Florence in Ecstasy

by Jessie Chaffee

  I hand her the small book and remember the feeling of ceding my journal to that doctor, who wasn’t old enough to be my mother, but still I felt like a child, caught, as I do now.

  If Lorenza registers my discomfort, she doesn’t show it. “Sant’ Angela—are you familiar with the mystical saints?”

  “I’ve read about St. Catherine.”

  “Of course, but there are hundreds of others. Come.”

  She leads me down a level, past the section where I had found this book that I now clutch as though it is my last possession, and around a corner where a small sign reads SPIRITUALITY AND MYSTICISM.

  “The other half of the church,” Lorenza says, pointing to the spines: Between Exaltation and Infamy; The Dark Night of the Soul; The Order of the Poor Clares. “Santa Caterina was mainstream, but some of the others…” She pulls out a book on Margaret of Cortona, her arm shaking against the weight, and hands it to me. “…less so. Women you’ve likely never even heard of. Don’t be mistaken. In their era, they were celebrities. Untouchable. In fact, Florentine families had a strong connection to the saints, particularly the local ones, like Caterina de’ Ricci”—she smiles over her shoulder at me—“my ancestor. Florence has always been a city of women—though, perhaps, not always for them.” She runs her finger along the shelf and stops at another book. The Life and Doctrine of Saint Catherine of Genoa.

  “What happened?”

  “What was holy became heresy.” She raises his eyebrows and turns a book over, opening it to the title page. “Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi.”

  I remember the small plaque to her in San Frediano in Cestello.

  “People like Maria Maddalena became dangerous.”

  “Why?”

  “That is for you to tell me,” Lorenza says, turning to me with a smile. “Not now. Read first. Allora, back to work?”

  Before leaving to meet Luca at the festival, I look up the saint he’d mentioned. There is only a single, small entry: Santa Reparata: Early Christian martyr and patron saint of Florence. That’s it. The city’s patron saint and I’ve never heard her mentioned. I turn the page and find a second entry: Santa Reparata. Original cathedral of Florence, the ruins of which now lie under Santa Maria del Fiore. Under the Duomo. So she and her church were buried and Florence given a new idol, the Virgin Mary.

  When I arrive at the Duomo, the piazza is already packed with bodies. Bikes zigzag through the crowds, and carabinieri troll the perimeter, sweeping out the acrobats, magicians, and musicians who fill their cups here. Near the cathedral, people wait in a slowly crawling mass. The cafés on the piazza are filled as well. Luca had mentioned a specific place but it could be anywhere, and the sun is glaring, masking everything in light. I cup my hand over my eyes and try to make out the names until I hear my own name.

  Luca takes my hand with a broad smile and greets me formally—two quick kisses. “We have good seats, no? Front row.” Among the sea of small tables in the café behind him I recognize two men—his rowing companions, both there the evening I blacked out dancing—and the adrenaline goes straight out of me. I’ve misunderstood something.

  “Everyone comes today,” Luca continues, putting an arm around me and leading me toward them. “Our friend Enzo marches for Santa Croce. Allora, we come to cheer.” He puts his hands in the air, shakes two fists, and I want to wrap my arms around him, but not in front of these other men.

  “Ti ricorda di Hannah?” Luca asks, and they rise with deliberate formality. “Ecco Sergio.” The man with red hair and large teeth smiles shyly. “And Gianni.” The tall, bearded man. They greet me with kisses and a chorus of certo, sì, and ciao, bella, overly friendly. I feel as though I’m wearing armor or a halo. Either way, I’m protected.

  “So what is going to happen?” I ask once we’re seated.

  “In realtà,” Luca says, “it is not normal that we come for this day—you see there are many tourists. All tourists. But we come to see Enzo.”

  “And instead, I should be watching the game,” Gianni cuts in.

  “Big game,” Sergio says. “Fiorentina contro Milan.”

  “And Carlo?” Luca asks, and they are on to a new topic and I still don’t know what to expect, and this, too, is so Italian. Nothing defined, only suggested, and the evening stretches vaguely ahead of us. I cannot follow their conversation, though I recognize the tone as different from the usual banter—it is anchored now, serious.

  “È molto triste,” Luca says, turning to me. “Lo sai?”

  I shake my head.

  “Carlo is separating from his wife.”

  “Divorce,” Gianni says. “It’s very bad.”

  “In America, it is also bad?” Luca asks.

  “It’s common.”

  “Do you know many?” Sergio says this as though referring to celebrities or lepers.

  “Many. My parents.” Naming them, I feel suddenly displaced—“my parents” doesn’t belong in this piazza.

  “Davvero?” Luca asks. Sergio and Gianni are looking at me as though I’m the leper now.

  “They are not Catholic,” Sergio states.

  “No. Not even close. They—well, my mother, anyway. She isn’t anything.”

  Sergio nods, and Gianni flags the waiter and orders a round of espresso and some sweets. I see a flash of gold on his finger and wonder if he’ll make any reference to his wife this evening. I rarely hear the men talking about their own families, as though their lives don’t exist beyond the club’s boundaries.

  “To not believe in God, this I understand,” Luca says. “But divorce? No. This I do not. This is about people. The ‘God’ is not important.”

  I’m surprised by his rigidity and want to ask him more, but a loud “Ragazzi!” interrupts us and there is Carlo, tall and broad. Sun glints off his dark shades. I remember him from the evening at the dance club. Drunk, like me. He’s as gracious as the others now, though, removing his sunglasses and taking my hand with an exaggerated bow. “Hannah di Boston,” he says, before pulling up a chair next to Gianni.

  With Carlo, the conversation is again buoyant. It fluctuates naturally, dipping into comfortable silences before rising. Meanwhile the line outside the cathedral grows. Before entering, people stop at a statue tucked into a niche near the door, some taking pictures. It must be Santa Reparata. Every day she must watch people enter this cathedral that used to be hers, and on every day but this one, she is probably not given a second glance.

  When the coffee arrives, the conversation pauses as though for prayer, and there is only the sound of five small spoons stirring espresso, then the tap tap tap of metal on china before each man sets his spoon down and takes his coffee whole. I refuse the cookie that Luca offers and sip my espresso while the men’s conversation resumes. I spot Peter and Pam then, across the piazza, part of a group of students following a small Italian man who holds a red umbrella above the crowd, gesticulating wildly as he burrows in so that the umbrella swings side to side.

  “Che succede?” Luca asks, following my gaze. “Ah. L’Americano.”

  The barrage of commentary begins, each man trying to best the others, and I have to concentrate to follow.

  “The boy from the club?”

  “Yes, the other American.” And for the first time, I realize that they see me as half of a pair—the Americans—though right now they don’t seem to see me at all.

  “Have you ever spoken to him?”

  “No, but he’s arrogant, I think.”

  “He rows alone. Always alone.”

  “In Borea.”

  “He’s not so bad, no?”

  “No. He’s good but—”

  “Sì, for an American, good.”

  They all laugh.

  “We only joke,” Luca says, breaking into English.

  “The blonde looks good,” Carlo says then. “More than good.”

  “Yes, cute little blonde.” Gianni nods.

  Luca smiles at me warily, but he and Sergio say nothing as Carlo and Gia
nni lob adjectives back and forth. By the cathedral’s entrance, Pam and Peter stare up to where the umbrella-waver is pointing.

  “Cute,” Carlo says, “but not little, not too little. Not little everywhere.”

  “I think we should invite her to join us, yes?”

  I wish that Pam would disappear. I wish that I could disappear. There is in my soul a chamber.

  “Bionda,” Carlo sings in her direction. “Biondiiina…”

  “Carlo…” Luca begins.

  “What? I’m only friendly.”

  “Sì,” Gianni says, turning to Luca now, “we are only saying the blonde looks good.”

  “Yes,” Carlo agrees, nodding. “And maybe she—”

  “Carlo, scusa,” Luca says sharply, glancing at me.

  Carlo shrugs.

  “You know the Americans, Hannah?” Sergio asks quietly.

  “A little bit. Not really,” I lie.

  “Allora. La bionda, you know her?” Carlo asks.

  All eyes on me.

  “Pam.”

