Chapter 1 #11
My employer made ample use of each hour the day provided, but though we pruned roses, even in the continuing heat; hunted down books and magazines and drawings that seemed to her essential to have at hand; made numerous phone calls for hair salon appointments, doctors’ appointments, and massage appointments as well as veterinary visits, we never approached anything like making the catalog I had been sent to prepare.
This was a source of great frustration to me, and I fell into bed each night exhausted by both the physical labor and the circumlocutory conversation I partook in ten hours of each day.
Mornings, however, were mine alone; since my employer did not appear at her balcony until eleven, and since the rooms were not “ready” for my cataloging, those hours were given over to my own pursuits.
I took it upon myself to explore this bit of Tuscany.
I discovered that Villa Coco lay on a ridge between two deep river gullies and that the road Ghazel had brought me on formed a loop leading from a bright, sunny hill down to a dark, sunless valley and back up again into the light along another ridge that soon connected to our own.
It took about an hour to make this Orphean loop on foot (Cesare always running merrily beside me), which began just below Villa Coco on the disused portion of road I had been warned so ardently against. Its overlayer of sand and dirt was so worn away by time and the elements that it was reduced to the bones of its former self: the flat stones of the Roman byway it used to be.
I could make out, in the damp clumps of forest around me, here the remains of a grand stairway above a cliff, there of a door lintel leading to nowhere, and, at the bottom, a sign pointing to the nearby town.
Rising up from this dark valley, however, was a delight; I came across a lively stream whose course was directed, here and there, by concrete berms and dams and, in one location, an overgrown bridge leading to nothing but a dappled glade in which lay a contented cat.
Higher up the ridge, the path became brambled, and one time I lost my way and emerged in a large field with myself at one end and a bull at the other.
I watched as his awareness came gradually my way; his ears flicked to attention; I waited no more but threw myself back into the brambles from whence I’d come.
There were other houses along the way, some utterly abandoned with entrance gates hanging rusty from the hinges but others neatly painted white, with vegetables growing in tidy gardens.
I grew to know some of these neighbors enough to say “Salve”: short, elderly Duccio, who owned the land beside us and was always working on a fence that seemed to fall apart at one end just as he was restoring the other; the middle-aged twin brothers, the thin one a painter, the fat one a composer, who had somehow made an artistic life in this bit of wilderness; the town baker, whom I often saw returning from work in his truck, singing loudly as he drove along (he had been trained for opera in his youth).
At the end of my route, just before it joined our own ridge, I always passed the Cinghialaio: the Wild Boar Lodge, whose cardboard sign had been my first indication of my future home.
As I passed only in the mornings, I found it always abandoned: a sort of log cabin with a slanted roof and a large area of fallen tree trunks placed around a fire.
Later I learned it came to life on Saturdays, when men would arrive in Jeeps to hunt the area’s famous wild boars.
Sometimes, on my walks, I did not come across another human being, nor have anyone say a word to me—anyone, that is, except the elderly woman seated in her red chair at the crossroads…
“Ah, Signora Guicciardini!”
I asked the Baronessa about her at our next luncheon. “She’s always there. What is she shouting all day?”
“All day and night! She will not let them bring her in until it is time for bed.”
I asked again what the woman might be saying to passersby for all those hours.
“She is—” But then the Baronessa put a finger to her lips. “When you are able to tell me, then I will know you have kept your promise to learn Italian.”
How I was to learn Italian was a mystery; we were in the middle of the countryside and I had no easy access to a car to attend a school.
I searched the bookshelves and came across a lesson book, in English, from the 1960s, which contained full scenes of dialogue such as Visiting a Tailor and Talking to Clergy, with phrases such as “I want to look groovy” and “I don’t believe in God,” neither helpful in proving my worth to my employer.
I wondered how I would ever translate the mysterious pronouncements of Signora Guicciardini or accomplish speaking Italian with my employer “in macchina.” And yet I did, in my way, begin a series of Italian lessons through pure force of necessity. My teacher was none other than Nimali.
