Seven Seasons in Siena (23 page)

When the food finally appears, it's impeccably prepared, beautifully plated, and disorientingly flavorful. Calamari bruschette, steamed mussels in a garlic broth, gnocchi with shrimp and crab, delicately poached sea bass. While we're feasting, Alessio's continued reappearances in the dining room prompt me to wonder about his father, whom I haven't yet met; how many Palii, exactly, did Cianchino ride for the Caterpillar over the course of his career?

It's an obvious enough question from a newcomer, but I'm surprised by how eagerly the brucaioli take it up. This is the kind of thing they live for. No one seems to have an indisputable answer at his fingertips, so they spend the next several minutes rifling through their memories and tallying up the races—sometimes pausing to dispute an assertion or argue that someone's gotten the year wrong. Eventually the answer is determined: eight—possibly nine, if you count July 1996,
when he broke his leg in the
prova generale
before the race. (Nothing is ever clear-cut about the Palio. Which is part of its appeal.)

With the food now prepared and served, the kitchen staff are at their ease, and though their demeanor up to now can't exactly be called efficient (word leaks out that they ran a Crab Palio on the countertop before cooking up the crustaceans), the successful completion of their task comes as such a happy release to them that they basically degenerate into anarchy. I find myself envying them, remembering the way everything at that age—every accomplishment, every pitfall, heartbreak, and triumph—is so heightened that it feels cataclysmic. What's coming from the kitchen now is the sound of pure, untrammeled joy. Part of the proceeds from tonight's dinner goes to a fund for Gianni's hoped-for fourth victory—not unprecedented for a captain, but extremely rare—and when I slip into the kitchen to scope out what's going on, Alessio and the others all have their arms around one another and are throatily singing, “We will hang it once more”—meaning the prize banner.

Eventually people begin wafting away from the dinner tables and congregating in the bar, which is where Dario introduces me to Claudio Bani, who is the contrada's barbaresco—a position of inexpressible importance that Bani has held for an incredible seventeen years. His chief responsibility is that of groom to the horse during the days of the Palio, though in that capacity he's augmented by an exceptional horse whisperer from Rome called Er Mutanda (literally, “the underwear”—how he earned this nickname isn't explained, and frankly I'm fine with that). But during the remainder of the year the barbaresco is equally preoccupied,
traveling about the country to follow the training and development of the horses that will be offered for consideration for the Palio. The advice of the
barbareschi
and the captain's aides, the
mangini
, will be crucial in determining which mounts make the cut.

Because of these demands, the barbaresco is a rare sight in the contrada; he's almost always on the road, and during the days of the Palio he's perpetually at the stable with the horse, thereby missing all the dinners and the feasts. Bani, however, looks quite at peace with this life of near isolation. Lean, taut, and completely bald though still appearing quite youthful (I'd guess him to be in his very early forties), he seems tremendously self-contained; he barely moves a muscle but exudes power and confidence. I suppose these are all traits necessary in the handling of highly strung horses, and indeed it's hard, after chatting with Bani for just a few minutes, to imagine a scenario in which he'd rush to judgment or overreact.

As if to demonstrate this, the young kitchen staff—now almost wild over their big success tonight—descend on the bar like a squadron of paratroopers. There's shouting, shoving, singing, and a surprising amount of leaping about. But no one seems to mind much, least of all Bani, who barely acknowledges the sudden influx. He's telling us which were the most exceptional horses he's handled in his nearly two decades on the job. “Vai Go was the most surprising to me,” he says; later I'll learn that this was a horse who almost won scosso (riderless) in 2004. “I had no idea he was so powerful.”

“What about Elisir?” I ask. “He took everyone by surprise, didn't he?”

Bani allows the most muted smile to cross his lips. “Not me. I knew from the start what Elisir could do, and I knew
when his time had come.” Just beyond us, Alessio and some of the others have started taking packages of snack foods from the display cases and smashing them underfoot. Crisps, chips, and pretzels are flying everywhere; it's as though someone stepped on a land mine set by Keebler Elves. “Urban, on the other hand,” Bani continues, completely unfazed and recalling a horse ridden by Trecciolino in July 2002, “I had much greater expectations for him.…”

The level of destruction keeps mounting, and I can't help feeling a bit on my guard. I'm in a crowded bar, hemmed in by dozens of people, and there's a small-scale riot going on just a few steps away. But everyone else here looks either unconcerned or affectionately amused, so I try to be cool—especially since Bani, in response to an inquiry from Dario, has become even more introspective; the more chaotic things get all around him, the more serene and thoughtful he appears to become. “It can be a very lonely existence, yes,” he says. “A barbaresco is never really off duty. Any kind of social life is next to impossible, never mind a relationship … still, it's my choice to do this, and though I've done it for seventeen years, I don't feel in any way that I've reached my limit. I can't imagine giving it up. It's a calling as much as a job.”

At this point, someone bursts a bag of mixed nuts over my head, and a little shower of pecans and almonds cascades down past my collar. (I'll be shaking them out for the rest of the night, and when I awaken tomorrow morning I'll find an entire cashew sitting primly on the pillow next to me. And one week later, back home in Chicago, I'll have to stop while walking the dogs because of what I think is a pebble in my shoe, but when I shake it out I'll see that it's a pistachio.)

Now, you'd think that this would alarm me; it's the first
hint of the rowdiness in the bar turning actually violent. Yet it's also so absurd. I've been attacked with a bag of snacks; more salted than assaulted. It almost feels like an ironic welcome. And sure enough, as I look over my shoulder, I can see that I'm not the only one being preyed on in this manner—and that all the victims are taking it with giddy good humor. In a way, it feels as much a rite of passage as winning the karaoke trophy with Luigina.