  “Sì, Pam, Pam,” Carlo echoes. “Of course.”

  “And the boy?” Sergio asks quickly.

  “Peter.”

  “He’s very young, very handsome, Luca,” Carlo says slowly and pointedly. “Fai attenzione.”

  Luca no longer seems to mind their game. He turns to me with a grin and asks, “Should I be jealous?”

  It feels like an old childhood game—Truth or Dare, and either one would land you in hot water. I always wondered why Flee wasn’t an option. Truth or Dare or Flee. There is no right answer.

  “Maybe,” I say finally, igniting cheers from the others.

  “No!” Luca feigns shock, placing his hand on his heart as the men’s laughter circles him, and I feel like there is some other woman in my place, sitting beside this man and laughing along with his friends. She is the woman who flirts with a man she doesn’t know very well in another country, and even though she does not know him very well, she still wants to please him and appease his friends. I’m afraid, though, that she might also be the woman who props herself up against this man, abandoning everything else, and begins to mold to him, adjusting to his temperature, adapting to his desires, bending into the woman who is maybe not the one he asked for but is certainly the one she thinks he asked for, until she is gone entirely and there is only him and the stranger beside him. I’m not sure which woman I am, but as I watch Luca consumed by his friends’ mockery, I know that I want to shoo their laughter away from him. I can protect, too.

  “He is very handsome,” I continue, “but…”

  “Però?” Luca raises his eyebrows and puts his hands up in the air. “Silenzio, ragazzi, silenzio,” before turning to me expectantly, his smile still wide but his eyes serious, as I’d seen them a few evenings before.

  “Continue,” he says, his hands still up. “He is very handsome, but…”

  “But way too young,” I say, “and also not as handsome as you,” which ushers in skeptical groans from everyone except for Luca, who gathers my hands in his and gives me a kiss before turning to the men.

  “You see?” he says. “Allora, basta. Un aperitivo, no?”

  At exactly four thirty, following the bells of the Duomo, drumming begins in the distance and all the men rise. The carabinieri shepherd people away from the piazza’s center to create a path to the cathedral as the drumming grows louder. Luca takes my hand and pulls me closer to the sound. Parading up the street are people in medieval garb. A hush falls over the crowd until there is only the rhythmic beating of the drums.

  “The procession of the Republic,” Luca says.

  The parade snakes slowly into the piazza and trumpets join in. Luca nudges me and points to four men who look like politicians, each one wearing a dark suit with a distinct, brightly colored sash—white, blue, green, and red—across his chest. “The color”—he draws his hand across his own chest—“is for the area: Santa Croce, Santo Spirito, Santa Maria Novella, San Giovanni.” The four quarters of the city, the four major churches. One of the men holds a garland woven with ribbon. “The bravio,” Luca explains. “The prize for the calcio storico. A kind of football match.”

  “There’s a game today?”

  “No, no,” Luca says. “It happened already. In the summer.”

  After the politicians there is a gap in the procession, and then cloth flutters in the wind as flag throwers step into the piazza. The fabric spins in different formations like brightly colored birds. The drums grow louder. Around me, everyone is speaking English.

  “What is it for?”

  “It sounds like a dirge.”

  “It must be for a visiting cardinal.”

  “A random Saturday in Florence. Who knew?”

  Even on this day that honors her, Santa Reparata is invisible. The malleability of history, the ease with which she has been erased, is chilling. The crowd erupts into cheers and whistles as men in medieval uniforms appear behind the flag throwers. They are all young with strikingly muscular legs and sober expressions. Four rows of five. Twenty solemn faces.

  “Eccolo Enzo,” Luca says. “With the flag for Santa Croce. Last summer, it was Santa Croce that won the calcio storico—Enzo plays for Santa Croce.”

  “Very serious,” Carlo whispers, imitating Enzo’s stone expression.

  “Sì,” Gianni says, and laughs. “Very different from last Friday.”

  “Enzo!” Carlo shouts, but their friend keeps his eyes on the flag he’s carrying. Behind the athletes are men and women in period dress. At the end of the line, four children decked in the colors of each quarter play small drums. When the last child has disappeared into the Duomo, the carabinieri form a half-moon around the entrance.

