Seven Seasons in Siena (30 page)

At the end of the night, a cluster of diehards has gathered
around the garden bar, where they seem to be settled in for a long, loud night. There are only two people working behind the counter—Daniele and Fabrizio—so Dario, perhaps pining wistfully for our duties at the wine table, volunteers the both of us.

At first I'm all for it, a chance to get some actual face time with brucaioli I haven't met yet. But I've never tended bar before, and I don't know what half the customers are asking for—or where I'd find the mixers even if I did. Nor do I know what anything costs. I can handle the beer orders; but it seems a bit of an anticlimax to my great Caterpillar adventure. I'd envisioned some tremendous catharsis—some great communal coming together that would sum up everything I've seen and done and learned. Instead I'm a barback; and a pretty lame one at that.
Humility
, I remind myself.
You're in the service of something greater than you are. You don't get to choose how to honor it
.

But I suppose that's in the nature of things. Familiarity dulls the novelty of even the most spectacular surprise, and if you'd told me, three years ago, that I'd one day be here behind the bar at Società L'Alba wielding a bottle opener and trading quips with the Bruco regulars, I'd have been dizzy with disbelief. But now that I'm here … I've seen how much deeper all this goes. I'm still skimming the surface; I'm still on the periphery. The extraordinary spirit of these people, their resiliency and honor, their loyalty and their pride—all these things are still only on exhibit, like the costumes in the museum: visible behind glass. I can see them but not touch them.

When the crowd finally thins out to a manageable level, Dario and I put down our counter cloths and depart. On my way out I turn and take one last look at the garden, still alight,
still alive, still dappled with conversation and splashed with laughter. I can't even imagine when, or if, I'll ever see it again. Things have changed over the past few years; the world has become less friendly to adventuring. Leapfrogging the Atlantic every few months to come and pretend to be something I'm not is a luxury I just can't afford, in any sense. And it breaks my heart.

MY FLIGHT HOME
is out of Rome, so I spend a brief spell there as a kind of buffer—a period of readjustment to modern, noisy, gritty urban life. Though I have a particular agenda beyond just that: when my mother died a year ago, she stipulated that each of her children receive an equal share of her cremated remains, to be dispersed however we see fit. Since she was a devout Catholic, I've chosen to release my portion in the piazza at St. Peter's Basilica. This is technically illegal, so I have to be stealthy about it; accordingly I carry the ashes in a plastic shopping bag. When I reach the piazza, I bend down to tie my shoe, and while I'm crouched there I surreptitiously tear a hole in one corner of the bag. Then I get up and take a leisurely stroll around the Bernini colonnades, with Mom peacefully sifting out behind me. Then, not without emotion, I leave her to an eternity in the Eternal City.

That done, I'm ready to go home. The closure I didn't get from the Caterpillar, I've now had with Mom. Emotionally, it fits almost into the same space. Letting go is the main thing: that feeling of extending your hands and opening your fingers wide. Of giving over to memory what you've been trying to hold as reality.

I'm having a pizza and a glass of Chianti on some extraordinarily
clamorous street when I get a text from Dario:
When do you fly home?

Tomorrow afternoon
, I write back.

Can you extend your stay a day or two?
he asks.

Possibly, why?

So you can be baptized into the Bruco
.

…

 
THE BAPTISM OF NEW BRUCAIOLI IS PART OF THE ANNUAL
celebration of the Visitation of Mary, which serves as the contrada's patron saint's day. The roster of events runs in a curiously backward order, beginning with an official visit to the Caterpillar dead; continuing with the confirmation of the contrada's sixteen-year-olds; and concluding with the baptism of the newborn (and those of us, slightly older, who are to be similarly honored).

I'm so gratified by this unexpected distinction that I feel I have to be worthy of it; and so, rather than sweep in for my ceremony alone, I arrive in time to take part in all the day's events. Dario, who's never participated in the funerary visit himself, is only too happy to accompany me. We find ourselves at Laterino Cemetery, a quiet park of small mortuary buildings and minimal landscaping. It's blisteringly hot, but that doesn't stop the brucaioli from arriving in state, with two alfieri drumming in the lead, followed by a nearly complete roster of the contrada's officials: Fabio the rettore, Gianni the vicario, Pierluca and Roberto the pro-vicari, Francesco the mangino, Bani and Alessio the barbareschi, and Francesco the vice president of the Società. But there's no address to
mark the occasion, no pomp or circumstance: on arrival, the members of the contrada simply disperse to stroll the grounds in silence. It's more of a social call than a civic rite; a gesture. The contradaioli move among the headstones and memorials as if to say, We remember you; we honor you; we miss you.

