8. Fonte di San Maurizio, 1351

“Cosi di questa fontana che doveva essere fra le piu’ utili e copiose della citta, che deve la sua modesta’ vita alla fonte del Campo, che alimenta a sua volta altre fonti e fontanelle e che riversa lo scarso trabocco nel Val di Montone, non resta ora che il grazioso bacino principale e piu’ alto deturpato prima e decorato poi da stemmi medicei e un sottil filo d’acqua che scaturisce alla base di un alto e nudo muraglione. Dell’abbeveratoio e del lavatoio non restano che I vani e scarse traccie in quel muro.”

Fabio Bargagli-Petrucci, Le Fonti di Siena e i loro acquedotti, pg. 286

“Thus of this fountain which should have been among the most useful and copious of the fountains, which owed its modest life to the fountain in the Piazza, which fed on its own other fountains of all sizes and which gives its scarce overflow to the Val di Montone, now remains no more than the gracious main basin….and later decorated with the Medici family crests, and a fine thread of water which …at the bottom of a tall and nude wall. Of the water trough and the washing basin remain little more than vain, scarce traces in that same wall.

Chapter ten of our Italian textbook was so irrelevant and so colorfully obnoxious that I had taken to reading my children’s book during class. During the break, Stefano poked me on the shoulder and asked if he could take a look at it. I double checked my page – 29, and handed it over. Ilaria raised her eyebrows at me meaningfully, assuming that I was trying to hit on the German boy. I looked back at her, skeptical. Ilaria never seemed to forget about boys, it seemed to me. She often arrived in class wearing the same thing she’d had the day before, and blew it off with a knowing tilt of her head, her blond ponytail swinging, and her eyes as carefully outlined as ever.

In some ways, I admitted as I watched Stefano perusing my book, Ilaria was a huge mystery. She never talked about herself, and yet she never stopped babbling. I knew the love affairs of every single one of her roommates – who they were sleeping with, and where, and whether they had fought, and when; a constant whirlpool of action. Yet regarding her own behaviour, she was tight lipped, her blue eyes luminous but giving nothing away. I didn’t try to dig. I didn’t even pretend, although every time I turned away and saw that soft baby raccoon look at me, I wasn’t quite sure I was doing the right thing. It kept the alien quiet, I thought, at left it at that.

Stefano was shaking his head. “No way, genius,” he said. “I could never read this stuff. I can just about talk with the Italian guy in the apartment now – when he asks me to buy groceries I get the right stuff!” he broke into a grin. “Like, in January he asked me to get some spaghetti and garlic, and I got a bunch of zucchini and some tomato sauce. It was pretty funny man, when we tried to eat dinner!”

I smiled wanly, accepting the book. Ilaria was making subtle motions under her desk, trying to get me to continue the conversation, but I just turned back to my seat and inserted the novel back into my textbook. I was glad that I wasn’t near the front of the class, now. Sra. Sartorini had an eagle eye, and she would have been on me in a millisecond, trying to engage me in yet another scripted conversation, full of…what was it this time? chapter 10. I rolled my eyes at the thought, and was glad that we had a mere hour left of class. A butterfly unfurled wings in my stomach. Today, like it or not, I was going to help Fede in the bar. Cati was leaving this evening for Ireland and so today they were going to show me how to do the basics. I took a deep breath and tried to settle back onto page 29, instead of fretting over what was yet to come.

Ilaria, oddly more clingy than usual, insisted in accompanying me to the bar. “You can make me your first cup of coffee,” she said with a teasing grin. “I’ll be the guinea pig, if I keel over, you’ll know that it wasn’t any good.”

I managed a faint grin, and fanned my jacket out in front of me. “It’s too hot for this jacket,” I complained. “I don’t miss my scarf, and I don’t miss the cold, but it’s still windy. What am I supposed to do, wear a tshirt under it to compensate?”

Ilaria looked at me with barely supressed surprise. “Buy a lighter jacket,” she said, as though it were obvious. I snorted with dislike. “Ugh,” I emphasised.

“Aw, come on! We can go shopping together for spring clothing!” Ilaria was blossoming at the thought. She detached her arm from mine as we walked, and started motioning in the air, grandly imagining the things we could buy.

