PART 1
Villa Chiara
Villa Chiara is protected from the world outside by a high stone wall and an ancient gate with the initial S swirled in iron on each wing. The dusty, sunstruck road, scarcely wide enough for two small cars to pass each other without knocking their mirrors, cleaves to the wall for half a mile. On the far side, ranks of iconic sunflowers stand at attention like stolid soldiers, indifferent to the elements, awaiting their orders.
When you turn in to the gates, what strikes you is that, though very near the road, the sparse yard that serves as a parking area feels private and cool. This gravel and packed-dirt patch is closed on four sides. On two, gardens of roses and herbs, backed by plum and apricot trees, disperse gentle fragrances into the hot afternoon air. Parallel to the gate, the charming limonaia stands with its back to the wall. Glass and verdigris copper doors glint beneath the shelter of the rafters, which extend over a small stone terrace. Artfully placed hip-high pots of rosemary and lemon trees create a cool and semiprivate sitting area.
On the fourth side, the imposing pale pink facade of the villa closes in the drive. A graceful triangular double staircase rises from two directions to a wide landing before the arched manorial door. The villa has three floors. The lowest, behind the staircase, is the cantina, an unfinished space used to store farm equipment as well as wine and olive oil, both products of the property. The two upper levels are lined with tall shuttered windows looking out over the drive. The house isn’t grand but rather grandly substantial, and because of the perimeter wall it is impossible to view it from any distance. The Villa Chiara thus creates for itself an encapsulated space, peaceful, retired, without views.
* * *
I arrived at Villa Chiara a week before I met its owner, Signora Beatrice Salviati Bartolo Doyle. I knew only a few facts about her. She was employed as a professor of Italian at a small college in upstate New York. When she wasn’t in America, she lived in the villa with her aged mother. Obviously she had, at some point, married a man of Irish ancestry. She had a grown son, David, who resided in Munich with his German wife and their baby son. She had spent some years in Los Angeles when her son was a child. She rented out a small apartment at the villa, but only to tenants recommended by friends. I was fortunate enough to know one of these, Ruggiero Vignorelli, who was a colleague at my own college in Pennsylvania.
The apartment, created from the limonaia, an outbuilding designed to shelter citrus trees in the winter, comprised a kitchen and sitting room on the first floor, a large airy bedroom and minimalist bath—the shower was an open tiled area with a drain and a showerhead—on the second. Signora Doyle had renovated it for her son and his wife so that they might have more privacy when they drove down from Munich to visit. It was the first of many decisions about her property that suggested a lack of foresight. In a few years the couple would have two children and the space would be too small.
On my first visit, in the summer of 1983, I had written instructions from Signora Doyle directing me to the far end of the villa, beyond the imposing staircase, where I was to knock at the door I would find beneath a wisteria arbor and ask for Signora Mimma, Signora Doyle’s cousin, who lived there and would give me the key to the apartment. I had very little Italian, but I hoped it would be sufficient to see me through this simple task. I parked my rental car in the drive facing the villa and easily spotted the wisteria bower and the door. There was no bell, so I rapped sharply three times on the dark wood, waited until I had counted to fifty, and rapped again. I heard footsteps dimly, slowly approaching, and then the door slid open and a chubby white-haired crone peered out at me, squinting as if I gave off light. “Buongiorno, signora,” I said. “Sono qui per prendere la chiave dell’appartamento di Signora Doyle.”
She gave me a pert perusal from head to toe, furrowing her brow and nodding slightly. I feared that, as often happened, she hadn’t understood a word I said. At last, with a polite smile, she said, “Qui non c’è nessun appartamento,” and carefully, but firmly, closed the door in my face.
There is no apartment here? Then it occurred to me that I’d forgotten to ask for Signora Mimma. But if I knocked again, the crone would surely answer and tell me there was no apartment. I wandered back to my car, opened the door, sat on the seat, and looked up at the villa.
It was clearly a venerable building; I guessed seventeenth century, with a facelift along the way. The jutting inverted V of the staircase that led to the central door had a quality of being tacked on, though certainly not recently. The entrance to the cantina wasn’t visible from the drive, as the stone stairs formed a deeply shaded archway that hid it from view.
The roofline of the villa took a step down at the far end and jutted out, making an L-shaped wing covered with the same pale pink plaster. The door I had been directed to, beneath the wisteria arbor, stood flush to the ground and opened into a stone-floored entryway. In the moment when I had seen it, this entrance appeared to me cool and inviting. The second floor had smaller windows and must have lower ceilings. Perhaps this wing was the original structure. In my observation, money often served to raise the rafters of a house. When families grow wealthy and powerful, they need more headroom.
The villa seemed to be of two minds, one noble, chilly, and serious, the other homely and cozy.
Nothing moved, nothing breathed. And then a bird streaked out from one of the three cypresses that guarded the gate and disappeared beneath the rafters of the limonaia. I got out and followed the bird to the glass door. Should I try it? I stepped into the cool shade. I could see through the doors to the sitting room. Terra-cotta floors, solid-looking furniture, a good table and two chairs, a few steps at one end leading to the upper floor. I allowed my hand to stray to the door handle, pressing it down tentatively. It was locked. I backed out into the drive and looked up at the ovoid windows of the second floor. My Tuscan apartment.
I heard the crack of a door opening, and then a pleasant female voice called out, “Signora, signora.” I turned to find a robust, handsome woman with an abundance of dark hair tied up in a knot on her head, wearing what my mother used to call a housecoat. She held out one hand as she approached me eagerly. “La chiave,” she said cheerfully. “La chiave.”
“The key,” I called back to her. “Bene. Grazie. Mille grazie.” We met halfway across the drive and she pressed the key into my hand. “Lei è Signora Mimma?” I said.
“Mi chiamo Anna,” she said.
So the other one was Signora Mimma, the cousin of Signora Doyle.
Later I learned Anna’s full name, Anna Falco. She lived with her husband, Sergio, in a stone house across the road from the villa, and her family had been in service to the Salviatis for generations. She was housekeeper, cook, and caretaker of the villa. Sergio kept the gardens, served as an all-around handyman, and supervised the hiring of locals for the yearly harvests of grapes and olives. They had one grown son, Leonardo, who was a bank clerk in the nearby spa town of Rapolano Terme. He had never married and still lived with his parents.