Ferenc Máté - The Hills of Tuscany: A New Life in an Old Land

September 1987 Tuscany

W e stepped from the cool shadows of the archway into the warmth of the autumn sun. It was early afternoon, the narrow, flagstone streets were deserted, the shops closed; Tuscany was eating. Arm in arm in the autumn light, calmed by the warmth and the pitcher of red wine we had with lunch, we ambled in contented silence up the hill toward the piazza where the mosaic facade of the cathedral blazed like a million tiny stars.

We had been shivering while researching a book in the rain of Sweden, the cold of Finland, and the damp of Brittany, and in more than a month this was the first time we were warm. We stared at the mosaics. Then, glitter-blinded and wine-weakened, we went around to the small church garden, sat on a low stone wall, and like dreamers through the centuries before us, gazed out over the countryside below.

A sea of hills rolled to the horizon, covered by odd-shaped, lovingly kept vineyards and olive groves, orchards and fields: a freshly plowed field here, a bit of corn there, some hay, some woods, some pasture, all odd sizes, all open and unfenced. The plots were defined by the curve of a stream, or the crook of a hill, or the fold of a hollow, with boundaries of poplars or a ditch or nothing. Old stone houses were huddled on knolls surrounded by their cypresses, fruit trees, and vegetable gardens. On a ridge, in a wood, a monastery stood with a square steeple, and beyond it a tiny hamlet on a hilltop. Everything was smallto the measure of man. And over it all reigned the gentle Tuscan light, and silence, and a calm.

Candace was far away, her gaze fixed near the horizon, auburn hair glowing in the sinking sun. The air thickened with light. We sat.

After a while I suggested moving on.

Candace gazed. You know, she finally said, Im getting tired of moving on. Weve been moving on for fifteen years. The houseboat, the sailboat, the mountain cabin, that garage in Laguna Beach, the attic in Paris, the cubbyhole in New York, the whatsit in the Bahamas. What was that thing with eight sides anyway?

A tolling of bells from the monastery trembled in the air, sonorous and slow, drifting like a veil of melancholy over the silent hills.

Theyre burying someone, Candace softly said, and looked as if it were someone she had known. When the bells were still and their echo had died away, the world remained respectfully silent. The sun sank behind strips of clouds and the air glittered with light. After a while, just below the town, rose the brittle sound of kindling being cut. Then a womans voice, one accustomed to shouting, Mario! Non troppo grosso! Per la Madonna!

I laughed. What did she say? I asked Candace.

She said she was sick and tired of moving on, and if she had to move on one more time, she was moving on on her own and leaving you behind like camel dung in the desert.

Mario chopped for a while, unhurriedly, rhythmically. The kindling must have been non troppo grosso , for no one gave him hell. Mario was toeing the line.

I want to settle down, Candace said. A tiny house, some fruit trees, a vegetable garden.

Sounds nice, I said. Where?

Anywhere. She had said that louder and it echoed from the church walls. An old man with a narrow brimmed hat who had wandered into the churchyard turned and looked at us as if he had been following the conversation. I looked out at the hills, the warmth, the gentleness. How about here? I said, spreading a hand toward the valley below.

Here?

Lots of room for vegetables. We could get an old farmhouse and fix it up. Have a bit of land, some woods, a few rows of grapes, a wine cellar. Make our own wine. Old wood casks oozing that perfume, pigeons swooping overhead. A rooster on the dunghill. Olives. Can you imagine pressing our own olive oil, pouring it on a hunk of fire-toasted bread with a ton of garlic rubbed over it?

Youre nuts, she laughed.

Fine, a bit of garlic.

I mean about settling here.

Why not? The country is beautiful; the food the best; the people are wonderful, art even better. Concerts in churches and castles. Ill write, you paint. Even the weather is perfect. What more is there? We could have a little farm right there. And I pointed just over Marios head at a small farmhouse near whose crumbling walls a handful of white somethings were grazing in the shade.

A farm. You dont know a thing about a farm.

I can learn.

But you dont speak a word of Italian!

Ill take a course.

She smiled. You dont even know where you are.

Ill ask somebody.

She stared at me in silence. So did the old man, his face aglow with anticipation. Candaces eyes softened. Youre a nice guy, she said, like an attendant calming a mental patient. But you and reality just dont mix, and she shook her head. The old man seemed satisfied with that. He adjusted his hat and left. The pulleys of the bells in the tower above us rumbled, the pins creaked, and with a great whoosh the enormous old bell swung out of the tower, then a wider swing, swoooshhh, then a deafening Diiiinggg then another Donnggg, booming and thundering until both the air and earth shook. A short priest with large hands shuffled into the church, followed by some older women in ones and twos.

Candace got up. She seemed deep in thought. You know, she said, there are few things more scary than moving to a foreign country.

Name one, I said.

F or the next year we lived walled-in in New York City, Candace working long hours to complete her Masters in Fine Arts, while I finished a book about sailboats, then struggled with a novel about some poor sailor searching for his dead wife. The degree was completed and the novel, too. The latter was placed with care in the bottom of a wooden chest whereI hopedit could somehow improve with age like wine, and emerge a few years hence, supple and complex.

Anyway, the year passed.

Most mentally stable people, given this gift of time, would have sobered up from daydreams of living in Tuscany, gotten a job, and signed up with a gym and cable channels. But not I. I planned. Determined to find a place to rent for a month from which I could hunt for the Tuscan Farmhouse of My Dreams, I made calls: the Italian tourist board, Italian travel agents, an American university in Tuscany, an order of Benedictine monks near Florence, the corner pizza-parlor whose owner was Korean but had postcards from Siena taped to the register, and even the local Italian Golden Age Club, where everyone turned out to be deaf. Nothing worked. No one knew a thing. Or if they did, they werent talking. Or when they did, it was in Italian and I didnt understand a word. Then I found a contact through a chance encounter: in the laundry room.