Mugello, Volterra, Colle Val D'Elsa, Artimino · Toscana
When
16 Mar 2007 – 18 Mar 2007 3 days · trip of 2007
Who
Nathan & La Francese Un Mondo di Bene · @LaFrancese&Nathan · Firenze
How
Travel diary
The story · 2 days
from At home. Terre Francesi (...) Friday begins late, or rather very early. It depends whether you want it to start when your eyes open or from the moment we decide to assume the vertical position. Anyway, we have breakfast around eleven. The muffins! (is there anything else to be said about these treats?) and then the yoghurt, the honey, the jam of nostalgia (throw out the bathroom scales that threaten our good mood). Off we go. A basket (not wicker) labelled 'political-economic power from coast to coast' (clear, no?), complete with: a) vegetable and pecorino balls in a breadcrumb of passion; b) 3 hard-boiled eggs with a yolk as big as a heart; c) Pecorino as soft as your hips, as sweet as your words; d) Bread, love and…; e) Chianti (not straw-wrapped) and two stemmed glasses (how could they be missing?).
Destination Mugello, this brother of Chianti that turned out badly, less glossy and more down-to-earth, through Calenzano (Crodi di) and the little lake (puddle?) of Galliano, around which we make a stop. A dirt road, a knoll dominating the landscape. Picnic, daisies, sun, sky, gentle hills as far as the eye can see. And Celati, the Lunario del Paradiso, that sort of imprinting of my youthful tastes, a step forward in this amorous game of language that we have begun on our sentimental and literary journey. The fascinating discovery of the happy marriage between your cadence and the quips and jokes of Celati's linguistic craft, which I can only cool and impoverish with my icy pronunciation of a burrow buried in the fold of the Boot. We empty the basket and get back in the car. Scarperia (I'd understood you were taking me to a shoemaker!?).
A handful of houses, the town hall, and a small library overflowing with literature, like the ones I've worked in. The knife boutiques, in Scarperia, and the old people with those faces of tufa that we'll find tomorrow further south. Faces of sun and atavistic toil. "They make knives and sell them to the Sardinians," you tell me. But what a story is this!? Tuscans imitating and exporting material culture like the Chinese… go tell the people of Prato. And Borgo San Lorenzo, "bigger," you say "and more populous," the hospital at Borgo San Lorenzo too, and several bookshops where you find, and decide to buy, the guide to Paris and the Ile de France that you'll never look up from again.
The Touring one, with all those precise descriptions of palace architecture, urban history, that make the trip seem more a professional mission than a holiday, a nest of emotions, a jungle in which to get lost and savour the enchantment of being lost. But you like that one, compiled by the most select teams of contemporary architects, judging from the price. And then home. Put on that film bought partly for me and partly to celebrate that genius of simple ways named Morricone, that Mission (with a De Niro uglier than ever), swan song of Liberation Theology, definitively killed by the last white smoke in St Peter's. (Am I throwing too much on the fire? Accuse me of ozpetekism, if you like. Or Francese, do we write it or not, what we thought of that Saturn in Opposition?).
Anyway, great music in that film (and me at 14 even buying the soundtrack, on vinyl, as was done then), which the Francese recalls in the Valle degli Orti advert, my love… Anyway, I fall asleep right during the final battle, amid great blasts of harquebuses and Portuguese cannon fire that turn those half-Christianised Indians into nothing but a heap of mincemeat (and you really start to reflect on how History prostrates peoples, thinking of those gentle Portuguese faces encountered up and down the Lusitanian country…). But in short, it's your caresses on my face that send me to sleep, not that fine film for which I tried to keep my eyes and ears wide open. "Let's go to bed," you tell me, stroking my neck, "because making love is tiring, for someone who falls asleep at the culmination of a massacre" Mhm, yes, goodnight.
Day 117 Mar 2007
A dive into the tuff
So, let me tell you, for Volterra we take the Pistoiese towards Florence, we do the Indian bridge and get on the motorway for Siena. No? Why are you laughing, sorry? Isn't that right? I'm telling you without looking at maps, improvising routes like a foreigner. But you laugh at my naive attempt to navigate your places. "For you every bridge is the Indian bridge." And so I'll tell you about that time I wanted to head for Empoli and got lost in the centre of Scandicci. And you take a long, strange detour to confuse me and give me the distinct feeling that I was right, but you don't tell me, spiteful as you are, whether I'd got it right or not. I've never been to Volterra, or at least I really don't think I have.
Except these tufa buildings, these tufa views, these tufa faces (here too), this road that curves over the panorama of hills and above all the fortress park that is still a prison today stir deep memories in me, a sense of déjà vu resurfacing from the subconscious. And maybe I have passed through before, but I really don't remember. Surely, if it happened, it was in a previous life. Or maybe it's simply that this Middle Ages between Umbria and lower Tuscany endlessly repeats itself (I realise I'm making a statement that you might censor).
Another picnic, with yesterday's basket, again meatballs hard-boiled eggs pecorino and muffins to celebrate this love of ours that suddenly finds itself short of liquids (and not because of the wine we didn't drink because I forgot the glasses) and therefore as self-sufficient as possible (like the Government) and almost almost autarkic (like that other Italy of so many many years ago, with which we hope not to share the fate...). Yes, in short, another amorous picnic with your voice interlocking with Celati's, the children playing ball, the little birds going pi pi and fli fli from the branches, again you and me.
And then Colle Val d'Elsa, the long town on the back of the tufa, which at certain moments, like in via del muro lungo or in that other parallel alley just above, reminded me of Assisi, there I've said it, but back then I kept quiet because you would have taken me for a fool, accused me of Gallic foolishness, I know, even if now you'll say no. I just watched you take photos and laughed with you as you mimicked the elderly ladies ahead pushing each other inside the church to light little votive candles. What a rascal you are! And home at last, flooding the kitchen and living room with smoke with that three-centimetre steak you cook on the fire to proudly offer the bloody meal of your land to this mild northerner who has come down from the highest peaks craving your flesh.
Love of my stovetop, to hell with the tufa, to hell with Volterra and all the Etruscan tombs we didn't see, let me grab your flesh, let's consume our meal, we can't wait any longer.
Piazza dei Priori in Volterra
Day 218 Mar 2007
The Great Frenchman
Long night, between Saturday and Sunday, really long: twelve hours of sleep in a row (apart from that shouted exclamation of yours in the middle of the night). Breakfast at eleven (I reckon that's more than twelve then) and I won't repeat the ingredients. And you on the phone at the ear of that womb that gave you life and that promises succulent seasonings (the paiata!) and varied second courses (scandalously tasty offal). And it's in this unforeseen circumstance that it happens. Before the trip to Artimino. Before the kisses under the olive trees. Before the photos of the Medici villa, before the other three hundred and forty-five times we made love. Before my departure. The Great Frenchman came in through that door. He was holding a crate in his hands, the Great Frenchman, full of every good thing, and he advanced with that smile that stretched his grey moustache.
He said "ciao Nathan" to me, just like that, with those quiet blue eyes of his, and he handed you the crate to shake my hand. He spoke, the Great Frenchman, about the life of those places, about practical matters and the fate of men. He expressed judgements, the Great Frenchman, and opinions with the grace and caution of a measured and serene man. And he smiled again, the Great Frenchman, in that broad way of the satisfied man. And twice, for two very long moments, he extended his fatherly hand and laid it on my shoulder.
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