by Phil Doran
These e-mails made me feel more like a travel agent than a writer, but at least they had opened a new avenue of communication between us. So I sent him back the names of a few B and Bs, as well as more impressions of Italy, like how every time I came back here from America it took me weeks to reset all my default commands. Expectations had to be lowered and appreciation widened so that I expected to do less in a day, but appreciated each thing more.
Meanwhile, Nancy rented a space at a local marble studio and began carving a statue she thought she might have a buyer for. The marble studio she worked in was a large open space the size of a warehouse. Yet it felt claustrophobic, due to the towering blocks of raw stone and the half-sculpted human figures that were scattered throughout the area like huge oak trees in a forest. There were life-sized angels and nightmarishly proportioned gargoyles. Fluted columns of creamy alabaster and ceiling-high pillars made from a Russian onyx as black as sable.
As many as a dozen sculptors and artigiani worked there at one time, and the din of air compressors and hammers striking chisels was thunderous. In the midst of all this glorious confusion and serious concentration, people laughed and shouted over the jet-engine howling of the machines and the unsynchronized clanging of hammers playing a version of the “Anvil Chorus” at warp speed.
One wall of the studio was hung with a collection of body parts . . . arms, legs, torsos, hands, and feet that would have been macabre if they weren’t so beautiful. They were plaster models, some dating back to the fifteenth century, and the sculptors, using calipers to scale up or down to whatever size they wanted, used them for reference points when they couldn’t get a live model.
I entered and ratcheted down my senses to adjust to the dim light, the mind-throttling noise, and the burning smell of stone being ground into powder. Stepping around a coarse wooden trestle that was cluttered with chisels, mallets, drill bits, and air hammers, I spotted Nancy. I tried to call out, but my throat was already hoarse from the marble dust that hung in the air like a cloud and was rendered in shades of ivory by the sunlight that streamed in through flyspecked skylights that were never opened.
“Hey,” I croaked as I approached.
Nancy smiled as she looked up from the torso she was smoothing with a rasp. I smiled back because she was so covered in marble dust she looked like she had been rolled in powdered sugar.
“You did a lot today,” I said, walking around the statue.
“It’s getting there.” She took off her goggles to reveal the face of an albino raccoon.
I put my arm around her, and we walked over to the opened, garage-sized doors where it was a lot quieter.
“I spoke to Ike,” I said.
“Oh, how is he?” she said, unzipping her jumpsuit and letting the top fall around her waist.
“Worried. In all the years he’s been doing our books, he’s never seen it like this.”
“We’re broke?”
“We’re getting there.”
“So you, and Ike, think it’s time to sell?”
I nodded and turned away to get a drink out of the water fountain, because I didn’t want to see the look she was giving me. I swallowed, and with my head still down, I said, “I know it’ll mean taking a loss, but in the long run—”
“A loss? That house should be worth a lot.”
I straightened up and faced her with narrowed eyes. “What house are you talking about?”
“Brentwood.”
“You don’t want to sell the one here?”
“No! I thought you were talking about—”
“I don’t want to sell the one in Brentwood!”
“It’s the only thing we got that’s worth anything,” she said.
I should have known it would come to this. For the past few weeks she had been talking about refinancing that house and pulling some money out. But I was nervous about taking on large monthly payments when neither of us had a salary coming in. She argued that it would be a short-term loan that we’d pay off when the Comune unblocked our funds . . . but what if that, like everything else in Italy, took years?
Then we started talking about renting it out, long term. That would certainly help with our cash flow, but do little to give us the amount we needed to finish the rustico.
“I’m not ready to sell that house,” I said emphatically. If I had been holding one of those sculptor’s hammers, I think I would have banged on something.
“I knew it was too good to be true,” she said. “You’re still dreaming about Hollywood.”
“That’s not it,” I snapped, even though it probably was.
“All right, honey,” she said soothingly. “Let’s not get all worked up over it.”
