Torregreca Life, Death and Miracles

Foreword to Torregreca: Life, Death and Miracles in a Southern Italian Village by Frances Mayes "How long does it take to get to Urbino?" I ask Ed. "When is the right time to fertilize olives?" "Where does the accent fall in 'Maritima' ?" "How long was a Roman mile?" "I don't know," he answers. "Ask Ann." Later he asks me, "Will we need to buy a chain saw?" "Do you think the shutters must be oiled every year?" "Poliminia was the muse of what?" "Where will we get the well tested?" I look up from my book. "Call Ann--she would know." My husband and I bought a gone-to-ruin little villa in Tuscany. As we were about to launch into restoration, we were invited to lunch at thecasa colonicaof expatriate French and Filipino writers we'd met at another summer lunch given by a British and French couple. They'd heard that American poets had been crazy enough to buy the long abandoned house near theirs and simply had walked up the driveway and introduced themselves. Suddenly, we realized, a colony of foreign writers lives in these hills. The table is set under a shady grape arbor. Cold salads and wine, fruit, a grand cheese souffle somehow steamed on top of the stove. Heat shimmers around the olive trees in the distance. On the stone patio, we're cool. We're introduced to the other guests: novelists, journalists, translators, a nonfiction writer--all expatriates who have restored old properties. One guest is Ann Cornelisen, a writer I have long admired. She moved to Cortona after living for years in the post-war wild south of Italy and then in Rome. I knew from book jackets that she lived here "in a 13th century farmhouse." I even had been given her telephone number by a mutual acquaintance in Georgia, the home of her parents and where she now lives. Cold calls always have been hard for me to make and I am a little awed by the woman who wrote, in luminous, austere prose, about the dark, raucous, convoluted lives of women in the south of Italy. WhenWomen of the Shadowscame out in 1976, I was intrigued by these lives, so far from my own in mellow California at the height of the women's movement, and intrigued, too, by the woman who chose to live in severest Basilicata, driving the pen across page after page, recording the toughness, humor and cunning of women so different--or were they? When I readTorregreca(actually written first), I knew it was one of those blessed books that I would reread from time to time, teach from, and pass around to friends. It struck me with the same power as James Agee'sLet Us Now Praise Famous Men, a book it resembles, not in style, but in its penetration of a time and place. Ann is across the table and down from me. I see her cover her glass with her hand as Alain starts to pour wine. "You know I never drink at lunch." Ah, the austerity. She wears a blue cotton shirt with some vaguely religious looking medallion around her neck. She has the kind of dead-level blue gaze that I associate with a steely intellect. I notice her fair skin and catch an inflection in her voice that I think has a touch of my own accent. I lean forward and venture, "Is that a trace of a Southern accent?" "I certainly hope not," she snaps--do I see a hint of a smile?--and quickly turns back to the famous translator beside her. I look down into my salad. By the time Ben serves his lemon gelato made with mascarpone, several empty wine bottles stand on a side table. The intense sun is now caught in the limbs of a chestnut. Ed and I join in where we can but this is a lively group of old friends, almost like a family gathering, with years of shared experiences. Claire talks about her research trips to Bulgaria and Russia; Tom tells a story aboutCornelisen, Ann is the author of 'Torregreca Life, Death and Miracles', published 2002 under ISBN 9781586420444 and ISBN 1586420445.