Florence in Ecstasy

by Jessie Chaffee

  Mary and Elizabeth meet in the middle of a city street, three ladies-in-waiting behind them, one of whom stands out—she is in profile, her hair coiled along the back of her head, curls framing her face, her neck long and pale. But it’s her gown that sets her apart: doves and sunbursts swirl over a gold background, a brooch at her bust picks up the magenta of her cape.

  “Giovanna degli Albizzi,” Peter says, following my gaze. “Gorgeous, right? She married Giovanni Tornabuoni’s only son. She died in childbirth a year later—I think she was already dead when this was painted.”

  “That’s creepy.”

  “Well, she’s immortalized. Can you even imagine how many people stare at her every day?”

  I glance back at her profile. “Still.”

  “And that’s Lucrezia Tornabuoni,” Peter says, pointing to an older woman in the birth scene. She is in plain clothes, her head covered. I hadn’t noticed her earlier, but her name is familiar.

  “She was really interesting,” Peter continues. “She was a politician and a writer. She also married a Medici, which helped—she had her hand in everything.”

  “Huh.” I examine Lucrezia again. Her face is pinched, her eyes small. A woman beside her is speaking to her with one hand extended, as though she might place it on the older woman’s arm, but Lucrezia looks straight ahead, her lips pursed. I imagine her debating, imagine her writing. I’m intrigued, but I still go back to the beautiful stone face of Giovanna, drawn in by the promise that seems to find its home in beauty. Is that how it always was? Is that how it would always be?

  He shakes his head and sighs. “I can’t believe I’ll ever have to leave this city. Listen, I’m going to Orvieto on Saturday. I’m supposed to see at least four other towns for class and one has to be in a different region, so this weekend it’s Umbria. Have you ever been there?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you should come. It’s just a day trip. I think you’d like it.”

  My second invitation of the day. And, again, I accept.

  Perhaps I’ve been primed by the inundation of beauty in the art, but on my way home, groceries in hand, I am struck by the light. It escapes an alley and stretches in a rectangle across the street. It cannot be called summer light or autumn light. It is its own. I follow the tunnel of gold to the river, where it becomes a solid beam. The street is ablaze with activity and I am suddenly and completely infatuated with everything: the couple, two on a bike for one, his arms stretched around her to the handlebars; the woman in blue glasses walking a small dog, the end of a gelato—just a triangle of cone—in her other hand; the shop, loud with marble being cut, where I glimpse through the cracked door a young man, bearded and strong; the folds the breeze cuts in the river’s surface; the break in the mopeds’ hum as a light farther up turns red and the traffic pauses. Even a far-off siren does not ring of death.

  I want to remain on this street, but I turn onto my block. I don’t think about the future or the crust of bread in my stomach. I think about the feel of my feet on these stones and the warm air that is placed on my shoulder by a passing bus. I don’t feel the pull of the scale. I feel instead the sun breaking around the perimeter of my body. My sounds and smells brush up against this city, not changing it but still audible against it, and finally, if momentarily, in tune.

  Chapter Eight

  Stazione di Santa Maria Novella keeps the pace of the past—the times, tracks, and destinations still flip by on little rubber rectangles, and most of the signs fulfill their original missions: FARMACIA, TABACCHI, INFORMAZIONI. I wait under the departure board and watch the crowds of bleary-eyed backpackers come and go, the haze of this early hour wafting dreamlike through the building. A line of passengers snakes around and around the entry hall. Of the twelve ticket windows, two are open. It is Saturday.

  Last night there was a persistent knocking at my door just after I got home. A familiar voice—Signorina? Signora Rosa. I remained unmoving and held my breath, though she must have heard me come in, must have followed me up the stairs, and surely she could see the light on. Because it is October now and I’m still here. I changed my ticket again, fees mounting. I wrote Kate—I didn’t call, couldn’t face her questions. With what money? With what plan? This is now borrowed time. I know the dangers of this type of negotiation. I’ve done it before, only with food—denials I promised myself I would account for later by eating extra to fill the expanding void. But here is the truth: I was quite comfortable with the void. I felt safe dancing along its edge.