I took a deep prana breath like, yeah, that was going to help.
“I don’t know, would it hurt just to find out what that house is worth these days?” she said. “Couldn’t we at least look into it?”
“I can’t stop you, it’s half yours.”
“Aren’t you just a little curious about what the housing market’s like back there?”
I knew what she was doing. When a frontal assault doesn’t work, pull back, and come at it from the flanks. Introduce the idea and get the other person used to it little by little, like boiling them alive by turning up the temperature of the water very slowly. Oh, yeah, I knew what she was doing, because it was something I did all the time.
It was so beastly hot that only mad dogs, Englishmen, and fools who owned broken-down houses in Italy were out in the noonday sun. Nancy was inside helping Umberto and the guys tear up the old flooring so we could put in terra-cotta bricks, while I was hauling debris down to where we were dumping it at the bottom of the hill.
I was mopping my brow in between gulps of water, as Vagabondo filled my wheelbarrow with shovelfuls of dirt and broken concrete. We were talking about women, and he was telling me about a girl he had met at the disco. Even though he liked her and they had really hit it off, he suspected that from the wild way she danced she was a bicicletta. That’s a term the local boys use to describe a woman who’s so easy, it doesn’t take a car to get her into bed, she’d go off with a guy who only owns a bicycle.
Nancy, Umberto, Va Bene, and Problema drifted outside. They were breaking for lunch, and as they sat down in the shade and unwrapped their sandwiches, Nancy motioned for me to sit beside her. I told her I was just going to take this last load to the bottom of the hill, because I was afraid once I sat down, I’d never get up again.
I turned the wheelbarrow around and pointed it downhill. I had to dig in my heels to keep it from dragging me headlong as sweat, mixed with sunblock, ran into my eyes and stung them. My sunglasses slid down my nose, and I had to squint because the day was as blindingly bright as an overexposed photograph.
I was feeling as oppressed by my worries as I was by the fierce Tuscan sun. I hated the idea of struggling this hard at my age. I felt that after a lifetime of work, things should have been easier. But here I was, bedeviled by financial worries due to the fact that we hadn’t saved enough because I thought I would keep working forever. I knew that once I got to a certain age and my pension kicked in, we’d be okay, but the trick now was to live long enough to collect that pension before this house killed me.
I hit a bump in the heavily rutted road and the wheelbarrow swerved to the left. I tried to jerk it back on course, but my hands were so raw, I lost grip of the handles. The whole thing pitched over and started to fall. I lunged after it, but I couldn’t hold on. I fell to my knees and could only watch helplessly as the wheelbarrow tumbled down the side of the hill, spewing its contents along the way.
I looked up to see Nancy and the guys laughing. She called out to see if I was okay, but I was so pissed, I couldn’t even answer. I started to climb down to fetch the wheelbarrow. She yelled to me to let the guys help me get it after lunch. I hollered back that I didn’t need any help as I half stumbled down the hill and retrieved the wheelbarrow.
My anger kept festering as
I pushed the wheelbarrow back up the hill. By the time I reached the top, it was all I could do to look at them. I picked up the water bottle, chugged down a long gulp, and then poured the rest over my head. I wanted to go inside the rustico, curl up in some dark little corner, and lose myself in the smell of cool, wet stones and cobwebs.
But I didn’t want the guys to think I was upset, so I plunked down next to Nancy under the dappled shade of an ancient olive tree. I was hungry but the sandwich she handed me felt heavier than a shotput. I held it in my hands, trying to muster the strength to bring it to my mouth as Nancy and the guys ribbed me about the wheelbarrow. They were chattering in that high-speed, back-street Italian that I always have trouble following, but I did manage to hear that my wife had anointed me with a new nickname, Goffo, “clumsy.”