“Oh, please, Ilaria no,” I whimpered. “The only thing I can stand buying is books. And leotards, when I have to. I even buy toe shoes in bulk from a catalog so I don’t have to go to the store.”

Ilaria appeared scandalised, but we had arrived. The door chime rang over the bustle of people in the bar, and Caterina looked up and smiled when she saw me. I could see the worry lines across her forehead, and I wished, not for the first time, that I understood why this trip to Ireland was so troubling. Family? I wondered. I had never had any family problems so they were difficult for me to understand. I walked around to the side of the bar, and Ilaria hesitantly followed me.

“Uh, Cati? Where should I….?” My voice trailed off as I pointed to my backpack and my coat. I was already sweating in the heat of the bar. Once upon a time, I thought with annoyance, I had been glad my coat was heavy. Now it was just a nuisance. Fede came out of the backroom carrying a great round of cheese, which he was taking over to concoct a sandwich. “Aspetta,” he mouthed to me as he passed, and I nodded. Wait, I could wait. I had all afternoon. I just wished I could take my coat off first, but there wasn’t really anywhere to put it.

Finally Cati found a free minute. She led me to the back, back to the room I recognised that seemed like an annex to a bathroom. “Leave your stuff here,” she said, and I complied. I peeled my jacket off with great relief, then wrinkled my nose as I saw that my long sleeved shirt had frightening sweat stains under the arms. Cati paused behind me. “I think…” she said, almost to herself, “that we still have that shirt…” she dug around in a cupboard and pulled out a men’s dress shirt.

“Ari?” she said, handing it to me. “This is better, no?” I took the shirt and prepared to change, and she went running back out to the bar at Fede’s call. It was indeed much better. I tucked my backpack in the corner and left my jacket hanging over the back of a chair. Then I took a deep breath, preparing to face the world.

It was immediately too busy to think. “This is how you make coffee,” Federico explained quickly. He took a metal scoop with a handle, held it under a machine, and pulled a lever. A measured amount of coffee felt into the scoop, which he then compressed with a little circular tool thing. The scoop went into the espresso machine and turned to the right with a snick. Then he pressed a button, stuck a tiny coffee mug under the spout, and the coffee began to pour out.

“When it gets this high,” he lectured, “that’s enough. It’s done.” he pulled out the little cup, pressing a button to stop the flow of coffee, and turned gracefully to set the mug on a plate, the plate on the bar, in front of an elderly woman who was watching us sceptically.

“New girl, Federico?” she asked in between sips of coffee. Fede started chatting with her, watching me as I attempted the same procedure. First a good whack of the scoop thing to get the old coffee grounds out. Then a rinse. Then, coffee in, tamped down. I tamped it once, and peered at the fresh grounds. Then I tamped it again, wondering if that was enough. “That’s good, Ari,” Federico said supportively. I fitted the scoop into the coffee maker and turned it until I heard the click. I felt much more clunky and slow than Federico’s dancing movements around the coffee maker. I did, however, produce a little cup of espresso, which I set in front of Ilaria. “Tell me how it is, master,” I said with an elfish grin, feeling surprisingly more like myself than I had in ages. Or maybe not like myself, I thought, as Cati called me, “Ariele! Vieni qua!” and Ilaria’s brow wrinkled in the confusion of my multiple names. I had almost forgotten that she wouldn’t know aobut it, and somehow she had never been in the bar to hear me called anything else. Here, I thought, I was Ariele, I was in control of something. The thought dispelled the last of the butterflies, and I waved goodbye to a bewildered Ilaria as she made for the door.

Cati wanted me to make a sandwich. I sliced tomatoes, sliced mozzarella, poured some olive oil on top, and then held the concoction out for her perusal. “Good,” she said with a smile. “Now you need to learn how the cash register works.” She led me over to it, telling me how to type in the price, followed by a green button and then the great big button over on the left. A receipt slowly began its staccato journey out the slit, and the cash drawer opened in front of me to show me a shiny array of euro coins.

