The Reluctant Tuscan (32 page)

A middle-aged man in a serge suit that had seen better days was sitting at the counter with a cup of coffee. All the time we were there, he never once took a sip because he was too busy cleaning his spoon with the end of his necktie. Rounding out the scene was a pair of twin teenage boys of about fifteen, wordlessly playing a pinball machine. They had big eyes and shaved heads with a low cephalic index, and they looked like something out of a Diane Arbus photo shoot.

The four of us stood at the bar, staring at the decrepit espresso machine, wondering if there was anyone around to operate it. We were about to leave when a small man with a pinched face and a body shaped like a potato came out from the back. We told him what we wanted, and his response to everything we said was to give us back a short but distinct bird whistle. When Stefano asked him where the bathroom was, the man pointed with a fluttering hand that looked like a sparrow taking off. Stefano said,
“Grazie,”
and the man bird whistled,
“Per niente.”

I looked over at Rudolfo and bounced my eyebrows for an explanation of this Tuscan version of the bar from
Star Wars
.

He uttered one word.
“Cittapazza.”

Rudolfo went on to explain that, like many towns high up in the remote hills, Montemetato was isolated from the rest of the world. The very road we had driven up on had not even been put in until the 1950s. As a result, there was so much inbreeding, the village became well known for the odd behavior of its citizens and it was dubbed Cittapazza . . . Crazy Town.

“I never heard that expression,” I marveled.

“Well, they like to keep it a secret,” Rudolfo said. “But some of the most important families of Cambione came from up here.”

“Really?” Nancy said.

“Oh, yeah, the Tughis, the Rinaldis, the—”

“The mayor's family?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What about the Pingatores?” I asked.

“Absolutely. We'll drive right past the farmhouse where they all came from.”

“This is quite interesting,” I said as the lady with the spooky grin took out her teeth, making her grin even spookier. “Any other secrets we should know about?”

“Oh, there are stories galore,
multi sussuroventi,
” he said using the archaic expression that means “whispers in the wind.”

“And what are they?”

“Who remembers?” he said. “But my aunts know all that stuff.”

“And what about your folks?” Nancy asked. “Are they from up here?”

“No, our branch of the family moved away years ago,” Rudolfo answered. “We're all crazy for reasons of our own.”

 

 

The house that Nina,
Nona, and Nana lived in was even more ancient than they were. There was some stonework to it, but it was mostly built of rough-hewn logs and done in such a way that the three-story structure stood as crooked as a witch's hat.

Our arrival was heralded with shrieks of joy and barrages of kisses on our cheeks. From the overwhelming affection of their greeting I assumed that perhaps Rudolfo's aunts hadn't heard the reason for his expulsion. I soon discovered that, not only did they know all about it, they were remarkably accepting of the situation. Nina felt that this was a stage most boys go through and he would soon grow out of it. Nona believed that many men who like other men eventually marry and sire families, and Nana wondered what the big deal was about having grandchildren anyway, since it just meant more mouths to feed and more diapers to change.

Almost as remarkable as their degree of tolerance was the lunch they laid out before us. In spite of the fact that Nina, Nona, and Nana were over eighty years old and had five bad legs between them, they had prepared a meal that, even for Italians, was of gargantuan proportions.

It began with a vast selection of
legumi al sotto
, which are freshly dug-up vegetables marinated in olive oil and white wine vinegar. This was accompanied by
crostini di polenta
(corn fritters on toast), and carpaccio, lean raw beef pounded tissue thin and adorned with parmigiano cheese and olive oil. We were all pretty hungry when we arrived, so we made the mistake of devouring the appetizers with such ferocity, you'd think the Visigoths were at the very gates of Cittapazza.

Next came the soup. Since they couldn't decide on one, they made two: a
zuppa di zucca
made from the small, sweet pumpkins they grew in their garden, and
pasta e fagioli
, classic Tuscan pasta and bean soup.