I wanted to crack some kind of self-deprecating joke to let them know I was being a good sport, but my brain felt spongy and my tongue lay in my mouth like a cinder block. Plus, my stomach had started to reel as the fumes from Umberto’s lunch engulfed me. In spite of the heat he was eating zambone, a heavily spiced pork sausage encased in the skin of a pig’s foot.
Nancy was on a roll, as if inspired by this incident to recount every klutzy thing I had ever done in my life. The guys were howling with laughter as she continued her monologue. The comedy writer’s wife. Years of living with me and she could certainly hit a punchline. I just smiled and nodded, trying to mask my seething rage. I knew the guys couldn’t wait to repeat her stories to all their friends until the whole town was laughing at me.
How dare they laugh at me? Here I was, a fifty-something guy, a lifetime office worker, busting my hump in this heat to keep up with guys in their thirties who did this every day. And they were laughing at me.
I spent the rest of the day sulking. Nancy knew I was upset and made a special effort to be loving, but I didn’t respond. I just pretended to be busy and answered her questions with one-word answers. As soon as the guys left and we were alone, she cornered me and tried to apologize.
I heard her say that she had just been kidding around and that she had only done it to amuse the guys and take their minds off the heat, and what was the matter with me anyway? I used to have such a good sense of humor.
That did it. As difficult as it is for me to express my anger, I exploded. The gall of her accusing me of not having a sense of humor! It was that very sense of humor that had gotten us almost everything we had in life. Why, because I wasn’t making any money at it now, did that suddenly mean I no longer had a sense of humor?
As is so often the case when you get mad at somebody, they get mad at you for getting mad, so the argument escalated. She glared at me in a way that instantly trivialized everything I was saying. Then she accused me of secretly wanting us to fail so we could go back to L.A. and I could resume killing myself trying to worm my way back into show business. I told her I didn’t have to go all the way back to L.A. to kill myself, because this house was doing a pretty good job of it right here. We started screaming at each other and I wound up saying some things I really didn’t mean, like how she dragged me here so she could finally be in control of everything.
Her cheeks went crimson, and she told me that if I really felt that way maybe I should go back! I told her that maybe I would, and if there was one thing I was grateful for, it was that I hadn’t let her talk me into selling our house in Brentwood, because that’s exactly where I wanted to be right now!
22
Fiesole
Nancy was already in the shower by the time I staggered into the bedroom and stripped off my muddy clothes. I was in the process of kicking the whole sweaty mess into a corner when I noticed a pair of tickets sitting on our nightstand.
A few weeks before, when we were getting along much better, I had seen a billboard for a concert in Fiesole, a dramatic little hill town on the outskirts of Florence. It was an evening of love songs performed by a cast of popular Italian singers in an outdoor amphitheater originally built by the Romans. It had all the makings of a wonderfully romantic evening, except that tonight we happened to hate each other’s guts.
Nancy was just coming out of the shower when I walked into the bathroom holding up the tickets.
“That’s not tonight?” she said, wrinkling her nose.
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m in no mood. You go.”
“Oh, like I’m going to drive two hours to sit there by myself and listen to an evening of love songs.”
“I don’t care, do whatever you want.”
She reached up and began towel-drying her hair. I sighed in full knowledge that it’s hard for a man to be angry at a woman when she’s standing in front of him naked.
“I’ll call Rudolfo and see if he wants to take Pia.” I went back into the bedroom and picked up the cell phone. “Maybe it’ll light a fire.”
She popped her head out of the bathroom door. “How much were they?”
“Forty euros apiece.”
She clucked at the waste of money.
“I’m not going to give ’em away,” I said as I dialed. “I’ll sell them to him.”
“You can’t call up somebody last minute and sell them tickets.”
“They’re great seats.”
“Whatever.” She withdrew into the bathroom.
“He’s not answering,” I called out as I redialed. “I’ll try him at his parents’.”
“While you’re at it, tell Dino we’re out of hot water.”