A small array, alas. I thus learned the worst dilemma of the bar trade. There was never enough change. The time passed incredibly fast, and I was shocked when I noticed the sky was dimming, and looked at my watch to see that closing time, 7 pm, was quickly approaching. “What do you think,” Cati said during a lull. “Will you be able to do this all tomorrow without me?” I went over to her almost without thinking, slipping my arm around her back. I was pleased that Italians accepted affection so easily. How much simpler things would have been, I thought, if I could have just hugged Madri, one great big hug to cancel out all the ills that had been done to her.

Madri seemed, in this minute, very irrelevant to Caterina’s pain. “I’ll do ok,” I said, frustrated that I couldn’t use the words I wanted to. How to say “I’ll manage” in Italian? I had no clue. “But I’ll miss you, Cati. You better have lots of fun so that Fede and I are jealous when you come back.” She managed a wan smile at my teasing, and then the moment ended as a customer came in for an evening aperitif. I poured the red liquid into the cup with a flourish, adding a tiny slice of lemon and placing the glass in front of him with a slight clink on the granite countertop. “Eccola!” I proclaimed victoriously, and the customer, stoically Sienese, set exact change on the counter and proceeded to drink his beverage in silence, staring off in some uncertain direction. I replaced the coins with a receipt, and took the time to start cleaning the counters.

The night ended, and I shrugged back into my jacket at the last minute as Fede locked the doors. “You don’t like your coat anymore?” he asked.

“It’s not that, it’s just not cold anymore. I go outside and I’m hot,” I explained.

“Do you want that old raincoat of mine? it’s not so heavy,” he offered, and my heart leaped a little at getting to wear the mysterious black raincoat again. I nodded, smiling shyly, and then realised with an odd tightness that I had just looked at him with the same shy shiny eyed look Madri had always given me. Tears came almost to the surface of my eyes, but I blinked them away, shedding my cheery yellow coat for Fede’s long black jacket, slinging my backpack over it with joy. It was lighter, indeed, warm and long and I suddenly felt like an important person, as I waved goodbye to Fede, knowing I had a job and a place to come to tomorrow, and that I would be missed. I could no longer vanish into mid air. Suddenly, something was holding me in place. I was real. At least, a stutter in my step, Ariele was real.

I decided resolutely, that I preferred it this way, and strode with confidence toward the bus, my coat tails fluttering in the breeze.

I was unusually cheerful all evening, and I noticed that Isabella was not very happy this evening. As a matter of fact, I reflected, it was possible that she hadn’t been very happy for quite awhile, and I just hadn’t noticed. I had noticed very little in these months that I didn’t actually trip over.

Isabella played with her dinner, answered her parents in monosyllables, and left the table early. Dinah and Riccardo carried on a conversation between the two of them, as always, and I wondered for how long the situation had been like this. I ate the pasta with fervor; Riccardo was a fabulous cook, and I partook of a large helping of salad, which I crunched as though I had forgotten the crunchy wet taste of lettuce and tomatoes. When, I thought, as Dinah brought out a fantastic chocolate dessert, was the last time that Isabella had made it all the way to dessert at the table?

“Does Isabella eat?” I asked into a moment of silence. Riccardo cleared his throat. Dinah answered me. “She usually comes and eats the leftovers after we’ve finished.” They made faces at each other, then she added, “We’re hoping it’s just a phase.”

“Hmph,” I articulated with a shrug. I didn’t remember being a very difficult teenager, but I assumed that my parents had a different view of things. I licked the last bits of chocolate off my fingers, stood to carry my plates to the sink, and with an odd burst of affection I gave them each a hug before scampered up the stairs to my aerie.

I woke with surprising alacrity the next morning, genuinely pleased despite the three hours of Italian class I had to get through. Even that, armed with my novel (page 36!), I felt prepared to handle. Ilaria looked at me with surprise as I walked into class in the black raincoat. I felt very sophisticated, for once, although the effect diminished when I was next to her. Her long coat had long passed into another, lighter coat, and her purse changed to match it. This coat was a pale grey unlined velvet, which served to highlight the blue of her eyes, the clarity of her blond hair and her pale peach skin. It was an impressive effect. I wondered if her boys had changed or grown in quantity. Today she wore heeled boots and tailored black pants, and a soft looking sweater a shade darker indigo than her eyes. It was a nice sweater, I thought, enviously, although I didn’t generally think about clothing that much. Suddenly I wished I had the know how to pass myself off as a sophisticate. I settled into my seat feeling grumpy, knowing that my backpack ruined the effect of the coat, and that despite hanging out with Ilaria, and with Fede and Cati, I still had no sense of style.

