From early this morning, as soon as I crossed the bridge of graces, I heard the cacophony of Florence happily returning to its Renaissance roots. Last Saturday I hadn’t been able to resist pushing my way along the ever-growing crowds on via de Benci to the Signoria to see the tail end of the weekend’s parade. As well as the men in their tights and feathered hats, trumpeters with draped flags and liveried horses, there were women holding their long skirts out as they walked, their hair set with diadems, their waists cinched in corsets. It must have been the end, as everyone was milling around, talking to friends in regular clothes, peeling off to take a coffee, carefully placing their plumed hats on tables as they smoked.
In Antonella’s apartment, I leaned out and took in the scene. Anto was leaning out of the other window and she called out to me across the gap, raising her voice above the din. Below us were a mass of burly men in Renaissance football shorts—long and shaped a little like knickerbockers, they were baggy and tied at the knee. One team’s shorts were striped violet and white while the others were blue and violet. “Sempre viola,” shouted Antonella across the windows to me. The Adonis closest to me explained that there had already been two previous matches in which the teams were eliminated down to the two playing today.
“What are the rules—is it like modern football?” I asked him, and he laughed.
“Watch, you will see.”
On the night before leaving for Spain, Dino had told me a little about the history of the Calcio Storico. He was cooking a pasta sauce from the fresh young zucchini that were in season with a few slivers of pancetta and a splash of white wine.
“Amore, you know of course I am passionate about football?” he started.
I did indeed know that he was a devoted supporter of Florence’s football team, Fiorentina, known as the Violas.
“Well, that of course is because we invented football here in Florence!” It was a big claim, but he insisted that the tournament had its roots in the sixteenth century, originally played by aristocrats and noblemen.
“It’s changed now, most of the guys playing in the teams are convicted criminals…”
I was intrigued, and now, as I looked down at the thickset men who were running around the playing field, covered in tattoos and scars, I could well believe it. There seemed to be hundreds of them on the field at once—the Adonis told me that there were twenty-seven men on each side, and as the game started, there was a scrum more akin to rugby than football. As the game proceeded, the men fell on their opponents, tackling, kicking, and even head-butting each other, regardless of whether the ball was in the vicinity. The crowd went wild every time the ball got near the goal, but even more so when someone hit someone else—which was often. Despite the best efforts of a referee who ran around waving a big white feather as a sign of his authority, the whole thing degenerated into mass fights several times. I looked at Antonella in shock but she was busy shouting at the players, waving her fist out the window. All around the square, there were people hanging out windows and on balconies, shouting and gesticulating wildly. Even la mamma, who had popped her head out to check on the match’s progress, was shouting something, her hands cupped around her mouth. The Adonises were all transfixed, mostly watching the muscles ripple on the brawny bodies on the pitch, and the crowd was almost as out of control as the players, having arguments and fistfights among themselves in the bleachers.
I started to laugh. Giuseppe had once told me that the great puzzle of the Renaissance was how such refined art and architecture could have been produced by people who were essentially as rough and violent as street thugs. Dino’s own belligerence and love of dominance could, I imagined, quickly turn to aggression, and indeed I could clearly see him in my mind’s eye stalking the streets of sixteenth-century Florence, his small, taut body in tights, ruffled shorts and feathers, his sword poised and ready to run through an enemy as he crossed the Ponte Vecchio. I looked down again at the spectacle of flouncy costumes and hulking muscles, feathers trodden into the sand, the iris-bearing flag of Florence flapping around the bleachers, the crowd shouting obscenities, and wondered if anything had really changed in Florence in the past five centuries apart from the outfits.
