See You in the Piazza

by Frances Mayes

  * * *

  POWERING DOWN! AFTER yesterday’s exploits, we’re ready for beach time. Too bad Robin and Andrea left by train for Roma this morning. Work called…Calling us, cherries and cappuccino for breakfast.

  The beach, only fifteen minutes away, is deserted this early, though by eleven a few souls are combing the rocks. Ed meets a man looking for octopus. He wades in and scoops up one from the rocky water then rolls it against rocks to tenderize the flesh. Then he grabs up another, almost as long as his leg. Michael, Francesca, and I walk as far as we can. Others are sitting on towels, listening to the slight tide scrooch in and out.

  We wanted only a light lunch but find ourselves at a light-infused waterfront restaurant in nearby Savelletri. Thin pale curtains lift in the slight breeze and the white room takes on the tint of the sea. Mounds of freshest fried fish, whole lobsters that look formidable to deal with, big grilled shrimp, and carafes of cold white wine. The wavering reflections from the turquoise waters make us all appear to be subaqueous.

  We drive home through the most ancient olive groves. Ann and I cause a halt so we can run into the field and say hello to a few of the thousand-year-old giant crones that emanate survive, survive. They’re ancient souls writhing out of the earth, their crowns of leaves as green as in their early years. Leaning against one, imagining what this place was the day it was planted…“Let’s go!” we hear them call from the cars.

  * * *

  IN THE LATE afternoon, the owners’ son shows us his family art collection in a romantic building at the back of the garden. We’ve been drawn to the elegance of the ripe-peach stucco façade with faded green shutters, niches for statues no longer there, and a parade of busts along the roof. The place looks as if it could dissolve into a reflection in a Venetian canal. When he opens the door, light floods into a room lined with marble busts on pedestals mounted around the walls. Statesmen, poets, gods. “Roman copies of Greek statues,” he tells us. He has seen them all his life and looks at them affectionately. “There was also an archeological collection, but much of it was stolen and the rest has been moved to a safer location.”

  Some of the pedestals are empty. Faded ocher walls with arched marble molding, and fascinating trompe-l’oeil tile floors, blue and yellow squares within squares—dazzling. There are maybe fifty of the astonishing busts and one palest white marble full-size naked goddess with a cherub at her feet.

  * * *

  PEDESTRIAN OF ME for sure, but I whisper to Ann, “If they sold some of these to a museum where someone could see them, they could restore the villa.” As I say this, I am remembering what I know: Italians don’t think that way. That’s American practicality that doesn’t comprehend what comes to you from eleven or twelve generations back. Perhaps he does not at all see the villa as we do.

  * * *

  NO ONE WANTS to drive any more today. When Ed and Randall turn in the rental car, the clerk waves away the info about the accident. “Not worth bothering about” is his surprising reaction. (That’s not going to happen in the United States.) After the long lunch, dinner seems redundant. Ed takes off at nine to pick up pizza. He gets lost in the dark, dark countryside, and we’ve gone through a few bottles of wine while waiting. Our last dinner in the grand old dining room with the planks of the table flying up! Otium was the house philosophy and we certainly have embraced the concept.

  A discovery for me: A new context deepens friendship. At home, we have our dinner parties, walks, fund-raisers, birthday parties, etc. Traveling together moves us out of preconception. Though some travel only to confirm their held convictions, this group is ready to be amazed. Seeing what is new gives our friendships new grounds. We’ll be reliving Puglia for years.

  * * *

  “GOOD-BYE, GOOD-BYE,” AS the Lucio Dalla song goes. Andare via e non tornare mai. Go away and never come back. That we won’t; not to this dreaming-in-time villa. But somewhere else? We’re talking about Venice next May. Or what about the Aeolian Islands? The future begins rushing toward us but I’m still saying good-bye to Puglia.

  Our car is loaded with wine, bread, bags, all the flours, dried beans, taralli we’re lugging home. Con un foglio d’erbe in tasca te ne vai…“With a blade of grass in your pocket, you leave.”

