Under the Tuscan Sun (7 page)

On the third-level terrace wall, a rusted pipe crumbles off as
we hack at thorny blackberries. At the base, we discover a flat
stone. As we shovel off dirt and pour on water, it grows. Something
gigantic is buried here. Slowly, we uncover the roughly carved
stone sink that once was used in the kitchen, before the
“improved” concrete sink was installed. I'm afraid it's broken
but we scrub mud away, wedge it out of its hole with a pick,
and find intact the single stone, four feet long, about eighteen
inches wide and eight inches thick, with a shallow indented
basin for washing and with drainage ridges chipped out on
either side. The corner drain is clogged with roots. We've been
sorry our house didn't have this original and very characteristic
object. Many old houses have similar sinks in place, draining
directly out the kitchen wall and off a scallop-shaped stone
shelf into the yard. I would like to wash my glasses in this
prototype sink. We'll put it against the house outside under the
trees, a place to keep ice and wine for parties and to
wash up after gardening. It has been used to scrub enough
crusty pots in its day; from now on: an honored place to fill a
glass, a place for a pitcher of roses on the stone. It will be
returning to good use after many years buried in dirt.

After a few more minutes of chopping, I'm about twelve
feet down from the stone sink when two rusted hooks appear under
the leaves. Beneath them, again we see a glimpse of flat stone. Ed
shovels off a mound of dirt. In the middle, he hits a latch, around
which is twisted a rusty coil of wire. We make out a circular opening.
He has to angle the shovel in the crack to pry up the long-covered
stone lid.

It is late afternoon, just after a thunderstorm, when the light
turns that luminous gold I wish I could bottle and keep. Off comes
the lid and the light that falls down strikes clear water in a wide
natural cleft of white stone. We can see another undulation of the
stone, too, where the water becomes aqua. We lie on our stomachs
on the ground, taking turns sticking our heads and the flashlight
down the hole. Fig roots seeking moisture slither down the rock
wall. On the bottom, we see a big can on its side and easily read
the magnified green words
Olio d'Oliva.
Not exactly like
finding a Roman torso or amphora with dancing satyrs. A rusty pipe
leans against the back of the white stone and we notice that it
emerges just below the two hooks—someone stopped it up with
a wine cork. It now seems obvious that the hooks once secured a
hand pump and that this is a lost natural spring, hidden for years.
How long? But wait. Just beneath the stone covering lies a remnant
of another opening. What appears to be a corner of two layers of
carved travertine lintel angles for a couple of feet, then
disappears into rock. If the top were dug away, would this be an
open pool? I read about a man nearby who went in his backyard on
Christmas Eve to pick lettuce for dinner and caved into an Etruscan
tomb with elaborate sarcophagi. Is this simply a fortuitous opening
in rock that supplied water for farming? Why the carving? Why was
the carving recovered with a plainer stone? This must have been
covered when the second well nearby was dug. Now we have a third
well; we're the latest layer of water seekers, our
technology—the high-whining drills able to pierce any
rock—long removed from that of the discoverer of
this secret opening in the earth.

We call Signor Martini to come see this miraculous finding.
Hands in pockets, he doesn't even lean over.
“Boh,”
he says (
boh
is an all purpose word, sort of “Well,”
“Oh,” “Who knows?” or dismissal), then he waves a hand over
it.
“Acqua.”
He regards our fascination with abandoned
houses and such things as ancient wells as further evidence that
we are like children and must be humored in our whimsies. We
show him the stone sink and explain that we will dig it out, clean
it, and have it put up again. He simply shakes his head.

Giuseppe, who has come along, gets more excited. He should
have been a Shakespearean actor. He punctuates every sentence with
three or four gestures—his body totally participates in
every word he speaks. He practically stands on his head looking down
the hole.
“Molta acqua.”
He points in both directions.
We thought the well opened only in one, but because he is dangling
upside down, he sees that the natural declivity of the rock extends
in the opposite direction also. “O.K., yes!” These are his only
English words, always uttered with arms wide apart, embracing an
idea. He wants to install a new hand pump for garden use. We already
have seen bright green pumps in the hardware store out in the
Val di Chiana farm country. We buy one the next day, uncork
the pipe, and place the pump right on the old hooks. Giuseppe
teaches us to prime the pump by pouring water into it while
pumping the handle rhythmically. Here's a motion long lost to my
gene pool, but the creaky-smooth movement feels natural. After a
few dry gulps, icy fresh water spills out into the bucket. We do
have the presence of mind not to drink untested water. Instead,
we open a bottle of wine on the terrace. Giuseppe wants to know
about Miami and Las Vegas. We're looking out over the jungle growth
on the hills. Giuseppe thinks the palm trees are what we really
need to tend to. How will we ever trim them? They're taller than
any ladder. After two glasses, Giuseppe shimmies up to the top
of the taller one. He has the biggest grin I've ever seen. The
tree leans and he slides down fast, too fast, lands in a heap
on the ground. Ed quickly opens another bottle.

