Seven Seasons in Siena (26 page)

Cianchino was one of nine sons in a farming family. His father worked in Germany, but despite the portion of his income he regularly sent home, the family was so poor that they couldn't afford to keep a stable. “So I learned to ride not on horseback but on pigs.”

Despite this lack of proper training, he was spotted by a scout from Lazio whose eye for talent was fixed by the boy's trim, compact frame—ideal for a jockey. He recruited Salvatore, trained him, and set him up in a career in conventional racing. Soon he was noticed by Giuseppe Gentili, aka Cian-cone, the great fantino whose historic 1955 victory was, at that time, the last the Caterpillar had enjoyed. He took the young Salvatore under his wing and convinced the captain of the Bruco to bring him to Siena to race for them. He was given the nickname Cianchino in reflection of his benefactor.

“I was a poor, unworldly Sardinian boy,” he says. “For me, Siena was a dazzling, magical place, like the land of Bellocchi”—a reference to
Pinocchio
, a story that has the same resonance for Tuscans that
The Wizard of Oz
has for Americans.

The first summer after Cianchino's arrival, the Caterpillar didn't race in July, so the Bruco lent him to the Ram contrada
for his first Palio. In August, he donned the Bruco colors for the first time, but as luck would have it, his horse was injured in one of the trials, so the contrada had to withdraw from the race. The Caterpillar lent Cianchino to the Panther, for whom—in only his second race—he won his very first victory. At the time, he wasn't much beyond his twentieth birthday.

It was the beginning of a legendary career, though he couldn't know that then. He didn't win any of his next five Palii—all raced for the Caterpillar, which had invested so much in him and for whom he was eager to make good. The first time he wore the contrada's green, blue, and gold was in fact the most disastrous—and must have seemed in retrospect an ill omen for the following four. “I fell from the horse,” he says, “breaking my leg and my collarbone and puncturing my lung.”

The Caterpillar released him to race elsewhere, though he returned to it twice (in August 1982 and August 1989), but he continued to win Palii only for other contrade. His victory in the August 1990 Palio was perhaps the most extraordinary and thrilling of the last century. Racing for the Ram, astride an extraordinary mount named Pitheos with whom he'd been paired for the previous two Palii, he found himself late out of the mossa, with the Forest, the favored winner, comfortably in the lead. And so it would have stayed, but for a sensational domino-effect upset. The Owl's horse took a tumble at the first pass of San Martino, then managed to get up and get going again but stopped just before the finish line—which caused both the Forest and the Unicorn, which had by now rounded the track two more times, to plow into him as they hurtled toward victory. Cianchino, incredulous, suddenly
saw the way clear before him and sailed by his fallen competitors to a completely unforeseen victory—even as the members of the Forest, who had already rushed to claim the prize banner, looked on in astonishment.

“It was a lucky sequence of events for me,” says Cianchino. “If I hadn't won, the members of the Ram would have beaten me to a pulp.”

“Why?” I ask.

He grins slyly. “Pesse was their jockey. But when they extracted Pitheos, I went to them and urged them to take me on instead. I had ridden Pitheos in two Palii, I knew him, I believed in him—and I promised I could win with him. So they set Pesse aside.” But then Pesse went on to win with Pitheos as well—in fact, he did so twice, in the next two August Palii—which I think must be one of the causes of the bad blood between them. At the very least, it can't have
helped
.

The story of Cianchino's 1996 win is almost equally astonishing. He was slated to race for the Caterpillar in July, but in the
prova generale
—the trial the
night before the day of the Palio—
he fell and broke his leg. It was as if he were repeating his first, bone-crushing performance for the contrada. As you can imagine, the dinner at Società L'Alba afterward was held in appalled silence, and when Riccardo the captain appeared at midnight with the hastily recruited replacement, the effort to feign enthusiasm was excruciating. There was no victory the next day.

A month later, Cianchino had not only completely recovered but climbed atop the great horse Rose Rosa and rode on to claim the first Bruco banner in forty-one years—the victory he had longed for seventeen years to give it.

It was, alas, Cianchino's last triumph; and perhaps sensing
this, he declined to ride for the Caterpillar again—believing it better to end his association with the Bruco on a high note. Though in a sense it wasn't the end at all; he had his sons baptized in the contrada, and one of them, Alessio, is now barbaresco alongside Bani. It's a measure of how completely his father's legend has saturated the contrada, that he too is called Cianchino—“Cianca” for short.

In 2005, Cianchino decided to retire from racing altogether, having noted the coming of a new generation of fantini—Trecciolino and his contemporaries—who he felt were handled more like commodities than members of the community. He wasn't comfortable in such an environment, so he hung up his saddle (metaphorically speaking, since his career was predominantly bareback) and opened his bar. In which he now is seated, patiently enduring my many questions.

Wary of wearing out my welcome, I thank him warmly and make my way to the door. As I take one last look at the wall of photos, I can suddenly hear the cries of the crowd, smell the tang of perspiration, and feel the earth tremble beneath my feet.

I'm betting Cianchino still can, too.

BACK IN VAGLIAGLI
, Dario suggests a walk up to the hills above the town. We start the trek and soon find ourselves enveloped in the quiet hiss and murmur of solitude. The climb is a little arduous, and at one point I step on some wild sage growing by the path, crushing it and releasing a potent, earthy-sweet aroma. Soon we come across a cluster of buildings nestled on one of the rises. There's a main house, a garden
shed, a garage, a swimming pool—and a sign that reads
VILLA ASTREO
.

“This is a bed-and-breakfast run by a friend of mine,” Dario explains. “Come on, I'll introduce you.” There's an impish grin on his face that perplexes me; he's obviously holding something back.

