Salon Wanderlust | At home in Tuscany

[Salon Wanderlust: Travel with a passion]

T A B L E_T A L K
Have you ever seen a passenger go berserk on a plane? Share your tales of air rage in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y
The belles of St. Mary's
By Jennifer Moses
A Jewish writer learns about the Old South, and herself, in the most unlikely of places
(12/01/98)
Afoot in the South African bush
By Lance Gould
A New Yorker ventures on a walking safari into the wild world of wildebeest, Cape buffalo and dung beetles
(11/30/98)
The Khan men of Agra
By Pamela Michael
In India, a moment of trust opens the door to a traveler's richest reward
(11/25/98)
The rabbis of Bangkok, Part Two
By Douglas A. Konecky
A live sex show reveals more than flesh to an American musician in Thailand
(11/24/98)
The rabbis of Bangkok
By Douglas A. Konecky
A traveling Jewish band from California meets a trio of Hasidic Jews in the teeming city of Live Sex Shows and Thai Full Body Massage
(11/23/98)

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AT HOME IN TUSCANY | PAGE 1, 2, 3
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
We went back out to get our luggage but ended up meandering in the garden, looking at the tiny leaves sprouting on rose bushes, smelling the pungent fragrance of the white-flowered lentaggine that formed a hedge along the walk to the outbuilding, kicking piles of leaves, wandering into the hayfields, ending up on an eastern bluff where the sun-warmed air ghosted up the slope. Here, a few years later -- we didn't dare dream of it then -- our son, tousle-haired and in short pants, would spend hours in the fields holding with all his might, his kite soaring in the warm summer winds that swept up the hillside.
We were standing there, staring across the valley at a pine shrouded ruin, when we heard a car on the clay road on the ridge. It turned down our drive, stopped in the clearing above the house, and out stepped Piccardi with a fruit crate packed with jars of preserves. He explained how from his window in town he saw our shutters open, and how his wife, who has a passion for putting up preserves, was worried that we'd come to an empty pantry, so there were cherries and plum jam, and whole plums and apricots, and artichoke hearts in olive oil. And a bottle of olive oil from his trees, of course. He asked if all was well, and we dragged him inside and showed him all the things the previous owner left. He said simply, "Normale." Which of course it wasn't. Then he left and told us he'd check in again tomorrow, then raised dust along the road as he drove back to town.
We shelved our jars in the pantry and began to settle in. The suitcases we lugged upstairs, and we were putting some things away on shelves and hooks when the second visitor came. It was Bazzotti. He had come in through the open front door without knocking, and only when he was well inside the house did he call out loudly, "Permesso?" May I? Tuscan style. In one arm he had a wicker-shrouded demijohn of wine, and in the other a paper bag whose contents seeped grease through the paper. It held a string of sausages he had made himself, and a half-loaf of bread. He talked with his small eyes squinting, straightforward, unsentimental, and his great, sunken gash sometimes blushed. Renata, his wife, had meant to look after the house as she had for the previous owners, but she has not been well as of late. She sent these things not knowing if we'd had lunch. Then he left, chugging up the hill in his Cinquecento.
"It's beginning to feel like Christmas," Candace said.
We laid our treasures on the table. Then we began hunting for gas valves to light the stove, and breaker panels to turn on the hot water, and a switch for the furnace which we couldn't find, so we lit the fire in the kitchen. We sat by the fire and roasted Bazzotti's sausages, poured his wine, munched Piccardi's wife's artichoke hearts, and poured more of Bazzotti's wine. We ate and drank some more until the sun went down and it got dark, and we forgot that we still hadn't found the furnace. So we showered in the cold house, started the fire in the soggiorno, dragged down the mattress from upstairs, and laid it on the old rug before the flames. We put on the sheets, puffed up the down quilt we had brought from Paris, turned out the lights, listened to the enormous silence, and watched the distant, comforting lights of our fairy-tale town.
We slept. The deep, dreamful sleep of those at ease in their own home.

A flood of sunlight and concert of birdsong woke us, and the tapping of a beak on tin. Somebody was building a nest in a drainpipe. We went to the windows. To the east, the town was silhouetted against the early light, each tower etched in black, each rooftop solid dark; you could sense the mystery of its streets in the shadows. To the south, beyond the tall wild roses, San Biagio stood solid and comforting. To the west was the hill of lavender and rosemary and the pomegranate bushes and the wild hedge full of birds. We dressed and rushed outside as if going somewhere, then ambled aimlessly around. Candace announced that she was starving and went in to get a piece of bread, but the bread had been left out overnight and had turned to stone, so she ate some plums from the jar with her fingers. Then she said she was still hungry so we drove to town to shop.
