2004 - Italy

Saturday - Casoli

I can hear the church bells ringing in the village down in the valley. We are too small here for bells – just a tiny eyrie of three or four cottages perched under the very lip of the hill. The road to our hamlet twists and turns and tangles into itself to keep a safe grip on the mountains, and the terraces and birds and the wildflowers are tightly encased in the crystalline silence. We are high, high in the Apuan Mountains, and ours is the final cottage at the end of the road. The world could burn and we would never know. There is no television here, no newspaper and the only phone down in the village has a broken connection. Our mobile phones accept calls intermittently, but may not make them. We are isolated and remote and like the cottagers here connect only to each other, and to the bells.

On the road up, we passed shrines - so the old gods still live in the area, although they wear the robes and carry the wounds of Christianity. It would be easy to worship here. In this icy, crag-faced indifference the small resilience of the anemones and finches carries a message of renewal and protection – an unquestioning belief in at least the chance of tomorrow.

The little child in the next cottage squeals. She wants papa and her dog. She has a head of Botticelli curls and thick braced overalls dusty and damp at the knee. In ENglish, Paul asks her “What is your name?” and she regards him with a deep understanding of everything the question entails. She plugs her mouth with her finger, considering; then takes the wet finger away and answers him in French “Tomorrow, it is Easter.” This is dangerous information, not lightly held, not lightly given away; in the face of her damp-kneed authority we doubt our own calendars. And which of us would dare tell her that Easter is still four sleeps away?

Up here, we drink coffee – strong black, bitter – and eat dark chocolate. These are not things I have ever liked before, but now they are our first food of the day. The wildflowers – anemonies, jonquils, ferns, muscatti – are just as I’ve always imagined. Our hills are almost bare, eaten by winter, but down below us, deep in the valley, the fruit trees are swelling with bud and everywhere the olives and the cranky grape vines – black and crucified on their stakes – give promise of eternal renewal.


*


A saint or holy man has guard of our staircase. I needed him this morning when my cell phone shrilled through the pre-dawn and I ran in socks through the darkness, trying to find it. There has been un catastrophe at home – a minor car entanglement and no-one hurt, but it underscores how far away we are and how strongly we believe in our children’s capacity to look after themselves. This is new to both of us though not, I suspect, to them.



*


Paul is keen to shop and cook. He comes into his own at the marketplace, where all the focus and talk is on food and good cooking. Saucisse, du pain, tomate, and de l’huile d’olive have all travelled down with us from France. But today we will become Italian, stocking up with pasta, panne, d’agnello pollo and vino. And vino. I will pick wildflowers for the table when we go out today, and some for the saint who guards the stairs and saved me from tumbling headfirst and breaking my neck.

We walk into the village, fifty minutes away down a steep goat-track. In the time it takes to walk, we pass three shrines to the lady and gather enough to make a posy (which the god of the stairs rejects) of fifteen different varieties of wildflower. The village is Casoli, and at the bar we order grappa and vino russo piccolo to beat off the chill. The bar is the province of local men who play cards and smoke evil cigars, and the grappa is foul and undrinkable and I wouldn’t be anywhere else in the world this cold evening. It is all quite perfect here.


Sunday – Casoli.

At Lia’aia, Paul plays the guitar as evenings come in. It is cold – very cold without any fire or heating – and the hamlet dwellers are just beginning the chilly walk down to the village. Today is Sunday, so they will gather for dinner perhaps and to catch up on the news of the week. There was no-one visible in the church when we went down earlier but we could hear a chattering of women’s voices rising and tumbling In from the presbytery. They are the women perhaps who prepare the robes for the priest.

The current church is old, but the Chiesa is twelfth century. Its doors are always locked and it seems to be disused. All the nearby houses have signs proclaiming the glory of the Catholic god – so perhaps the church has already done its work.

In France, where the language was simpler, day-to-day living was much less magical. Here, where no-one except next door’s child has spoken French or English since we arrived, there is an infinite degree of possibility and conjecture. We have no idea for the most part what we are eating. From force of habit we ask for and try to follow directions – but we seem always to end up lost in little hamlets and misremembered borghi.

Our landlord is Carlos-Alberto. He has no English and Paul has no Italian and between them they must uncover all the deep secrets of Lia’aia’s workings. Carlos-Alberto demonstrates cupboards and stairways and blanket-boxes; he takes Paul on a tour of the plumbing and explains the gas stove. It is all mime – all commedia d’ell arte. Carlos boasts that he knows two words of English – Carlos and Alberto – and Paul replies that they - are wonder of wonders! - Paul’s only two words of Italian. They are fast friends before the tour is over; some hint of disaster involving the gas stovetop has strengthened the bond between them. That, and some good vino russo.



*


We almost miss the train to Cinque Terra. In the quintessential Harmon style, we spend fifty-five minutes in the car-park repacking cameras and backpacks and realise with ninety seconds to spare that our train is about to leave the station. In a situation like that, we Harmons don’t run, we fly, hysterical and unstoppable, leaping obstacles and ticket barriers with open-mouthed Italians watching in awe and cheering us lustily on. The crowd (there is always a crowd) takes on the task of securing our berth and orders are roared and semaphored from the station master through the concourse to the platform and thence to the traindriver. The place is in total uproar as we make the carriage at the last possible instant. We are cheered and waved like the heroes we are as the train pulls away. We were made for this country.

*


Lia’Aia is not heated. This is manageable at the moment, although the air is crystal and very cold. But if the snow comes or the mistral blows it must be unbearable. The beds are big and the blankets thick, rough and heavy, but hard work and cheap wine would probably be the only antidote to a late freeze.


Monday – Casoli

In the late quattrocentro in Lucca, a celebrated artist named Civitali worked with paint, wood, marble and terracotta and became a keystone in forming the Lucchese artistic style. I spend hours in the Villa Guinigi where an exhibition is given over to his works and the work of people in his circle. My own favourite of these artists I think is Fillipino Lippi whose painting of the Madonna, Child, St Peter and St Sebastian is richly human and laced with a quiet humour. But I love the wood statue by Civitali – the annunciate.

The stone floors of Villa Guinigi tap and echo underfoot. This early in the season, I am the only visitor. The villa and its artworks date from the 1400s. I am dwarfed by the size and the splendour and the antiquity. Lucca is a vortex of beauty, age and singular loveliness. In today’s grey and sombre light, the riches of the quattrocento are luminescent and we will have to return. There are too many roads that we didn’t take and too many times the noise of the scolari piccoli distracted us. They flock here, native born and stranieri alike, and always, always, there is one child outside the melee, watching the chattering group from a distance and wondering why.


*


The mist has come up now to shroud the top of our mountain. Up here, we close the shutters early; and when we go to bed we sleep very late indeed. It is a winter rhythm we live by. Our focus is food and warmth and our walk down the hill to the village is purely ameliorative - we must be warmed and salved with grappa and vino. But beyond the warm flush of the wine, the bar also provides a renewal of communication – a time to connect and mark off the faces of neighbours and strangers. We are not absolved from this process. A man from the back of the hill whom we’ve never met asks us if we had gone to San Gimignano today as he had been told we would. He is disappointed when we say we went to Lucca. There is nothing there, he tells us sourly – only old houses and crowds.

