We had been dreaming for years about renting a villa in Italy. We imagined a place perched high on a hill, a view of red-tiled rooftops and vineyards below. There would be rosemary growing in the garden, and cozy rooms cluttered with family heirlooms. We’d hang ropes of garlic and a Parma ham in the sunny kitchen and dip crusty bread into a terra-cotta bowl filled with redundantly chaste extra-virgin olive oil. This time we would not be tourists, always on the outside of life, moving from hotel to hotel, packing and unpacking, collecting tiny bottles of shampoo. We’d shop only at farmers’ markets: spaghetti, pomodoro, pecorino, porcini—no problema. We’d go on picnics. We wouldn’t feel the typical tourist compulsion to see everything. We wouldn’t stand in line at the Uffizi. We’d stay home, curled up in a cozy armchair, and read all day if we wanted to. We’d stay home and make love all day if we wanted to. And we’d see the Piero della Francescas too.
I pored over a number of rental catalogs, looking at photos and reading descriptions, until I came upon what I was sure would be the rental home of our dreams—“a renovated mill, located in the heart of the Chianti Classico region, only two kilometers from the center of San Gimignano, a hill town famous for its beautiful towers. A perfect base for exploring Tuscany.”
In retrospect, the description was accurate as far as it went, although I think the photograph of the living room, featuring the sofa in the foreground, in no way suggested that it was the only piece of furniture in the room. It is true that the catalog never mentioned anything about heirloom furnishings, the view, or rosemary in the garden. Maybe I should have inquired about these specifics. And to be fair, I probably should have known that we would not be looking down on rooftops, or anything else, for that matter, since, as Larry did not hesitate to point out to me rather testily once we got there, “You knew you were renting a converted mill. You know that mills use waterpower. You know that water doesn’t flow uphill.” Nor was it the agent’s fault that it rained every day of our stay, or that I brought the Scrabble set but forgot the tiles, or that Larry started smoking again, or that the fiasco had cost us $1,750.
By the end of our two-week vacanza in purgatorio, which felt like a year, we thought it only decent to leave a note of warning for the couple from Oregon who had rented the place for the next two weeks.
“Benvenuto! We are the Weismans, the people who rented this villa for the two-week period just before yours. We hope you won’t look upon this note as an impudent invasion of your privacy, but rather as an act of compassion.
“Welcome to Villa Potemkin. Right about now you must be wondering why the house is so dark; what happened to the furniture; why there are no rugs on the floors, no spoons in the kitchen, soap in the soap dish, or hangers in the closets; and what to make of the fact that the only art in the house, which hangs over the kitchen table, is a pen-and-ink drawing of a headless man in a sport jacket, holding his own entrails.
“We suggest that you take a look at the ‘house book’ right away. That’s the loose-leaf notebook on the kitchen table, next to the flashlight. It’s packed with diagrams, troubleshooting advice, and the phone numbers of people to call in an emergency. The book was written by Villa Potemkin’s owner, Nigel Potemkin, who is also a well-known London architect and the man responsible for this millhouse renovation. We learned from Mark, the English caretaker who stops by from time to time to offer his condolences, that Mr. Potemkin is a member of the postmodernist school of English architecture aptly known as the New Brutalism. Prince Charles, who is very concerned with preserving Britain’s architectural legacy, has spoken out often against the deconstructionist vogue, but his words have failed to deter Mr. Potemkin.
“Nicoletta is the name of the housekeeper. She comes in every Saturday to hose down the floors, strip the beds, and change the batteries in the flash-lights. Nicoletta has mixed feelings about the New Brutalism. ‘This is easy place to clean,’ she says, ‘but hard place to live in.’
“As you are bound to discover, the house book, although detailed and informative, is irrelevant or incomplete in too many instances. Don’t bother to read the chapter titled ‘How to Operate the Cappuccino Machine.’ The machine does not va bene any longer, having blown up several rentals ago.
