A Thousand Days in Tuscany by Marlena de Blasi Read Free Book Online Page B

Though it’sbeen he who has pursued us in his often vulpine manner, he who loves to talk and preach, to plumb his history before such a new and eager audience as we are, he will not suffer our sidling up too close to him or upon his memories. Barlozzo is a man with boundaries, confines unsusceptible to our pressing for even the smallest part of him that lies beyond them.
    T HOUGH DISAPPOINTED, NEITHER of us is surprised at 4:00 when no knock sounds on the stable door. Fernando says the duke is staying away for the sake of showmanship— un colpo di teatro, a theatrical move. We pretend not to notice when the afternoon becomes evening without sign from him. A long time to keep his audience waiting, I think. We’re out on the terrace, changing our shoes and just about to start up to the bar for apperitivi, when the duke rounds the back of the stable.
    “Avete benzina per la machina? Do you have gas in your car?”
    “Certo,” Fernando tells him. “Ma, perchè? But why?”
    “Because I’m inviting you out to supper.”
    We drive south through the nearby villages of Piazze and Palaz-zone. Twenty minutes later, Barlozzo, navigating from the backseat, says “eccoci qua” as we round a curve on which sits a curious structure.
    Half hut, half rambling shed, its haphazardness is surrounded bygrand magnolia bushes whose shiny leaves are strung with many-colored lights, their winking and shimmering making the only noise in the dark, silent night. Tomatoes and garlic are moving about together over some nearby quiet flame and the scents curl up to and mingle with the char of slow-burning wood. Leaving the car on the edge of a ditch and alongside a truck that Barlozzo says belongs to the cook, we push our way inside the place through a curtain of red plastic beads.
    Pinball machines, wine casks, a small bar, and the strangled air of fifty thousand smoked cigarettes fill the first room. There is no one about. A second red bead curtain leads to a larger room set with long refectory tables, each one covered in a different pattern of oilcloth. Announcing himself with “permesso,” Barlozzo walks through a small door at the end of the room, letting loose the steamy breath of a good kitchen. He motions us to follow.
    Slowly, rhythmically rolling a sheet of pasta on a thick wooden table is the truck-driving cook—a petite woman of perhaps seventy, her violently red hair pinned up under a white paper cap. She is called Pupa, Doll.
    We are interrupting the final scene of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which creaks out from a wall-hung television set. As though he were at mass, Barlozzo seems to know to wait for the film’s finish before speaking and so we stand, equally hushed, behind him. As Clintlopes out into the Maremma, Pupa—never once having broken her rolling stride—turns only her head to us and, rolling still, bids us good evening. “C’ è solo una porzione di pollo con i peperoni, pappa al pomodoro, cicoria da saltare, e la panzanella. Come carne c’è bistecca di vitella e agnello impanato da friggere. There’s only one portion of chicken with peppers, there’s tomato porridge, chickory to sauté, and bread salad,” she tells us without being asked what’s for supper.
    “ E la pasta? And the pasta?” Barlozzo wants to know, nodding toward the thin yellow sheet she’s been rolling.
    “ Eh, no. Questa è per domani, per il pranzo di Benedetto. No, this is for tomorrow, for Benedetto’s lunch,” she tells him, slowly unfolding her torso from the rolling posture.
    “We’ll take a little of everything, then,” he tells her, and realizing he’d forgotten us, he says, “Scusatemi, siete i nuovi inquilini di Lucci. Excuse me, they are the Luccis’ new tenants.”
    Back out in the dining room, we wander about looking at the wall art—a serious collection of Daredevil comics covers, each one framed in bright blue enamel—while Barlozzo fills a ceramic pitcher from the spigot on a barrel of red and pours it