Seven Seasons in Siena (19 page)

Why am I doing this? It's not as though anyone is watching me, and even if someone were, it's unlikely they'd be impressed. I made a silly vow, and in my head it became something more than it ever should have. Who am I to make a promise in exchange for a Caterpillar victory? I'm not one of them. And to feel I have to honor my word? What presumption. As if the victory of August 2008 had hinged on me. As if I had anything even remotely to do with it.

I feel stupid and sad, standing in this downpour in the middle of nowhere, for no reason and to no conceivable gain.

I remain that way till the rain at last lets up a bit; then I
continue slogging along, my spirit sapped, my will to live diminished by roughly half.

Some minutes later I see horses. Magnificent beasts, gleaming in the muted light, clomping about and whisking their tails and kicking up clots of newly wet earth. They're everything I'm not right now—carefree, weightless, belonging exactly where they are. It's irresistible. I stop to look at them and try to see them as the Sienese do—to gauge their strength and speed and stamina—but my eyes are too untrained. I see just beauty and grace and freedom.

I feel immeasurably better, maybe because I'm suddenly a bit light-headed. The horses move away from me so that I can't see them anymore, but I'm not ready to let go of them yet. So I turn up a gravel drive to follow them.

It's a very long drive, as it turns out, and I've gone a considerable way down its length without any more sight of the horses, so that I'm wondering if maybe I'd better just give up and turn around. And that's when someone speaks to me.

I turn and see a man a dozen or so yards away; he looks like a rancher—jeans, boots, hat. He repeats what he just said to me, but I still don't catch it.

“Sorry,” I say, “I'm a little bit lost. I saw the horses.” I point to where there quite plainly aren't any horses. “I got caught in the rain.” I'm aware even as I say this that I'm sounding rather incoherent.

The rancher nods dubiously, and asks where I'm going.

“Siena,” I say.

“Siena?” he repeats incredulously, and he glances past me as though he might spot a car he overlooked before.

I'm about to explain that I'm walking there for private
reasons and that I don't know the way and could use a bit of help with directions. But then he takes off his hat to wipe his brow, and I notice his face. It's very familiar. Dark eyes, square jaw … a kind of movie-star handsomeness … I know I've seen him before. And pretty recently, too.

Then it hits me. “Aren't you Trecciolino?” I ask.

He nods warily. “Yes.”

“I just saw you a few days ago,” I say, excited. “At Gianni Falciani's dinner, in the Bruco—with Gingillo.”

He cocks his head. “You were there?”

“Yes; I'm an American, a friend of the contrada. I'm just visiting.” I point back to the road. “In fact, I'm walking to Siena to fulfill a promise I made before the victory last year.”

At least, that's what I think I'm saying. God knows what actually reaches his ears. He grins widely, as though listening to a parakeet try to speak Latin, but then he gestures toward the house and asks if I'd like to come inside and dry out a bit.

My first, intimidated impulse is to decline, because—because this is
Trecciolino
, this is Gigi Bruschelli, winner of eleven Palii and the jockey who gave the Caterpillar
two
of its last three victories, in 2003 and 2005, both with the same noble mount, Berio.

Yet how can I say no? Just thirty minutes ago I was moaning about how little anything I do, or say, or
feel
, matters in the grand arc of the Caterpillar narrative, and now here's Trecciolino, appearing virtually out of nowhere, a sudden benediction, a sign from above.

“Va bene, grazie,”
I say.

And with that he leads me up the walk to his house.

Now, one of the singular differences between Tuscany and the average American locality is that here the great majority
of the social life occurs out in the open, in public spaces; or, in the case of Siena, in the great contrada halls. For that reason I haven't seen the interior of too many houses. Even so, the moment I step across Trecciolino's threshold, I know I'm seeing something extraordinary. It's large, airy, and open, with high ceilings and a suspended staircase and a dazzling array of equestrian memorabilia: sculptures, trophies, photographs, you name it. The furnishings are modern and sleek; what it most reminds me of is a classic California ranch house, circa the 1940s. I clumsily doff my mud-caked boots so that I don't defile the pristine blond wood floor, and peel off my anorak.

In the living room, a locomotive-length sofa winds around the perimeter of the room; behind it, there's a dining room table that could easily seat your average extended Italian clan—or a full marching band. And against the far wall is an anomaly: an enormous wooden wheel, which Trecciolino now tells me is seven hundred square meters across. “This place used to be a mill before I converted it,” he explains. “There are still canals running underneath the place.”

At this point his companion, Annarita, appears. She's as good-looking as he is; a svelte, olive-skinned beauty with a cascade of silken black hair. I'm more acutely aware than ever that I'm a moist, muddy, disheveled intruder who speaks in tangled phrases, but there's not even a hint of distaste or distrust in Annarita's eyes. Trecciolino explains me to her, and I become aware I haven't actually told him my name, so I do so now and shake the hands of both. Annarita leaves and reappears a few minutes later with a steaming espresso.

In the meantime Trecciolino shows me around the house, in particular the gallery of Palio photos that form a kind of Bayeux tapestry of his career in the Piazza del Campo. He's
raced, and won, for a number of contrade, and each of his eleven victories is represented here, the blur of their colors immediately identifiable to us cognoscenti: the blue and yellow of the Tortoise; the burgundy, blue, and white of the Tower; the red, black, and blue of Porcupine; the orange, white, and azure of the Unicorn; the green, red, and white of the Goose; and, of course, the blue, green, and gold of the Caterpillar.

He seems justifiably proud of his victories—there are, after all, only two jockeys in Palio history who have racked up more (and since he's still racing, he could conceivably surpass them). Yet this is nothing to the pride that beams from his face when he tells me, “I was born and raised in Siena, you know. Not many who race the Palio can say that.”

At one point a torrent of teenage boys roars down the staircase, and I suddenly realize that there's a rhythm to life here that I've been interrupting. I thank Trecciolino warmly for his hospitality—he responds with a dazzling smile, and his charisma is so overpowering that I miss one of the steps in the foyer and lurch forward, managing somehow to arrest my plummet just before slamming into the floor and breaking my nose. He coolly pretends not to have noticed.

Annarita comes to say goodbye as I'm pulling on my boots. Unfortunately, my anorak seems to have blown away (I'd left it on the stoop), though I'm less concerned about meeting further rain without it than about polluting Trecciolino's pristine acreage.

He walks me out to the drive, pointing out his stables and the living quarters where he has four apprentice jockeys in residence. As a final treat, I get to see his horses again; they appear out of nowhere, trotting up to the fence all brilliant and dark-eyed and quivering.

Trecciolino surprises me by offering to give me a lift to Siena, and as tempting as that may be, I have to decline. I've vowed to walk, and walk I must. Especially now that I've had this validation, this nod of approval from the Fates. I am on my own personal road to Damascus, and a vision has appeared, not to tell me to turn back but to give me courage to go forward.

Trecciolino smiles; he seems to appreciate my gumption and my devotion to the contrada. And so, armed with a few general directions from Gigi Bruschelli himself, I resume my walk.

The next hour or two pass pleasantly enough; there's a kind of electric tang in the air, as is often the case after a rainstorm, and it energizes me. But soon the terrain makes a drastic change. The winding, isolated country roads winnow away, and I find myself on a busy
strada statale
, which seems, after the bramble-covered paths I've just left, like the L.A. turnpike. I creep my way along a shoulder no wider than the average pants leg. Trucks come barreling by at something close to planetary escape velocity, and there's really nowhere for me to go—the best I can do is sort of lean out of their way. Even worse, by my estimation I'm only two-thirds of the way to Siena.

And this, of course, is when the sky decides to open and pour down upon my head a deluge of almost biblical proportions. It lasts only about five minutes, but that's more than enough to leave me thoroughly drenched. And there's no chance of drying out in the aftermath, because the tires of each truck that passes shoot a frigid sheet of water over me.

Many temporary heart cessations later, I reach the outskirts of the city, and my sense of arrival is somewhat dulled
by my realization that I still have quite a few hilly miles to go before I reach the centro storico. At least the clouds have cleared, and the sun has come out. But it's still November, and the chill air reacts with the moisture in my clothes to produce a state of almost primal misery.

But when I reach the Porta Ovile, I feel a glow of triumph that transcends every hardship. It's taken me four hours and twenty minutes, I'm soaked through, I'm sweating, and my teeth are chattering, but I've done it; I've honored my vow, I've repaid the powers, divine or otherwise, who gave the Caterpillar its last victory. As I climb up the sharp incline of Via del Comune, I think how nice it would be if someone here knew what I'd just accomplished and offered a handshake for it; but then, that isn't the point. I haven't undertaken this for recognition or approval. I've done it solely for honor.

And of course I've had coffee at Trecciolino's house. I'd have to be crazy to ask for any further validation.

I'm very, very hungry now and feel I've earned a really good late lunch. I choose a restaurant called Medio Evo on Via dei Rossi. I must alarm the maître d'—I'm dirty and damp, with sweat running down my face—but he graciously doesn't show it.

A prosecco helps restore my equilibrium; a second one helps even more. And then there are stuffed onions, pappardelle with wild boar sauce, and a Chianti Classico to wash it all down. All under a vaulted ceiling with the crests of neighboring cities painted there: Arezzo, Montalcino, Pisa, Grosseto. I wonder what it would be like to walk to such places. Maybe if the Caterpillar were to win again next year.…

…

 
I'M COMING TO THE END OF ANOTHER SOJOURN IN SIENA
, but with no corresponding sense of completion. Despite the activity in Società L'Alba, I haven't made nearly as much headway as I'd hoped. On my way down Via dei Rossi, I spot a white plastic grocery bag skittering about a cul de sac, being blown first hither, then thither, then back again to repeat the circuit, always in frantic motion but never actually getting anywhere. “Brother, I know how you feel,” I mutter as I pass; then after a few steps I turn back, pick it up, and stuff it into the first trash can I find. Maybe, by the rules of karma, someone will now do the same for me.

I'm attending one last event in the Società tonight: a dinner/karaoke contest. There are five teams competing, of which one comprises Luigina and me. She very kindly offered to be my duet partner, and if nothing else, singing with the wife of the society's president ought to put me on the map. But Luigina's offer isn't entirely an act of kindness; like all the Sienese, she's fiercely competitive, and she knows that back in America I have a second career as a singer. I front an alt-rock band called 7th Kind, which boasts three trumpets and two saxes. When you sing with that many horns, you learn pretty
quickly how to make yourself heard. If I don't gain any immediate notice for singing with Luigina, I'll get it when I blow everyone's hair back from their heads.

When I arrive at the Società, I head to the bar, which is packed with men (women seem rarely to venture here). I make friends in the time-honored way—by buying a drink for whoever's on either side of me—and soon find myself drawn into a conversation with an older brucaiolo named Antonio. He has a brown paper sack that he's clutching jealously, and after we've chatted for a while he deems me sufficiently trustworthy to have a look at what he's got inside. It's a bottle of grappa, “my own home brew,” he tells me proudly.

It's not every day you meet someone who brings his own hootch to a bar; I have to wonder what the point might be. But it turns out he's not drinking it here; instead, he slips it back into the bag to save for dinner. I get the distinct impression that the humble table wine the contrada serves doesn't pack enough punch for him. Meantime, he allows me to buy him another shot.