  “And now,” Luca says, “we wait perché they must give a blessing to the bravio.”

  The sounds in the piazza return to full volume and we return to our table in the café.

  “Francesca and Marco,” Gianni says.

  Francesca and an older Italian man are stopped in front of the baptistery. They are speaking quickly with a flurry of gestures.

  “Attenta. Trouble,” Gianni says, setting off another wave of commentary.

  “Where there is Francesca, there is always trouble.”

  “Where there is trouble, there is always Francesca.”

  “She is Milanese.”

  “If she was my wife—”

  “Maybe Marco doesn’t know.”

  “You think? He’s a smart guy.”

  “Yes, but remember last year—at the regatta.”

  “True, true. They weren’t fighting then.”

  “But, Sergio, one time—what does that mean? We never see him. At the game, for example.”

  “The regatta? Wasn’t that the time Nicoletti showed up?”

  “Yes, the idiot. Like coming to one race would fool us into voting for that buffoon.”

  As they talk, Peter and Pam reappear around the side of the cathedral. I glance at the men, but they have moved on from their dissection of Francesca and don’t see as Peter almost collides with her. Francesca’s intense frown shifts to a look of surprise and then—so quickly that it is almost imperceptible—fear, before she recomposes herself. She is calm, glowing. If her husband has registered anything, he doesn’t act like it, though Peter’s enthusiasm is glaring. Maybe the men are right and Francesca does what she wants. And so what if she does? Her husband points in our direction and they turn to us. Peter squints and I give a half-wave. Then Francesca says something to the group that makes them all laugh before she and Marco split off. It is only when they’re almost upon us, the sun edging their silhouettes in gold, that Luca and his friends look up. Francesca’s face is impenetrable as she greets them and presents her husband to me.

  “Marco, you remember the American I told you about—Hannah.”

  He grips my hand tightly. His irises—deep blue—are rare in this city of dark eyes. He holds my hand and my gaze for a second too long, and in that second, ther
e is no one else at the table. I am certain, in fact, that we are the only two people in the piazza.

  “Nice to meet you,” he says. “I’m glad Francesca has another woman at the club.”

  His mouth turns up at the corners, and I cannot tell if he’s making a joke. He is all charm and I can see how Francesca would have fallen for him. How anyone might.

  “So you got dragged along, too?” are her first words once she’s seated next to me. Marco has pulled up another table and sits by Carlo, leaving the women to themselves. “It’s all ridiculous, if you ask me. Do you see any other Italians here? But Enzo is marching, so here we are. Scusami—Marco, un bicchiere di vino, per favore.”

  Marco nods but continues talking. Francesca sighs and rolls her eyes.

  “Do you know anything about her? Santa Reparata?” I ask.

  “She was an old saint—before all of this.” She waves her arms around at everything in the square before turning to the men. “Santa Reparata?”

  “She was the patron saint of Florence,” Gianni says.

  “Why?” I ask. “What did she do?”

  “She was burned alive,” Gianni says.

  “Sì,” Sergio agrees, his forehead wrinkled. “O forse è stata decapitata.”

  “Decapitated?” I ask.

  “Ma dai, ragazzi,” Luca exclaims. “You make things up!”

  “She defended Florence from barbarians,” Carlo interrupts.

  “Well, this city’s still full of them if you ask me,” Francesca says.

  The waiter arrives and Francesca orders a wine and then digs around in her bag, producing lipstick.

  “Honestly, I can’t keep up with all these saints,” she says after blotting her lips. “Everywhere you turn, it’s another one. It’s too much. Will you still be here at Christmas?”

  “I’m not sure.” Christmas is over two months away. Will I be here? I have no idea.

  “If you are, you’ll get to see the craziest thing—the Display of the Virgin’s Girdle.”

  “Her girdle?”

  “Yeah, like her belt. Apparently, she dropped it as she was ascending. And it made its way to Prato, of all places.”

  Prato is one town over, Florence’s “little sister.”

  “You can’t make this stuff up,” Francesca continues. “Anyway, a few times a year you can have an audience with the girdle. Hey, Luca.” She reaches across me and grabs his wrist.