Under the Tuscan Sun

by Frances Mayes

  Ferro battuto, wrought iron, is an ancient craft in Tuscany. Every town has intricate locks on medieval doors, curly lanterns, holders for standards, garden gates, even fanciful iron animals and serpents shaped into rings for tying horses to the wall. Like other artisan traditions, this one is fast disappearing and it's easy to see why. The key word in blacksmith is black. His shop is charred, soot covers him, the antiquated equipment, and the forges that seem to have changed very little since Hephaestus lit the fire in Aphrodite's stove. Even the air seems hung with a fine veil of soot. All his neighbors have gates made by him. It must be satisfying to see one's work all around like that. His own house has a square patterned balcony, a flirtation, no doubt, with moderne, redeemed by attached baskets for flowers. The shop faces the house and between them are hens, ten or so cages of rabbits, a vegetable garden, and a plum tree with a handmade wooden ladder leaning up into the laden branches. After supper, he must climb up a few rungs and pick his dessert. My impression that he stepped out of time strengthens. Where is Aphrodite, surely somewhere near this forge?

  “Time. Time is the only thing,” he says. “I am solo. I have a son but . . .”

  I can't imagine, at the end of the twentieth century, someone choosing this dark forge with traffic whizzing by, this collection of bands for wine barrels, andirons, fences, and gates. But I hope his son does step into it, or someone does. He brings over a rod that ends with a squared head of a wolf. He just holds it out to me, without a word. It reminds me of torch holders in Siena and Gubbio. We ask for an estimate to repair the cancello, also for an estimate for a new gate, rather simple but with a running form similar to the iron stair railing in the house, maybe a sun shape at the top closing, to go with the house's name. For once, we don't start asking for the date of completion, the one thing we've learned to insist on to counter the enviable Latin sense of endless time.

  Do we really need a handmade gate? We keep saying, Let's keep it simple, this is not our real home. But somehow I know we'll want one he makes, even if it takes months. Before we leave, he forgets us. He's picking up pieces of iron, holding them in both hands for the heft or balance. He wanders among the anvils and hot grates. The gate will be in good hands. Already I can imagine its clank as I close it behind me.

  THE WELL AND THE WALL FEEL LIKE SIGNIFICANT accomplishments. The house, however, still is untouched. Until the main jobs are finished, there is little to do. No point in painting, when the walls will have to be opened for the heating pipes. The Poles have stripped the windows and have begun scrubbing down the whitewash in preparation for painting. Ed and I work on the terraces or travel around selecting bathroom tile, fixtures, hardware, paint; we look, too, for the old thin bricks for the new kitchen's floor. One day we buy two armchairs at a local furniture store. By the time they're delivered, we realize they're awkward and the dark paisley fabric rather weird, but we find them sumptuously comfortable, after sitting upright in the garden chairs for weeks. On rainy nights we pull them face-to-face with a cloth-covered crate between them, our dining table with a candle, jam jar with wildflowers, and a feast of pasta with eggplant, tomatoes, and basil. On cool nights we build a twig fire for a few minutes, just to take the damp chill off the room.

  Unlike last summer, this July is rainy. Impressive storms hit frequently. In the daytime, I'm thrilled because of my childhood in the South, where they really know how to put on the sound and light. San Francisco rarely has thunderstorms and I miss them. “This heat has to break,” my mother would say, and it would, with immense cracks and bolts followed by sheet lightning when the whole sky flashes on a million kilowatts. Often the storms seem to arrive at night. I'm sitting up in bed, drawing kitchen and bathroom plans on graph paper; Ed is reading something I never expected to see him reading. Instead of the Roman poets, tonight it's Plastering Skills. Beside him is The Home Water Supply. Rain starts to clatter in the palm trees. I go to the window and lean out, then quickly step back. Bolts spear into the ground—jagged like cartoon drawings of lightning—four, five, six at once, surrounding the house. Thunderheads swarm over the hills and the quiet rolling suddenly changes its tune and starts to explode so close it feels like my own backbone snapping. The house shakes; this is serious. The lights go out. We fasten the windows inside and still the wind whips rain through cracks we didn't know were there. Spooky wind sucks in and out of the chimney. Wild night. Rain lashes the house and the two silly palms give and give in the wind. I smell ozone. I am certain the house has been struck. This storm has selected our house. It won't move on; we're the center and may be washed downhill to Lake Trasimeno. “Which would you prefer,” I ask, “landslide or direct hit by lightning?” We get under the covers like ten-year-olds, shouting “Stop!” and “No!” each time the sky lights up. Thunder enters the walls and rearranges the stones.

