The Artist, Her Villa, The Bombs Of World War Two

A calendar marking the New Year arrives in the mailbox from Esselunga, the largest supermarket chain in Florence, reminding me of last things: the last of the year, the last of our last few days in Florence. In less than a week we will be packing up to go home to America.

I remember with amazement that I didn’t want to leave my home, my bed, my mother, my country. Now, my fear of Italy having vanished, I most definitely don’t want to leave my life here, this glorious city, my friends, the view from my roof terrace, my comforting basket-bed, and all the foods of Italy made into art on my supermarket calendar.

For even the food ads in Italy are art. The pictures representing each month of the coming year are illustrated in glowing colors: the first month, Gennaio, presents a scallion upside down with roots flailing like Einstein’s hair. Its caption reads “Scienziato o cipolla?” (Scientist or onion?) Febbraio offers two arched bananas: “Delfini o banane?” (Dolphins or bananas?) Marzo shows floating upside-down red onions: “Mongolfiere o cipolle?” (Hot-air balloons or onions?) Aprile features peas and their pods shaped like dragonflies: “Libellule o piselli?” (Dragonflies or peas?) The rest of the months continue, “Tennis balls or grapefruit?” “Rugby or melon?” “Tulips or red peppers?” “Mouse or radish?” “Seals or eggplants?” “Hedgehog or chestnut?” and finally, for Dicembre, a triangle of peanuts and holly berries in the shape of a tree: “Buon Natale.”

Art and Italy are words that go together like love and marriage. To me, art is this calendar, is the view of the Arno from my window and the clouds bunched like downy thrones above the cypress trees on the hills. Art is the way the foam of milk swirls on the cup of cappuccino, the way the swallows fly from the bell towers when the bells are rung, the reflections of the Duomo in the puddles of water after a heavy rain.

Sometimes I watch the woman across the courtyard hanging her husband’s shirts to dry, her way of alternating colors, arranging the collars and sleeves just so, having them face all one way so that when puffs of wind blow them outward, they are like a chorus line, dancing. There is an aesthetic at work here on every level, in nature, in architecture, in food (especially in food)—art as evident in life as it is in the paintings of the museums and the sculptures of the piazzas.

Though my kitchen utensils are very spare and utilitarian, I find in the back of a cabinet, just these few days before we leave Italy, the most beautiful hand-painted pasta bowl, brilliant with purple and yellow flowers—a capacious and elegant showcase for a pot of cooked capellini or tortellini. It’s as if my countess landlady had bought it preparing for royalty. And indeed, perhaps anyone who eats in Italy is royalty.

Art is on my mind. We now have an invitation to visit Flavia Colacicchi, Cornelia’s friend, widow of the artist Giovanni Colacicchi, whose works hang in the Pitti Palace. At age eighty-three, Cornelia tells me, Flavia is not often feeling well enough to work. Joe and I are invited to tea with her tomorrow afternoon. Cornelia will pick us up at the last stop of the #14 bus and drive us to the villa.

A large and energetic Dalmatian dog is in the yard to greet us as we drive through the stone gates and up the gravel path. A young man, (quite good-looking, I can’t help but notice), comes out of the house to quiet his barking.

“He is the art student who boards with her,” Cornelia explains. “Since the death of her husband, she rents a room in the villa to an art student each year. Her son—who is also an artist—and his family live in the adjoining villa, but Flavia stays mostly to herself.”

“I hope she understands English,” I confess. “You know how little Italian I speak.”

“I think she knows a little English,” Cornelia tells me. “But we always speak in Italian, so I really don’t know. I may have to act as interpreter.”

The villa is like so many of the houses in the hills above Florence; two floors of gray stone, green wooden shutters, and the ubiquitous terra-cotta tile roof. Cornelia has given me some little background information—that her husband, Giovanni, was the director of the Accademia delle Belle Arti, that he had many famous friends: Bernard Berenson, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and Niccolo Tuccì among them. That Flavia has always been a wonderful painter and that she has had many showings of her work. In recent years, her ill health, which has kept her from painting, has left her feeling depressed.

But now the dog’s barking has brought the artist herself to the door. She is small and spry on her feet, gray-haired. She has lively eyes. She is wearing a dark sweater and gray skirt. A polished gem on a gold chain hangs about her neck. She graciously invites us in, speaking (to my relief) excellent English. She tells me she has heard from Cornelia how much I admire the writing of Arturo Vivante, and confides at once that Arturo’s father saved her life—long ago in Siena—by riding a long distance to bring back a doctor on the night she was in labor with her first son.

We are off at once telling stories to one another—I describing which of Arturo’s stories I love best (the one about gypsies camping on the front lawn of the villa where the hero’s mother takes in paying guests, and the one Cornelia and I discussed, about the son who goes to the Abruzzi after his mother’s death to buy her the dishes she had always longed for when she was alive).