Later, Paul points out how lucky we are – to have work in Cannes and follow-up time in Tuscany. We are living a dream he says, and I think he is right.


*

Our hamlet is called Luciana. It lies above the village of Casoli in the brotherhood of Camaiorie. We are half a dozen houses, two churches and an alimentari; but behind the alimentari there is a bar on a terrace with views over the valley and stone benches along the walls. It is too cold out there these days, and we crowd at the bar with the wary cigar-smoking men and their playing cards.


*


The tomato was disappointing. That one can be disappointed by a tomato is news to both of us. We ate chicken that Paul had stuffed with prosciutto, tomato and mushrooms and cooked in red wine with wild green asparagus. The rucculo salad and parmigiano was wonderful. Only the tomato let us down.

We eat from five till eight-thirty every night. Anne Marie is to join us in three weeks and my first words to her will be “Tell me honestly, are we fat?”



*


Paul backed the car into a mountain yesterday, which was pretty moving for all of us except the mountain. The bumper is scratched and crumpled and with the Lenten palms on the back seat and the newly damaged rear we look very Italian and anonymous when we drive out. Driving in Italy is similar to driving in Malaysia with this exception; where the Malaysians fling their cars forward with a reckless and gleeful faith in Allah to protect them, the Italians – at least, our Italians, here on the treacherous mountain – are drivers enraged. There is a malignant god at their backs whipping them on against their will. They know the car will suffer and the mountain road will suffer, and they pit one against the other with black savagery. Their only care at the end of the day is to reach home or the village alive – driving is not a pleasure here. Our Italians become once again beasts of the agrilands hauling unjust and crippling loads for a cruel overmaster, serfs to an unjust feudal power. And so they berate themselves, their metal steeds and all other drivers – and above all, enraged, they take no care of the roadway. It is battered and scarred, for why should the serf protect the landlord’s furrow? The terrible injustice of the peasant is plain in the reckless, heroic echo of the drive down the mountain.


Tuesday – Casoli

The clouds have descended on our mountain while we were out. We have spent the day in Pisa and returned to a black storm and a terrible cold biting wind. Our little cottage is sturdy and proof against draughts, and with the shutters closed we are cut off once more from outside. Only the whip of the wind round our old strong stone walls lets us know of the rage building up over the top of the hamlet. Down in Casoli there was no breath of this storm. But the light was eerie - yellow-tinged and still – and a thick line of black cloud has cut off the top of our mountain.

There will be no walk down past the shrines to the village tonight.



*


In Pisa we talked about the dinner Paul planned for tonight. It is idiomatic that in Italy, surrounded by artistry, intellect, art and history we should be so obsessed with food.

The Duomo at Pisa was destroyed in a fire in the war. We call it the Last War, but of course it wasn’t. We call them The Enemy, till later we learn they were us.


*


The barometer is falling. The barometer is our only link to the outside world now, and we have come to know it well. The weather is worsening and our concentric circle tomorrow will not be possible. I don’t mind – overfull of pasta, piselli, funghi and salsiccia I can think of nothing better to do than sleep tomorrow till midday.

The wind stops it battering for a moment, and in the sudden icy stillness a dog on our hilltop barks out his fear. His bark echoes six times around the black-shrouded hills. It is the sixth of his echoes that he answers, just as the wind begins again.

Wednesday, Casoli

The wind slams against our cottage today, cold and pitiless and fierce. I imagine how it must have been for the contadini here years ago, and for the shepherds centuries earlier – shut in with only their faith that the sun would return.


Thursday, Casoli

The storm has beaten itself out in the night. This morning is almost intolerably bright and we will make use of it. Yesterday was a cathedral day – The Duomo in Florence – but today we will hike the road over the hilltop to visit the neighbouring village. The air in the wake of the storm is so clear and so light that it makes breathing a conscious act.



Friday, Casoli

The storm has whipped up again and somewhere a shutter is loose on the side of the cottage. This storm is bad news for the town of Camaoire which has been given the honour of the Passion Procession tonight. The procession is shared between all the neighbouring towns and their small populations. For months Camaoire has prepared wooden frames for the tiny oil-lamps that will outline each door and window, shrine and fountain. The lights are to be lit tonight for the holy day, but if our storm extends over the town, it will have to be cancelled.


*


In a lull in the storm, I open the door to look out just as a hiker appears on the foot trail soaked through and sullen, weighed down by his backpack. I dream of travelling light through a warm hospitable country, with a warm hospitable soul for company. I would invite the hiker in, but there is no fire, and no warmth to make it worth shrugging off his tight, soaked, waterproof raingear.



*


The only sound is the rattle of the gas burner, the wind, and in the silences, birdsong. Paul has taken the car to Viareggio for the day to catch up on business. In this rain, a walk is out of the question – the mist has closed in and there nothing to be seen at all. I had wanted to explore the space under the house, but that too must wait - the key I’ve been given won’t open the big metal door. It is strange to be soundless here with nothing – quite literally nothing to do except write these pages.

Soon I imagine, the gas will run out. Then it will be quite quiet with only the wind. The shutters are closed tight, the mountains cut off. I imagine it will be like being deep inside the catacombs.



*


The long Tuscan twilight is midway done, and the township of Camaoire has come out to celebrate Good Friday. A magnificent display of the Stations of the Cross highlights the intense emotionality they bring to Easter, but still it seems the Madonna is the main focus. Ahead of me, two men are making last minute adjustments to the black draped virgin who will, I think, be carried high on her throne through the crowd. Up and down the street the townspeople are trying to beat the darkness back with their tiny lamps – oil and water – tucked into the frames. Our storm it seems – still raging up at the top of the mountain – has pulled its skirts from this place in fear of the oil lamps.

The children are out and excited – not in the same way that ours get excited on Christmas day, not with the expectation of presents and toys – but with the exuberant wild delight of being out so late at night for this fire-lit ritual.

Under the dome of the chapel (the small, empty chapel) a life-sized jesus is taken down from the cross and laid on three cushions. On this night of the lights he is flanked by tall slender candles. Women particularly drift in from the street and kiss his face and stroke his feet. It is such a private and moving display of sadness and memory I move to the shadows and try not to intrude.

An ancient man comes in and pats my hand. “Journalisti?” he asks (he has watched me ordering shots from Paul and the camera) “No, sono una scritorria” I say and he pats my hands again and nods sympathetically. It will be our secret.


The thousands of lights are water and oil with wicks make of thread affixed by wire to four tiny corks. They float on the oil. Everything from olive twigs to mini-flame-throwers is used to light them, and now, with the rain beginning to threaten and the walls of this narrow street forested each side with ladders, the grandmothers (all in black) are out in force pressing young men and teens into the service. All these lights must be burning before the priests come, and the sulky boys put down their mobile phones and slouch away from the bar and pick up the tapers.

On a balcony, a woman in blue stretches up to her height to light the topmost lamp on her wheelframe.


