Under the Tuscan Sun

by Frances Mayes

  “What is it?” We all stop.

  “Nothing! How could we not have noticed? No motorcycles. It must be too cold for them.”

  Ashley wants boots for Christmas. Obviously, this is the place. She finds black boots and brown suede ones. I see a black bag I really admire, don't need, and manage to resist. Just before everything closes, we dash over to San Marco, the serene monastery with Fra Angelico frescoes in the cells. Jess never has seen it and the twelve angel musicians seem good to look at during this season. Siesta catches up with us, so we settle into a long lunch at Antolino's, a righteous trattoria with a potbellied stove in the middle of the room. The menu lists pastas with hare and boar ragù, duck, polentas and risottos. The waiters rush by with platters of big roasts.

  There's plenty of time for a long walk before the town reopens. Florence! The tourists are gone, or if they're here, the fine misty rain must keep them inside. We pass the apartment we rented five years ago, when I swore off Florence. In summer, wads of tourists clog the city as if it's a Renaissance theme park. Everyone seems to be eating. That year, a garbage strike persisted for over a week and I began to have thoughts of plague when I passed heaps of rot spilling out of bins. I was amazed that long July when waiters and shopkeepers remained as nice as they did, given what they had to put up with. Everywhere I stepped I was in the way. Humanity seemed ugly—the international young in torn T-shirts and backpacks lounging on steps, bewildered bus tourists dropping ice cream napkins in the street and asking, “How much is that in dollars?” Germans in too-short shorts letting their children terrorize restaurants. The English mother and daughter ordering lasagne verdi and Coke, then complaining because the spinach pasta was green. My own reflection in the window, carrying home all my shoe purchases, the sundress not so flattering. Bad wonderland. Henry James in Florence referred to “one's detested fellow-pilgrim.” Yes, indeed, and it's definitely time to leave when one's own reflection is included. Sad that our century has added no glory to Florence—only mobs and lead hanging in the air.

  In early morning, though, we'd walk to Marino's for warm brioche, take them to the middle of the bridge and watch the silvery celadon light on the Arno. Most afternoons we sat in a café at Piazza Santo Spirito, where a sense of neighborhood still exists even in summer. The sun angling through the trees hit that grand undecorated sculptural facade of Brunelleschi's, with the boys playing ball beneath it. Somehow it must make a difference to grow up bouncing your ball against the wall of Santo Spirito. Perhaps many who come to Florence in summer are able to find moments and places like this, times when the city gives itself over by returning to itself.

  Today, the stony streets take a shine from the mist. We walk right in the Brancacci chapel. No line; in fact, only a half dozen young priests in long black gowns, following an older priest as he points and lectures about the Masaccio frescoes. I haven't seen Adam and Eve leaving Eden since the vines over their genitals, painted during some fit of papal modesty, were removed and the frescoes cleaned and restored. Shocking to see them lifted out of the film of centuries of candle smoke: all these distinct faces and the chalky rose and saffron robes. Every face, isolated and examined, reveals character. “I wanted to see what made each one that one,” Gertrude Stein said about her desire to write about many lives. Masaccio had a powerful sense of character and narrative and a sharp eye for placing the human in space. A neophyte kneels in a stream to be baptized. Through the transparent water we see his knees and feet. San Pietro flings the basin, showering his head and back with water. All the symbolism of earlier art is abandoned for the cold splash on the boy. Another pleasure is Masaccio's (and Masolino's and Lippi's, whose hands are apparent) attention to architecture, light, and shadow. Here's Florence as he saw, or idealized it, with the sun falling logically—not the sourceless light of his predecessors—on this cast of characters who surely walked the streets of this city.

  We hurry to the six-nineteen train and miss it. As we wait, I mention the black bag I didn't buy and Ed decides it would be a terrific Christmas present, although we have said we only are buying things for the house. He and Jess literally run back to the shop, halfway across town from the train station. Ashley and I are uneasy when it's five minutes until departure but here they come, smiling and panting, waving the shopping bag just as the train is announced.

