhead and Anselmo at the time had noted, “For drying the grapes for
vin santo
.” Susan and Cole, both ardent gardeners, join us and assure us they'd love to come help harvest grapes. Anselmo found this place for us. All along he has helped us with restoration. Now that he is retired, he has transformed two of our terraces into a vegetable paradise. He has taken us on jaunts in his car, introducing us to country people with their own ways. He has watched Ed learn about vines from Beppe and Francesco. I feel a quick shiver in accepting this gift. Now he is passing on the
torchio,
like passing the torch.

 

Dark never turns black-dark. The stars exert their most powerful kilowatts. Also the moon, glassy in old windows, wavering and rising from bottom pane to middle to top is a pleasure for the insomniac to watch. The one nightingale, who must live in the ilex above the house, pierces the quiet with insistent notes. Dawn is the sweetest time on earth. In the last moments of dark, the bird chorale begins. One of us wakes the other.
Listen, they're starting to sing now
. So many, a rising cloud of birdsong, a lift, an ushering-in. Then the sky—no rosy finger of dawn but a suffusion of rose out of indigo, the quietest light on the hills and the rushing songs of the birds still rising over the absolute world unto itself. Moles, voles, porcupines, snakes, foxes, boar, all the creatures burrowed for the night return to day with this music, as we do. The deep freshness of the earth returns to those who sing, to the fusion of colors. As the sun brightens, colors sharpen and separate from each other. But where is the cuckoo at this hour?

Our friends wake to the sound of the bird who sings, “Wheat, wheat.” Ed listens every day for the bird he says sings, “When you're a Jet you're a Jet all the way, from your first cigarette. . . .” from
West Side Story.
We take them on a wildflower walk around the land. All spring, I've photographed each flower as I found it. Most amazing have been the wild white and purple orchids. My book with the medieval wildflower cover, bought in Asolo, now bulges with poppies against stone walls, ragged robin, purple lupin, cotton lavender, wild carnations, lilies, dog roses, still unidentified spiky blue flowers. The many yellows are hardest to identify with the wildflower book in hand. There simply are too many that look similar.

Susan and I cut off rose leaves with black spots and some with the dreaded rust. These go in a bag to be destroyed. She shows me how to take cuttings from my favorite pink roses in front of the house, which survived thirty years of neglect and still bloom with a clean, violet fragrance especially strong early in the mornings. We spend hours in the garden and on the terraces picking wildflowers, then down to the
orto
to fill a basket with lettuces for lunch.

At home in California we are so busy we have 8
A.M.
phone conversations two or three times a week, shorthand exchanges of vital information about our daughters, both of whom are in graduate school, about her bookstore business, and what we're managing to read. A few days to walk, go to a museum, cook dinner, and sit out under the benign lights of fireflies and the Milky Way, reconnects our friendship. “Why don't we have more time at home?” we ask each other, but we don't have an answer.

Like the birdsong, like the droves of butterflies and bees, the volunteer flowers in profusion delight me because they come purely as gifts of the land. Just as I'm waxing about the pleasures of rural life to Susan and Cole, an English friend calls and says they've arrived to find two drowned baby boars in their well and they've fished out the rotting, bloated carcasses with a hoe.

At dinner Cole speculates on why we've taken this place so much to heart. “Is it because it's a return to a simpler time? You get to erase the urban blight from your minds for a few months each year?”

Relaxed and enjoying the evening, with lanterns along the wall, lasagna, and the Vino Nobile they have brought, we agree. By dessert, I retract. “That's not really it. It's the end of the ugly century here, too.” I flash on the prostitutes along the Piero della Francesca trail. Trucks on the autostrada polluting like mad. Frustrating strikes, which are so frequent there's a space in the newspaper announcing when public services will not be operating. “The people aren't in a simpler time. Generally, they've just managed the century better than we have in America. Everyday life in Tuscany is good.”

“The everyday interactions with people are drastically different—personal and direct,” Ed says. “We were too geared toward the long range and the long range is a long shot.”

“There's very little violent crime, people have manners, the food is so much better and, we all know the Italians have more fun.” I realize I've said “manners,” and sounded like my mother. “I love the courtesy of encounters in the streets, purchases in stores, even the mailman seems pleased to hand me a letter. When strangers are leaving a restaurant they say goodnight to the people around them.”