Flavia tells us how Arturo, coming to visit her here shortly after the villa was bombed during the war, climbed up on a tall ladder to nail wooden boards over her broken windows. She regrets she has not been in touch with him or kept up with his work for many years. I promise her I will try to find her a copy of his latest book, The Tales of Arturo Vivante, as well as a long essay about his life, which he published in an encyclopedia called “Contemporary Authors’ Autobiography Series.” (I add that they have just published my brief autobiography as well.)

The ice thus broken, Flavia asks if she may serve us tea—and I ask if I may help. We rush off, leaving Joe and Cornelia in the living room, a room that I have been too distracted to observe save for noticing the large fireplace in which a crackling fire has been set to burn.

When I admire the grand old kitchen, the wood burning stove, the many hanging pots and baskets, Flavia shrugs her shoulders. “It was a busy place once. I do not cook much for myself now that I am alone. You know how it is.”

I tell her I do know. I tell her about my widowed mother, now in a nursing home for years, unable to walk or eat.

“Getting old,” she says. “It is always difficult and sad.” We stand there in the kitchen for a moment of silence, thinking about the necessary losses in life. Then we do what has to be done. She puts on the pot for tea, I help her by carrying the cups and saucers into the living room, she brings in sugar and a plate of foil-wrapped chocolates.

Joe and Cornelia are admiring Giovanni’s paintings on the walls of the villa. One of them, “L’ebbrezza di Noé” (The Drunkenness of Noah), displays Noah with three young men sprawled in a meadow, all nude but for a scarf held by one of the men in such a way that it hides Noah’s genitals; beside Noah on the ground is a flute. In his hand is a glass, half full of the potion that made him drunk.

Other paintings of the artist feature nude maidens, landscapes of the Italian countryside, a country house in which, Flavia tells us, they often vacationed, portraits of people dear to Giovanni, one of them his master teacher. And of course, portraits of Flavia, in her youth, in her maturity (but none in her old age.) I ask Flavia if I may photograph her now with my camera; I will make my own portrait of her. When she agrees, I snap a photo of her standing beside one of her portraits.

“But if you want another, let’s go outside,” she says. Once in the garden, she walks quickly away from me and calls back, “Take it in the dark and far away. It is the only way I can stand myself now.”

We have our tea and talk as if we have all known one another for a long time. Flavia tells us the story of a secret room in the house where her family hid Jews and partisans during the war, at great risk to themselves. And how one night, the hidden soldier in the room under the house detected a fire that had just begun, and which would have destroyed the entire house had he not been hidden there.

We speak of the mysteries of life, the violence of war, the pain of loss. We recognize this rare moment—when the veil of sociability and polite chatter gives way to an urgent honesty, to truth-telling.

When Cornelia recognizes that Flavia is tiring, she suggests we all should be going home.

“First let me show you Giovanni’s studio—and mine, upstairs,” Flavia says. She seems reluctant to let us leave. I have the sense that she has few visitors these days with whom to share her life and history. The stairs are steep, the hallways are covered with hard red tile. More of Giovanni’s paintings fill the hallways and in his studio canvasses are stacked one behind the other.

Flavia shows us her bedroom, the double bed with the old brass headboard, the handsome marble-topped dresser, the photos of her grandchildren.

“I stay up here mostly,” she says. “I don’t go downstairs very much, only when I have to.”

“May we see your studio?” I ask.

She ushers us into a smaller room—and there are her paintings: breathtaking portraits of young women, women in thought, women frozen with anger, women in love. There are landscapes as well, of this very house and its garden, and of haystacks in the country. Her paintings are full of personal emotion, while it seems to me her husband’s carry the ideas of history and religion.

Downstairs once again, we pass a table full of photographs. “Oh, I was just looking at these,” Flavia says. “See this one, of my husband with Bernard Berenson? And this one of my husband and me, in l934, I think.”

And there is Flavia and Giovanni in profile, young and beautiful at the start of their long and fascinating journey together.

“We were very good-looking,” she says without vanity.

Just as we are leaving, she asks us to wait just one more moment. Leaving the room, she comes back nearly staggering under the weight of two enormous books—the collected and published artworks of her husband. She gives one to me, one to Cornelia.

“I want you to have these.” On top of them, she places smaller paperback books, one of her art, one a catalog of her paintings that have been shown in public.

I don’t know how to thank her enough for this invitation into her home, her life, and her heart. “I will write to you. I will send you copies of these pictures I took. I will send you Arturo’s book, I will…”

She smiles, but she is already withdrawing. We watch her close and lock the front door. The lights downstairs go out.

Just as Cornelia reaches the bus stop above Careggi and exclaims that we are in luck, the bus is waiting there, just as she pulls up behind it and we begin to get out of the car, the bus pulls away and accelerates down the hill.

“I’m sure he saw us!” she says. “Why didn’t he wait? Shall we try to chase him?”

“No need,” Joe says, “We’ll just wait for the next one.”

