A Thousand Days in Tuscany (24 page)

I
T
’
S THE SECOND
weekend of December and every little village and
borgo
is celebrating their own newly pressed oil. Bonfires in village squares, great wood-fired grills set up on which to roast bread and sausages, whole pigs gilding on spits, makeshift burners to heat red wine, accordion players, mandolin duets,
mangiafuochi,
fire-eaters,
giocolieri,
jesters in medieval dress, tarot readers in satin skirts come to say the future and bishops in silk robes come to bless the oil and the souls it will nourish. Pagan rites, sacred rites embraced together in the warmth of the long, licking flames of a fire. Country festivals are cures. Sweet revels come to interrupt the constancy that life asks of a farmer. We will go to the
sagra dell’olio nuovo
in Piazze along with almost everyone else in San Casciano. Twill jodhpurs, riding boots, a white lace shirt, its collar tight and high as my chin, a soft leather jacket the color of sweet wine, my hair pushed up inside a brown beret. The night is black and scented in wood smoke and new snow as we jump down from the duke’s truck on this Tuscan Saturday-night-at-the-world. In a wave of what seems like five hundred strong in a village where perhaps seventy-five people live, we walk in the dark toward the municipal parking lot, the scene of the
sagra.
We come upon the light. The first thing I see is the
paiuolo,
a cauldron rigged up over a fire that leaps from a pyramid of logs, waiting for a witch. There are beans cooking in it, red
borlotti
beans and the scored skins of a pig, branches of sage and rosemary, whole heads of bruised garlic, all of it bubbling in a broth of tomatoes and red wine. There are two narrow grills set up, each perhaps twelve feet long and glowing with the red and white ash of olive wood and vine cuttings. The crowd is thickest around them, waiting for the grilling of the bread, which would soon become bruschette. A man steps forward with a great basket of bread sliced into one-inch trenchers. With deft and flying fingers, he lays the bread along the lengths of first one and then the other grill, tilting around them to place a layer on the far side. The hot ash grazes the bread in less than a minute, and thus the man must race back to his first slice and turn it with the tongs just slapped into his hands as would be an instrument to a surgeon. In fact, he has two sets of tongs and uses them one after the other, never missing a beat. He is playing the marimba, turn, turn, dancing down one side of the grills and up the other in a thrillingly smooth glissade. When both sides of the bread are gently toasted, he lays the pieces onto restaurant-size sheet pans. Another dancer enters and drizzles gorgeous, thick green oil onto the hot bread from a two-liter bottle with a spigot, which he holds up a meter above the bread. The third dancer is behind him pinching sea salt over the oil, the pearly crumbles of it melting like ice on
a griddle over the very hot bread. As quickly as he finishes one tray, someone passes it to the crowd, and then another one passes the next, until all the bread has been distributed and the marimba master is beginning his dance all over again.

There is a proscenium of sorts built up on cinder blocks. A tasting panel composed of four gentlemen who sit in front of a white-clothed table set with six clear glass bottles, each filled with the oil of a different consortium and labeled with a number. A line of glass tumblers is arranged before each man and, with the pomp of a Burgundian auction, the tasting begins. The judges are retired farmers, and since farmers hardly ever retire in these parts, I guess their average age to be near ninety. All wear hats against the cold, most of them the typical
colbacco,
a rabbit-lined wool cap with earflaps. One braves the night in a fedora. The first oil is poured into their glasses and the four dip their wizened, rough old beaks in to whiff the oil’s perfume. They look at it in the dim light of the parking lot lamps and write impressions on yellow pads. They taste it, drink it in some cases. They write more impressions. They taste it on a piece of grilled bread and write again. There is no wine allowed on the dais, and I know this fact will cause a speedy finish to the event. Sure enough, the six oils are dispatched, smelled, tasted, drunk, and judged in as many minutes. The winner is announced and there is great cheering, whistling from the foot-stomping crowd. The oil
from Piazze’s consortium is the unanimous winner. Barlozzo says that’s because it was the only one entered, that all the bottles held the same oil and that those ancients wouldn’t know the difference between two oils if one of them was from Puglia. Or Greece, for that matter. Still he goes up to congratulate the judges and the mill owner. His fondness for his neighbors is as clear as is the false sarcasm he uses to hide it.

