Breathe In
A last-minute dash into a dodgy looking market leads to some lasting insights about Italy and its people.
“We won’t find anything for dinner here,” I whispered to my wife, Chris. “Look at that pitiful tomato.”
I pointed to a solitary, withered blob in a wooden crate outside the shop. There was little else to suggest the entrance led to a grocery, other than the word Alimentari painted carelessly on a weathered board. Shops in Tuscan hill towns usually have colorful outdoor displays to lure customers inside, but this market tucked into a corner of a sunny piazza had no alluring bin of flowers or vegetables, no baskets swollen with panettone or shimmering bottles of limoncello. Only the slumping tomato and the afterthought of a sign.
“I don’t think we have a choice,” Chris whispered back. “It’s siesta time and the other place is already closed. We’d better hurry while this one’s still open.”
Peering inside, I could barely make out the shop’s dark interior. The sunlight streaming in illuminated a small shelf of produce along one wall. Opposite the shelf, a bare, incandescent bulb dangled over a narrow counter. A small, battered ice cream freezer sat in front, emitting a dim, fluorescent glow. Perched on a stool behind the counter, with arms crossed, sat an elderly, white-haired woman in a threadbare sweater.
We were in Montisi, a village in the Crete Senesi region of Tuscany. It had a single main street that was so narrow in places, even the tiny Piaggio trucks had to maneuver carefully to avoid scraping the walls of adjacent buildings. We were renting an old farmhouse on the outskirts of town. After four days, we had yet to adjust to village siesta time. On several occasions, we had rushed around to shops or cafés only to find them closed. Our tardiness today had put us in a bind. We were leaving the village until evening and needed groceries for dinner. This pathetic little market was our only hope.
Fighting every instinct I had that it was a fool’s errand, I stepped across the thick stone threshold into the cave-like room.
“Buon giorno,” said the old woman halfheartedly as she shifted on her stool.
I returned her greeting, then glanced furtively around the room, letting my eyes adjust to the dim light. There wasn’t much to see; the store’s provisions appeared limited to the paltry offering I’d seen from outside.
As I studied the shelf of vegetables, I could feel two pairs of eyes boring into my back like tiny heat lamps: the old woman wondering what could be taking so long, and Chris, willing me to invoke some spell to magically make more produce appear. I disregarded a yellowing cabbage and instead plucked two small potatoes from a box. If nothing else, we could bake them, though I held little hope for scoring a stick of butter.
“You’re supposed to let her choose the produce. Remember?”
Chris was referring to the part of Under the Tuscan Sun where Frances Mayes learns the etiquette of buying produce at an outdoor market. I should have told the old woman I wanted two potatoes and let her pick them out. I glanced back at her self-consciously. She seemed content to let me help myself.
I grabbed an onion, a bulb of garlic, and a limp bunch of spinach and placed them on the counter. I glanced down through the glass top of the ice cream freezer. It was actually a small dairy case containing milk, cheese and a few other items. I added a carton of milk to my meager supplies.
The old woman looked at me with patient eyes, a faint smile hovering lazily in the corners of her mouth. She looked cold and tired. She was probably anxious for siesta: a pot of hot tea then a nap on a sunny terrace, far from this gloomy dungeon.
I peered into the shadowy corners of the shop, searching for some sign of more merchandise. There was another doorway farther back, but it was dark and unpromising. Out of options but still determined, I asked, “Dove è il pollo (Where is the chicken)?” I managed to butcher the language and sound plaintive at the same time.
“Ah, sì,” she replied, showing a sudden burst of energy.
She hopped off the stool and came around the counter, burbling in a warm, Italian lilt. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, but followed dutifully behind her as she walked back through the darkened doorway. She waved an arm in the shadows for a moment, then the tinny sound of a pull chain unleashed a hundred watts of light on a largish room lined with shelves. There were cans of vegetables, loaves of bread, coffee, boxes of crackers and cookies, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, cooking oil. A large freezer occupied the center of the room. The old woman had been sitting in near darkness to conserve electricity. Any local would have known this. Only her clueless American visitor suffered such confusion.
