The Reluctant Tuscan

by Phil Doran

  Next came the soup. Since they couldn’t decide on one, they made two: a zuppa di zucca made from the small, sweet pumpkins they grew in their garden, and pasta e fagioli, classic Tuscan pasta and bean soup.

  We were stuffed, but Nina, Nona, and Nana were just getting warmed up. For our primi they brought out platters of fettucini carbonara made with bacon and eggs, broad pappardelle noodles with roasted red potatoes in a pesto sauce, and a heart-stopping lasagna made with alternating layers of spinach and ricotta cheese.

  At this point all of us could have stopped eating and lived on our body fat for a month, but that would have meant missing out on the main course, trota. These grilled trout had been caught that morning by their neighbor from the little stream that ran behind their house, and if any of you who are reading this happen to be sitting on Death Row awaiting your execution, I would beg you to consider this for your last meal. The taste of these fish grilled in their skin on an iron skillet with lemon, olive oil, and sage was the culinary equivalent of making love to Marilyn Monroe. Something you could look back on in your old age and savor.

  After all that food, topped off by a scrumptious torta di cioccolata and assorted roasted figs, Nancy and I decided that we needed either a long walk or a stomach pump. So while the boys got settled in the guest bedroom, we followed the gurgling little trout stream as it led us deep into the woods.

  We walked without speaking, our path a spongy bed of pine needles that quieted our footsteps so as not to disturb the cathedral silence of the tall trees. Eventually we came to where the stream emptied into a small pond. The water was incredibly still and held the shimmering reflection of the clouds overhead as well as the upside-down image of an ancient, abandoned mill. The mill was completely encased in moss and overgrown vines, its waterwheel frozen in time and decomposing in soundless splendor.

  We sat on a fallen tree trunk, staring at the mill, only occasionally distracted by the silvery flash of a trout in the icy blueness of the pond.

  “It’s so beautiful here,” Nancy murmured amid the buzzing of insects and the soft rustling of the grass.

  I loosened my belt and unbuttoned my shirt where it was tight across my belly. “I don’t think I’ll ever eat again.”

  “Until dinner.”

  “We got to stop.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’m out of control.”

  “My problem is I still feel like I’m on vacation here,” I said, “so every day I’m partying with the gelato and the cheese.”

  “The cheese is killing me,” Nancy said.

  “We got to get serious about a diet, and this time I mean it.”

  “We’ll help each other,” she vowed. “If one person starts to weaken, the other one stops me.”

  “We’re only talking about eight or nine pounds here. You know the drill: fruits, vegetables, fish.”

  “Exercise every day,” she said. “And keep each other away from the cream sauces.”

  “It’ll go quick,” I said. “Say we lose a pound a week—”

  “Which isn’t much.”

  “In two months we’ll have taken off so much, we could really pig out at our Christmas banquet.”

  “We’re having a Christmas banquet?”

  “Yeah, we’re inviting the neighbors over for roasted goat.”

  “Shut up.”

  “It’s a tradition around here.”

  “Don’t even joke about it!”

  “What? You thought we were keeping him? I thought you knew we were just fattening him up for—”

  She put her hand over my mouth and tried to wrestle me to the ground as she yelled, “I hate you, I hate you.”

  “Mmm, I can smell that sauce now.” I laughed as we rolled around on the small apron of grass. “Pomodoro alla Pepe.”

  “Why do you keep teasing me about him?”

  “I’m just trying to get your goat.”

  We were anxious to get on the road before dark, but Nina, Nona, and Nana wouldn’t let us leave until they had packed us up with enough food to provision an Arctic expedition. We sat in the kitchen as they bustled about, and I took this opportunity to ask them about some of the “whispers in the wind.” I was especially interested in the ones that involved the Pingatores. After weaving me a convoluted narrative about people who had been dead for a hundred and fifty years, they finally got up to the present time, and then they proceeded to tell me the most astonishing story I had ever heard.

