Women in Sunlight

by Frances Mayes

  * * *

  —

  I find a chair by the fireplace downstairs and write a few pages about Margaret.

  These are easy memories from when we were close in those two years before I met Colin. We read aloud to each other, traveled Italy in her Alfa, sat at a table with a bottle of wine, poring over Anna Akhmatova, Cesare Pavese, and Nâzim Hikmet poems, analyzing sentence types in Italo Calvino and Katherine Mansfield. She constantly gave me presents—pillows from Turkey, lotions from the English pharmacy in Florence, maps, Italian guidebooks from the 1920s, other books, books, books. She didn’t cook but loved to bring over the best white peaches or a white truffle when I invited her. If she didn’t love what she ordered in a restaurant, she pushed it aside and selected something else because life is too short to be disappointed with things you can control. I was fascinated with her and I think she was a little in love with me. Perhaps in love with the life I had before me. She was already sixty-eight when we met, but like my three new friends, she didn’t pay attention to her age. I didn’t either. She said she was “born with the energy of two people.” We often hiked stretches of the San Francesco trail from La Verna to Assisi, and the Rilke walk from Sistiana to Duino castle where the poet wrote the great elegies. Besides her Casa Gelsomino here, she kept an apartment in Rome that she’d had when she lived for many years with a woman whose name never came up and who was brushed aside when anecdotes from Margaret’s era there were mentioned. We’d go down for weekends to see exhibits and stay there, a fifth-floor walkup with a terrace overlooking the Tiber. One bedroom. Twin beds. Don’t ask. I didn’t. As I said, she remains herself, a cypher. She was annoyed when I fell in love, but seemed riveted when she met Colin and praised his offhand wit and his passion for architecture. She came to prefer him to me.

  Would she be amused with all this chasing around of wine, and plotting trips for women to be engaged, entertained, stimulated? I like to think she would. She was always quick to spot the ways women are put down. A girls’ getaway might easily be condescended to, whereas a men’s hunting trip would not. Not that either promotes the general good. That always preoccupied Margaret, though she would occasionally take sybaritic trips herself, especially after a punishing journalistic mission in a dangerous or rough area. The injustices of the world fueled her. I also feel weighted by the immense crises in the world, but what can I do, other than donate and vote for reasonable candidates, about the immigrant problems, about global warming, about terrorism? Compost my vegetables?

  I’m sure Margaret would be on site with refugees, chronicling what she saw and thought, pinning people (in her frosty way) to the wall with questions. I can see her mind working on the context of world immigrations throughout history, the long-range effects of diaspora, the individual stories we cannot even imagine. That might be the book she was meant to write, and one that would last—unlike her writings on the attempted assassination of a prime minister or the wrongdoings of some forgotten politician. Burning topics inspire journalists, and those books written in a zealous fever disappear as soon as the fickle news shifts. She did write about southern Italians migrating to Germany for work; this massive migration from the Middle East would be a natural for her.

  There should be a word for what I’m thinking—to imagine the book someone should write, even if the someone is dead. (German has numerous precise words for emotions not named in other languages. Sehnsucht: nostalgia for someone else’s past or for something felt but not personally lost.) (I have this Sehnsucht for Margaret.)

  At heart I believe that poetry has crucial work to do, all art does. What news remains from the cave dwellers? Not who killed the most game or ruled over the bush. Soot and blood handprints on the cave walls remain, and the sketchy stick figures and animals they drew. Art lasts. Still, the inexorable grind of world events keeps me anxious. Margaret, that’s part of her immortality: she’s that other voice in my head. She challenges. She pins me to the wall. (Oh, what’s that German word for the unrest birds feel the days before their migrations?)

  * * *

  —

  Chris wants to go to the enoteca before dinner in town. Here are gathered many of the Collio region winemakers, freshly shaven, hair slicked back, wearing nice shirts and sweaters. Wine talk, nothing but wine talk. Chris and Julia shake hands with the men they’ve visited and introduce themselves to others. They don’t look like Tuscans. They’re sturdier, many have light hair and eyes, and they seem to hold themselves in more. Generations of living near Slovenia, of mixing with the Austrians, produced a different breed up here. “How great that these guys are friendly with each other,” Chris observes. “Among top vintners like these, you’d think they might be snarky toward their competitors—I certainly see that in Tuscany and California—but there’s a brotherhood here, a lot of leaning into the glass, heads nodding, wine swirling.”

