Under the Tuscan Sun (35 page)

For much of the fall, I have been travelling on a book tour for my novel,
Swan.
Ed has been here since the very first scouts arrived to look for a villa that could be transformed into a replica of our house, Bramasole. He has sent photos of the piazza transformed by snow for a Christmas scene and of the six-foot diameter cake with
Under the Tuscan Sun
spelled out in berries, which was served for the kick-off party at a gorgeous villa. Everyone in the photos looked dazzling, especially to me, dashing through awful airports in order to stand in long lines, while I headed for a different city every day.

Finally, on arriving in Cortona late in the filming, I find the town charged with cinematic energy. It seems surreal that all this has anything to do with me. Exciting, astonishing, exhilarating, shocking—all those, but mostly surreal. The Villa Laura, which Ed now calls Bramasole Due, was, like our house, abandoned for many years. I have some resistance to it, thinking loyally that the real Bramasole is more poetic and sacred. Diane Lane looks like a fairy princess. On the set, she's reenacting the day when I was scrubbing down the walls and finding a fresco, the storm when an owl perched on my windowsill, even the feasts I cooked. She's playing me. What a strange expression. What a surprising turn in my private writing life. How will this take a place in my history? I wonder.

Audrey Wells, the director and screenwriter, seems as if she could be a daughter of mine. Like my daughter, she's intense and brilliant, shy about her beauty. We spent a few days together before she began the screenplay, and then I waited to see how she would transform my pages into the visual world of film.

When the screenplay arrived, I couldn't touch it for a whole day, then I read it straight through, captivated by her wit and her ability to isolate an incident and pare it down. Though much had been changed, I felt the spirit of the book was intact, and even enhanced by her vision. Reading lines to Ed, I laughed out loud. She added an Italian lover for the Frances character. “Too bad I missed that,” I joked to Ed.

Everyone says, “What will this movie do to your book?” But there on my study shelf, the English
Under the Tuscan Sun
leans on the French, Estonian, Hebrew, Chinese, and other translated editions. The film is another translation, and at the same time, will have a fate of its own.

I'm fascinated by the symbiotic process of a Hollywood movie company interacting with the people of this walled hilltown. But the Tuscans are anciently sophisticated—nothing shocks or throws them or even wows them. They are not star-struck. I begin to think there are books to write or movies to make about this movie being made. The young assistant to the Italian producer soon starts a romance with the gorgeous local travel agent. Diane Lane, the star, is seen shopping for antiques along the main street. Partners of crew members enroll in Italian classes. Restaurants begin to give discounts to actors and staff. The mayor offers the keys to the city and finds spacious offices for the production group. Placido and Fiorella, our neighbors, have feasts at least once a week which include us, producer Tom Sternberg, and his assistant. Johnny, Audrey's husband, spends an afternoon falconing. Laura Fattori, the Italian line producer, falls for Cortona and starts to look at thirteenth-century apartments in town.

Half the town seems to be in the movie as extras and the other half seems to be working on it. We see Piero, a famous stonemason in his late eighties, all dressed up in the piazza. We're afraid someone has died, but no, he says, he is about to be filmed in a street scene. We take many friends to marvel over the Bramasole set, which is now painted the color of the original, with fresco-covered rooms and extensive outside stone walls created out of resin by the set staff from Rome and then fastened to wooden frames. Even the expert Placido is fooled until he taps the stone and hears a hollow sound. I covet the long marble kitchen sink from a convent. A garden of pergola and lemon trees is plugged in overnight. Friends and family from the U.S. come over to witness this miracle event. We all ride over to Montepulciano to see a medieval pageant scene filmed in the piazza. Hannibal over the Alps! What massive movement of equipment, how many moving-van trucks, what huge organization to set up meals for the crew and cast, how many miles of electrical cord! For one scene, a fiberglass fountain is erected in Cortona. While waiting for Ed to come out of the post office, I hear a tour guide tell her group, “This is Cortona's famous baroque fountain now under restoration.” The Atlas figure in the center of the fountain has quite a large piece of male equipment. In fact, crowds are gathering. Someone complains about the dignity of the town to the mayor and the next morning the Disney people are out there sawing away.

When books go out into the world, they take on a life. Sometimes that life is a quiet and dusty one, waiting in the nether regions of library stacks. I have books of poetry like that. With others, the book's life is one of surprise because the book keeps on making its way, on its own, into intriguing and larger spaces. I have been pulled along in the wake of
Under the Tuscan Sun
with great joy.