  31

  Fare una Bella Figura

  The two Italian words most firmly embedded in the English language are graffiti and paparazzi. Interestingly, both involve a public display. This tells us much about their national psyche, for the average Italian is motivated by two powerful forces: fare una bella figura (looking good to his friends and neighbors) and non fare una brutta figura (not looking bad to his friends and neighbors).

  With this in mind I was trying to figure out how we could most benefit from the story Rudolfo’s aunts had told us. First I had to make sure it was more or less true. Having spent my entire career as a professional sitcom wordbag, I realized that I didn’t know very much about journalism. But I had seen All the President’s Men a couple of times, so I understood that if you wanted people to believe your story, you needed independent corroboration. And to get that I had to talk to the one person I had been avoiding. The mayor.

  Every Wednesday the mayor had lunch at Trattoria Toscana, where the special of the day was always saltimbocca, a veal dish so named because it literally “jumps into your mouth.” Then, after a leisurely meal, he would go see his mistress. Interestingly, a popular Italian expression for mistress is contorno, which means side dish. Italians love those polite little euphemisms. They commonly refer to a public toilet as a vespasiano, from vespa, the word for wasp, presumably for the buzzing noise inside, and their discreet way of describing the streetwalkers on the boulevard is to refer to them as le lucciole . . . the fireflies, because they only come out at night.

  I had positioned myself between the trattoria and his girlfriend’s apartment, directly in the path of his booty call, and it wasn’t long before I spotted the mayor coming down the street with the jaunty air of a man who had just satisfied one appetite and was about to satisfy another.

  “Scusami, Signor Sindaco, buon giorno,” I said, greeting him in my best Italian. My language skills had developed to the point where I could carry on a reasonable conversation without Nancy’s help, which was good, because a lady’s presence might have further embarrassed him.

  He seemed pleased to see me and eager to find out whatever had happened to that article I was writing about him. And he was not shy about reminding me how quickly our denuncia had disappeared because of his intervention. I told him that I was glad he’d mentioned the article, because I had just come upon some new information that I needed to confirm. As I laid out the parameters of the story, he stared at me with growing unease.

  He started to back away, denying the story by chalking it up to the ramblings of the uneducated peasant mind with nothing better to think about. But from the jittery edge in his voice and the way he was trying to get away from me, I knew it was true. I took out my notebook and followed him down the street, calling out questions as if I were a member of the Washington press corps trying to engage the President before he could get to his helicopter.

  He was just about to reach the sanctuary of his girlfriend’s apartment when Horn Dog appeared. As if incensed that somebody was going to get some nookie and he wasn’t, the little mutt starting growling at the mayor and yipping at his ankles. The commotion of my questions and Horn Dog’s yapping caused windows to open and curious heads to look out. All this attention was too much for a man on his way to visit his mistress, so he doffed his hat in my direction and bolted up the street, having to settle for a lunch without his favorite side dish.

  Now that I’d field-tested our story on the mayor, I knew it was ready for prime time, so we set about trying to come upon the key players whe
n they were both together. Fortunately, they were also creatures of habit. So, the following Sunday we parked our car under the shade of the lead-colored dome of the church and sat waiting for the noon Mass to let out. When we spotted Vesuvia Pingatore in the crowd exiting the chapel, we were somewhat surprised to see her walking arm in arm with Marco Mucchi, the pair of them chattering away like old friends. They stopped in front of the eroded saints on the façade of the church doors, and Vesuvia took out a sheaf of papers. She handed them to Marco Mucchi and waited while he looked them over.

  What fiendish plot were they hatching against us now? With Marco’s new position on the Comune board he could cause us no end of fresh grief. I simmered with rage at how I had come up with his campaign slogan, only to have that smiling little Judas turn against us.