  This morning when I woke, I felt, again, the pull of the scale—taunting as though it knew that I wasn’t meant to be here anymore. And I was weak, gave in, trailed down that long hall, dragged its orange body out. I almost stepped on, the certainty it promised filling me, the longing unbearable. Then I doubled over and pushed it as hard as I could. It felt good, pushing it like that. It rattled and rattled and hit the wall hard. Hard enough that it may be broken. Good, I thought. Let it be broken.

  Then I crept out, avoiding Signora Rosa, and headed to the station, thinking all the way, This isn’t wrong. Just new. Without edges.

  The trains are all late, and every minute or so a bell chimes, followed by a stilted recording that echoes, distorted: “Il treno regionale in partenza dal binario uno da Firenze per Napoli partirà con quarantacinque minuti di ritardo… Il treno Eurostar in partenza dal binario dodici provenente da Roma per Milano viaggia con un’ora di ritardo.” Forty-five minutes late, an hour late. I look at my watch again. Perhaps I will be alone. If so, I’ll go anyway. I am fixed in limbo and this is oddly freeing. The only thing to do is to keep moving. I stop listening to the place names and focus on the repeated words—“Il treno… in partenza… da… per… di ritardo.” The train… leaving… from… for… late. Then just the stressed words, little punches in the recording—da… per. From. For.

  “Hannah, hey!” Peter appears and kisses me quickly on both cheeks. He is consciously becoming more Italian. “You okay? You looked like you were in a trance or something. Oh, this is Pam. She’s in my program.” An American woman emerges from behind him—blond, pony-tailed, tight-sweatered, self-assured. Well-bred.

  “Nice to meet you,” she says brightly, looking me up and down and then flashing a thin smile, unimpressed, and I suddenly feel like a chaperone at the junior prom.

  “You didn’t buy a ticket yet, did you?” Peter asks, and, before I can answer, “I bought three. Geez, look at the time. Andiamo, kids. Track eight.”

  “I think all the trains are late,” I say, hoping this might give me a reason to back out.

  “Not ours—it’s an Intercity. Leaves every hour.” And he’s off, with Pam and me trailing behind him.

  “So are you a student, too?” Pam asks as soon as we’ve settled into the musty compartment, Peter and I across from her. I suspect she knows the answer already.

  “No. Just visiting.”

  “She’s got an art history degree,” Peter says, barely looking up from his guidebook. “She works for a museum in Boston. I told you that, didn’t I?”

  “No, you didn’t,” Pam croons accusingly. “He didn’t tell me anything about you. I don’t even know how you know each other.”

  “From the rowing club,” I say.

  “You row, too? Maybe I should try that. I mean, all these carbs. I don’t know how Italian women do it. What I would give for some good sushi.”

  “Listen to this,” Peter breaks in as the train lurches and pulls out of the station. “Orvieto is built on a hill that’s made entirely of tufo—this volcanic rock.” He pauses, scanning the page.

  “And they’ve got great wine, too, right?” Pam asks. “He promised me a place with good local wine.”

  Peter nods, then continues. “There’s a whole city underneath the city. Built by the Etruscans. Wow. This is going to be great!”

  I look back at Pam, who is staring out the window now. Peter’s excitement rolls off her but he doesn’t seem to notice.

  At the
second stop, an older man joins our compartment. “È libero?” he asks, gesturing to the seat next to me.

  “Sì.”

  He sits down, crosses his legs, and puts a little bag down beside him. INTIMISSIMI, it reads. An Italian lingerie store—“Very Intimate.” The bag drifts onto my seat. He shifts, uncrosses his legs, puts the bag on his other side. Then he stands, lays the bag on the overhead rack, and sits back down with a sigh. Pam raises her eyebrows at me before leaning across the aisle to whisper something to Peter. He smiles, but continues reading. Intimissimi. I wonder if it’s a gift for a wife or a lover. I look past Peter out the window. The colors of the architecture in the towns we pass are changing from the gold-and-green shuttered homes of Florence to peaches and mustards and browns. They are less vibrant, more burnt. I’d love to see a color chart of the homes in Italy, how the stuccoed hues shift.

  The sky clouds over and drops line the window. “Perfect,” Pam says, but by the time we pull up to the next station, it’s sunny again. A young Italian woman gets on and sits next to Pam. She falls asleep almost immediately and her head drops to her side, jerks up, drops down, the ends of her dark curls brushing Pam’s shoulder. Pam sighs loudly and inches closer to the window. I close my eyes.

  When I wake up, the sun is bright and hot on my face, and Peter is laughing, his body shaking against me. The older man is gone and the woman with the coiled hair is curling out of her seat again, forward this time. Down and then up. She curls and uncurls, curls and uncurls, and doesn’t wake, not even with Peter’s laughter.

  “Welcome back,” Pam says to me.

  I smile, but I don’t know what to say to this woman; I don’t have the words to include myself in her world. I remember Luca’s question: It is not a problem? To be so much alone? Julian had once asked me something similar, though the words were different.

  I look out the window at the passing fields, sloping and combed into wide strips. Bales of hay are rolled along their tops. I could go to the top of that hill and push those rolls of hay down one at a time and be perfectly content, watching the light catch first on one side, then the other. One at a time, push them off, and watch them roll down and down and down.

  When we pass the sign for Cortona, Pam exclaims, “Cortona! That’s where that book takes place!” She leans over to grab Peter’s knee. “We have to go to Cortona.”

  “Sure. Maybe on the way back. Hannah?”

  I shrug my shoulders. “Sounds good.”

  She and Peter trade stories about one of their teachers until Peter leaves to find a bathroom. Pam locks her eyes on me. “So what’s your story, really?”

  “My story?”

  “Well, you’re not a student. What are you doing here?”

  “In Florence, you mean?”

  “Yeah.” Her gaze is unwavering, so unlike mine, which must look nervous to her, a moth flitting here and there without ever landing. Look at you. I wish the sleeping woman would wake. I know what Pam is after. She doesn’t know how to place me. But I don’t know how to place myself.

  “I needed a break,” I say.

  “From work?” she presses.

  “From everything.” From the doctor who couldn’t help me. From my sister who wouldn’t stop watching me. From every corner of the city that reflected back at me my isolation. From all of it. Pam is waiting for me to say more, and what I want to say is that I needed a break from women like her. I hold her gaze and let two beats go by before looking away. We duck into a tunnel and my ears pop. Once we’re back in the light, the young curling woman is finally stirring, rubbing the back of her neck. An announcement clicks on—“Prossima fermata: Orvieto”—and the train pulls to a stop.

  “Eccola!” Peter reappears at the compartment’s door. “We’re here!”

  Orvieto is perched on a mass of dry cliff. We take a tram to the top and follow a cobbled road to the center. It feels good to be walking these strange streets on this borrowed time. All the buildings are low and slightly off-kilter, leaning on one another for support. We visit the cathedral first. It is out of proportion, like Florence’s, but it lacks the Duomo’s uniformity. Tall Gothic archways frame Byzantine mosaics; intricately carved reliefs crowd the doorframes; an army of marble saints encircles the rose window; and on each set of massive bronze doors, angels in flight are half emerging, twisting with joy and agony. It is monstrously impressive.

  Peter guides us through the church, whispering lines from his book. “You are not going to believe this,” he says, leading us into a chapel at the end of the narthex. I remember the frescoes right away—the apocalypse and resurrection—remember seeing them on slides in a darkened classroom, the images reaching in, scooping me out, leaving me shaken.

  “Signorelli,” I say. “The artist.”

  “Yup,” Peter says. “This is his masterpiece.”

  Nude figures and skeletons rise out of the ground, straining to free a leg or torso still buried in the earth. Above them, two angels trumpet and the ghostly figures of infants dance in purgatory. Strange as it is, the scene is tranquil compared with the grotesque fresco beside it, where demons cut down the sinful. The demons’ toned bodies are multihued—red legs, purple chests, green heads—like badly dyed Easter eggs, and their scaled wings flap as they torture with indifference, binding hands, twisting limbs, feasting on the ears of the anguished humans, who seem entirely shocked by this gruesome end, their mouths open in protest. A crush of tormented flesh.

  “It’s disgusting,” Pam says.

  “That’s the point,” I say. “He wanted an emotional response.”

  At the center of the scene, I find an image I remember well. A woman is gripped tightly by a blue demon with a single horn. Her brow is furrowed but she isn’t struggling—her head is dropped to the side as though she’s sleeping. Wake up! I want to shout. Wake up before it’s too late! But of course, it’s already too late and so maybe she has the right idea. It’s all borrowed time.

  “That’s Signorelli,” I say.

  “Where?” Peter asks.

  I point to the horned demon with the lifeless woman. The artist’s eyes look out at the viewer with a half-smirk, claiming his prize.

  We have lunch on the square. When Peter orders pasta and a meat dish, I feel my stomach clench. I’m getting better, but I am still not like everyone else. I am not normal. I frantically scan the menu for a safe dish. Pam quickly orders a salad, though, and so I order the same, grateful for the first time to have her along. I even wonder if I should try to spend more time with her, suggest to Peter that she join us at the club, on excursions—anywhere where it would be convenient to produce this girl who doesn’t eat much and no one seems to notice and so I’m not alone; not eating is what women do, at least what American women do, anyway. The waiter asks if I would like a glass of wine, and I shake my head.

  “Sicura?” He raises his eyebrows. “It is local. Very good.”

  “Told you,” Pam says to Peter, before ordering a bottle for the table.

  After lunch, we visit the subterranean city. The English tour leaves at three o’clock, and at two forty-five we sit outside the cathedral with a crowd of Americans and one German family. By three o’clock the crowd has grown large and there is no guide in sight.

  “Always late,” Pam says with a sigh, leaning her head on Peter’s shoulder and ripping at the edges of her ticket. “I don’t know how people live here.”

  At three fifteen, two Italian women appear and lead us to the wall at the city’s edge, where they announce that we need to split into two groups.

  “Let’s follow her,” Pam whispers, pointing to the younger woman with the brightly striped pants and broad smile. “She seems fun.”

  We join the crowd to the right and follow our guide—“Elena,” she introduces herself—through the gate and down into the first cave.

  “Tufo,” Elena says, running a finger along the walls and loosing little clouds of earth. It is the substance that makes up the guts of the hill that Orvieto sits o
n. Light and permeable, it breaks off easily, fills the air, and I imagine that I’ll leave this place caked in the dust of the Etruscans.

  Elena has clearly memorized her English tour. Though she knows the history and conveys the overall narrative, the sentences are garbled and she attaches no meaning to the individual words, which hang off her speech at odd angles. It must be what I sound like speaking Italian. Only two phrases are clear and she repeats them with fervor: “But why?” and “Pay attention.”

  There are layers of history here, she tells us, not continuous but broken. Etruscan homes topped with medieval dovecotes, Renaissance ceramic workshops transformed into olive oil mills and, later, air-raid shelters. All capped with the aboveground city and its massive duomo. A complex warren of 1,200 man-made caves make up the oldest layer. “But why?” Elena asks as we stand in the middle of one of these caves, peering down a vertical tunnel at its center. The tufo is so light—“poo-rus,” she says—that the water ran right through it, forcing the Etruscans to dig down for wells. “Ninety meters,” she says. Lining the tunnel is a row of nooks. “But why?” she asks. Footholds.

  We follow Elena up a narrow curling staircase into a larger cave, where a deep window offers a snapshot of the surrounding countryside. It provides the only light, a single beam that cuts across our bodies as we stand in a circle, everyone silent except for the two German children who are playing a modified game of tag, using their parents as obstacles. Along one wall, the earth has been carved into a grid of niches. They look like primitive shoe racks. “Dovecotes,” our guide says. Medieval pigeon coops. She points to the back of the cave where a set of crumbling steps leads straight into a wall—each cote connected to the kitchen of a home. Pigeons were ideal because they fed themselves, leaving through the deep windows in search of food and drink, and then returning to be eaten. They remained a staple until the Renaissance, when, our guide says, “the pope orders the windows be closed. But why?” And then: “Pay attention.” People were throwing so much garbage over the cliff that merchants were able to enter the city by climbing the trash heaps, avoiding the steep tax at Orvieto’s gate.