  When the big storm starts passing to the north, the black sky is left washed clean for stars. Ed opens the window and the breeze sends in pine scent from blown-down limbs and scattered needles. The electricity still is out. As we sit propped up on pillows, waiting for our hearts to slow down, we hear something at the window. A small owl has landed on the sill. Its head swivels back and forth. Perhaps its perch was blown down or it is disoriented by the storm. When the moon breaks through the clouds, we can see the owl staring inside at us. We don't move. I'm praying, Please don't come in the room. I am deathly afraid of birds, a holdover phobia from childhood, and yet I am entranced by the small owl. Owls seem always to be more than themselves, totemic in America, symbolic at least, and here, mythological as well. I think of Minerva's owl. But really it's just a small creature that belongs to this hill. We have seen its larger forebears several times at evening. Neither of us speaks. Since it stays, we finally fall asleep and wake in the morning to see that it has flown. At the window, only the quarter of six light—raked gold angling across the valley, suffusing the air briefly before the sun clears the hills and lifts into the absolved, clear day.

  The

  Wild Orchard

  THE WATERMELON HOUR—A FAVORITE pause in the afternoon. Watermelon is arguably the best taste in the world, and I must admit that the Tuscan melons rival in flavor those Sugar Babies we picked hot out of the fields in South Georgia when I was a child. I never mastered the art of the thump. Whether the melon is ripe or not, the thump sounds the same to me. Each one I cut, however, seems to be at its pinnacle—toothy crispness, audacious sweetness. When we're sharing melon with the workers, I notice that they eat the white of the melon. When they finish, their rind is a limp green strip. Sitting on the stone wall, sun on my face, big slice of watermelon—I'm seven again, totally engrossed in shooting seeds between my fingers and spooning out circles from the dripping quarter moon of fruit.

  Suddenly, I notice the five pine trees edging the driveway are full of activity. It sounds as though squirrels are pulling Velcro apart, or biting into panini, those hard Italian rolls. A man leaps from his car, quickly picks up three cones, and speeds off. Then Signor Martini arrives. I expect he's bringing news of someone who can plow the terraces. He picks up a cone and shakes it against the wall. Out come black nubs. He cracks one with a rock and holds up a husk-covered oval. “Pinolo,” he announces. Then he points to the dusky beads scattered all over the driveway. “Torta della nonna,” he states, in case I missed the significance. Better still, I think, pesto to make with all the proliferating basil that resulted from sticking six plants in the ground. I love pine nuts on salads. Pine nuts! And I've been stepping on them.

  Of course I knew that pinoli come from pine trees. I've even inspected trees in my yard at home to see if, somewhere hidden in the cone, I would find pine nuts. I never thought of the trees lining the driveway as the bearers; thus far they simply have been trees that need no immediate attention. They're those painterly-looking pines, sometimes stunted by coastal winds, that line many Mediterranean beach towns, the kind Dante wandered among at Ravenna when he was in exile there. These along the driveway are feathery and
tall. Imagine that plain pino domestico (I see in my tree book) will yield those buttery nuts, so delicious when toasted. One of the nonnas who make all those heavy pinolo studded tarts must have lived here. She must have made delectable ravioli with ground nocciole, hazelnut, stuffing, and macaroons and other torte, too, because there also are twenty almonds and a shady hazelnut tree that droops with its crop of nuts. The nocciola grows with a chartreuse ruff around the nut, as though each one is ready to be worn in a lapel. The almonds are encased in tender green velvet. Even the tree that collapsed over the terrace and must be dying has sent out a plentiful crop.

  Perhaps Signor Martini should be back at the office, prepared to show more foreign clients houses without roofs or water, but he joins me picking up the pinoli. Like most Italians I've met, he seems to have time to give. I love his quality of becoming involved in the moment. The sooty covering quickly blackens our hands. “How do you know so many things—were you born in the country?” I ask. “Is this the one day the cones fall?” He has told me previously that the hazelnuts are ripe on August 22, feast day of the foreign St. Filbert.