  NOTES:

  We missed the Santa Maria del Suffragio, another purgatory church, in Monopoli. It has not only carved skulls on the façade but also full skeletons on the door. Inside hang preserved bodies of eighteenth-century Monopoli officials, plus one desiccated little girl. The figures must look like gruesome piñatas.

  Fondazione Rodolfo Valentino in his hometown, Castellaneta: www.fondazionevalentino.it

  Ann Cornelisen wrote Torregreca and Women of the Shadows, both of which came out of her experiences living in the south of Italy in the 1950s and 1960s. She spent her last years in Italy in Cortona, where we became friends.

  As we approach departures at Fiumicino, the Rome airport, Ed calls Park and Dream. We often use this private long-term parking service. We wait in the passenger drop-off area called Kiss and Go. “Park, dream, kiss, go,” I say. “Even flying in Italy is romantic.” Kiss and Go means you can kiss for fifteen minutes and then depart. Within six, Dario arrives to take the car. “Where are you going for only one week?” he asks. He’s used to us leaving the car for months when we go back to the United States.

  “Sardegna! Last week of summer on the beaches.” Ed unloads our two carry-ons and Dario speeds off.

  * * *

  THE PLANE QUICKLY ascends and as quickly descends. We’ve landed in Sardegna. Passing Cagliari in our rented car, we see a steep hillside town of pale stones stretching out to a plain and the sea. We’re coming back here at the end of the trip. For now, we take only a few wrong turns while leaving the tempting town in the rear-view mirror. In less than an hour, we’ve checked into Is Morus Relais, a hotel in pine woods on the sea. The gardens are rampant with trumpet vine, oleander, hibiscus, lantana grown into bushes, and entwined pink and white bougainvillea spilling over the wall and into trees. Two beaches lie just beyond—crescents of golden sand—and a wade-in pool designed to look natural in the landscape. Our room looks through pines at the glorious sea and a ruler-drawn line of purple horizon. The bedspread, headboard, and rugs are traditional Sardinian woven natural wool, the floor smooth tile. A balcony with two chairs—perfect—where I will reread D. H. Lawrence’s Sea and Sardinia.

  Ed notices many eucalyptus trees. Why would those be here, so out of place? They’re out of place everywhere, according to me, except Australia, where they belong. In California, we had several that shredded constantly and stained everything. They were never mentioned without the word damned attached to their name. Other than the damned, the rest of the garden is all Mediterranean; beyond the hotel, the hills are covered with the low, scrubby, fragrant plants known as macchia. I was surprised to read that Sardegna once was a forested island, until those northern Savoy rulers in Torino clear-cut vast swaths of trees to use for their projects. By now the low macchia, home to birds, seems the true natural habitat. The desk clerk tells us that eucalyptus was planted extensively in some ill-advised government program. Ah! Like kudzu overrunning the American South. Good intentions turned to disaster.

  * * *

  WE ARE IN Santa Margherita, close to Pula. Sand beaches line this southern section of coast. Unlike the northern Sardinian coast, famous for its “villages” of tourist accommodations and seaside resorts such as Porto Cervo and Costa Smeralda, the landscape here remains unspoiled.

  We chose Is Morus for the first two nights because it’s near Teulada, where we will meet friends of a friend for a visit, and because the archeological site Nora is nearby. And the beaches! At the end of September, the sea is still warm but most summer visitors have returned to Milano and Rome.

  * * *

  DARK AS TAR. I would not want a flat tire on this road. We’re driving up to Pula fo
r dinner. We’re late. What stars! Crystal clusters, the evening star, the diamond my mother wore. For braving the blackness, we arrive at our reward: Cucina Machrì, an inconspicuous restaurant half on the sidewalk, half inside—a dozen small tables.

  When bread is this good, I indulge. I’ve had carta di musica before, dry flat bread thin as a sheet of music, crackly but pretty tasteless. Hard wheat flour, water, yeast rolled very thin then baked. It puffs and is then split in two and rebaked. In Sardegna, it’s called pane carasau, meaning “bread crust,” from the sardo word carasare. This savory version has been enlivened with rosemary, sea salt, and a bit of olive oil. The whole basket disappears—irresistible with a glass of bollicine, crisp, sparkling wine.