*


It is after seven now, still dusk and still people are rushing back for the festival everyone thought would be cancelled. The noise and energy builds as whole families lean out of their windows, perilously, dangerously, boisterously touching flame to the wicks of the lamps. Most windows have two shutters, each shutter has twenty-six oil lamps, thirteen to a side. But there are bigger, prouder displays as well; fifty candles for a wheel-frame is not uncommon and four wheel frames on a single building is not excessive.

The woman who works at the Celero Bar has just burnt her hands. If she swore (and I think she did, cursing the mother of god for a pig) the tiny old nun in brown habit made a point of not hearing. The nun is the happiest person here tonight – happier than all the shrill, boisterous children together. This entire spectacle might have been made for her.

It is seven-twenty and the twilight has given way to deeper dusk. The preteens – the last to arrive, the fashionably late – have appeared on the scene. Eight-to-twelve is an age where even to notice the lights would involve serious loss of dignity.

I am worried that the Erbistoria is missing its chance. The candle frame they have built is intricate and wonderful, but no-one has appeared to light it. I don’t know whether they live too far from the town to come back through the storm, and I don’t know, also what protocols stand whether lighting another’s lamps is considered bad luck.

In the church, the priest is giving a press conference of sorts. He is little and soft and the journalist with him has wild un-brushed hair and seems to dwarf him, dressed to match his hair in a thick-pelted brown corduroy suit.

There are quiet, unobtrusive beggars here - a mother and her daughters, I think illegal immigrants because they have a different bearing, passive, apologetic, unlike the ebullient Italians.

Arguments are developing on the street. Military Shopping (for Girls and Boys) have confined themselves to a spare display atop their central window and an early grandmother – white hot, four-square – is furious. She thrusts an outraged arm towards the single frame – “It is a disappointment!” she shouts and now she has caught the owner by the arm and is scolding him roundly. I think before long that the omission will be rectified.

A bass drum begins throbbing in the black, lamplight alley at my side and I watch as a choir assembles itself and begins to sing. The audience – there are hundreds of us now, crammed into this street – continues to chat and critique. Unusually, I have had to move back in the crowd and I’m suddenly aware of just how tiny these villagers are. Two oboists and a flautist push past me, the flautist getting slapped by one of the women for arriving so late. There is no hush of respect for the choir here, in this country where art and music are part of breathing. The singers are shoved aside for a stroller with a baby, loud conversations continue through the crowd and a man in a red robe is calling for spare umbrellas – but the singing, which is beautiful, soars above the melee as it is meant to do, and beside me I see the tiny nun, nodding, ecstatic.

Beside me, a man exhales a plantation of garlic and nobody notices.

The procession waits to begin – the rain has held off and all the oil lamps are lighted. A huge monstrance, gold, elaborate, will lead the way, followed by servitors and my soft little priest from the chapel with the dome. It is not, as I expected, a silent, respectful procession – the servitors, tall, red-robed leaning on their four ornate altar lamps are engaged in a voluble and emotional story about a parking ticket and the fool who paid it. Ten inches shorter than them are the men who must carry the heavy loudspeakers. Banners are carried up to join the throng; the Commune di Camaoire, followed by 48 officials and 10 cabarisie. By sneaking in behind the officials I get halfway down the column, only to be held up in conversation by a delightful old woman who comes up to my shoulder (eighty-five if she’s a day) and her very small friend who is older. Monks in black hoods carry a rough and heavy wood crucifix, and my wall-mate and I exchange compliments about how beautiful the town is tonight and how heavy the cross.

Saturday – Casoli/San Gimignano

We must say goodbye to our cottage on the hill, this morning. Carlos-Alberto comes to see us off and waves as we edge down the mountain. The Mediterranean Sea is as blue as the sky.

The children are leaving these hamlets and towns, and the townships themselves are dying. There was a school in Casoli once, but it is long gone. The French-speaking child of our neighbour is the only one left, and she will move back to France when she’s old enough for school. Near Lusitgnano Zavegn, we find a town empty of all but some chickens and a dog and the man who stands watch on the church. The church was renovated in 1150. The old church below is is ancient. Two statues watch over the garden that was once pathed and terraced. They are – how fittingly! – Hospitality and Abundance.

Inside the church, abandoned, a huge old (14th 15th century) oil – filthy and quite gorgeous above the altar.

We drive on country roads, quiet, with orto, olive and fruit. Pensees les enfant signs here have a big boy and a small girl hand-fast - running!

We pass Cevoli, a hilltop town, old and full of gardens. This is Tuscany as we dreamed her – the hills are planted, wooded, alive with colour, the trees are silver and yellow and all shades of green, the wheat is young and calf-high and ripples like water. Gnarled black vines are underplanted with borage – it is quite perfect.


*


We arrive at last at San Gimignano. Our apartment is four rooms in a thirteenth century monastery. The town is medieval, closed to traffic, with stone-and-iron buildings that pre-date our monastery, with circles in the walls that once held the rods for the Sienna cloth that could only be made in this place. Today is Easter Saturday, tremendously busy and over-run with busloads of tourists – but even so the chiesi are open only to worshippers. It is warm, and blue-skied with a zephyr that makes the flags dance. We will unwind here and maybe relax into Italy. Lia’Aia seems a world away. I miss it, cold though it was – miss the clouds and the mists and the silence. Here we are among people again and I imagine we will read the newspapers again and write letters and re-touch the world.

Paul is glad to be here, I know. I think he missed the world more than I.

The sun burns my face. It is hot, and strange to be hot again – to feel the sun and shy away from the glare of light unsoftened by mist or cloud or nebbia. Strange too to be so closely among the crowds, to have people so near and so loud and in such numbers! I watch Paul coming out of the church, his eyes and the cameras shining. I don’t think he went there to pray.

In our 13th century piazza, the boys of the town ride their bikes and call to each other, the shrill sing-song bravura of youth. The sun is beginning to lower towards the horizon and we have ordered another quattrocarafe to keep up the warmth of the day. We have Italians, Germans. French and us at the bar (the Locanda di S Agostino). The Italians are the loudest, us the least noisy and the French have the best of the languages. But the young Italian lovers – oh how they kiss!


Sunday – San Gimignano

It is Easter Sunday and I can count six different church bells – and I think there are many more. The peals have soaked into the ancient stone of the towers and the echo is deep and resonant and lasting. In the square here, a small boy, Matteo, is running and shouting out of control, overflowing. It is the bells that make him like this, make him twist and jump and shout and break into song. He is for the moment a physical form of the sound. And now the bells have stopped and he comes to a halt, surprised. But he will carry that tumult in his body all the days of his life.



*


An old man has bought a door-knocker. He peels it from its newspaper wrapping to demonstrate it for his wife who is not impressed. There are a surprising number of facets to this device and he explains them all in all their glory, to show her what he has seen and share his good fortune. There is the general shape, he tells her – pleasing and firm. The hinge, the handle just the right size for a man to grip strongly, the good metal, longlasting, well turned and again – look – the hinge can be worked either slowly or quickly and will echo loud and assertive ("fortemente! fortemente!")or quiet, not to wake the sleeping grandchildren. On the right door, he assures her, the device gripped hot in his hand, this metal will sing. She looks at him, briefly, in silence, and moves on her way and he follows her wrapping and unwrapping his find, satisfied and pleased with his purchase and the blue sky arcs over him.