She rummaged around in the freezer, then pulled out a small frying chicken. She held it up high, arching her eyebrows victoriously, and said something indecipherable, perhaps the Italian equivalent of voilà.
As she closed the freezer and reached for the light cord, I held up my hand, signaling her to wait.
“E el vino?” I asked, hoping to complete this modest feast with a bottle of wine. I stressed the word vino, stretched it out, let it dangle expectantly in midair. There was no wine in sight, but I was feeling suddenly lucky. After all, I had just seen a chicken materialize out of thin air.
The woman said nothing, but motioned for me to follow her. We passed through a doorway into another darkened room. Once again, she fished in the air for a pull cord. Once again, the tinny sound yielded bright light, illuminating a room that served as a small enoteca. Bottles of local reds lined the shelves: Vino Nobile, Brunello, Dolcetto, and Negro Amaro, as well as wines from nearby regions. Feeling pressed for time, I resisted the urge to study the labels closely. My hand hovered briefly over a Chianti then came to rest on a bottle of Rosso di Montalcino, or Baby Brunello, as it was often called.
“Oh no, signore, è speciale!” the old woman said in a deep, somber voice. She was warning me that it wasn’t table wine, but rather a more expensive variety reserved for special occasions. We were in Brunello country, but the locals drank simple wines with their meals, usually something lighter made either by themselves or their neighbors. Table wine ran five or six euros. The Baby Brunello was twenty.
“Va bene . . . umm . . . celebrazione,” I reassured her in my best broken Italian. It was indeed a special occasion. If nothing else, we could celebrate finding enough food for a decent dinner. But we were also in an idyllic place, enjoying a rustic farmhouse that overlooked the vineyards and olive groves of Tuscany. That was reason enough to splurge for a special bottle of wine.
As we walked back toward the front of the store, she patted the frozen chicken, burbling again in her motherly Italian. Though I couldn’t really understand what she was saying, I was certain she was advising me about how to cook the chicken. I imagined her saying: You’ll want to rub this with olive oil and salt, then lots of garlic. Then stuff it with bay leaves and lemon wedges. Use lots of rosemary. Don’t overcook it now.
When we reached the counter, I glanced back at the two previously dark rooms and shook my head in disbelief. The dingy little grotto we had entered so tenuously was really a sprawling emporium and the listless old woman, a warm and lively surrogate mother.
That evening, after we’d returned from our sightseeing, I rubbed the chicken with coarse salt that I found in our kitchen, then with olive oil that had been pressed from the trees outside. I added a generous dose of crushed rosemary that I’d picked from the bush by the kitchen door.
In a short time, we were sitting down to dinner in the spacious dining room of the old stone house. Other parts of the house could be dark and cold, but the dining room was always bright and cheerful. The double doors to the garden were open and a soft, warm breeze blew in over the rolling hills outside. The smell of roast chicken mingled with that of spring grass and olive trees and pungent sage. The sun was low on the horizon and a rosy-golden hue was spreading across the sky. As we ate our simple meal and sipped our vino speciale, I felt a deep sense of gratitude. The food, the wine, and the magnificent landscape had merged into a single, pervasive sensation that provoked all of my senses. It was something to relish, something to savor.
Savor, from the Old French savorer, means to taste, but it also means to breathe in. That’s what was happening at that moment: I was breathing in everything around me and making indelible recordings of the experience.
We never returned to the little market in the piazza, but I found myself recalling that day at other times during our trip, times when I felt reticent about sampling something or eating in a restaurant that was a bit frayed at the edges. I would picture the kind old woman and the two dark rooms in my mind and remind myself that there is really only one way to experience Italy. Don’t doubt. Don’t hesitate. Just breathe in. Deeply.
Keith Skinner writes fiction, memoir, creative nonfiction, and travel stories. His story “Inside the Tower” about Robinson Jeffers was a 2014 Grand Prize Bronze Solas Award winner. He published the hyper-local blog Berkeley Afoot, and his work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Berkeleyside, and The Woven Tale. He is currently at work on a historical novel set in nineteenth-century Mendocino County. He lives in Berkeley, California.