THTooLongDon'tRead

I could tell you that “Via Solferino” meant “Sunset Boulevard” in Italian, but that would be a lie and undoubtedly cast doubt on the rest of my story.  The story that follows is true; embellishment or omission of the details is due solely to the passage of time and the vagaries of human memory. 

I spent my junior year in a study abroad program; I chose Florence, Italy, a decision I will never regret.  It was an exceptional experience that has continued to influence my life.  But the story of Via Solferino did not occur until a few years later, after I had graduated and spent eighteen months working and scraping and saving the money to finance my first return to Italy.

At twenty-three I knew that before I got settled into any sort of career path (read ‘rut’), I absolutely had to get back to Italy.  In the fall of 1982 I packed my bags and headed back to Italy.  I had a roundtrip ticket, money in the bank, and a few friends in Italy to help me get settled.  My goals were diverse and included:  finding love, finding work, learning the language, and soaking up some more of that damn fine Italian (read ‘eye-talian’) culture.  Three out of four ain’t too bad.

Through some stroke of luck I found part-time work teaching English at an American language school.  In the words of the director of the school, “One cannot live full-time on part-time pay.”  The sad truth was that with what she paid, one could not live part-time on full-time pay.  That being what it was, like many workplace environments, the co-workers were the best part of the job.  My fellow starving expatriates became a network connecting me to many useful things.  Most germane to this story is the connection to Via Solferino.

Signora Massi had to have been 75 years old in 1982.  I make this estimation based on my belief that she was a woman in her prime and glory during the height of the fascist period in Italy.  She called the American school where I worked looking for a reference to the “right sort” of person who might need to rent a room.  I am not sure if I really was the “right sort” but my pal who handled the front desk at the school gave me a glowing recommendation knowing that I wanted to find a better living arrangement than the small room in a cheap hotel that I had rented on a monthly basis.

I met Signora Massi to see the room and talk about the rent.  Via Solferino is in a relatively new part of Florence—new enough to lack the cramped charm of the city center, yet old enough to be shabby and faded.  Most of the buildings lining the wide residential street, with a median in the center, were large and boxy.  What could have been a very charming boulevard was mostly desolate and strewn with dog crap.  Via Solferino #43 was no exception to the neighborhood.

I cannot recall with total clarity my first encounter with Signora Massi but it must have gone well enough for me to agree to what would later seem to be an exorbitant sum.  Her home was, upon first impression, truly impressive.  A large mirrored foyer lined with large, heavy antiques, ornate frames, and gilded candlesticks opened onto other large and similarly furnished rooms.  There were fourteen rooms not counting the four bathrooms.  My rent would entitle me to a small and modestly furnished bedroom just off of the kitchen, of which I could make use.  While there were four baths, I would be allowed access to one, conveniently located adjacent to my room.  Compared to the cramped and spartan room I had rented for the past month, Via Solferino struck me as spacious and luxurious.  In a temporary flight of fancy, I must have imagined myself holding court in the grand main salon when I agreed to the terms of the arrangement.

Marguerita Massi was a widow with two sons, one a gynecologist, the other a psychiatrist.  I met the former but never the latter.  It seems she and her second son were estranged and only in hindsight can I imagine why.  In addition to her sons, she had her faithful dog, Whiskey, the quintessential Yorkshire terrier.  Being a dog lover, I thought the three of us would get a long just fine.  I was mistaken.

Signora Massi played the grand dame almost as well as Gloria Swanson.  When she was dressed to go out one could tell that her clothes, while old, were tailor-made of fine Italian fabrics, albeit in the forties or fifties.  When she would stay in, which was most often, I would often find her in bizarre and eclectic ensembles.  I vividly recall returning from teaching a morning class to find her at home in her Chinese red silk embroidered pajamas, strappy platform shoes that must have dated back to Mussolini, and her fur coat.  Another time she was cooking with her apron on and a jacquard throw draped around her like a cape.  I remember thinking to myself, “That probably is not flame-retardant…”  Her hair was a shade which is difficult to define, somewhere between yellow and blond.  She had a fondness for pin curls and marcel waves.  I know she must have been pretty and stylish in her youth, and probably vain as well, for she continued to use make-up even after it was necessary or wise to do so.  Certainly the steadiness of her hand, or lack thereof, was made abundantly clear when she applied her ‘face’.  The eyebrows that she penciled in were in relationship to her natural brow much as a paved freeway is to the old dirt road it was built to replace.  Her face had the texture of crepe paper with a light dusting of talcum powder.  The lips that were drawn on to the narrow, furrowed lines of her mouth only vaguely suggested their intention.

