Every Day in Tuscany, page 25
I never will completely get over the nagging sense: I should be doing something. But my friends and neighbors in Cortona don’t have that particular demon. They are doing what they need to do by being. People who own so much historical time must feel more comfortable inside time. I see: Time can be a river for floating. Our friends drop in. They call and propose spontaneous excursions. They stay out late having dinner on Wednesday nights. We hardworking Americans instead fight time, wring time out, push up against time, clock ourselves constantly. Italians relish the day. Carpe diem, they repeated for so many centuries that they don’t have to say it anymore.
“They’re playing, you know?” I said to Ed. “They’re not force-feeding their days.”
WHILE LEARNING ITALIAN, what began to loosen in my skull was the tightly wound spool of should, a word I’ve always found deeply allergic, a word that takes a tremendous toll in time squandered. When my mother said “you should,” I was quickly figuring out why I would not. “Should” was a word that figured in my leaving my first marriage. But conversely, I’d always applied the word in many guises to myself. You should brush the dog, fluff the pillows, water the plants, clean out the fireplace, get a haircut, replace the cushions the squirrels destroyed. On and on. Then the big one: You should speak fluently.
But I had to speak. Before I could speak. Letting loose in language, mistakes and all, finally cut that restraint. The Italians didn’t care that I bumbled the conditional tense. Better to fail than feel hesitant. Better to let the cushion fluff provide nesting for birds than to experience lo stress. Better to have no houseplants. Maybe never mastering the conditional freed me, broke the hold of the brutto word should.
Isn’t it best—to surprise your own life? Beats the bejesus out of my tidy priorities. Hemingway said sometimes he could write better than he could write. If I can extrapolate that—Italians live better than mere living. Even those with little live as though they were put here to flourish and praise.
My flowered project boxes become time capsules. I find menus from Elba, scraps of paper with quotes from Horace, outlines I’ll never follow, images detached from their origins, such as:
His imprecise features look as though his face has come unstuck from a gelatin mold and is slightly melting.
And:
A miraculous face—surely she grew not normally but from a bulb deep in earth, issuing forth as if a lily.
Will I ever use those?
MATERIAL OFTEN DOES not like to stay in its appropriate box and wants to leap over into another. While slowly writing this memoir, I’m finishing a book of travel narratives. I’m also hunting and gathering for a book about moving back to the South. I’ve started a magazine article. The South, I find, especially intrudes.
I often consider what my life would have been had I stayed in my hometown, married my first love, who was so beautiful, with eyes green as jasper, black hair cut too short, and a tiny space between his front teeth. With him I could have put down the tap root in the fecund soil of south Georgia. I almost can see it. The one trip to England for Shakespeare and Keats, the blissful vacations at Fernandina Beach where I spent summers as a child, compiling the Methodist Church cookbook, and restoring my grandfather’s half-burned house. I deeply admire those who continue to live under the protective veil of deep familiarity. I have traveled much in Fitzgerald. The scenario is vividly imaginable/unimaginable. There I might have written seven southern novels by now, become an eccentric, caused a few scandals. There would still be those who said, “Got your daddy’s lips. I’d know you anywhere.”
At sixteen, I was, way down in the swamps, already dreaming of old-world avenues with chestnuts in bloom, wavy colored reflections in the Grand Canal, and most of all the dry Attic air of Greece, where even the wind might seem to blow ancient sighs of the Oracle.
In my high-school senior notebook I wrote only one sentence from the required reading of The Old Man and the Sea:
I have seen the lions on the beach at evening.
The colors of the sand and the light glancing off the water and the tawny animals cuffing each other and tumbling—the whole image rose in my mind, as though I actually had seen those lions pacing the tide line in Africa.
Instead of staying where I belonged, I took the first thing smoking on the runway out of Georgia. My grandfather said I could go to college anywhere I wanted as long as it was not north of the Mason-Dixon line. I had an unexplainable longing to escape. Is there a genetic marker for that? I made it to Virginia.
In college I heard a speech by Ramsey Clark, then attorney general. He talked about the passionate, active life and concluded that when he died, he wanted to be exhausted. “Just throw me on the scrap heap,” he said. Amen, I thought. A way to double life, I thought. When I move on to glory (let’s assume), I hope I will have lived twice the years actually granted to me.
I LET THIS southern interlude into my pages today because the force to go probably landed me in Italy, in this study where I lean out the window drinking light, this unlikely place for a south Georgia girl who spent high school reading about The War between the States.
Could I as well be in the front bedroom at Daddy Jack’s house, my desk in front of the fireplace, the flower-sprigged wallpaper, my papers spread on the blanket chest, and Aunt Hazel’s iron bulldog to keep me company? How—ever—to understand one’s choices? One thing leads to another, my mother would say with resignation. Maybe it’s that simple. Mr. Ramsey Clark, yes, writing and reading sustain me, pleasures to keep for an entire life, as politics did yours. As for exhaustion, wait—I’m not tired yet.