We tell them about our recent trips into the countryside and the lives we've glimpsed. Our expat friends talk about how much Cortona has changed. But the changes were rapid—and needed—after the war. Now they have slowed. The life of the town is intact, they've taken the right measures to protect the countryside, the cultural life of this tiny town puts to shame most good-sized American cities. I think of the younger generation—Giusi, Donatella, Vittorio, Edo, Chiara, Marco, Antonio, Amalia, Flavia, Niccolò—bringing along all the good traditions. When our adored Rita retired from her
frutta e verdura
last year, a young man took over. Unlike many rural towns, this one hasn't lost its young to the cities. I've said enough and don't say any more.

A group from town walking by the house is singing together. They walk and sing. In my normal life I cannot imagine doing that on a Wednesday night. We listen to the unfamiliar song.

“Like that—Italian life is still sweet.”

“And what's also sweet is this peach parfait,” Ed says. “It makes my teeth ache.”

 

The past few days have added hundreds of images to my mental archives. Finding the taproots of places far in the country counterweighs the noetic life with a powerful reality. Already I return in imagination to Achille's place in the mountains with joy. Right now he may be soaping his wife's back in the cool night air. Could we have a bathtub outside? And Giusi's long, long feast, over in a day, will stick in time for its intense celebratory generosity. Ed probably will dream of the entrance of the beef leg into the tent, adding the blare of a trumpet. The
signora
sleeping near her framed husband with the shining eyes has spanned the century and still grabs my hand, pulling the new into her world. Anselmo has made his last wine in his barn but has his eye on our grapes. We will make the wine someday. His brother-in-law, on intimate terms with the Romans and Hannibal, has a sense of time that irritates the hell out of him; he wants his pears and olives to live right
now
.

The Root of Paradise

ED HEADS FOR THE UPPER TERRACES EARLY. HE
wants to cut out a trunk of ivy which is menacing a wall. If he doesn't, tentacles will twist between stones and in two days or twenty years the whole wall will cascade down onto our roses. He pauses to watch our neighbor Placido's fifteen white doves swoop over the valley. Let out twice a day for a few minutes of freedom, they fly in loose formation round and round, then all at once head back to their cage. A movement to his left startles him. From behind the ilex tree, a woman emerges, holding a cloth sack and a stick. The forager!

She is not at all abashed at being caught.
“Buon giorno, signore,”
she greets him.
“Una bella giornata
.
”
Beautiful day. She waves her stick over the valley.

Ever polite, even to someone who may have helped herself to our daffodils, Ed introduces himself. “You're the Swiss professor,” she says.

“Not Swiss,
americano.”

“Ah,
sì
? I thought you were Swiss,” she says dubiously.

Although the morning is mild, she's wearing two or three layers of sweaters, a scarf knotted at her throat, and rubber boots. She grins, showing gold. “Letizia Gazzini,” she says in a loud voice. “I used to live here but many years ago.” She opens her bag. “I always come back.” She has collected several kinds of greens and a separate plastic bag of snails. She holds up spindly weeds. “You have the wild leeks, naturally.” She rummages deeper and pulls out more.
“Prenda, prenda,”
take them, take them, she offers.

Ed is totally disarmed. He likes her tanned, creased face and shiny black eyes. He takes the leeks. “Did you own the house?” He's confused. We'd been told that ancient sisters from Perugia held on to the place, leaving it abandoned for thirty years.

“No, no,
signore,
my husband was the farmer, we lived only in a portion of the house. That part.” She points with her stick. Ed knows all too well; that section was walled off when we bought the house and had to be opened on all three floors. “Many years of hard labor. Now my husband is dead and I'm left.” She pauses.
“Insomma,”
she concludes, an untranslatable expression, in summary, meaning more closely, what else is there to say.

Ed tells her we'd like to learn more about what's growing on the land. Perhaps she could show us the
mescolanza,
the edible greens. Would she mind?

“Ah,
sì, sì, certo,”
Yes, certainly she will. She waves her stick again and disappears behind the
ginestre
.

 

I yank tender clumps of weeds from the rose bed and dig out evil, thorny ones. The wheelbarrow fills over and over, and the pile way out on the land grows larger than a haystack. When the terrace brush is cut, other haystacks rise. After the next rain, Ed and Beppe will burn them. Dry weeds create a fire hazard so after every rain in early summer, fires start up all over the valley, ruining the just-washed air. The fires always scare me, even though they stand by with buckets of water in case the wind lifts the fire over to dry grass. This spring an experienced farmer burned to death when the blaze suddenly blew back, catching his clothes on fire.

