The Reluctant Tuscan (37 page)

“I say, old duck.” Mario slapped me on the back. “First-class wingding. Top drawer and all that rot.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Glad you could come.”

“Yes, quite. But now I have to get the old girl home,” he said, helping his sister on with her wrap. “And you two need to get rid of everybody so you can start
la luna di miele
.” He gave us a lascivious wink.

“Ah, yes, the honeymoon,” I said.

“Well, we've still got family visiting,” Nancy said. “So after they leave, maybe we'll take a few days.”

“Splendid,” he said. Then he reached into his coat pocket. “By the way, you're going to need this. Blasted Comune and all their bloody paperwork.”

He handed us a thick envelope. I opened it and took out two documents. Nancy read them over my shoulder, and then we both looked at Mario in astonishment.

“My sister is giving you the land at the top of the hill,” he explained. “And I'm giving you the land at the bottom.”

“Oh, my God,” Nancy cried. “This is so generous.”

“It almost doubles our size,” I said.

“Well, if you're going to grow olives, you need enough trees to make it worth the bloody trouble.”

“Thank you so much,” Nancy said hugging him.

“Yes, thank you both,” I said, hugging Vesuvia.

 

 

For the next
few days we played tour guide, showing Nancy's mom, Aunt Rose, and my sister and brother-in-law the glories of our little corner of Tuscany. We ushered them into secluded monasteries to see hidden masterpieces of medieval art, took them to a trattoria so
autentica
no tourist had ever set foot inside, and did all the haggling when they shopped at the outdoor
mercato
that's held every Friday morning in Cambione's Piazza Maggiore. At the end of the week my sister and her husband took off for France, and we dropped Nancy's mom and Aunt Rose off at Civitavecchia, where they caught a cruise ship for the Greek islands.

Alone at last, we drove up the coast, parked the car, and used the train to explore the Cinque Terra. These are five small, picture-perfect villages nestled into a series of ascending rocky coves that overlook the Gulf of Genoa. These villages are inaccessible by car, which does not prevent them from being totally overrun by tourists in the summer. But this late in the fall it was so quiet, we could almost hear the pine nuts falling out of the trees as they ripened.

We didn't do much for the first few days, preferring to lounge around in our room, gaze out at the sea, and, well, do what people do on their honeymoons. Even their second ones. When we did venture out, it was to take long hikes on one of the fourteen walking trails that connect the five towns. Some of these paths are quite difficult, so we would stay on the easier ones, strolling leisurely through densely wooded forests richly permeated with the sweet decay of season melding into season for as far back as anyone can remember.

Sometimes we would stop for lunch at a cliff-side café that seemed to hang precariously over the sea. The cuisine was invariably seafood done in the Ligurian manner, plump
branzino
or shiny
orata
caught that morning and salt-roasted on a wood-burning stove. Or perhaps something more exotic, like
cozze ripiene
, stuffed mussels cooked in white wine and served in butter sauce.

It would be difficult to imagine a land where one could eat so well from just the bounty of the nearby forests, fields, and sea. In addition to an amazing variety of edible mushrooms, there is oregano, sage, and rosemary. Garlic and leeks, chestnuts and beets. Pine nuts for pesto sauce and an armada of fishing boats disgorging their daily yields of anchovy, mussels, squid, and octopus. And it all gets washed down with a local wine called Sciacchetra, made from the Vermentino grapes that grow in the vineyards on the adjacent plains.

 

 

I have come
to believe that the Italians should rule the world. Not that they'd want to. After all, they did it once, and despite their best efforts to civilize us, it still ended up in the hands of the barbarians. And then, what about the Renaissance? Just how many times do they have to show us?

I was thinking about things like this as I wandered around the village of Monterosso. Nancy was sleeping in that morning while I decided to go for a walk and explore the largest of the five towns. Monterosso is the hub of all tourist activities, but for that day at least, I seemed to be the only person around who hadn't been born there.

A gray drizzle was falling, leaving the cobblestone streets as shiny as polished glass. A group of schoolgirls in uniform rushed past me, giggling under a cluster of bright yellow umbrellas. I found myself wondering why my compulsion to be back in L.A., working in show business, had mysteriously vanished.

Where had it gone? And what had I replaced it with?

I heard somebody practicing opera in a soprano voice, scales ascending out the window of her bedroom, and I felt so gloriously alive, I could sense the very blood rushing through my body. I was walking as if in a dream. I passed a
macelleria
, and through an opened door, I exchanged waves with a butcher in a bloody apron, a cigarette dangling out of his mouth as he hacked on a side of meat. I came upon a café whose frontage was bordered by fat terra-cotta planters bursting with riotous colors. I was particularly drawn to a patch of scandalously scarlet morning glories, and I bent over to admire how raindrops clung to the petals like silvery pearls.

These flowers were so beautiful, I thought, I should put them in our garden so it wouldn't look so desolate over the winter. I was in the midst of calculating how many flats we'd need when the supreme folly of all this struck me. I hated gardening, and here I was making plans to grovel around in the mud, planting something I couldn't even eat!

Living in Cambione had certainly changed me. The irony of it was, when you broke down the name of the town you got
cambiare
, “to change,” and -
one
(OH-nay), the suffix Italians use to say “big.” That's right: Big Change.

 

 

I guess that
I had had enough epiphanies for one morning, because I noticed that the café I was standing in front of was also an Internet spot. So I went inside, ordered an espresso, and bellied up to the computer. When my e-mails came up, I discovered that in addition to all the spam for low-interest bank loans and mail-order Viagra, there was something from my agent.

As I waited for his letter to open, I imagined that he was writing to tell me that another one of his big clients wanted to rent a villa, or needed opera tickets for La Scala, or perhaps they'd like me to meet them at the airport, holding up a little sign with their name on it like a limo driver.

His message began with congratulations on our wedding, and then, in the way of a gift, he told me that he had been showing my e-mails to some of the other agents in his office. And everybody really enjoyed them. One lady in particular got very excited and thought I had the makings of a terrific screenplay. Or even a book. She made a few calls and had gotten something lined up, and she needed to know how soon I could get back to L.A. to take some meetings.

I blew out a long, slow breath as I got up from the computer and went over to the window. I looked out at a pair of rowboats tied together at the fishing pier. One was fire-engine red and the other was painted as bright yellow as a banana. I stared at these two little boats bobbing in the gray-green water for a long moment as I wondered how I was going to tell Nancy about this.