* * *
—
Later, we stood on the banks of the Arno in crowds that included all my San Niccolò neighbors, watching fireworks burst over the sky above San Miniato. The display was the climax of the festival of San Giovanni and it illuminated the city, lit up the river. It was beautiful. The heat of the day had simmered down to a balmy, still evening. I wished Dino was here, and I instinctively pulled out my phone to check if he had rung. He had been gone two days and there’d been no word of him. I found this odd, but I told myself that he was in Spain, busy with his friends, and perhaps there was no reception. That I would hear from him soon; that, as he had assured me with his parting words, he would always find a way to communicate. I took a photo of the fireworks exploding in the dark sky with my phone and sent it to him, expecting to hear from him as soon as it went through, but there was no call and no answering text. I saw Antonella watching me and gave her a watery smile.
“He’ll ring soon, don’t worry,” she said kindly, and took my hand in hers.
I nodded, watching fire explode in the sky. But worry gnawed at me and, for the first time in all these months in Florence, I couldn’t give myself over completely to enjoying its beauty.
Pasta with zucchini
SERVES 2
2 zucchini
1 white onion
Best-quality extra-virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic
Sea salt, to taste
5½–7 oz. pasta (I like penne)
½ glass white wine
Parmesan, to serve
Top and tail the zucchini and cut them lengthwise into two. Then slice. Chop the onion and fry in a pan with olive oil until translucent. Chop the garlic and add to the pan. Cook a little, then add the zucchini along with a splash of water—a couple of tablespoons will do.
At the same time, fill a large pasta pot with water and, when it is boiling, add salt. Add the pasta, and cook till al dente. Add some of the pasta water to the zucchini, and the white wine.
When the zucchini are cooked but still moist, drain the pasta and add to the pan till the sauce covers all, then grate on some Parmesan. Serve.
Wild arugula and Parmesan salad
SERVES 2
Two handfuls fresh wild arugula
Mature Parmesan
Juice of 1 lemon
Olive oil
Sea salt and black pepper, to taste
Wash the arugula carefully and let it dry, then add some long, fine slivers of Parmesan. Make a pinzimonio (see page 36) with lemon juice, season liberally with salt and black pepper, and pour over the salad, tossing it all together. Serve.
7
JULY
·
Piacere a te stessa
or HOW TO TAKE PLEASURE IN YOURSELF
PRODUCE IN SEASON · San Marzano tomatoes
SCENT OF THE CITY · roses
ITALIAN MOMENT · a visit to the beauty salon
ITALIAN WORD · brillare (to sparkle)
I was on one of the little yellow buses rumbling out of the city, heading to Bagno a Ripoli, a small town to the south of Florence. It was the day after the Calcio Storico, the date long arranged for the start of my modeling career, and I was going to a tiny hamlet where Betsy and Geoffrey lived.
In preparation, I had shaved my legs carefully and regarded myself in the mirror, sucking in my tummy, choosing good underwear, massaging cream into my body. It was a welcome distraction from waiting for Dino to ring—it was the Sunday morning of his trip to Spain and still I had not heard from him. Betsy had told me to bring a swimsuit and I had picked up the only bikini I could find in the market, mortifying as it was—I usually tried to hide as much of my body as possible in a swimsuit, but my budget made buying a one-piece from one of the boutiques in the center prohibitive. For t
he first time in years, I would wear a bikini. Trying it on at home later, I had blushed. And yet, as I turned and examined my body from every angle, I couldn’t deny that it actually looked okay. More than okay, it was almost slim, just the hint of one roll left on my back instead of the three I had arrived with. Still, I hoped that there would be no one but Betsy at the pool with me.
Betsy met me in the village piazza wearing a stripy summer dress with green plimsolls and pink ankle socks. She was voluble and colorful, full of exuberant curiosity as she drove us into the wooded hills, a rough road leading to a cluster of houses clinging to a steep slope. There were only six houses here, she told me, made up of two families. She and Geoffrey had bought their house forty years ago, and they were now part of this small community. “Although,” she said with a wink, “it took a few years…”
We stepped through metal gates painted blue, the high stone walls closing the house off from the street. Inside, there was a courtyard and a shaded terrace that looked out over a deep valley, a stone table and benches set with Betsy’s pottery. At the back of the house there was another nook hanging out over the valley into which was built a round table, and I sat here while Betsy made us coffee. I looked down over the countryside falling away all around me and spotted the dome of Florence’s cathedral far in the distance, tiny. The air was warm and still, the day alive with the noises of the country, the chirping of birds, the chirruping of insects, the hum of bees. There were pigeons and turtledoves fluttering around an aviary that occupied the other side of the courtyard and, at my feet, I spotted a small tortoise with an exquisite shell.