With my stoop-labor fork I loosen the soil. The beds are ready. Time to plant. We loaded the car with flowers at the nurseries yesterday and the day before. Each time we leave, we're given a gift. The
signora
runs out,
“Un omaggio e grazie
.
”
She hands me a campanula, or terrace rose, or a fuchsia. Twice we've been given a burgundy red coleus, a plant I don't fancy. They look like what would survive after a nuclear blast. Naturally, they're thriving in their far corner. Sometimes we're asked to choose something we want. After rampaging through, buying dozens of plants, suddenly it's difficult to select the gift. One of these small pots from two years ago has turned into a bush covered with yellow blooms which last for two months.

Many businesses give customers gifts—a T-shirt to celebrate a store's anniversary, beautiful calendars at the new year, and, once, a box of fifteen different pastas when we spent more than 200,000
lire,
around $120, at a discount store.

I somehow love the gift plants even more than what I've bought. A scented geranium given last year has tripled in size, a dwarf lavender seems especially fragrant. Maybe the gift aspect makes me care for them more carefully, or maybe something given naturally thrives. I'm even growing fond of the coleus.

After working outside all day, the last task remains. We prime the hand pump and trudge out to douse the lavender and new cypress trees with the icy water. Once established, they won't need watering. The walk toward the lake view, formerly a jungle, then a path, now is a lane. Next year, more grapes on the right side (too late for planting grapes now) and a trail of lavender along the left.

Ed has eggplant
parmigiana
in the oven. While I bathed and fell into reading the poems of Horace in the tub, he picked lettuce and set the table outside. Is there anything more splendid than a man who cooks? I bring my new yellow book, where I have begun to list garden ideas. Before we launch into that all-night topic, I read him something amazing I found in Horace:

. . . In spring the swelling earth aches for seeds of new life.
Lovely the earth in labor, under a nervous west wind.
The fields loosen, a mild wetness lies everywhere.
Confident grows the grass, for the young sun will do no harm.
The shoots of the vine do not fear a southerly storm arising
Or icy rain slanting from heaven under a north wind—
No, bravely they bud now and reveal their leaves.
So it was since the beginning of the world,
Here is the brilliant dawning and pitch of these days.

I love the last two lines. Horace could sit at our table, not having to ask that we keep his glass full of the local wine, while he tells us how little has changed and that we need to thin the fruit in the pear trees.

We assess the current state of the land. Right away, we found the good bones. After bringing back what was already here, although smothered by vines and brush, we are starting our more ambitious phase of gardening with the original structure in place. In Renaissance and later formal gardens, a central axis usually boldly joined the architecture of the house with that of the garden. Walkways were like halls, with glimpses into the interior of the garden from the paths. The perpendicular dimensions of our own front garden approximate the size of the house, with the terraces above and below roughly half the width of the front garden. Vestigial formality remains in the long boxwood hedge with five round topiary trees rising at intervals out of the hedge.

It's time to regard the garden long range, feel my way toward a philosophy of gardening. I visualize how it looks from the third-floor windows, what has lasted these first few years, and, primarily, what truly gives me pleasure, rather than simply what will grow. Ed is interested in what brings bees and butterflies. Because lavender is a magnet, especially for white butterflies, we've seen how they put the garden in motion. Motion and music—the bees' humming forms a sleepy background for the birds' twitters, arpeggios, and caws. I like cut flowers in the house every day. We both love the currents of scents swimming through the garden and how they rise to the house early in the morning. The ripe peach colors of the house rhyme with yellow, rose, and apricot flowers.

Because the land is steeply terraced, our garden has distinct parts:

At the side of the house, the shady rectangle we call the Lime Tree Bower stretches maybe sixty feet, then turns into fruit and olive terraces. We've given every area a name, to save each other the bother of saying, “You know, beyond the lilac bushes on the way to the view of the lake,” or “On the east side of the house under the
tigli
trees . . .” We've even named each olive tree. All our family members and friends, favorite writers and places are immortalized with a tree. We haven't yet checked to see which ones passed away in the freeze.