Guess where wallflowers grow? They grow in the walls of eleventh century towers, and sweep the sky with their perfume.



San Gimignano

I saw a picture in the town of Volterra which took my breath away. It described the deposition of Christ and was so arresting and so compelling that I returned to it again and again and again. Instead of the two Marys the deposition was being carried out by a bunch of rough men – disciples I expect, or even just friends. What struck me most was the very Italian uproar at the scene. The artist had caught them in a moment of terrible activity. Three ladders were balanced against the crucifix, and the hands had just been released from the nails of the crossbar. But the weight of the body, now unsupported, had begin to shift sideways, putting stress on the nails at the feet. The rage of these men at the thought of causing more pain to this poor dead christ was palpable. The body was grasped by one man who was being yelled at by another on the ladder at the side of the cross. A third man hung over the top of the crossbeam from his perch at the back of the cross, trying to ease the weight from the nails at the feet. A man at the foot of the crucifix was looking up in agonised concern and the women around him were near hysterical. Only the crucified man looked relaxed, his face suffused in death. In every frame was the terrible despair of treating a dead body gently. And I awoke to hear an Italian hostage is gone.


Friday – San Gimignano

From the outside balcony of the Palazzo Communale, I can watch the man next door dig his orto - lettuce, artichokes, beans and rosemary beneath medieval towers and a blue and grey sky. His grapes are just starting to bud, and he and the garden a framed by hand-worked stone arches. There is a wood and brick roof over me, centuries old, and a laughing French boy teases his mother nearby and pigeons sneak into the gaps in the hand-thrown brick walls. Tomorrow I will come and shoot up here to bring it home.



*


Children love echoes and these walls make perfect echoes. The crests and shields carved into the walls are almost faded and it is impossible now to know who once looked for fame or remembrance this way.


Next day

We have come back to the Trattoria San Donato, scene of last night’s revelry, to shoot more footage. I am not yet robust enough to face the day, and have spent a glorious 30 minutes reading up on our local church – La Chiesa della St Augustine de San Gimignano – which promises great things. The Miracle of the Toe is remembered here, and the remains of the Blessed Bartolo are on view through a grille in his sepulchre – this though he died in 1299 a.d. Less gruesomely, ther is a terracotta floor I want to see by my friend Della Robbia (the first) and the hermit friars themselves, robed, rotund, robust and doing a roaring trade in benedictions, icons and prayerbooks


San Quirico D’Orcia – at a small restaurant, drinking wine that is made especially for the owner, Paul discusses the delight of travelling. For him it is not a passive or even a visual experience. For him it is a hunt, with the goal being connection to other likeminded souls – that is, other collectors. He talks of the vision he has of our home in twenty years time – a cluttered, eclectic and generous amassage of things garnered from our travels. He is, of course, the definition of that wonderful Italian specialist , the thingfinder.

We are early lunchers still, Paul and I – and there is an added delight when a restaurant fills up just as we are leaving, and we know that yes indeed, we did choose well…

San Quirico D’Orcia has not yet fallen to the charms of tourism. It is light and uncluttered, carless and full of sunlight and blue sky and bells. The biggest delight is the lack of cars, which leaves so much space for people. Paul likes the San Q crostini – surprisingly he likes the truffles best of all.

My request for cappuco after lunch is disapproved of – but Paul’s suggestion that he should be allowed a scoop of gelato with his dessert results in hilarity. It takes a long time for them to accept that he is serious.

In the church of the Madonna, we find the most exquisite statue we have seeb – a Virgin Annunciate by one of the della Robbias. The High Altar is flanked by an angel and a virgin, by di Valdambrino - also exquisite; but I think Rome knows their value. The votive candles, (25c everywhere else) are 5 euro here.

*

We have sighted the most exquisite little tableau in the distance – a building (a chapel perhaps?) nestled between three pines. We are trying to find a road that will take us there while the sun holds – but we (Paul) keep being distracted.

*

In the distance I can just make out the tiny figure of a man wading through acres of wheat. It is Paul, of course

When we get arrested in Italy, it won’t be because of anything I said at the airport – it will be because Paul persists in asking old comtadini the way to the Communist Party Offices so he can gather up a bunch of posters for David and Stephanie. If he just accepted the direction with thanks it would be no problem – but he will keep engaging the locals in heated discussion of the didter that is George W. Bush. And Berlusconi. One day he’ll find a he’s talking to an Italian neocon and then we’ll have trouble. “George the Younger and his cabal of economic fascists” – nicely put! But it doesn’t leave much room for doubt on where he stands…...



Tuesday – Cortona

It has become a battle against the weather now, a cat-and-mouse skirmish where we watch the sky continually ready to make a dash for the car. In the mean-time, housebound, we cook and read the papers or wander museums.

Today, for a moment or two, the sky is clear and we head towards the nearby Castel il Fiorentino near Santa Lucia – 11th century, gloriously un-ruined, crowning the hilltop with sunlight sketching its contours and rooks and eagles calling and soaring around the battlements. The vagabond light is perfect and we abandon the car where the steep and boggy road gets too narrow to pass, and - camerapacks and tripods thumping against our backs – we run the last hundred yards uphill to the lichen grey walls. But we are too late. As Paul raises his camera and I struggle to change my lens, the light dissolves. The sun has vanished into thick black cloud, the first drops of rain begin and a sturdy workman, renewing the 11th century outbuildings by the side of his cliff, tutts at us sympathetically. “Niente sole”, he laments “Il tempo e terribilo” – and set for the day.

Chastened we stomp back down the steep lane to the car. We have left a window open and the seats are wet.



*


In Cortona the cloud has returned like an unwelcome Great Aunt and settled itself with a steady stream of disapproval over the towers and spires of the township. The BBC weather-witch smiles spiteful delight as she tells us that Italy’s spring is the wettest on record. The rain should clear some time next week, she says – but sometime next week we’ll have left Tuscany behind us. There is no help for it. We shall have to come back

Italy’s war trial continues for the men who killed 560 villagers in Tuscany in 1944. Guns, bayonets and grenades were used on civilians and refugees seeking safety during the war


*


Paul has found his most beautiful church in Cortona – perfect dimensions he says, and the music of water torrents through the Etruscan aquaduct and a domed roof perches above the olive trees like a prayer to a countryside god. It is the church of S Maria Nuova and Paul is delighted with it.

Paul adores travelling. Open to everything and everyone, he befriends people, has long mutually delightful conversations in a tangle of mime and goodwill. He shares his appreciation and his enthusiasm. He is now fast friends with at least three of the locals; when we pass The Artist’s studio, he is called inside and feted with wine and small pastries. In every new town his first task is to search out the local bar for his morning coffee – not an appealing, artistic, bright bar, but always a dark and fuggy one, crowded with silent men who eye him suspiciously. On the second or third day, one of the men will be forced to acknowledge him. By weeks end, they are saving a space for him at the counter. That task – the task of belonging – seems to subsume all other requirements. It is the first and always the most rewarding task of our travels.


