A Thousand Days in Tuscany Read Free Page A

just-ground black pepper; another one of fat white beans flavored with sage and tomato and one of new peas in broth with a few shreds of field greens.
    The second courses are equally humble. Floriana uncovers an oval cast iron pan to display a polpettone, a hybrid meat loaf/paté. “A piece of veal, one of chicken, one of pork, a thick slice of mortadella are hand ground at least three times until the meat is a soft paste. Thenadd eggs, Parmigiano, garlic, and parsley before patting the paste out into a rectangle, laying it with slices of salame and hard-boiled eggs, then turning it over and over on itself, jelly-roll fashion. Bake it, seam side down, until the scent makes you hungry. You know, until it smells done.” Floriana offers this information without my asking, talking about the polpettone as though it was some local architectural wonder, looking down at it with her head cocked in quiet admiration.
    Her whole creation couldn’t weigh more than a pound or so, and I am preparing myself for a loaves-and-fishes event when two of the other women uncover their own version of polpettone. Each slices hers thin as leaves, then passes the plates around. Still, we are thirty at table. But soon enough other dishes are introduced.
    Faraona, guinea hen roasted with black and green olives, is offered by the baker’s wife. There is an arista, a loin of pork stuffed with herbs and roasted on branches of wild fennel, a casserole of tripe, its cover still sealed, which had been set to bake with tomatoes and onions and white wine in a slow oven the whole day long. There are all manner of little stews and braises, each of a moderate portion, a dose meant to sustain two, perhaps three, restrained appetites. Yet the crowd ogles and groans and protests.
    “Ma chi può mangiare tutta questa roba? Che spettacolo. But who could eat all these things? What a spectacle.”
    Each person eats a bite or two from the dish that is closest to him, takes a slice or a morsel of whatever is passed before him. Chewing and mopping at jots of sauce with their bread, sipping wine, arms in allegro postures of discourse—I wonder if this is a Tuscan reading of The Emperor’s New Clothes. Are they truly convinced this collection of their suppers to be la grande bouffe? How careful they are to pass the plates and dishes, how they ask, check, ask again who would like some more. Many here seem beyond fifty, some twenty or thirty years more. Those who are younger echo their elders’ kindnesses and somehow seem older than their years. There is less distinction among the generations. A girl of perhaps seventeen gets up to fix a plate for her grandmother, telling her to watch for the bones in the rabbit stew, asks her if she’s taken her pills. A boy, not more then ten, slices the bread, telling his younger brother to stay clear of his work, that he should never play where someone is using a knife. A suggestion of calm and small graces wash the tableau in long ago. 1920? 1820? How is this evening different from an evening in June when the oldest man here was young, I wonder. I ask the question of Floriana, who is of a certain age, though hardly old. She’s quiet for a bit before she puts the question to the table. People answer but more to themselves than to the assembly.
    Up from the din, Barlozzo says, “No one’s going to bed without his supper tonight.” Shifting the great bony length of himself to sitsideways in his chair, he crosses his legs, lights a cigarette. The laughter that follows is thin and sounds like memories.
    Wearing a rumpled face and a stiffly starched shirt, one bumptious man redeems the mood, “Whoever cooked the lamb stew is the woman I’ll take for my next bride.” Now the laughter is refreshed and Floriana looks at me, nods toward the rumpled face, “He’s ninety-three and has buried four wives. There’s no one left who’ll take a chance with him. The last one was only sixty-three when she died. She was a bit fat but in