A Year in the World (24 page)

Villa
Matilde epitomizes the zesty spirit of contemporary wines from the South. Odd that this should be so, since their vines come from stock older than the Romans. Our close friend Riccardo Bertocci (remember we had the Slow Food
lardo
dinner with him) represents several of the most distinctive wine producers in Italy. Villa Matilde is one of his favorites. He asked us to rendezvous for lunch at Villa Matilde to meet Maria Ida and Salvatore Avallone, the Neapolitan sister and brother who preside over the vineyards started by their father. We often stay at the Avallone family’s hotel in Naples, the Parker, for Old World ambiance, the dining terrace overlooking the Bay, and their scrumptious pastry table at breakfast.

Since we were in nearby Sperlonga, exploring the coast, we settled on Wednesday and drove down to Cellole. I hope you’ll go there on your trip. Despite the fireworks around wine produced in the South, there still are very few vineyards where you can visit and taste. You also can stay overnight; the old estate house now serves as a small inn. Maria Ida and Salvatore showed us around. Their father, Francesco Paolo Avallone, practices law in Naples, and the children have taken over the vineyard. They’re young and hip and devoted to the wines their father developed after World War II. During his law studies he read Virgil, Horace, Pliny the Elder, Catullus, and other classical authors—does this happen in American law schools?—where he came across references to
falerno
, one of the prime grapes of the Romans. The vines over time had succumbed to disease and neglect. Avallone studied the characteristics mentioned by the authors and set out to find lost stock of this grape in the original location where it had flourished, the Massico area. He and his associates found five
falanghina
vines and so secured a route back to the production of white
falerno
. They found five
piedirosso
(red feet), which with
aglianico
(the “Hellenic” remnant) could combine to make red
falerno
. Many graftings, propagations, and lullabies later, the Villa Matilde slopes again thrive with the ancient heritage grapes of the area. The Avallones still keep the precious vines their father found when he reached far back into history.

At
pranzo
in their restaurant, we were served pumpkin ravioli, veal roast, and a plum
crostata
. Salvatore would eat only a salad after the pasta. He was telling us about the remains of a Roman wine cellar just adjacent to their property, and the other hectares he and Maria Ida have acquired and planted with
coda di volpe
(fox tail),
abbuoto
, and
primitivo
grapes. We liked all the wines he poured, especially the Falerno del Massico Vigna Camarato and the delicate, golden Eleusi Passito, which arrived with the
crostata
. The
passito
’s grapes dry on the vines, concentrating the sweetness until late fall, then age in barriques. Catullus would write an ode.

You’ll be singing praises, too, when you arrive in Naples for your month of roaming. Let me know exactly when you’re coming. I know a place in Gallipoli where the squid caught last night hang on a clothesline outside the kitchen, waiting to be pounded and dressed in tomatoes and good oil. We could meet in Matera, strangest of cities, and eat vegetable lasagne made with big slabs of pasta, and slow-roasted lamb shanks.

Think of me as you pour a splash of Greco di Tufa in your glass, or think back to the Greeks who brought the vine, or just think of your friend across the table and the night ahead.

Get
The Blue Guide to Southern Italy
. Don’t miss Siracusa and the cathedrals in Bitonto and Trani. You’ll see many of Italy’s one million vineyards, most the size of your backyard. With the olive and wheat, vines make the ancient trinity. You may see remnants of the old style of planting, with the wheat among the olive trees, and the field bordered by vines. If so, take a picture. The trinity is disappearing fast. The bread, the wine, the oil. Life is possible from those. Mark on your map all of Frederick II’s castles. You’ll be lost a hundred times. Endless, Italy is endless.

Ci vediamo subito
,
Frances

Inside the
Color Spectrum

Fez

The art of departure I may never master. A smooth departure includes time to pack and think and anticipate. The suitcase, all shoes on the bottom, holds clothes in two basic colors with several tops in lively patterns. Everything fits neatly, and I have room to bring home a couple of souvenirs. The houseplants are watered, newspaper stopped, and two lights set on timers. Dinner will be simple, a salad and soufflé. We will sleep without nightmares, wake with the excitement of the voyage pulsing in our veins, and leave the house with plenty of time. We do not confuse flight times or leave passports behind or forget to turn off the espresso machine.

