“The Germans,” I said.
“The Germans, the Allies, the partisans. Italy was a battleground, all of it. People stopped taking sides and just tried to survive. My mother’s brother, a poor madman who could barely speak, was shot in a skirmish in our driveway.”
This stunned me. That banal patch of dirt and gravel inside the gates of the villa? Whenever I turned my rental car off the road and in at the gate, an impression of peaceful solitude soothed me. I tried to imagine the mad uncle running there, pursued, the crack of gunfire, his falling, perhaps near the limonaia, blood spattering across the terrace, his dying agony there beneath the rafters. There would have been lemon trees then, in their russet clay pots: the scent of citrus mixed with the iron smell of blood.
“Were you in the villa?” I asked.
“The night he was killed? No,” she said. “I had gone back to Firenze for school. I was fourteen. My mother was here. She saw it all.”
* * *
At the villa we parted, and I spent an hour reading a guidebook to the hill towns of Tuscany and another hour failing to understand the proper use of Italian indefinite pronouns. Then I drove out to Montalcino to visit yet another museum, another church. I returned at nightfall, fatigued from my excursion in the fierce sun that still scorched the dry grass at the edge of the drive. Signora Doyle’s car was gone. She’s dining with old friends, I thought, or relatives. I pictured a grand villa with a terrace, aristocrats sipping prosecco, gazing out at the magnificent view as they discussed the political gossip of the day, while servants attended a side table laden with platters of tantalizing food. I’d seen a movie with a scene like that. The sun setting over the terraced hills, the long ranks of pale grapevines stretched over their wire supports, the gray cloud of the olive grove below, steadily darkening as the moon rose in the heavens. I let myself into my little slice of this paradise and switched on the inadequate light. It was so hot I left the door ajar and went straight to the refrigerator, which contained a cold bottle of white wine. As I stepped back to the kitchen table, I heard the crunch of tires and then the car lights swept across the drive. Beatrice Doyle switched off the engine but left the lights on for several moments. I could see her clearly; she appeared to be looking for something on the floor, then on the seat, then in the pigmy glove compartment. At length she switched off the lights and sat a few moments longer in the darkness. I slid my glass onto the table, turned on the ceiling fan, pulled out my chair. At last she pushed the car door open, climbed out of the uncomfortable, surely sweltering seat (there was no air conditioning in the Cinquecento), and made straight for my door.
“Hello,” I called out, pulling the door open wider. “Will you join me for a glass of wine?”
“It would be better if we go to my house; it is much cooler there,” she said. “This little place traps the heat and doesn’t let go.”
I declined to comment on this statement of fact. I felt curiously defensive about the limonaia. It struck me that as lemons thrive on heat, its being hot wasn’t a fault in the design of the building but rather of the use she had put it to. “I’d like that,” I said.
“Have you had your dinner?” she asked. “Americans eat very early.”
“No,” I said. “I have something here. I’ll eat later.”
“It’s too hot to eat,” she observed. “I have a cold supper. There’s plenty for us both.”
“What can I bring?” I said. “I have some nice peaches.”
She smiled at me indulgently. I had the impression she thought I was foolish. “Very well,” she said. “Bring your peaches.”
Dinner at the villa, I thought as I set my glass in the kitchen sink and took up the paper parcel of ripe peaches I’d bought in the town. My curiosity was so strong it inflated like a bubble in my chest. Would it be palatial or shabby genteel? Family portraits or valuable landscapes? My brain busied itself so arduously in speculation it amused me. I was like a child sitting before a theater curtain, waiting breathlessly for the heavy, dark folds to slide apart, opening upon a fabulous scene of mystery and intrigue in which a thrilling story would now commence.
* * *
Paradoxically, the most notable feature of the Villa Chiara—which means “Bright Villa”—was gloom. The big door at the top of the stairs opened into a marble vestibule, cool and useless, the walls clotted with heavily framed paintings hung too high to see, the line of shutters firmly closed against any intrusion of light. Beatrice switched on a lamp as we entered the dining room and beyond that the kitchen, where she flipped a wall switch that illuminated a double strip of grim fluorescent tubes attached to the ceiling. I followed her, my eyes darting about to mark various details. The dining table: long, heavy, and covered in a patchwork of differently patterned tablecloths; the chairs: heavy and oversized, chairs for big people. There were framed paintings of outdoor scenes that looked old and interesting; one was a long narrow view of a seashore with mountains coming right down to the sand. An enormous sideboard the size of a van stood against one wall, its shelves crammed with all manner of plates, glasses, cups, its surface cluttered with silver service pieces, a dark wooden flatware box, and stacks of linen napkins. In the kitchen Beatrice made straight for an antique refrigerator with the freezer compartment inside at the top, a remnant of the fifties. She yanked open the door and commenced pulling out plates and containers, which she set one by one on the large marble-topped table that occupied the center of the plain little room. The stove, I noted, was gas with a pipe stuck through the wall, equally antique, and the sink was farm-style, with a wooden counter and deep porcelain bowl, big enough, I thought pointlessly, to wash a thirty-pound Thanksgiving turkey.
“Can I help?” I asked, clutching my bag of fruit in the doorway.
“You can take these plates to the table,” she said. I took up a platter of prosciutto and a small plate of ricotta cheese and ferried them to the table. Beatrice followed me with a bowl of white beans dressed in oil and parsley and another of slippery artichoke hearts. She pointed to the box on the sideboard. “Knives and forks are in there,” she said, turning back to the kitchen. I opened the box and took out a few pieces of the heavy flatware, arranged them at one end of the table, then drifted back to the kitchen. Beatrice was cutting open a cantaloupe, piling the slices onto a plate. She lifted her chin, indicating a basket next to a cutting board on the counter behind me. “Cut some slices of bread,” she said. “And bring the basket to the table.” I did as I was told. A few more passes from kitchen to table, the plates, the glasses, the napkins from the sideboard, the bottle of red wine opened, the water pitcher alongside, more dishes, thin slices of salami and hard cheese, and at the end two bowls of colorful minestrone served at room temperature directly from a big pot on the stove. We carried these to our places, she at the end of the table, I next to her, and she poured out the wine and water. When we were seated, she lifted her glass to mine and we tapped the edges together. “Cin-cin,” she said. She took a small sip from the glass and set it on the table.