A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure

Maybe the only thing that matters is to make our lives last as long as we do. You know, to make a life last until it ends, to make all the parts come out even, like when you rub the last piece of bread in the last drop of oil on your plate and eat it with the last sip of wine in your glass.

They all know the truth, that there are only three subjects worth talking about. At least here in these parts," he says, "The weather, which, as they're farmers, affects everything else. Dying and birthing, of both people and animals. And what we eat - this last item comprising what we ate the day before and what we're planning to eat tomorrow. And all three of these major subjects encompass, in one way or another, philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, the physical sciences, history, art, literature, and religion. We get around to sparring about all that counts in life but we usually do it while we're talking about food, it being a subject inseparable from every other subject. It's the table and the bed that count in life. And everything else we do, we do so we can get back to the table, back to the bed.

I run down to meet Floriana who is breathless from her hike. She stops in the road, the last light at her back. Prickles of rain cling to her unkerchiefed, loosened hair, capturing in her the flickering russet frame of it. Topaz almonds are her eyes, lit tonight from some new, old place, from some exquisitely secret oubliette, which she must often forget she possesses. We talk for a minute and Barlozzo passes us by like a boy too shy to speak to two girls at once.

All of Venice is tattered, resewn, achingly lovely, and like an enchantress, she disarms me, making off with the very breath of me.

You rob time, Fernando. How arrogant you are, taking an evening like this one as though it were some sour cherry, spitting half its flesh into the dirt. Every time you pitch yourself back into the past, you lose time. Have you so much of it to spare, my love?

know the truth, that there are only three subjects worth talking about. At least here in these parts,” he says. “The weather, which, as they’re farmers, affects everything else. Dying and birthing, of both people and animals. And what we eat—this last item comprising what we ate the day before and what we’re planning to eat tomorrow. And all three of these major subjects encompass, in one way or another, philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, the physical sciences, history, art, literature, and religion. We get around to sparring about all that counts in a life but we usually do it while we’re talking about food, it being a subject inseparable from every other subject. It’s the table and the bed that count in life. And everything else we do, we do so we can get back to the table, back to the bed.

Live gracefully in plenty and live gracefully in need. Embrace them both or swindle yourself out of half a life.

Barlozzo’s word for nonchalance is sprezzatura. A hard word, a hard concept. The translation is “the state of effortlessness.” It means the mastering of something—an art, a life—without really working at it, with the result being nonchalance.

Cominciamo dal fondo. Let’s begin at the beginning. St. Augustine said it most clearly, We are, every one of us, going to die. Rotting is the way of all things. A tree, a cheese, a heart, a whole human chassis. Now, knowing that, understanding that, living begins to seem less important than living the way you’d like to live. Do you agree with that?

sotto le cenere, beans in a flask braised under ash. Now he’s pouring the cooled, herb-scented beans from all the flasks into a huge white bowl, drizzling on more oil and tossing them. When everyone is seated he and his wife will carry the bowl together, passing the creamy-fleshed beans table to table, person to person, just like his grandparents used to do.

Federico hurries me on to the next glory. Under the ashes of last evening’s fire in a hearth wide and deep as a small room, he’d set fat white beans to braise in bulbous-bottomed wine bottles, most of them remnants from his grandfather’s winemaking days, he says. He’d mixed the beans with water, sage, garlic and rosemary, sea salt, just-cracked pepper and a dose of extra virgin oil. He’d stopped the bottles with pieces of wet flannel so the steam would hiss away without exploding the glass and left the beans to cook all night long. Fagioli al fiasco

his “ma guarda che roba, but will you look at this,” when he sees the flowers and then his tinkering search for the espresso pot while I’m pulling on shorts and sandals, shouting down, “Why don’t we just run up the hill for cappuccini?