Attention is turned back to the dais as the mayor is announcing the winners of the evening’s raffle, the proceeds of which are destined to cover the costs of whitewashing the interior of the chapel of Sant’Agata. The premiums are ported up onto the dais on the beefy shoulders of eight men, and the sight of the four whole
mortadelle—
each of them weighing in at twenty kilos—tantalize the screaming crowd into frenzy. First prize is two whole
mortadelle,
second prize, one whole mortadella, third prize, half a mortadella, fourth prize, the other half of the third prize.

A mandolin accompanies a whiskey voice torching out the evils of false love, and we wander toward the wine, served almost boiling from ceramic pitchers into styrofoam cups. Holding the hot things with two hands, sipping gingerly, we are warmed. We find seats at the communal tables, each of us in a different place. On one side, I’m snuggled close to the butcher who is wearing neither his cleaver nor his modish belt this evening; on the other side is a Roman who
says he comes each year for this
sagra
on a bus with thirty-five other Romans. People at the table chide him for remaining a city slicker when life is so much more wonderful in Piazze. There is no trope, no satire but only a sincere desire to convince the Roman of what they believe.

More
bruschette
and jugs of wine drawn from barrels are passed about the tables, and now the beans are ladled out into white plastic bowls, the good spicy scent whipping our hungers.
“Evviva, i fagioli,”
shout the men as if they’d struck gold. “Eureka, the beans.” Stewed and plumped to silk in the old cauldron, their flavor explodes in the mouth, then comforts, nearly like an unexpected kiss does from lips placed hard on the nape of the neck. A piece of bread, another spoonful of beans, now some wine, each food exalting the other. Beans and bread and oil and wine. So what does it mean to be poor? I ask myself once again.

B
ARLOZZO TOOTS HIS
horn at 3:00 a.m. on Christmas Eve, ready to drive us to Norcia to hunt for black diamonds. Truffles. There in the southeastern part of Umbria close to the region of Abruzzo, the mystical tubers grow not so deep beneath the roots of oak, hazelnut, and birch trees. A local zealot called Virgilio—the duke’s old chum—will lead us up into the hills. We meet him at the appointed hour and place. Wrapped in the traditional black wool
cape of the
trifolau,
truffle hunter, a short-brimmed leather hat perched at an almost foppish slant, he and the camouflage-jacketed duke are an unlikely couple. We leave Barlozzo’s truck in a field and climb into the back of Virgilio’s pickup to sit among coils of rope and empty wine demijohns while he and the duke pass a grappa bottle back and forth up in the cab. As we begin our hike, Virgilio tells us he’s been digging truffles for sixty years, that by now he can
sense
them even when it’s this cold, as long as the ground isn’t frozen. He says that his dog, Mariarosa, is nearly superfluous. “I’ve outlived generations of fine truffle-hunting bastards and I paid attention to every one of them, learned from them. The last one before Mariarosa was eighteen years old when she died. And as her senses dimmed, mine seemed to grow keener, as though she’d signed hers over to me. And so when she passed on, I just thought I’d carry on alone. That is until Mariarosa began following me one day. A small, bright bastard, just as any good truffle dog must be, she’s more faithful than a wife,” says Virgilio, who now seems tired from such a long soliliquy.

Barlozzo takes on the character of Virgilio, grunting answers to our questions, sometimes looking off into the distance when we speak, not hearing us at all. Or is it that I can better recognize Barlozzo’s manner as it resonates in Virgilio? It hardly matters at this moment, in the powdered blue dawning of a Christmas. We tramp the mystical hills where once lived saints and serpents, and only our
boots and our breathing and the cawing of some bird interrupt the whisperings of the snow. Mariarosa stops short by the roots of an oak, sniffs them. She barks then howls, prancing in ecstatic leaps, ears folded back in the wind, nose in the air. Mariarosa has found a truffle. Virgilio quiets her to a panting whine, kneels beneath the tree, gently scrapes away, with a trowel of sorts, at a point under some of the smaller roots. He uses the instrument as a shovel then, but takes only tablespoons of earth at a time, touching the place with long, searching, ungloved fingers and pulls up the truffle, shaking just some of the black, thick dirt from it, placing it carefully inside the canvas sack he wears across his chest. He feels about the spot once again, then covers it up, pats it as though in thanks, and walks on. He brings Mariarosa’s snout down to scent the place where the truffle was found, pulls her close into his arms for an embrace, takes a biscuit from his pocket. Her prize. With only slight variations, Mariarosa and Virgilio repeat this magical performance four, five, six times before he announces it’s time for his breakfast, that we’re welcome to join him. He hands Barlozzo the sack to inhale and inspect and we huddle about him, yelping and groaning for the joy of such bounty, naming the dishes they’ll grace over the next few weeks.