MY STUDY SEEMS like a visible expression of mind: the jar from Greece where I keep pens; the wall cabinet Antonio made, lined with old photos of Italians; a row of inks I rarely use but think I’m going to; the walnut desk—long enough—that Fabrizio found for me; books stacked on the deep sill—and I must move them when it rains because the window leaks—the stuffed bookcase Ann Cornelisen gave me when she left Italy for good and never wrote a book again. One window looks south, the other east, always magnets causing me to look out. The small room is pale yellow with a border Eugenio painted under the beams, of the wild potato vine that crawls over our hills and the birds and butterflies that visit the garden, sometimes flying in one window and out the other, as though this room were part of the trees and sky, and maybe it is. This study, this house and garden, this town and landscape have given me books to write. I wish I could do justice to the place. In a life, though, whether you meet your aspirations or only strive, the important thing is the passionate interest, that true-north needle keeping you focused. I’m not the tortured kind of writer who forces herself to the computer and cranks out a certain number of words a day. Since age nine, when I found out that you didn’t have to be dead to be a writer, I always thought writing books was the best life I could imagine—joyful and exciting. I was right.
Later, when I toyed with architecture as a profession, I still intended to write. But then I had to admit that I was not going to get beyond the quadratic equation in math. My interest, I told myself loftily, was in the integrity of buildings, how they interacted with their surroundings and people—not with the intricacies of structures, the vents and insulation and conduits. Especially since those aspects required advanced math. Now I would just like to write a book about buildings I admire.
Writing is play. You choose a subject and set out to learn and think as much as you can about it. Then you get to let your imagination loose in the arena. My project boxes remind me of the cigar boxes I used to collect and stack in my toy cabinet. One held pieces of pretty broken glass. In others I collected postcards, paper dolls, crayons, and shells. In this grown-up playroom I like to layer a lot of possibilities that may spark energy and combust among themselves. Maybe one idea hybridizes into an unexpected chain of thoughts.
I used to quote Ezra Pound’s dictum to my students: Make it new. He meant this as a push toward the creative, a push away from what’s known, accepted, expected. To fall into grooves already well worn may be comfortable, but it’s hard to rise over the edges of what you’ve fallen into. To poets, he was admonishing them to abandon the old forms and rhymes, to find their voices in something fresh. As a life philosophy, make it new challenges the day. As a writer, he knew his business.
IN MY HERB garden, I made a table out of a slab of marble I found in the weeds when we moved in. This table under a pear tree became my sanctuary, my outdoor study. I balance a bowl of pasta with arugula pesto on my notebook and climb the steps to the first terrace level. One stone is loose and someone could stumble if it gave way. Oh, yes, the land always has something in mind for us to do.
I flash on the blistering work we did to rebuild the herb garden after the stone wall fell. Aches, sweat, scratches. I developed sciatica and barely could get out of bed. Still, we loved the work; we were living in the world of the project. Drawing the plan, planting the voluptuous Eden roses to climb the wall, watching bees ricochet among the new plants, lying in the grass at night watching falling stars, chasing fireflies, driving back from the nursery in the hot Fiat with scents of herbs filling the car. We made this room outside.
As indoors and outdoors became seamless, I got back the thrilling feeling I had in the long twilights of a Georgia summer when all the neighborhood children played kick the cans in the alleys and hide-and-seek among the bridal wreath bushes and old matriach gardenias. When the mothers began to call, often we pretended not to hear. We were on the cusp of night in soft southern air, held in that air as though we belonged to the place itself and not the lighted houses with mothers outlined in the doorways.
Instead of being surrounded by bookshelves inside, I’m within a softer surround: tarragon, rue, lemon balm, mints, lavender, santolina, roses, and the afternoon ahead with no more to do than watch the lambent rays streak the valley below. A dangling olive branch brushes my neck. Did my mother’s spirit flash by?
Just as I open my book, I hear “C’è nessuno?” Anyone home? Chiara comes in the gate, smiling up at me. She’s holding a colander and because it is September, I know she is bringing blackberries. Carpe diem. Carpe lucem. Seize the day. Seize the light.
Permission for the New
THE BUTCHER GAVE ME A HUNK OF PROSCIUTTO bone. When I brought it home Gilda laughed. “This goes back, way back,” she said. “My grandmother used to cook these. You only find it”—she gestured toward the mountains—“in remote places.” She soaked it for two days in water to release the salt, stripped off the meat, added tomato and cannellini beans, then put the pot on to simmer. Last night we were astonished to taste the intense meat, and the thick rough stew infused with a dense, rich, confit taste. Some flavors evoke memory and emotion. This dish recalled the contadini who always used what they had. It tasted as though it had been prepared with a ladle of time added to the pot. Ancient wisdom: Scrape the bone for every shred of flavor. And, simultaneously, it was a big new treat to us.
IN JUST THIS way, what’s old becomes new again.
