Seven Seasons in Siena (27 page)

I go to fetch Dario from the adjoining great room, where he's been watching a soccer match with Rosanna's daughter, Chiara. We return to the hall, where he attempts to make further conversation with Rosanna, but she offers only polite responses, unwilling to take her attention from the quiz program. She watches it while standing upright, shifting her weight from one foot to the other; and in this attitude she strikes me as rather equine herself—like a mare at the mossa, waiting for the race to begin. Quietly, we take our leave. (Later I'll learn that she's a lifelong devotee of puzzles, brainteasers, and word games.)

It's been quite a day, encountering two such very different Palio legends, both still surrounded by mementos of their prime. I can't say they're riding on past glories, because there is no “past” in the Palio. Yesterday's triumphs are as urgently felt as today's, making Siena a very good place to be a hero—retired or otherwise.

…

 
MY PRINCIPAL REASON FOR COMING TO SIENA THIS MONTH
is to take part in the annual footrace from Siena to the nearby hill town of Montalcino, best known for its spectacular Brunello wine. The two Palii each summer only temporarily appease the Sienese's mad urge to throw down. The contrade continue gleefully to butt heads all year round in an exhaustive range of games and challenges limited only by what they haven't thought up yet.

This particular event is held in honor of the Sienese patriots who, on April 21, 1555, left the city rather than live under Florence-based Imperial rule and trekked the forty-three kilometers to Montalcino, where they hoped to maintain the institution of the Sienese Republic in exile. It's also held in honor of Montalcino itself, which welcomed them with open arms and with whom, as a result, the Sienese maintain a warm relationship to this day.

Ironically, the race is organized by the Tortoise contrada. All the other contrade take part, with the exception of the Snail, which is the Tortoise's bitter enemy and won't demean itself by participating in anything organized by its hated rival. Its place is taken by the Ruga, a district of Montalcino similar
to a Sienese contrada, which is friendly with the Tortoise and even shares its colors.

The course is divided into four sections, as in a relay race, and participation is supposedly based on the number of military units quartered in each contrada. The Caterpillar has only one such company yet is competing three teams—two men's and one women's. Dario and I are on separate teams, with each of us running the difficult final leg, the bulk of which is basically straight uphill to the gates of Montalcino. Our Bruco sister, running the same leg for the women's team, is Tatiana, whom I met briefly in the kitchens after dinner a few nights back.

I've trained for this like a sonofabitch back home, and my idea is to make a damn fine showing, if not actually win. The worst of my shingles has now abated, so it's not impossible. We head for the Tortoise contrada, where all the participants congregate for team photos and get their togs. Each team will be wearing running gear in its contrada's colors, and I queue up with the eleven other Caterpillar competitors for my kit. I watch as the team captain, a cheerful guy named Fabrizio with a wave of salt-and-pepper hair, hands out lycra tanks and shorts drawn from a large sack. Blue for him … green for her … green again … blue … and so on, till I'm at the head of the line. Fabrizio reaches into the sack and pulls out a great big of handful of yellow.

A yellow tank and yellow shorts. Bright, screaming yellow.

And I balk. For God's sake, I'm a grown man, well into middle age. How am I supposed to keep my dignity when I'm prancing around in
yellow
? I'm just about to request a different color, when it occurs to me that any salve to my pride that
might be gained by switching this ensemble for one respectably blue or green might be offset by the harm done to my reputation in asking for it. No one else here is getting all choosy about hues. No one else is stopping to say, “Do you have this in cerulean?” I don't want to come off as a difficult, prissy American, and I sure as
hell
don't want to disrespect one of the colors of the contrada whose favor I'm trying to win. So I swallow my request, and my pride, and take the yellow as though it's candy. I even say
“Grazie”
and flash Fabrizio my very best smile.

But I really don't want to wear yellow any longer than I have to, so while everyone else is suiting up, I keep my togs tucked under my arm and just hang out. I consent to put the tank on over my shirt for the team photo, but that's it. I can't help noticing, as the shutter clicks, that no one else on the three Caterpillar teams is saddled with yellow. Dario is resplendent in a very mature green. Ditto Peggy, the American brucaiola. I get a chance to catch up with her as she goes through her warm-up; she's incredibly limber—she pulls her leg up into a stretch, and her knee almost knocks her in the forehead.

We break up and pile into our cars to head to our starting points. Dario and Tatiana and I ride together, along with a friend of Tatiana's from the Porcupine contrada, one Guido, the sight of whom gives me my first inkling that I might be in serious trouble. His legs are absolutely ripped. Possibly, just possibly, my plan of glorious victory might be in jeopardy.

We arrive at our starting point, out in the verdant countryside. Cars line up along the roadside, and runners spill out and begin warming up—jogging down the road, then sprinting back. There's a table offering water and tea and—God
only knows why—sardines. We mill about sociably, and I continue to put off the moment when I must don the fearsome yellow.

Though the course is divided into four lengths, it's not an actual baton-passing relay race; apparently that takes too long. Instead, each of the four teams has a staggered start time—the first beginning at 8:30, then the others at half-hour intervals till the last group, ours, sets off at 10:00. Afterward the times will be tallied up and the winner announced. When I notice the other runners beginning to congregate around the starting line, I check my watch: ten minutes to go. Time, finally, to suit up.

I head back to Dario's car, strip down, and toss my clothes onto his backseat. Then I slip on the tank and pin my number onto the chest—thereby reducing the acreage of sheer yellow. And then I unfold the shorts.