We stopped at the Bazzottis' and saw only his mother, short and smiling, and we thanked her profusely for the gifts of yesterday, and we're not sure to this day if she had any idea of what we were saying. Then we said our good-byes and drove up to town.
It was a normal Wednesday morning, but to us it felt like the most festive day of the year. Outside the town gate, under the ilex trees, was a balding man on an Ape with a small workbench mounted in the back. He sat on a stool and sharpened knives that people had brought down. But now he was finishing the last one, and people stood around and gossiped, so Candace went to over to him, pulled out her Swiss Army knife and said, "Per favore." The little stone whined and sparks flew. Then Candace came back proudly. "First contact," she said.
On our way to the gate, we edged over to the low stone parapet and looked down into the valley, just to be sure it was all real, just to be sure La Marinaia with its little island of green was still there. It was. Then we invaded Montepulciano.
Montepulciano was built for humans not for cars, so the main street was just wide enough for conducting daily affairs, evening promenades, and small festive processions. No outside traffic is allowed, so we walked in the middle of the quiet street that from beginning to end at the Piazza Grande is but a ten-minute walk uphill, and much less coming down. We passed the little gnome guarding his cantina full of bottles and jars of tourist ware. He looked at us, smiling expectantly. We wanted desperately to tell him that we were locals, dammit, not tourists, but we were too shy, so we just walked by. He glared.
Across the street from him was the cobbler's shop with a handful of old boys sitting on old chairs against the wall. A hundred steps inside the gate was the first store we needed. It, like so many in small Tuscan towns, was a store of many faces, a general store of sorts without the hardware. There were pots and pans and plates and grappa glasses, and doormats, and electric fans for the summer heat and electric heaters for the winter cold, and wedding gifts and baby gifts, and what we needed most: an espresso maker. And for the kitchen stove, big ugly tanks of propane that gave one hernias, so the son of the earnest-faced signora who owned the shop would bring them to house in his Ape. Oh yes, La Marinaia; my son knows the place.
Next door was another mixed store: postcards, cameras, binoculars and the film we wanted. The door was open. But there was no one there. The cameras and binoculars lay on open shelves. We called out, "Buongiorno!" There was no response. We felt like thieves being in a store alone, so we went back out onto the corso and stood conspicuously away from the door in the middle of the street. We waited. Nobody. Then we heard steps and turned. It was a sizable butcher with his apron smeared along his two thighs where he always wiped his hands, and he said, "Sta per arrivare dal parrucchiere." He's coming back from the barber's. So we waited, assuming he'd gone for a quick errand. And waited some more. Only when the youngish man arrived, with his wavy red hair freshly cropped, did we understand that he had been gone for a good while, with his shop's door ajar, and cameras on the shelves. Yet he was a careful, dedicated young man, we were to discover: the official town photographer. We would often see him at concerts and plays and town events, always with a camera, recording impressions of his town for posterity.
We found out later that his empty shop was not unique. Tuscans are a social lot, and apart from necessary errands to barbers, banks and a merendina at the local bar, they often wander off to another shop to chit-chat, or to the churchsteps to get some sun, or to the corner to talk with the vigile or the sweeper, or the cobbler's to sit with the old boys against the wall.
We went a few more steps, past an antique store, a tiny jeweler, a barber, a shoe store and a bar -- of which we had counted three since we entered the town -- to a tiny fruit and vegetable store across from the church where Christ lay full of thorns and the pin cushion Madonna stood with her chest of daggers. The fruits and vegetables were laid out neatly in the street in wooden fruit crates. Braids of red-skinned onions and garlic dangled from pegs; small barrels were filled with beans and lentils and chick-peas; big jars with sunflower seeds and nuts; and crates with figs and dates and gnarled ginger root.
We had three shopping nets from Paris with us, and we asked for a kilo of this and a kilo of that, blood oranges and clementines, tomatoes, potatoes and carrots, onion and tons of garlic. A quiet lady, the owner, asked where we were staying, thinking we were here on an off-season farm holiday. We beamed. Then we explained to her, that we were, as of yesterday, locals, having bought La Marinaia, and she laughed and said she used to go there as a child because the priest lived there who taught her catechism, but in a hurry, because he liked to go off hunting on Saturday afternoons. So she chose what we asked for and set aside the slightly bruised fruit and gave us only good ones.
Then the bags were full and our arms stretched, and Candace was still starving, so we found the bar Cafe Poliziano, and stuffed ourselves with spremuta squeezed from blood oranges, and brioches, and caffe's, and Candace said, "This sure beats the hell out of shopping at A&P."
