4. Fontino di San Francesco, 1513

“La fontanina dei battesimi di contrada (antica quattrocentesca Fonte di S. Francesco) e’ scavata a forma di grotta, sotto la strada a pochi metri dall’arco. Un recente restauro l’ha di nuovo valorizzata coll’aggiunta della figura bronzea di “barbicone”

Piero Torriti, Tutta Siena Contrada per Contrada, pg. 393

The small fountain of the contrada baptisms (also the antique fifteenth century fountain of San Francesco) is excavated in the form of a grotto, underneath the street and few meters from its arch. A recent restoration has given it new value with the addition of a bronze figure of a”barbicone”…

I crossed the piazza in front of the school, testing the air. Inverno, I thought. Hiems. But I noticed that the Italian came first, instead of the Latin. Maybe I was learning a little something after all. It was warming up, a little. I still had my scarf tucked all the way around my neck like a furry collar, but the wind no longer carried an icy bite.

This means, I thought joyously, that I can study outside! I was in a mood to test the hypothesis, and Ilaria had rushed off right after class to meet one of her paramours. I had never asked her how it went with Federico, somewhat surprised by my reluctance to know. But I hadn’t gone back to the bar, either.

I crossed the piazza away from the school, a contrada church on my left. This, I thought, pleased with my knowledge, is the contrada of the Leocorno. Unicorn. This is the church of the contrada of the unicorn. And that, my eyes swinging to the narrow street that led out of the claustrophobic piazza, toward the ominous Logge del Papa, is the Via di Follonica.

I settled myself on a ledge that defined the end of the piazza and the beginning of the street. It overhung the road by a few meters and was nice and wide to sit on. The stone was cold and grey, as always. The street was a small private road with a rusty metal gate and very few people passed by – just other foreigners who gathered in the piazza between classes. I had another class at 2 – Latin, but for the next two hours I was free to study. I doubted I could withstand the cold for the entire duration, but I could try. Then, I thought dully, I would have to figure out somewhere else to go.

There were definitely times when Ilaria came in useful. She generally occupied this time, taking me to see something new that she had discovered or some abstruse piece of history. (Look at this street name, Gaia! This is the street of brothels. It was full of prostitutes, and so they gave it the name Via delle Vergini.) Good medieval irony, I thought. My history class wasn’t too bad itself for abstruse history, although we always felt slightly rushed as the teacher kept the pace up, trying to balance notebooks on one arm, scribbling with gloved hands, but it was too cold to go slowly.

I dropped the backpack on the ground next to me and pulled out the textbook. Lesson 5: “Prendi qualcosa al bar?” And a fantastic grammar lesson on combined pronouns. I decided to pass over the grammar for now, and concentrated intensely on finding all the new vocabulary words (tazzina, tazza, bicchiere, lattina) when I suddenly realised that one of the milling herds of students were approaching me. I ducked my head and focused on the words.

They were German. I looked up hesitantly and recognised the boy who sat behind me in class, the punk in black. Stefano? I thought, and wasn’t certain. I certainly didn’t remember his original, non Italian name.

This possibly-Stefano disengaged himself from the herd and they slowly milled off. He sat down next to me and pulled out the same textbook. “You study a lot, Gaia! You always know the answers in class,” he said out of the blue, and I looked up with a jerk. His English was good, with a slight German accent under the English clip. I realised with surprise that I had never heard him speak English.

Then again, other than Ilaria, I hadn’t interacted with anyone in any of my classes. Other than listening to their accents in Italian and the patterns of who gossiped with whom, I wouldn’t have been able to tell apart the nationalities.

I blushed. More direct contact; this was clearly too obvious of a place to study. My mind was already shuffling through other options, and not coming up with much. In two hours between class, I couldn’t go home. The bar came to mind, but I shooed it back out. Definitely not a safe place to go. I could sit in the school in the stray chairs lining some of the hallways, but that was too scholarly of an atmosphere. I didn’t want to sit inside, watching the other students wander from one class to another.

“I’m sorry,” I finally said. “but I don’t remember your name.” I focused on the ends of his shoulder length brown hair.

“In class they call me Stefano,” he said, “But my name is Jan.”

I nodded. “I don’t study that much,” I said. “But I study Latin in the States so Italian comes a little bit easier.” The alien was getting anxious. (Too much information! it said.)

“You’re from the US?”

