6. Fonte Nuova, 1303

La fonte entro le mura, detta Fonte Nuova d’Ovile, per la sua maestosa potenza strutturale e’ fra le piu’ belle di tutte quelle che Siena creo’ fra due e trecento…La fonte era gia funzionante nel 1303. Possiede due grandiosi e stupendi arconi ogivali in facciata ed uno laterale sulla destra che vanno a sorreggere possenti volte a crociera. Anche la rovina del terminale contribuisce ad offrire un fascino tutto particolare a questo gioiello di architettura.

Piero Torriti, Tutta Siena Contrada per Contrada, pg 394

The fountain contained within the wall, called Fonte Nuova d’Ovile for its majestic structural power, is among the most beautiful of Siena’s fountains created between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries…the fountain was functional in 1303. It possesses two grand and stupendous gothic arches in façade and one arch laterally on the right which rises to support powerful cross vaults. The ruins at one end contribute to offer a fascination completely unique to this architectural jewel.

I had my after school activities all planned out today. I was going to study – possibly on the steps of Fonte Serena, if it weren’t too cold, and possibly in the crypt. The studying that needed to be done was a gigantic tome of misery, Homer?*. And an infernal chapter 7 (“Che bel vestito!”), in the ever-engaging Italian textbook. Then, at three or four I was going home to dance. I had finally started choreographing a new dance, and I was intent to get home and work on it for a few hours. Then there would be dinner, and more of the infernal Italian homework, and a nice, relaxing novel. Perhaps while sitting in the greenhouse terrace among all the trees, although I doubted I could manage that for long before dark.

This plan entertained me through the final half hour of Italian class, Sra. Santorini flitting among the students and asking them ridiculous questions. I felt more advanced than them already, although I supposed it didn’t matter. I studied incessantly, almost obsessively, but I didn’t want to have to say anything. I learned vocabulary hoping that by understanding what people said, I could avoid having to respond. I could become a part of Siena, like the grey walls, indistinguishable and therefore unremarkable.

I was wrapping my scarf around me, tucking my backpack securely onto my shoulders, when Ilaria said to me, “You have to come see something! I found it, I thought of you…but I don’t want to say too much. I don’t want you to guess…”

I had a sinking feeling in my gut. I wasn’t in the mood to be friendly to Ilaria today. I wanted to avoid her, and thus avoid the possibility that I might say something I would regret later. She was, however, absolutely beaming with joy. And I had succeeded in being extremely antisocial for at least a week. I thought of my nice and orderly afternoon with regret, hoping that this wouldn’t take long, and I could carry on as desired.

“Ok, Ilaria,” I said reluctantly. “But can we hurry?” The impatience in my voice was difficult to veil. Ilaria looked at me, slightly offended. “If you don’t want to go,” she said, her eyes widening, “you don’t have to. I just thought you might like to see it.”

Now I’d done it. Without even trying I had managed to upset her. I knew that I shouldn’t say anything at all. I was suddenly angry at myself for being so fragile. How could I know when to interact with people and when not to? I was angry that I went around feeling like I might break something – like myself, or the other person; if we managed to have a conversation, I couldn’t be depended on to finish it.

And after all, it wasn’t Ilaria’s fault that she had chosen me. She didn’t know I was a bad friend prospect.

I gathered my bits of shattered self together, and said as evenly as I could, “I do want to go, but I just don’t know what it is! So it’s hard to share your enthusiasm, quite.”

Ilaria accepted this with a slightly chilly shrug, and grabbed my hand to haul me off in a new direction. We went down the main street and then through the arch that led to San Francesco, the crypt library. After a bit, we made an unprecedented left turn into a piazza. It might have been a nice piazza once upon a time, but it was now a rather ignominous parking lot, full of cars instead of open space. But this wasn’t it. Ilaria kept dragging me as we proceeded down a steep hill, then a right turn, down another steep hill, through a staircase, and down yet further.

All of this down was ringing bells in my mind. I should be recognising something, an intellectually dry voice concluded. But what?

Then, as we followed a street down and around the bend, there it was. I recognised the slightly pointed arches first, peering over a wall towards the street. Then took it all in -- at least, I tried to. Because all of a sudden, Ilaria started to chatter. It wore at me like hailstones, her endless droning of facts. I wanted to say snidely that I knew this stuff, after all, I was doing a project on these fountains! But I kept my mouth shut, and tried to think of the nice and quiet dance studio waiting for me. (it is indeed a fountain, latin.) I thought, trying to detach myself, stay rational.