Betsy arrived with our coffees and, after setting them down, went and opened the door of the aviary. The birds flew out, the doves flapping above our heads before they disappeared into the valley, a few loose feathers floating down. I felt a nip on my big toe and looked down to see the tortoise nibbling on my nail. “Oh, ignore him,” Betsy said, laughing, “he’ll stop in a moment.” For the first time all weekend, I relaxed and enjoyed myself, happy to talk to Betsy about her life, her art, about my book. That morning with Betsy brought me back to myself, reminded me that there was more to me than this story with Dino. She quizzed me about the themes of the book, talked of process and patience, of a lifetime of creating. And I found myself confiding in her about Dino—his sporadic reliability, how I hadn’t heard from him for a few days. Her intelligent eyes regarded me from behind her thick glasses.
“Ah, Italian men,” she said laughing. “They are a law unto themselves. But”—with a twinkle—“so delightful. Every girl should have an Italian romance. Remind me to tell you a story from my youth later. Now, let’s get to work.”
She led me down the path into the garden. The main house was supplemented by both her and Geoffrey’s studios, each occupying a different terrace cut into the hill, stone dining areas and lounges built out over the drop into the valley. Everywhere there were statues and benches built by Betsy, large pots she had made as well as their own attempt at sgraffito etched on the walls. Her studio was several terraces down, with a large kiln outside, the bright green lawn in front dug up with what looked like small tractor tracks. “Wild boar,” she explained, indicating them. “They sometimes come in from the woods and run rampage here. They destroy the grass.”
“Aren’t you scared?” Dino would love this, I thought. He could come hunting here.
She laughed. “No, they never come when there are people around. They are shy, magnificent creatures. Now”—opening the door—“come in.”
Betsy’s studio was large and light, one side covered in sliding French doors. Trestle tables lined the walls and stood arranged at regular intervals through the room. Some walls bore cubbyholes filled with pigments, paints, brushes. Elsewhere there was a potter’s wheel and sacks of powder, sketchbooks, and, leaning against the walls, giant ceramic works that defied description. Neither pots nor sculptures, they were like giant ceramic paintings with jagged edges and fins sticking out. In contrast to their challenging forms, they were painted in happy colors, with squiggles that resembled flowers or vases, reminiscent of Matisse. In the middle of the room were her other works, the pots she was famous for, standing tall, their shapes conforming to nothing I had seen. Betsy explained when they had been made, what had inspired her. As I picked my way carefully through this ceramic wonderland, I realized what a privilege it was to be here in her studio, examining pieces at such close quarters that were usually visible only in the museums and galleries of the world, with the artist herself explaining them to me. I shuddered to think how stupid I had been, letting my life be reduced to Dino and his whims. This was why I was here—to create—and Betsy’s studio inspired me to refocus on the main purpose of my life.
“Now.” She turned to me. “As you can see, I never decorate my pots with human figures. I have a work now that has been puzzling me for some time, but when I met you in Cibreo that time, something clicked.” She laughed. “You reminded me of it. That’s why I asked you to model for me!”