  “Don’t you love it that men kiss and hug?” Julia whispers.

  The waiter sets down a board of cheeses for the group. He nudges Julia and points to thinly sliced pink ham. “Il migliore,” he says, “il prosciutto della famiglia D’Osvaldo.” The best—prosciutto made by the D’Osvaldo family. And it is. Julia resists the impulse to tear off the broad rim of fat edging each slice. The almost-transparent slice tastes pink and gently cured.

  She rolls a piece and hands it to Chris. “We should see if we, you, can take the tour to the place that makes this. It’s spectacular. The fat tastes like salted butter.” Julia widens her perception of prosciutto, which previously she could easily pass on when the antipasti platters came around. She quickly notes the name.

  At the bar, Camille and Susan order tastes of the friulano, then the odd ribolla gialla. Susan tries a sip. “Tastes like something the Roman gods might drink at their orgies.” She purses her lips.

  “Honey, toasted bread, cane syrup, melon,” Camille jokes.

  “That sounds like breakfast.” The waiter pours them a lemonade-colored pinot grigio. “Now that sparkles. It’s nothing like a usual house pinot.” Susan holds her glass to the light and the wine sends off coppery glints. “White pepper, mineral, oh, what about stone-ground stone.” She raises her glass. In a forest green tunic sweater, with her wind-burned cheeks, and her hair even more on end than usual, she looks elfin. Susan’s laugh lights up the room and she finds a lot to laugh about, a quality that must have served her well with grumpy clients looking for crown molding in suburban tracts. “Let’s run back and pick up Kit. You’ve noticed that she’s not drinking—and she did that night at Leo’s. Do you think she could be preggers? Let’s ask her.”

  “I was wondering, too! But we cannot ask. Maybe she’s just off her feed a bit. You go for her. I’ll have another taste of, what?” Camille signals the waiter. “What else must I taste?”

  He pours a sauvignon, Ronco delle Mele. “Hill of the apples,” he says.

  But no apple ever tasted as good. A hint of crisp citrus but not like the heavily grapefruit note of the New Zealand sauvignons they quaffed all summer at Sand Castle. “I like this. May I have three bottles to take home?” She hopes she’s found a discovery for Chris and Julia.

  She’s loving the cross-pollination among her friends: how she’s developing a more particular interest in food and wine—for sure won’t ever go back to frozen quiche. She’s become more interested in renaissance garden design, as is Julia. Being with Susan makes her want to be determined and ambitious. Susan and Julia are responding more to art. Susan came home from the last antique market with a well-done still life of cherries, which now hangs in the kitchen. They must all delve into Kit’s poetry.

  Learning the language, they’ve found differences in aptitude. Julia is picking it up with alacrity; Susan is diligent with verb lists and pronoun practice. She’s not too shy to talk with the people she encounters in San Rocco, Venice, or wherever. She can laugh at her mistakes, whereas Julia apologizes, then speeds on. When she sits down to study, Cam
ille finds herself quickly distracted. She’s wondering if she’s too old to learn conjugations or if she’s swamped by sensory overload and just can’t concentrate. What did Rowan call it? The Stendhal syndrome, named after the author, whose character almost collapsed from too much beauty in Florence. Camille keeps learning the same past participles over and over. When someone speaks rapidly, a veil falls down and she wants to doze.

  Julia and Chris look so connected that the winemakers assume she is his wife. They’ve been invited to dinner. Camille sees Chris turn toward her and gesture. She hears the man he’s talking to shout “Certo. Tutti!” Certainly. Everyone.

  Julia comes over to the bar. “We’re all invited to dinner at this man’s brother’s restaurant. Where’s Susan?” Julia looks flushed, buoyant, like the ends of her hair might spark.