We pass through the gate and knock on the door, and a few moments later an elderly woman opens it—trim, petite, in slacks and a sweater and fully made up. She greets Dario warmly, and when he introduces me she offers her hand with genteel primness. Dario gives me a look, as if to say,
So?
All of a sudden it hits me: despite her age, I recognize the woman's singular features: the wide eyes, the aristocratic nose. “Rompicollo?” I whisper. He nods.

Rompicollo (which means “breakneck”) is the fantino name of Rosanna Bonelli, who in August 1957 became the only woman to race the Palio (at least in modern times; there are rumors of some others in the remote past). I was aware she was still alive but didn't know she was essentially Dario's neighbor.

Dario asks if we can come in and chat for a few minutes, and she agrees, but says very pointedly, “I'm just waiting for my show to come on,” and nods toward a small TV mounted on the wall behind her. She takes us into the kitchen and offers us a couple of espressos, and she and Dario catch up on local gossip for a few minutes, till she notices the way I keep looking around the place, which is packed with photos, books, artifacts, and display cases. “Would you like a tour?” she asks.

As we head into the adjoining room, I learn that the place isn't merely a bed-and-breakfast. “This has been my home, on
and off, since childhood,” she says, “so I've turned it into a museum, with each room devoted to a member of my family.” The first we visit enshrines the career of her late husband, General Giulio Cesare Flamini.

The next room is dedicated to Rosanna's father, Luigi Bonelli, a playwright, composer, and general man of the theater; the walls are choked with photographs of his various productions, and signed portraits of his collaborators, including Pietro Mascagni and the great ballerina Anna Pavlova, whom Rosanna called “Aunt Tatiana.” There are also posters and music folios from some of his shows, including one that—astonishingly—is called
Rompicollo
and features a young girl astride a horse. The look I give Rosanna makes her laugh.

“My life is interesting that way,” she says. “Full of such portents. Yes, when I was very young my father wrote an operetta—widely praised—about a girl named Diana, who takes the place of a jockey for the Forest when he is made drunk by a woman from a rival contrada.” Her eyes twinkle. “Of
course
she triumphs. Back then, the Forest—which is our family contrada—hadn't won a Palio for many years, so my father gave it a theatrical victory to compensate.”

“And then
you
went on to live that story yourself.”

“Yes,” she says, obviously flattered by my interest; “though my own path to the corsa was a bit more complicated. And it involves association with another fictional heroine.” She now leads me into a room enshrining her own career, and among the many ribbons, awards, and photographs is a splashy, colorful movie poster:
La Ragazza del Palio
, starring Diana Dors and Vittorio Gassman.

“The film is about an American girl who through various
adventures ends up riding, and winning, the Palio,” she explains. “The director, Luigi Zampa, had been a friend of my father's, so he allowed me to hang about the set during filming. I was by this time an accomplished horsewoman and had even mastered bareback; I had always dreamed of riding in a Palio, as Rompicollo had, so this film greatly intrigued me.

“One morning the director called for six jockeys on horseback in order to film a scene of a prova. Only five jockeys could be found. I offered myself as the sixth, and he was desperate enough to accept me. So I tucked my hair up under my hat and joined the other five fantini in filming the scene. It was such a thrill—being on horseback, in contrada colors, on the piazza with the tufa beneath my feet! But afterward, when word got out that an uninsured young girl had taken part in a potentially dangerous scene, there was a bit of a scandal, so I decided to keep shy of the set. And anyway, what else could I find there to top what I'd just experienced?

“As fate would have it, the next day Diana Dors's stunt double was hurt in a fall, and the production manager was again desperate. He asked everyone if they knew how to get in touch with ‘that mad girl from yesterday morning.' When they found me, they offered me the job of replacement stunt double—and so once again I found myself on horseback in the piazza! Though this time with a big platinum wig so I would resemble Diana Dors. Which was another strange coincidence, because the heroine of my father's operetta was named Diana. Like I said, so many portents.

“The filming went well, and then one day the production manager came up with the idea of generating publicity for the movie by having a
real
girl in the Palio. The film company offered to pay any contrada that would allow me to ride for
them. My dream, of course, was to ride for the Forest, but my uncle was the captain, and he wouldn't allow me to risk it. Eventually the Eagle agreed; it had just won a Palio the year before, so they felt no urgency to win another, and the money was welcome to it. And just like that, I was accepted to race in an actual Palio! Of course, for my nickname I chose Rompicollo.”

We've moved to a wall of photos of the event. There's Rosanna, in medieval dress, astride the mount in the historical procession; Rosanna, in the Eagle's gold and black, heading out to the mossa, crop in hand. “Unfortunately, my story ended less well than my fictional predecessors. I wasn't positioned well at the start but made up a great deal of time to reach third place by the second lap—I really thought I might overtake the others to win—but I collided with the Tower at the San Martino curve and we both ended up falling. The Shell won the race as I watched in dismay, and then suddenly the members of the Tower came onto the track and attacked me for having caused their loss. A member of the Eagle came to my defense, fending off the blows with a bouquet of roses he'd intended to give me.”

She smiles appreciatively as I look at her with astonishment. “You mustn't mind it; I didn't. In a way I was glad to be treated as any other fantino would be. And later, some members of the Tower came to my house to apologize, because they belatedly realized I hadn't intended to hinder them.”

She happens to glance now at her watch and experiences a little jolt of alarm. She leads me very quickly back through the rooms. “I tried very hard to find a contrada to take me the following year,” she says at a slightly faster clip, “but alas, no one would bite. Still, I've had an experience no other woman
can claim, and a wonderful life …” By this time we've reached the front hall again. She turns up the volume on the TV, and a quiz show blares to life.