*


In the convent of San Agostino a naughty boy – small, in a brave red jumper – kicks a ball as high as he can; as high, he hopes, as the frescoes along the walls. It is an innocently anti-papist game in anti-papist Tuscany. He is as glad as I of the break in the rain. We both know it will end in a moment. When the rain begins he will be called back inside, to that unruly room with the wild and noisy classmates; and I too will have to protect my camera and take it inside again. No matter, though – in the school he has his little village of fights and forgetting and at home Paul is cooking tiny artichokes in garlic and oil.



*


And finally the clouds dissipate and we take advantage of a gap in the rain to climb up through the village, taking hidden streets and lanes that will lead to the top. The climb is endless and dangerous, the way steep and the cobbles green and slimy. The eaves drip and the handrails are treacherous here and not to be trusted. We pass churches and chapels and poke our heads inside, but apart from a modern “****He is Risen” there is nothing to really excite us. Then, at the top of the hill, the sun appears warm and steady as though she has never been away, and the cobbles are dry and we whoop with delight and continue our walk, renewed, straight through the walls and up a goat-track through a meadow that reaches to the very top of the hill, awash with long wet grass, slipped terraces and the infinitesimal forget-me-nots so much tinier than ours and so intense. The meadow, terraced once, but long wild, runs the foot of the crumbled tower walls. Our shoes and our legs are drenched to the knee by the thick, wet, abandoned grasses, but we follow our own trail back to the porta and see from the hilltop Cortona bright and warm , twisting along below us, hugging the hill. And it is worth all the days of rain and cloud and worth wet boots and blistered toes as well.



*


Later, coming in through the porta ****, I see the old woman with her handful of kindling, her ancient purple dress and broken gumboots.




Wednesday - Cortona

Signor Cherubini has now become Paul’s best friend, supplanting even The Artist in his affections. Signor Cherubini is a collector of antiquities. He collects, says Paul, who knows such things, from his knowledge, not from his hunger. This means, I think, that the basis of his desire is intellectual and not, as in Paul’s case, emotional. Remarkably, for we have no Italian and he has even less English, we spend some hours in his shop, discussing antiquities and collecting and his methods and successes. He lowers his voice and describes to Paul his methods. “Take a stick into the fields in early spring, just after the first rains have softened and lifted the soil. Where the herbs are growing piccolo, piccolo, where the legumes do not mass, there tip your stick into the ground – so softly – and listen. Allora, you hear the voice of the soil and the rock and if you are good you will hear the t’ing of ceramic. Then use your hands – but gently, gently. This is not excavation, this – this must be gentle.” “But who gives permission?” I ask, thinking of all those E Prohibita signs in the back of the car, and Signor Cherubini shakes his head and says “No permission.” “But the police,” I begin, and he expands and swells into his only English so far. “Carabineiri” he says with pride “Carabinieri my friend.”

Paul is his friend too, and will buy a broken Etruscan jar from him though Snr Cherubini doesn’t know this yet. He has extracted a promise from us that we will visit the Etruscan museum before we leave. “Domani-domani” we promise, Malaysian style because we don’t even know the names of the days of the week. But he is satisfied; he seems to understand us.



*


Paul is cooking again, while I write, curled into my place in the hearth of the sitting room. He has cooked a bowl of fava beans in garlic and oil to go with a pleasant chianti while he makes the main meal – Tuscan sausage with wild asparagus, zucchini and fresh carrots. The kitchen smells wonderful.

Paul is a better cook than I in this situation. He sees cooking as sport and enjoys the planning as much as the doing. I prefer it as a spectator sport – but I clean.

Signore Cherubini has given his opinion on our dancing boy – South American as we thought and probably 1850s. He tells us, and I am astounded that after so many weeks of chiesi and chapels and cathedrals I didn’t see it, that the boy is an angel. A cherub, in fact. This clears up what had been a problem for me – the mismatch of the yearning, effeminate little face and the sturdy young legs. It also explains the long back – where the wings took support. I like the idea that it is an angel, and particularly that Signor Cherubini noticed. It seems very appropriate.


The fireplace I occupy has a filled in chimney, exposed supporting beams and a stone seat built-in and covered with cushion. It is just the right size for me to curl up in – too short for Paul and not soft enough, either. It is in the same cheerful yellow as the room and the covers are cream. It is a darling little nook.

Tomorrow, on the advice of Maria, daughter in law to be of Giancarlo and Reoberta, affianced to Manuel, we are off to see the little church built by Francis, saint of the town of Assisi. It is small, she says, built by him with his own hands, and after a few days the boys of the village came down and helped build too. And they became, many of them, followers and disciples and helped support his work with the poor and destitute.




Thursday – Cortona

The basilica over St Francis’s church has enraged me, and Paul, who had the foresight to predict this, is attempting to salvage the day with a merenda he packed without telling me. In Umbria, a tiny simple chiesa, craked and hidden, restores my equilibrium – that, and the cheeky schoolboy who was startled when he saw me and broke into a torrent of welcome in the tiny clutch of houses. We drive on to Pilonico Materno e castel del piano and find along the way the ruins of an entire hamlet – three or four houses, outbuildings and a small church. Paul shoots the poppies and flax and the sheep move slowly away their bells echoing distant bells from the unremembered village.



*


We are at the back of Umbria now, near the Tuscan border, coming down from the tops of the hills. The first warm day after the first spring rains is still a magical time in Umbria. All the old, old, oldest people are out with their paperbags, hunting for mushrooms. I found two at the Uni dig we stopped at earlier – and Paul found a sign that said “it is absolutely forbidden to hunt mushrooms, asparagus, truffles or other wild food…” and promptly pinched it. (It occurs to me that anyone who searches our car for the stipulated mushrooms, truffles, asparagus or other wild food, or indeed any relics, artefacts or fossils will find only a sign that says “It is absolutely forbidden to…”)



We have sighted an ancient castle on the top of a hill and the daylight is starting to soften. Paul has stopped to ask a local (it is the enchanted Rafael, but we don’t know that yet) how we might best get up there. It will be a long hike, but we have water and if there’s a way in without (obvious) trespass, we’d like to find it…



*


We climb the hill to the tower. The sun is setting and we have wasted precious time exploring Rafael’s house and garden. Rafael has bought a ruin in a landlocked valley – once floodplain swamp, riddled with malaria. But before the house came the Etruscans who drained the swamp and channelled the water into streams and runnells and created a small and fertile valley where water sings everywhere. Rafael’s mill-house is at the lowest point of the valley where the streams come together. He has found and cleaned the old aquaduct under the mill and, Roman-like, channelled the stream away and down to the olives.