AT THE LONG TABLE IN THE COUNTRY ON SATURDAY
night, I'm sitting between Ed and a woman with the mythic name of Leda. We're facing Giorgio and a man from Rome. As every stupendous platter is put before us, Lina smiles at me from on down the line. Five
antipasti
, a traditional polenta and cabbage soup from time immemorial, then
gnudi
, those delectable little balls of spinach and ricotta. And, ah, the duck that was squawking this morning, served with Ed's favorite local pasta,
pici
. The din rises. More bottles of wine and water arrive. Donatella and her daughter, Lucia, who have created this feast in their home, visit around the table. Then the roast pork, the rabbit suffused with fennel, the roasted potatoes. Two desserts.
Vin santo, grappa,
kisses all around, good night, good night. We whiz back to Cortona and Giorgio drops us at the
duomo
, where we left our car. The bell sounds its one lone gong, marking the first hour of a new day in this ancient place.

Following is an excerpt from
Swan: A Novel
by Frances Mayes, a Broadway Books paperback, available now.

J. J. STOOD ON THE END OF THE DOCK, FEELING AS IF THE
four pilings might rip loose in the current and send him rafting. But the dock held. He loved the smell of rivers. In July heat, in wavy air, in the throbbing of cicadas, in the first light on the river, he was what he would call happy. A full moon angled down between pines, casting a spiraling silver rope across the curve of the water. He watched the light, flicking through his mind for words to describe it.
Luminous, flashing.
Ordinary. The light seemed liquid, alive, annealed to the water, too changeable for any word. The river rode high after two storms. A cloud of gnats swarmed his foot, then moved as a single body over a swirl in the current. He stepped out of his faded red bathing suit—automatically he pulled on this suit every morning when he got out of bed—and climbed down the ladder into the water. His morning libations, he called this routine. In all the good months, and sometimes in the cold ones just for sheer cussedness, he dipped himself in the river early in the morning. Near the dock he could stand on the bottom, feeling the swiftness or languidness of the current, sometimes jumping as a fish nipped at the hairs on his legs and chest. He floated for a minute, listening to water whirl around his head, letting himself be carried, then turned his body sharply and swam over to the crescent of washed-sand beach his parents had cleared years ago. From there he could walk out of the river and follow a trace covered in pine needles back to the dock. He noticed a fallen sourwood sapling, tangled with muscadine vines, and leaned to pull it out of the water. As he jerked loose the roots, a wedge of earth cleaved from the bank, spilling dirt onto his wet legs. At his feet he saw something white—a bone, a stick bleached by the sun? He waded back into the river and rinsed off.

Maybe what he glimpsed was an arrowhead. J. J. had found hundreds. He turned over the earth with his foot. There—he picked it up, blew off the dirt, and washed it. Never had he found one of these. He held a perfect bone fish spear, three inches long, with exquisitely carved barbs like a cat's claws on each side. He admired the skill—the delicate hooked end of each barb would bite into flesh while the fisherman dragged in the fish. At one end he saw slight ridges where the line was tied over and over by the Creek Indian who once fished these waters. Ginger, he thought, Ginger should see this. But his sister's green eyes were light-years away. He pawed through the dirt and pulled out other roots from the bank, but found only a smashed can. What a beauty, this small spear in the palm of his hand. He took in a breath of pine air as far as he could, the air driving out of his head the familiar surge of what felt similar to hunger and thirst. Ginger was not there, so to whom could he show his treasure? He regarded it intently for himself. He had no talent for needing someone else. He shook his hair and banged the side of his head to knock the water out of his ear. Rainy night in Georgia, he mocked himself. Last train to Clarksville.

He dressed in khaki shorts, not bothering with underwear. Six-thirty and already hot, heavily hot, steamy hot, the best weather. Nothing to eat in the refrigerator but some rice and a piece of left-over venison from a week ago, when he'd brought Julianne, the new schoolteacher from Osceola, out here. She'd said it was so interesting that he lived way in the woods all alone. As down-to-earth as she looked, she turned out to be afraid for her feet to touch the bottom of the river. She'd hung on to his back, her laugh verging toward a squeal, and he felt her soft thighs on his. She was hot to the touch, even under water. But then she couldn't eat venison because she thought of Bambi. She cooked the rice, which, as he remembered, had hard kernels at the center of the grain. Then she looked at his wild salad as though it were a cow pie. J. J. often went for days eating only greens he picked and fish he caught. He chewed slowly, watching her. If she was beautiful, as Liman MacCrea had promised, why did he think her skin looked so stretched tight across her face that it might split like a blown-up pork bladder? And eyes that close together made a person look downright miserly.