“Familiarize yourself especially with the text and diagrams on page 15, under ‘Electrical Problems’: ‘If electrical supply cuts out, set restart button on incoming supply. If electrical supply cuts out to ground floor only, set internal restart button.’ This information will prove particularly important if you’re renting the villa during the rainy season, which you are. We know that the guidebooks say that September and October are ideal months to visit Tuscany and that the Italian rainy season begins in early November and lasts through December, but Nicoletta disagrees. She says that for the last few years the rainy season has occurred early, in September and October.
“The Italian rainy season is very impressive, very operatic. Che tempo orribile! (What awful weather!) Very vivace, very fortissimo, very agitato, with molte, molte blown fuses (lampadina bruciata). The instructions in the house book are fine as far as they go, but they won’t help you once you have an Italian-speaking electrician on the other end of the phone.
“An ordinary tourist can get by on ‘Grazie’ (‘Thank you’), ‘Per favore’ (‘Please’), and ‘Dov’è il gabinetto?’ (‘Where is the bathroom?’). You, however, will need to know how to say, ‘Dov’è la valvola?’ (‘Where is the restart button?’).
“All Italian appliances have valvolas. At any time, any one of them may be hit by lightning. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself asking ‘Dov’è la valvola? Dov’è la valvola?’ with metronomic regularity. Try it to the tune of ‘La donna è mobile.’
“In addition to the information above, which we trust will be useful, Larry and I have attempted to anticipate some of the questions that may arise during your stay.
“Where is the view? Not everyone who rents a villa in a hill town in Tuscany automatically gets a view. Somebody’s got to live in the valleys. Villa Potemkin is located at the bottom of a valley, at the end of a two-kilometer rutted dirt driveway, so steep, winding, and narrow that it must be executed in first gear, and then only under dry, daytime conditions. You will get used to life in a hole. So you don’t have a view of acres of rolling vineyards, rows of stately cypress trees, and the charmingly scabby ocher farmhouses with their red tile roofs. You’re a part of somebody else’s view. You’re somebody else’s red tile roof!
“Why is the underside of my rental car making that funny noise? Parts of it are falling off. See ‘Where is the view?’ above.
“Are there screens for the windows, to keep out flies and those long, gray things that have wings and jump? No.
“Where is the nearest garden market? There is no nearest garden market. There’s an A & P about twelve kilometers from San Gimignano (not counting the driveway). A & P went to Italy at about the same time D’Agostino’s came to New York. It costs five hundred lire to rent a shopping cart. That’s the silver coin with the copper center. Risotto ai funghi porcini comes in a plastic bag with directions to drop the contents into ‘acqua in ebollizione.’ It’s ‘pronto in l5 minuti.’ (So many of the words are the same.) The Parmesan is grated. The tomatoes come from New Jersey. The bakery sells croissants. Take a number.
“Why does the shower fill up and pour under the bathroom door and run down the hallways? Because there is hair in the drain.
“Why does our hair feel so thin and lifeless? Because the house has its own well and there are chimici nell’acqua (chemicals in the water). That’s your hair in the drain.
“Why is there an echo? What else would you expect from a virtually unfurnished, renovated mill with barrel-vaulted ceilings as high as major duomos, thirty-two stone steps, a living room the size of the Roman Forum, a fireplace in which you could roast a wild boar—if it weren’t bricked over—and no drapes. A cast-iron sofa, a slate kitchen table, two folding chairs, two metal beds, and a broken cappuccino machine don’t provide much acoustic relief under those conditions. We both should have asked the agent to send us pictures of the inside of the house. We actually considered buying a sofa and a couple of chairs in nearby Siena. Furniture, the more upholstered the better, would absorb sound and act as a wind barrier as well. Some rugs on the terra-cotta tile floors and a few tapestries on the gray plaster walls would also help to cut down on the echo. Or you can just stop talking to each other. That’s what we did. Plus we drank a lot of Chianti Classico.”