  On Christmas Eve eve, we take off on a quest in Umbria. Ed thinks we must have one of his favorite reds for Christmas dinner, the Sagrantino, impossible to find this far from its origins. I am after the ultimate panettone. I called Donatella, an Italian friend who's a wonderful cook, and asked if we could make one together, thinking the homemade would be better than the commercial ones stacked in colorful boxes in every grocery and bar. “It takes twenty hours of rising,” she says. “It must rise four times.” I remember how many times I've killed the yeast when making simple bread. When her mother was small, she tells me, panettone was just ordinary bread with some nuts and dried fruits tucked into the dough. La cucina povera again. “It's really best to buy it.” She gave me several brands and I picked out one for Francesco's family. As I was about to take another, a woman buying at the same time told me that the very best are made in Perugia. She wrote the name of a shop, Ceccarani, on a piece of paper. So we are off to Perugia.

  Ceccarani's window display is a full crèche intricately executed in glazed bread dough. Dough must be a good medium; the figures have expressive faces, sheep look woolly, fronds on the palm trees are finely detailed. The nativity scene is surrounded by marzipan mushrooms and panettoni hollowed out on the side. Inside each—what else but a miniature crèche? Incredible!

  Throngs of women fill the shop. I push to the back and select a panettone as tall as a top hat.

  Deeper into Umbria, we come to Spello and walk all over the steeply terraced town. Coming down from Spello, we see the early moon hoisting itself over the hills. We keep losing it as we turn then face it again, the largest, whitest, spookiest moon I've ever seen. All the way to Montefalco, home of the Sagrantino, we dodge the moon. Two or three times we see it rise again, over a different hill. Jess has taken to calling Ed “Montefalco” for his black leather jacket and tendency to speed. He makes up Montefalco adventures as we take several wrong turns. In the piazza, the wine store is open but the proprietor is missing. We look around, look outside, come back—no sign of him. We take a walk around the piazza. The store stands wide open but still the owner is gone. Finally, we ask at the bar and the bartender points to a man playing cards. We buy our four bottles and head home, chasing the moon across Umbria.

  On Christmas Eve, Ashley and I launch into cooking. Jess, a novice, is given tasks and entertains us with rock lyrics. Ed dedicates the morning to squeezing silicone around the windows. He runs into town to pick up tonight's first course, crespelle, from the fresh pasta shop. The delicate crÊpes are filled with truffles and cream. Our menu after the crespelle: a warm salad of porcini, roasted red peppers, and field lettuces, grilled veal chops, the local cardoons with béchamel and toasted hazelnuts. For dessert, a family cake I know by heart and castagnaccio, the classic Tuscan chestnut flour cake. My neighbor says not to try it. Her grandmother used to make it when they were very poor. “All it takes is chestnut flour, olive oil, and water,” she says, grimacing. “My grandmother said that they always had those. They flavored it with rosemary and some pine nuts, fennel seeds, and raisins if they had some.” I've never worked with chestnut flour, an ingredient I'd considered esoteric until I learned that it was a staple of la cucina povera. This recipe is decidedly weird. As my neighbor indicates, it must be one of those acquired tastes.

  “But where are the sugar and eggs—can this really turn into a cake? And how much water to use? The recipe only says to use enough for the batter to pour easily.” My neighbor just shakes her head. I'm intrigued. This cake will send us back to the roots of Tuscan cooking. Ashley and Jess are not so sure they want to be transported that far.

  Before siesta, we walk over the Roman
road into town for last-minute lettuces and bread. Where is our “angel”? In winter, he does not seem to come to the shrine. I watch for his slow approach, his eyes on the house, then his long pause while he places his flowers. Would he bring a twig of bright rose hips, a shriveled bunch of dried grapes, a spiny chestnut casing split to reveal three brown nuts? Perhaps he walks elsewhere in winter, or stays in his medieval apartment, feeding logs into the woodstove.

  Cortona is hopping. Everyone carries at least one panettone and one basket of cellophane-wrapped gift foods. No shop plays that canned, generic Christmas music I find so dispiriting at home. People crowd the bars, stoking themselves with coffee and hot chocolate because the sharp tramontana has started to blow in from the north, bringing frigid air from the Alps and northern Apennines.