  He tells me he grew up in Teverina, on down the road from Bramasole's località, and lived there until the war. I would love to know if he turned partisan or if he stuck to Mussolini until the end, but I merely ask if the war came near Cortona. He points up to the Medici fortress above the house. “The Germans occupied the fort as a radio communication center. Some of the officers quartered in the farmhouses came back after the war and bought those places.” He laughs. “Never understood why the peasants weren't helpful.” We've piled twenty or so cones on the wall.

  I don't ask if this house was occupied by Nazis. “What about the partisans?”

  “Everywhere,” he says, gesturing. “Even thirteen-year-old boys—killed while picking strawberries or tending sheep. Shot. Mines everywhere.” He does not continue. Abruptly, he says his mother died at ninety-three a few years ago. “No more torta della nonna.” He is in a wry mood today. After I squash several pinoli flat with a stone, he shows me how to hit so that the shell releases the nut whole. I tell him my father is dead, my mother confined since a major stroke. He says he is now alone. I don't dare ask about wife, children. I have known him two summers and this is the first personal information we have exchanged. We gather the cones into a paper bag and when he leaves he says, “Ciao.” Regardless what I've learned in language classes, among adults in rural Tuscany ciao is not tossed about. Arrivederla or, more familiarly, arrivederci are the usual good-byes. A little shift has occurred.

  After half an hour of banging pine nuts, I have about four tablespoons. My hands are sticky and black. No wonder the two-ounce cellophane bags at home are so expensive. I have in mind that I will make one of those ubiquitous torta della nonnas, which seem sometimes to be the beginning and end of Italian desserts. The French and American variety of desserts is simply not of interest in the local cuisine. I'm convinced you have to have been raised on most Italian sweets to appreciate them; generally, their cakes and pastries are too dry for my palate. Torta della nonna, fruit tarts, perhaps a tiramisu (a dessert I loathe)—that's it, except in expensive restaurants. Most pastry shops and many bars serve this grandmother's torte. Though they can be pleasing, sometimes they taste as though intonaco, plaster, is one of the ingredients. No wonder Italians order fruit for dessert. Even gelato, which used to be divine all over Italy, is not dependably good anymore. Though many advertise that the gelato is their own, they neglect to say it's sometimes made with envelopes of powdered mix. When you find the real peach or strawberry gelato, it's unforgettable. Fortunately, fruit submerged in bowls of cool water seems perfect at the end of a summer dinner, especially with the local pecorino, Gorgonzola, or a wedge of parmigiano.

  Translating grams into cups as best I can, I copy a recipe from a cookbook. Hundreds of versions of torta della nonna exist. I like the kind with polenta in the cake and a thin layer of filling in the middle. I don't mind the extra hour to pound open the pine nuts that at home I would have pulled from the freezer. First, I make a thick custard with two egg yolks, 1/3 cup flour, 2 cups milk, and ½ cup sugar. This makes too much, for my purposes, so I pour two servings into bowls to eat later. While the custard cools, I make the dough: 1–½ cups polenta, 1–½ cups flour, 1/3 cup sugar, 1–½ teaspoons baking powder, 4 oz. butter cut into the dry ingredients, one whole egg plus one yolk stirred in. I halve the dough and spread one part in a pie pan, cover with custard, then roll out the other half of the dough and cover the custard, crimping the edges of the dough together. I sprinkle a handful of toasted pine nuts on top and bake at 350° for twenty-five minutes. Soon the kitchen fills with a promising aroma. When it smells done, I place the golden torta on the kitchen windowsill and dial Signor Martini's number. “My torta della nonna is ready,” I tell him.

  When he arrives I brew a pot of espresso, then cut him a large piece. With the first forkful, he gets a dreamy look in his eyes.

  “Perfetto” is his verdict.

  BESIDES THE NUTS, THE ORIGINAL NONNA PLANNED MORE OF an Eden here. What's left: three kinds of plums (the plump Santa Rosa type are called locally coscia di monaca, nun's thigh), figs, apples, apricots, one cherry (half dead), apples, and several kinds of pears. Those ripening now are small green-going-to-russet, with a crisp sweetness. Her gnarly apples—I'd love to know what varieties they are—may not be salvageable, but they're now putting forth dwarfish fruit that looks like the before pictures in ads for insect sprays. Many of the trees must be volunteers; they're too young to have been alive when someone lived here, and often they're in odd places. Since four plums are directly below a line of ten on a terrace, they obviously sprang from fallen fruit.