One of the first things she did for me upon my moving into the room was to have a spare refrigerator moved in for my use.  This way I could keep my food separate from hers and also keep it fresh and wholesome.  Theoretically speaking that is.  Until you have opened a refrigerator to see and smell two dead pheasants replete with most of their original plumage, you can only image how inviting that refrigerator was.  When I inquired about the birds, why they were there and when would they be leaving, she laughed—apparently she had forgotten that her son had gone hunting and had brought them back to her to prepare.  I think she suggested that I join them for dinner.  I think I declined.

In short order after my arrival, she regaled me with tales of the grand days of Italy’s past (read ‘fascist era’).  Those were the days when a woman of her social standing could hire a nice Italian woman to cook and clean for her.  While she could surely still afford the luxury of help, she chose to forego it rather than have one of the many extra-European immigrants come into her home.  I cannot say that she blatantly spewed hateful epithets, but the message was clear, Italy was worse off for all these undesirable aliens that could not be trusted to clean and cook for a genteel lady of advancing years and comfortable means.  Her unwillingness to trust her cleaning products to a non-native Italian resulted in what, by the time I moved in, was a deplorable state of cleanliness.  Rather than risk certain food-borne illnesses, I opted for a lot of take out food that did not require preparation.  There were, however, those occasions when I could not gracefully avoid the consumption of her cuisine.

At one point during that winter I was in bed for several days with a terrible flu.  It was one of those nasty achy, painy, sick-to-your-stomach, constantly in the bathroom kind of viruses.  I remember sleeping a lot and alternating between fevers and chills.  Bless her decrepit little heart, Signora Massi took it upon herself to feed me “in bianco”, the Italian remedy for all that ails you:  only eat white things—rice, potatoes, plain pasta.  If you don’t die of boredom and recover they will credit the diet.  While I am certain it does have its merits, even in my feverish state I was more than a little leery to ingest anything coming from this particular kitchen.  After she fed me she must have ventured out for her daily constitutional because I remember making it the nearest phone to call my friend Bruno; nearly in tears, I asked him to come visit me and to bring food.  I spoke to him recently about this and he did not recall what seemed to me a supreme act of kindness. 

I survived the flu; I survived her cooking.  I am alive today and the memories of my illness bring to mind the wonders of my assigned bathroom.  I always felt that considering the amount I paid in rent as well as the fact that there were at least three other full baths in the apartment she should have had the decency to not use mine.  The room itself, long and narrow, was tiled floor to ceiling with institutional ceramic tile.  The fixtures all matched and were arranged single-file like immobile porcelain chess pieces—toilet, bidet, sink, and shower.  And not a single surface on which to set things to avoid the inevitable flooding that plagues Italian bathroom design.  Now about the shower—while I was glad to have a fully functional shower—there was a singular design flaw that made it awkward to use and contributed to the uncontrollable flooding.  No standard shower curtain would have been as difficult or cumbersome to use as the unique method used in the Massi house: venetian blind.  This is the first and last example of this use I have ever seen.  Let me assure you, it is not effective or user friendly.  I tried various approaches to getting in and out of the shower, each presented pros and cons.  Raising the blind from inside after the shower was awkward and resulted in a burst of water over everything.  To sneak past the slats with the blind down presented risk of sharp, painful slices without the protection of clothing as well as unwanted water just about everywhere.  A fine case of damned if you do and damned if you do.  If her filthy little dog ever looked groomed, I would have suspected that she had bathed the little rat of hers in my bidet.

Over the months spent living at Via Solferino #43 I improved my Italian and enjoyed living in a neighborhood not overrun by tourists.  In spring of 1983 I gave up the room in Via Solferino to move to the seaside resort of Forte dei Marmi.  My adventures there soon overshadowed the time spent with Signora Massi making them seem almost normal, but then, that is a whole other story.

To truly envision Signora Massi and her home simply imagine that Federico Fellini had directed Sunset Boulevard and that a faded Anna Magnani played Norma Desmond.  I, of course, played the role of Joe Gillis, hack writer; luckily for me there was no swimming pool.