  Sophisticated restaurant! We’re served an amuse-bouche, a miniature zucchini timbale that tastes like the essence of summer. Ed passes me a bite of his Verrigni spaghetti with two bottargas, one of the great pasta dishes of Sardegna. I love my rich eggplant parmigiana but Ed is absolutely raving over the bottargas. After he almost hugs the waiter, the chef comes out. He looks cool in his whites, even though it’s hot and must be steaming in the kitchen. “Complimenti,” Ed says. “Please tell us the secret of this!”

  “Verrigni is a dried pasta from up in Abruzzo but the bottarghe is one hundred percent sardo.” Ed knows about the dried fish eggs that are grated over certain dishes, but that’s not, the chef tells us, how he prepares this. “I mix the spaghetti in a cream of fresh fish eggs, either dentice [snapper], muggine [mullet], or ricciola [yellowtail amberjack], then add more muggine eggs. The entire egg pouch of a red mullet is salted and dried, then it grates onto pasta, like Parmigiano.” His pasta, we quickly learn, is special. Organic, whole-grain durum wheat, cut through bronze or gold, then slowly dried at a very low temperature. All this care causes the pasta to remain porous, absorbing the tastes of the sauce. (We’ll be ordering some of these Verrigni products when we get home.) Gold-cut! I thought bronze was the best—never heard of gold—but can see how it would keep the dough smooth. Always something to learn at the Italian table.

  Now, the wine. We initiate this first night with a bottle of Iselis Argiolas, 2014, made from monica, a grape we don’t know. Nice to meet you. You’re plummy, spicy, and your tannins are tamed and behaving.

  * * *

  ON OUR RETURN, the dark and looming hills block the moon, if there is one. Back in our room, the terrace doors open to a sea so calm that reflections of stars wink on the surface. We hear the soft sluicing of retreating waves. I dip back into Sea and Sardinia. “Comes over one an absolute necessity to move. And what is more, to move in some particular direction. A double necessity, then, to get on the move, and to know whither.”

  So he begins. Lawrence, difficult and fierce, his wife Frieda, irritatingly called the Queen Bee, spoiled and capricious, on a brief trip shortly after World War One. Memory has tricked me; I recall from reading it years ago that the book was about the place, the sea. No. It’s about the voyage by ship from Sicilia and then about travails of travel, with passionate bursts of description. Mostly, it’s a novelist’s book. What interests him is how to write vigorously about people and character. “A jaw of massive teeth,” “an ancient crone in a crochet bed cover,” “drooping-lily sisters, all in white, with big feet.” He records long conversations with rough men slurping soup, glimpses of “wild peasants” dressed in black sheepskin tunics, and a man with two black pigs wrapped in sacks, each face appearing “like a flower from a wrapped bouquet.”

  The horrifying inns and meals Lawrence and Frieda suffered would have put anyone off visiting this island. Just as I’m getting tired of the banter from along the road, he launches into a gorgeous description:

  “Another naked tree I could paint is the gleaming mauve-silver fig, which burns its cold incandescence, tangled, like some sensitive creature emerged from the rock. A fig tree come forth in its nudity gleaming over the dark winter-earth is a sight to behold. Like some white, tangled sea anemone. Ah, if it could but answer! Or if we had tree-speech!”

  Buona notte, D. H. and Queen Bee. I’m lucky not to have to tie up my hair in a white kerchief to avoid contact with an unsavory pillow.

  * * *

  OUR FRIEND CRISTIANA, who lives near Siena, restored a house in nearby Teulada. She put us in touch with her builder, Antonio, and his partner, Elisabetta, because she wants us to see her favorite view in the world. They’ve agreed to take us to a point above Domus de Maria for her mystic site. We arrive in front of the Municipio, town hall, as they pull up in a truck. We climb in the backseat. They’re young, bright-faced, and welcoming. Elisabetta’s hair is pulled back tight, showing off her smooth tawny skin and big smile. How generous of them to give up their morning. Antonio heads right out into rugged hills where no one lives. What I thought was an especially heavy rock outcropping is the five-part ruin of a Nuraghi settlement. Those prehistoric people built conical rock fortifications with domed roofs. Now flat or collapsed, they’re hard to distinguish from the natural landscape.