“It’s getting very cold,” Cornelia reminds us.

“We’ll be fine.”

“You could wait here in the car with me…”

“No, don’t worry. You just go on home.”

I am having my doubts. I think we should either chase the bus or wait in the car. But Joe is clearly not remembering what I am: our long wait for a bus in Rome one night.

“Good-bye then,” Cornelia says. “I am so glad you could meet Flavia. She is one of my dearest friends in Italy.”

“It was an honor for us.”

“I will try to see you again before you leave. Perhaps we can have a farewell lunch at Grande Mondo.”

“Let’s count on it.” We hug good-bye.

After Cornelia drives away, Joe and I duck our heads against in the wind, trying to shelter against the wall. It’s Saturday night; there is no knowing when or if the next bus will turn up!

By the time a bus actually arrives, we are nearly frozen statues. Winter is upon the country. Italy, in the last weeks, has been transformed to a gray and colorless land. The tourists have left in droves, the stalls of souvenir-sellers have closed, the gelato shops have pulled down their iron gates, and the museums—without dozens of tour-guides shouting information to their flocks—are quiet again.

Tonight only a few passengers board the bus at various stops as it makes its way down toward il centro. When we reach the flatlands, an enormous traffic jam is evident. Streams of cars are flowing in from every street and moving toward the center of Florence. We can only conjecture as to the cause. Joe and I concur in our guessing: a soccer match must have ended and these are all the cars going home.

Whatever the reason, our bus moves only a foot or two every five minutes. We enter that state of suspended life, all plans and needs on hold, there will be none of the necessities of forward motion till we get out of this. A huge mental effort is required not to feel constrained, or even a little desperate. It matters not if we are hungry, tired, or in need of a bathroom—we are imprisoned for the moment. Be Here Now is where we are, like it or not.

I think this would be a good time to recite to one another from memory poems we learned in our youth, but I can see this is not an idea Joe would appreciate at this moment. I try to visualize peaceful moments in an idyllic country setting, but my mind will not cooperate.

The five or six passengers still on the bus seem to be sleeping, their heads falling forward or leaning against the window. I consider studying the artworks of the Colacicchis in the books I hold on my lap, but I feel I would be doing them a disservice, using their life’s work as a convenient way to pass the time while stalled in traffic and in a dim light. I will simply suffer and learn from my husband, who in his wisdom is patient and practical. “It can’t last forever,” he informs me.

Somewhere near the station the bus begins to move faster. Soon, in fact, the driver is flying along at a wild speed. At this rate we will be home in no time. My spirits rise—I count the landmarks: the stop at the Duomo (where two riders get off), the short distance along the lungarno, the turn into the residential area, the tall pine tree in a park-like traffic island in the middle of the road. We’re only a few miles from home!

And suddenly, on a dark stretch of street, the bus driver pulls to a stop, opens the doors, and says something to the passengers. Those still dozing on board are roused; one man speaks to the driver who answers brusquely. It’s clear—the ride is over, we must all get off.

Get off? We are still miles from home! This is not the stop at which we intended to get off the bus.

Joe goes forward to the driver and says, “Non continua?”

The answer is what we feared. Non-continua indeed. We must get off. The bus is finished with us. There is no discussion about why.

Confused, we reluctantly step off the bus we feared we might have to stay on forever. The bus pulls away, its taillights disappearing into the night.

“What was that all about?”

Joe is buttoning up his coat against the wind. He shrugs. There’s not much point in conjecturing. Another mystery of Italy.

“Well, I think that he was late,” I tell my husband. “The traffic jam got him off schedule, his shift was over, he didn’t want to complete his route. I think he figured he’d put in his time and he wanted to get home.”

“That could be it,” Joe agrees. “We’ll never know.”

“Only in Italy,” I say. “Only in Italy could this happen!”

We discuss the possibility of waiting for another bus. But we are in a deserted area of closed shops and dark streets. There may not be another bus for an hour or more. It’s too cold to stand still. We begin to walk toward home. The wind chills our cheeks. We begin to laugh. In fact, freed of the constraints of the bus and the creeping movement of the bus’s wheels, we find we have energy in reserve we didn’t know we could call upon.

Despite the heavy art books (which Joe valiantly carries) we are light on our feet. We walk so fast we begin to run. It’s cold and the motion warms us. The fresh air wakens our senses. We laugh and hold hands, swinging them between us.

Passing the Grande Mondo, we know we are closer to home than we thought. A sense of safety and confidence returns to us. We’ve survived the challenge one more time. The day’s events take on an aura of adventure and discovery. A visit to an elderly woman, a bus caught in traffic. At home these events would be ordinary matters, but here, in Italy, nothing is ordinary.

We are always having an “experience,” something to live through now, to talk about when we return home, and to remember, no doubt, forever. That seems to be a gift we have received here, the ability, somehow, to transform the contingencies of daily life into Italian ecstasies. In one way or another, joy has been inescapable here.