5. Fonte Serena, 1359

Fonte Serena – questo il suo nome—tuttavia non è particolarmente amata dai Senesi: è incassata nella spalletta della collina; invisibile da chi transita per via del Casato; scomoda per chi deve attingere l’acqua costretto a scendere e risalire poi una ripidissima scalinata, quasi come se si dovesse scendere e risalire da una cantina – ci si lamenta--....Fonte Serena non è stata toccata e che anche oggi [e stata] riaperta a metà degli anni Settanta del nostro secolo, dopo che per un tempo lunghissimo era statea dimenticata dietro una cortina di mattoni che ne murava l’apertura.

Vinicio Serino, Ed. Siena e l’acqua, pg. 13

Fonta Serena – this is its name -- isn’t particularly loved by the Sienese: it is embedded in the parapet of the hill; invisible to those who travel along Via del Casato; uncomfortable for those who need to obtain water, who are forced to descend and ascend an extremely steep staircase, (almost as though one were descending and ascending from the depths of a cellar, they complained)…Fonte Serena was never modified but was only reopened in the middle of the 1970’s, after being forgotten behind a curtain of bricks which walled up the opening.

‘Let’s,’ said Ilaria decisively, ‘go hang out in the piazza tonight.

“Why?” I asked mutinously. We were standing outside school uncertainly. It was a Friday, and my only plans were to go home, go to the studio, and dance for a very very long time. I was sick of thinking in Italian. I was tired of espresso and being looked at oddly in the streets. I wanted to enter a bookstore full of English books – even better, I wanted to enter the University of Washington bookstore, full of every book a girl could want, and all sorts of other treasures. I wanted an Italian soda (not to be found in Italy) and to curl up on my own bed at home. Christmas, even though it had been terrible, suddenly seemed like Utopia, full of the forementioned things and the peace of knowing what I was talking about.

“There’s some kind of party going on. I didn’t really understand when Marco explained it to me, but he said it would be fun. Come on! Even if there’s nothing…you’ve never been to the piazza at night, have you?” she suddenly changed her tack, her blue raccoon eyes narrowing.

I shook my head. Ilaria sighed, expressing how hopeless I was.

“There’s always something going on. At the least we’ll hang out with Marco and drink some wine. Gaia, you never come out at night with me, there’ll be masses of people, it’s fun!”

I was already shaking my head wordlessly.

Ilaria set her jaw. “This once Gaia. You’ve never come, so you don’t know what you’re missing. I am going to come to your house and get you, if you don’t promise, this once.”

The joy of having friends, I thought sarcastically. I wasn’t sure why people wanted me around so much lately. Even Isabella had turned down going out with her fabulous friends recently, to take me shopping for a pair of pants.

I turned to leave the piazza, choosing the longer and harder way up Via Bandini instead of passing the Logge. I wasn’t in the mood to see anything turbulent today.

“Gaia! Eight thirty at your namesake fountain, or you are dead meat!” I didn’t doubt her, either. When it came to me, Ilaria had an odd innocence, and I knew that she would be shattered if I didn’t come. The weight of her insistence hung over me as I walked up the hill, up and up and out at Piazza Tolomei, then a sharp right to the main street. All the expensive shops, toned down in their anti-tourist winter garb, added the only colour to the grey herringboned ground, and the grey and brick monotony of the buildings. An odd innocence, I repeated to myself. I could feel the alien nestling in my head, a burden to carry with me. A knot tied itself in my stomach and made me want to throw up. Like me with Madri. But she never protected me from all the things I didn’t know.

I spared a quick glance off to the left as I walked up the street. I knew now that there were a few ways to get to the bar, and all of them involved turning left. I wasn’t going to do it. Not today.

There were days when I went to the bar and studied. I had never mentioned Ilaria, and she had never been mentioned to me, but I vaguely wondered nonetheless if Federico had been added to her long list of Italian instructors. We hadn’t taken any more excursions, and I hadn’t seen the mysterious Signore di Gaspari any more – thus he continued to be mysterious. I wondered where Fede and Cati were from, but I didn’t ask. And today I felt too fragile to chance anything. Saxa, I thought my well-worn mantra stubbornly. Saxa, taberna, lapis. Does anyone ever say anything about saxa that’s famous?**

I crossed the Piazza della Posta and went down the wide alley that led to La Lizza, where the buses collected like iron filings faced with a magnet. My bus was scheduled to arrive in five minutes. I leaned myself against the railing and wondered why so many people choose black coats in the winter. Winter is already a cold and colourless season. Why make it worse? My own jacket, slightly ratty after years of use, was a sunny yellow, accented by navy blue.

I thought suddenly of the trench coat of Fede’s. He never wore it, preferring a heavy leather jacket that I had seen him in a few times. I missed that jacket, it made me feel mysterious myself, as though I were suddenly worth more to the world.

(you, the alien said poisonously, are worth nothing.) Black suddenly seemed like a good colour to wear, but here was bright yellow Gaia, waiting for the bus.

In the dance studio the time passed without note, my heart rising on each tour jete, my attention focused on the precise alignment of my arms and the up-up-down beat of toe shoes on the floor for the pas de bas. I drove myself into the dance, trying to jump higher and higher, trying to pull myself into more and more precise shapes. Trying to become a concept, instead of a mere dancer. When the phone rang in the hall – Isabella calling to tell me to come home -- I was not surprised to find blood in my toe shoes. I took the CD out of the CD player, wrapped my toes in gauze and put on my comfy old sneakers, glad that finally the cold winter breezes were fading, and there was no sign of snow, for the time being.

It felt surreal to be walking back from La Lizza in darkness. The streets were lit, there were people milling in the streets, and for some reason it surprised me. As I got nearer to the piazza, my feet tingling with every step, I heard a low hum build up. I walked down the stairs and through an archway to see massive amounts of people sitting in the shell shaped piazza. Remembering Ilaria’s last remarks, I walked to Fonte Gaia.

She wasn’t there yet. I checked my watch and it said 8.35. Oh well, I thought, it’s just like Ilaria to have picked up on the Italian habit of lateness. I started ambling around the fountain and then stopped in shock. At night time the white stone of the fountain and the pale teal-aqua of the water were lit with small lamps. Out of the darkness it shone like a blue and white beacon: the white almost blinding with light, all of the magnificent carvings showing every detail. And the water – the water was a brilliant translucent aqua, a colour that seemed nearly surreal in its clarity. There weren’t even very many pigeon feathers floating in it tonight, for some reason.

Finally I felt a tap on my back, and there she was. She was wearing heeled boots that made her even taller than usual – there weren’t many women I had to look up to, but Ilaria was one of them. Her long black coat was sleek and sophisticated, and today she had on slim black pants and what looked like a cashmere sweater the colour of her eyes. I internally shook my head at her put together look – very British, I tried to console myself, but it didn’t seem fair that it be a genetic trait. I stuck with dancer basics and left it at that. Nonetheless, tonight exhausted and creaky from dancing, in jeans and my sneakers, I felt like I definitely didn’t compare to her.

“So Ilaria, where’s the party?”

“You came!” Her entire face lit up like a candle. “I thought you wouldn’t come, I thought I was going to have to come and get you. I was so worried, Gaia, you’re here!!”

the alien grumbled.

I shrugged. “I’m here. So where do we go?”

“We wait for Marco and Aldo. They should be here soon, they’re bringing the food. And look – I brought wine.” She displayed a brown paper bag, which she was holding by the evident wine bottle’s neck.

“And what is it exactly that’s going on?” I wrinkled my brow, surveying the groups of people huddling in the piazza.

“Well, it’s Friday, and every Friday there’s some singer or someone who comes and plays music. Look – way up front, they’ve set up a stage. See it?”

I squinted. All the way at the bottom of the piazza, in front of the Palazzo Comunale, there was indeed a dilapidated stage being set up. I eyed it sceptically, wondering what sort of music might be produced this evening. My mood wasn’t what I would call sociable, and I was dubious about meeting Ilaria’s toy boys.

“There they are!” she grabbed me by the arm and started hustling me over to two men coming our way.

“Marco,” the first one said to me, holding out his hand. I took it, then hesitated. Who was I tonight? “Gaia,” I finally said, shaking his hand. “Piacere.” There was a certain comfort in the routine of meeting new people. Now it was his turn to make a pleasant comment about me, and I would make a pleasant comment about him, and then everyone would consider us fully acquainted.

The second boy looked me up and down for a second. He smiled. I blushed. He was tall and good looking, with a waterfall of shiny dark hair, dark eyes and a classically long Italian nose. It was the smile that did it, for some reason. His teeth weren’t quite even, but the effect was smoldering.

I hoped strongly that Aldo – I assumed this was Aldo, would not smile at me. Ever. He was holding out his hand for our introductory handshake and as I took it, he gave me a predatory look and I frowned at him. “Piacere,” I said, not meaning it. We all headed off down the piazza. Marco and Ilaria had decided that a corner off to the right was our best bet, where there was still a lot of open space between the groups of people. We settled ourselves on a blanket that the boys had brought, and opened the food. I took a hunk of bread and a plastic cup of wine, participated wordlessly in the toast, and then tuned out, letting Ilaria and her boys flirt with each other without my disturbance. Her Italian had gotten very good, I noticed, especially in flirting, although remembering Stefano’s remark of a few weeks ago, I tried to listen for her accent. Then I wondered if mine was as strong. I hoped not.

I was still zoned out when the music started, until Ilaria poked me. “What do you think?” she whispered. “Of what?” I whispered back, fully mystified.

“You know!”

“I do?” I looked around in confusion. “Oh! The music’s started. It’s not bad, actually.” It was better than I had expected – someone copying modern pop songs. Luckily they weren’t trying their luck in English.

“No, you bloody idiot! My boys!”

“Marco seems nice,” I said calmly.

“And Aldo, what do you think of him?”

I shrugged, unwilling to say anything.

“Come on, you’ve got to tell me. You must have some opinion!”

Finally, I said reluctantly, “If you’ve got to sleep with one of them, sleep with Marco. Or find some more guys. That’s all. But I don’t know, maybe we just got off on the wrong foot or something. Whatever. Not everyone can like everyone.” I subsided, feeling like I had made a much longer speech than necessary.

“Hun. You really don’t like him?”

“I feel like a specimen to him, that’s all. Maybe he’s actually really nice.” I held out my cup. “Why don’t you give me more wine?” My feet were starting to hurt a lot. It had been a good few years since I had danced that hard for that long, and my toe shoes were new, which didn’t help.

I settled back on a corner of the blanket, staring up at the stars and letting the music wash over me. Ilaria and her boys were still flirting, and the wine was making me woozy. I looked over at the corner of the piazza. A group of people was standing there wearing bright orange. What are they? I wondered groggily. And what’s with the outfit? All of a sudden one of them pulled a radio out of a pocket and started talking into it. I felt a pang of yearning for 33-7 and my old ambulance routine. Even when I got into a pattern here in Italy, it still felt like an escape. This wasn’t real life…Ariele, I thought.

I leaned back and closed my eyes, until Ilaria shook me. “Get up, lazybones. Marco has some friends in the Misericordia, he wants to go talk to them.” She was pointing toward the orange crowd. I shrugged and let her pull me to my feet.

“Misericordia?” I repeated, following her as she followed Marco. Aldo was left guarding the blanket. He smiled leeringly at me, and I bared my teeth at him.

Ilaria didn’t answer. She just held my hand tighter, as though afraid I might run away. I didn’t, though, I was curious what the orange was about.

Marco started the introductions. There was a Francesco, Luca, Simona and another Francesco, who said “You can call me Rossi. Everyone else does.” Ilaria smiled and preened for them, and I shook their hands and zoned off. The first Francesco kept the radio in his hand, as though afraid it might vanish. Marco started talking excitedly with him and the other Francesco. Ilaria wormed her way into the conversation. Simona was a short blond, and Luca looked tired. They were both eyeing the herds in the piazza as though they wanted them to vanish. It was Simona who got up the energy to talk to me.

“You’re an American?”

“Huh?” I said, my head swivelling from the top of one of the Campo’s towers. She repeated the question.

“Yeah,” I said unenthusiastically. “Are you from here?”

She shook her head, “I study here, I’m studying medicine. But Luca’s Senese, aren’t you Luca?” she prodded him. “He studies too, he’s studying giurisprudenza.”

I frowned, saying the long word to myself. Giurisprudenza. Jurisprudence. Law? Or political science? I nodded, finally. “Law?” I hazarded.

Luca shrugged.

“What are you doing here in these uniforms?” I said hesitantly. The wine was dulling my general contrariness, and I needed to say something so I didn’t collapse into a tired, wounded puddle on the cold ground. Before I got any response, the radio emitted a high beep, and they all perked up their ears. Even Luca, leaning on a white pillar, looked less likely to fall asleep. I couldn’t hear what it said, but all of a sudden they were all heading the other way. Francesco handed the radio to Luca, and he accepted it with a sour look.

“Where are they going?” I whispered to Ilaria, who I found next to me. Their orange backs were undulating in the darkness ahead of me, dreamlike. All of a sudden the sharp bleat-bleat of an ambulance siren cut through the music that was playing behind me, and a white and orange striped ambulance careened out of the street in front of me.

It grew larger and larger in my vision, the sound of urgency and fear, and echoed in the entire piazza above the music. The sound bounced off the wall of buildings and returned, growing greater and permeating deeper into my brain. I had to escape this closed in piazza. I had to get away from this endless ambulance noise.

(orange! orange! the alien was screaming, keening, orange! safety orange! you didn’t want to admit it but you knew!) its voice in tune with the echoes of the ambulance, and I, like a trapped rabbit, took the nearest exit. I started running up the street in front of me, my toes a dull and constant agony, the buildings dark and shadowy in the moonlight. I ran until I came up a hill and then I vanished down a pale staircase to my left.

I stopped, hearing a light splashing. Where was I? I had no clue, I wasn’t sure if I had turned more than once or if I had gone straight up the hill. I looked around, and saw that a steep and shiny white stone staircase led down to a fountain. Like Fonte Gaia, the water was an ethereal blue, but this fountain shone at me like a jewel, empty of people. It was like a secret treasure. I limped down the staircase in awe, and looked around. The fountain was tiny, not at all like the three great arches of Fonte Branda. This had one single arch, and was built into the wall under the road I had just been running on. It had two separated basins of water, the one on the right higher, which poured into the left. I looked at the sparkling blue water. Finally aware that my feet hurt more and more, I settled myself down at the very corner of the fountain, not caring if I sat on an entire mountain of the unavoidable pigeon shit.

On the topic, “Oh shit, oh shit oh shit,” was a low mutter under my breath, in pure English. I was quivering so hard that I thought I might topple into the fountain. I wedged myself more tightly in the corner, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the radio.

I had been reading a novel, something about (ironically) the Renaissance in Italy, with herds of complex characters. On my bed, nighttime. I wasn’t required to do night time ambulance shifts, but the schedule had such glaring holes that once in awhile, especially when I needed the money, I filled them in. Luckily it wasn’t too far to get from my dorm room to the Wallingford Fire Company, especially on a bicycle. Nonetheless, I was hesitant to go to bed, not wanting to be awakened at two am for a drunk – it seemed somehow better to wait until the post midnight hours before sleeping.

I flipped a page, and then the loud, piercing tone of my pager cut through the air. I was in motion in milliseconds, shoes on, sweatshirt buttoned, keys and pager in hand. I was ready to withstand the freezing cold on my bicycle, ready for anything.

The reception in the dorm was bad; I could barely hear it as it recited the call. “Ambulance 33-7,” that was a given…but I was already out the door and into the cement block hallway. Not a chance. Only when I was outside, fumbling with the bike lock, letting go – I held the pager up to the light of a streetlamp, and made out some words.

“UNCONSCIOUS PT,” it said. “POSS OVERDOSE.” I didn’t recognise the precise street adress, but I knew it was one of the apartment buildings on the two main streets of Wallingford. They were lined with apartments, full of students. I shoved the pager back into my pocket, the cold air biting my cheeks as I flew down the hill as fast as I could. Adrenalin was coursing through me.

I shivered and put one finger into the water of the fountain. It was just water. Nothing happened. There were no ambulances here. Far above me I heard Ilaria’s voice, sharp and worried, but I couldn’t move. The idea of it made me shiver even harder, and my feet hurt in sharp and agonising pangs.

Water, the fluid of life…the bedroom that I had been in one other time, but now I was not looking around with wonder. With total calm I inserted the plastic needle into the IV bag, following the medic’s precise and almost panicked instructions to dig through his blue bag for the diazepam, trying as hard as I could not to remember who it was, lying corpselike on the ground as he inserted the needle into her hand. “Damn addicts,” he had said, unable to find a vein in her arm, and a sharp and bitter anger rose up my gut. It was all I could do not to backhand him, IV bag, needle and all.

The wine had been a bad idea. I wanted to vomit. I leaned over the fountain and the sudden, sharp smell of chlorine cleared up my nostrils and my senses. Not only was this water non potabile, but they chlorinated it? Or did they clorinate it since it was non potabile? I couldn’t unbraid the confusing chain of events. I looked around for the unavoidable white plaque on the wall, but it wasn’t to be found. So this water is not potabile, I thought, because it is chlorinated, who knows why, but it could be potabile, if they didn’t chlorinate it?

All that made sense was that this water, like all the beautiful water in this poisonous city, was poisonous. And if it hadn’t already been poisonous, they had put chlorine in it, and now it was definitely poisonous. (latin***)

Are the people in this city trying to poison something? I thought semi-rhetorically. Or someone? Who has suffered from this poisonous water? Have people died in it? Or have they died after drinking it?

I thought suddenly – perhaps someone came in and poisoned the water one night, sick and tired of the Sienese people and their snobbiness. I contemplated this for a second, then revised it to fit history. Perhaps the Florentines came in to poison the water because they were afraid of the Sienese and wanted to weaken them.

Not that it mattered in the end. Siena was always doomed, compared to Florence. The underdog. I watched my finger make delicate rings in the stinky water. A pigeon feather bobbed as the waves hit it, one by one, carrying it closer to the other shore.

Water continued pouring in through a little tiny spout in the wall. The wall was dotted with brick sized holes, but I wondered what was behind it. Where did this water come from? How could you trust this water that seemed to arrive from nowhere, and then vanished back into nowhere? I looked ahead of me into the second, lower pool, but there was no explanation of where the water went. It kept coming in, and vanished.

Orange uniforms came to mind. How could I have known, I thought crossly at the alien, that orange would be the colour of emergencies around here? We wear navy blue! My body hurt and I felt unbearably fragile. How could I know what would make me break? How could I keep myself safe from such pain? It seemed impossible. I curled my knees up tight to my chest, and tried not to cry.

Then I thought of Federico and Caterina’s painful secrets, and about how Ilaria didn’t want to go home to England – I knew this, although she had never needed to tell me. All of us, I thought, are like these fountains. We all have sunken and hidden reasons for things. How much can any one person understand?

(the alien was disagreeing.)

What if someone needs you to understand? he hissed at me angrily.

“I couldn’t have understood! How did I know? How could I have had any clue what was flowing under the surface…what Madri had flowing in her blood, under the surface of her shiny eyed, shy smiles? To me she was nothing more than this fountain, mysteriously beautiful but impossible to understand further.” For a minute I wasn’t sure if I had spoken aloud, or if I had gone insane to be actually replying to the alien.

go away! I thought to it angrily. Get out of my head! You don’t belong to me.

(killer, the alien said, and then was silent.)

“She likes the fountains,” I heard Ilaria’s voice say, floating over me. They were coming down the stairs. I assumed it was her and Marco. I held my wet and dry hands together in front of me, both of them cold. I was still shaking, but their impending arrival gave me a sudden burst of energy to at least appear normal. I wiped the tears off my cheeks and sniffled, trying to keep more tears from falling. I wiped my entire face on my jacket sleeve. Luckily I wasn’t vain enough to attempt makeup. Then with a grimace I swung my feet off the ledge and tried to stand up.

“There she is!” Ilaria sounded relieved. I looked up through the darkness at two figures, and was surprised to see that she wasn’t with Marco. She was with Luca, the one in orange.

No, don’t panic, I thought before the alien could say anything dreadful. He’s only a person wearing a uniform. Nothing more, really.

they came down the stairs toward me, and I tried to look carefree and as far not like I had been crying as possible.

“Gaia I’m really sorry,” Ilaria said in a burst of English. “I knew that you were afraid of ambulances so I didn’t want to tell you that’s what the Misericordia is, I had no clue it would make you run away like that. I’m really really sorry. Are you okay?”

I tried to smile. “I danced too much today. My feet hurt, that’s all.” I didn’t move. I wasn’t actually sure I could stand up. I knew I should have packed more gauze around my poor toes, but I hadn’t realised how bad they were. I wondered if I could fall backwards into the fountain and vanish, rather than interacting with Ilaria and Luca and pretending to be normal.

I wished I could be normal. I felt wounded, not only my feet, but as though my entire personality was suddenly in danger. Who was I, this fragile and irrational dancer who ran away from ambulances? I didn’t seem like myself anymore. Then I noticed they were staring at me.

“Sorry for running away,” I said awkwardly in Italian, directing it at Luca. He looked disturbed.

“I’ve never seen someone react that way to an ambulance,” he said with an anxious look at me. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

I wanted to laugh, at just how not all right I suddenly felt. I hoped that a good night’s sleep would make me feel better. I hoped it was the wine.

“Fine,” I said dully. “I should probably get home, though.” I checked my watch. It was already nearly 11.

“I can give you a ride, if you want,” Luca said. “My shift ends at 11 anyway, and there are already other people here.”

I shook my head. “No, you don’t need to. There’s the bus.”

Ilaria interruped. “Gaia, he helped me to find you. I had no idea where you might have gone. Luca knows all the streets, he knows everything about the fountains.”

“Where are your boys?” I responded, wondering if Luca cared that we were speaking in English.

“I told them to go home. I wasn’t in the mood, once I saw how upset you were.”

I was surprised that Ilaria noticed and cared. Although it wasn’t nice of me, somehow I always thought of her as self-interested, but she wasn’t. She just had problems, like anybody, I thought. I was probably too self-interested myself to notice.

(better that way, the alien said thoughtfully.)

I felt like a very egotistical person.

“Really, I insist, I should give you a ride home. Where do you live?” Luca said, indeed insistently.

“Petriccio,” I said, echoes of a conversation with Federico and Caterina spiralling in my brain. I had, after the Petriolo event, succeeded in keeping them at a distance simply by not ever mentioning it. Or even suggesting that we had passed a unique and surreal evening experience together – once.

“Come,” Luca said, and together he and Ilaria pulled me up. I gave them my hands grudgingly, and staggered up the double staircases back to the street. I had been right, it was one street, Casato di Sopra, all the way to the piazza. We walked along the piazza in three, in front of the palazzo comunale, behind the mess of stage and singers and other general confusion, and turned right onto one of the numerous streets that exited the piazza.

“I have the car inside the Misericordia,” Luca said hesitantly as we slowly made our way down the street, past a brightly lit bar and a number of closed shops.

“I think,” I said weakly, “that I’ll wait outside. Is that okay?”

Luca motioned off to the left, where a white stone hallway led into the darkness away from the street. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll change and then bring the car out.” He turned and vanished into some invisible doorway.

“Sorry for ruining your night,” I said to Ilaria morosely. “I didn’t realise I was such a bum friend.”

(shut up! the alien said warningly.)

“Are you just going to go home now?”

Ilaria thought for a second, her arm around me nearly the only thing holding me upright. “I might go look for Marco and Aldo, if they’re still around. But I’m not sure, I might just go home and hang out. There’s usually something interesting going on there, too.”

That’s right, I thought to myself. The noise and joy of a dormitory, five girls all living together somewhere in the center of town. Or was it four? I was never sure, but Ilaria and her Italian roommates always had some friend visiting, or some boy intrigue, and so it was hard to count just how many people actually lived there.

Ilaria finally leaned me against a wall and made her exit. It seemed uncharacteristic for her to leave me, but I was relieved. My mind wandered, until I saw a little black car nosing its way out of the shiny white corridor, with Luca at the wheel. I felt awkward getting in, wondering if this was the ‘getting in the car with strangers’ that children and foreigners are warned against. But I figured Luca was disinterested enough that I wasn’t in danger.

I shut my eyes and leaned back in the seat as we bumped endlessly along the cobble stones. I opened them once to see Porta Romana looming darkly in front of me, as I had seen it one other time, but I was getting woozy and only shut my eyes again.

After an innumerable number of curves, Luca broke the silence. “I keep going straight here, right?” he said.

“Yes,” I answered precisely, looking around.

“It wasn’t anything about us, was it? Your fear of the ambulance?”

“No,” I responded shortly. Luca took a second to look at me, again with the slightly disinterested gaze of a scientist.

“If it would help, I could take you inside the Misericordia sometime to look at things. It might help you get over the fear,” he offered after a few more minutes.

“No, I don’t think it would help,” I said. “It’s a…a personal problem.” I stumbled over the words, watching the street pass by. We went through a stoplight.

“Turn left,” I directed, down the street and another left, and then a right onto my own street. “It’s here,” I motioned, and he stopped. “Thanks for the ride. You didn’t have to come looking for me.”

“I have never seen someone so bothered by an ambulance before. I was worried,” Luca said, and although I didn’t understand a few of his words, I got the idea. I opened the door, figuring that was about all we had to say.

“You can come find me anytime, just ask for Luca Fanetti. You know, if you want a tour or anything.”

“Thanks,” I responded as I stepped out of the car, a sudden hiss slipping through my teeth as I put weight on my feet. I tried not to stagger up to the doorway, aware that Luca was waiting for me to enter, before he would gun the engine and vanish.

As I put the key in the lock, I thought, almost gone. Almost vanished. And that, I thought, would be the end of Luca Fanetti and orange suited ambulance people.

My final expressable thought before I gave in to the red hot spiking waves of agony that attacked me on each and every stair – I wondered whether they were Emergency Medical Technicians on the ambulance, like us, and whether they were paid, and I wished that I had thought to ask.

*

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

The contrade of Stalloreggi, San Marco, Postierla and Vallepiatta di Sopra, later to become the contrade of the snail, tortoise, eagle and panther, complained to the commune that they had no decent way of getting water. Life being hard enough in the middle ages, the fact that they had to go all the way to Fontanella, down a steep staircase, and then climb back up to the highest point in the city bearing a heavy load of water, was too much to bear. They begged the commune for a fountain of their own, saying that they would pay, and justifying how the water could come from the overflow of the Piazza.

After a long while, the commune gave in and produced a fountain. The result? The residents began to whine. They said: This fountain is ugly, it is small, it is under the road. We have to go down a dreadfully steep staircase to get the water, and then back up. They asked the commune to please relocate the fountain in a more suitable location.

Unfortunately, just about at that time, the commune was losing stability. Although the contrada of the aquila continued to whine for decades, and reports were made and plans even considered, Fonte Serena was there to stay. The fountain was never moved.

It is found in a tucked away corner underneath Casato. You must go down a staircase heading toward the Contrada of the Wave, and then immediately turn around and go down another, steeper staircase that leads to the single high arch of the fountain. Unlike the fontana di San Francesco, Fonte Serena does not hide, tucked deep beneath the street. It is tall and proud in its single arch, with two basins of glowing water underneath.

That is to say, now. As the fountain least cared for and perhaps most detested by the Senese, fonte Serena has not always been beautiful. It fell out of use when the water supply began to dry up – a process that was already damaging many fountains in the settecento. By the eighteen hundreds, many of the lesser fountains were dry, fonte Serena among them. So, the Senese did what seemed practical: they bricked it up. They simply closed the arch, leaving two staircases which led down to a blank arched wall.

Thus in the 1950’s when the Department of Health decreed the fountains ‘non potabile,’ fonte Serena did not even exist, and so no marble plaque can be found in its vicinity, declaring the water undrinkable. You wouldn’t want to drink it, though. Although when cared for fonte Serena shines a clear pale blue, its location bricked in on three sides turns it into a giant pigeon cesspit, full of floating feathers and, during the hot summer months, a fine yellow algae which coats the two small basins.

It was only in the 70’s with the work of the ever fabulous Association of the Diana, not to mention the new water supply of the Ugo which made refilling of the fountains possible, that fonte Serena was opened for the public, where it continues to be tripped over by lost tourists, and entirely ignored by all Senese.