  Peaceful eve, bountiful feast, dessert by the fire. We all hate the chestnut cake. Flat and gummy, it probably has the exact taste of a Christmas dessert during the last war, when chestnuts could be foraged in the forest. We trade it for a platter of walnuts, winter pears, and Gorgonzola, a dessert for the gods. Long before midnight mass, which we'd hoped to experience in one of the small churches, we fade.

  ED CALLS UP FROM DOWNSTAIRS, “LOOK OUT THE WINDOW.” Snow fell in the night, just enough to dust the fronds of the palm tree and glaze the terraces with a sheen of white.

  “Beautiful! Turn up the heat.” My bare feet feel icy. I pull on a sweatshirt, jeans, and shoes and run downstairs. The front doors are wide open, the frosty light pouring in. Ed scrapes a snowball off the outdoor table. I jump aside and it lands in the hall. The sleeping beauties have not yet emerged. We take our coffee to the wall, brush it off, and watch the fog below us moving like an opalescent sea. Snow on Christmas!

  Is this much happiness allowed? I secretly ask myself. Will the gods not come down and confiscate this health, abundance of cheer, these bright expectations? Is this the old scar, this rippling of want and fear? My father died on the eve of Christmas Eve when I was fourteen. The funeral day was rainy, so rainy that the coffin floated for a moment before it settled into the earth. My pink tulle Christmas dance dress hung on the back of my closet door. Or is this unrest just part of the great collective holiday blues all the newspapers focus on every year? Many Christmases in my adult life have been exquisite, especially when my daughter was a child. A few have been lonely. One was very rocky. Either way, the season of joy comes with a primitive urge that runs deep into the psyche.

  After breakfast, we build up the fire and open presents. We brought over a few and slowly have accumulated the usual pile around the tree. We hadn't intended to have so many but the day in Florence inspired us to pick out soaps, notebooks, sweaters, and a surprisingly huge quantity of chocolate. One of our gifts is a chestnut roasting pan, which we put to immediate use. We're gathering at four at Fenella and Peter's and one of our contributions will be roasted chestnuts in red wine. We cut a thin slit on each, shake them over the coals for less than ten minutes, then prepare to ruin our nails peeling them. Perhaps because they are fresh, the shells come right off, revealing the plump toasted nut. Everyone takes a job and we fly through the preparation of two faraone, guinea hens, and a rustic apple tart made by rolling a large round of pastry on a cookie sheet, piling the buttered and sugared fruit and toasted hazelnuts in the center, then flapping the pastry irregularly around it. Our cook, Willie Bell, would be proud of my variation on her cream gravy. To the faraone pan juices, I add béchamel and chopped roasted chestnuts. I want chestnuts in everything. Fenella is preparing a pork roast and polenta, Elizabeth will bring salad, and Max is in charge of another vegetable and dessert. We could fast before such a feast but we have a light lunch of wild mushroom lasagne. A Christmas walk is a long tradition, for Ashley and me at least. Ed and I haven't told them yet where we are going.

  We drive to the end of a road near our house and get out. We discovered this walk purely by chance one day when we walked this road and spotted a path at the end of it. We kept walking and made a fantastic discovery. It was one of the great walks I've ever had and we decided then to come back at Christmas. Water is flowing where I've never seen it in summer. Sudden streams gush out of crevices and wash over the road. We come to a waterfall and several torrents. Soon we're in a chestnut and pine forest of huge ancient trees. We see a few patches of snow in the woods and more snow higher up in the distance. The air, deeply moist, smells of wet pine needles. We come to paving stones laid end to end. “Look, a path,” Ashley says. “What is this? It's wider up ahead.” Out here in nowhere, we're on a Roman road in incredibly good condition for long stretches. We never have reached the end but Beppe, who knows it from childhood, told us it goes to the top of Monte Sant'Egidio, twenty kilometers away. Instead of winding and skirting, Roman roads tend to go straight to the top. The chariots were light and the shortest distance between two points seemed to have governed their surveyors. I've read that some of their roadbeds go down twelve feet. We're on the lookout for the distance markers but they have disappeared. Cortona lies below us, and below the town the valley and the horizon look polished and gleaming. We see mountains in the distance we've never seen, and the hilltowns of Sinalunga, Montepulciano, and Monte San Savino rise sharply like three ships sailing against the sky. The last knot of my unrest unravels. I start to hum “I saw three ships come sailing in on Christmas Day, on Christmas Day in the morning.” A red fox leaps down onto the path ahead of us. He sweeps his plumy tail back and forth, regards us for a moment, then darts into the woods.

