Here I am again stunned by the views. The so-called “street,” Via Tragara, takes us past house after gated house, where glimpses of the dramatic south coast of the island come into view between patches of lemon trees and climbing vines. The houses here all have names like La Gentilina, Villa Celeste, and Villa Grotta Azzurra and tease you through the gates. I want to stop and marvel at them and think about who lives in them and what it must be like to wake up each day with a view like that, to have breakfast and coffee on the edge of the world.
But Felisa is now making a clucking noise like an angry chicken and I keep up the pace. I’ve only got my handbag on me and I’m starting to wonder, if I have to spend the night here, what the hell I’m going to wear. I don’t have my face wash, my toothbrush, deodorant—nothing. It’s enough to send me into a bit of a tizzy but I take a deep breath and keep walking.
“Do cars ever come down here?” I ask. The lane seems barely wide enough for even one car.
She shakes her head. “No cars here, only carts.”
“Like golf carts?”
“Only carts.”
“How do you move, though? Like, with all your furniture?”
“Carts,” she repeats, exasperated. “Hurry.”
I don’t know why we’re hurrying. It’s not like I had an appointment or anything. In fact I think it’s pretty commendable on my part that one moment I was standing on the beach in Positano and the next moment I’m here on a job interview gone rogue.
As the road dips down a bit toward massive outcrops of rocks that jut out over the sea, the houses that flank the hill above and below us spread out. Soon, it’s just cypress, eucalyptus, palm trees, and fragrant periwinkle bushes. The air hums with cicadas.
Finally, we stop by an impressive cast-iron gate, bookended by a massive stone wall. The number 33 is done up in fancy tile and a copper plaque reads Villa dei Limoni Tristi.
“The house of sad lemons?” I ask, doing a poor translation in my head, but Felisa is ignoring me, sticking a giant skeleton key into the lock. I’m about to ask why she doesn’t have a modern keypad but realize she’d ignore me anyway.
The gate swings open with a dramatic creak and I step inside. While she locks the gate behind us, I take it all in. It’s like we’re in the middle of a garden run wild. The grass is coarse and knee-high, weaving around overgrown shrubs and pomegranate trees. There are lemon trees, too, and in keeping with the house’s strange name, they do look a little sad. The lemons are huge—the size of your hand—and weigh down the trees, their boughs reaching out to us. Overripe fruit litters the ground, bees swarming happily around it. Back when I was in high school and full of hopes and dreams and shit like that, I actually fancied going into botany, or at least flower arranging, so all the beautiful flora here was doubly exciting for me.
Through the middle of it all is a crumbling cobblestone path that leads down a slight slope to the house itself. From where we are and the angle of the hill, the house doesn’t look all that big. It’s built of flat stones stacked on top of one another, similar to the wall running around the grounds, with vines and deep orange Campsis flowers climbing its rugged planes.
But as Felisa bustles past me and I follow down a path that turns to stairs, leading us past fragrant lavender and rosemary bushes at the side of the house, I realize there is so much more to the house than I thought. A lot more. From the front it looks like one story, but from the back it’s two, with what looks to be an additional attic area above the second story. The house is enormous and the ceilings have to be well over ten feet high. And that’s just one surprise. Before us is a large outdoor area made up of red brick and tile that stretches from the open back door all the way to what seems to be the edge of a cliff. There’s a blue swimming pool here that appears to be only half full and a wooden bench overlooking a stunning view, hidden by chipped and cracked terracotta pots of unkempt flowers. Grapevines climb over a pergola, which shelters a massive outdoor dining area that looks like it hasn’t been used in a long time.
The whole place is stunning in a shabby-chic way. It’s like an old-school millionaire built the house of his dreams on the side of cliff, the blue sea at his feet, and then thought of a new dream and kind of forgot about this place. It all looks a touch neglected, which I guess would be creepy if it wasn’t so charming.
And stunning. Because holy hell. No matter that the tiles need some power washing, I could totally see myself sitting on that bench in the mornings and having a cappuccino while watching the boats head to and from shore. The breeze wafts in from the sea and carries the scent of fresh herbs and bracing salt and lemons, the way I imagine sunshine should smell. I close my eyes and breathe in deep, trying to capture it somewhere in my brain.
“Sit here,” Felisa says. I look over and see her gesturing to the table and chairs underneath the pergola. “I’ll go get the children first.”
Oh right. The reason why I’m here. She disappears into the house and suddenly I’m beyond nervous. Even though it’s been a bit strange and an inconvenience, now that I’m here I’m curious about the position; even a weird job would be better than no job at all.
I sit down on the chair, the linen cushion starchy and stiff under me, and wait. After a few moments of grappling with the view—some places are just too much for a person to absorb all at once—I crane my head to look at the house. A few wide, brick-lined steps lead up to a smaller patio and to an open door, through which I can kind of see inside the house. The walls are bright white and the floors look intricately tiled. I can just glimpse the end of a gilded frame on the wall.