“Calmatevi,”
says the duke, “calm yourselves. We’ll see how many of them go home with us after they’re weighed and priced.”

We settle ourselves around a table in a small
osteria.
It’s the last table, in fact, as the place is all abuzz with hunters, most of them stripped down to their woolen undershirts, at home in the smoky, steam-heated quarters, resting from their battles, quaffing liters of red, sitting in front of beefsteaks or bowls of thick soup and plates heaped with pasta. It’s just after eight in the morning. But we, too, have been on the road since 3:00 a.m., just as they were in the woods or on the hills by then, and so this sort of early feasting seems just.

We begin with
frittata di tartufi
—a flat, thin, paper thin omelette, nearly orange in color from rich yolks given up by corn-fed hens—with fat black disks of musky truffle showing themselves all over it. In fact, it seems the eggs are merely transportation, a buttery, golden medium to get the truffles to the table. I reach for a first sip of wine but the duke stops me, says to wait. Cutting the great circle into four wedges, serving Virgilio and then us, delivering the last to his own plate with skill and pomp, he says, “Eat this immediately and with your eyes closed.”

I slide down a bit in my chair, ravished and nearly disbelieving the sensations caused by an egg, a wild tuber, and a knob of sweet butter. Fernando sits dutifully with eyes still closed until the duke breaks the spell and says with glass raised,
“Buon Natale, ragazzi.
Merry Christmas, kids.”

Even Virgilio seems pleased with our response to the first course of the breakfast, and he tells us, “This is the one truly perfect way to eat a truffle. The eggs are cooked over a low flame only to softness in good, white butter. And just at the moment they’re about to set, one slices the truffle over all, as much of it as one can buy or steal. Cover the pan for a few seconds to warm the truffle, to release its power. Bring the pan to the table. But that’s not the whole recipe. Everything else has to be just right, as well. No wine, empty stomach, ferocious hunger, fine company or no company at all. It’s like making love, one thing out of place and it’s all mechanical, no more exciting than potatoes and eggs.”

Perhaps it’s not so much that Virgilio is prone to silence as he is to saving his breath for plucking straight into the pith of things.

I
T
’
S NEARLY DARK
when we pull into the drive at Palazzo Barlozzo. The village is twilit, asleep beneath the fogs. I stand at the edge of the garden to look at her, watching as the windows, one by one, turn golden. Fernando and Barlozzo are making some sort of plans for later but I’m not listening. I throw a kiss to the duke and walk up the stairs, aching for a warm bath.

There’s a tree in the tub. There are six-foot evergreens in jute sacks leaning in the bedroom, in the front entryway, on the landing, there are five of them in the stable and the whole place smells, feels
like a forest, and I love it. Fernando is laughing and grinning close behind me as I discover his gifts.

“I told the
vivaio
to deliver them this morning. I left the key for him and a bottle of wine. Aren’t they wonderful? After Epiphany, we’ll plant them all along the farthest boundary of the garden and they’ll be beautiful. It was the best present I could think of for us.
Un gesto simbolico,
a symbolic gesture, I guess. We’ll transplant them like we did ourselves,” he tells me.

I kiss him hard and long and then kiss him again. We take our bath, rest a bit, then dress and go downstairs to open some wine, but the duke is already there with a fire lit and the horrid, carbonated wine he calls
vino da festa,
festival wine, sitting in a bucket. A tall, fat silver fir, its tip bent by the too-low rafters, sits in a black metal stand in front of the kitchen door.

“I didn’t know where to put it, so I just stood it there in the meantime. I know you’re going to scream at me for killing a tree, but this is the first Christmas when I’ve
felt
like it was Christmas in a very long time and I really cut it down for myself and only brought it here because your place is bigger than mine,” he says, grinning.