A Thousand Days in Tuscany (19 page)

Because he is surrounded by such a rapt audience, this generosity with the floor is a surprising gesture from the duke and I’m pleased to take it. “I’d say it’s difficult to talk about how a Tuscan drinks without talking about how he eats.”

The Hollanders like the opening, another excuse for a cheer and the clanging of glasses. I continue. “A day’s and an evening’s eating and drinking usually goes like this. Upon rising, a man takes a
caffè ristretto corretto con grappa,
which is to say he holds the bottle of spirits over the small cup with the left hand where not more than two tablespoons of thick, almost syrupy espresso wait, while he makes the sign of the cross with the right hand. The perfect dose of grappa splashes into the coffee with only that gesture, which also performs as morning prayers. Hot milk and bread or marmalade-filled coronets complete the breaking of the fast. Then, at about nine, after three hours of work in the fields, a glass of red wine lifts the spirits and makes good company for a round, crisp roll stuffed with mortadella. Then, another espresso. Nothing much until noon, when one wants a light
aperitivo
—Campari soda, Aperol with a spritz of white wine, or even a quick
prosecco.
At the stroke of one, seated at table, a liter of local red is placed close to his drinking arm. The main meal of the day is long, rich in variety, but not weighted down
in quantity. A plate of crostini or one of
salame
or a heft of cooled melon or a basket of figs, tastes of braised fennel or onions or eggplant. Then a thick soup or a plate of sage-scented beans, sometimes both of them, before a stew of rabbit with olives or veal with artichokes, maybe
porchetta
if it’s Thursday. Roasted potatoes and spinach or beet greens sauteed with garlic and chiles are always there. Then,
una grappina
—literally, a tiny shot of grappa, but since Tuscans are not literal about such piddly things, they pour the stuff out into a water glass, filling it to the rim—is taken for digestive purposes before
il sacro pisolino,
the sacred nap.

“At three-thirty or four, an espresso and back to the fields or into the barn for mending and building projects until seven. A quick face wash,
un colpo di pettine,
a stroke of the comb, into the truck and back up to the bar for a glass or two of simple white, a saucer of fine, fleshy olives, focaccia, crunchy with crystals of sea salt and set down with a pitcher of oil for drizzling. A nice prelude to supper. But once back at table, out comes the red again, less of it, though, because supper is thin compared to the harvest table at lunch. Now there wait only a few hand-carved slices of prosciutto from the mandolin-shaped leg dangling conveniently overhead in the pantry. Maybe a mingy ten centimeters worth of dried sausage. Bread is near. Then a soup of
farro
or lentils or
ceci
with fat, roughly cut strips of pasta called
maltagliati. Leggera,
they call such a soup, light. Then
una bistecca
sizzling on a grate in the fireplace across the room or a breast of chicken braising away in the kitchen with red and yellow peppers and a handful of sage leaves. A few stalks of wild salad. The tiniest wedge of pecorino. A pear, skin stripped, its juicy transparent flesh carved into wedges, each of which is brought to the mouth on the point of his knife. A hard, sweet biscuit or two with a thimbleful of
vin santo.
A short bracer poured out from the grappa bottle to sip with the day’s last espresso. All in all, a moderate feast.”

I’ve barely, if at all, larded the truth in my telling of the story and am rewarded with polite applause and many repetitions of
incredible
in Dutch. I think the duke enjoyed hearing me recount impressions in Italian to Hollanders who speak the language in what he calls the
sopravvivenza,
survival style, when I could have spoken more easily in English, which they all understand and speak quite well. Of couse he takes this as a show of deference to him rather than considering that I might prefer speaking in Italian. Lulled, now, and deep into their cups, the Hollanders talk quietly among themselves, comparing their gastronomic culture to this Tuscan one. Pupa comes out of the kitchen wiping her hands on her apron, makes room for herself between two of them, asks Giangiacomo to open more wine. She points to the bottles in scandalous formation at the end of the table and laughs. She says she loves the plump sound a cork makes as it’s urged, guided toward freedom. Her
mother once told her that opening wine is like birthing babies. Everyone likes the metaphor, save one magnificently pregnant woman, her head wound in thick blond braids. She absorbs her wince inside a smile.

Fernando nods Barlozzo and me up onto our feet and, our good-nights said, steers us out to the truck. Pewter gauze drapes the moon. Dogs bark and frilled, parched leaves whir about this night of November. And as though he’s finishing a sentence he’d begun a minute ago, the duke says, “What you should be doing is what you’re already doing. You should be cooking for people. Just like Pupa does. Much better than traipsing all over the earth with strangers in tow, telling them things they won’t remember and taking them places that are bound to come up short after that cruise to Cozumel or some whirl through Disneyland. Anyone with a whole soul and even the dimmest passion for adventure will find his own way through Tuscany. Write. Cook. That’s what you love to do.”

“We talk about having a little place of our own. We talk about it all the time,” says Fernando.

“I can help you negotiate with the Luccis about restructuring one of the outbuildings, about putting in a kitchen and making space for a few tables. And the permits would be no trouble, since your house is already licensed as an
agriturismo.
It would take very little to set up.”

“How is it that our house is officially an
agritursimo?”
Fernando wants to know.

“Another politesse passed to the nobility by the local authorities. Signora Lucci applied for funds to cover the costs of restructuring your house, signing papers that said the place would be used to attract tourism and to provide cultural activities. It’s so that she could have a state loan with less payback. The system is called
i patti territoriali a fondo perduto,
terrirtorial incentive or loans that require only partial restitution. Haven’t you ever wondered why she asks you to sign a different person’s name each month in her rent register? She’s covering herself should anyone come to check her records. By law, you’re living in a country hotel. But running a hotel or setting up concerts in the garden would be too much trouble, so she just collects her rent from you—in cash and under the table—on an abandoned building for which the government paid part of the expenses to repair and put in order. Or almost in order. The whole scheme is fairly common in these regions.”