Walter comes to the door this morning with long rolls of architectural drawings under his arm. As usual, he’s impeccable in a light brown suede jacket, just pressed pants, and polished shoes. Looking at him inspires confidence that any project he supervises will exceed specs; the attention to detail will drive builders mad. But fortunately, Rosanno, one builder he often selects, may be as particular as he. Together, they’d be the ones to deliver Bramasole into its next stage of life. He’s smiling and shaking his head in disbelief. “Great news. The comune has approved everything. Tutto. Veremente un miracolo.” Everything. Truly a miracle.
He comes inside and, first things first, Ed makes espresso. Walter spreads out the drawings, awed over all the approvals of usually difficult requests. They’ve even approved a two-car garage into the hillside because seventy years ago Bramasole was a house for the owner and for the farm tenant. Any garage used to be impossible, then one per house was allowed as long as it could be concealed. Two is a coup. “Look, the back terrace. The doubling of the living room. The pool out on the point, only they want you to move it over two meters.”
We did not expect a decision so soon. Over the six months since application, the value of our portfolio of investments has nose-dived in the American recession. “The timing is now a problem,” Ed starts.
Walter has anticipated as much and waves his arm. “My friends, don’t worry. We have three years to complete the work. And extensions are possible. Just spend time thinking, planning, even looking for special materials. You’re going to want an old fireplace in stone, stone door surrounds and wooden doors; don’t worry.”
We chat about his daughter graduating from law school, his mother’s illness. He’s determined now to move into his dream villa. Then he’s answering his phone and must rush.
We stare at each other. All the ambitious possibilities for Bramasole’s transformation spread and curl across the table. For most of the summer, we didn’t talk about the Great Remodel. Occasionally, when Ed checked our plummeting investment balance, he’d curse and say we shouldn’t spend anything.
As I put on the pasta water for lunch and Ed starts the salad, we both speak at once, “You know, I’m not so sure …” We laugh.
We’ve both been thinking to ourselves, mulling through these weeks, and quietly came to the same conclusion. Bramasole is what it is, as Fulvio told us. Changing it, even for such great luxive improvements as Walter and we envisioned, might mean we’d lose our deepest psychological connection with the house. I’m fearful of wedding the patinas of its history to updated surfaces and structures, even carefully executed works. Redone, it would be brilliant but not as intriguing and mysterious. We fear it would be cored of its anima, soul.
“But the roof,” I begin. Just this morning I heard the owl stomping in the attic over my head. Trickle marks of rain down the pale yellow walls don’t classify as charming patina.
“Agreed. We must replace the roof,” Ed says. “Rosanno says it’s dangerous up there.”
“Well, over two hundred years—the beams underneath must be twigs. Rosanno said they’d use as much of the old tile as possible.”
“Yes, and we have another stash, remember, from the side of Fonte that had collapsed.” We, like all Tuscans in old houses, keep our piles of stone, brick, and tile. You never know when they may be useful.
“And Ed, the terrace door. We’ve just got to do some maintenance things even though they’re not exciting.”
“The screens.”
“Oh, I forgot. The humidity problem.” Since the living room walls dried by June and I swabbed them with two coats of whitewash, I’d blocked out the moldy smell of spring, the white-sprouted wall, and the dehumidifier toiling away.
We stare at the plans. Just what we’ve mentioned sounds scary, given the economy. What if it plunges further?
I take the plates to the table, pushing aside the neat and inspired plans. “Let’s wait six months to decide on how and when we’ll get into all this.”
“Even if we hadn’t lost a sacco di soldi, I think we would have come to the same decision. It seems right.” Ed serves the salad. He has made a ton. We’re going back to the United States soon and he wants to graze completely through the orto lettuces before we go. “The time. All the meetings over every little doorknob. The trips to the bank. I’m over the whole remodeling venture. I need a remodel myself.”
“And it’s just not long since Fonte and the fallen walls. We need to focus on our own lives.” I’m dreaming already of traveling for my southern book and of a garden plan I’ve revealed to no one. Time has been on my mind all year. I’m dreaming of free-running hours.
“We’re used to the small kitchen. I’m attached to the platters all around the room. Just grab one when you need to.”
“Not everything has to be perfect.”
“When was it ever?”
“It’s been close enough.”
“Yes,” I admit. We’ve been lucky to live in this dream-catcher, quirky house. “Remember that dream I had? When that stern dean tried to make me choose between my arm and Bramasole?”
“Yes, you couldn’t.”
“Now I can. I’d choose my arm, thank you very much. A slow sifting of priorities, I guess.”
“Well, I knew you would go for the arm, even if you didn’t.” “Remember that Auden poem we used to love:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;Our dream of safety has to disappear.”
“Yes—’Leap Before You Look,’ or is it ‘Look Before You Leap’?”
“Actually, it is leap first—reminds me of swinging out over the river on a vine and there’s that moment just before you start to swing back. That’s the moment to drop, the only moment. Just as your hands let go, before you fall and the river catches you, the exhilaration …”
“So, you’re saying?”
“Let’s do what has to be done but beyond that, let’s swing out over the river and let go. Just see how we can open up to what’s new. Faith.”