When Stefano walked in and took the seat behind me, I felt a little better. He was still, as always, decked out in black ratty pants and black ratty shirts and a black ratty coat, and he still looked awfully good. I wondered with a frown where my good mood had come from. It felt unaccostomed, like an article of clothing that doesn’t quite fit.

Class passed in the usual blur of superfluous practice on verb endings and prepositions, vocab and scripted conversations, and then I was slipping the luxurious jacket back on and, with a wave at an oddly quiet Ilaria, I was out the door, on my way to work. Even the overcast day didn’t drown out my cheery mood.

It was strange at first to be behind the bar, making coffee and using the cash register, and not seeing Cati anywhere. Fede smiled at me, and when it got rushed he reminded me not to worry, that I had all the patience in the world, and I relaxed as the day went on and I didn’t do anything incredibly stupid, or break anything.

It was around four when a man came in and had an espresso. There wasn’t much going on, so I started cleaning the bar. “Can I have a glass of water?” he asked.

“Gas or natural?” I returned.

“Natural,” he said with a wink. I poured it for him, wondering what the wink was for.

“What do you think?” he said, holding the glass up to the light.

“What do you mean?” I was confused, waiting for more explanation. I had understood what he was saying, at least.

“Is this really any better than the water that we get from our faucets?”

I shrugged, smiling. “I guess you hope so, if you are paying for it.” He laughed. Then I said, thinking of the deep aqua waters of the numerous fountains, “But you could always go and test the water in the fountains. Who knows what’s in there.” I said the last with sadness, because I wanted to know. I was joking, but I didn’t mean it.

The man drank his glass of water, looking thoughtful. “I remember,” he said, “when they put up the acqua non potabile plaques.” My eyes lit up.

“Really?!” I couldn’t believe it. “When was it?”

“In the ‘50’s.”

“Why?”

“Oh, that was when the Department of Health decided that the water really wasn’t actually safe for drinking any more. You know, though,” he added thoughtfully, poking the empty glass toward me on the bar, “the fountains were used until the 1920’s.”

My eyes couldn’t get any wider. “You mean, it wasn’t just something they used in the Middle Ages?”

“No, no,” he laughed. “That was the only water in Siena until 1920, when they finally got the new aqueduct of the Vivo here in town. Up until then, the Sienese were constantly searching for water.”

“But,” I frowned, “I thought when they started making fountains that they had found water. Why did they need to keep searching for it?”

“Oh, they found some water. And that was back in the mid 1200’s, remember. But then it dried up, and anyway, any fountain that wasn’t used either dried up or vanished from memory, and by the end of the 1800’s everyone was in a real panic about the lack of water. Even Fonte Gaia was almost dry.”

“What do you mean, vanished from memory?” I repeated the words cautiously, not certain that I understood them.

“Oh, the fountains that people forgot about, because they didn’t need to use them. Like Fonte del Casato, do you know where that is?”

I thought for a second. “That’s the tiny one, the one down all the steps, off of Piazza del Campo?”

I could see from his expression that he was impressed. “You’ve been studying,” he said with a grin.

My mind was already filing what he had said. “So,” I interrupted, “the water was drinkable until the 1950’s? What happened?”

“No, it was only then that they started researching water quality. Before then, people didn’t worry too much about calcium deposits and the minerals in the water. Poisons were things that were literally going to poison the water, not things that might change the taste. Basically, once we had lots of water, we could get picky about where we got it from.” He smiled and gestured towards the water he had drunk. “And so we choose clear stuff in bottles.” He gestured that he wanted to pay, and waved at me as he left.

