Seven Seasons in Siena (25 page)

DARIO IS OCCUPIED
the next day, so I spend the morning with Rachel. She's offered to drive me to Siena but has a few errands to run first, and I'm only too happy to accompany her. The first of these involves visiting Clara, Dario's elderly friend, who is recuperating from surgery at the home of her son and daughter-in-law, just down the hill from Dario's house. Aldo and Luana have never seen me before in their
lives but usher me in as though I've been through grade school with both of them and danced at their wedding. As for Clara—tucked up on a narrow twin bed in a room laden with artifacts both religious and familial—she once again appears completely oblivious to ever having met me before, addressing me as
gentile signore
—“kind sir.” I mean, I'm a bald American with a big black mustache; exactly how many of those pass through this burg? Rachel, however, is a different story: at the sight of her Clara almost levitates from the bed, and the smile on her face lights up the room more powerfully than any rheostat. Rachel sits on the bedside and clasps her hand, and they engage in earnest talk. I'm left at a loose end; when Aldo offers me an espresso I gratefully accept, because fiddling with the sugar and the spoon and the little saucer beneath the cup will give me something to do.

It once again becomes clear to me, in just the short time we've spent together this morning, that Rachel has extended her sphere of influence from the contrada to Vagliagli; she appears to know everyone here and to have some kind of genuine interest in the varying conditions of their lives. Sadly, as Rachel's affectionate bond with everyone in Dario's vicinity waxes, her romance with Dario himself wanes—apparently the Apollonian and the Dionysian were just too different for the long haul; opposites attract but don't necessarily adhere. In fact, Rachel's next item of business is to go house hunting, for she still fully intends to move here, even though she won't be residing with Dario. In the ordinary way of things, the conclusion of a romantic relationship involves each partner's returning to his or her prior life—but even if Rachel were of that inclination, no one here would let her go. The more I see
of her among the locals, the more apparent it becomes that they flat-out adore her—just as the brucaioli do.

It's a hard contrast to the frictionless demeanor I myself seem unable to shake, but maybe that's just a matter of gender. I can't imagine putting myself forward the way Rachel does—stepping into other people's lives with so little reserve or circumspection; in a man, such openness, such a disregard of boundaries, might seem not so much endearing as threatening. As for Dario, well, his riveting good looks and charisma rescue him. I am, I realize, pretty much on my own here.

And so it feels when I arrive back in Siena, which isn't till the following day (one thing leading to another as they often do here). It's a cold, damp morning; also, it's a Friday, so most everyone's working. I run into Giuliano Ghiselli in the street, which is about as close to a royal welcome as I could conceivably hope for, but it's my only significant encounter. (I do learn, from chatting with one of the locals, that the local term for shingles is
il fuoco di Sant' Antonio
—literally, “the fire of Saint Anthony.” Everything sounds better in Italian.)

That night, however, there's the customary Friday dinner at the Società, and Dario and I go early to socialize at the bar. We spend some time talking to Francesco, a sharp dresser with keen eyes and a trim beard who's currently one of the mangini—the pair of assistants to the captain—and who Dario thinks may be elected captain himself after Gianni steps down. It's a little alarming that people have begun to think of Gianni's retiring; but he
has
brought home three victories, which is more than most captains manage in the course of their careers.

It's April, which makes this officially the run-up to Palio time. There are still two months to go, but already there's an obsessive interest in which contrade have claims on which jockeys; what each is paying or willing to pay, either for a victory or to prevent someone else's victory; the contingencies that will have to be considered once the final three contrade are drawn. It will become the subject of increasing inspection, dissection, speculation, and argument over the coming weeks.

A few minutes later Rachel walks in, looking absolutely smashing and bearing (of course) a bag of gifts. A roar of joy goes up in the bar—if you didn't know what was happening, you'd have thought Siena's soccer team had scored a goal on TV. It's the first chance I've had to observe Rachel in this milieu in almost two years, and I'm astonished at the difference. After all, she started on this path at the same time I did; I can actually remember—it seems ridiculous now—her asking my advice in the early days, as if there were anything about these people I could possibly tell her. But since then she's sailed right past me; if there's an American Caterpillar in the room—and clearly there is—it isn't me.

Yet I can't begrudge her or even muster up much jealousy. She's my friend, and thus her triumph is mine, and I find myself rather shamelessly basking in it.

And though my own way may be more circuitous and ultimately less resounding a success, I soon realize I'm not entirely without resources. In fact, I find myself rather easily moving about the room, seeking out and greeting Fabio and Gianni the vicar and Giorgio and Luigina and several of the friends I made on karaoke night. And at one point someone reaches out to grab my wrist as I'm passing a table—and it's Silvia; astonishingly, I've reached the point at which she not
only recognizes me but is openly glad to see me. Her smile of welcome is disorienting; I babble something incoherent, making, I hope, not too big a fool of myself, and return to my own table blushing like a six-year-old.

Over dinner (pasta with sausage, stuffed chicken, poached pears, and gelato—have I mentioned that they eat
very well
in the contrada?), Dario fills me in on the broad strokes of the Palio gossip. The Shell, it seems, is the favorite to win; it has spent a fortune already and has Trecciolino lined up—though it's whispered that it's putting a lot more pressure on him than the Caterpillar ever did. Also, its rival, the Ram, isn't racing, so it really does seem to have a clear shot at a victory. And since it's an ally of the Caterpillar and the Caterpillar has won so often of late, the general consensus is that it's our duty to help it in any way we can.

