These days I'm waking up late to slatted light streaming in through the grey blue shutters in the morning, staccato sounds of engines and voices rising from the streets below rattle me into being. A long lost friend is often found silhouetted on the windowsill smoking calmly six floors high.
Coffee becomes our only routine and we sample different cafes daily. We perch among the pigeons on a thin balcony in the Piazza with sugared fingers and cocoa-covered legs as the inevitable result of a good cornetto. A Gatsby fueled whim is then indulged at the Caffe' Le Logge where peacock feathers gleam doubly in gilded mirrors and chandeliers, and our coffee is accompanied with black chocolate and almonds. We return there one evening with friends for an aperitivo. Skewering green olives, the Italians follow an unusually strong Spritz with an equally heavy Negroni and Erika takes Talisker, neither of which do much to relieve the suffocating humidity of the night into which we wander afterwards.
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| photo by Erika Lewis |
On other nights we cook together at home, over stuffing ourselves with Italian classics taken from a beautiful book of Erika's called 'POLPO' and mulling over future business ventures. We eat anchovy stuffed courgette flowers and divinely fresh buffalo mozzarella with basil and tomatoes. We roll thyme-scented Arancini and blitz rocket and walnuts in preparation for the party we are hosting later that evening. Chianti in hand, we attempt pizzette which burst with flavour but are let down by my cursed inability to get on with yeast. This is followed by a dessert of tiny saffron infused pears drizzled in amber moscato with whipped cream and pillows of meringue; all are defeated by it so it lingers sunken and sticky until breakfast the next day. The pears we had bought from a favourite character of mine at the Wednesday market, the beekeeper Luigi. Brown and stooped with quiet movements, he has always appeared suspicious of my foreignness, smiling a wise and closed smile, usually wordless. As usual he was selling a small selection of other things aside from honey, and the wooden crate of pears none larger than a wren in size caught both mine and Erika's eyes. I tentatively questioned Luigi about these and he gave us one each to try, telling me they were called 'uccellini' (little birds) by the locals, weighing out a kilo of them as he spoke, for which I paid next to nothing. Perhaps we gilded the lily, drowning them so in unctuous liquor, but it was delicious nonetheless.
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| photo by Erika Lewis |
Lazy Sundays are spent basking above the terracotta rooftops squinting out towards the mountains, listening to Paul Simon and dunking cantuccini in our coffee. A hummingbird moth flirts briefly with us and we talk of Dali and skulls and how some moths have no mouths. Idly, I paint my nails with iridescent rust. Later, we strike out for an ice cream at my preferred gelateria around the corner, where I usually choose strawberry and dark chocolate. Then, in a more energetic mood we go to feed the goats and the donkey at the old Orto where the enthusiastic goat warden's hearty laugh as he hands you crusts and looks on delightedly is infectious.
Another of our strolls, after not quite perfecting pizza at home, is with the sole intent of sampling what the local pizzerias have to offer. After stopping at various locations, seeking out fountains and retreating greedily to the shade with numerous paper bags, we conclude that Menchetti's is the best. This is closely followed however by our last buy which we were truthfully too full to appreciate, a spicy artichoke and spinach stuffed spiral at an unassuming sort of place on the way home. Soon, I'll be in Sicily with Marta and her family where I know that all such ideas of pizza will be usurped, more lazy days will be spent in the sun, on the beach, on boats and on mopeds. Even after a year has passed, I still can't quite fathom that I am here in Siena at all and it is tugging at my mind while I sleep and while I talk and say goodbyes as everyone leaves except me.
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| "Pizzette croccante" di casa nostra |
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Menchetti's (photo by Erika Lewis)
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