I t a l I a n s a l w a y s h a V e l I V e d o V e r t h e store. The palazzi of some of the grandest families have bricked-in arches at ground

level, with remains of waist-high stone

counters where someone used to ladle out

preserved briny fish from a vat to customers,

or carve the stuffed pig, a job now per-

formed in sleek open-sided trucks that ply the weekly markets or sell from roadsides. I

run my hand over these worn stone count-

ers when I pass them. From odd windows at

ground level, the palazzo’s house wine was sold. First floors of some grand houses were

warehouses. Today, my bank in Cortona is

the bottom of the great Laparelli house,

which rests on Etruscan stones. On the top

floors, windows open to the night show an-

tique chandeliers, big armfuls of light. Often

the residents are leaning out, two, some-

times three to a window, watching one

more day pass in the history of this piazza.

C O R T O N A , N O B L E C I T Y

141

The main shopping streets, lined with great houses, are everywhere converted on the ground floor to the businesses of hardware, dishes, food, and clothing. For many buildings, probably it always has been so.

On the facades, I notice how many times previous occupants have changed their minds. The door should be here—no, here—

and the arch should be a window, and shouldn’t we join this building to the next one or add a continuous new facade across all three medieval houses now that the Renaissance is here? The medieval fish market is a restaurant, the Renaissance private theater is an exhibition space, the stone clothes-washing sinks still just await the flow of water, the women with their baskets.

But the clock repairer in his four-by-six-foot shop under the eleventh-century stairway of the city offices has been there for all this time, though he may now be changing the battery on the Swatch watch of an exchange student. He used to blow the glass and sift the white sand from the Tyrrhenian at Populonia for his hourglasses. He studied the water clocks drip by drip. I never have seen him stand; his back must be a hoop from slouching over the tiny parts for so many centuries. His face is lost behind the lenses he wears, so thick that his eyes seem to lunge forward. As I stop in front of his shop, he is working by the light that always angles in just so on the infinitesimal wheels and gold triangles, the numbers of the hours that sometimes fall off the white face, four and five and nine sprinkled on his table.

Perhaps my own teaching activities are immortal and I just don’t see it because the place doesn’t have this backdrop of time; in fact, my building at the university is a prime earthquake hazard, slated to be demolished. We’re to move to a new building next fall, one with a flexible structure suited to a foundation that is partly sand dune. A postwar structure, the current Humanities Building already is obsolete: fifty-year turnaround.

The cobbler, however, seems permanent in his cave-shaped shop, which expands around him only enough for his bench, his 142

U N D E R

T H E

T U S C A N

S U N

shelf of tools, the shoes to be picked up, and one customer to squeeze into. A red boot like one on an angel in the Museo Diocesano, Gucci loafers, a yard of navy pumps, and a worn work shoe that must weigh more than a newborn baby. A small radio from the thirties still brings in the weather from the rest of the peninsula as he polishes my repaired sandal and says it should last for years.

At the frutta e verdura, it is the same, the same white peaches at the end of July. The figs that are perfect now and overripe by the time I get them to the kitchen. Apricots, a little basket of rising suns, and bunches of field lettuce still wet with dew. The Laparelli girl, who became a saint and now lies uncorrupted in her venerated tomb, stopped here for her grapes before she gave up eating, in order to feel His suffering more clearly. ‘‘From my garden this morning,’’ she heard, as I do when Maria Rita holds up the melon for me to smell the fruit’s perfume and her clean hand so often in the earth. When she takes me in the back of her shop to show me how much cooler it is, I step back into the medieval rabbit warren many buildings still are, behind their facades and windows filled with camcorders, silk skirts, and Alessi gadgets.

We’re under stone stairs, where she has a sink to wash the produce, then, another step down, we’re in a narrow stone room with a twist into darkness at the end. ‘‘Fresca,’’ she says, fanning herself, and she shows me her chair among the wooden crates, where she can rest between customers. She doesn’t get much rest.

People shop here for her cascades of laughter, as well as for the uncompromising quality of her produce. She’s open six and a half days a week, plus she cares for a garden. Her husband has been ill this year, so she’s shifting crates every day as well. By eight, she’s smiling, washing down her stoop, wiping a speck off a pyramid of gargantuan red peppers.

We shop here every day. Every day she says, ‘‘Guardi, signora,’’

and holds up a misshapen carrot that looks obscene to her, a luscious basket of tomatoes, or a cunning little bunch of radishes.

C O R T O N A , N O B L E C I T Y

143

Every garlic head, lemon, and watermelon in her shop has been lavished with attention. She has washed and arranged. She makes sure her best customers get the most select produce. If I pick out plums (touching is a no-no in produce shops and I sometimes forget), she inspects each, points out any deficiency she detects, mumbles, takes another. Each purchase comes with cooking tips.

You can’t make minestrone without bietola; chard is what makes minestrone. And toss in a heel of parmigiano for flavor. Just melt these onions for a long time in olive oil, a dash of balsamic vinegar, serve them on bruschetta.

Many of her customers are tourists, stopping in for some grapes or a few peaches. A man buys fruit and makes motions of washing his hands. He points to the fruit. She figures out that he’s asking her where he can wash it. She explains that it is washed, no one has touched it, but, of course, he can’t understand, so she leads him by the elbow down the street and points to the public water fountain. She finds this amusing. ‘‘Where is he from that he thinks the fruit isn’t clean?’’

All along the streets, artisans open their shop doors to the front light. As I glimpse the work inside, I think medieval guilds might still be practicing their crafts. A young man works on elaborate fruit and flower marquetry of a seventeenth-century desk. As he trims a sliver of pear wood, he’s as intent as a surgeon reattaching a severed thumb. In another shop near the Porto Sant’Agostino, Antonio of the dark intent gaze is framing botanical prints. I step in to look and spot a lovely old mirror on his shelf. ‘‘Posso?’’ May I, I ask before I touch it. When I lift it, the top of the frame comes loose in my hand and the fragile, silver-backed antique mirror crashes to the floor. I want to dissolve. But his main concern is my seven years of bad luck. I insist on paying for the mirror, over his protests. He will make a couple of small mirrors with the old foxed shards and he will repair my frame and put in a new mirror.

As I leave, I see him carefully picking up the pieces.

Most fascinating to look into is the place where paintings are 144

U N D E R

T H E

T U S C A N

S U N

restored. Strong fumes emanate from this workshop where two women in white deftly clean layers of time off canvases and re-work spots that have been punctured or damaged. Renaissance painters used marble dust, chalk, and eggshells as paint bases.

Sometimes they applied gold leaf onto a mordant made of garlic.

Their black paint came from lampblack, burned olive sticks, and nutshells; some reds from insect secretions, often imported from Asia. Ground stones, berries, peach pits, and glass yielded other colors, which were applied with brushes made from boar, ermine, feathers, and quills: spiritual art coming directly out of nature. To duplicate the colors of those mulberry dresses, mauve cloaks, azurite robes, modern alchemical processes must go on in this little shop.