Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes Page B

the
terrace for an hour with a book and the green-black rows of
cypresses against the soft sky, the hills pleated with olive
terraces that haven't changed since the seasons were depicted in
medieval psalters. Sometimes the valley below is like a bowl
filled up with fog. I can see hard green figs on two trees and pears
on a tree just below me. A fine crop coming in. I forget my book.
Pear cobbler, pear chutney, pear ice, green figs (would the
wasps already be in green figs?) with pork, fig fritters, fig and
nocciola
tart. May summer last a hundred years.

W hir of t he S un
    THE HOUSE, ONLY TWO KILOMETERS FROM town, feels
like a deep country place. We can't see any neighbors, although we
hear the man way above us calling
vieni qua,
come here,
to his dog. The summer sun hits like a religious conviction. I can
tell time by where the sun strikes the house, as though it were
a gigantic sundial. At five-thirty, the first rays smack the patio
door, routing us out of bed and giving us the pleasure of dawn. At
nine, a slab of sunlight falls into my study from the side window,
my favorite window in the house for its framed view over the
cypresses, the groves in the valley, and out into the Apennines.
I want to paint a watercolor of it but my watercolors are awful,
fit only to be stored on a closet shelf. By ten, the sun swings high
over the front of the house and stays there until four, when a cut
of shadow across the lawn signals that the sun is heading toward
the other side of the mountain. If we walk to town that way in late
afternoon, we see a prolonged, grandiose sunset over the Val di
Chiana, lingering until it finally just dissolves, leaving enough
streaked gold and saffron behind to light a way home until
nine-thirty, when indigo dark sets in.
    On moonless nights it is as black as inside an egg. Ed has gone
back to Minnesota for his parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary. A
shutter bangs; otherwise, the silence reverberates so strongly that
I think I can hear my own blood circulating. I expect to lie awake,
to imagine a drug-crazed intruder with an Uzi creeping up the
stairs in the dark. Instead, in the wide bed with flowered sheets,
I spread my books, cards, and notepaper around me and indulge in the
rare act of writing letters to friends. A second indulgence goes
straight back to high-school days—consuming a plate of
brownies and a Coke while copying paragraphs and verses I like
into my notebook. If only Sister, my black long-haired cat, were
here. She is truly a good companion for solitude. It's far too hot
for her to sleep against my feet, as she likes to do; she would
have to stay on a pillow at the foot of the bed. I sleep like one
newly born and in the morning have coffee on the patio, walk to
town for groceries, work on the land, come in for water, and it is
only ten o'clock. Hours go by without the need to speak.
    After a few days, my life takes on its own rhythm. I wake up
and read for an hour at three A.M. ; I eat small
snacks—a ripe tomato eaten like an apple—at eleven
and three rather than lunch at one. At six I'm up, but by siesta
time, the heat of the day, I'm ready for two hours in bed. Slumber
sounds heavier than sleep, and with the hum of a small fan, it's
slumber I fall into. At last, I have time to take a coverlet
outside at night and lie on my back with the flashlight and the
star chart. With the Big Dipper easily fixed right over the house,
I finally locate Pollux in Gemini and Procyon in Canis Minor. I
forget the stars and here they are, so alive all along, pulsing and
falling.
    A French woman and her English husband walk up the
driveway and introduce themselves as neighbors. They've heard
Americans bought the place and are curious to meet those mad enough
to take on this ordeal of restoration. They invite me to lunch the
next day. Since both are writers and are restoring their small
farmhouse, we fall into instant camaraderie. Should they have the
staircase here or there, what to do with this tiny