And then they quietly regroup at the gate for a bottle of prosecco and some pastries. It's all very civilized, even gently celebratory; not a mournful note is struck. As Dario says, “When you're in the contrada, it's forever. Even in death, you're included.” (He reminds me that when the Caterpillar wins a Palio, its members bring the drappellone here to share with their forebears.)

I can't help making the comparison with the private, almost metaphorical rite I just performed with my mother's ashes in Rome; maybe I was wrong about letting go. Or maybe letting go is all you can do, unless you have the framework in place to do otherwise. Had I been a
bruco puro
, I'd still have Mom within the scope of my life; I'd know exactly where she was and would have a time set aside to go and visit her. That would be enormously comforting, but it is so beyond the scope of my imagination that it makes me a little dizzy considering it.

The ceremony is repeated at another cemetery, the Misericordia; then everyone climbs back into an air-conditioned bus and returns to Siena, where, a few hours later, most of them are again on hand, along with a choir and a crowd of onlookers, for the confirmation, which takes place in a large meeting room in Società L'Alba, adjacent to the museum. The juxtaposition is kind of thrilling: all those antique costumes and artifacts staring out at the lean, suntanned, bright-eyed sixteen-year-olds, whose casual grace can't—and doesn't
seek to—hide their excitement. Once again, I'm deeply moved by the enthusiasm and commitment of these kids; they seem so ordinary, so familiar in many ways, yet their zeal for their community and its traditions is something absolutely singular. Each of these teens fairly springs from his or her seat to recite the oath of allegiance:

There's no hesitation, no self-consciousness, no stab at irony in any of this. It's always seemed to me that the aggressive world-weariness of Western teens is born out of insecurity more than anything else; lacking a solid sense of identity, they put up a front of indifference, of disdain for instutitions and traditions that seem beyond their grasp. The teenagers of the Caterpillar suffer no such affliction. They know exactly who they are. They always have. It's a fair bet that they always will.

Then it's my turn. Well, not mine alone. Outside, under an openly sadistic sun, before the grotto where Barbicone stands eternally brandishing his rapier over a pool of plumpish goldfish, the officials convene once again for the rites of baptism—in this case civic, not religious. Fabio, the rector, performs them himself, and he has about seventy before him
today. They're conducted in order of the recipients' ages, and the first is an infant just five days old. Clearly it's going to be a while before my own time comes. In fact, there's only a small clutch of adults on the rolls today, of whom I am second to the last, just before Enrico, a tousle-haired athlete I met during the Siena-Montalcino race, and who is a few months older than I am. I also appear to be the only American; possibly I'm the only non-Sienese.

At last my name is called. I enter the enclosure—shaking Gianni the captain's hand along the way—and stand before Fabio flanked by my “godparents”: my
padrino
, Dario, on my left; and my
madrina
, Silvia, resplendent in a sleek white shift on my right. It still seems incredible that Silvia agreed to stand up for me; I've never had a moment with her when I wasn't awkward or clumsy or foolish. Long ago, Peggy, my American predecessor, told me that the key to acceptance was just to “be here”; possibly she was right, and any lapses or deficiencies in my conduct have ultimately mattered less than the fact that I've kept coming back again and again and again—to be here, just to be here.

I look up and see Peggy now, smiling down at me from the railing overlooking the grotto. I smile back, taking this as a benediction from an illustrious mentor; perhaps somewhere above
her
, Roy Moskovitz is looking down as well. Then Fabio recites the few lines that welcome me into the fold and confer on me both the joys and responsibilities of being a brucaiolo; after which he quickly daubs my forehead, and just like that, I'm transformed. He places a fazzoletto around my neck and hands me a certificate of baptism, and Dario and Silvia escort me from the enclosure back out into the crowd.

At the final moment before I'm again reabsorbed by the
mass of people, I pause and look up, and there right above me is the window of the room at the San Francesco bed-and-breakfast where I stayed when I first started this journey two years ago—the very window on whose casement I leaned every night as I watched the life of the contrada parade by me—sometimes literally—in all its brightness and bustle and color and collegiality. It seemed at the time so separate, so distant; I could see it but not know it; reach it but not hold it.

I gaze up at that window and try to summon myself to it, across the threshold of time; to entice my past self to come and look down
now
, see where his journey will ultimately take him. He doesn't appear, of course. He'll just have to keep going one step at a time, one visit at a time, one glory, one folly, one throw of the dice at a time, before he can arrive where I'm standing now.

I can only envy him.