And suddenly I know innately that no one is in any peril here tonight. This is just another example of high spirits, driven by excitement and fraternity, by testosterone and Chianti Classico. In another place, such a combination might lead to something lethal; but this is Siena—everything is structured, everything is channeled, everything is sistemati. Even as I'm thinking this, I notice that one of the revelers has taken up a broom and begun sweeping up after his friends, who are still busily bursting snack packs. This kind of carousing is allowed and even smiled upon, because everyone here knows what the boundaries are; this is their place—their collective home—and they can be utterly themselves here, never mind how extreme the behavior that results. But for the same reason, they respect the place; they honor it and they preserve it. So yes, go crazy, tear up the joint, bash it to bits. You know where the broom and dustpan are.

By the end of the night the bar is looking pretty much restored to order. I'm also fairly certain someone is happily settling up for the damaged inventory, too—probably the perpetrators themselves or their fathers. If there's a harsh word to be said over any of this, I'm not hearing it. In fact, it appears quite the opposite: everyone is leaving with smiles and laughter.

I'm feeling pretty good myself, but on the way home I become aware of a small, sharp pain in one of my lower teeth. Probably the wine dulled it a bit so that I didn't feel it until now. In which case, a little
more
wine when we get back to Vagliagli ought to dull it enough to let me sleep. If it's still there in the morning, I'll worry about it then.

…

 
THE NEXT DAY THE PAIN IS WORSE; I CAN BARELY TOUCH
the affected area with my tongue, and my face has a slightly swollen aspect.

“I think I might have cracked a tooth,” I say.

“How is that possible at a seafood dinner?” Dario asks, quite reasonably.

“Maybe I bit down on a mussel shell or something. I don't remember.”

“Would some hot tea help?”

The hot tea doesn't help.

“Ow, ow, ow!”
I wail as the steaming brew scalds the tooth's tender nerves.

“You should go and see Fabio,” Dario says.

“Fabio? The rector?”

“He's a dentist,” Dario explains.

To me, it's always seemed as though being rector of the Caterpillar must be a full-time job. It had completely slipped my mind that he has another career alongside it.

“I'll give him a ring, see if he can fit you in,” Dario offers. “If he can, I'll give you a lift to Siena.”

Fabio's office is located in Piazza Gramsci, not far from the
Siena bus station, a place I've come to know well. “Bus station” has a rather seedy connation in the United States, but the station in Siena is actually a very pleasant spot. The ticket office is below ground, so all that's on the surface is the buses, just two or three at a time; this is, remember, a very small city. I sometimes bring my lunch here and sit and watch the travelers come and go.

There are gently waving trees across the way, and just over the rooftops you can spy the imposing edifice of the Basilica of San Domenico, which houses some of the remains of Saint Catherine—her head and thumb, to be precise. (The rest of her is interred in Rome.)

The story goes that the Sienese, believing that Catherine would prefer to be laid to rest in her own city but knowing they couldn't smuggle her entire body out of the capital, settled on taking only her head. When, despite this precaution, Roman guards stopped them and commanded them to open their sack, what they found there was a mound of rose petals. Once safely beyond the walls of the city, the faithful reopened the sack and looked again; Catherine's head had been restored. Relic and miracle, all in one package.

Catherine was a towering figure, not just for the Sienese but for all of Europe, and in fact she remains so (she's the patron saint of both the city and the continent). She had that medieval bent for self-mortification—hair shirts, autoflagellation, sleeping with a stone for a pillow. Yet she was also a relentless firebrand, a champion of the poor and a protofeminist in the truest sense; she wrote hectoring letters to just about everyone—kings, dukes, mercenaries—she even badgered the pope on matters both spiritual and temporal. She'd probably have made a spectacularly awful dinner guest. No one else
would've been able to get a word in. Also, she famously didn't eat. In her latter days she even tried to give up water, preferring to drink the pus of the afflicted. Which frankly I prefer not to serve in my house.

Fabio's office is located in one of those wonderful old fortresslike buildings you find only in Europe, with a great carved door big enough to admit a woolly mammoth. Inside there are a grand staircase and a cage elevator, like something out of a Vincente Minnelli movie. Caramel-colored light pours in from a sky-high window.

Fabio has promised to try to fit me in between his scheduled appointments, so I have to wait on his convenience. In the waiting room there are magazines and newspapers on hand, but my tooth hurts too much to allow the requisite concentration for reading in Italian. I take refuge in my iPod, fully aware of how distressingly American this makes me look. A mitigating factor, if anyone but knew it, is that I'm not listening to some mind-numbing pop music; I'm actually tuned in to a podcast,
12 Byzantine Rulers
by the historian Lars Brownworth. In this episode he's talking about the reign of the Emperor Justinian, and in particular his commission of the Hagia Sophia church in Constantinople, in its time the most spectacular building in the world (and still a jaw-dropper today). Even more astonishing is that it was built in just five years, ten months, and four days from the laying of the first stone—which Brownworth cannily compares to the much later edifices of Westminster Cathedral (thirty-three years to build), Notre Dame (more than a hundred), and the Duomo in Florence (two hundred thirty). What occurs to me instantly, of course, is that the Duomo of Siena is
still
unfinished after eight hundred years; there's an entire nave of
which only one wall has been erected. Granted, its construction was halted in 1348 by the Black Death, which pretty much decimated the workforce for the next few generations. And then those pushy Florentines took over the city (and its purse strings), which basically meant forget about it.