We were stuffed, but Nina, Nona, and Nana were just getting warmed up. For our
primi
they brought out platters of fettucini carbonara made with bacon and eggs, broad
pappardelle
noodles with roasted red potatoes in a pesto sauce, and a heart-stopping lasagna made with alternating layers of spinach and ricotta cheese.

At this point all of us could have stopped eating and lived on our body fat for a month, but that would have meant missing out on the main course,
trota
. These grilled trout had been caught that morning by their neighbor from the little stream that ran behind their house, and if any of you who are reading this happen to be sitting on Death Row awaiting your execution, I would beg you to consider this for your last meal. The taste of these fish grilled in their skin on an iron skillet with lemon, olive oil, and sage was the culinary equivalent of making love to Marilyn Monroe. Something you could look back on in your old age and savor.

 

 

After all that food,
topped off by a scrumptious
torta di cioccolata
and assorted roasted figs, Nancy and I decided that we needed either a long walk or a stomach pump. So while the boys got settled in the guest bedroom, we followed the gurgling little trout stream as it led us deep into the woods.

We walked without speaking, our path a spongy bed of pine needles that quieted our footsteps so as not to disturb the cathedral silence of the tall trees. Eventually we came to where the stream emptied into a small pond. The water was incredibly still and held the shimmering reflection of the clouds overhead as well as the upside-down image of an ancient, abandoned mill. The mill was completely encased in moss and overgrown vines, its waterwheel frozen in time and decomposing in soundless splendor.

We sat on a fallen tree trunk, staring at the mill, only occasionally distracted by the silvery flash of a trout in the icy blueness of the pond.

“It's so beautiful here,” Nancy murmured amid the buzzing of insects and the soft rustling of the grass.

I loosened my belt and unbuttoned my shirt where it was tight across my belly. “I don't think I'll ever eat again.”

“Until dinner.”

“We got to stop.”

“I know,” she said. “I'm out of control.”

“My problem is I still feel like I'm on vacation here,” I said, “so every day I'm partying with the gelato and the cheese.”

“The cheese is killing me,” Nancy said.

“We got to get serious about a diet, and this time I mean it.”

“We'll help each other,” she vowed. “If one person starts to weaken, the other one stops me.”

“We're only talking about eight or nine pounds here. You know the drill: fruits, vegetables, fish.”

“Exercise every day,” she said. “And keep each other away from the cream sauces.”

“It'll go quick,” I said. “Say we lose a pound a week—”

“Which isn't much.”

“In two months we'll have taken off so much, we could really pig out at our Christmas banquet.”

“We're having a Christmas banquet?”

“Yeah, we're inviting the neighbors over for roasted goat.”

“Shut up.”

“It's a tradition around here.”

“Don't even joke about it!”

“What? You thought we were keeping him? I thought you knew we were just fattening him up for—”

She put her hand over my mouth and tried to wrestle me to the ground as she yelled, “I hate you, I hate you.”

“Mmm, I can smell that sauce now.” I laughed as we rolled around on the small apron of grass.
“Pomodoro alla Pepe.”

“Why do you keep teasing me about him?”

“I'm just trying to get your goat.”

 

 

We were anxious
to get on the road before dark, but Nina, Nona, and Nana wouldn't let us leave until they had packed us up with enough food to provision an Arctic expedition. We sat in the kitchen as they bustled about, and I took this opportunity to ask them about some of the “whispers in the wind.” I was especially interested in the ones that involved the Pingatores. After weaving me a convoluted narrative about people who had been dead for a hundred and fifty years, they finally got up to the present time, and then they proceeded to tell me the most astonishing story I had ever heard.

T
he two Italian words most firmly embedded in the English language are
graffiti
and
paparazzi
. Interestingly, both involve a public display. This tells us much about their national psyche, for the average Italian is motivated by two powerful forces:
fare una bella figura
(looking good to his friends and neighbors) and
non fare una brutta figura
(not looking bad to his friends and neighbors).

With this in mind I was trying to figure out how we could most benefit from the story Rudolfo's aunts had told us. First I had to make sure it was more or less true. Having spent my entire career as a professional sitcom wordbag, I realized that I didn't know very much about journalism. But I had seen
All the President's Men
a couple of times, so I understood that if you wanted people to believe your story, you needed independent corroboration. And to get that I had to talk to the one person I had been avoiding. The mayor.

Every Wednesday the mayor had lunch at Trattoria Toscana, where the special of the day was always
saltimbocca
, a veal dish so named because it literally “jumps into your mouth.” Then, after a leisurely meal, he would go see his mistress. Interestingly, a popular Italian expression for mistress is
contorno
, which means side dish. Italians love those polite little euphemisms. They commonly refer to a public toilet as a
vespasiano
, from
vespa
, the word for wasp, presumably for the buzzing noise inside, and their discreet way of describing the streetwalkers on the boulevard is to refer to them as
le lucciole
. . . the fireflies, because they only come out at night.

I had positioned myself between the trattoria and his girlfriend's apartment, directly in the path of his booty call, and it wasn't long before I spotted the mayor coming down the street with the jaunty air of a man who had just satisfied one appetite and was about to satisfy another.

“Scusami,
Signor Sindaco,
buon giorno,”
I said, greeting him in my best Italian. My language skills had developed to the point where I could carry on a reasonable conversation without Nancy's help, which was good, because a lady's presence might have further embarrassed him.

He seemed pleased to see me and eager to find out whatever had happened to that article I was writing about him. And he was not shy about reminding me how quickly our
denuncia
had disappeared because of his intervention. I told him that I was glad he'd mentioned the article, because I had just come upon some new information that I needed to confirm. As I laid out the parameters of the story, he stared at me with growing unease.

He started to back away, denying the story by chalking it up to the ramblings of the uneducated peasant mind with nothing better to think about. But from the jittery edge in his voice and the way he was trying to get away from me, I knew it was true. I took out my notebook and followed him down the street, calling out questions as if I were a member of the Washington press corps trying to engage the President before he could get to his helicopter.

He was just about to reach the sanctuary of his girlfriend's apartment when Horn Dog appeared. As if incensed that somebody was going to get some nookie and he wasn't, the little mutt starting growling at the mayor and yipping at his ankles. The commotion of my questions and Horn Dog's yapping caused windows to open and curious heads to look out. All this attention was too much for a man on his way to visit his mistress, so he doffed his hat in my direction and bolted up the street, having to settle for a lunch without his favorite side dish.

Now that I'd field-tested our story on the mayor, I knew it was ready for prime time, so we set about trying to come upon the key players when they were both together. Fortunately, they were also creatures of habit. So, the following Sunday we parked our car under the shade of the lead-colored dome of the church and sat waiting for the noon Mass to let out. When we spotted Vesuvia Pingatore in the crowd exiting the chapel, we were somewhat surprised to see her walking arm in arm with Marco Mucchi, the pair of them chattering away like old friends. They stopped in front of the eroded saints on the façade of the church doors, and Vesuvia took out a sheaf of papers. She handed them to Marco Mucchi and waited while he looked them over.

What fiendish plot were they hatching against us now? With Marco's new position on the Comune board he could cause us no end of fresh grief. I simmered with rage at how I had come up with his campaign slogan, only to have that smiling little Judas turn against us.

Their conversation continued as they crossed the street and ambled toward the little café with the green awning. We got out of our car and followed them at a distance discreet enough to see Marco Mucchi, still holding on to the papers, bid her good-bye. Marco then sat down with his wife and two small daughters, who had been to the earlier Mass, while Vesuvia continued over to another table where her brother, Mario, was waiting. No sooner had she sat down and ordered herself an espresso than we approached and greeted them.