Fur Elise

Lisa and Jeff have been gracious enough to share their little rental car on a day trip through the Chianti Classico region in the wooded hills of Tuscany. Lisa is a child therapist, specializing in creating little sandbox figures with which kids can express themselves in play. "The Hitler is the most popular," she told us, "Go figure." Jeff's a few years younger than Lisa, waist-length black hair, he's a marketing guy for a video game company. Yah, the long-hair connection too. Jeff's into his digital photography too, a nice quirky personal sensibility.

Directed by the earnestly eager-to-help female Australian accent of Jeff's GPS unit, we wind our way through a bewildering series of hills and dales, bumping up from watershed to watershed. This rugged terrain allowed the cities of Florence and Siena, separated by no more than 40 miles, to remain bitter rivals for centuries--it was just pretty hard to win any wars between them.

Well, it's all about tourism here now, but that's OK, we're tourists. I buy a polyester biking jersey with the gallo negro black rooster symbol of the local wine producers, sneer at the shorts, we sample a couple three glasses of the chianti, it's the stuff that comes in a bottle wrapped in straw, you can drink it all day and never get drunk.

Now we're getting kind of hungry start looking for a place to eat. Yeah, there we go, a hand-lettered sign ahead that reads "Ristorante, 600m". Jeff pulls onto the country road that heads off uphill to the left. "Wow," I say, "Look at that!" It's a big ring-necked pheasant scampering through rows of twisted grapevine. A red fox trots ominously close behind.

There's nothing at 600 meters, no restaurants, no further signs. That's only about a half mile, right? By now we've probably gone three or four miles. The girl in the GPS unit is unexpectedly silent. Jeff drives on, downshifting unnecessarily as we head uphill. The sun is beginning to filter the dusk, the shadows long. Behind us the pheasant has already died.

Suddenly the road swings through a wide, pyloned gate and ends. A massive villa sits ahead of us, a dark stucco wall twenty feet high, a hundred feet long or more, without doors or windows. Jeff pulls the rental up in an empty parking lot. He and Lisa leap from the car in a single-minded pursuit of food, Vickie and I hanging nervously behind. There's obviously no one here. Let's just go.

We walk down a long path, eventually reaching a place where the massive wall folds inward. Far, far off down a corridor, the small figure of a woman stands, dressed as a maid or waitress. Has she seen us? Apparently so, because she turns and flees deeper within. "Excusay!" Lisa calls loudly, hurrying after.

It's darker within, but we follow Lisa inside, and as we do we can begin to make out a melancholy air of piano music--it's Beethoven's spooky "Fur Elise," nah,nah,nah,nah,nah,nah...nah nah nah...nah nah nah. No other sound but the echo of our steps. The music grows louder and more frightening as we advance, played in a frenzy, over and over, with deep emotion, no variation or imagination, no mercy fur Elise. We turn the corner to a massive dining hall, hung with glistening chandeliers, perhaps a hundred tables, the room completely unoccupied except for the pianist, his back to us, at the far end. Should we say something? Cough?

Lisa jerks open the door behind which the maid has fled, astonishing an elderly man who is in the act of dressing, the black and white uniform of a maggiordomo. Behind him the maid cowers in confusion, babbling in Italian.

"Ha un tavolo per quattro?" Lisa inquires. It seems to upset the man. He shrugs his shoulders into a tight black jacket and turns to Lisa. "I'm very sorry," he says with an expressive wave of his hand, "we are completely booked this evening."

At the gesture I turn, ready at this point to run, discovering to my horror that the way out is now blocked by a hundred dinner guests standing in formal dinner attire and complete silence, eying us hungrily, not giving way, in fact crowding closer as more and more of the zombies press forward behind them.

"I'm so sorry," the maggiordomo continues. "Please come back another time. There are some excellent ristorantes just down the main road."

Which was where our next waiter, whose head had obviously been struck by an axe sometime in the recent past, served us a nice meal by candlelight on the terrace.
.