Early in the mornings, I took down the coffeemaker (what is called a “moka”) and carefully unscrewed it into three parts, filled the lower region with water and the perforated middle section with coffee, screwed them back together, placed it on the flame, and waited so long for it to boil that it seemed a wonder of thermodynamics.
Nimali would inevitably arrive in the kitchen during this procedure and launch into impassioned Italian as if we were lovers parted by circumstance.
“Joe!” she would shout, without even a buon giorno, and begin a series of complaints about either her husband or “lei” (her), and of course there was no “lei” except the Baronessa.
Nimali never seemed sad despite her complaints.
Instead, complaining seemed merely a habit of morning; she often smiled while listing off the faults of each member of the household, most of which I did not understand.
She wore her hair unbraided and, dressed in one of the “maid’s outfits” the Baronessa bought her (which Nimali hated), her hands clasped before her, she resembled a Tuscan soprano singing her morning song, and the chorus seemed to be “La vita è dura!” Life is hard.
To which I learned the proper response was “Ma andiamo avanti!”—but we must go on!
On she would go, appealing to me with those eyes, clasping her hands, shaking her head, then reaching the chorus: “La vita è dura!” I said we must go on, and on she then would go with more complaints.
There seemed to be innumerable verses. All while I waited for the moka to sputter out my morning coffee.
Eventually I learned enough Italian for another phrase: “Caffè prima, dopo italiano.” That is to say: Coffee first and then Italian.
She admired my resolve and usually took a turn through the downstairs while I prepared the moka, reappearing just as the coffee had finished brewing.
“Joe!” she would shout. “Piano, piano,” I would say, and she would nod as sagely as any professor.
In return, I taught Nimali some English that she might find useful, including the simple word “Enough!” We practiced; I would begin by saying La vita è dura, La vita è dura, over and over until she slammed her palms on the counter and, in her lilting accent, shouted, “Enough!” Then we both had a great long laugh.
Eventually, I reported these morning lessons to the Baronessa, who seemed delighted.
“But you must be careful,” she told me. “Nimali has decided not to learn gender. It is not for political notions young people have. I think it simplifies the language. So all the world is feminine to her! It makes for a very rose-colored conversation. You will become as fanciful as Gazelle! And the last thing I desire is someone else in the house I do not understand.”
Estelle was not often at Villa Coco, and I had not yet received an invitation to her house, but our paths did cross on one of my morning walks.
I had just passed the signora in her chair and was making my way down the shadowless stretch of road before it dipped into the forest. Dry and beautiful, with a view of hills covered by centuries of cultivation—vineyards and olive groves in their regular lines—that contrasted so much with the thorny wilderness below; I was already sweating from my efforts and glad I wore a broad straw hat borrowed from the villa (in a closet with a dozen others) when I was surprised by a high honking sound behind me.
It was an Ape—a miniature breed of truck on three wheels, its name meaning not a simian but a bee—and behind the wheel was Estelle.
She pulled up beside me and asked if I needed a ride.
I said I enjoyed the walk every morning before the Baronessa arose.
Estelle leaned out the window. “You took the lower road? We never use it, it’s certain death to drive on. How is it on foot?”
I told her it was fine.
She asked if I was finding my days too empty, and I responded that I hoped they would soon be filled with something more than pozzos and pruning gardens and pugs.
“Are you unhappy?”
I paused a moment. “It’s just not what I expected.”
“You have to get used to one another.”
“I wonder if she’ll get used to me. She didn’t want an American.”
She laughed. “No, I wanted an American. She wanted a blond British boy, that’s the kind she likes.
An ‘Anglosaxophone,’ is how she put it.” We shared a laugh.
“But Americans are…honest. You’re honest. We don’t need some twit who knows every object and can cite the provenance of every painting. We just need an honest list.”
“That’s what Oscar told me, too.” It seemed strange they would both say this.
“Oscar!” she said. “Well, he’ll make everything speed along. They have an important trip to Ferrara coming.”
“And who is this cousin who will be visiting?”