Botticelli Blue Skies: An American in Florence

18. Postcards and E-Mail (Two)

postcard to jessie gerber: Peaceful Hills Convalescent Hospital: Dearest Mother— On the other side of this card is the famous “Duomo”—the great cathedral of Florence that can be seen for miles in every direction. Next week we are going with all the students to Venice, the city of canals, but no streets (and no cars!). Maybe I can get Joe to take me for a gondola ride! I think of you every day and love you. e-mail to my sister: Dearest B— I have finally met my landlady, the Countess Rina Masotti. She is a beautiful, fashionable, intelligent, and interesting woman who used to work in the fashion industry and speaks excellent English. Rina is about my age, has an old mother about the age of ours, children about the ages of ours, and is married to a Count! How do I know? She left us a bottle of Chianti Classico wine from their farm in northern Tuscany, and on the label it says “IMBOTTIGLIATO ALL’ORIGINE DAI 70 18 Postcards and E-Mail (Two) CONTI MASOTTI PROPRIETARI VITICOLTORI IN COLLE VAL D’ELSA”—Colle Val d’Elsa is where their farm (or “fattoria”) is—not far from Siena. They grow wine for grapes, raise pigs and rabbits and turkeys, and also rent rooms to summer tourists who want to be in the “agriturismo” environment (that is, to vacation on a working farm). The farm has been in Rina’s husband’s family for seven hundred years, and the original palazzo on the property is now rented to a hotel agency, which made it into a luxury hotel. The outbuildings on the farm (pigeon coop, barn, farmer’s cottage) have been transformed into the apartments they rent in order to keep the farm in the family. She said she hopes we will come to visit them at the farm some weekend. (They also own another apartment in Florence where they live part of the year.) Our present apartment was where they first lived when their children were small and before there was a freeway entrance (the one we see from our kitchen window) just across the road. In those years only the river was there, and lovely fields full of flowers. She did ask whether we needed anything: I suggested we could use another pillow or two, though I would have liked to ask her for wine glasses and a pizza pan and a potato peeler and some pots that are not so dented (and whose handles aren’t nearly burned off)—and even a vacuum cleaner. When I told her we can’t clean the rug since there’s no vacuum here, she said they don’t generally use vacuum cleaners, but they sweep the rug with a broom! When she noticed the plastic umbrella stand was missing from the entryway, I had to show her where it was, upside-down in the shower where it holds my soap and shampoo. We did of course conduct some business; she wanted a 100,000-lire deposit on the phone (did I tell you that every time we make a call, there’s a counter attached to the phone that registers the number of “scatti” used—it clicks away at a slower rate for local calls, much faster for long distance. Each Botticelli Blue Skies 71 click costs about 200 lire). When I told her I was a writer, she said “Perhaps someday you will put us in one of your books.” Perhaps, indeed. Thank you for checking my mail, taking care of Mom, and seeing that Maxie is doing okay. I’m glad he likes the boy who comes to feed him. Poor little cat, he will probably never speak to me again. Love, M Merrill Joan Gerber 72 ...