Marlena De Blasi - Antonia and Her Daughters: Secrets, Love, Friendship and Family in Tuscany

ALSO BY MARLENA DE BLASI

Non-fiction

A Thousand Days in Venice

Tuscan Secrets

(previously published as Dolce e Salata)

An Umbrian Love Story

That Summer in Sicily

A Taste of Southern Italy

(originally published as

Regional Foods of Southern Italy)

Regional Foods of Northern Italy

Fiction

Amandine

MARLENA de BLASI

First published in Australia and New Zealand in 2012

Copyright Marlena de Blasi 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Larry G. Martin of Deer Park, Illinois

As was Barlozzo, he must surely be one of the Thirty-Six.
He stopped by one evening and changed things forever.

Contents

A ntonia and her Daughters is a true story. To protect the sacred right to privacy of this family and their way of life, I have changed names and placed the narrative at a geographic distance from the actual location in Tuscany where these events in fact unfolded.

In 2010, at the age of eighty-nine, Antonia passed away peacefully in the predawn hours of a May morning, twelve days after our last meeting. The story she had recounted to me during the summer of 2003 she now passed on to her daughters in a series of letters which she began writing in 2004 and all of which were found among her private papers.

Though Antonia often told me herself of her wish that I write this bookafter Im goneshe also mentioned this desire in the legacy of her letters. Her daughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughter were in accord with this desire, and all of these women, most especially the characters Ive named Filippa and Luce, urged me on with unfailing grace.

There is much in the narrative which was difficult for me to include. At many junctures I was tempted to commit my own sins of omission or, at the least, to sprinkle a touch of rosewater here and there. Several passages I was moved to delete from my early notes and yetand not without angstI retrieved them. Thats what a storyteller is morally bound to do when she agrees to take on the task of telling someone elses truths.

A leaving sun tries for a last glisten through dull yellow snow clouds. In front of the dilapidated doors at number 34 in the via del Duomo, we wave addio to the big blue truck, a tangle of straps and canvas tarps rattling against its emptiness as it lumbers up the gentle slope of the stones towards the cathedral. As though waiting for a cue, we stay there, Fernando and I, arms about each others waist, long after the truck is out of sight.

Oh yes, I think, this must be the moment when we turn around, push open the doors, climb the stairs to the ballroom. The restored, scrubbed, polished, upholstered, already-woodsmoke-scented-from-this-mornings-first-fire ballroom. For two years this was the moment wed chanted for, dreamed of, counted out the last of our doubloons to fund. And now? For the first time, theres no one up there hammering and cursing and singing. No one. Not the five Neapolitan workmen whod become as errant sons to us nor the upholsterers wholike pastry cooks porting a flaming pudding through a hallhad carried drapes and valances, piece by piece, and chairs and sofas, one by one, through the winding back alleys from their atelier here to number 34, past neighbours gathered along the route for a glimpse of their days work. So much red, almost everything is some shade of red, theyd clucked, mystified. Also gone away is the woodworker who made two legs of the kitchen table shorter than the other two and swore he meant to, saying the slant gave the room the correct perspective. I dared to ask him about the plates which would surely slide down to and collide with the ones set before the person at the foot of the decline. As he puttered about filling soup plates and glasses with varying amounts of water and demonstrating the nuances of physics, hed said, with the disdain appropriate when addressing a cultural outlandera stance which commonly greets the expatriate and one he must quickly learn to greet with a certain meeknessHere one arranges life to fit art. Also gone is the marble worker with the thick-lashed eyes of a pony, who tramped repeatedly about, room to room, with his fistful of chains and an executioners grunt to distress the surfaces of the stone, and the electrician who, having had so little to dowhat with the chandeliers and sconces being stuck with candlestook to helping the plumber. Everyone gone. Wed been an extended, exuberant and highly functional family but theres no one left nowonly us. Our belongings unpacked, the kitchen upright, white beans and pancetta and branch of sage braising in red wine in a terracotta pot on the back burner, the yellow wooden baldacchino weve carried from Venice to Tuscany to here mounted, its red silk feather bed plumped, firewood stacked on the back terrace, linens in the chest, brocade and damask stretched over, nailed to and draped upon every remotely submissive surface. When we climb those stairs we will finally be at home. So why are Fernando and I standing here in the cold?

Shouldnt we be going up now? he asks.

I look at Fernando, who has been looking at me. Waiting for my reverie to pass. Of course. Lets have a bath, a rest and...

And then lets walk up to the piazza and sit in Foresi for a bit. Va bene?

Do you think any of the old troupe will come by? Miranda, perhaps. Or Neddo. Maybe Barlozzo? Do you think anyone will?

After staying so close through these two years of waiting and working I would think theyll trust us to our own mode of celebration on the first night in the ballroom.

Theyll be right, wont they?

Of course they will. Come with me now.

The bulbous toes of my workboots hit the wall of each shallow step. I count them as I climb: