Florence in Ecstasy

by Jessie Chaffee

  He grabs the nose of one end, sliding it slowly off the support and resting it on my shoulder. He skirts around me, lifts the other end onto his own shoulder, and I can feel the full weight of it then. It is heavy, digs into the bone, and I have to reach up with both hands to keep it from toppling off.

  “Andiamo,” he instructs, and we walk the boat down the hall—“Ciao, Hannah of Boston,” Manuele says as we pass—out into the sun, down the brick steps, and onto the metal dock. It is a brilliant day. It doesn’t feel like a weekday in September. The sound of jazz from the Uffizi courtyard, the people leaning contentedly over the river’s walls, and the flashing of cameras on the old bridge all suggest that this is still summer, that life is still free and open.

  Correggio lifts the boat on his end and I mirror his movements. We spin the body, lower the spine down into the water. Then he grips the edge with one hand and offers me his other. I place one foot in—the boat shifts, the dock shakes—then the other, and crouch onto the small wooden seat, sick at the loss of solid ground. The river is empty today and I’m grateful for this. Correggio places my hand on the dock and squeezes it. “Un momento.” He disappears back into the dark tunnel and reemerges with two oars on his shoulder. He slides them into the metal casings, then holds the scull steady as I take the handles. Don’t let go, I think.

  But Correggio smiles encouragingly and, with an “a dopo,” pushes me off without a word of instruction. The momentum carries me away from the dock and the boat shifts side to side. He waves one last time before turning his back. I feel exposed, paralyzed, with nothing to anchor me. I look over my shoulder at the Ponte alle Grazie. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that I’d be facing away from the direction I’d be rowing. I will have to navigate without seeing where I’m going. The boat begins to spin of its own volition, shaking me to action. I need to start moving. I need to find a rhythm. I imagine myself from above then. This boat is a fish. No—this boat is a bird with long wooden wings. Or a person with arms outstretched and curved palms striped red and white reaching down into the river.

  Keeping my legs locked and using only my upper body to start, as I’d watched others do, I dip each oar. As I pull back against the water’s resistance, I imagine those wooden arms are mine, those striped palms mine, my hands skimming just below the surface. But I dig too deep. One oar catches and the boat pitches left as the end surfaces with a splash. I breathe in, breathe out, realign the oars in a T, then lean my body forward and push the oars behind me, a diver preparing to launch. I close my eyes, dip them again, not too deep. I pull—my muscles shaking—and watch the wooden arms fold forward, taking with them a gulp of river. The ends emerge in unison this time, and I shift the handles so they are parallel to the water’s surface, palms facing the sky, like St. Catherine in ecstasy, arms open, ready to receive.

  I look over my shoulder—I’m close to the bridge now and I’ll need to turn. I dip one oar into the water and use the other to pull myself around, the boat rocking one way and then the other, until I’m facing the Ponte alle Grazie. As I make my way back toward the Ponte Vecchio, I add my legs, sliding the seat forward, pushing against the footrests, then pulling with my arms. There’s something wrong, though. The line of water in my wake is not straight but jagged. My right oar hits a rock with a loud clunk and the rattle reverberates through me. I stop, my body pulsing—I’m too close to the wall. I look at the club, directly across the river from me now, but there is no one on the embankment to witness this. I push off the rock, then use one oar to pull the boat back to center as I approach the Ponte Vecchio. I don’t look up at the bodies leaning over the wall or at the sky bright above them. I keep my gaze fixed on a point behind me as I pass into the shadow of the middle arch. The underbelly of the bridge is brushed with soft reflections, and I can hear the water licking lightly at the supports. I pause, happy to be hidden here, and bring the oars into the boat. Their palms curl around my feet, dripping. The boat begins to spin on its own again, and I take one last breath of this cooler air before lifting the wooden arms and righting it.

  I take one stroke and then another. With each one, I feel more centered. When had I last felt so centered? How do you cut so close to the bone? Back then, yes, even when the comments changed direction, praise replaced by suspicion and carefully framed questions. They were envious, I thought. The nerves in my face went numb, and still I felt centered. I stopped sleeping, I stopped bleeding, and still I felt sure.

  May. I was seated in the museum’s courtyard, where I went when I needed to mute the world. Students were scattered around the garden and up and down the arcaded walkways, separated into small groups. They were drawing and occasionally speaking, their voices absorbed into the vacant air above. They had each chosen a different model: Persephone, her hip cocked to one side; mosaicked Medusa screaming; a maenad reaching out to a figure unseen.

  I sat cross-legged at a distance, watching. In the museum’s café the cash register chimed and the sound hung in the air like a tuning fork struck. The world was foggy but I was clear. Centered. I could feel each of my vertebrae, buttons against the stone column, shallow ditches dug around the bone. My ring was loose, my pants were loose, my joints were loose, unbound. I was changing form.

  The galleries upstairs held endless cycles of love and pain. I understood this movement. I heard Julian’s voice grasping for me even as I said, Leave me alone. And now he was gone. He had disappeared, too. Or had been replaced, as though in reaching for one thing, I’d found something else entirely.

  It was raining, drops tap-tapping on the glass ceiling above, and the light in the courtyard went blue and then gray. One of the students cried out, her voice cutting through the fog—when had the world grown so loud? She shrieked again.

  Then loud heels on marble and there was Claudia, looking down at me.

  “Hannah, here you are,” she said in a tone that suggested that I was no different from the students, in need of a chaperone.

  I struggled to get up, ticked through excuses in my mind, then said nothing because what did it matter? Claudia gave a small smile, put a hand on my arm, but it was false. Look at you is what her eyes said. She was wrong. She could not see who I was becoming. There were these things that I could be.

  “Robert wants to see you.”

  “All right,” I said.

  The cash register chimed and I followed her out slowly. I was well sculpted. Close to something.

  I don’t know how much time has passed when another figure appears on the river. I’ve made a single loop, under the three bridges and back, and am approaching the Ponte Vecchio again when I see a flash of silver catching up to me. It’s Peter. I stop rowing as he passes.

  “Ciao, Hannah,” he says, not slowing his pace but smiling broadly as he glides by, leaving a clean line framed by a perfect series of rings behind him. I look over my shoulder and watch as he and the boat become a single form again and pass under the next bridge. He is a bird, he and that silver scull, a bird. Would I ever have that grace?

  There are these things that I could be, I had thought in the gray light of the museum. But what did I know then? In the months that were a haze, were a dream—the world coming into and out of focus, the contrast sharper than the movement from the dark hum under the bridge to the sunlight on the other side—in those months, a voice arrived and kept returning. If only you were… It did not arrive as I had expected. Its grip was soft at first, and I welcomed it. This is mine, I said, wrapping it around me. I gave it words. I gave it language. I heard it, I embraced it, and I replied. Digging ditches around the bone, I replied. If only I were…

  But now, pulling long these wooden arms, I know that there are things that I will never be. Never the bird that is Peter in that boat, never my sister’s ordered apartment, never the S of the Italian women. The thought catches and catches and catches. It comforts me, terrifies me, breaks my heart. If only you were… You will never be. Pitching one way, then the other.

  There must be a b
alance between the things that I can be and the things that I will never be. There must be a time when the spine of this boat will hold the body steady along a straight course. There must be words for that moment.

  Chapter Seven

  The descent into the club, Manuele’s greeting, Correggio’s smile, the weight of the boat on my shoulder, the explosion of sun on my face, the trembling of the metal dock under my feet, the settling into the seat, the footrests gripping my heels, the oars sliding into place, the first pull of water. This all becomes habit, this all becomes familiar.

  You are here, each stroke says. You. Are. Here.

  I go every morning. The river is quiet early in the day and I like the solitude. For the first time since my arrival in Florence, I don’t feel lonely—it is only natural that I do this alone. My muscles ache in the mornings not from tossing and turning all night, but from this movement: sliding forward, pulling back, tracing a long ellipse. After a few days, the ache dulls and I begin doing five laps instead of four, up under three bridges and back.

  In the afternoons I have lunch at my café—a salad, but with more to it now, and sometimes even a cup of soup. Except for the students, the city is less crowded with tourists—all returned to school and work in other countries—and I visit the city’s churches. I take in the simple facade of Santo Spirito, the tombs of Michelangelo and Galileo in Santa Croce, the languishing figures of Dawn and Dusk in the Medici Chapels, all the things I’ve never seen but learned about years ago, and that past hovers close like a half-remembered dream. I take these things in and I do not think about my weight, do not look in the mirror, do not step onto the scale. I’m doing this on faith—not looking and not measuring. When did this start? It doesn’t matter anymore. I need to move forward.

  I no longer go out to dinner and I stay clear of Dario’s restaurant. Instead, I walk to the supermarket in the evenings, weigh out tomatoes, zucchini, and eggplant on the scale and press their accompanying pictures to print the price. I have the young woman behind the deli counter measure due etti of cheese. She knows me well enough now that I no longer have to ask. I add rustic bread or a bag of potatoes. I prepare my meals at home and have just a single glass of wine. I’m falling in love with the details of my daily life here; I’m falling in love with this city.

  I avoid Signora Rosa. The one time I do see her, I assure her that, yes, I will be out by the end of the month. I write Kate every three days with my list, call her once, and in this way, I keep that world silent. And when I receive an e-mail from Claudia with the subject “checking in,” I don’t open it. There will be nothing to upset this equilibrium.

  Two weeks pass, and suddenly my departure looms close. I should be making plans, looking for jobs. But I don’t. I need this time. I need this time like I need the light.

  Monday morning as I’m leaving the club, my body glowing from being on the water, I find Luca seated in the little coffee bar reading a newspaper. His face opens up, deep lines appearing around his eyes, and with this, the past—my near collapse, our odd stroll back to my apartment—seems to vanish.

  “Come stai?” He stands and takes my hands. “Where did you go? You left Firenze?”

  “No, qui. I’ve been here.” My words are broken, hovering between languages. “I’ve been here every day.”

  I’d seen him several times from the water, bent until he arrived at the large glass doors, where he straightened, a lightness emerging in his step.

  “You’ve been in the palestra?”

  “No. In a boat—on the water.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “Brava,” he says. “You like this?”

  “It’s beautiful.” I pause, trying to convey the depth of it. “Molto calmo. Molto tranquillo. E anche… comforting.”

  “Sì. It is like a friend.”

  “Exactly.”

  Luca considers me for a moment, as though trying to figure something out. Then the thought is broken and he smiles again. “And now? You go to meet other friends?”

  “No. I don’t know many people. I mean, I’ve been busy. Visiting churches, seeing the city. Oh, I went to the one you recommended. San Frediano in Cestello.”

  “Ah, sì. Ma sempre da sola?”

  Always alone. I nod.

  “It is not a problem? To be so much alone?”

  I hesitate. “Well, I have the river. The best kind of friend, right?”

  “È vero.” He laughs. “Allora, Hannah, I must go. Stefano and Sergio wait to train. Ma, se vuoi, we have dinner or see something of interest in Firenze. Insieme.”

  “Sì,” I say automatically. I find myself saying yes often in conversation, and my many yeses make me feel distinctly un-Italian.

  Luca pulls a pen out of his backpack and writes his number on the bar napkin. “Perfetto,” he says. “You call if you want—tomorrow, next week. Quando vuoi.”

  I’m supposed to leave on Saturday, take a train to Rome, stay over, then board a plane early Sunday, but still I take the napkin, fold it into my palm.

  “Sì,” I say one last time. A lot can happen in a week, after all.