He is a magical sprite of a man, Rafael; part imp, part sorcerer, born in India, he replies to Paul’s “Do you speak any English at all” with “Perfect English, and eight other languages besides.” He is tiny, about my height, well-muscled, not wiry, and tanned from his work in the sun. He has almost restored the mill-house structurally, has planted windbreaks, dug and planted the borders of lavender, cleared the orto, pleached a barrier to keep the animals out and is tarring posts for the fencing when we happen upon him. He is enthusiastic about our plan to climb to the tower and drops everything to accompany us, until gently dissuaded by Paul. He will show us the way though, will guide us down to the best place to cross the river; but first we must see his house and watch as he unveils every room and the staircase he built by himself and the old tubs – ancient, Roman – that he found or bought or was given depending on his mood. Rafael redefines himself with every sentence. Sparkling, momentary, he changes his life and his story as easily and quickly as his surroundings. He was given the house and land, or he bought it – or it isn’t his at all but belongs to his students. He is a silversmith or a teacher or he has been a student all his life and never used money. The truth, I think, is probably more prosaic; the property belongs to his wife Stefania, who works as a language teacher and so earns the money for both of them; I think he provides the vision and muscle and dreams.


*


We cross Rafael’s brook which is running deep now (for which he apologises) and step out in the direction of the church as he advises. We have lost so much time with Rafael that the light is softening as it does in Italy – a prelude to the long and drawn-out twilight. We are walking fast, our camera packs thumping against us and the way is quite steep and its all uphill, the track outlined with little runnels of water – but oh it is beautiful! It is a secret, magical place, full of the whisper of water and echoes of worship.

The church is a ruin (and is it a church? We have only Rafael’s word after all, and the one standing wall looks prosaic and holds none of the platforms and plinths that usually stand for the gods) but it is beautiful in the warm afternoon sun. The roof – these roofs in Italy, centuries old, wonderful, delicate tiles and all mossed and messy with grasses – has fallen in on itself and bought the other walls down. Rafael has told us that when the roof goes, the house quickly follows after. This house is empty now – no sign that it was ever more than rock and stone.

The tower is still some way away, silhouetted above the hill and we come on it by degrees. Paul is excited, imagining David here, finding the place on his own. He starts shooting early, to bring back photos to show David the unfolding of the quest – the setting sun, the church bell so far distant, the whisper and giggle of the water and all the mad birdsong. After all this time, both Paul and I still trap ourselves with the hope that sound will be somehow maintained on the picture. We haven’t managed it yet…

And the tower! It appears full-length in the aging light when we turn the last curve of the track. It is huge – a knights-and-battles tower, and indeed we learn later that its aim was to protect **trade and customs duty. It is completely cracked through, decrepit and Paul must climb it of course, though the staircase gives way every step. I am happier in the outbuilding, in even worse state but gorgeous and perfectly made with fireplaces and stone shelves and carved stone benches and arches to keep the wood dry. It is a story-book place and we congratulate the makers and bless Rafael too for showing the way.

It is not over with Rafael yet, though. We come down through the forest at a jog with our gleanings (a stone from the Tower that Paul has for David, a small piece of carved marble for me) and stop to look for R. to thank him. He is back again at his tarbrush, but now splashed with the stuff and delighted to see us once more. He has thought of way we can repay him, and nothing will do till we have photographed him with the posts which he has cut and stripped himself (but in the next breath has bought like this from the farmer) and which he considers beautiful. They are beautiful, too, chestnut, taken from the mother-stump which sends up saplings that must be cleared every five years or so. Thus Italy retains her centuries of forests. Fifteen years between thinnings for wildwood on rotation so some is cut every year) and five for the chestnuts. We are taking shots and listening to Rafael who knows so much about Italy and happily makes up what he doesn’t know, when Stefania comes home. She is not happy with him, splashed with tar and the posts unfinished and guests expected for dinner within the hour. She shoos us off and berates Rafael all the way back to the house. Or we’d be there still…



*


We leave with the map Rafael has drawn to the local restaurant. The map is tar-splattered and sticks to his hand, so he tells us the way and we follow directions arriving at 8:45 at another hilltop town with a single restaurant. The streets are so very narrow and twisted we abandon the car and go in on foot (muddy, sweaty, tar-daubed). We find the Restaurant La Castagna Reschio, but it is closed. Two women are chatting in the dregs of the twilight, one on each balcony over the road from each other. They are amused that we expect the place to be open. “You must ring before and arrange with Andrea” they tell us. “How would Andrea suppose you were coming?” Chastened, we head back for the car and drive through the night, finding a superb meal at a town called ***. In this unprepossessing little place, Paul declares the Umbrian wine the finest he’s tasted in Italy (Antigniano Torgiano Rossi - Vendemmia 2000). His carpaccio of zucchini with rocket, pinenuts and parmesan is also the very best thing in the world


Friday – Cortona

We are going back to Lisciano today, since we saw so little of it yesterday. But first Paul must pay Snr Cherubini for the angel and Snr Cherubini has told his friend the potter that Paul will be gone tomorrow, so they must say goodbye too – loudly, with gestures, in florid Italian – which alerts The Artist and Signora-the-Tabbachi and others and they gather in the square and look set to dissolve into tears so we – Anglo, repressed – wave and beat a hasty retreat.


*


At Val de Pierle, near Mercatale we find the ruined castle we saw lit up against the darkness last night. The castle is perilous so of course it must be explored and photographed. Never mind the signs that say access is forbidden, never mind that it is attached directly to the back of someone’s home, car parked outside. Never mind that – unusually for Italy – it is swathed in orange plastic, or that the dog at least is home and that Snr di Castello may well be armed and inbred. Paul leaps the obstacles, scales the barriers and shoots to his heart’s content, while I, centuries of nun-disapproval burning my face – sit on an old stone step (scent of crushed sage and thyme all around me) and write disapprovingly, and wait for the gunshot.

And if Snr does hold fire for long enough to ask Paul what the hell he thinks he’s doing accidente Madonna! Hanging like a monkey from the battlements, Paul will probably reply with the words I’ve taught him. “Niente – non capisce Italiano” in a perfectly parroted accent; which should give them pause.

The castle is perilous, it is – but oh it is beautiful, too.

A workman has just driven up in his little fiat. We are so far outside the pleasantries of Tuscany here that he refuses to even notice me, a woman alone. He wears a flannel shirt and blue cotton jeans and a train drivers cap.He is small, squat, nut-brown, unshaven and I can’t see his gun. I toy with the idea of telling him there’s a trespasser up on the tower, but I’ll wait and let events follow their allotted path.


*

The tower hisses my name and I look up to find to my horror that Paul is now inside and thrilled with himself. But he has the wrong camera. In mime he explains that he wants me to leave the safety of my step, wander up to the perilous castle, and meet him at the towers door here, in full view of anyone who might be curious enough to be spying from their kitchen (or fiat) we can execute a swiftly secretive camera-swap. He’ll get me shot one day, but I’ll kill him first. Whispering – hissing – at him to get back outside the castle, miming the tower’s imminent collapse, describing in dumb show the fact that the neighbours are watching (in train-driver’s caps with undisclosed weapons) does no good at all. The longer I try to get him out, the more likely we are to be caught. We do a synchronised lens-swap – I am getting so good at these – and I hand over my camera.

Eleven centuries of disapproval bore into my back.