At this moment, staring at the fountain with Ilaria going on and on about it, I was angry at her for bringing me here. I wanted to have found this place on my own, and have time to let it sink in. I furrowed my brow, not sure what the fountain was called.

“What’s it’s name, Ilaria?” I interrupted her.

“Haven’t you been listening this whole time?” she asked with exasperation. “It’s Fonte Nuova. Do you need me to repeat anything?”

“No,” I stuttered, trying to mean it and wondering why I cared. Why didn’t I just dump her and scream at her and make her go away? I wondered. I didn’t deserve friends, I knew this. So why did I keep them around anyway? “but, um, Ilaria? Can you leave me alone here for awhile?”

“You really don’t want to hang out with me, do you Gaia?” her expression was cloudy and uncomprehending. Hurt shone from her raccoon eyes, turning them neon blue. I didn’t know how to respond without saying the truth.

(the alien started a high pitched screech.) I winced at the horrible noise, even less certain how to proceed.

“Don’t mind me, Ilaria,” I said heavily. “It’s not about you.”

“I know,” she responded, her anger seemingly vanished. “I just wish you would talk about it.” She suddenly hugged me tightly for a second, then gave me a small wave, and turned to walk back up the hill. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Gaia.”

I watched her go, not sure what she had really been thinking. Then I turned back to the fountain. It was two great pointed arches, similar to the arches of Fontebranda. Unlike Fontebranda, the fountain was made of red brick with very distinctive vertical white stripes. They looked accidental, some bizarre combination of rain and calcium deposits, but matched the white marble of the arch itself. One basin was set lower than the other, and from where I stood I could see a bit of grass in front, and what looked like a staircase. On the left there was a bizarre, cut off arch thing. It, too, looked almost accidental. On top of the fountain there was what looked like a little room. I walked closer and saw that a staircase led up to a doorway, presumably to that room. I ducked under the arch and walked down the connected brick staircase. I was facing the little patch of dead grass. How odd, I mused, that the stairs seem to lead away from the fountain instead of toward it. I turned left and walked up to the first of the great basins. This fountain seemed to have an oddly self contained personality, I concluded, feeling hidden under the level of the road.

I clambered precariously up to the ledge of the first big basin, and settled myself onto it. The water was cool looking and a clear aqua, the bottom very smooth and the same inviting colour of the bottom of a swimming pool. Over the sound of splashing there was the occasional coo and the slick swish of bird feathers sliding over one another, as the pigeons rearranged themselves and flew between cracks in the wall.

I wished that I had listened when Ilaria told me how old this fountain was. I wanted to save these poor fountains from being ignored. I slowly dunked a finger in the water, watching the ripples. I wanted to believe that the fountains weren’t useless, I corrected. They weren’t precisely ignored, they were just irrelevant.

That made me mad. I wondered about the people who had constructed the fountains, and who somehow had found water and made it arrive here. Here, at the lowest point between two hills, just like Fontebranda was at the bottom of some other great big hill. Even little Fonte Serena was downhill from other things, I contemplated. After all, you still have to go up from there to get to the duomo.

I felt sorrow welling up inside me as I eyed the ‘Acqua non potabile’ plaque on the wall. The lives of so many people must have gone to waste, I thought, if these fountains really mean nothing. Madri’s life went to waste.

There was a great howling silence in my head after this thought. I should have been able to read the signals and known how to save Madri. I ducked my head, staring down at the pigeon shit at the very deepest part of the pool of water. The water was so clear that it was difficult to gauge how deep it was. I thought again of how Madri both hid herself and exposed herself from me, and I wondered if she had been too afraid to say it straight out. It wouldn’t have taken much.

“Help me, Cole.”

And then I could have done something, instead of worshiping her seeming perfection and her offbeat way of living. Was I, I thought, convinced by what she told me about her life? I wasn’t sure, but I thought I couldn’t have been. There were so many signs. There was the day in Madri’s apartment.

We decided to meet in her apartment to do homework, this time, because she didn’t want to come all the way up to campus, or she was eating lunch, or something. I couldn’t remember precisely why. Madri had said a subdued hello and then vanished in the kitchen, where she really was preparing food to eat, and I looked over her bookshelf. She had a number of novels that I wanted to read.

“Hey, Madri?” I hollered.

“Do you want to come and have some tea?” she called back from the kitchen. I walked down the hallway and stood in the kitchen, surveying it. It was tiny, as you would expect from student apartments, with a two seat table. I took one of the seats, feeling dizzy as I stared at the busy flower pattern of the plastic tablecloth. Definitely fished out of the trash. The flowers looked carnivorous.

She set a cup of tea in front of me.

“Madri? Could I borrow one of your novels? There’re a few in the bookshelf that I want to read.”

“Oh…it depends which ones. See, some of them I’m taking with me on fall break, but other ones, maybe. I don’t know.” Suddenly she looked angry, and I jumped as she slammed the teapot on the stove. “But people are always stealing my books when I lend them out. Or they give them back worn and ratty.” Her voice calmed. “You have to show me which you want.”

“Where are you going on fall break?” It was coming up in two week’s time, in mid-October. Naturally, vacation and mid-terms were all we talked about. But Madri didn’t answer.

I took a sip of tea, eyeing her a little uneasily, and wondered why that was an unanswerable question. Today was a glitter day – above her tiny orange tshirt and grey lounge pants, she had sparkles that glittered from atop her eyelids and spangled her brows and cheeks.

The result was that she looked cheerful. Her eyes looked even greener amid so many rainbow fragments. Worry in her eyes was occluded by the bright colours, or by the cheerful orange logo on her tshirt. I didn’t notice any worry, at least.

She took a sip of tea, and stepped from one leg to the other. She put the cup down. “I hate astronomy,” she announced.

“But anyway, I did the homework last night, I couldn’t sleep.” I felt completely betrayed. I knew that I would have no qualms copying her homework – not for this class, but I depended on her to hate class and to be as bad as me in it, when instead she was carrying a solid A and I had something in the mid C range. This didn’t ever seem fair. And it was despite Karen’s help, and despite doing the homework with Madri.

I usually stubbornly tried to do the homework fast instead of trying to do it well.

We returned to Madri’s room, Madri carrying her tea cup because she had taken to staring into it rather than drinking the liquid, and was thus not done with it yet.

“This book,” I pointed to a novel. “But you have a few that I would like to read.”

She shook her head, “I need to keep that one, I haven’t read it yet.” I pointed out a few more, but she always had a reason. “Not that one. No, no, I need to take that one with me. Later, another time, I know someone’s been stealing my books and I want to hold onto these. Okay?”

I didn’t understand. She could just tell me that she didn’t lend books. I wasn’t going to get angry or vanish, I was just unable to tell what she wanted. She had done the homework already. Why was I here? Although I hadn’t seen her in the past week, other than during a short, failed study session in Jenkins Hall, I had thought somehow that we were reaching a deeper friendship. I’d thought, when I went with her to the skate park in Philly, that I was starting to understand what made Madri special. Now, I wasn’t so sure she wanted me to understand. I felt like an invader.

Madri vanished into the bathroom, and I sat down to copy her homework. I might as well get something out of the excursion, I figured. I felt flung away like an unwanted lover, but I tried to not let it affect me so much.

Madri, I thought, is just an unknowable quantity. I knew that there must be some trauma in her past, and I was impressed by her obvious coping mechanisms. Her glitter and her anti-rape shirt gave her substance, as someone who had dealt with the problems, and overcome them.

(big mistake, that, said the alien.)

I never thought that the coping mechanisms weren’t working.

She came out of the bathroom wearing a black sweatshirt over her orange tshirt, rubbing her arms. I looked up, worried that she seemed surprisingly flushed.

“Are you sure you aren’t hot, Madri?” I asked. I was warm. Her apartment was a lot warmer than the dorms, at least, and I had stripped down to a tshirt myself.

Madri shrugged and curled up on her bed, watching me languidly.

“I’m almost done,” I announced up at her, then realised she was nearly falling asleep. She looked like a little kitten, curled on the bed, and I thought with a pang of all her sleepless nights. When I finished copying the homework I tidied up her papers in the textbook, and wandered into the bathroom.

The toilet flush must have wakened her. I frowned at the towel underneath a random mess of spoons and eyedroppers and bits of cotton fluff, waving my wet hands around, and turned.

“Oh! You surprised me!” I was startled, nearly flinging water in her face, but she didn’t flinch. “Madri, are you sure you’re okay?” She was hanging in the doorway, her pupils down to pinpoints, as she narrowed her eyes. “What are you doing in here?” she demanded, blocking the exit.

“It’s a bathroom, Madrigal. I was using it.” I smiled, trying to tease her out of her mood, “What do you do in the bathroom, silly?”

She turned without saying anything, and went back to her room. I followed her to pick up my schoolbag, watching her rub her arms with furious intent. I hoped she wasn’t really sick.

“Madri,” I said softly.

Her green eyes opened, all green nearly to the very center. They looked like green glass held up to the light, luminescent.

“Call me if you need anything.”

She didn’t respond, and I let myself out of the apartment. As I stormed down the stairs a piece of me wanted to turn around and go back. I felt somehow like I had failed a test, and I didn’t know what it was.

My butt was sore from sitting on the hard stone. I stared up at the very top of the arch inside the fountain, then slowly uncurled myself and stood up. I was cold, and surprised that I hadn’t noticed it. The sky was a chilly, flat blue. I wandered ahead to the second of the basins, noticing that this one was detached from the walls, a stand-alone basin. I felt empty and cold and near tears.

I would have definitely been better off going home and dancing, I thought. Everything else I did brought back these insidious memories of Madri. Before I could stop it, I felt the tears collecting and spilling over, the wet turning quickly cold on my cheeks. Madri was supposed to be some kind of perfect. She was my emblem for a type of person I might not be able to become, but that I could learn from. I didn’t know what to think anymore about my own judgment. Not only had I chosen the wrong person to call perfect, but I had been incapable of understanding her problems. We were that different. And it was me, the only one of her friends with at least one foot in the real world, who would have known where to go and how to get help.

I thought she probably let me stay around because part of her wanted so desperately to be helped. It had been my duty, hadn’t it? Isn’t that what you accept with friendship – to be there for your friends when they need you, whether they know they need you or not?

Some demands, I concluded bitterly, are too much. I fumbled through my pockets and pulled out a ratty napkin, blowing my nose loudly. There was no one around. And if there were, I supposed it didn’t much matter.

Of course now it was clear. Of course now I could put together the signs. But then, when I was so enamoured of her, I could never have guessed. Pinpoint pupils. Her sudden flame of paranoia, the anger I had never seen before. I was too innocent, I thought. It was just too dangerous, too over the top. I thought that because there are things I would never do, that none of my friends would do those things either. I thought that my friendship with her was a matter of time – that we would learn the things that mattered about each other, and grow and change, and sooner or later I would understand. I didn’t know it was a matter of life and death. (you didn’t realise, the alien snorted sarsastically. you failed her.)

I gave a final sniff and started up the hill, pushing hard so my muscles hurt, trying to push the alien out of my soul. Not back the way we’d come, but straight up. Up a staircase to a street, which I vaguely recognised. I turned left and kept going. I passed through a narrow sort of piazza, and then recognised the hill I had come down with Ilaria. It was rather more taxing on the way back up, I huffed. Then back through the car-filled piazza, and one more right turn. When I got up to the main street, Via di Citta, I went down over the backbone and down the next hill. I turned left and went into the bar. For some reason I couldn’t go home quite yet, full of some fragile sensation that might turn into more tears.

Caterina beamed when she saw me, and poured out my juice with a flourish. I could study here, I decided. I was arraying myself at the table when Federico came out of the back room.

“What’s wrong?” he said immediately. So much for women being the more sensitive sex, I thought wryly.

“Nothing really,” I hedged. “Just thinking.”

“Definitely think less,” he said with a grin. This time I was looking for it, though, and I saw a shadow of sadness hiding in his eyes.

I thought again of swimming at Petriolo. It had such mystical qualities in my memory that I was afraid to ever refer to it, in case it had been a dream. But although I tried to keep my walls up, little by little I felt safer when I came into the bar, as though knowing that they too had unspeakable problems made me believe I could band together with Cati and Fede, and be safe.

But I wasn’t going to try.

Then I thought reflectively, as I dragged the Italian text out of my bag, whether they too were looking for someone to save them.

But how can you help people who have real problems? I wondered. You can be there to listen to them, but what if they aren’t willing to talk? Do you have to force it out of them? What if they don’t want to be forced? I thought of some of the people I had taken to the hospital, back in another universe. When people aren’t willing to take advice, then it’s not much use bothering.

Then I felt a pang, realising I was thinking about the ‘frequent fliers,’ the neighborhood junkies and drug addicts that came up with every excuse to go to the hospital, where they would beg drugs off the interns who didn’t know better. We on the ambulance recognised these people, and it was a shock to me that the hospital was too big and too busy, and every time, they fell right through the system and came out with whatever perscription they wanted.

And save them from what? I wondered. Chapter 8 was no more interesting than I expected, but I filled in the blanks (“A che ora ci vendiamo?”) and read the blurbs faithfully, figuring that at least school was nice and clear cut.

But who doesn’t need saving once in awhile? I wondered. Then I thought about it. Do I need to be saved? An image of Luca came into my mind, calm and distant. “Come anytime,” he’d said. “Let me show you the ambulance.” What a word, saved. Salvato. (latin.) Saved from the ocean of reality, saved from drowning in our own thoughts…

An image of Madri, resisting but slowly sinking in a deep and hungry ocean, crossed my brain. I took a sip of juice and looked around. The bar was here, it was real and concrete. I wondered what their other half was. I couldn’t figure it out. It was true that they didn’t act like other Sienese. They were far too open and friendly when they decided to be. But a bar has a neighborhood atmosphere, I recognised. There’s a difference between being welcomed for your 3 o’clock coffee and being welcomed as a bosom buddy.

But I wondered if anyone would come along who would try to save me, and from what. And I wondered if it was a common failure, not to save those who need saving. I was an EMT because I wanted to save people, and I wanted to do it concretely. None of this messy psychology. I snorted into Exercise 6. It seemed lately that I was mired in psychology. Even I didn’t behave the way I expected, and I wasn’t sure why.

The tables in the bar were empty, it was just about four in the afternoon. Not quite as dark out as it had been last month, not quite as cold. All of a sudden Cati and Federico came crowding up to my table with tiny cups of espresso, one for each of us. They settled around it, forcefully shutting my textbook, pencil and notes and all, and depositing it on my backpack, where it rested rather precariously.

“Ariele. You’ve been crying,” Caterina stated.

“You should tell us why,” Federico continued. His knees under the table jostled mine, and I tried hard to ignore the leap in my stomach.

“And were you doing it outside again?” Cati narrowed her eyes as she felt my cold hands, remembering when I had arrived drenched and trembling.

“I went to see a fountain,” I said unsteadily. “And it makes me so sad.” I was near tears again, thinking about the moment standing by fonte Nuova (and where, I wondered, was the old fountain, if this was the new one? Ilaria had resolved one question and brought up another.) and the irretrievable fact that I had failed to save my friend,and maybe she had asked me in the only way she knew. I thought I probably sounded ridiculous crying over fountains, but I couldn’t think of a better way to put it. Cati put her arm around me, and Federico on the other side had his hand on my arm. I felt oddly comforted, unable to say more but glad to know that they were here.

After a few minutes, Cati broke the silence. “I have to go to Ireland,” she said in a low voice. Although none of us moved, the circle tightened. If anyone had entered the bar, they weren’t getting any service.

“Our mother needs her,” Federico said by way of explanation.

“What will you do with the bar?” I asked the first question that came into my mind, crowding out the great pandemonium that her statement had brought forth in my head.

There was a pause. “Ari? Would you come help out? It’s only for two weeks. Whenever you don’t have class?” Cati was almost pleading.

“You don’t want to go, do you?” I hoped that I didn’t sound callous. She shook her head and looked upset. It was Fede who explained. “She left when Cati was six. Now all of a sudden she wants us to come to Ireland and be a family again. We never were a family, and no one forgets that in a town like this. She is trying to recreate something that doesn’t exist.” His voice was bitter, oaken. My next thought was that they must speak English better than I had presumed, and I felt a rock in my gut, the big undigestible morass of things I had neglected to notice.

I didn’t know what else to say, I just held tight to the circle and hoped that somehow, between the three of us, we were saving each other.

*

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

For some reason, the citizens of Siena have decided that Fonte Nuova is the most beautiful of the Sienese fountains, other than, of course, Fonte Branda, which wins because of its size and mysterious depths. Perhaps this favortism is due to the odd structure of the fountain, which hosts two tall, pointed arches on one side and one tall arch on the other. Perhaps it is due to the odd white striping of the brick. Or perhaps due to the staircase on one side of the fountain which, as it leads up to a room over the fountain, also forms the arch under which you must pass to descend the staircase to the fountains basins. This structure is unique of the fountains in Siena. It was also chosen with great precision by a number of well-known Sienese artists, including Duccio Buoninsegna.

Fonte Nuova, unlike many of Siena’s fountains, did not depend solely on the overflow water from Fonte Gaia. Instead, it was fed by its own bottino, found underneath Via Vallerozzi. This, however, did not save it from doom. By the end of the Settecento, Fontenuova had begun a tragic decline, including a lack of water and architectural failure. Pieces were falling off, the arches were coming apart, and to the horror of nineteenth century archivists, the brick was now stained white by calcium deposits, ruining its original, matte brick picturesque quality. The matter was only saved by Fabio Bargagli-Petrucci, who not only cared deeply for the fountains of Siena in the beginning of the twentieth century, but was also the mayor, and had the power to save them. Under his lead, Fonte Nuova was returned to its original architectural glory, where the ever-fabulous Association for the Diana continues to keep an eye on its state of repair. The white markings have remained, but according to many, they only add to the fountain’s many stupendous qualities.