Gabriela Ybarra

My time in Santa Maddalena has been useful and enriching in ways I did not expect. I could anticipate long walks in the hilly Tuscan landscape and working and living in rooms decorated with character and taste. Before leaving Madrid for Florence, I had seen several pictures of the house, including the one of Edmund White reading a book in a bathtub embellished with hand-painted birds. However, I could have never imagined how time works in this estate. Here it is possible to travel across the years and have the chance to meet Beatrice’s long-gone friends, visitors, ancestors and pets. And of course, Grisha, Beatrice’s husband, who I always had the feeling that might appear for lunch or to recover his studio to write one more novel where he could explain how is life on the other side. I worked in all the different places of the house that I could, because everywhere there seemed to be someone to meet or something to see: a Turkish prince, a pug chewing a 1995 stick.

Beatrice has several talents that I admire: she is able to make you feel comfortable in her house, she is a great oral storyteller and she is a master of her own particular craft of creating spaces that can defy time. In Santa Maddalena every object is placed to build a narrative and it is a privilege as a visitor to become part of the plot. While I travelled through Beatrice’s long and rich life, I also had the chance to reconnect with my own childhood, when the answer to “what’s for dinner?” was always a surprise and objects appeared to be alive. I want to thank Beatrice, my co-guests, and everyone working and cooking at Santa Maddalena for taking care of me. I left with a manuscript full of ghosts to continue developing back home.