After the dinner the contradaioli, as usual, trickle back into the bar. But Dario, Rachel, and I depart together, all of us having long days tomorrow. Dario is working, Rachel flying back to the States, and I … well, I'll still be shaking off jet lag.

As we exit the clubhouse onto the street, someone from the bar sees us through the window and loudly hails Rachel. She goes over and has a brief, laugh-filled chat, then turns to where Dario and I are waiting for her, down the incline of Via del Comune, and signals that she's going back inside.

Dario and I continue our descent. After a moment he chuckles and says, “Rachel Moskovitz.”

Damned if she's not.

…

 
A FEW DAYS LATER I'M RUNNING SOME ERRANDS IN SIENA
, and outside the imposing arch of Porta Romana I come across a pub called Bar Valli. The name is familiar; have I been here before? I'm almost certain I haven't. This isn't an area of the city I frequent. Since I'm feeling a bit run down from all my errands, I figure I might as well go in and have a revivifying coffee and possibly satisfy my curiosity at the same time.

I enter, and at first glance the place doesn't strike any chords. It's a nice establishment, with a big marble-topped bar, bottles of wine stocked like tenpins on wide shelves, a freezer of
dolci
, a row of video slot machines—and, of course, the requisite wall of Palio memorabilia.

A wiry, craggily handsome man behind the counter asks my pleasure, and I tell him, “Espresso.” He serves it up a moment later, then turns his attention back to the day's paper. I take my cup and saucer over to the wall, and as I sip the steaming brew I examine the dozens of photos. Most of them seem to chronicle the career of a single jockey, and a framed newspaper article reveals his name: Salvatore Ladu, better known as Cianchino, who won the Palio of August 1996, ending the
Caterpillar's forty-one-year losing streak, thus at a stroke becoming one of the Bruco's immortal heroes.

There are photos of Cianchino wearing the colors of a number of contrade—as well as an article that lays out the statistics of his astonishing career: he raced in forty-six Palii and won eight (two for the Panther, two for the Wave, and one each for the Shell, the Ram, the Tortoise, and the Caterpillar), tying him for fourth place in total victories in the twentieth century. In each photo he seems to embody the fantino ideal: lean, compact, wiry.…

I almost drop my cup and saucer.

I turn back to the barkeep and say, “Hey! You're Cianchino!”

He nods, in the careful way you'd humor someone who's spent ten minutes staring at the big
HOLLYWOOD
sign above Los Angeles and then turned around and exclaimed, “Hey! I'm in Hollywood!”

“I didn't know this was your bar!” I continue. “I mean, I
knew
this was your bar, that is, I knew you
had
a bar called Bar Valli, but I forgot—that is, when I came across it just now, I couldn't remember where I—” He's looking at me with one eyebrow raised, as though I were a cat coughing up a hairball. So I just shrug and say, “What the hell. Give me a prosecco.”

There's a very fine book,
I trenta assassini
, which profiles thirty legendary jockeys of the Palio, with text in their own words. Cianchino's entry is the shortest, just two sentences long: “An old fantino told me: ‘Salvatore, the bread of the Palio has seven crusts.' Now I understand.” He is, apparently, a taciturn man.

Yet he seems willing to tell me a little of his life. Possibly
because it's a slow day and I'm a willing customer; it must also be intriguingly unusual to find an American interested in the Palio. But most likely he's receptive to my curiosity because I've told him of my slender, but intensely felt, connection to the Caterpillar contrada. “I owe everything to the Bruco,” he says, nodding for emphasis.
“Everything.”

The first thing I learn, to my surprise, is that Cianchino is two years younger than I am. It's incredible to me that someone of my generation can already have completed the full arc of a career—much less a
brilliant
career—and then retired with honors.

What makes this even stranger is the way Cianchino, who's barely past fifty, keeps referring to himself as being the last of a venerable old breed of fantini—a hardscrabble, hard-living lot whose ranks include such luminaries as Aceto, Bastiano, and Il Pesse—the last of whom was his great rival. And this was no invented rivalry either, no public relations gimmick; Cianchino openly admits that the friction between him and Pesse—with whom he seemed almost in private competition for Palio victories during the 1980s and 1990s—was personal as well as professional. “I couldn't stand him,” he says. “He was a great fantino, but off the corsa …” He shakes his head tellingly. Pesse, it seems, caused frequent problems for the contrade he rode for and was accordingly often beaten up; whereas Cianchino, ever the gentleman, ever the professional, never once had a hand laid on him. The two men were like oil and water.

Cianchino was born in the town of Bono in Sardinia. A great many fantini hail from, or trace their ancestry to, that rocky island, whose people are noted for their toughness. In fact, there are idiomatic phrases about the thickness of their
skulls. (Once, at a picnic hosted by a group of Chianti wild-boar hunters, I sat across from a man who swore that when he was in the military, he could tell the Sardinians in his unit at a glance. “It was just a matter of looking at all the shaved heads,” he said. “Theirs are
shaped
differently.”) The Sardinians are essentially an entirely different people, not only from the Tuscans but from the Italians in general, what with their distinctive tongue and their particular surnames, which almost always end in either “s” or “u.”