  He turns off the two-lane highway onto a rutted road going up. We bounce along as they tell us about plants along the way: the brush that the lean, horned cows eat; the lentisco bush with bright berries that yield a prized oil (used like olive oil but less copiously); the canna (reeds) used in buildings; fichi d’india, prickly pear, which is everywhere, erupting its spiky, rosy fruit.

  At a sharp upward turn, Antonio jumps out and opens a gate. After a couple of hundred yards of jouncing along, he stops at the low house of a friend who is not there. Yes, here’s Cristiana’s hallowed view. We look between branches of pomegranate and wild olive at the distant blue crescent of a Roman port, and the coastal points—Antonio names each—of Perdalonga, Tuerredda, and Torre di Malfatano. Home to them, these ineffably gorgeous places. “One of the great views in all of Sardegna, no doubt,” Elisabetta says. Another great view is her big genuine smile.

  * * *

  WE THOUGHT THEY’D drop us back at the piazza, but instead, we take a looping tour along the stupendous coast, stopping at the Marina di Teulada for lunch. Their friend Enzo brings out a platter of shrimp and octopus, then another of sharp local pecorino, salume, and prosciutto, along with tumblers of cold white wine. He’s from Piemonte. Married a local girl and has been here for twenty years. He pulls up a chair and we talk wine and Piemonte and food. The fishermen sell their catch right here on the dock every morning. Fresher than this doesn’t exist. Then Enzo suggests a mirto, the Sardinian digestivo made from the maceration of myrtle berries in alcohol. Just a sip! It’s pretty—dark, as though garnets melted into the glass—and the taste of the ripe berry leaves a slight rasp of bitterness on the tongue.

  We’ve mellowed into the afternoon by now and when Antonio suggests a visit to his cousin, we climb back in the truck. Up into the rocky hills to a house with another staggering view. His cousin, a coiffed woman dressed as if about to lunch in a fancy restaurant, shows us her airy indoor-outdoor home where she expertly fashions fishing lures. The living room is strewn with her tackle and trim. She’s a serious fisherman and lives in this remote area with her husband, dog, blown-up movie posters, an eggplant garden, and a shelf of dictionaries. Surprises everywhere.

  Antonio drives another dusty road to show us Cristiana’s house, which he restored from a broken-down farm. The ceilings are canna reeds, hand-tied. Juniper beams have been rubbed to a waxy patina. What is on the land becomes the house. Simplicity itself—minimal furniture and views of the hills. Her neighbors are cavorting goats.

  We feel uneasy, taking their day, but we are having fun. Antonio makes a quick stop and runs into a store. He’s bought us a bottle of lentisco oil. I can’t wait to try it.

  We must leave them; we’re close to sunset. I hope they will come to visit us in Tuscany.

  * * *

  EN ROUTE BACK to our hotel, we stop for dinner at Mirage, an enormous restaurant with a crowded parking lot. We�
��re stuck by the kitchen door, lucky to get a table. We don’t expect much but the seafood fritto misto comes to us hot and crisp, and the grilled fish under a heap of chopped celery and tomatoes is fresh and simple. So is Ed’s selection of wine: Mesa’s Carignano del Sulcis Buio. How inexpensive good wine is here! We often order red wine with fish. Ed thinks if you’re going to have wine, it might as well be red, and so often in Italy, fish will be served in a robust presentation.

  The carignano grape, grown all over the world, is most at home in Sulcis, southwest Sardegna. Buio, dark. “What’s the first word you think of?” Ed asks me.

  “Blackberry.”

  We split a lemon tart and the last of the wine and the last of the tart make a happy ending.

  * * *

  I’M SLEEPY BUT manage a few pages of Sea and Sardinia:

  The great globe of the sky was unblemished and royal in its blueness and its ringing cerulean light…It was a savage, dark-bushed, sky-exposed land, forsaken to the sea and the sun.