Then he'd rubbed his temples and looked again. A pleasant face, kind and expectant. Warm. What is she wanting? he wondered as she smiled. Then he noticed her teeth, which were ground down, like an old deer's.

“Pokeweed and lamb's-quarters? I've heard of dandelion greens before. Can you eat these? That's so interesting.” She pushed the fresh, pungent greens around with her fork. With the one bite she took, grit crunched between her teeth. Something she saw in his eyes appealed to her, some waiting quality. Not just a flirt or the good ol' boy he sometimes appeared to be, he was someone to solve, she told herself as she changed into her bathing suit in his room. She looked carefully at his things, comparing her own box bedroom to his, her pink chenille spread and the prints of Degas dancers on the wall, the lace curtains and view out onto an empty street, to his crammed bookcases, twenty or more ink pens, mounted fish and deer heads, his rough Indian blanket on the bed. I have no way to reach him, she thought, and would I want to? She felt suddenly tired but practiced a big smile in the mirror, lifting her thick chestnut hair off her neck. Her teeth gleamed white and even. The new red maillot certainly showed off her Scarlett O'Hara waist. “Cherry Bomb,” she whispered. Cherry Bomb had been her nickname at Sparta High, when she was Homecoming queen. But that was twelve years ago. She wished she had washed the lovely greens because she was not about to eat grit.

J. J. thought if she said “so interesting” again, he'd drive the fork through her eyes. He poured glasses of bourbon. “Let's toast your seventh-grade class who gets to spend all that time with you.” She lowered her eyes with pleasure, which shamed him. Was he becoming a God damned hermit? He wondered how he would feel with her legs wrapped around him. Lost in outer space? He knew he'd find fault with Christ Almighty. She played the flute, had a degree in music education. So what if she turned freaky in the woods? Still, he had felt a tidal wave of boredom flood through him, a craving to be alone so intense that he shuddered. Although he'd expected to be driving her home at one or two in the morning, top down, a little night music, he was burning up the road at nine-thirty.

He made a pot of coffee and heated Julianne's leftover clump of bad rice with some butter. The kitchen table was littered with chert, flint, a flat stone, and two antlers. Lately, he'd tried to teach himself flintnapping, using only tools the Indians had used. He'd ordered
A Guide to Flintworking
and driven over to a rock shop in Dannon to buy pieces big enough to work. He wanted to make a stone knife for gutting fish, but so far he'd split a lot of stones and created a pile of waste flakes and chips. One try, by accident, actually resembled a scraper.

He held up the fish spear to the sunlight at the window, admiring the fine symmetry. Balancing coffee, bowl, and notebook, the spear held lightly between his teeth, he pushed open the kitchen door with his elbow. Yellow jackets worked the scuppernongs, and bees burrowed into the rose that sprawled among the vines, his mother's yellow rose, still blooming and her gone an eon, a suicide. He did not want to think about that. She had loved the cabin as much as he did. Her rose had long since climbed from the arbor and bolted into the trees. He placed the fish spear on a piece of white paper and opened his notebook to record his find. July 7, he wrote. The early sun through the grape arbor cast mottled light onto the table. He might love the light at the cabin even more than the water, but no, they were inseparable. The emerald longleaf pines tinted the light at all hours, casting a blue aura early and late, and in full sun softened the hard edges of objects. He moved the paper into a splotch of sun. The bone looked like ivory. First he measured the length, then in light pencil carefully he started to draw. What kind of bone, he wondered, maybe boar, maybe beaver. How long would it have taken the Indian to carve it?

He quickly went over his lines in black with his Rapidograph. Drawing, he thought, never captures the thing itself. At least mine doesn't. Maybe Leonardo da Vinci could get this right. But Leonardo never heard of the Creeks, or of the belly of the beast, south Georgia. Easy to get the
likeness.
The unlikeness is what's hard. Where the object ends and everything around it begins, that's the impossible part to negotiate. He held up the spear and turned it around. He decided to look at it under his father's microscope. He might find a speck of blood from the fish that swam away with the spear in its side. Too bad Ginger's not here, he thought. She ought to see this.