The Reluctant Tuscan by Phil Doran Read Free Book Online Page B

men stood facing me, vigorously extolling the qualities of their particular wine, two sets of hands emphatically flying in the air. Uncle Carmuzzi’s hands occupied the horizontal plane, while Dottore Spotto’s the vertical. And like airliners stacked up over a busy airport, there were many near misses, but miraculously, no collisions.
    I could see no diplomatic way out of this, so I brought the wineglasses over to Nancy. She sampled each as the men stood in rapt anticipation like two Miss America finalists. Addressing them in Italian, she explained that both wines were equally excellent. And just as one couldn’t determine the superiority of a sculpture by Donatello over one by Tullio Lombardo, one could not, in good conscience, rate one wine over the other. Both were masterpieces in their own right. This seemed to satisfy them.
    Nancy later explained that their rivalry was not just based on wine, but upon the fact that Dottore Spotto was a Florentine, while Uncle Carmuzzi’s family was originally from Ravenna. Her clever use of Donatello (who was from Florence) and Lombardo (who hailed from Ravenna) gave each a face-saving way of accepting the quality of each other’s vino.
    To understand why the citizens of these two cities despise each other, you have to go back to 1309 A.D., when Italy’s most renowned poet, Dante Alighieri, was exiled from Florence for political reasons. For years he wandered Tuscany, venting his fury by writing the Inferno and peopling hell with all the Florentines who had done him wrong. He finally wound up in Ravenna, where he died and was buried. Centuries later, the Florentines realized their mistake and demanded the return of their favorite son’s remains. The Ravennese refused, and to this day there is bad blood.
    I have a lot of problems with Italy. It’s chaotic, confusing, and oftentimes incomprehensible. But I must confess that I find unabashed delight living in a society where people still get furioso over the bones of a poet who’s been dead for seven hundred years.
    â€œCome here, I show you something.” Dino led me over to a wall hung with hunting rifles, antlers, and the large, snarling head of a wild boar.
    â€œI shot him last month.” He patted the pig on the snout. “On your land.”
    â€œWhoa, he’s big.”
    â€œAnd vicious. Gored two of my dogs. Had to shoot them too.”
    I suddenly realized that a scorpion sleeping in my shoe might not be my most serious wildlife problem.
    â€œDo you hunt?”
    â€œHaven’t for a while,” I said, thinking about the time eight years ago when I had killed a spider in the bathtub while Nancy screamed in the background.
    â€œWhat do you do?”
    â€œI’m a writer.”
    â€œReally? What do you write?”
    â€œI’ve worked on a lot of television shows back in America.”
    â€œI can’t believe it, you’re a celebrity!”
    â€œNo, no, I’m just—”
    â€œ Mamma mia, how many movie stars do you know?”
    It made me smile that Italians really say “mamma mia.”
    â€œDo you know Frank Sinatra?” Dino demanded.
    â€œIsn’t he dead?”
    â€œAl Pacino?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œRobert De Niro? Sylvester Stallone?”
    â€œActually, him I’ve met.”
    â€œAttenti, attenti tutti!” Dino hollered out. “ L’Americano conosce Sylvester Stallone!”
    I was instantly surrounded by everyone at the party eager to hear all the intimate details of Stallone’s life, except for Cousin Spartaco, who urgently needed to know if Britney Spears had had breast implants. Despite Dino’s best efforts to translate, it was impossible for me to share the highly nuanced concept that my position in Hollywood hardly afforded me access to the pantheon of movie stars and their sordid little secrets. I was just a behind-the-scenes guy who had worked on a lot of TV shows, some good, some bad,