A Thousand Days in Tuscany Read Free

unearthedfrom the cellars of the nearby city hall and soon the whole piazza is transformed into an alfresco dining room.
    The fornaio, the baker, had been summoned and, like some sweat-glistened centaur, peaked white hat floured, bare knees poking up from his aproned lap, he pumps his bike up the hill into the village, alternately ringing his bell and blowing his horn. I watch him and the others and I think how so simple an affair can inspire their happiness.
    He unloads rounds of bread big as wagon wheels from his saddle baskets, lays them on the table, stands back to admire them, telling us one was meant for the osteria in Piazze and the others for the folks in the castle up in Fighine. “Let them eat yesterday’s bread,” he says remounting, yelling over his shoulder to save three places for him at table. After brief raids on their own kitchens, fetching whatever it was they had prepared for their family supper, the scattered women reconverge at the bar. Their mothers and children and husbands in tow, they come toting pots and platters under an arm, a free hand tucking drifting wisps of hair under their kerchiefs. Like a gaggle of small birds, their high-pitched patter pierces the soft ending of the day. Flowered aprons tied—at all times of the day or evening, I would learn—over navy tube skirts, their feet slippered in pink terry-cloth, they move easily between their private spaces and the public domain of the piazza. Both belong to them.
    A man they call Barlozzo appears to be the village chieftain, walkingas he does up and down the tables, setting down plates, pouring wine, patting shoulders. Somewhere beyond seventy, Barlozzo is long and lean, his eyes so black they flicker up shards of silver. Gritty, he seems. Mesmeric. Much later I see the way those eyes soften to gray in the doom just before a storm, be it an act of God or some more personal tempest. His thick smooth hair is white and blond and announces that he is at once very young and very old. And for as long as I will know him, I will never be certain if time is pulling him backward or beckoning him ahead. A chronicler, a raconteur, a ghost. A mago is Barlozzo. He will become my muse, this old man, my ani-matore, the soul of things for me.
    F RESH FROM THEIR triumph of the squash blossoms, now Bice and Monica come back laden with platters of prosciutto and salame—cose nostre, our things, they say, a phrase signifying that their families raise and butcher pigs, that they artisinally fashion every part of the animal’s flesh and skin and fat into one sort or other of sausage or ham. There are crostini, tiny rounds of bread, toasted on one side, the other side dipped in warm broth and smeared thickly with a salve of chicken livers, capers, and the thinly scraped zest of lemon. Again from the kitchen, two large, deep bowls of pici, thick, rough, hand-rolled ropes of pasta, are brought forth, each one tucked in the crook of Bice’s elbows. The pici aresauced simply with raw crushed green tomatoes, minced garlic, olive oil, and basil. Wonderful.
    Many of the women have brought a soup of some sort, soup, more often than pasta, being the traditional primo, opening plate, of a Tuscan lunch or supper. No one seems concerned that the soups sit on the table while we work at devouring the pici. Soups are most often served at room temperature with a thread of oil and a dusting of pecorino, ewe’s milk cheese. “There’s more intensity of flavor quando la minestra è servita tiepida, when the soup is served tepid,” says Floriana to me across the table, in a voice both pedantic and patient. “People who insist on drinking soup hot burn their palates so they must have it always hotter yet, as they search to taste something, anything at all,” she says as though too-hot soup was the cause of all human suffering.
    There is a potion made of farro, an ancient wheatlike grain, and rice; one of hard bread softened in water and scented with garlic, oil, rosemary and