N E X T+P A G E | Searching for the baker


	T A B L E_T A L K Have you ever seen a passenger go berserk on a plane? Share your tales of air rage in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y The belles of St. Mary's By Jennifer Moses A Jewish writer learns about the Old South, and herself, in the most unlikely of places (12/01/98) Afoot in the South African bush By Lance Gould A New Yorker ventures on a walking safari into the wild world of wildebeest, Cape buffalo and dung beetles (11/30/98) The Khan men of Agra By Pamela Michael In India, a moment of trust opens the door to a traveler's richest reward (11/25/98) The rabbis of Bangkok, Part Two By Douglas A. Konecky A live sex show reveals more than flesh to an American musician in Thailand (11/24/98) The rabbis of Bangkok By Douglas A. Konecky A traveling Jewish band from California meets a trio of Hasidic Jews in the teeming city of Live Sex Shows and Thai Full Body Massage (11/23/98) Browse the Wanderlust Passages archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		AT HOME IN TUSCANY \| PAGE 1, 2, 3 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - We went back out to get our luggage but ended up meandering in the garden, looking at the tiny leaves sprouting on rose bushes, smelling the pungent fragrance of the white-flowered lentaggine that formed a hedge along the walk to the outbuilding, kicking piles of leaves, wandering into the hayfields, ending up on an eastern bluff where the sun-warmed air ghosted up the slope. Here, a few years later -- we didn't dare dream of it then -- our son, tousle-haired and in short pants, would spend hours in the fields holding with all his might, his kite soaring in the warm summer winds that swept up the hillside. We were standing there, staring across the valley at a pine shrouded ruin, when we heard a car on the clay road on the ridge. It turned down our drive, stopped in the clearing above the house, and out stepped Piccardi with a fruit crate packed with jars of preserves. He explained how from his window in town he saw our shutters open, and how his wife, who has a passion for putting up preserves, was worried that we'd come to an empty pantry, so there were cherries and plum jam, and whole plums and apricots, and artichoke hearts in olive oil. And a bottle of olive oil from his trees, of course. He asked if all was well, and we dragged him inside and showed him all the things the previous owner left. He said simply, "Normale." Which of course it wasn't. Then he left and told us he'd check in again tomorrow, then raised dust along the road as he drove back to town. We shelved our jars in the pantry and began to settle in. The suitcases we lugged upstairs, and we were putting some things away on shelves and hooks when the second visitor came. It was Bazzotti. He had come in through the open front door without knocking, and only when he was well inside the house did he call out loudly, "Permesso?" May I? Tuscan style. In one arm he had a wicker-shrouded demijohn of wine, and in the other a paper bag whose contents seeped grease through the paper. It held a string of sausages he had made himself, and a half-loaf of bread. He talked with his small eyes squinting, straightforward, unsentimental, and his great, sunken gash sometimes blushed. Renata, his wife, had meant to look after the house as she had for the previous owners, but she has not been well as of late. She sent these things not knowing if we'd had lunch. Then he left, chugging up the hill in his Cinquecento. "It's beginning to feel like Christmas," Candace said. We laid our treasures on the table. Then we began hunting for gas valves to light the stove, and breaker panels to turn on the hot water, and a switch for the furnace which we couldn't find, so we lit the fire in the kitchen. We sat by the fire and roasted Bazzotti's sausages, poured his wine, munched Piccardi's wife's artichoke hearts, and poured more of Bazzotti's wine. We ate and drank some more until the sun went down and it got dark, and we forgot that we still hadn't found the furnace. So we showered in the cold house, started the fire in the soggiorno, dragged down the mattress from upstairs, and laid it on the old rug before the flames. We put on the sheets, puffed up the down quilt we had brought from Paris, turned out the lights, listened to the enormous silence, and watched the distant, comforting lights of our fairy-tale town. We slept. The deep, dreamful sleep of those at ease in their own home. A flood of sunlight and concert of birdsong woke us, and the tapping of a beak on tin. Somebody was building a nest in a drainpipe. We went to the windows. To the east, the town was silhouetted against the early light, each tower etched in black, each rooftop solid dark; you could sense the mystery of its streets in the shadows. To the south, beyond the tall wild roses, San Biagio stood solid and comforting. To the west was the hill of lavender and rosemary and the pomegranate bushes and the wild hedge full of birds. We dressed and rushed outside as if going somewhere, then ambled aimlessly around. Candace announced that she was starving and went in to get a piece of bread, but the bread had been left out overnight and had turned to stone, so she ate some plums from the jar with her fingers. Then she said she was still hungry so we drove to town to shop. We stopped at the Bazzottis' and saw only his mother, short