It becomes immediately apparent that I should have given them at least a cursory inspection earlier. Because they are, these shorts, very short indeed. Very, very short. In fact, my first reaction on seeing them is to exclaim aloud, “What am I,
eleven
?”

I have a moment of panic, because I'm well and truly stuck here. I can't go back to Siena for an exchange—even if I could, Fabrizio would be long gone by now—and I can't run in my jeans. I have no recourse but to wear these dinky little hot pants.

I'm just about to slip them on when I notice that, unlike every pair of running shorts I've ever seen, they have no mesh pouch to cradle the Essential You. They're just fabric all the way around. Sheer, yellow, peek-a-boo-I-see-right-through fabric.

I could end up making more of an impression on the contrada than I ever dreamed. But instead I decide that the better part of valor is to wear my boxer briefs beneath the shorts.

But wouldn't you know, my underwear is actually
larger than what it's underneath
. So that I have to tuck it up so it doesn't hang out, making the shorts look like a large yellow diaper.

Even more mortifying, when I drop the shirt it falls below the hemline of the shorts, making it look like I'm wearing no pants at all. I tuck the back of the shirt inside the waistband, to forestall any such misunderstanding by onlookers. At this point I'm wondering if anyone would notice if I just stayed behind the car and didn't race at all, because my confidence has been busted down to subzero. But I force myself to man up. “How bad can it really be?” I say, and I back up and look at my reflection in the van's window.

“Oh, my God,” I exclaim, “I look like a pedophile.”

There's just so much
thigh
. I generally think that a man has no business baring his upper legs in public past a certain age. (That age being, oh, fourteen.)

But I put up a brave front and go out to mill among my colleagues. Possibly I can lose myself in their number. And if this beautiful landscape of Brunello wine country should crack wide open and swallow me up? That would be okay too.

As I approach, Dario turns, and there's just a momentary glint of alarm in his eyes; but ever the gentleman, he immediately hides it and says, “So, you ready to race?”

“Yes,” I reply. “Tell me the truth, I look like a pedophile, don't I?”

He cocks his head and makes a little dubious rocking gesture
with his hand, which is very far from the ringing denunciation I'd hoped for.

But there's no more time to dwell on how seedy I look, because the official with the stopwatch is counting down the final seconds. Suddenly we're
on
.

I'm near the back of the pack, but that's all right, because I have a strategy. While everyone else shoots off like a rocket, I'm going to keep a nice, steady pace and wait for the hot dogs to lose their steam and fall back. Then I'll chug right by them to victory.

Except no one falls back.

In fact, after the majority of the runners take the first bend in the road, nearly a mile ahead of me, I won't see them again till after the finish line.

Soon there's just Dario, a good half mile ahead of me, and Tatiana, a similar distance behind. Which isn't exactly spelling triumph for the Caterpillar.

I'm realizing something: all that training I did back home—running ten, twelve miles at a pop, with decent speed—means nothing now, because I live in the Midwest, a great expanse of utterly flat flatness. The kind of flat you get for only a couple of yards at a stretch here in Chianti, before you find yourself back on either side of a hill.

There are, I now discover, muscles that you use in running on hills that you don't use at all running on an even surface. It's an idyllic, sun-soaked, gorgeous day in Chianti, and I'm out among landscapes that inspired the Renaissance masters. And I am wearing yellow and I am going to collapse. Just crumple up into a big steaming mass of hairy white thigh.

To buck myself up, I force myself to think hard about those passionate self-exiles in 1555. When they left Siena forever
rather than live as vassals of the Emperor Charles V, they took with them their wives and children and whatever household goods they could carry strapped to their backs or wheel behind them in carts. They traveled an ancient, broken Roman road and must have moved at a crawl. They were afflicted by famine and disease along the way, and many of them died by the roadside.

By contrast, all I have to do is run—unencumbered, on pavement—a quarter of the distance they endured in the name of liberty. That's all. And to do it
in their honor
. How can I complain?

This stratagem works well for a time, and I huff and puff my way ever closer to Montalcino. But then, at the foot of the hill atop which that city sits, resplendent as a queen on a throne, the incline—which has been increasing incrementally for several miles now—suddenly zooms upward. I'm talking sheer. I have to propel my torso forward as I run, and at certain junctures it's as though the road really is rising up to meet me.

The grade is so steep that bicycles can't manage it. A couple of cyclists strive mightily to pass me, their legs straining against the pedals, before giving up and dismounting, and walking their bikes up the road beside them like pack mules. Finally, my strength gives out; I can't run anymore. I struggle on at a walk, with gravity pushing ever harder against me. It's as though someone has tipped the whole world up fifteen degrees.

And that's when I hear myself being hailed from behind: “Ciao, Robert!” I turn and see Tatiana, coming up fast—or relatively fast, anyway. Tatiana, who has clearly adopted my
strategy of keeping a steady pace and waiting for others to fall behind. Except I'm the only one who's obliged her.

Well, I can't let myself be shown up like this—my one comfort, up to now, was that at least with Tatiana behind me, I wouldn't come in dead last. But Tatiana's not behind me anymore; she's right next to me, looking remarkably fresh and actually being rather chatty. I force myself into a trot again, just to keep up with her, and my calves start screaming like baby seals.

I'm so delirious with the effort that I can barely hear a word Tatiana is saying to me (not to mention that my yellow shorts have ridden even higher up my thighs). When we finally reach the city gate, I'm nearly ecstatic with relief; but once we're through it, it becomes apparent that we still have a way to go. The finish is all the way at the summit, on the central piazza. I may need triage by then.