I will teach Paul a new sentence, I decide; “Your wife is ugly and your mother humps pigs.” We’ll see how much trouble that gets him out of.

Voices! A couple – locals – sound to be coming this way. They’ll see me, una scrittoria, my car and my camera; they’ll see the tower, but if Paul is smart – he is smart – he’ll stay in the shadows. According to the sign, if he is caught there he will be denounced (well, frankly that’s going to happen anyway) and quite possibly jailed. I won’t visit him.

Truck, bus or paddy-wagon is coming. We are (of course) illegally parked, and Paul (of course) has the keys. If they need me to move the car a little, we’re undone.

I can’t hear him now – can’t hear anything except the tiny finches and doves. The day is divine, the sun warm and herb-scented, the sky powdered with thin white cloud. God, the racket this castle will make if it falls in on Paul…

Why do I follow him into these places? Why don’t I stick in my heels and refuse to budge? But yesterday we forded a river that was torrenting too fast to be safe, and we climbed a hill that was too high and steep in light that was fading too quickly with too-heavy cameras; and we came to a tower that was too old and dangerous to climb and we climbed it. And it was all magic and wonder and wild, wild beauty.


*


A man – out of sight on the other side of my wall – is talking on his mobile phone. Every now and then the pigeons panic and mass and swoop from the tower. If the man notices, things will come unstuck. If Paul hisses for me again – but here he comes, hotfooting up the road with a fixed smile on his face hissing “Get in the car, we’ve been spotted!” Suddenly there is movement in the village, a voice calls out in anger and another responds and Paul starts the car and we shoot through the one street which ends some seconds later at a farm gate. There is nothing for it – we must drive back through the town, where I’m sure we’ll find people have gathered, watching the tower in deep suspicion. We pass, unnoticed, but I blush anyway. Paul is laughing. He got his photos.



Saturday – Cortona/Sorrento

Sorrento – at least the way in to Sorrento – is a voyage into insanity. The worst kind of insanity – paranoia, confusion, anxiety, mania. We drive through a township with streets so narrow that one single lane of traffic is barely contained – but pedestrians, dogs, buses, and cars from the other direction jostle and fight for space. There is a nastiness to the usually exhuberant machismo, and for the first time in Italy I feel unsure of myself. I don’t know the townships name but I want to get away – and there is no way out but to continue on through the turbulent, untrustworthy streets. The corners are tight and blind, the air is foul and every car has it’s lefthand mirror shattered. Theere is menace underneath the chaos and even Paul is unnerved.

We need to reach a place called Tasso Square, but before we do that, we have to get down the coast road, where the traffic has stopped around us, not moving for the last twenty minutes, and never at more than a crawl. We are not sure of our directions, not sure of our booking, and after the last town we passed we are not sure if Sorrento is such a great idea after all.


Sunday – Sorrento

Oh ho, Sorrento! In Sorrento, for the first time, we become part of the Italy scene – the tourist part of it, admittedly, but then Sorrento is lively and brash and want to be friends with everyone. Already Paul has found his personal coterie – Antonio from the gelateria, Il Politico from the alimentari and the woman from the bar outside our gate. Sorrento is packed and very scene-y, especially on Saturday night. We realise the big difference, the thing that engages us heart and body and soul with this town is the high high percentage of young people – especially our favourite age group, the 18 – 25s. True, there are babies in prams. Toddlers and little ones (and hear those little ones laugh at the street parade!) but the 18 – 25s mark the town’s heart, take over and crowd out the square, mill and preen and kiss and laugh quite unrestrained. This is Squealie territory; a depth of family and culture give it balance but it seems to both of us to be the spiritual home of the Squealies and their cohort; stylish, exuberant, self-concerned, protected and cherished.

On Sundays, the Piazza becomes the province of families and neighbours. The young people are out but looking a little chastened, the family groups (three generations) are milling around after mass and the square echoes with the shouting of names and laughter filled greetings and the squeals of the boy, Nico, six years old and stylish in black sunglasses who finds everything hilarious and above it all the smoke-shattered voice of the American woman at the next table who is a heathen and proudly so and would rather enjoy a midday gin than visit the church with her (very dull) travelling companion. It is safe to predict that theirs is a friendship that won’t survive the trip.

The companion leaves, disapproving, and as if in celebration, a swing band strikes up, loud, hip and infectious and Anne Marie appears out of nowhere, gorgeous and funny and beautiful. The large American lady lights a cigarette and draws deeply, metaphorically kicking off her sensible shoes.


*


Italian mothers wipe their children’s faces constantly. This is more theatre than hygiene, since Italian children are no more prone to food mess than any others. The child must be corralled and restrained, the top of its head firmly grasped. A wet cloth appears from mid-air and is rubbed across the squirming child’s face with an intensity and vigour that simply has to be painful. The child’s face has been screwed up in anticipatory agony and invariably mother (it is always mother or grandmother wielding the cloth) imitates the look as she scours away at the features. Thankfully, it is only the under-eights who must be subjected to this. Nico’s facecloth days are nearly behind him.



*


Oh the little girls ready dressed for church in frocks and stockings, jackets and black patent shoes. They have such curly hair and they hold on to adult hands and never get lost or run over or knocked down by the mixed-breed dogs that run freely in Italy.

It is strange to think just how soon these babes will be the gloriously scene-y young creatures who lean against motorbikes and flirt outrageously (and unconsciously) with the gorgeous young men



Monday – Sorrento

When the postman brings the mail to the apartment in the courtyard facing ours but two storeys up, he sings out for Giulia. She appears, on the balcony, seventy years old and round and sprightly and lowers a basket tied to a ribbon of tattered della robbia blue. The postman places the letters in her basket – letters from children and grandchildren far away, perhaps, or lovers almost forgotten or friends from her youth – and she draws the basket up and disappears inside with her bounty. The postman waits a moment, thinking, then he sees me watching and stretches his shoulders under the weight of the bag and moves on.

Tuesday, April 27 – Sorrento

My boots are covered with the dust of Vesuvius and after a long day tramping the ruins of Pompei we are ready to make our way back to Sorrento and dinner.

Pompei infuriates Paul. He becomes the essential American Tourist – finding fault with everything (maps, touts, translations) and above all with the precarious nature of the protection given the city. He has a point – this amazing, evocative, pitiless, desperate ruin is being badly mishandled. Barriers are flimsy or non-existent, people climb and clamber all over and through the houses and shops with no guard to keep them away and dogs pee all over the walls. Rubbish is everywhere – but worst of all every corner, every hidden room, every corridor is used without shame as an alfresco toilet. It is such a pity.

Pompei itself though! Despite the crowds there is a stillness, a silence that cannot be broken even by a classroom of eager eight-year-olds galloping down to the fugiteria. The atmosphere is quite airless, distanced, dusty. I could stay there all day


*


A very small girl – French – wanders up and gives me her bunny to hold while she clambers up onto the footpath. When she has steadied herself, I try to return the rabbit but she won’t take it back. Instead she finds two very specific stones and gives them to me. I would like to photograph her with the huge old ruins behind, but she is too tiny.