  Leaving the club, the air is cooler and the sky is beginning to cloud over. My hair is wet from the shower and the breeze is energizing. It feels like rain, so I run for the bus that will take me across the river and down and just catch it. As I board, a man gets up, freeing a seat. This day feels like a victory already. It begins to rain, validating my decision, and fat drops stretch long across the bus’s window, break the river’s surface into hash marks, and catch in the crevices of the city, pulling familiar smells from the stone and drawing the umbrella vendors out. The rain passes, and by the time the bus pulls to a stop a few bridges down, the sun comes out strong and new scents rise from the city’s core, a mix of hot stone, sewage, and earth. The fall in Florence is like this, I’ve been told. A smattering of rain and sun, cool mornings and hot afternoons that belie that it is nearly October as the city hovers ambivalently between seasons. So different from the climate back home, and I wonder how it affects people here, the lack of hard lines.

  I go to my regular café and find it closed. Even this cannot upset the day. Instead, I try the bar around the corner. Its small door hides an interior filled with life, business men and women out for lunch. American music is playing, reminding me of where I’ve been, of where I am. I order a salad, wine, and water from the tap, and all this is understood. The waiter is friendly but efficient, and the food arrives quickly. I’m hungry and the mozzarella, fresh, is good. I even take a crust of bread, and the waiter returns with oil and salt without my asking. She might need this. The choreography of this day is right. The rowing, the bus, the rain, the square salad bowl with its rounded corners, the espresso cups hitting the saucers that line the bar, followed by small spoons. Each thing knows its part. These things, too, add up. These things, too, count. They stack to form a complete whole.

  I take out my little notebook and write down what I’ve eaten, but I don’t think about it after I’ve put it away. I have a new inventory now.

  After lunch, I cross the Arno again—how many times have I crossed this river?—and walk to Santa Maria Novella, one of the only churches left on my list. I stand for a long time in the chapel behind the main altar, surrounded by Ghirlandaio’s frescoes. They are filled with color and detail, and though they tell the stories of St. John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary, they aren’t about religion, not really. They’re about Florence, this city that is beginning to feel more and more like home. They’re about beauty, bodies, food. The birth of St. John is a footnote to the scene in the Florentine bedroom: the carefully carved headboard, the tufted pillow, the maidservant sweeping in with a basket of fruit on her head, a white gown flowing around her body. Herod’s Banquet is a glamorous dinner party, the small plate bearing the saint’s head an unfortunate hiccup amid all the splendor. And then there’s the clothing: heavy brocaded gowns, gold-edged collars, delicate ruched sleeves in deep purples and burnt reds.

  As I take in this
rich, gilded existence, I feel like a child again, imagining a future in which I am somehow transformed, inhabiting a life saturated with beauty, stability, confidence. My understanding of this future is both visceral and intangible—no hard edges to define it, only a sense of possibility. Maybe I can stay. Because I can’t think about Boston, where soon everything will be dying, the grass growing brown, the leaves crumbling to dust. I look back at the baby in the first panel, at the rounded forms of the women. I’m feeling better, eating better, and still I am not full like them, and still I am dry. I feel far from my childhood fantasies then. My hopes for the future are rooted in reality, in the earth, in my body and blood.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?”

  I turn to find Peter staring up at the same panel. I haven’t seen him since he passed me on the water—a bird in that silver boat. Squinting up at the wall in his navy blazer, he looks more like a professor than an athlete.

  “It’s hypnotic,” I say. “I had no idea they’d be so…”

  “Decadent?”

  “Silenzio,” a guard stationed at the chapel’s edge says.

  “Exactly,” I whisper, leaning closer. “If I had lived then, coming to church would have made me want to get wealthy and sin. And shop.”

  “Ha! Then it’s working.” He drops his voice as the guard shoots us another hard glance. “Did you know they were commissioned by bankers? The Tornabuoni family.”

  “Like the street?” Via de’ Tornabuoni is Florence’s main shopping street—Ferragamo, Versace, Gucci.

  “Yup. Giovanni Tornabuoni”—Peter points to a middle-aged man kneeling at the center of one of the panels—“paid for it.”

  “That’s right. It’s funny—I have a degree in art history, but there’s so much I’ve forgotten.”

  “I’m thinking about changing my major to art history. Or Italian. I’m addicted. Right now I’m taking a class on Renaissance women—I’m the only guy in the class, which is so stupid. The teacher is phenomenal. Did you see this one?” He walks farther back.