AS IT TURNS OUT, THE FORMER OWNER WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE
water. If the
water setup doesn't exactly rival the gardens of the Villa d'Este,
it is ingenious enough to keep us digging and exploring for many
days. The elaborate underground system makes us understand precisely
how precious water is in the country. When it flows, you figure
out ways to save it; when it is plentiful, as now, you must respect
it. St. Francis of Assisi must have known this. In his poem “The
Canticle of the Creatures,” he wrote, “Be praised, O Lord, for
Sister Water, the which is so useful, humble, precious and chaste.”
We convert instantly to short showers, to turning off the water
quickly when washing dishes and brushing our teeth.

Interesting that this oldest well has channels on either side
of it to divert runoff so that any extra water flows into the
cistern. As we clean around the cistern, we find two stone tubs
for washing clothes and more hooks in the stone wall above it,
where another pump must have hung. Do not waste a drop. And
there, not five feet away from the natural well, the old one
that went dry last summer—now replenished fully by the
winter rains. The hand pump for potted plants, Ed decides,
the old well for the grass, and for the house, our fine new
pozzo,
a hundred meters deep, drilled through solid
rock.

“Wonderful water,” the
pozzaiolo,
the well
driller, assures us as we pay him a fortune, “down to inferno
but cold as ice.” We count out the cash. He does not want a
check; why would anyone use a check unless they didn't actually
have the money?
“Acqua, acqua,”
he says, gesturing
over the entire property. “Enough water for a swimming pool.”

WE NOTICED, VAGUELY, WHEN WE BOUGHT THE HOUSE THAT A
stone wall
perpendicular to the front had tumbled down in a few places. Weeds,
sumac, and fig sprouted along the fallen rocks. The first time we
saw the house the section of the yard above that wall was topped
with forty feet of rose-covered pergola lined with lilacs. When
we returned to negotiate for the purchase, the pergola was gone,
torn down in a zeal to clean up the place. The roses and lilacs
were leveled. When I lifted my eyes from that debacle to the
house, I saw that the faded green shutters were repainted a glossy
dark brown. Stunned, we hardly noticed the heaps of stones. Later,
we realized that a 120-foot-long wall of immense stone would have
to be rebuilt. We forgot about the romantic pergola with its
climbing roses.

During those few weeks here last summer after buying the
house, Ed started to take down parts of the wall adjacent to the
tumbled sections. He thought stone building sounded
gratifying—finding just the right stone to slide into place,
tapping it in with a mallet, scoring stone surfaces, hitting them
precisely to direct the split. The ancient craft is appealing;
so is the good hard labor. An alarming pile of stones grew daily,
as did his muscles. He became a little obsessed. He bought thick
leather gloves. Big rocks went in one line, small ones in another,
and flat ones in another. Like all the terrace walls on the
property, this was drywall, with a depth of more than a yard: nicely
fitted and stacked stones in front, neat as a jigsaw, with smaller
ones behind. The structure leaned backward, to counteract the
natural downward heave of the hillside. Unlike the lovely stone
fences of New England, which cleared the fields of stone, these
actually are structural; only with braced terraces is a hillside
like ours an olive farm or vineyard. On one terrace where the
stones fell, a large almond tree also toppled.

When we had to leave, about thirty feet of the wall lay in
orderly piles. Ed was enthusiastic about stonework, though slightly
daunted by the excavation and the surprising depth of stonework
behind the facade of the wall. But instead of the miles to go, we
noticed the huge heaps of stones he'd stacked.

Over the winter we read
Building with Stone
by Charles
McRaven. Ideas such as sealing out moisture and foundations and
frost lines started to crop up. The height of the remaining wall was
not the actual height the rebuilt wall would have to be to support
the broad terrace leading up to the house. Besides being 120 feet
long, the wall must be fifteen feet high, buttressed from behind.
As we read about packed fill, thrust, balance, and all the ways
the earth shifts when it freezes, we began to think we had the
Great Wall of China on our hands.

We were absolutely right. We've just had several experienced
muratori,
masons, out to view the remains. This job is
a monster. Restoration work inside seems dwarfed beside this project.
Still, Ed envisions himself apprenticed to a rugged man in a cap,
a stone artist.
Santa Madonna, molto lavoro,
much work,
each
muratore
exclaims in turn.
Molto. Troppo,
too much. We learn that Cortona recently adopted codes for walls
such as this one because we're in an earthquake zone. Reinforced
concrete will be required. We are not prepared to mix concrete.
We have five acres of blackberry and sumac jungle to deal with,
trees that need pruning. Not to mention the house. The wall
estimates are astronomical. Few even want to tackle the job.

This is how in Tuscany we build the Great Wall of Poland.

Signor Martini sends a couple of his friends by. I forewarn him
that we are interested in getting the work done immediately and that
we want a price for
fratelli,
brothers, not for
stranieri,
foreigners. We are recovering from the new
well and still awaiting permits so the major house work can begin.
His first friend says sixty days of labor. For his price we could
buy a small steamer and motor around Greece. The second friend,
Alfiero, gives a surprisingly reasonable estimate, plus has the
terrific idea that another wall should run along the row of linden
trees on an adjacent terrace. When you don't speak a language well,
many of your cues for judging people are missing. We both think
he is fey—an odd quality for a mason—but Martini
says he is
bravo.
We want the work done while we are in
residence, so we sign a contract. Our
geometra
doesn't
know him and cautions us that if he's available he probably
is not good. This kind of reasoning doesn't sink in with us.