and smiling, and we thanked her profusely for the gifts of yesterday, and we're not sure to this day if she had any idea of what we were saying. Then we said our good-byes and drove up to town. It was a normal Wednesday morning, but to us it felt like the most festive day of the year. Outside the town gate, under the ilex trees, was a balding man on an Ape with a small workbench mounted in the back. He sat on a stool and sharpened knives that people had brought down. But now he was finishing the last one, and people stood around and gossiped, so Candace went to over to him, pulled out her Swiss Army knife and said, "Per favore." The little stone whined and sparks flew. Then Candace came back proudly. "First contact," she said. On our way to the gate, we edged over to the low stone parapet and looked down into the valley, just to be sure it was all real, just to be sure La Marinaia with its little island of green was still there. It was. Then we invaded Montepulciano. Montepulciano was built for humans not for cars, so the main street was just wide enough for conducting daily affairs, evening promenades, and small festive processions. No outside traffic is allowed, so we walked in the middle of the quiet street that from beginning to end at the Piazza Grande is but a ten-minute walk uphill, and much less coming down. We passed the little gnome guarding his cantina full of bottles and jars of tourist ware. He looked at us, smiling expectantly. We wanted desperately to tell him that we were locals, dammit, not tourists, but we were too shy, so we just walked by. He glared. Across the street from him was the cobbler's shop with a handful of old boys sitting on old chairs against the wall. A hundred steps inside the gate was the first store we needed. It, like so many in small Tuscan towns, was a store of many faces, a general store of sorts without the hardware. There were pots and pans and plates and grappa glasses, and doormats, and electric fans for the summer heat and electric heaters for the winter cold, and wedding gifts and baby gifts, and what we needed most: an espresso maker. And for the kitchen stove, big ugly tanks of propane that gave one hernias, so the son of the earnest-faced signora who owned the shop would bring them to house in his Ape. Oh yes, La Marinaia; my son knows the place. Next door was another mixed store: postcards, cameras, binoculars and the film we wanted. The door was open. But there was no one there. The cameras and binoculars lay on open shelves. We called out, "Buongiorno!" There was no response. We felt like thieves being in a store alone, so we went back out onto the corso and stood conspicuously away from the door in the middle of the street. We waited. Nobody. Then we heard steps and turned. It was a sizable butcher with his apron smeared along his two thighs where he always wiped his hands, and he said, "Sta per arrivare dal parrucchiere." He's coming back from the barber's. So we waited, assuming he'd gone for a quick errand. And waited some more. Only when the youngish man arrived, with his wavy red hair freshly cropped, did we understand that he had been gone for a good while, with his shop's door ajar, and cameras on the shelves. Yet he was a careful, dedicated young man, we were to discover: the official town photographer. We would often see him at concerts and plays and town events, always with a camera, recording impressions of his town for posterity. We found out later that his empty shop was not unique. Tuscans are a social lot, and apart from necessary errands to barbers, banks and a merendina at the local bar, they often wander off to another shop to chit-chat, or to the churchsteps to get some sun, or to the corner to talk with the vigile or the sweeper, or the cobbler's to sit with the old boys against the wall. We went a few more steps, past an antique store, a tiny jeweler, a barber, a shoe store and a bar -- of which we had counted three since we entered the town -- to a tiny fruit and vegetable store across from the church where Christ lay full of thorns and the pin cushion Madonna stood with her chest of daggers. The fruits and vegetables were laid out neatly in the street in wooden fruit crates. Braids of red-skinned onions and garlic dangled from pegs; small barrels were filled with beans and lentils and chick-peas; big jars with sunflower seeds and nuts; and crates with figs and dates and gnarled ginger root. We had three shopping nets from Paris with us, and we asked for a kilo of this and a kilo of that, blood oranges and clementines, tomatoes, potatoes and carrots, onion and tons of garlic. A quiet lady, the owner, asked where we were staying, thinking we were here on an off-season farm holiday. We beamed. Then we explained to her, that we were, as of yesterday, locals, having bought La Marinaia, and she laughed and said she used to go there as a child because the priest lived there who taught her catechism, but in a hurry, because he liked to go off hunting on Saturday afternoons. So she chose what we asked for and set aside the slightly bruised fruit and gave us only good ones. Then the bags were full and our arms stretched, and Candace was still starving, so we found the bar Cafe Poliziano, and stuffed ourselves with spremuta squeezed from blood oranges, and brioches, and caffe's, and Candace said, "This sure beats the hell out of shopping at A&P." N E X T+P A G E \| Searching for the baker