  THE ROAD TO FENELLA AND PETER'S NOBLE FARMHOUSE IS rough enough in summer. Now we're holding on to pots and trays and trying not to empty them into one another's laps. The poor Twingo's axle! We ford several impromptu streams and almost get stuck in a washout of near-ditch proportions. When we arrive everyone is gathered by the gigantic fireplace, already into the red wine. This is one of the most magnificent houses in the local vernacular. The living room, formerly a granary, soars two stories high with rows of dark beams. The immense room is filled with a lifetime collection of antiques, rugs, and treasures. The space is too large to heat, however, so we settle into big sofas in the former kitchen, with its fireplace large enough for the original cooks to set their chairs inside it and tend their pots. Downstairs the thirty-foot-long table is laid with pine boughs and red candles. Ghosts of Christmases past join us in everyone's stories of other holidays. Fenella pours the hot polenta onto a cutting board. Ed carves the faraone while Peter slices the succulent roast. We pile our plates. Fenella has journeyed to Montepulciano for a stash of her favorite vino nobile, which travels around the table. “To absent friends,” Fenella toasts. “To the polenta!” Ed rejoins. Our little expatriate band is merry, merry.

  En route home, we stop in town for a coffee. We expect the streets to be deserted on Christmas night at nine o'clock, but everyone is out, every baby and grandmother and everyone in between. Walking and talking, always talking. “Well, Jess, you're objective,” I say. “You're new here so you must tell me if I'm under an illusion—or is this the most divine town on the planet.”

  Without a pause, he says, “I'd say so. Yes. Extra primo good.”

  The passeggiata activity is to stroll from church to church, viewing the scenes of Christ's birth. The reminder of birth is everywhere, is still the major focus of Christmas here. Pagan, I suppose I am, but I think what a glorious metaphor the birth is at year's end, the dark and dead end of the year. The one cry of the baby in the damp straw and death is denied. The baby in every scene has a nimbus of light around his head. The sun heads toward the celestial equator, bringing back the days I love. One foot over and we're on a swing toward light. That restless urge at this season, maybe it's the desire to find the light of one's own again. I've read that the body contains minerals in the exact proportions that the earth does; the percentages of zinc and potassium in the earth are the same amounts we have in our bodies. Could the body have an innate desire to imitate the earth's push toward rebirth?

 
All the Cortona churches display their presepi, nativity scenes. Some are elaborate reproductions of paintings in wax and wood models with elaborate architecture and costume; some are terra-cotta. One crib is made of ice cream sticks. At the middle school's exhibit of students' presepi, we're touched to see the children's less ornate versions. Most are traditional, with small dolls, twig trees, and hand-mirror ponds, but one astonishes us. Paolo Alunni, aged perhaps ten, is a true heir of the Futurists and their love for the mechanical and its energy. His crèche—stable, people and animals—is constructed entirely of keys. The animal keys are horizontal and it's clear which are sheep, which are cows. The humans are upright except for the cunning little diary-sized key that is the baby Jesus. He's made the stable roof from a hinge. Eerie and effective—a stunning piece of art among all the earnest projects.

  EVERY MORNING I LOOK OUT THE WINDOW AT THE VALLEY filled with fog, pink tinted at dawn on clear days, a roiling gray when high clouds blow across from the north. These are seamless days of walks and books, of taking trips to Anghiari, Siena, Assisi, and nearby Lucignano, whose town walls describe a graceful ellipse. At night, we grill in the fireplace—bruschetta with melted pecorino and walnuts, slices of fresh pecorino with prosciutto, and sausages. Scamorza, more native to the Abruzzo but growing popular in Tuscany, is a hard rind cheese shaped like an 8. It melts to almost a fondue and we spread it on bread. I learn to use the hearth to warm plates and keep food hot, just as my imagined nonna must have done. Our favorite pasta becomes pici con funghi e salsiccie, pencil-thick pasta with wild mushrooms and the grilled sausages. A seven-mile walk along the fire road cancels the effects of one evening of grilling.