I shook my head, expecting to hear it rattle with all this new information reverberating inside. A few customers later, I finished cleaning up, and went to collect my things before leaving. Fede was taking apart the coffee machine, meticulously cleaning each piece. I came up beside him, the edges of the coat hitting his leg. “You’ll teach me to do that tomorrow, right?” I asked. He looked up, startled, and smiled at me.

“I’ll teach you whatever you want, Ari,” he said with an intense expression that I didn’t recognise.

The alien, silent for so long, suddenly whined.

I gave Federico a half smile and stepped back, planning to leave. “You know that, don’t you?” he asked me with total seriousness. I had never seen him look so serious. On the other hand, usually Caterina was at hand, cheery, chatty and energetic, to keep the two of us from our natural seriousness.

“Uh,” I cleared my throat. “I think so.” The pieces of espresso machine were suddenly all in their place, Fede’s arms snaking around me under the jacket. He looked at me for a long moment, as I felt glued to the ground. The alien was uncharacteristically silent, but even he could not have gotten me to move. Finally Federico broke the spell, planting a kiss on my forehead. “A domani, Ari,” he said, and I turned for my backpack and left the bar.

I didn’t feel ready to go home, so I started walking. I walked back past the school, towards the Classics section where I had Latin class. I passed through the arch of the old wall, and for a change, I turned right.

I was immediately stuck in place. What are they doing? I thought incredulously. Are these damn fountains following me or something? Because here, of course, was another one, lacking the distinctive arches but full of the same swimming pool blue water. In the twilight it was lit from lamps within, which gave the entire fountain a mythically blue colour and hid most of the dirt floating around within.

He was right, my first thought. The fountains are everywhere! They have to be everywhere, people used them! I felt joyous, as though some terrible pressure were lifted off me.

Then it returned. People used to use them, I corrected. Is Madri like one of those old fountains, I wondered suddenly, wandering toward it. Will she be forgotten, hidden away, a dusty piece of history? I remembered Madri so vibrant after our study session at the firehouse, teasing me as we walked together back to campus. “Jack is awfully cute, Cole,” she said, almost thoughtfully. “When are you going to ask him out?”

“I can’t ask him out!” I insisted, “I work with him. What would happen if things got ugly or something?”

“But you’ll never know unless you do it. Besides, Cole, isn’t it better to seek out the adventure and follow it through, rather than wishing you had the nerve?”

“I get enough adventure responding to ambulance calls,” I retorted.

“No you don’t,” Madrigal said. “Come skateboard with me.”

“What?” I wasn’t parsing. “What does that have to do with real adventure?”

“You know. You came with me that other time to the skate park. I bet you’ll understand if you try. And then ask Jack out!” she smiled, she glittered, her eyes sparkled like the freshest green of a forest clearing.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do that. But it doesn’t mean I’ll ask Jack out.”

The fountain was a giant rectangle, the back of it against a brick wall where I could still see the remains of the old arches. About two meters high, up to the brick, it was covered with some wall material and painted yellow. In the middle of the fountain, where once there might have been a dividing wall between two square basins, there was now a pale orange panel with a lion’s head sticking out of it. The water poured out of his mouth and into the pool. In the front of the pool there was a half-pillar sticking out of the water, the same pale colour, with a faucet pouring the water into the fountain. Right on top of the faucet was the ever present acqua non potabile symbol. I dropped my backpack on the gorund in front of the fountain, and with a slightly guilty thought towards the future of Federico’s jacket and pigeon droppings, I wrapped it around me and sat down on the lip of the fountain.

What did he mean? I wondered, worrying. Then I rolled my eyes. I knew what he meant. No, I didn’t. I frowned. I was only a foreigner, after all, here for a few scant months before returning to a life that – I shivered, might as well not exist. He was a barista, he was older than me and owned a business and was trying to graduate from University.

I shook my head, exasperated. I didn’t know what to do with romantic interest. It distressed me. I might, I thought, miss out on some important signals; he might vanish like Madri vanished, and what if it were my fault again? The water of the fountain was cold as I stuck the tips of my fingers into it. I hefted the arm of the jacket to my elbow, hoping that it would stay there. I concentrated on that, and not on the fact that in another two months I would be leaving.

The thought troubled me. All this work, I reasoned, all this time I have been coming to terms with being Ariele, with being Gaia, with living in Siena. What if that hasn’t prepared me to live in Philadelphia? What if I am still everything I was when I left?

My gaze rose, and I stared at the terra cotta, or who knows, travertino emblems on the fountain. The one on top I recognised right away. It was the seal of the de Medici family. What was that doing in Siena? I wondered, and then realised that sooner or later they had conquered Siena, just a little, and left at least a tiny mark.

I felt amused to hear myself sound as snobbish as the Sienese did about their city. Below the great big seal, there was a little plaque. I squinted at it. “Ferdinando Medice Magno duce aetruriae tertio dominante anno sal ci) I)l xxx viii” Ferdinand di Medici, great king of Tuscany …I translated musingly.

I looked back into the water of the fountain, thinking of what the stranger had said in the bar. The fountains were still sort of important, I thought. They hadn’t been forgotten, they had been important enough to keep restoring.

Like Madri, I thought, she’s not entirely vanished. She’s still around. I mean, I still think of her a lot. I act like her sometimes, I can feel it when I tilt my head a certain way, or when I am hoping for the impossible from somebody. She, believe it or not, taught me something about skateboarding.

A great wave of deep biting pain coursed through my body. She left me, I wanted to holler. She was supposed to be my saviour, to help me, to get me through the worst class ever, and when I was the most fragile, the most unable to help, she left, she vanished, she made everything my fault.

I thought suddenly of our first meeting. One day at lunch Jessica had turned to me and said, “You’re in a class with Madrigal Williams, aren’t you?” I frowned, chewing on a sandwich. “Yeah,” I said, remembering the previous day, her name on a piece of paper, about to be annihilated by a great big dragon.

“She mentioned you.”

I looked at Jessica queryingly. “Why? Do you know her?”

“Yeah, we skateboard together all the time.” I rolled my eyes. It totally figured. Jessica was also from Seattle, but unlike me, she was the ultimate grunge girl. I could barely tell apart Alice in Chains from Nirvana, but she was there, all the way from the ratty clothes to the music to the I-didn’t-want-to-know. I, on the other hand, wore doc martens regularly, wore jeans all the time, and owned a rain jacket. And that was about the extent of the effect grunge culture had had on me.

“So, do you want to study with her?”

“Hun?” I said, confused.

“She’s looking for a study partner, to do the Astronomy stuff. I bet if you wanted to, it would be good for you.” Jessica was teasing me, she knew that out of all of us, I was the one who was impossible at math.

“Is she good at math?” I asked sceptically.

“A whiz.”

“Well then,” I said, a smile breaking out on my face, “This could be my lucky day,” not even looking over to Karen to see whether she thought this was a defection. Karen, as far as I could recall, had been so attached to Chad that between the two of them, there wasn’t space for me to sneak in.

We had met the first time in Jenkins Hall, as became our habit. Me, sitting with a chai and a granola bar – this was more often than not a late lunch after a long morning on the ambulance, and Madri looking wan and spangled, not willing to eat anything. Once she brought a banana, I thought, smiling into the fountain. I teased her all day, saying I thought she was a robot, and that she didn’t need to eat.

That first time we studied less than we chatted. We talked about our hobbies, getting it straight that we both absolutely abhorred this class, and had to take it to graduate, and planned to do as little work as possible. Then she explained how she would prefer to be skateboarding or snowboarding, or at least outside studying Linguistics, and I mentioned how I would prefer to be dancing, or at the very least sitting outside studying Latin. We were all set. I thought I had a best friend for life.

I thought she was weird, but I was intrigued. I thought we had enough in common that it would work, even though she made me feel like a straitlaced nanny.

“Who do you party with?” she asked, and I wrinkled my nose and said that after dance performances there was usually a reception. Her eyebrows went up at that. I responded, defensively. “Who do YOU party with?”

“It depends who’s partying!” It turned out that she knew the rounds, all three of the fraternities, all the clubs that held parties, and who was holding a party where, and whether it would be good. I just shook my head, it was all superfluous information to me. As a dancer, I excused myself. “I can’t drink calories,” I said, “ I have to be svelte to dance. I still have fun!” I told her about my crush, extolling the virtues of Jack, buff and fabulously intelligent, until I was sure she might run away.

She asked what I smoked and I said I preferred to breathe air. Madri wasn’t offended, she just laughed. “Where’s your spirit of adventure?” she asked, and I responded dryly, “In my toes.”

“Oh, I’ll make you come to one someday,” she said playfully. “They don’t hurt. I promise! Besides, I know some of you dance majors, I see them at parties all the time. So that’s no excuse. You obviously need some practice, so you can ask this guy out.”

As we left Jenkins Hall and headed down towards the library she set her skateboard on the ground. “Go ahead,” she gestured. “Here’s your chance to have some adventure. Try it out.”

I hesitantly put a foot on the skateboard and looked up at her for instruction. “Do I just go?” I asked.

“Try it!”

The fact that a five foot tall sprite in children’s clothing was egging me on had an impact. I pushed off with the other foot, feeling the pavement under the skateboard wheels. We made our way slowly down the path.

“Start turning, turn! Turn now!” I followed her instructions and was surprised that I wasn’t falling off. I turned. My stomach wobbled a little, but the skateboard held steady.

“I’m thinking of getting a tattoo,” Madri said conversationally as we walked. “What do you think?”

“Would you design it yourself?” I asked, only half concentrating. The other half was desperately trying to stay on the skateboard. “Because if you did, and if that dragon were any example, it would probably be gorgeous. Why are you studying linguistics if you’re such an artist?”

“Yeah, I was thinking of getting a dragon with flames across my back,” she said, ignoring the other part of my question.

“Well, I mean, it should mean something to you. If you’re going to have it your whole life, and it’s big, you better really like it. That, to me, is a scary sort of adventure.”

We were just about at the library. I skidded to a stop at the curb, and Madri laughed at my expression. “Hey,” she said, “you did it. Your adventure for the day. If you keep practicing, you might be as daring as I am.”

We waved goodbye, and I thought it was just me that she sounded sad.

Only later I wondered. Did I really miss out on having a sense of adventure? I wanted to learn from Madri. I thought she would be able to teach me some of this stuff; I had no idea that many of her lessons were out of my league.

I looked at my arm, the jacket agreeably snuggled above my elbow. The veins were blue, very visible in the fluorescent evening light. I knew how to draw blood, but I couldn’t imagine putting a needle into that innocent blue vein. I traced it with the other hand, feeling my vein spongy under the skin.

I wouldn’t have passed the lessons Madri could have given me, I thought sadly. I chose a challenge I could never beat.

At least, I thought, there are the fountains. And somehow, it made me feel better, looking into the deep aqua water, to know that they were still here, 800 years later, and that if you didn’t worry too much about calcium, random minerals, and a lot of pigeon shit, you could probably drink the water. I pulled out my notebook, and in the light of the fountain, started my essay.

23. La scarsita’ di acqua e’ stato uno dei grandi problemi della citta’ medievale…I governi Senesi affrontarono il problema realizzando con un lavoro secolare una rete (quasi 24 km) di gallerie quasi sempre praticabili, dette “bottini” , che drenavano ogni grande e piccola vena d’acqua da una distanza di vari chilometri da porta Camollia, e la portavano alle 58 fonti pubbliche e a circa 200 utenti privilegiati. Questo tipo d’impianto era reso piossibile dall stratigrafia delle colline senesi, dove si trova un giacimento superiore tufaceo, di sabbie e ghiaie permeabili, e uno inferiore impermeabile di argille azzurre, sul quale scorrono le acqua filtrate dal tufo.

The scarcity of water was one of the biggest problems to a medieval city…the Sienese government faced the problem by instituting work on a (nearly 24 km) of galleries, nearly always , called ‘bottini,’ that drained each and every vein of water from a distance of many kilometers to the porta Camollia, and then carried this water to 58 public fountains and around 200 privileged users. This type of ..was made possible by the stratography of the Sienese hills, where the superficial ground layer is tufo, of sand and permeable , and the inferior layer is made of impermeable blue clay, upon which flows the water filtered through the tufo.