“Well, yeah,” I said uncertainly. I liked having this discussion in Italian, where there was a certain distance. In English, he could ask more and more personal questions and there would never be a stopping point. In Italian I always smiled a blank smile and pretended not to understand, when it started getting too personal. I had had some practice on Isabella’s friends, Dinah’s friends, and Riccardo’s professor friends as they were brought over for dinner. Isabella’s friends were the easiest. They asked me two or three questions to show a surface interest, and then ignored me. The one time I had gone out for an evening walk with Isabella, it had been like that. We had walked down the main streets of town, which were crowded with other people out walking, and had slowly collected a herd of four friends of Isabella. After the requisite introductions, we had walked into a restaurant and had dinner. Isabella, luckily, had sat next to me, because the rest of them talked and gossiped among each other.

“They can be a bit self centered,” she said later.

Stefano wasn’t going to let go so easily, I could tell.

“Where in the United States?” he asked. “I could tell by your accent that you were American. Not like Ilaria, everyone can see that she’s from England!” I wondered if that was a slur on my friend, but I certainly wasn’t up to defending her and her pursuits.

“I’m from Seattle,” I said reluctantly. “What about you, where are you from?” Stefano immediately wrinkled his nose up a bit. “I’m from a small town in Germany,” he said apologetically. “You probably won’t know the name.” I snorted, and with the first bit of spirit I had felt in a long while, I said “Don’t worry. I don’t know the name of anything in Germany.”

Stefano laughed, and opened the textbook with reluctance. “Have you studied the chapter yet?” I shook my head. “I was just reading it,” I finally allowed. “There’s a lot of new vocabulary; you know she’ll try to embarrass us all in class tomorrow if we don’t learn it.”

He raised his eyebrows knowingly. “So that’s it. You don’t do the work, you just do enough to seem like you know it all!” I frowned. “It doesn’t exactly matter. I mean, if I learn Italian then I learn it because I want to talk to people, not because I want to get a good grade!” I was exasperated at his assumption of laziness.

(you don’t want to talk to people! the alien hissed.) I stiffened. “Maybe we should just study,” I suggested awkwardly, aware that I was getting cold, and there was still an hour and a half to go.

“You know Bibo’? The bar nearby? Why don’t we go in there to study? It’s cold, you know. Or do Seattle –“ he hesitated over the word, “Seattlers?”

I interrupted, “Seattleites!”

“Do Seattleites not get cold?”

I was incensed, but he was right. I was cold, and the sun was fading into a cloud. “Ok,” I said finally. I packed my books back up, and hoisted the backpack onto my shoulder. Stefano did the same, and I followed him silently out of the Via di Follonica and to the right. Just past the Logge del Papa there was indeed a bar – a big, neon bar that had a certain USA 1950’s feel to it. I realised as we settled into a booth that it was the cafeteria tables that did it. Other than the Italian raised bar (for morning espresso), with the row of cafeteria tables it could have been one of those lonesome, streetside diners found along narrow highways anywhere from Seattle to New York.

“Do you want anything to drink?” Stefano offered, and I shook my head. “Are you sure?” he looked worried. “No, I’m really fine,” I said. “I have some food along with me for lunch.”

“But you’ll let me know if you want something?”

I wondered why I couldn’t get myself a beverage. Some aspects of European culture had yet to sink in. I busied myself retrieving my books, and settled into the booth to study. After a few repetitions of the vocabulary list, I found my mind wandering. Not, as usual, towards the Latin I would be analysing in class today, although Lucretius was a lot of fun. I thought about the interactions people created between each other. Without trying I had been befriended by a whole herd of people. What, I wondered, does it take to become real friends? (a real friend, the alien said coldly, will save you from yourself when need be. A real friend will understand the things you can’t say.)

I thought of Karen, who emailed me faithfully once a week to tell me what was going on at school. I didn’t always email back. Just like in the past semester I hadn’t been there for her when she broke up with Chad, her boyfriend of two years, because I was too engrossed in work and Latin, dancing and Madri. She had still helped me with the homework whenever I asked.

I thought maybe she was more of a real friend than Madri had been. Then I felt guilty. Madri was sparkles and mystery. She was little girl smiles and deep, frightened eyes. In Madri, I thought I could learn things about the world that I would never know for myself, but I couldn’t put into words what they were. Adventures and danger I would never put myself into. I couldn’t imagine skateboarding – or living -- with the passion I had seen in Madri. I couldn’t conceive of flinging myself in the air with total abandon on a little board with wheels. Especially when I saw the scrapes and bruises from the days when she fell.

But that was the two of us. I recalled Professor Blum’s annoyance one sunny day in October when he finally broke out of his usually rant and hollered at us. “Miss Williams! Miss Ostrovsky! Can you let us know what is so exciting outside on this warm October day? Whatever is more exciting than the wonders of the sky?” We exchanged a look, and a sad sigh. Madri had already told me that she was planning to go snowboarding that weekend. Her bag was packed and waiting. It was this last hour of class that she had to get through, and I could see by the look in her eyes that it had never gone more slowly. I, on the other hand, was running through my dance in my head. I had a performance that evening, with original choreography and very little assistance from the dance professor. This would be my first time performing it beginning to end for the public. In my head, there was nothing but the flow of the music, the pas de bas, pas de bourree’ combination, the jetes as the music swelled, my final pose, balanced against my partner on the spindly tip of one toe shoe. Joel, my partner, had been feeling even queasier than I at lunch, and I was worried about that as well.

My eyes focused back on the words (un caffe ristretto, un caffe lungo, una bibita ghiacciata…) and after a few more lists, I checked my watch. It was nearly two, and I was sick of thinking about all these types of coffee, anyway.

“Well,” I said. Stefano looked up. “I have to go to class.”

“What class is it?”

“Latin.” Stefano looked confused.

“It’s in the normal university,” I explained. “It’s advanced Latin, we speak only Latin. I don’t need Italian to understand anything.”

“Whoa, you study hard,” Stefano said. I shrugged uncomfortably. “See you,” I said, gathered my things, wrapped my scarf back around my neck and walked out the door.

After Latin class, I wasn’t ready to go home. I felt safe, comforted by the purity of Lucretius*. I started walking. Latin was in one of the faculties of the actual university, and I had to walk up a hill, through an arch (the voice of the history professor: Look at this arch, class! This was once a part of the city wall. Then, what do you think happened?) and down a street I was beginning to recognise as the domain of the students. Especially foreign students. I kept going, and then made an unprecedented right turn, and started climbing a hill. Dead end. I turned right, and then left. Vicolo al Vento, it said. The cute tiny street dead ended on another, each one equally grey and stony as the previous. I turned right, and went down, and found myself in a piazza with a giant white church. I thought I might eat something, all of a sudden, and so I settled myself down on the wall in a corner of the piazza, and pulled out an apple.

It was October, and Madri was off snowboarding. I never ate with her in the dining hall, though, because she lived off campus and didn’t eat with other students. I was carrying my dinner tray towards my usual table in the smaller of the two dining rooms, when I saw that it was more full of people than usual.

‘Karen!’ I said, wondering why it felt like I never saw her. She looked up at me, grimly. ‘Cole.’ Her curly blond hair was in an unkempt ponytail, and she was wearing a ratty Wallingford College sweatshirt.

‘Are you okay? I never seem to see you.’ I hesitated. “Where’s Chad, anyway?”

Karen looked at me. Ryan had started to make a sculpture out of french fries and other detritus, signifying that he, at least, was done with the nutritional phase of dinner. Now, it was time for the socialisation phase. Jessica and Dorian were looking over a series of chemical reactions. I rolled my eyes as I sat down, wondering how I had been saddled with a bunch of science dorks for friends. Jessica, astrophysics genius notwithstanding, was a music minor. Dorian played in the orchestra. But Karen and Ryan were lost souls, they were nothing but science dork through and through.

This, I had thought, is what makes them fun to hang around with.

‘Why don’t we construct it out of french fries, Dorian, so I can show you how it turns into an anhydrous complex after the reaction?’ Jessica asked us all in general, plucking a few french fries off Ryan’s tray and arranging them on the table. Dorian looked unconvinced. He smiled in greeting as I sat down next to him, trying to ignore the awkwardness that my words had created. As Jessica maneuvered french fries into cyclohexane rings, he leaned over to me and whispered in my ear, “They broke up last week.”

Now, eyeing the whiteness in front of me, I wished I had been a little more thoughtful. A lot of Wednesdays must have passed before I noticed that Karen wasn’t actually doing that well. For someone who spent every morning on an ambulance, I contemplated bitterly, I was awfully bad at noticing my friends’ problems. I nibbled off the last bite of the apple, and looked around the piazza for a place to put it. There was a metal trash bin across the piazza in front of me. I heaved my backpack back on, trashed the core, and looked around.

The staircase at the side of the church was too tempting to resist. I went back towards it, passing the church again. Wherever could this go, I wondered, feeling like a rat in a labyrinth. At least I hoped I would succeed in getting back to the bus, sooner or later, to get home and be fed.

The space between Karen and I wasn’t just about me having my head in the clouds, though, I thought as I ambled down the stairs. At the bottom, I found myself in yet another of the numerous piazzas. This one was a great open space with two exits. I looked around. There was a closed gate going one way, next to another of the Sienese bizarre sculptures I had been running into. I looked at this more closely. On the right there was a bit of modern art, chunks of white stone. On the left was a bronze plaque of some sort, but the only part I could make out was a terrified horse coming off the right side. Right, I thought to myself, that would be the Palio, the horse race in the summer. Perhaps this is one of those contrada-neighborhoods that Siena is composed of. They were supposed to each have an animal totem, but, other than the frightened horse, I couldn’t see any animal in the sculpture. I crossed the piazza and surveyed my options. I could go down a hill, or I could go up a hill. collem scandere, collem discendere, ascendere, discendere. I teased the words in my head until they turned into discrete and meaningless sounds. Then with one last glance up the street, I decided to go down.

The skywatching session after fall break was in the early evening, and for reasons that were never fully explained, Madri didn’t show up. Of course, sometimes I skipped class, but I wanted to pass, at least, so I came to look at the stars. Without Madri, I was aimless, and then relieved when Karen pulled up a chair next to me. She was enthralled.

‘Look at how different the sky is at this hour! Look at how you can see the planets on the horizon!’ She was bubbly and joyous, a far cry from her behaviour a few weeks ago. I looked up at the grey, blackening sky looming over me, and I felt only dread. The sky seemed huge and endless, ominous in its immensity. I didn’t understand how people thought of it as so beautiful from this angle. The more we learned about stars and cosmology, the more I felt threatened by the hugeness, by my location on a microscopic earth, hanging balanced on a fine thread of gravity, being tugged at by the sun and tugging on its moon. I worried that everything would break loose.

The next day in class, Madri convinced me to go with her to a party. “Come on, Cole!” she insisted in a gravelly whisper. Professor Blum continued his lecture, droning like a hive of bees. “It’s a Russian Club party, they’re the best. Besides, you’re like, Russian, you should go for cultural reasons.”

“Madri! I’m barely Russian. My parents moved here when they were kids!” I counterattacked.

“Cole, I promised to teach you something about adventure, didn’t I? You didn’t fall off my skateboard that once. This won’t hurt, it’ll be fun. Come on, you know you’re curious.” And because I was curious, I acquiesced.

At the bottom of the hill, I was facing a dead end. Upon more close observation, it looked like I had one option. I could turn left. I did. When that made another sharp left turn I was stuck going up the hill, parallel to the street I had come down. I started huffing in the chilly air, not displeased that I was warming myself internally. I peered down a side street, a ladder rung between these two dastardly hillstreets.

I stopped in wonder. In the middle of the tiny street, next to a doorway but seemingly not connected to any particular house, there was a bench. I felt a great desire to sit on that bench. Right now. I looked around cautiously, not wanting to impinge on any neighborhood bench sitting schedule, but there was no one in sight.

I entered the vicolo and settled myself down. There was a green door across from me, and a window at about head height. Above it in the middle of the wall there was a little alcove. It had a plastic nun in it wearing a red and white outfit, surrounded by blue and white flowers. Underneath – I squinted to make out the writing, it said advocato nostro. Their saint, I presumed. Then I thought, on a more earthly tack, I had to have more food in my bag. Dinah had given me a sandwich for lunch, and although I usually nibbled them during our break in class, or snatching tiny pieces during Italian lessons, today I hadn’t bothered. I peeled off the foil: cheese and prosciutto, like always, between two pieces of filling Tuscan bread. I wasn’t complaining.

I remembered feeling, as I listened to Karen yammer on in between the professor’s studied remarks, that the distance between us was growing like the distance between two stars. The universe expands, and the tiny tiny stars in it grow further and further apart, isolated in a sea of absolute nothingness. I couldn’t imagine enjoying this class, I couldn’t conceive of her joy in it. I liked chemistry for its formulae and for the fun of drawing benzene rings, but I didn’t consider myself logical enough to pursue it. I preferred the chaos of the ambulance, the logic of health and the on-your-feet reasoning to solve people’s problems. At least I thought. My mouth suddenly dried out in the middle of a bite of sandwich, and I carefully set it down and dug in my bag for the Nalgene. It tasted a bit mildewy, but I didn’t care. I took a healthy swig of water.

(In the end you were good for nothing!) the alien shrieked, and its voice gave me a headache. In the end I was good for nothing, I thought. In the end there was nothing I could do, or nothing I could do right, there was only fear and the metallic taste of illness and pain and agony in my mouth. I remembered sharp stabs of moments, the medic taking the IV needle from my hand, bright technicolour moments, sharp voices and the medic’s calm. I remembered the trembling, trembling inside my skin even when outside all was firm.

I felt sick, I couldn’t let myself think these things. I shoved the sandwich back into its foil wrapping, and gave Mary on the wall across from me a stern look. She was supposed to be a saint of some sort, I stewed, but she obviously doesn’t save people from their own dangerous thoughts. I exited the street and continued walking up the hill, briskly.

I came to the top and with a sudden shock of recognition, I knew where I was. I recognised the entrance to San Francesco on my right, the crypt! I came here to study occasionally when I wanted silence. Why hadn’t I thought of that today, I wondered. This is the perfect place to study. Huge and cavernous. The people stare at everyone who comes in, but the minute you sit at a table you join their ranks. Silence and the echo of pages turning.

I took the street that went below the entrance to San Francesco, and paused. On my right was a small archway under Via dei Rossi, that was some kind of fountain. I figured it had to be a municipal thing, it had the balzana – the black and white seal of Siena, on the front of it. I sat down on the bench conveniently facing the fountain, and turned to stare down the steep hill that led away from it. Then I turned, feeling the cold stone under my jeans and the gritty cement under my fingers. Gloves, I thought, dammit. Where did I leave them?

I stared into the flat water inside the arch. There was a frightening statue of a man on the left, brandishing a sword out over the water. He looked fierce and angry. He looked like the sort of person who would kill you, no problem.

the alien startled me with a sharp noise, and I jumped. Then I looked around, angry. I stared back into the fountain, my attention suddenly caught by what was in the back. There was a little arched doorway, dripping with moss and greenery, and sitting in it, there was a… a caterpillar? It was covered in moss and a bit difficult to discern, but it seemed pretty incontrovertibly caterpillarish. Odd, I concluded. Animal statues, indeed. But behind that, there was another doorway and what looked like a staircase. How bizarre, I decided, wondering if anyone had recently been tempted to clamber through the fountain and escape up that mysterious and tiny staircase. From here I could barely believe that anyone would fit. I shrugged, thinking this was no stranger than anything else in Siena, and stood. It was too cold to stay put for long.

I wandered into a small archway on my right, rather than attempting to go down the steep hill, which I would (I had, at least, mastered basic physics) have to come back up later. The arch led to what looked like a dead end. The dead end looked over a huge expanse of dry, brown land. In the summer, I mused, this must turn into a gigantic garden. I could see a covered area with a table. In warm weather this would be heavenly. I missed the sun and the warmth, all of a sudden. Green felt so far away, and the scent of spring, almost impossible to imagine. I yearned for the time when Madri and I had sat in class together, complaining, and I had had no idea how things would change. Abruptly, I turned away from the view and started walking back up Via dei Rossi, tired of looking at the endless expanses of uneven grey stones. One building front shaded into the next, the only difference being the store on the ground level, or the type of brick or stucco. Monotony. Nulla varietas, which, I considered thoughtfully, wasn’t quite monotony, but really meant a lack of variation. What is the difference between monotony and a lack of variation?

Without making a conscious decision, my feet were leading me back to the bar. I didn’t want to admit that I was curious what effect Ilaria had had on Caterina and Federico. I felt floaty, lost in my memories, and I wanted to be grounded by something, or someone. Some reminder that reality didn’t live in the past, but belonged to this bizarre medieval town I randomly found myself residing in. I looked at my watch. The sky was getting dark, and it was nearly five in the evening. Winter, I thought disgustedly. I wondered if it would get warmer in March.

I entered the bar,surprised to see a few people dotting the tables, but little other action. ‘Ariele!’ I was hailed as I arrived, and felt an odd shock to hear myself called by my new, invented name. Ariel. This was a name I could get used to. I had told Isabella, and she had wrinkled her nose and said it was a good thing I only used it on special occasions. She didn’t seem to think it was a good, Italian name. But she did admit it was an improvement on Cole. She only liked my real name when she hooked it all together, ‘Dar-ya Cole,’ in a precise, sing songy voice of hers.

‘Ariele, come stai?’ Caterina was greeting me joyously. I responded promptly, surprised to notice that the Italian was coming easier, that little by little, Latin class notwithstanding, I mixed them up less and understood more.

I ordered a glass of juice and stood up at the bar to drink it. I wanted something, but I wasn’t certain what I was waiting for. I sipped slowly, watching Caterina flow from the espresso machine to the counter, producing a huge number of tiny coffee cups and placing each one in the middle of a tiny plate.

Caterina arranged spoons on each plate and two by two, set them on the bar beside me. I realised belatedly that these were for the people at the tables, who swarmed up, languidly, and poured terrifying amounts of sugar into their tiny little espressos before returning to their seats.

When she had finished, she wiped the counter, threw a load of dirty cups into a round plastic bin, and shoved it into a dishwasher. Then she turned to me.

“Ariele,” she said thoughtfully. “We’re going to Petriolo in a little while, after we close the bar. Are you coming?”

I was confused. “Petriolo? What’s that?”

Caterina laughed. “Petriolo is great! It’s….” I didn’t understand the explanation. “An outdoor swimming pool?” I paraphrased, wrinkling my brow. Without asking, Caterina took my glass away and poured me something. “Try this,” she told me, and after some further explanation, I finally got the idea.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, “It’s a hot springs!” How exciting. “But, you’re going now? And I can come? I don’t have a…” I tried to convey the concept of a swimming suit. We definitely hadn’t done a unit in class on “the beach” yet. I sipped the red stuff suspiciously. “What is this?”

“Campari,” Caterina said.

“Is it alcoholic?”

“Solo un po.” Only a little. I nodded. It had a strange, bitter taste.

“Where do you live?” Caterina asked, looking thoughtful.

“Petriccio,” I said, naming my suburb.

“Well, then it’s no problem. We can stop by your house for the swimming suit.” She said the words slowly, and I repeated them. Costume da bagno. Costume da bagno. The Romans hadn’t had swimsuits, so I was saved from seditious Latin whispers in my brain.

“When are you going?”

Caterina, being a classic Italian, had a rather slippery sense of time. “We’ll close the bar, and then we’ll go!” she said optimistically. I was uncertain what to do.

“So,” I said, “I should just wait? Actually, can I use the telephone? I should warn them that I’m not coming home for dinner.”

Caterina nodded, and handed me a cordless phone. I dialled the number, and Dinah answered. “Pronto.”

“Dinah?”

“Cole? What is it?”

“No, nothing important. I’m just not coming home for dinner. I mean, I’ll stop by for a second, but we’re going to Petria…uh, Petriolo,” I stammered, realising how ridiculous it sounded.

“Who’s we? Let me get this straight. You aren’t coming home for dinner. You are going to Petriolo. With someone. Right?”

“Right!” I was relieved.

“But with whom?”

“Oh, with the people from that bar, the one I told you about.”

Dinah finally sensed she had gotten about as much information as there was, and subsided. “Okay. We’ll see you later.”

I hung up the phone, relieved. Then suddenly worried. What had I just gotten myself into? Caterina was still watching me, curious. “Who do you live with? You speak English only?” I realised that she hadn’t understood much of the discussion. I still wasn’t totally convinced that neither Federico nor Caterina spoke any English, but I didn’t push it.

“I live with…” I hesitated. “American woman who married Italian man.” The grammar was all wrong, but she had understood. “Ahhh,” she said. “So you speak English at home! All the time?”

I shrugged. “If I want to, I can speak Italian too. A little.”

Caterina’s eyes widened. “But you have learned so much already!” I felt grumpy. I sure hoped so, it had been an entire month!

Caterina hadn’t made any reference at all to my British friend, but it seemed like I hadn’t been displaced in her affections, at least. And now I was spending the entire evening in company? This was horrific. All of a sudden I wanted to back out, but I realised that I had pretty neatly caged myself into it. I took the last sip of the Campari, and went to sit at a table and watch her clean the bar. The last of the coffee sipping herds were gone, and peace reigned. I took out my textbook, and flipped through the shiny pages back to “At the bar,” to study for a bit more.

I was deep in the middle of the grammar lesson for chapter 12, which had seemed rather more interesting than my current homework, when I felt someone looming over my shoulder.

“Ariele!” Federico said, his eyes lighting up. I was grumpy again, suddenly tense after the calm of my studying. Whyever was he so pleased to see me? I didn’t like it. I had nothing against Federico; I didn’t let myself assess him in a romantic way.

(Killer, the alien hissed.)

I didn’t deserve friends, much less romance. And I couldn’t speak enough Italian, anyway. I wasn’t like Ilaria, collecting boyfriends for “Italian” lessons.

“You are coming with us to Petriolo,” he stated. I nodded. “Have you been there before?” I shook my head. “We go on Wednesdays because no one goes there on Wednesdays! It is best when there isn’t too much people.”

I worried. Why was it better without people? It was dark out, and cold. I wondered if this was some evil, spooky experience that I was truly better off avoiding. But it was already time to go. “Come on!” Federico said, as Caterina turned off the lights and surveyed the bar. “Let’s go!”

I put my book away and stood up reluctantly. then came the scarf, back around my neck, and the jacket zipped up. Caterina said something under her breath to Federico, and he laughed.

“We stop for your swimsuit?” I smiled, remembering the words. I nodded. “If it isn’t a problem,” I said in a small voice. I certainly wouldn’t swim without it, though. A sudden image of Madri flashed through my head. I was prudish, compared to her. She would be out there, even in the middle of the winter, swimming nude. Not I. I thought, sorrowfully, that she had had a love for life, passion and exuberance. I had thought I could learn that from her.

(Wroong!! the alien trilled.)

yeah. I’d sure been mistaken on that one.

I followed Federico out the door, and Caterina paused to lock the bar shut. It was strange to exit it at night, and see the bar dead and dark inside. They whispered together a bit more, and we started heading up the hill, back the way we came.

Federico turned to me, and said something explanatory that I didn’t understand. Then, “…so she left the car at Porta Romana.”

I wasn’t sure where porta Romana was. It seemed that I was about to find out. We went down Via Pantaneto, full of students in the daytime, and even now not empty. I reminded myself that despite the darkness, it was only 6.30 in the evening. We kept going, through the arch of the old city wall, and straight. And finally, with the shadow of a great, high arch in front of us, was the car: a small, blue citroen. Caterina was driving. Federico motioned me to take the front seat, and I shook my head. “No, no,” I said, trying to explain that he was taller than me and needed more space. My complaints and explanations were all in vain.

“You need to show me where your house is,” Caterina finally said, and I acquiesced. From here to the north of town was a long long windy road that circled the town wall. In and out, curve one way and then another – you could get carsick a mere few miles from home!

My sister, I thought suddenly, would already be groaning in the backseat. My sister was sixteen and wanted to be an actress. She reminded me of Madri on good days, I thought as we turned another curve. I remembered Madri teasing me incessantly about my crush. “Jack, oh Jack!” she swooned one day in class, when I admitted that we had been on a fire call together that morning. Then I shivered. I didn’t want Belinda to be like Madri, not really. I wanted her to be like what I thought Madri was – courage and adventure and love for herself. That was what I thought.

Belinda, at least, was doing very well on the loving herself part of things.

Suddenly I was distracted by the valley on the right. We were approaching another entrance to the city wall, but deep in the valley there were, almost hidden in shadow and only lit by a nearly full moon far overhead, a grey shadowy set of arches. Or was I imagining it? I was suddenly struck by this mystery. I wondered if I could find my way out here – but before I could figure out where we were, we had gone around the next bend, and it was out of sight.

Petriolo was lovely, contrary to my fears. Isabella had told me to put my swimsuit on in the house, and I was glad for the advice. We got to Petriolo, and all it was was some cold cold ground, that led down to a series of calcium-white pools full of sulphurous hot water. Below us, the river roared by. There was indeed, on a cold Wednesday evening in the middle of February, no one else there. The moon, large and cheeselike, lit everything with a silvery sheen. We stripped off our clothing, giggling – although mostly between Caterina and Federico, who away from the bar were behaving younger and younger. We settled into the pools, Caterina in one, me in another a level below her, and Federico eye level with me. Federico’s was the largest. He wiggled his eyebrows at me, “Don’t you want to come here, Ariele?” patting the water next to him.

I didn’t even respond, I just lazed in the hot water, letting it relax me and my body. I knew I would be dancing well the next day, after this treatment. They – the children, I thought sardonically, settled down to silence after a few minutes of whispering, and I sunk deeper into the heat of the pool. White noise, the river sloshing merrily by, filled my head. Suddenly, just as the hot water was beginning to make me suffocate with heat, I was startled by a splatter of wet feet on the wet and slippery stone, and a slick sloshy sound as someone slid out of a pool. I opened my eyes. Caterina was already making her way nearer to the sound of the river. By the amount of sound I had been lolling in, I had the impression that it wasn’t that big. Before I had much time to calculate, Federico grasped my hand and was prying me out of the water.

“Come, come,” he said impatiently, and we walked across the white stones, shivering with heat in the cold. Waves of steam came off his and Caterina’s bodies, and I looked down to admire the white clouds pouring off my swimsuit.

“You can swim, Ariele?” Caterina said out of the darkness, and I turned to her with a worried look. What was she suggesting? Before I could even respond, I felt a push on my back, I slipped on the rock, and I was powerless to stop the fall.

And then I arrived. With a splash, and a gasp as I hit the ice cold water. I sunk under, and my feet scrabbled and found the bottom. I sprung back up to break the surface, threw myself above the water and screamed. My skin was alive and tingling, and I had no idea why or how I made such a loud and confident noise, but there it was. Ariele was awake, more awake than I had been in a long time.

(Ever, a little voice insisted.)

Caterina bobbed next to me, and Federico further downshore was already stepping out of the water to return to the warm bath. I slogged downstream, half swimming, and stepped out. Caterina was behind me. She said breathlessly, “We’re like your family here. We’re also only half Sienese, can you tell?”

“But what’s the other half?” I said curiously, looking down at Caterina’s blue eyes, her clear bronze skin and straight dark brown hair (disregarding the blond stripes). Federico was taller than me. His skin was paler than Caterina’s, but not by much. His hair was darker and curlier and his eyes were green. They have cat eyes, I thought, feeling as though this were a dream. The entire scene, moonlit and silent, suddenly belonged to someone else’s version of reality. I felt suffused by a blush as I stared at Federico, his abs shimmering through the clear water.

Cole, I thought, would never be here. Maybe vibrant and screaming Ariele is someone different. This was a new concept of liberation. Could a new name turn me into a new person?

Caterina was still behind me. I turned and gave her a hand up the slippery rocks. Federico laughed into the silence. “What is the other half?” he asked rhetorically. I could sense that this wasn’t something they liked to talk about. Caterina rubbed her hand down her nose, where I suddenly noticed a sprinkling of freckles, visible in the cool moonlight.

“Better not to say,” she said abruptly, and on light feet, scampered up to the highest pool where she sunk in all the way, her eyes closed.

Federico looked at me somewhat sadly from the middle of the biggest basin. “Sorry,” he said in a low voice. “She shouldn’t have started it.” I understood his tone more than his words, and nodded.

A knot of anger at the world suddenly coiled itself around my heart. Even these, the most joyous and open of everyone I had met in Siena, had sad and painful problems? It didn’t seem fair. Certain that the moment wasn’t entirely real, I gained confidence and slid myself into the hot water next to him. My feet fit next to his feet, thigh to thigh, my back cushioned against the smooth and hot stone, and then I turned and slid my arms around his frightningly fabulous chest in a tight hug.

It was a long time, the air freezing from above and the water steaming from below, the river burbling along, surrounding us with white noise, before I felt him start to uncoil. His head lifted from on top of mine, I untucked myself from the curve of his neck, and he said “It’s late. We should go.”

The return to Siena was in silence. I dozed at first, surrounded by the memory of warm water. As we got nearer to Petriccio, I started to wake, feeling like maybe I was returning to reality, or maybe I would find it in the morning.

Excerpt from A History of Siena through the Fountains, by Cole (Gaia) Ostrovsky.

Passing along Via Rossi, if you happen to take the low road instead of entering San Francesco, you’ll find a small resting place on your right. There is a sunken circle with a bench, which sits facing a single arch underneath the road. At first glance, it is easy to not realise that this hidden arch is the standard form of the fountains of Siena, curved and with a single basin of water inside. Because it is limited by the street overhead, the fountain is low and deep, and because it was adopted in the 60’s by the Contrada of the Caterpillar, the new accoutrements inside make one disregard the original architecture.

The fountain of San Francesco was originally fed by the water from the Piazza, and was of great importance to the contrade of the Caterpillar and the Giraffe. The residents of these two contrade were for the most part silkweavers, carders and clothmakers, which were all crafts that had an enormous need for water, even above the standard need for drinking water and water for cleaning and living. This fountain was created late, compared to many of the other fountains, but served a great need. When it was no longer useful for the workers in the contrade, it gained a few new decorations. First, a giant caterpillar set into an alcove, reminding passers by that the Contrada of the Caterpillar has claimed this fountain for the contrada, for baptism and symbolism. Next, a “barbicone” was placed into the fountain – the statue of a violent looking man bearing a sword, with a somewhat undeterminate symbolism. Thus, unlike other fountains of Siena which, when they lost their original value, faded into ignominy, the fontana di San Francesco changed with the times, and is still valuable today. It was also called the fontana di San Bernardino, because of some confusion regarding just which saint was caring for the fountain, or perhaps to distinguish it from the ill-fated Fontana di San Francesco, which was at one point found inside the monastery courtyard.