Florence in Ecstasy

by Jessie Chaffee

  “Sì?”

  “You’re a good Catholic, right?”

  “No,” he says.

  “But you know the story of the virgin’s girdle? La cintola?”

  “Certo. She gave it to Santo Tommaso,” he explains, speaking slowly to include me. “Because he did not believe she was the mother of God.”

  “Doubting Thomas,” I say.

  “Sì. She gave him la cintola from Heaven—as proof.”

  “Thank god for hard evidence,” Francesca says.

  Here Marco jumps in, his voice cutting the air, clear and resonant. Like Francesca, his English is flawless. “No, it’s about faith. The belt was around the womb—the immaculate conception. It is the beginning of all belief. St. Thomas doubted, but the belt was a gift of faith, not ‘evidence.’” Whatever our beliefs, Marco has a way of speaking that makes you want to listen, want to believe, or at least want to believe in him.

  “Glorified pornography, if you ask me,” Francesca says. “And why does Prato have it?”

  They shrug.

  “Why not?” Carlo asks, before drawing the men back into discussion.

  “My question,” Francesca says to me, “is why all the men are running things in this country if they think women are so important. Nothing changes, does it? They can tell you what to believe, but it’s just that. A lot of talk.”

  The waiter returns with their drinks and Francesca raises her glass to Marco, who doesn’t acknowledge it. “See what I mean?”

  I want to ask Francesca about how she and Marco met, but there is a commotion by the cathedral as the bells ring five o’clock and the sound of a drum announces the return of the procession, the prize now blessed.

  “Allora, finalmente!” Francesca says.

  The carabinieri clear a path and the drummers emerge, followed by the rest of the participants. We all stand as they wind through the piazza and around the baptistery.

  “Vai, Enzo! Vai! Vai!” the men shout when he passes, and a small grin creeps onto his stone face. The parade moves out of the piazza, taking with it some of the spectators. Luca tells me they will do a loop through all the major squares, drumming and singing.

  “And then?” I ask.

  “And then nothing.” He smiles. “Then the festival is done. But we stay for a bit to take something to eat and to see Enzo maybe, va bene?”

  We stay until the square grows dark. Portions of the crowd disperse while others set up camp on the cathedral steps or squeeze into the few open spots in the cafés. At our table, the men order pasta.

  “Francesca, what do you want?” Marco asks.

  “Nothing,” Francesca says, pulling out a cigarette. “Another wine.”

  “Va bene.” Marco shrugs, then says to Carlo, “She is a bird.”

  “We’ll all have wine,” Gianni announces, ordering a bottle.

  When the waiter looks to me, I order a salad.

  “Another bird!” Marco cries.

  But Luca puts his hand on mine and says, “Hannah can share with me. I’m not very hungry.”

  “For the first time!” Carlo says.

  When the pasta arrives, I reach my fork over and have a few bites. Luca doesn’t look at me, but he puts his hand on my back for a moment, smiling. With the wine, the conversation begins to swell, more animated but less focused. It swings from politics to rowing to the football season and the scandal the Fiorentina are involved in—will they or won’t they be viable this year? and an argument erupts as Sergio disappears inside to check the score of the game—to the upcoming Florence marathon to Marco’s trip to Geneva to the conference on Calvino to ranking the best Italian authors, operas, actresses—here another disagreement ensues, with Carlo’s argument resting mainly on breast size—and then on to restaurants and what Marco claims is the only place in the city for pheasant, though Sergio counters and Gianni negates them both in favor of a small trattoria outside of Florence. Luca says we’ll try them all.

  Francesca is silent through most of it, quieter than she ever is at the club. She throws in a comment here and there or feeds me asides, but she mostly watches Marco. I watch Marco, too. When he is in the conversation, he is utterly focused on the speaker, and when he’s the speaker, no one interrupts. When he pulls away, he watches the square, his eyes catching on any woman who passes before he brings his gaze back to the table.

  After the meal, Francesca excuses herself to call her daughter and disappears. Carlo’s eyebrows shoot up, but no one says anything or asks about her daughter when she returns twenty minutes later.

  “Andiamo,” she says to Marco.

  “You’re leaving?” Sergio asks.

  “Francesca, tranquilla,” Marco says. “We’ll finish eating and wait for Enzo to come.”

  “Sono tranquilla. I’m going. I’m tired. Do you have the keys?”

  There is silence at the table. Marco holds Francesca’s gaze. Then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the keys, dangling them in front of her.

  “So go,” he says. “Carlo can drive me.”

  Francesca looks almost pained, but her face hardens and she takes the keys, and with a “Grazie. Ciao a tutti,” she’s off into the night and I am, again, the only woman at the table. A lull settles over the group. The men stick to safe topics now and the conversation doesn’t regain its previous pace or energy. Sergio checks the game and returns to announce that Florence has just lost.

  “Again, Milan.” He sighs, throwing down money.

  “At least Francesca will be happy,” Marco says, his tone unreadable.

  Luca yawns and turns to me: “Andiamo?”

  I nod, and he stands and announces our departure.

  “When you see Enzo,” Luca says, “tell him we celebrate Monday at the club.”

  The men rise, all formality again, to kiss me on each cheek.

  “You should join us for dinner one evening,” Marco says, before releasing my hands. “Francesca would like it.” Then, glancing at Luca, he adds, “Tutti e due.” Both of you.

  Luca has parked near my house, so we walk back together. As soon as we’re alone, I realize that I’m exhausted—from the wine, from keeping up with the conversation, from having my defenses up for hours. I link my arm through his and listen to the echo of our feet on the empty street and the soft swishing of Luca’s jacket.

  “I’m sorry,” Luca says, “that it was not only for us.”

  “It’s okay. They’re your friends.”

  “Sì. Sergio and Gianni—always. Marco? He is hard to know, I think. Carlo—yes, but different. I am sorry for Carlo. He is sometimes strange now. Angry and also embarrassed.”

  “Because of the divorce?”

  “Sì. But Carlo always has trouble with women.”

  “Women don’t like him?”

  “No. He likes too many women, hai capito?”

  “He sleeps around.”

  “Come si dice? ‘Sleep around’?”

  “Exactly. So his wife asked for a divorce?”

  “No, Carlo wanted it. She did not.”

  “She didn’t know about the affairs?”

  “Yes. But also she was with another man. And Carlo discovered it—and then he wanted the divorce.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Cosa?”

  “He was okay with having affairs, but as soon as she does, it’s a problem?”

  Luca shrugs. “It’s different.”

  “Why? How is it any different?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think it’s different?”

  “Non lo so. A couple is two people. Not one. You cannot just point at one. I would not be happy if my wife—come si dice? ‘Sleep around’?”

  I nod.

  “But also I would not ‘sleep around,’” Luca says matter-of-factly. “Allora, I feel sad for them. For both of them. It is shame.” I don’t know if he means a shame or shameful.

  We step into Piazza della Signoria, almost empty except for couples who, like us, are walkin
g slowly, delaying the evening’s end. Luca points to where people have gathered around a vendor selling glowing tops. When wound, the tops spring high into the air, spinning disks of light. The crowd watches, heads thrown back with an “ooohh.” The vendor keeps sending them up as we approach, and as he launches another one, I let go, too, imagine that I grab hold and the orb pulls me up and up until we are one form, a distant glowing circle against the sky. I feel light but still here, and I slide my arm around Luca’s back as we watch in silence.

  “Do you want to come over for a bit?” I ask when we arrive at my building.

  “To see where this famous woman lives?” Luca grins. “Ma certo.”

  “Okay,” I say, pushing open the heavy door, clicking on the hall light, and taking my first visitor by the hand.

  As always, the door on the landing creeps open and the bleached head pops out. She glares at Luca, but he bows deeply and says with great deference, “Buonasera, signora,” and for the first time, Signora Rosa smiles. She nods, pleased, before shutting her door.

  “What kind of magician are you?” I whisper.

  Luca keeps up his act when we enter my apartment, surveying the space soberly. “Okay,” he says, nodding with exaggerated interest, and I follow him down the hall and into the living room. “Nice, not bad, not bad. Good windows. So this is where you are all these days?”

  He stops and smiles before bounding up the steps to the kitchen. He spots the wine bottle on the counter and raises his eyebrows. “Posso?”

  “Of course,” I say, digging out the corkscrew for him.

  He pours us each a small glass, then opens the doors to the balcony with a “Wow-wah. Very good, sì.”

  He points down at the old woman, still at her window. “You know her?”

  “No!” I whisper, grabbing his arm. “Come back inside.”

  A phone rings and the woman looks up. It’s my phone.

  Luca raises his eyebrows again. “Another friend?”

  “One minute.” I head to the bedroom as the shrill sound continues. It could only be my sister at this hour. Why? I already wrote her about my job. I watch it ring two, three, four more times, and then lift the receiver and place it back down. I don’t want her here. Not now. I take a few sips of wine, count to ten, and then walk back to the living room.

  Luca is standing by the window, looking out at my favorite view. “Che bello,” he says.

  “It is.” I stand beside him and he puts his arm around me without speaking.

  I look at the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, now lit gold from below, and think about the many mornings I’ve stood alone watching this city gathering light. There is in my soul a chamber. But it’s not right. It can’t be right that I must always be alone. And so I put my arms around Luca, his body already growing familiar, and begin kissing him. He pulls me closer, his hands running under my shirt and around my back, and I think about that other woman, the one who disappears into the man beside her. But this doesn’t feel like disappearing. It feels like not being alone. And then I stop thinking, and just feel his hands and lips, and feel my own body waking up, returning as though from a long absence. And it’s true. A part of me has been absent for months.

  “Do you want to stay?” I ask, surprising myself.

  Luca is surprised, too. “Do you want me to?”

  “Sì.” But I hesitate.

  “Sicura?”

  “I do,” I say, trying to sound certain, wanting to remain with him, wanting to remain in myself. And still the doubts creep in. Because if Luca stays, then he might see me, really see me. See the broken scale, my many lists, the controlled details of my controlled existence. See in my violent tossing and turning my violent dreams. And see the body I haven’t looked at for months.

  “Don’t worry,” Luca says, squeezing my hands. “I would like to stay, but maybe not this night, okay?”

  I nod, feeling both relieved and foolish.

  “I think maybe it should be,” he continues, “non lo so—we can have a nice dinner or something, no? You think I’m crazy?”

  “No, I just think maybe you’re not Italian.”

  “But I am not Italian. I am Florentine.”

  I can’t tell if he’s joking. “So you’re a real Italian, the best Italian.”

  Luca drains his glass, then pulls me in with a smile. “The best Italian? No. Not better. Different. A Roma, a Napoli, in Sicilia—in truth, people are different.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a bit of a stereotype?”

  He looks down at me, considering this. “Maybe, but—” He stops himself. “No. I think really we are different.”

  “I don’t believe it. People are not only where they’re from.”

  “But”—Luca puts a finger up—“in this way, you think all Italians—all the men—are the same. All wolves, no?”

  Touché. “Only some of them.”

  “Va bene.” He smiles and kisses me quickly and definitively before setting down his glass. “And now it is time for this very gentle, very kind Fiorentino to go home. Because you will make him crazy now if you continue to kiss him.” He offers me his hand and I take it, keeping hold as we walk to the door. “Thank you for this grand tour. If you want, I will make a dinner, va bene? The week is very busy, but Friday is okay? We meet at the club and then we go to my house. I will cook.”

  “What about Carlo?” I ask suddenly.

  “Carlo? What Carlo? I’m not cooking for him.”

  “Sì, Carlo. He’s a wolf. A Florentine wolf. What about him?”