Saturday – Sorrento/Rome

We leave Sorrento early and with deep, deep regret. I am not looking forward to Rome, having developed a deep mistrust of Catholicism, churches and culture. And the weather is dim and damp, the sky grey and further we get the more crowded and boisterous and dirty the streets and we want to avoid that nasty nameless town we went through on our way down but I don’t think we can. And then suddenly we are on the autostrada again, and its not pretty, no castles, not really Italian, but its fast and the sky is clearing after all. And GianCarlo loves Rome like a woman, so it can’t be all bad.





Sunday – Rome

On the Via Corso, I am first to catch sight of Giancarlo and Roberta, and they look just as they did in San G. We are kissed – once, twice, three times – and hugged like the lifelong friends we have become, but immediately we must set off, Carlo tells us, before the wedding party arrives at Loyola and ruins everything.

Giancarlo… What to say of this man who loves Rome like a woman; who plays his guitar in a crowded fattoria and sings “bridge over troubled water” for his clever, chainsmoking Roberta; who laughs and is moved to tears; who has a son who makes him bleed and another of whom he can say “He is my love”. There should be one – one tender, clownish, love-burned Giancarlo - for each of us.

Nevertheless, he makes us run, for fear of the sunset and the wedding party, and when we get to Loyola (a cathedral in the centre of town) he pushes us up the stairs twisting us through the urgent delivery of flowers (huge lilies, lemon scented greenery, beautiful flowers and oh how Roberta and I would like to stand and look and drink their perfume!) and he calms the woman-general blocking the entrance with a gentle pat on her face and the promise we’ll be a minute only, just a minute. It is darkling, and he wants us to see it before the light goes, and he runs us through the painted, vaulted room, makes us stand just there, just so, and tells us to look up as though he is unblinding us. “Do you see now? Do you see?” and I look up into the cupola – dark but unremarkable – and it is Paul who sees first what Giancarlo has wanted to show us. The cupola is false, is painted in, and painted so captivatingly that it is hard to see the trickery even when it has been exposed. Indeed, I never see it. My usual problem with visual perspectives leaves me utterly convinced that this cupola is there, is realised in a dome outside the church, and Giancarlo must point out from the outside that no such dome exists. And then he tells the story – the story of the cupola, of the Chiesa, of the Vatican and the black pope and the battle between the two sectors. When the Vatican refused to allow the building of a dome because he feared the Black Pope’s growing power, the artist retaliated by painting one in. Giancarlo talks of betrayal and revenge and war as lyrically and simply as a poet. For him, history is made by choices and choices by men and women who love and hate and have children and worries and dreams. For him, life is all-embracing and his clown face with its long eyes and slow smile lights up and becomes beautiful. The woman guard, angry at our presence, starts towards us, but Giancarlo has already begun his history- and memory-filled tour and he carries us with him, not noticing.

Through the long, impassioned night we visit the fountain (“only think!” exhorts Giancarlo “only think of the people when this is uncovered – this magnificence! – all for the town, for the commoners. Oh the miracle of the water coming now here all at once and forever more!”) and I am made to turn my back and throw a coin, to vouchsafe my return here one day; we visit the government square “and that terrorist il duce, and berlosconi no better” the Spanish steps where I leave a rose for Christie, who would have just turned 18 and would have sat with the young men and women and talked of - whatever it is they talk of; to the bar… and the writers street and we stop for a proper Italian dinner full of rice balls and pizza and and gelato after gelato and coffee at the bar Levi drank at. He takes us up to the Circus Maximus from whence we can see Rome laid out before us, searches out the place with the best coffee in Rome (a tiny, unprepossessing bar with a wonderful, smoke-filled, coffee-filled, wine-filled perfume) and makes me a present of chocolate coffee beans. And then we walk back, through the streets dark now but still full of life


Monday – Rome

Giancarlo has shown us his Roma, so now nothing will do until Paul cooks his famous spare ribs (spuntaturre) for them. This is not as simple as it seems. For reasons that we are not being given, the streets of Rome are full of uzi-wielding carabinieri today. They are capitaned by CIA look-alikes with walkie-talkies. Spare-ribs are an unusual cut of meat. Brown sugar is an unknown quantity. We spend the morning being Roman, looking for shops in a city where landmarks appear by the minute – the Vatican, St Peters, the Pantheon – it doesn’t seem to matter after a while. The Pantheon moves me terribly – a huge and beautiful building, once a one-stop shop for worshippers who could simplify the issue by making their offerings to all of their gods in one trip. But then the pope came in and the Catholic Church was ascendant in all its power and now, when we wander inside instead of the fierce old gods there are five priests serving High Mass. I turn my back, not realising, but aware of the dislocation. We are forbidden to walk through the Jerusalem Gate because it would signify agreement with the destruction and pillaging of Sion – but the terrible old gods are humbled routinely and Rome doesn’t flinch.


*


Paul comes back from his sojourn in the Hotel Regno cucina. For a few minutes at least he has lived his dream of being a top European chef with a staff of servitors – in this case three pretty girls at his beck and call, cleaning his workspace, measuring his ingredients (something Paul himself has never done) and pestering him for the details of his recipe. They tasted the brown sugar that took us all day to find and quarrel about the range of knives available. The whole performance lasts about twenty minutes and by the time it was over of course they were all fast friends. Which is quite an achievement - because she was very much Boss of the Kitchen when he arrived.



*



At Via Geraldo we are welcomed heartily and warmly and walked through the apartment and made to pat the dog… and then to the balcony (tiny, awash with potplants) where we are fed fava beans straight from the basket (“You are Romani now!” says Roberta, gleeful and proud of me “Brava! Bene!”) and a good strong pecorino cheese with alight local wine. And then the lessons begin. Giancarlo teaches Paul the risotto con zucchini, and Paul in his turn teaches Carlo the Rite of the Barbecue. All the ingredients have been prepared in advance for both dishes – each wants to share the alchemy, the moment of transition from food to meal. Their enthusiasm and their good-fellowship is tangible and out on the balcony Robbie and I discuss travel and children and work in a pidjin of English, Italian and sometimes fragmentary French.

And all the time, Giancarlo talks. He gives us his history of Rome, his unrelenting questions (“Why the miracle of St Peter to come here of everywhere, to little Rome? Why the miracle, the perfection?” and “You must understand the catacombs – everyone knew. Allora, there was no secret, it was dangerous and everyone knew.”) and his considered predictions (“George Bush will go, he is gone already, he is gone. The big men want to have trade, want to grow rich and he makes for them too many enemies, he takes their chances. Iraq, all the musselmen countries, he takes their chances. He must go for their profits alone.”) and his stories – of his time in Basra and Bagdad (“and with the wisdom of the Arab this wonderful man said ‘not Rome, but you my friend, change’.”) and his love for the people and sorrow at what Bush has done; and his love for Roberta (“she is a volcano of ideas, and I am a gypsy.”) and the miracle of their meeting. For Giancarlo miracles come easily and are uniformly positive.

And then, on our final day, Giancarlo gives us the gift of Clemente. And one day I will write a book about that...