“Again?” I stormed into the bathroom, stuck my head in the stall, and turned the faucet. Icy cold water splashed on my hand, and as I waited and waited it didn’t get any warmer. “Aw, man . . .”
“I had just finished rinsing off when—”
“Oh, thank you.”
“Think I did it on purpose?”
“Obviously, you weren’t going to mention it until I got in there, all set for a nice hot shower, only to—”
“Oh, shut up!” she screamed.
“You shut up!!” I bellowed.
And on that convivial note we threw on some clothes, piled into the car, and roared off for an evening of love songs in Fiesole.
Even though it was over a hundred kilometers away, and there was lots of traffic, we weren’t overly concerned about being late. The concert, like most operas and theatricals in Italy, was scheduled to begin at 9:15 P.M. This odd starting time is due to the fact that Italians must eat before a performance, and of course, the only time they can possibly have dinner is at eight o’clock. Now, there’s no way that any restaurant in Italy is actually ready to seat you at eight, since the waiters have just finished their dinner and they’re still enjoying an espresso and a cigarette.
You’re finally shown to your table at about eight-twenty, where you sit sipping bottled water and sucking on a bread-stick until somebody deigns to take your order, so realistically, it’s coming up hard on nine bells before any food ever arrives. Given time for your primo, your secondo, and your dolci, washed down with a glass of grappa of course, it’s now well after nine-thirty by the time you’ve signaled your waiter a half-dozen times for the check. Then there’s the driving to the theater, the nightmare of parking, the confusion of finding your seats, and the meeting and greeting of all your friends and neighbors in the audience. This explains why if any curtain in Italy ever goes up before ten o’clock, it’s a miracle on the magnitude of changing water into wine.
Fiesole was founded by the Etruscans seven hundred years before the birth of Christ, making it far older than its larger and more celebrated neighbor, Florence. From the beginning the famous and the affluent have flocked there to seek comfort in its cool, steady breezes and sweeping views of the countryside. So renowned are the vistas that if you look closely at many of the masterpieces of Renaissance painting, you will recognize Fiesole’s lily-speckled meadows in the background.
Kings, bishops, popes, and pop stars have all owned villas in Fiesole, which has been especially receptive to the creative communit
y, housing everyone from Boccaccio and Marcel Proust to Gertrude Stein and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Architecturally, there is nothing spectacular about its cathedrals, museums, monasteries, or civic buildings, save for how they are clustered upon a series of hilltops so that the entire centro storico (historic center) of the city has views to burn. There is, however, one edifice in Fiesole worth writing home about, and that is the Teatro Romano, the Roman Amphitheater. Actually, it’s a complex of structures built at the beginning of the Imperial Period in the first century A.D. and featuring, in addition to the outdoor theater, one of the earliest Roman baths ever built.
Originally ordered by Augustus, the baths were remodeled two hundred years later by Hadrian. In its expanded version you can look at the skeletal walls and easily imagine fleshy patricians steaming in the caldarium, then cooling off in the frigidarium, before oiling up and donning their togas for the Saturday-night orgy at Octavius’s pad.
Luck was with us when we pulled into the Piazza Mino in the heart of Fiesole, as we found both a parking space and a table for two at a restaurant called Il Lordo, which means “the filthy person.” Apparently, giving something an unsavory name doesn’t diminish the commercial appeal of a place in Italy, because I’ve eaten at a restaurant called Puzzadolce (Sweet Stink), which that day was serving sformati di verdure, or as we would translate it, “deformed quiche.” I’ve gotten a haircut at a unisex salon called I Piccati (The Losers) and spent the night at a popular hotel in Florence called Malaspina, which means “bad back,” causing me to wonder if anyone has ever said, “Say, how are the beds at the Malaspina Hotel?”
After dinner, we crossed the cobblestoned piazza, passing the Bandini Museum, which does not showcase the history of fertilizer, but rather a fine collection of thirteenth-to-fifteenth-century religious art and a splendid sampling of Byzantine miniatures.