  “Esatto!” Luca is laughing now. “Carlo is not Florentine. Where Carlo comes from, the men are wolves, hai capito?”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “But it’s true.” He wraps his arms around me, still laughing, and the sound reverberates deep through his body and shakes mine until I’m laughing as well. “Da dove viene lui,” Luca says, catching his breath, “ci sono più lupi che stelle.”

  Where he comes from, there are more wolves than stars.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lorenza leaves for Milan—“Estate business,” she says with determination—and I work full days and don’t go to the club in the afternoons. I won’t see Luca until Friday, and so it is a solitary week.

  I spend my evenings with the mystics. As soon as I start reading about them, I cannot stop. I am hungry for words. On the surface, they are all very different. They lived centuries apart in different regions of Italy and came from different social classes. They joined different religious orders—Dominican, Franciscan, Carmelite—or founded new ones. St. Clare of Assisi was born into wealth but gave up material goods for the ascetic life of the Franciscans, then created her own order, the Poor Clares. St. Margaret of Cortona, born decades later, was impoverished and followed a path of sin until her conversion. They had disparate methods for practicing their faith, for proving their devotion. St. Agnes multiplied loaves of bread for the poor. St. Margaret could detect the difference between consecrated and unconsecrated hosts. The evidence of Clare of Montefalco’s sainthood came after her death, when her Augustinian sisters opened her corpse to find carefully arranged in her heart the crucifix, whip, and crown of thorns.

  They were virgins or widows or devoted wives who never left home. St. Catherine of Genoa was a model “holy housewife.” Trapped in an abusive marriage, she never entered the convent. She served the sick during the plague without falling ill herself. They were political figures, like St. Catherine of Siena and the Blessed Lucia of Narni, famous for her political prophecies; and they were recluses, like Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, the Florentine mystic whose church I had visited weeks earlier—intensely private, she had visions that left her bedridden.

  They were pure, precocious naïfs and hardened, penitent sinners. They were from Tuscany and Umbria and Emilia-Romagna. They were rich and poor and everything in between. It is as though any woman, whether born in the 1200s in Cortona to peasants or the 1500s in Florence to nobility, had the potential to cros
s that elusive threshold. As though that first apparition of the cross or God or Satan was there waiting for whoever might stumble upon it—Catherine in Siena or Angela in Foligno or Clare in Montefalco. This is where it starts. But there is no consistent starting point, no predictor, as these women, one after another, fell into sainthood.

  There is something alluring about their behavior—Margaret cutting down to the bone when flagellating herself, Angela drinking from the sores of lepers, Maria Maddalena licking the wounds of her ailing Carmelite sisters and punishing her own body with burning and icy water—and I’m not disgusted but curious. As with St. Angela, there is a longing, an intense desire that simmers and ultimately explodes into feverish visions, and I witness, again and again, them straining away from a world that can no longer sate them. Life is torture, existence a punishment—

  Living, I seem to die in pain—St. Catherine of Siena.

  I wish to die a thousand times a day—St. Margaret of Cortona.

  The visions provide the only relief and they are addictive—once they begin, the single, consuming desire of these women is to lose themselves in ecstasy. I don’t want their isolation, don’t want to be always alone with my silent mornings, don’t want to flee this life that I am, little by little, constructing. I’m looking forward to seeing Luca, to rowing on the river, to letting go of some of the rituals, the counting, the precise and precarious balance that has dictated my life for so many months. But still there is something magnetic about the saints.

  The eyes of my soul were opened.

  Outside of my body.

  Wholly true. Wholly certain. Wholly celestial.

  When St. Angela describes arriving at ecstasy—her soul separating from her body and revealing truth—her words echo St. Clare’s and anticipate St. Maria Maddalena’s. I have reached the summit of perfection. I comprehend the whole world. There is such confidence—confidence in an absolute truth and one’s place within that truth, even when confronted with doubt, with a confessor or sister who might say, with suspicion, She did not seem to be the same person, and I wonder again how this is possible, that you can be so sure of your clarity of sight and self even as people tell you that you are blind, crazed, a stranger.