  “She’ll be right back. She went to get Kit. Aren’t these wines amazing? You know, Kit seems to be avoiding wine, and we’re wondering if she might be pregnant.”

  “Oh, no. She’s too smart for that.” Burned into Julia: the enormous risk of having a child. “I’m loving these whites; they’re as complex as good reds. I’m not used to that.”

  * * *

  —

  They’d all agreed not ever to say again, We’re not in Kansas anymore. At dinner, Julia wants to say it. She’s overwhelmed by the surprise of the food what’s-his-name’s brother brought forth. Snails cooked in tomato sauce with pork. Not like refined French escargot but a hearty, bountiful dish. They don’t get to order. Plum gnocchi arrives. They are seated with about twenty men and a scattering of women in an arched room lined with iron wine racks. Julia never did know the occasion, or maybe there is no occasion, but simply daily life in Cormòns. Woodcock from over the border in Slovenia. Capriolo: roebuck, thigh of, she surreptitiously translates on her phone. She notices that Kit’s glass remains empty. In this company, you’d have to be a raging alcoholic or, yes, pregnant to resist the superb wines. If she is, Julia thinks, I hope she was trying for this, a last gasp before the egg basket emptied. She catches Kit’s eye down the table, raises her glass, and sees Kit lift her water glass with a little back-and-forth movement of her head and eyebrows raised. From this silent gesture, Julia understands that Camille is right.

  Chris puts his hand on her knee and she does not flinch. “This is over-the-moon good. It’s surpassing anything I expected. This is the kind of town you could live in. I saw a quirky brick house off the road to the hotel. Maybe I should chuck Napa and move here.”

  “Now you’re influenced by us! You’re going crazy, too.” She’s thinking, what a great idea. Maybe once you’ve broken through one absolute, the next one is easier. Suddenly she wonders if Wade has moved on to another woman after Rose, and a sharp twist catches in her stomach. The winemaker’s brother—Mikal, he is—comes over to ask if they’re enjoying themselves, the lovely Americans. “Squisita,” Julia manages. Exquisite.

  “Mille grazie.”

  Chris launches them into a discussion of local wines and explains that he will be back in spring with more lovely Americans.

  * * *

  —

  Camille, Susan, and I exited early, well, it was almost eleven, and Chris and Julia moved to a small table after the party broke up. Julia thought they should try a couple of desserts for research’s sake. A few of the men sat at one end of the table drinking grappa. Gentlemen all, they stood as we left, making curt bows and saying buona notte. Everyone’s tired but me. All that unaccustomed red meat, and I mean red, jazzed my synapses. Two kinds of deer, the big one that looks like a reindeer and the small cervo I sometimes see on my land. I even had some of the goulash Mikal passed around at the end. What a hearty chef, hulking, corvine Mikal, and what a generous table. As long as I’ve been in Italy, I’ve not met such a various cuisine as Friuli’s, such a happy blend of all those unhappy warring states that captured this area. No wonder Julia wanted dessert. I, too, saw that Sachertorte on the menu.

  * * *

  —

  While they were gone all afternoon, I wrote a poem, which always invigorates me. I rested and then took a slow walk along a stream. In my work, I try to include something I see and something that happens. A secret tic. I’m convinced this keeps me grounded. I’m sure Julia knows about the baby. She looked at my glass and then at me quizzically. I’ll wait and tell them when we’re all together. Since I haven’t been to the doctor yet (because after that it’s real), I don’t think I should tell, but Julia I’m sure has guessed. Susan is driving slowly after such a boozy evening. When she starts singing “Blue Moon,” I join in. Camille’s head is bobbing awake, then sinking down again. Too late to call Colin. Three days and he’s home.

  * * *

  —

  I pretended to sleep when Julia came in. She had not been eating Sachertorte all night. She crawled in her bed around five and didn’t stir until Susan knocked at eight thirty. I was rereading Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald because I remembered that he wrote about star forts and we are seeing one today. Julia’s choice, along with Udine and Aquileia for Chris’s tour. “Arise, arise!” Susan called. “They’re serving fluffy pancakes with some kind of thick cream inside. A thousand calories per bite. Van is warming up because it is freezing.”

  * * *

  —

  On we go to Aquileia and Palmanova. To Maniago and Udine, back to Cormòns, then home. This rounds out Julia’s research on interesting places for Chris’s groups to visit in Friuli. En route, Camille says, “I hate to do this but I am dying to get back to Venice. I have this idea that’s like red coal in my brain and something tells me that I need to explore right now. I’m loving this, too, and I want to see the mosaics in Aquileia—how do you pronounce a word with six vowels—but after that, I thought I’d catch a bus or train, then spend the next two nights back in Venice. Kit, what’s the hotel where you and Colin stay?”

  We discuss logistics, with Susan looking up train and bus schedules, Chris driving, Julia taking landscape photos out the window. I’m trying to read about Aquileia, named for an eagle who flew over while some Roman outlined city parameters with a plow. Or so they say. It’s decided. Chris will turn in his car, we will drive back to San Rocco, and we arrange to pick up Camille at the Padova train station en route home. I say mildly that Padova might not be easy to navigate, but these are Americans and they have utter faith in navigation systems on their watches and phones, systems that are ignorant of Italian drivers. Susan secures my (formerly) favorite hotel for Camille for two nights. Travel with others (herding cats) can drive you mad. Whims, logistics, misconceptions, and perhaps one pregnant woman who wants solitude.

  * * *

  —

  Aquileia fascinates me. Like many Roman settlements this was strategic, a river port and headquarters for launching raids up into the Danube. It had peaked by AD 14. Will the town fascinate Chris’s group? We stop first at the basilica, built in AD 313. Yes! It’s worth a flight to Italy just to see this: the oldest and largest floor mosaic of the Christian world. Why haven’t I been here? Italy can always astonish you. I’m wishing for Colin. We are used to exploring together, falling into our own world of associations and reactions. I’m missing a limb that isn’t missing. “What’s your favorite part?” I’d ask him. Mine is the three fishermen (are two of them angels?) lowering their net formed with tiny black pebbles into a striated sea where all kinds of fish swim. A feeling of exhilaration sweeps through me; I can’t stop smiling as I wander around these fantasia expanses of mosaic.

  * * *

  —

  Why travel? This! Across eons, the hand of the artist reaches for small mosaic bits. A riot of animals, fish, and birds spreads across the floor. A peacock—that must have been fun to fit the blue stones into the tail fan. A deer as big as the roebuck they served us last night. Donkey, lobster, heron, partridge, ram, a rooster pecking at a tortoise—the makers reveled in the natural world. There’s
an allegorical and biblical context—Jonah and whale, angels, maybe other stories I don’t recognize, and pagan images, too, a winged horse and a languorous man sacked out under a pergola. Camille leans down to photograph a realistic group of snails. “What’s your favorite part so far?” I ask.

  “I love this group of snails. But did you see the fishermen? I suppose they’re apostles. That net—completely transparent but made of stones—in the sea just knocks me sideways. And the swirly octopus!” (Okay, Colin—I can travel without you!)

  “So many fish everywhere. It shows their world, I guess. This was a port, the sea nearby, water everywhere. Some of the fish I’m sure can be identified. We may see them on our plates at lunch.”

  “How did this survive? I read earlier that the town was destroyed by Huns and once or twice by earthquakes.”

  “It just got filled in and covered over somehow. Mud, straw, dirt, then some flooring went down. The Austrians took over at some point and discovered it. The town goes back to 181 BC. Just think of all the hordes that have overrun it.”

  * * *

  —

  There’s a lot left to see but it’s quick. A row of fluted columns used to be the forum. In the archaeological museums—funerary marble busts and statues that used to line memorial roads; urns; and monumental tomb markers with Latin inscriptions. A profound cache of vivid mementos. That most of the town is still unexcavated makes me want to be an archaeologist with a ton of money.

  There’s confusion getting Camille to a train, as there always is confusion in a travel group when someone breaks trail. She never elaborated on the “sex on the sofa” episode. Is she meeting this Rowan in Venice? She said she wants to explore an idea. Anyway, she’s off on her jaunt.