I reminded you of a pot? I wanted to say, instinctively sucking in my belly, but Betsy explained as she led me to a corner of the studio. “It’s a triptych that works together, they complete each other…”
And she indicated three large white pots. But to call them pots would be to call Botticelli’s Venus a sketch. They were as much sculptures in ceramics as anything else. Two were as tall as me, and in the middle there was one that was long, slim, curvaceous, like a female form. They were white and undecorated, but placed next to each other like that, with fins and broad, flat handles extending out, they completed one another, the spaces between them as much a part of them as their geometric protrusions. The positive and negative forms worked together to make a vibrant whole. And none of them were wide-bellied pots as I had imagined when Betsy told me I somehow reminded her of them—they were slender, lissom even, and there was something undoubtedly feminine about them. I was flattered.
Betsy handed me a dressing gown, and as I went behind a screen to undress, she went on talking. “This is the first time I have used the human form, I am quite nervous!” and she giggled. I came out to find her arranging her paints and brushes behind the works. She indicated where I should stand, and I slowly took off the dressing gown, throwing it over a nearby ladder, standing awkwardly with my arms crossed. Betsy ignored my self-consciousness and applied herself with no-nonsense practicality to helping me find the right pose. She made shapes with her small, round body, trying out the poses herself until we found a position that worked. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, trying to find a comfortable position, still unable quite to look Betsy in the eyes.
“Don’t worry,” she said in her East Coast drawl. “This is really a sketch, you don’t have to stand perfectly still. I just need a kind of outline…” She measured her perspective, holding out a paintbrush, her attention more on her pots and the lines she was painting on them than on my body. I started to relax as she told me of her life with Geoffrey, how they divided their time between Tuscany and New York, saying: “You know, I love New York. But it’s much too stimulating to create art. That’s why we spend six months a year here. Apart from how beautiful this house is, it’s just so nice to let the mind be washed clean of all that overstimulation. After a month or so here, I am ready to create again—that’s why I didn’t ask you before now.” Indeed, it had been more than a month since we had first met. She went on: “I’m a child of the city, I couldn’t stay here all the time, but as an artist, the city exhausts me. Here in Tuscany, with its amazing light and landscape and art, I fill right back up. I can slow down. And this laziness in the lifestyle here—I find it very conducive to creativity.” For the first time she looked me in the eyes. “I expect you find the same thing? With your writing?”
It had been a while since I had occupied that peaceful space in which I walked and visited art and wrote. But now I saw that she was right. In the first months after arriving, it was as if the stresses of London had drained out of
me and Florence had soaked in instead, marinating my burned-out brain in beauty. The laziness had lulled me, allowed my thoughts to expand, words to come up unbidden. Dino and the heart-thumping excitement created by his presence had put a stop to that. The sense I always had that he might not show up, that he was dangerous—it upset the delicate balance of peace and stimulation that had enabled me to write. Betsy was the first person to talk to me as an artist, and I liked this reflection of myself. I was so lost in thought that I forgot I was naked. Betsy’s gaze, as she stood behind her pots, was impersonal—she was in her own world now—and a peaceful silence descended.
It didn’t take long. An hour and three poses later, Betsy had sketched my form out in thick paint on the three pots. She beckoned me over and I looked at them, loose outlines of full breasts, a bellybutton, a swell of buttocks, all topped off by a headful of big curls. There were no details and yet it was me. And it was beautiful. I turned and, impulsively, threw my arms around her. She hugged me back. We looked at each other and smiled wordlessly. She knew as well as I did what I meant. And then I laughed, embarrassed, as I realized I was still naked.
“Come on,” she said brightly, “let’s have a swim before lunch! That was a good morning’s work.” I donned my bikini, no longer mortified by it, and we dipped in the infinity pool built out on a ledge overlooking the valley, the water spilling over the sides of the pool into the horizon. Afterward I helped Betsy carry out to the long stone table plates of cold roast vegetables, salad, chunks of bread and oil, a tricolore of creamy buffalo mozzarella sliced with tomatoes and fat leaves of basil. She cut us half-moon slices of very sweet watermelon and made us coffee. And before driving me back down to the village piazza and the bus, she pressed a hundred euros on me. “This is how much Geoffrey always pays his models. I hope it’s enough?”
Bella Figura Page 14