But usually I would like to be taken to the airport on a stretcher and rolled into the back of the plane where attendants will draw curtains around me, because any departure inevitably brings out the mischief in the gods. The day before you start a long-desired trip, they want you to pass certain tests.

This morning I searched the house for the tickets to Morocco, then finally Ed noticed and said he still had to pick up the tickets. Bramasole’s elaborate watering system, which involves two cisterns and the old well, developed an air vacuum hitch. We spent two hours crawling around tanks and shouting “Is it coming?” and finally the water arrived in spurts and jerks. A tube detached, spraying us both. A strange rumbling noise as we took our plates outside for lunch gathered to an unmistakable crash. What a disaster—the important lateral stone wall under the linden trees tumbled down the hill. We dashed to see the last of a rock avalanche landing on the road below. Lucky we were that no one passing by on a morning stroll or bike ride met their dismal fate in our driveway. And so we hauled stone off the road, and Ed went in search of a
muratore
who will repair the damage before another section falls. I canceled my much-needed haircut appointment. I did not pick up the dry cleaning.

Early
today in town I said to a friend, “We’re leaving tomorrow for Fez.” The words seemed miraculous. Fez. I’ve never put my foot on the continent of Africa before. As I pull my bag from under the bed, I hear a scuffling noise—unmistakable.
Un topo
, a mouse. Fortunately Giusi is downstairs. She’s my cooking friend who also looks after Bramasole when we are gone.

“I had
a mouse in my
armadio
last year,” she says, sprinting up the stairs and shutting the door of the bedroom, closing us in with the mouse. She’s armed with rubber gloves and a broom. We pull out the bed. Nothing. Open the
armadio
, where I have hung my summer clothes. Nothing. But in the top drawer of my chest, we find droppings. The mouse has eaten a bead from an African necklace. Resolutely, Giusi opens the drawer at the bottom of the
armadio
and lifts up a folded yellow sweater. Three almost-new mice fall out. I swallow a shriek. Giusi dons the gloves, picks them up, and drops them in a plastic bag. They are unformed and not cute. Their pawing motions and pin-prick eyes make my stomach flip. God’s creatures. Under a poncho she finds three more. I hold the bag at arm’s length. She pulls out the drawer all the way, and we see the mama, not so small, not a Beatrix Potter–style mouse at all, hiding behind the foot of the
armadio
. The chase is on. Giusi corners her, and she runs between Giusi’s legs, under the bed, then back to the
armadio
. I’m afraid she will bite Giusi’s ankle. Giusi wields the broom, and I cower in the corner feeling inept. The mouse leaps into the fireplace and disappears up the chimney. We leave a poison dinner for her return. Giusi insists that all my folded clothes must be washed now, since mouse feet have run over them. Visions of black plague victims reel through my head.

And so I pack what I can from the hanging clothes. Late in the afternoon we drive to Rome and spend the night at the airport hotel. Our flight to Casablanca leaves early tomorrow.

We
are let out of the taxi at Bab Boujeloud, an entrance into the Fez medina. Hafid El Amrani, the young manager of the house where we are staying, has rescued us in Meknes, an hour away. The car we hired to drive us from the Casablanca airport to Fez finally died outside Meknes, after sputtering and overheating for seven hours. Normally the trip takes three to four hours. The thirty-year-old Mercedes slowed on every slight hill, and when the gauge hit the top of the dial, the driver pulled over and waited for someone to stop and pour a bottle of water into the radiator. Twice the stops involved him scrambling down into a gully to fill a bottle with muddy water. We were in the backseat, temperature outside 104 degrees. The driver was an optimist; each time the radiator was filled, he thought the problem was solved. “Thermostat,” Ed said repeatedly. When the car finally refused to go on, we reached a place with enough telephone signal to call Hafid in Fez. Then we had only a couple of hours to wait before he pulled up in an ancient taxi. Is this trip jinxed?

