Brandimarte put on an exhibition of silver emboss works and of some of my paintings in Bari where we sold everything.
Coming back to Florence we stopped in S.Casciano at the restaurant "Il mulinaccio delle streghe" and ate with Lelo Livi who owns a hut at Punta Ala.
While eating we bargained about the rent of the hut that we intended to have for ten years in order to live there as heremits: Brandimarte would write and I would paint. The following spring we went to the hut to arrange it according to our plans and many local inhabitants came to have a look around.
Brandimarte stayed in Florence during the week and went there with workmen on the week ends. The summer went by. Our friends sometimes came to look at the new appearance of the house.
We knew some local fishermen who gave us fresh fish or ate with us what they had caught. I sometimes went to fish with them.
Our friends often came to Follonica to supply us with food, although we had enough bread and fish for our hosts. In a feew weeks our house was full of food and people as well.
The hut became a meeting place and during the week -ends it was so crowded with people that we could not succeed in dealing with house keeping and cooking for everybody. At the beginning of the spring Brandimarte had the marvellous idea of arranging an inn at the hut. And so we did.
He collected his workers at Punta Ala and in a couple of weeks the hut was a beautiful inn which could host about one hundred people.
The great adventure began: 4 or 5 fishermen's wives worked for us so that the restaurant was always full.
Artists, showbusinessmen, actors came often to the inn together with curious people who came to eat with them.
We had a female horse Etruria and many dogs: Poldo Popolino, Adone, Amind and Camilla; there was also a female pig we called Nilde.
At the break of the dawn I saw a man near the hut.
He was ragged and still asleep when I came near him and before asking him for something he needed he stared at me and answered: "Don't botherr me, I'm waiting for my friends." "Sorry" I replied and went on my way.
When I went back home he was still there and asked me "Ehi, do you want to have breakfast with me?" "Thank you" I said and accepted the invitation in order not to offend him and since a good smel of grilled fish came out from a tin.
Then I went to the hut to leave my shopping bags and to bring a spoon a bowl and a bottle of wine. I had met the most important figure of my life. He was not a talkative person and then I lernt from him that he was born in Val Paraise in Chile.
When his fishermen's friends came he went with them leaving me a fish and saying: "Good bye, see you soon!"
On a sunday he came to the hut with his nephew to show it to him. Brandimarte was there and I introduced him to the Chilean who talked to him. Then we ate all togheter.
They seem to like each other so that Brandimarte asked him to work for us: "If you work for us you will grill the fish and the meat; we 'll pay you, of course!" After the salary have been decided I suggested: "You can arrange to sleep here in the hut."
The following day at dawn he came, then we went together at the town council of Castiglione della Pescaia to arrange his residence permit.
I lernt that he had a wife whose name was Alba, she lived in Piombino but he cannot meet her for an unknown reason to me. At the beginning of summer the work became harder and harder and the staff was not enough to deal with it, so I proposed to the Chilean to ask his wife to come and work for us too.
He immediately called his wife who accepted the job and came to Punta Ala the following day, chilly after the long ride from Piombino on her motorcycle. She was a tiny woman, with a man's voice and a hard worker. She used to work with a cigarette in her mouth, that had probably caused the changing in her voice.
She was proud of her husband who had been all over the world and in prison for political reasons.
This was the lifestyle at the hut where many vips came to eat and where a familiar atmosphere was evident among the people of the staff.
I have never talked about my partner Lorenza. We were soulmates. How many joys and sorrows we experienced together. She managed a silver shop at Punta Ala together with her sister Gianna who attended Brandimarte manifacturing firm.
In a spring day of 1973 we received the injunction to destroy the hut because a bigger harbour was to be built. When the destined day came I laid the table as beautiful and elegant as I could while outside the restaurant cranes and workers were waiting for me to come out. I invited them to came in and so they did: they lifted the hut and destroyed it in the twinkling of an eye. Now it was just a beautiful dream!
Lorenza, Gianna, Cristina and the silver shop were real and I was white haired and bearded but I was beginning to live in 2000 thousand, in a new Century!