July 15, 2010
A working kitchen has finally emerged from the rubble like a phoenix rising. After two nail-biting years. No longer do I boil up boxed soup on a hot plate, despair, mix paint around with a carrot stick, despair, write on a plaster-encrusted sawhorse lit by a bare bulb. I have a real table, lights, a working stovetop. Not just any stovetop, amici, but a Renzo Piano one. (Renzo Piano is the Italian architect who designed the Pompidou Center, the new wing of the Chicago Art Institute, etc.) The stovetop is a piece of impeccable Italian design, though tricky to light and hard to clean (makes perfect sense as form usually trumps function in Italy).
Flies buzz in tight circles. The Iblean light beats in every morning, shining off the mirror-like floor.
The centerpiece of the kitchen is the cathedral dome out the window, and the soundtrack to my life are the bells, scaring me out of bed at 7am, marking the passing of each quarter hour, ringing for the dead, for weddings, for evening vespers, for morning mass, and for festa—four crazy-making days straight.
I love my Sicilian kitchen, and I’m grateful for each day I spend there. (What are you grateful for? Come on, tell us.)
***
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May 17, 2010
Doing the bathroom twice was not fun.
In the aftermath of Round One, I was tempted to give up and flee Sicily for good.
 Results of Round One “You get no respect from your crew,” noted a friend. She persuaded a local bigwig to throw his weight around, Sicilian-style, as my proxy.
That did the trick.
Early one morning a new piastrellista, tile setter, showed up on my doorstep smelling of cologne and rubbing sleep from his eyes. He toiled away in a no-nonsense fashion, furiously attacking his predecessor’s work. Glass shattered kaleidoscopically.
“Io sistemo tutto,” he kept repeating. I systematize all. (Sistemare is one of the highest Italian virtues.)
To fuel his fury, I ran to the local bar for tiny cups of thick black coffee and sweet ricotta tarts.
Round Two produced an apple-green bathroom. The tiles are ceramic and plain—not the pricey designer ones of yore. But you know what? Good riddance to those fancy-pants glass tiles. I like the brighter cheap-o ones better.
 Results of Round Two I hate to trivialize Andre Gide’s words by using them in this mundane context, but I’ll do it anyway: “One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”
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April 12, 2010
…
Into the cramped space under this arch—hardly big enough for a closet—I plan to stuff an entire bathroom: sink, toilet, shower, heat rack, mirror, towel racks. The project manager is insisting on a bidet (he says no Italian can live without one), but you’d have to put your foot in the bidet to squeeze into the shower.
This is part of the cantina, the old wine cellar that is slowly morphing into guest quarters.
I plan to expose as much stone as possible inside and above the arch. The back wall, which needs to be waterproof, will be a sea of tiny tiles. Tiles the blue of a storm-tossed Ionian Sea.
Beastly expensive tiles.
I knew nothing about the cost when I ordered. I didn’t bother to ask the price. I figured: they’re just tiles made right here in Italy, not some expensive import. How much could a few little tiles cost?
The boxes finally arrived from Milan, along with the bill. My eyes popped. I had to read it over and over. I could feel my face on fire.
“Well, you ordered glass tiles,” the project manager says. What did you expect?”
I did notice how lustrous they were, but I had no idea they were glass.
I thumb through the instruction manual that comes with the tiles. The installation looks complicated. “Are you sure the mason is up to this?” I ask the project manager. The mason seems to have perfected the art of banging and pounding, but I’ve never seen him do anything delicate with his thick, calloused hands. Do I trust him with my treasures? Has he ever installed anything of the sort?
“Non preoccuparti,” says the project manager, winking. Don’t worry.
This is the favorite phrase down here. It usually means trouble.
But who am I to argue?
***
..
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March 10, 2010
xx
My husband, newly arrived on the scene, has clawed his way down to stone. I phone the project manager with the news.
The crew turns up the next day with hammers and chisels. Now that Kim is here, the garrulous workers completely ignore me, peppering him with questions and concerns—never mind that he doesn’t speak one iota of Italian.
Something about a manly presence in the house has lit a fire under the crew. They really get cracking. Chink chink chink. Chunks of plaster fall like overripe fruit, unveiling enormous blocks of tawny stone.
Madonna! They look pretty freakin’ old. I’m prone to wild mood swings in Sicily, and now I’m on the upswing.
“Stones from the old Norman castello!” say nosey neighbors who wander in the house through the open front door, wondering what all the racket is.
They tell me the entire neighborhood scavenged rubble from the castle that once stood on this site before it crumbled in Ragusa Ibla’s great earthquake of 1693.
 Norman castle in Ragusa Ibla before 1693 earthquake, copyright S. Tumino Finding the ancient Norman rocks is a delicious surprise.
There are more surprises to come in the near future, though none nearly so pleasant.
***
xxx
Win this book!!!!!
I love this tiny up-to-date (2009) guidebook. It packs in information in the form of many top 10 lists. It includes charming out-of-the-way places—the author knows the hidden nooks and crannies of Sicily—and a few fold-out maps.
HOW? Between now and March 26, write a comment on any of my blogposts. The best comment wins. (“Best” could be funniest, most enlightening, most touching…)
March 1, 2010
The roof’s been fixed; the rain’s been staunched.
xxx
…xxxxx
…
xxx
xxx
I turn my attention to the interior of the house.
Please find me some old stones, I implore. Vi prego. There must be stone under the many layers of plaster and wall tile. Let’s expose it!
“What do you need old stones for, anyway? asks the project manager, tossing his head impatiently. “If you want stone, we can put pietra finta, fake stone, on the walls.”
Fake stone? Could he be serious?
“It’ll be faster and cheaper than looking all over the house for old stone. It looks better, too.”
“But,” I wail, “I love old stuff! We don’t have old stuff in the Stati Uniti!!!! That’s why I’m in Sicily!”
I long to wrap history around me like a well-worn cape. Sicilians, having lived among ruins for millennia, want to shed the old cape for something flashier.
***
A week or so later, I get a call in Rome. “Non c’e pietra.” There’s no stone.
I’m stunned. This is an old Sicilian house. There has to be stone. Or have I managed to purchase the one and only stone-free house in all of Italy?
***
There’s a new twist to the plot. My husband decides to travel from the U.S. to far-flung Ragusa Ibla to see for himself what’s going on. It’s the first time he and the house will meet—nearly a year after I’ve bought it—and I’m nervous. His interest in the project has not been keen. What’ll he think?
When he arrives at our mossy-smelling home late one afternoon, there’s rubble wherever you look. He wears a fixed frown and raises an eyebrow.
Then he hunts around for a tool. There’s nothing in the house but a vintage can opener. He climbs a ladder in the salone and starts scratching at the vaulted ceiling. He claws away with his rusty little can opener until fingers start to bleed.
“So who says there’s no pietra,” he yells from atop the ladder. “Look at this.”
Peeking through the plaster is a hint of beautiful stone.
x
He comes down from the ladder and steps onto the balcony with a wan smile. Plaster has settled into his hair. The sky is full of evening light; the bells toll as if they’re going mad. The small smile transforms into a dual-dimpled grin.
x
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