Now he loads our bags into a handcart pushed by a boy. Immediately I see that when we walk through this Blue Gate, we will enter a different world. Laden donkeys with muzzles made from plastic water bottles stand passively under loads of barrels and stuffed sacks. The acrid odor of live wool burns the air. A few red “petite taxis” dart in and out of the square in random patterns, weaving among men in
djellabas
and pointy open-backed yellow shoes. In Tuscany donkeys are gone. I used to see one occasionally fifteen years ago. By now they’ve been replaced by the charming three-wheel miniature pickups called
Ape
, bees. Here the donkey reigns.

Hafid is handsome, with large eyes straight from a Roman mosaic, eyes the same true black as his hair. He’s dressed in jeans, moving agilely through the gate and into the jammed lanes of the medina. Cars would be impossible. Not only are the streets narrow, but the minute kiosk-shops have goods piled outside their doors. People crouch along the edges selling CDs, socks, potatoes, lighters, and tissues. Ed points out that among the things for sale are squares of chocolate from a candy bar, single disposable diapers, and single cigarettes. Every few feet in the cobbled street holes deeper than graves impede progress. Men with picks chop around ancient water pipes in search of a leak or blockage. Odors dating back to the Romans rise from the depths. They look like an illustration for an engraving entitled “A Sisyphean Task.” Dirt mounds around the holes must be climbed over. No one seems to have the concept of waiting to pass; everyone plunges onward from both directions—a chaotic traffic jam of people and donkeys, a melting pot with everyone melting. Somehow no one falls in. Hafid and the boy carry the handcart over their heads. Every few minutes someone calls out
“Balak,”
which I quickly learn to translate: donkey about to thunder by.

We would need Ariadne’s thread through the labyrinth to find our way out of the medina. Hafid darts and branches down dozens of streets, often, it seems, doubling back. I would like to see a topographical map. “The streets are like those rubber insides of golf balls,” I say to Ed.

“More like the intestinal tract of Muhammad. It’s visceral.”

“Time made a detour around Fez.”

“Yes, cross through that gate, and you’ve stepped into the twilight zone.”

Balak, balak.

We arrive at a scruffy door and climb dark, cramped stairs, stumble at a landing where six small children are hovering outside their own door. Hafid opens the door of the
masseria
, the restored guesthouse we’ll call home for a few days.

After the squalor of the streets, the threadbare, sad donkeys, the odors of their manure, the heaped garbage, the mess, we step into a serene and poetic small house with intricately carved four-hundred-year-old plaster walls, delicately colored, with bands of Kufic calligraphy, an arranged marriage of art and geometry. High windows, far above our heads, let in panels of blond light. A few Berber rugs, a shower with seats and copper pails for washing in the style of the
hammam
, a tiled fountain, and low banquette sofas covered in rough hand-woven cloth—everything feels seamless. The roof terrace overlooks the entire medina, a vast warren of sand-colored cubes, all crowned with satellite dishes. The buildings are rough as barnacles. I’m unprepared for the size of the Fez medina. The medina
is
old Fez. The other two areas of the city are completely separated, three distinct towns. In the distance Hafid points out castles and a tomb on the hill, all the same earth color. Inside, peace seems to emanate from the walls. We are in a secret house in the heart of a mysterious medieval enclave.

When
we emerge after quick showers, dark has invaded the medina. Donkeys have been herded inside stables or have headed home to the hills. Although the streets are still crowded, I at least don’t fear being shoved into the fetid ditches. I lose count of the turns we make. If we dropped stones or bread to find our way back, we’d never spot them again. Hafid guides us to a small restaurant with dining on a roof terrace and leaves us. Little plates of roasted peppers, carrots seasoned with cumin and vinegar, a version of eggplant caponata, and olives with preserved lemons precede a traditional couscous with seven vegetables. I have loved Moroccan food ever since I went to a cooking demonstration by Paula Wolfert thirty years ago, then cooked my way through her
Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco
. I always keep jars of preserved lemons in my fridge. “How can
carrots
taste so good?” Ed reaches again for the tomato and cucumber salad, a twin to the California salsa we make at home. Couscous offers the same opportunities that pasta and tortillas offer Italians and Mexicans. You can improvise. Unlike the instant couscous I often resort to when I’m in a hurry, freshly prepared couscous is fluffy and tender, never glumpy. Tonight the seven vegetables are eggplant, kidney beans, tomatoes, onions, carrots, pumpkin, and cabbage—who would imagine the combination? These are added to the steamed couscous, along with potatoes and
khlii
, a beef confit that is a staple in every kitchen.