Because of the view over the valley and Apennines, the Lime Tree Bower is our noontime outdoor dining room. The front yard, where we live from breakfast to the last firefly count, leads to stone steps then down into a long garden. On this broadest terrace, called the Rose Walk, we have now planted fifty roses on either side of the lawn. I'm confused to see the volunteer, lush lawn, which thrives with a variety of hearty wild grasses. How do you have a lawn without planting a lawn? The top of the immense Polish wall, which we built in the second year, lines one side of this garden. An original stone wall and the inherited boxwood hedge with its ball topiaries line the other. Iron arches mark either end, one covered with jasmine, the other to be planted with two Mermaids, a climbing rose with a flat yellow bloom.

So a slight geometry is in place. While we were clearing jungle growth from the years of abandonment, we followed the cue of the boxwood and reestablished a well-defined rectangle perpendicular to the house. There, during the wall-building era, we unearthed a portion of a former road, with tightly packed stones laid sideways. We hauled away one level, but the next level still lies beneath the grass. I've read that Roman roadbeds were sometimes twelve feet deep.

To the left, curving stone stairs lead down to the Well Walk, another swath of front garden where the well and cistern live and where, previously, we had the well-established hedge of lavender, rosemary, and sage. We didn't know to cut back hard in the winter. At a California vineyard with extensive lavender, we saw the gardener cutting it back beyond belief, almost to the ground. Because we'd never trimmed, the freeze killed all but two.

To the right from the Rose Walk is The Lane, with the boxwood and a tall stone wall on either side. The green underfoot seems to be mostly camomile and wild mint, whose oregano-peppermint smell, I'm sure, attracts the black and white snake who has taken up residence under a rock beneath the faucet. The old well and the spring we discovered during our second summer are on The Lane. It ends with a mass of lilac bushes, then, joining the main garden and the driveway, proceeds to what we call the Lake Walk. From there to the end of the property, we have planted the cypresses and lavender. We want to reclaim an overgrown track—medieval, Roman?—which leads eventually into town after joining a Roman road. The immense views are from that far end of the property. Most of the land is given over freely to the olive, fruit, almond, and grape, with a few stretches abandoned to wild broom and rock. Two terraces are for herbs and vegetables, the first upper terrace for
le erbe aromatiche,
and for lettuces, the second for Anselmo's realm, his mega-
orto,
his grand illusion.

 

I have visions for all these areas. Making a sketch persuades us that we know what we're doing. “Think perennials,” Ed says. “We can't reinvent the wheel every year—we plant a carload and it doesn't do zip. We need plants that can take care of themselves when they grow up. Remember the summer I spent hours hauling buckets to those thirty olives?” We'd planted on various far terraces, not knowing we'd have no rain that year from May through August. With five acres, quantity and size are whole different issues. We've been slow to adjust our sense of scope. Finally we're getting it—our sense of scale needs to cube itself. “Think bushes.” He starts a list: hibiscus, forsythia, holly, oleander.

“I don't like oleander. It reminds me of freeways.”

“Scratch oleander, then.”

“What about more roses? We could build a running arch all along the top of the Polish wall.”

When we go inside, an e-mail has arrived from my friend Judy, a rose expert. “Mermaid alert. Beware of Mermaid. It's liable to grow forty feet and it has hideous hooked thorns.”

Too late. Two innocent Mermaids are ready to go in the ground tomorrow.

 

I'm thinking tonight of Humphrey Repton. He is an ancestor of mine on my father's side. My great-grandmother was Elizabeth Repton Mayes, whose memory is preserved only in my middle name and in a photograph of her cradling my newborn grandfather in her arms. He must have been the ugliest baby born in England at the end of the nineteenth century. He's glaring fiercely at the camera, already full of will. He waves his tight little fists, while she looks lovingly down at him. When he was still a small boy, she died. His father went to America and later sent for his son, who travelled across the Atlantic at nine carrying a small suitcase and a bag of apples. He watched from the railing as his aunt Lily receded on the English shore and finally disappeared. I've remained heartless to this story—impossible that cold, bossy Daddy Jack ever was a vulnerable child travelling alone to a foreign country. Instead, I see him tearing around the deck, terrorizing his fellow-passengers.

Farther back in Elizabeth's line was Humphrey Repton (1752–1818), a garden designer who popularized what we know as the English garden. Since my grandfather was a tyrant, I like knowing earlier men in the lineage loved flowers and trees. Humphrey's father was a tax collector; maybe he had someone to rebel against, too.