Palladian Days (9 page)

The spirit of Palladio seems to put extra pressure on workers at the villa. There must be a sense of a historical obligation to give the villa their best. As the following week progresses, my kitchen unfolds and the parts fit together like an elegant puzzle.

The enormous, symmetrical, freestanding wall cabinet is perfectly proportioned for the room; anything less would be swallowed by the space and anything more would overwhelm it. The color—matching the walnut of the French armoire that it faces—is perfect, too. The color of that cabinet was the only point on which Carl balked at what Renato proposed. Carl thought the blond pear-wood Renato suggested would look too modern. All the colors work well with the gray-black and coral tones of the granite coun-tertops we have chosen. Culinary heaven!

In the afternoon Jim and I tootle around the countryside in our rental car. We inspect the Roman mosaic pavements in Treviso, Giotto's frescos at the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Palladio's often-rebuilt bridge at Bassano. We pick our way along the hairpin turns of Monte Grappa in the first range of the Alps. Of course, we take the train into Venice and revisit the Basilica, the Doge's Palace, the Accademia (ack-ah-DEH-mee-ah). I begin to think of the treasure trove of Carpaccio's huge canvases there as old friends. We board a vaporetto (motorboat-bus) to Torcello, where Venice was first settled
sixteen hundred years ago, and we bathe in the Venetian sunlight reflected off the Adriatic waters to the east and the Alps to the northwest. No one has ever bested John Ruskin
(The Stones of Venice)
in describing the distant and mysterious silhouette of Venice viewed from Torcello.

Since we can't yet cook in our kitchen-in-progress, we have no choice but to sample restaurants of the region every evening. Carl will understand! So we're off to savor Venetan dishes at Da Barbesin, Due Mori, and Alia Torre in Castelfranco; Da Irene in Loreggia; Da Giovanni in Padua. But there's a danger in enjoying your food too much, I discover. I am so intensely devouring my
fegato alia veneziana
—calf's liver in the Venetian style, that is, with onions and parsley—outdoors at Alia Torre that I don't notice the meal that mosquitoes are making of my legs. When I crawl into bed that night, my legs look like swatches of dotted swiss.

Jim's social life is expanding like the universe in the seconds following the big bang. With the kitchen now complete and our departure date on top of us, Jim begs to host a final dinner party at the villa for his new friends. My contribution is to cook two large pans of
lasagne
in my newly installed oven, toss a gigantic salad, and pick out dozens of
dolci
(sweets) from the
pasticceria
down the street. We set twelve places at the dining table. By 8:00 p.m. more than twenty friends have arrived. “You're an engineering student and you can't count?” I chide Jim, scrambling to find more plates. The young guests make quick work of all the
lasagne
, salad, bread, and
dolci
, and then move with equal speed through miscellaneous other things that I desperately turn up: pickles, olives,
grissini
(bread sticks), chocolates. There is lots of wine, also. Without exception
the young people are friendly, well mannered, and garrulous. When the food has disappeared, they help clear the table and then wander amiably through the ground floor of the villa, admiring the frescos and architectural spaces. Finally they settle outdoors on the south portico to smoke (many of them) and talk. Jim seems to have no trouble with the language.

Jim and I wash dishes late into the night. We get to bed after 2:00 a.m. and rise at 5:00 a.m. to catch our early flight. We sleep all the way back to Atlanta.

I realize with a start that we are nearing our first anniversary of owning the villa. My mind fills with thoughts that I have pushed aside in the scurry and urgency of responding to everyday exigencies. I am reminded of the old bromide that we consume our lives with tasks of little importance but short deadlines, postponing more important matters that we convince ourselves can be done later.

Whatever brought you to buy a Palladian villa?

I am still hung up on that examination of the motives that brought me to my second life in Piombino Dese. Maybe my subconscious has been working on the problem while my conscious self has been focused on lawn mowers and kitchen appliances, because I have some new ideas now. I've gotten past the need to choose a single motivation from the grab bag of “second home” and “growth” and “escape” (and whatever else I might come up with). Now I can see that my motives are not static; all are true, just at different times and to different degrees.

I had indeed been seeking a second home for all the traditional reasons that drive city dwellers to acquire one: novelty, change of pace, relaxation, and the like. Many of our Atlanta friends seem to have preceded us in acquiring second homes on Georgia lakes or in the North Carolina mountains; some have moved farther afield to the Atlantic or Gulf coast, the western ski slopes, even Maine. My own background (and Carl's pleasure with the area) made New Hampshire a reasonable alternative.

But how much time would I have spent there in a year? One month, maybe six weeks? Probably something like that—certainly not four months. So why haven't I limited my Italian time to the same length? That, it seems, was a separate decision, but one that came so early and so easily that I never knew I was making it. Villa Cornaro is no New England lake home existing to serve my family during our holidays. Villa Cornaro is a force of nature, a vibrant personality in the lives of its owners, the farmers who till its fields, the students and researchers who study and measure its lines, the tourists excited by its spirit, the townspeople reassured by its constant presence.

My plans changed because I discovered that Villa Cornaro needs me.

Since Wednesday, workers on the south steps of the villa have been banging away like frustrated drummers. They're building a huge temporary stage about four feet high overlooking the small park— about an acre—that we call our “backyard.” On Thursday hundreds of folding chairs with cloth seats and backs were delivered to the side gate and other workers are setting them in rows facing the stage. The result is remarkably neat, considering how uneven the surface of the lawn has become through the years.

