Every Day in Tuscany by Frances Mayes Read Free Book Online

in broth—soul food that’s also served to children with colds and the elderly. More rousing is the famous fish stew, brodetto , made with no more, no less than thirteen kinds of seafood pulled out of the Adriatic. These marchigiani are big meat eaters, too. They like their castrato , which is lamb verging on mutton, and robust pork liver dishes. In down-home restaurants, sometimes you see various preparations of testicles. I draw a line there. Ed goes for almost every other part of the pig and likes ciauscolo , a soft salami to spread on bread.
    Ed holds out a bite of his sausage with melted caciotta , local sheep’s and cow’s milk cheese. He likes my baked rabbit just as well, so we swap. At the end, we try a local di fossa cheese. Fossa means “pit,” where the cheese has aged, but unfortunately, I always associate the word with my first horrid knowledge of it—when I confronted the open fosse biologica , the septic tank. The cheese is good anyway—tangy, complex, lingering. Ed asks for a local digestivo , after-dinner digestive drink, and the owner brings over Liquor d’Ulivi. “The very essence of the olive,” he tells us. Pit, leaf, bark, fruit? The old, old flavors taste like history, and is there a hint of spring sunlight through the branches?
    It’s easy to project a life teaching in Urbino, having a stimulating career within the confines of the fairy-tale architecture. As in other great hill towns, you can wander through Urbino in an hour and see the place or settle in for a decade and not reach the end.

    T HOUGH THE WIND still has a honed edge, pears, mimosa, forsythia, and redbud have been fooled into blooming and the hills are scrimmed with vivid green. We’re driving to Loreto, home of the house of the Virgin Mary, borne aloft by angels in 1294, and blown in a storm from Croatia, where it had paused en route from Nazareth. Believe that and you can make any leap of faith. I’m dazzled by the idea of a house flying across the sea. Researchers into this phenomenon found that a shipping family named Angelli brought the masonry back to Loreto from Palestine when it was in danger of destruction. Another line, less appealing because there’s no house careening through the air: Crusaders were sometimes called “angels” and they always returned with holy souvenirs. These were also days when holy relics were endlessly traded and stolen. Every church wanted its bony memento or bit of cloth or hank of saint’s hair. The raids and skirmishes and dealings around these sacred objects make fascinating reading 1 and surely comprise one of the kinkiest chapters in church history. Loreto, with the touchdown of the holy dwelling place, hit the jackpot. Carbon dating proves that the limestone and cedar remnants, not of this locality, are of the period of Mary’s life.
    Loreto often must be thronged with pilgrims, but today we find the town eerily empty. Along a huddle of open stalls very old women wait for the absent pellegrini who may buy their religious souvenirs. The unusual round campanile and the proud basilica anchor a broad piazza flanked by arcades on one side and handsome religious buildings along the other. I read that the campanile ’s bell weighs eleven tons. I’d love to hear its long bongs resounding across the stones; if it began to ring surely the faithful would suddenly materialize and miracles would again occur at the Virgin’s house.
    “Quiet as the day after judgment day.” Ed takes a few pictures. “Where is everybody?”
    “All gone to heaven. How did we never know this place was so … full of force? And the impression is so light . That stone—ivory, but warm.”
    “Do you think anyone’s ever made a study of campanile s? Isn’t the one in Città di Castello round, too?”
    “Ah, that’s right! Don’t you think that someone has studied every stone in Italy? This one is lovely, like a tall altar candle.”

    M ANY ARTISTS HAVE put their veneration at Loreto: Sansovino, Reni,