Gaia/ Cole Ostrovsky

History Project,

the Fountains of Siena.

“Siena, the town, has existed since Etruscan times. Thus, since centuries before the Romans, this unremarkable hilltown has been faced with what, to us modern people, seems like a munCole problem.

Think about it. You’re a little town, called Castelvecchio, on top of a hill. You’re nowhere near the ocean, and you don’t have the luck of Florence to be smack on top of a river. What’s the problem? You have no water. If there is any water at all, it is the thready and unusable beginnings of rivers, all of which flow downhill and away from Siena. The only thing to do is contrive some way of using the ground water, deep deep underground, under the soft tufa-rock but on top of the hard volcanic rock underneath.

The Etruscans did this. There are, of course, no Etruscan remains, but the Romans took up where the Etruscans left off. There are no Roman remains either, not in Siena. We know though that the Romans were masters of water. They have left kilometer after kilometer of white arched aqueduct, crisscrossing the landscape from Rome to points north. They were masters of the indelicate but functional round arch, and they were masters of the bath.

When these elements come together, the result is a fountain with a multiplicity of uses. The fountains of Siena aren’t Roman. However, they aren’t all originals. Some of the fountains are reconstructions. Some are replacements of fountains that were nearby. At least two of them were renovated from originals that have left no remains. And at least two more have a distinctive ceiling that may even be of Etruscan origin.

The true beginning of Siena’s success finding water was by necessity simultaneous with the beginning of habitation in Siena. However, by the middle ages, changes were being made. First, the government was finally relatively stable. Second, they had more money to spend. And third, the population was growing, and needed more water. Thus began what I would call the golden age of Siena’s fountains, when for about two hundred years numerous fountains were created, all of which were kept in perfect condition, and many of which were guarded around the clock by armed guards.

Water is a primary resource for life. Those who desire to live, both in the middle ages and today, must have clean, unpolluted water. We who turn a faucet without a second thought are a far cry from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Siena, when few drops of poison in the right place could kill half the population.”

Now, I thought, my pencil hesitating over the paper, we find other ways of killing ourselves. I looked back up at the fountain in front of me, and I knew I had a lot of research to go if I wanted to keep all these memories alive. I shut the notebook with a slap of pages, ready to go home, and ready to work.

*

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

The fonte of San Maurizio was supposed to be one of the most useful fountains, the first one to make use of the overflow water from the Piazza. Things, naturally, did not work out that way. The fountain was created less than ten years after Fonte Gaia was finished, because the fountains available to the Contrade of the Shell and of the Ram had a need for a greater water supply, and because the new availability of overflow water from the piazza made this possible.

Unfortunately, San Maurizio was redone a number of times, first in the sixteenth century and then in the eighteenth. Now, it is hard to notice right away that it is a fountain. There is a basin of water, yes. But that’s all. There’s a silly little faucet in the middle, spilling the water from the fountain back into the fountain. If anything, this fountain today seems like a decoration, with its Medici era medallions and the balzana of Siena hanging on the far wall.

However, upon a certain bit of analysis, one realises things about this fountain. First, a good look at the wall behind it shows, in its bricks, a curved arch, once the arch over the fountain’s top. Next, a stroll down the gentle hill towards the contrada of the Torre shows the remains of two other basins – for those who know what they are looking for. There is a small buttress in the wall, and then a narrow, dried up trough. Once upon a time this was a great second basin, used for the watering of animals. Past this, there is another buttress in the wall, followed by a very unfortunate, Duce era standing toilet stall. Contrary to the present evidence, this was once the washing basin.

Of these two basins, nothing remains but the memory. The first is used as a meeting place, and now has an atmosphere similar to Fonte Gaia – but on a smaller scale. Here, the old men gather in the evenings during their passeggiata to chat together and exchange gossip. The wide lip of the fountain encourages those who might like to sit and listen to a delicate trickling of the never ending faucet, watching the fountain at night as it is lit from beneath with an ethereal green glow. The fountain, originally available as a source of the most vital ingredient of medieval life, sits eight centuries later in the middle of an intersection, watching the cars, and the time, pass.