  Their conversation continued as they crossed the street and ambled toward the little café with the green awning. We got out of our car and followed them at a distance discreet enough to see Marco Mucchi, still holding on to the papers, bid her good-bye. Marco then sat down with his wife and two small daughters, who had been to the earlier Mass, while Vesuvia continued over to another table where her brother, Mario, was waiting. No sooner had she sat down and ordered herself an espresso than we approached and greeted them.

  “Sorry to bother you,” I said, as Nancy translated so nothing would be missed, “but I was wondering if you could spare me a moment.”

  Mario cocked his head at us like a spaniel.

  “I’ve been working on this article on Cambione. . . .”

  “Bully for you,” Mario said with hollow cheer. “Not even a car accident or the Holy Sabbath can keep you Yanks from making a buck.”

  I gave him an accommodating smile as I took out my notepad and flipped it open. “It’s going to feature some of the town’s most prominent citizens, which, of course, must include the Pingatores.”

  Mario translated for Vesuvia, who responded with a suspicious smile.

  “So I need you to help verify a story I heard about you . . . and your zia Teresa.”

  The mention of their aunt, who had gone off to live in America, caught them both short. They turned to us with expressions that ranged from guarded to contemptuous.

  “Apparently, when you were kids—during the hard years after the war—your family was pretty much kept alive by regular shipments of food from your zia Teresa.”

  “We received a leg up from many relatives,” Mario said, nervously glancing around to see who was in hearing distance.

  “Seems these shipments from America continued for a number of years,” I said, as Nancy and I sat down at their table. “Every month she’d send you a packageful of Hershey bars, Spam—”

  “Eh, it was so long ago, who remembers?” Vesuvia suddenly said in Italian, her jaw clenched in anger.

  “Even after Zia Teresa died, her son kept on sending you packages like clockwork. Then, one day, a box arrived like no other. When your mamma opened it, it was filled with a strange, dry powder.”

  “Who told you this?” Mario signaled the waiter for their check. “They don’t know bugger-all!”

  “There was a note inside, but since it was in English, nobody could read it. After much discussion your parents decided that it was powdered milk. So they mixed it with water, and you kids drank it.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Mario said.

  “Well, other people think I do. See, your parents generously shared it with some of the other kids in the village . . . like the mayor.”

  “Bollocks!” Mario hissed. “We knew what it was and we didn’t eat it!”

  “According to my source, which I can’t reveal, you didn’t find out what it was until years later when Zia Teresa’s son showed up, wanting to see where you were keeping his mother’s ashes.”

  “This is utter rubbish!” Mario started to rise, but I put my hand on his arm.

  “So you’re saying that a box of strange-looking powder arrived with a note that you couldn’t read, and you instantly knew what it was?”

  “Okay, maybe at first mamma thought it was some kind of yeast.”

  “Too bad she didn’t bake it up in a loaf of bread,” I said. “Because then the dead could have risen again.”

  “Why are you spreading lies about us?” Vesuvia said to Nancy in Italian.

  “Why were you spreading lies about us?” Nancy fired back. “Telling the Comune we were putting up a three-story aluminum-and-glass California beach house!”

  “We did no such thing!” Vesuvia said, her voice biting like a rusty saw.

  Nancy cupped her hands to the heavens, making the Italian gesture that implores the other person to be honest.

  “If we did say anything,” Vesuvia muttered, “we were only repeating what somebody told us.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing,” I said waving my notebook in their face.

  “How dare you!” Mario’s voice strained as he struggled to keep it to a whisper. “Don’t you know my sister already feels bad that the whole town is blaming her for your accident?”

  “Well, let’s see how bad she feels when the whole world reads that you’re a pack of ghouls who eat their own dead.”

  “If anybody has the right to feel bad, it’s us,” Nancy said. “After I made you that bas relief, and you never even acknowledged it!”

  Vesuvia’s face twisted into a sardonic expression. Her left eye bulged out so far, her eye shadow cracked. Just then, Marco Mucchi approached our table, beaming at the sight of the four of us sitting together.

  “Un miracolo,” he declared. A miracle. “Il leone e l’agnello.” The lion lying down with the lamb.