  I'm sure she gathered wild fennel, dried the yellow flowers, and tossed the still-green bunches onto the fire when she grilled meat. We uncover grapes buried in the brush along the edges of the terraces. Some aggressive ones still send out long tangles of stems. Tiny bunches are forming. Along the terraces like a strange graveyard, the ancient grape stones are still in place—knee-high stones shaped like headstones, with a hole for an iron rod. The rod extends beyond the edge of the terrace, thereby giving the grower more space. Ed strings wire from rod to rod and lifts the grapes up to train them along the wire. We're amazed to realize that the whole place used to be a vineyard.

  At the huge enoteca in Siena, a government-sponsored tasting room where wines from all over Italy are displayed and poured, the waiter told us that most Italian vineyards are less than five acres, about our size. Many small growers join local cooperatives in producing various kinds of wine, including vino da tavola, table wine. As we hoe weeds around the vines, naturally, we begin to think of a year 2000 Bramasole Gamay or Chianti. The uncovered grapes explain the heaps of bottles we inherited. They may yield the rough-and-ready red served in pitchers in all the local restaurants. Or perhaps the flinty Grechetto, a lemon white wine of this area. Ah, yes, this land was waiting for us. Or we for it.

  Nonna's most essential, elemental ingredient surely was olive oil. Her woodstove was fired with the prunings; she dipped her bread in a plate of oil for toast, she doused her soups and pasta sauces with her lovely green oil. Cloth sacks of olives hung in the chimney to smoke over the winter. Even her soap was made from oil and the ashes from her fireplace. Her husband or his employee spent weeks tending the olive terraces. The old lore was to prune so that a bird could fly through the main branches without brushing its wings against the leaves. He had to know exactly when to pick. The trees can't be wet or the olives will mildew before you can get them to the mill. To prepare olives to eat, all the bitter glucoside must be leached out by curing them in salt or soaking them in lye or brine. Besides the practical, a host of enduring superstitions determine the best moment to pick or plant; the moon has bad days and good. Vergil, a long time ago, observed farmers' beliefs: Choose the seventeenth day after the full moon to plant, avoid the fifth. He also advises scything at night, when dew softens the stub
ble. I'm afraid Ed might veer off a terrace if he tried that.

  Of our olives, some are paradigms—ancient, twisted, gnarled. Many are clusters of young shoots that sprang up in a circle around damaged trunks. In this benign crescent of hillside, it's hard to imagine the temperature dropping to minus six degrees, as it did in 1985, but gaps between trees reveal huge dead stumps. The olives will have to be revived from their long neglect. Each tree needs to be cleared of encroaching sumac, broom, and weeds, then pruned and fertilized. The terraces must be plowed and cleaned. This is major work but it will have to wait. Since olives are almost immortal, another year won't hurt.

  “An olive leaf he brings, pacific sign,” Milton wrote in Paradise Lost. The dove that flew back to the ark with the branch in its beak made a good choice. The olive tree does impart a sense of peace. It must be, simply, the way they participate in time. These trees are here and will be. They were here. Whether we are or someone else is or no one, each morning they'll be twirling their leaves and inching up toward the sun.

  A few summers ago, a friend and I hiked in Majorca above Soller. We climbed across and through miles of dramatic, enormous olives on broad terraces. Up high, we came upon stone huts where the grove tenders sheltered themselves. Although we got lost and encountered a pacing bull in a meadow, we felt this immense peace all day, walking among those trees that looked and may have been a thousand years old. Walking these few curving acres here give me the same feeling. Unnatural as it is, terracing has a natural feel to it. Some of the earliest methods of writing, called boustrophedon, run from right to left, then from left to right. If we were trained that way, it probably is a more efficient way to read. The etymology of the word reveals Greek roots meaning “to turn like an ox plowing.” And that writing is like the rising terraces: The U-turn space required by an ox with plow suddenly loops up a level and you're going in the other direction.