I remember, now, the first day he visited us and what he said about Signora Lucci having done everything as cheaply as she could with the state’s allotment.

“And you want a person like her to be our patron in a business as well as our landlady?” Fernando asks him.

“Her noble morals won’t interfere with your less greedy ones. You can run your business as you see fit, as long as you pay her the
way she wants to be paid each month. With a fat, sealed, unmarked envelope. I just want you to put your energies into something that will work, that will bring you satisfaction. Do something small, contained, and with the least possibility of failure. I want you to stay here, to prosper here. Isn’t that what you want, too? You don’t want to send me back to playing cards with that Brazilian. All I ask is that you just consider it.” Caught by the wind, a brittle leaf raps fast against the window glass.

Consider it? I already know how it would look and feel and smell. A
taverna
it would be, a small room in a small town somewhere. The walls would be rough and washed in the color of ripe persimmons, the whole of it lit by a great black iron chandelier with forty candles and the flames of a fire. A single long table would be set before the hearth. Twelve chairs, maybe fifteen. That’s all. I’d offer supper, one supper each evening built from whatever was fine and just harvested. Yes, supper made of soup and bread, some winey stew of game or lamb, pungent with wild herbs and my joy in fixing it. I’d set down a shepherd’s cheese and then a nice slice of pie—one of berries, probably, or of opulent brown pears, their still-warm juices spilling over a yellow cornmeal crust and scribbling in the beaten cream beside it. Consider it? Yes, I promise I will. But now is the time for Fernando and me to invent something together. The
taverna
fantasy is mine. The project of the tours belongs to both of us.

We ask Barlozzo to leave us at the Centrale so we can walk up the
hill. We kiss him good night, ask him to please stop fussing and ranting about what we should and shouldn’t be doing, that we’ll decide things in our own way, in our own time. Eyes full of woe, he waves, drives off. Fernando and I both feel the old duke’s sadness, know that his discourse about our future, though sincere, was raised up tonight as smoke. Rooted deep as a weed in a wall is his anguish.

S
INCE
B
ARLOZZO CHOSE
not to accompany us on the trial tour, we decide not to wait out the week. Next morning we’re up at daybreak, packing sweaters and books and a few essentials, both of us excited about this journey. We close up the house and we’re off to ride the most wondrous roads in all of Tuscany. Our first stop will be the thermal village of Bagno Vignoni, then on to Pienza and Montichiello, San Quirico d’Orcia, Montalcino, Montepulciano. Just outside of Pienza, we ride a zigzag road beveled into a rise and paraded on either side by a courteous rank of soldier trees, black and inevitable. The female cypress grows fuller with age, more round and lush about her middle, while the male stays thin and dry. Both stand watch. Made of savage land, tamed, is this Tuscany, instructed by a million hands into obedience. A dominion all of silk and velvet, the green and pink and tawny stuff of her bestrides the curve of the earth tight as new skin, rolling, riffling, then plunging deep into a blind, hiding from the sun, resting herself before a sudden surge onto a slope smothered in wild roses. High on a steep, sheep crop
and chalky crags break the hills now and then, relieving the green that abides even in winter. The Tuscan light heaves glitter up at the olive leaves and they dance. In summer they dance as the poppies do and as the wheat does when it’s ripe, all of them keeping time with the winds and the birds’ wings beating. But today the branches are heavy with ready fruit, and so the leaves slow dance to a song of December. We wander in each of the villages, supping like warriors, drinking humble wines, astonishing wines. We sleep.

We telephone the bar each evening when it’s nearing seven, knowing everyone will be gathered for
aperitivi.
As though we were calling from Patagonia rather than from fifty kilometers up the road, they line up to take a turn at shouting the day’s news, which is mostly about what they’re cooking or who’s got the flu or how cold it was at dawn, always asking if there’s anything worth eating so far away from home. Admonishing us to take care. And it’s always Vera who reads our faxes to us. In a clear, official tone, she recites the English words as she perceives they should sound, pausing for punctuation and, at will, for gloss. I can hear how straight she keeps her shoulders, how high her chin. We understand nothing, yet we listen to her devotion. She will decode messages for two lambs in the wildeness, the wilderness which she is certain is everywhere away from her own doors.

One evening, it’s the duke who answers, without a greeting and against a strangely silent backdrop,
“Torna subito. La raccolta è cominciata.
Come back quickly. The olive harvest has begun.”

Castagnaccio

1 pound of chestnut flour (available in specialty stores and in every Italian grocery)

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

cold water

½ teaspoon sea salt

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

½ cup pine nuts (optional)

2 teaspoons rosemary leaves, minced to a powder

Preheat the oven to 400°. Lightly oil a 10-inch cake tin. Pour the flour and sea salt into a large bowl and, in a thin stream, begin adding cold water, beating with a fork or a wooden spoon, until the batter takes on the consistency of heavy cream. Add the oil and beat for half a minute more. If using the optional pine nuts and rosemary, add them along with the oil. Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake for 30 minutes, or until it takes on the dark look of a crackled chocolate cake. Serve warm in wedges, as is or with a spoonful of lightly sweetened ricotta and a few roasted walnuts. A small glass of chilled
vin santo
goes well with it, however it’s served.

Winter