  But his delight was short lived. Mario shot out of his chair so abruptly that he momentarily lost his balance and wheeled like a spooked horse. He regained his composure and signaled to his sister that they were leaving. Thinking he might have caused the problem, Marco lavishly apologized. Vesuvia ignored him as she rose and gathered up her purse, but Marco kept explaining that he had only come over because she had forgotten to initial one of the pages.

  “Criminale!” Vesuvia screamed, grabbing the pages out of Marco’s hand and ripping them up. “Farabutti!”

  “We’ll take you scoundrels to court and sue your pants off!” Mario echoed as they steamed toward the door.

  Marco looked at us dumbfounded. When we explained what happened, his face turned as ashen as Zia Teresa’s remains.

  “How could you do this?” he said. “You’ve ruined everything.”

  “Look, I really wasn’t going to write the story,” I explained. “We were just trying to scare them into dropping all claims on the house and accepting us as the rightful owners.”

  “And to make them stop harassing us.”

  Marco picked up the ripped pages and handed them to us. “See this? It’s a document she asked me to file with the Comune. It transfers the ownership of the property at the top of the hill to you.”

  “What?”

  “She felt so bad the town was blaming her, she wanted to give you the land as a peace offering.”

  Nancy and I looked at the shredded document and then at each other in stunned silence.

  “But why didn’t she just respond to our offer?” Nancy said. “That was months ago.”

  “She told me that when she was opening the package, your bas-relief fell on the floor and broke. She was so embarrassed, she didn’t know how to tell you.”

  “Oh, that’s crazy,” Nancy said. “I probably could have fixed it, or made her a new one. I wish she would have said something.”

  “I think she wanted to surprise you,” Marco Mucchi said, looking mournfully at the ripped pages. “This was going to be your wedding present.”

  32

  Il Raccolto

  The only thing worse than feeling bad is feeling bad on a day when everybody else is feeling so damn good. And the source of such universal good cheer was the time of year known as il raccolto, the harvest.


  By late October the grapes and olives had ripened. From all over the area, vineyards and olive groves were reverberating with the collective joy of gathering in the land’s bounty. It was the time of year when one could safely say that the only places on earth where Communism was still practiced were North Korea, Cuba, and this little corner of Tuscany. Friends, neighbors, in-laws, passing acquaintances, and occasionally even a pair of stranieri, all pulled together to help bring in the harvest.

  We had spent the past few days recoiling from the fiasco we had created with the Pingatores. Nancy and I moved around the house like a pair of ghosts, as if dazed by the hurt we had caused. Even the sight of Pepe frolicking in the heather or eating one of my brand-new Nike running shoes failed to cheer us.

  The weather outside matched our mood. The all-powerful sun had faded into a pale white ball that was constantly obscured by gray skies until it looked like just another feature of the landscape. Cold, wet winds howled through hairline cracks in the walls, as people packed up the citrus-colored linens of summer and donned thick wools and heavy cottons in somber shades of navy and brown.

  I think no country on earth benefits from the sunshine more than Italy. When it’s overcast and dreary, the gray seems to accentuate how everything is slightly threadbare and the villages have an almost shabby, Eastern European feel. But when the sun shines, the ordinary becomes remarkable and the remarkable becomes transcendent.

  We might have stayed in this wintry funk forever if the ham-sized fist of Gigi hadn’t pounded on our door one morning, rousing us out of our malaise. What were we doing lying around the house? he demanded. Hadn’t we seen the gathering storm clouds? We needed to harvest our olives right now before it started to pour. A hard, cold rain like this could decimate our crop.

  We had been so preoccupied with construction problems and the internecine warfare with the Pingatores that we had neglected to notice that our olives had, in the last week or so, grown much fatter. Had we been more attentive, we would have seen how the hard, dark-green berries had morphed through a hundred shades of purple as they swelled into jellybean-shaped pods so saturated, they were almost sweating oil.