The electrician Giancarlo and his assistant are at work setting up and connecting spotlights and a control panel. (Giancarlo seems to have a monopoly on electrical work at the villa, based on the fact that he is the one who rewired it for Dick Rush and now no one else understands it.)

Saturday will be showtime!
Manifesti
—colorful posters—are on walls and shopwindows all through town. The event that brings so much excitement? A recital by Scuola di Danza di Castelfranco,
a regional ballet school that holds its classes in Castelfranco, a much larger town and trading center lying seven miles northwest of Piombino Dese.

Now, on Friday morning, the whole troupe arrives in full dress for a brief rehearsal on the massive stage and a group photo on the villa's north steps. The dancers range from four-year-old large dolls, so left-footed I'm sure they'll find a way to trip over their own thigh-length tutus, all the way to a few late-teens whose concentration is already so intense and professional that they seem sulky and detached. There are a few males among them, but my whole attention is swallowed up by the craze of colors on the girls and young women flashing back and forth before me as they gaggle and chatter, then move from warm-ups to tentative twirling rushes across the stage.

I can sense a quiet, contented grin from my villa, that so much youth and vitality is still fascinated by its own centuries-old form and drawn to dance in its shadow.

Saturday dawns bright and sunny, perfect for the ballet that will begin at the traditional hour of nine in the evening. But Silvana wears a worried face when she arrives to open the
balcone
. Despite the splendid weather that the new morning has brought, the forecast is not good. I will not let an anonymous weatherman confound my own eyes, I tell her; my optimism is undiminished.

Piombino Dese bestrides an ancient Roman road in the Venetan plain midway between Venice on the Adriatic coast to the southeast and the Dolomite range of the Alps surging from the plain to the north and northwest. On a clear day, free of the haze and ozone that are more typical in the modern industrial era, I can stand on the north portico of the villa and see past the low line of foothills, where Asolo and the other hill towns nestle, deep into the Alps themselves, standing snow-covered all summer long. All
tempo-rali
—storms—affecting the villa arise in the Alps and come down from the north. They have always done so. Palladio himself was well aware of the phenomenon; it led him cautiously to specify stone capitals for the columns of the villa's north porticos, even
while he was experimenting with the exuberant free form of terracotta for the capitals of the less weathered south facade.

Shortly before lunch, Carl buzzes me on the intercom to suggest that I join him upstairs on the north portico. When I arrive, he directs my gaze northward toward the Alps. I have to agree that there is a distinct darkening in the sky along the peaks.

“There may be a storm building up, but it will never get here in time to ruin the recital,” I insist.

“Maybe it will pass to the east or west,” Carl says, but with less certainty. The mountain-bred storms of the Veneto are often violent, but they frequently follow a random path, so there is an element of chance in whether a particular storm sighted on the horizon will actually hit Piombino Dese.

By midafternoon the sky has darkened across the whole northern horizon, blocking all sight of the Alps, but the clouds are still far, far away. About six o'clock we hear a vague shudder from the distance that a pessimist might take to be thunder. An hour later the thunder has settled into a syncopated rhythm that cannot be denied. Flashes of light begin to cavort across the northern sky before falling to earth with a crash.

“I think it's slipping off east of us,” I suggest bravely. Carl listens without comment.

The dancers and their parents begin to arrive at eight, but they show little enthusiasm for donning their costumes in the dressing rooms that have been provided in the
cantina
. Giancarlo and his assistant show much more energy in their rush to drape plastic sheets over all the electrical equipment in the backyard and secure the flaps with tape. The assistant ballet mistress, whom I discover to be an expatriate Englishwoman, and a tight knot of parents cluster on the north portico to watch the storm roiling across the sky just miles away. Its arms stretch around us to the east and west, and an early darkness envelops us.

I am not ready to surrender. “Maybe it will pass through before nine o'clock,” I suggest hopefully.

Ballet students gather on the north steps after a rehearsal

“No,” the ballet mistress says. “Once the stage is wet, we won't be able to dance on it. It wouldn't be safe for the dancers.”

At precisely 8:40 the imps of hell are unleashed around us. Sheets of rain and lightning, alternating with vast sound chambers of thunder, strike with such fury that we are all surprised despite having spent hours watching the storm's inexorable march across the plain.

The storm rampages through half the night, but is followed by a morning so brilliant it would challenge Titian himself to bring its colors to a canvas. The sharp edges of the Alps are a glistening and reproachful reminder of a world without smog. In our backyard the dripping chairs and sodden stage sit sleepily under the slowly warming sun. Gradually the heat lifts the water from the lawn and the leaves of the trees, and the familiar rustle of wind through the Lombardy poplars returns to wake the space.

The week passes quickly, all sunny and dry Saturday arrives and the afternoon offers no hint of shadow in the northern sky. Gian-carlo returns to strip the plastic from his spotlights. Finally the chattering dancers appear, happy now in the certainty that the show will go on. Carl and I watch in amazement as the crowd begins to pour through the front gate and flow in a swelling stream around the villa to the park. The chairs are soon filled, and still the throngs arrive. At half past nine, when the recital at last begins, there must be five hundred people gathered, a third of them standing.

The youngest children in their bright tutus are the biggest hit, but I am struck by the genuine talent of two of the teenage girls. A few years later I learn that the younger of the two, from a Piom-bino Dese family, has been recruited for the corps de ballet at La Scala in Milan, and that she has courageously accepted—a brave leap from the nest in family-centered Italy. (In fact, Piombino Dese must be a hotbed of terpsichorean talent: a son of a later
sindaco
now dances with the Rome ballet.)