“The guidebook said not to eat unpeeled vegetables,” I remember. We overlook the Blue Gate where we entered earlier, and without the commerce the scene has turned to slow motion—strollers and beggars, and shop people heading back to the new town. In the medina restaurants do not serve wine because of the many mosques, so cup after cup of mint tea arrives after a meal. Hafid returns for us. Like children, we’re led home.

When
mysterious gifts come your way, they must be accepted and understood. As we planned this trip, I looked on the Internet for a place to rent. Rather than making quick stops in several towns, I decided to concentrate on one city. Fez is quintessential Morocco, “the most complete Islamic medieval city in the world,” according to my Cadogan guidebook. I’d read so much about Marrakech that Fez seemed more of an adventure. I wanted to see Fez from the inside, not from the vantage of a hotel. Searching for a house, I located a site with an appealing description. The photographs showed the kinds of details that made me smile—a section of ceiling, a doorway. I could tell this was a loving restoration of an authentic old house. I filled in the availability questionnaire and sent an e-mail.

The next morning a long letter awaited me. Lori, the owner of the Fez house, told me that she once met Ed briefly when he was judging a poetry contest that she was administering. He’d shown her and the other poet some photographs of Bramasole as a ruin, just as we embarked on the restoration. The letter said that Ed’s photographs and description galvanized her to quit her job and go to Fez to study Arabic. Remembering Bramasole, she bought the medina house. Along the way, she’d read my books, which also, she said, bolstered her project. She married Hafid’s best friend. Her life completely changed. And so, she wrote, she wanted us to stay as her guests. As I read her e-mail, I felt the looping of long strands and read it over and over, marveling at how the motions of give and take remain mysterious, how one never can grasp causality. We accepted. We began a flurry of correspondence. We invited her and her husband to Bramasole.

Now I lie in her bed, happy to hear that birds sing in the medina. That ivory silk
djellaba
hanging on an iron rack belongs to the life Lori made for herself here.

Hafid
appears with breakfast. Dense semolina cakes, a fried crepe, coffee made in a Moka pot, and fresh orange juice. We have slept away the obstacle course we traversed to get to this roof open to the white sky.

Hafid takes us to see a five-hundred-year-old house that has been partially restored. Architecture speaks a clear language, translatable by all. This medina house says: privacy is paramount. Doors and windows face the inner courtyard, not the street. Inside the house you are not to be seen. The three-story interior lavishes ideas of coolness, tranquillity, and meditation on anyone who steps inside the one door. The intact carved plaster panels look like enormous lace handkerchiefs. The courtyard gives a view—look up—of the outside and lights the rooms, though you can always step back into an alcove of shadows. Desert people must always love shadows as much as the sound of running water. I would like to see the house when rain instead of sunlight falls to the blue-and-white-tile ground floor. Within the house, I feel a flow and a sense of connection. Back stairs and twisted passageways lead to catwalks around the courtyard. Off the catwalk are fiercely decorated rooms often opening to smaller tiled alcove rooms. I’m surprised to see the exact patterns and colors that I saw on floors and walls in Andalucía. Moors and Jews exiled from Spain settled in Fez, bringing back skills and crafts with them. Hafid says, “You should buy a house in Fez medina. Very cheap for Americans.”

“How much?” I ask, looking at the graceful arabesques of verses from the Koran carved above diamond-patterned tile.

“Twenty thousand, thirty thousand at most.”