Seven Seasons in Siena (6 page)

There are two Palii each summer, one on July 2, the other on August 16. Both are held in the same place, with the same rules, and are otherwise so exactly alike that no outsider could detect any visible or textural difference between them, but the Sienese treat them as if they're wildly separate occasions. This is because the July Palio is dedicated to the Madonna of Provenzano and the August one to the Feast of the Assumption.
Got that? It's apples and … well, slightly different apples.

There is also on occasion a special Palio, called the
Palio straordinario
, in honor of some great anniversary or event. The last was in the Holy Year of 2000. The Sienese are always speculating about what might prove sufficient justification for the next
Palio straordinario
. Ideas are usually shot down pretty quickly; they're very particular about the cause being grand enough.

Of the seventeen contrade, only ten can race at a time; any more, and you'd basically just have a big logjam at the pass of San Martino. The seven contrade that don't race in a given Palio are guaranteed to race a year later—in other words, if you don't race this July, you know you're slotted for next July. (“If you don't get to race in July, why not just race in August?” you might ask. Because
the August Palio is an entirely separate event.
) The remaining three places in the race are chosen, again, by lottery. So if you do race this July, there's still a chance you'll be racing again next July. This same rule applies as well for August. (For a
Palio straordinario
, all ten slots are filled by lottery.)

With this system, then, it's possible for a contrada to race in both the July and August Palii or neither. It's also statistically possible for a contrada to race
every
Palio (as the Ram has done since July 2005; it's the recent record holder for consecutive Palii), though none of them would actually want that, because it's an expensive proposition. See, you don't just show up with your horse on race day and hope for the best. You must first spend several weeks, if not months, engaged in politicking and backroom dealing, what the Sienese call “strategy.” These negotiations continue, among the
fantini
themselves, on horseback at the starting line, right up to the very moment the race starts.

The prize banners—the
drappelloni
—always contain an image of the Virgin but otherwise vary wildly in approach, technique, and subject matter. Each summer, one drappellone is created by a Sienese artist, the other by a talent from outside the city. Previous commissions have been given to renowned artists such as Renato Guttuso and Fernando Botero.

Despite my intense interest in all this, it's a little disconcerting that I'm well into my second day here and I'm still managing to speak only to Americans and hear things I've already heard before. So it's a relief when Luigina breezes by, spots us in the window, and comes in to join us, bringing with her a gust of authenticity that seems to raise the temperature in the place by about five degrees. She lights a cigarette and spends a few minutes chatting with Rachel, who surprises me by having a command of Italian superior to my own. (Rachel's mother, I'll later learn, lives in Calabria. “That's no explanation,” I'll protest. “That just means you should speak
Calabrese
fluently.”)

When there's a break in their conversation, I engage Luigina; I've learned a little bit about her from our email correspondence, but now's my chance to hear it from her own lips. She sits facing me, alert and agreeable, holding her cigarette up near her temple. “So, Luigina,” I say in my halting Italian, “if I remember correctly, you're not originally from here, right?”

She takes a quick puff as she shakes her head, then expels the smoke and says, “No, but I was born in Grosseto, in the city of Maremma, so I
am
Tuscan. And my mother had an aunt who had a friend who lived in Siena—a certain Countess
Piccolomini—and often she would go and visit her. One year—it was 1955—the countess invited her to come see the July Palio. Which, as you may know, was won by the Caterpillar.

“When my aunt returned home, she brought with her a gift for me—despite that I was at the time just a month old. It was a small doll dressed as a page of the Bruco. This gift accompanied me all my life, including when we moved to Piombino for my father's job. My mother found work in a hospital, and it was there I met Giorgio, who was of course both Sienese and of the Bruco, but at that time I knew nothing of the contrade, and of the Palio I knew only what I had heard my aunt recount. But after I met Giorgio in 1971 I went to Siena and saw my first Palio … and a year later we were married and he brought me into the Caterpillar. Strange, no?—That the little doll given to me by my aunt, and which I kept with such affection all those years, was in fact an early inkling of my destiny?”

We're momentarily distracted by ordering more wine, which surprises me, because we've already had a fair amount. In fact, Lou and Colleen now depart, with looks on their faces that clearly read Must Nap. Then Luigina picks up where she left off.

“A year after we were married, our son Simone was born, and that day in the contrada they flew a flag with a blue bow on it, as is the custom. In 1977 our second child, Stefano, arrived. At that time we lived in a house in the territory of the Giraffe, and you may well believe I always brought the children to play in the Bruco, to teach them their birthright!” She purses her lips in a
So there
kind of way and takes a self-congratulatory drag off her cigarette.

The new bottle arrives; by now we're all listening to her reminisce.

“Over the years it's been my honor to meet so many contradaioli both humble and grand, like Signora Armida, who lived above Società L'Alba and who was always at her window, calling out her greetings to all who passed. Over the course of time her vision failed her, but she was too proud to admit it, and though she could no longer see who passed beneath her she still maintained her post in the window and pretended she could. When I would come by, she'd call out, ‘Who's there?' and I would say, ‘Luigina, the wife of Giorgio; how are you, Armida?' And every time she said the same thing: ‘Oh, my dear, I didn't recognize you, you've grown even more beautiful.' ”

As our laughter dies away, I'm ready for a nap myself. I walk back to the B&B with Dario and Rachel, but when we reach the doors of San Francesco, Dario recalls that he's volunteered me to work in the Caterpillar kitchens tonight. “If you want to show the contrada you're serious in your regard for them, let them see you working on their behalf.” I'm all for that, so before I go in for my nap, he advises that we just head around the corner to the Società so I can be introduced to Silvia, who's in charge of the operations. I reckon I can manage to keep my eyelids from drooping for a little while longer.

We leave Rachel in the bar, and in the Caterpillar kitchens Dario tracks down Silvia, who is busy conducting a cadre of workers so large I'm amazed she doesn't need to use a megaphone, or, better yet, semaphore. “Silvia is the president of the Committee of Joy,” Dario explains, and I immediately fall in love with the name; it sounds like the title of a John
Cheever novel. “She's also the daughter of Germano Trapassi, a former
rettore
.”

“Rettore?” I ask.

“Rector. The top official in the contrada.”

“I thought that was Giorgio. Isn't he president?”

“He's president of the
society
. The rettore is head of the entire contrada.”

Before I can ask for further clarification we've reached Silvia. She's a slender, doelike Audrey Hepburn type, but when she shakes my hand and looks me in the eye, I can instantly see there's nothing gamine about her; she has the force of character of Margaret Thatcher.

Silvia says she'll be glad to have me in the kitchen tonight, so that's all set. We return to the bar, where Rachel—whose prowess in Italian is, I'm beginning to learn, second only to her genuine openness of spirit—has already managed to strike up an animated conversation with two brucaioli. Dario shrugs and says, “Well, since we're here, we may as well have a drink,” and orders a round of prosecco.

The intricacies of Italian phraseology, and the quirks of its idiomatic expressions, can take a long time to learn. Today is when I finally twig to the fact that in Italian, “We may as well have a drink” means “We may as well drain the place dry.” If I had any doubts, they dissipate when, back at the door to San Francesco, Dario looks up the street, sees the overflow of high spirits from Bar Macario, and repeats the phrase, to pretty much the same effect.

We stay long enough for Dario to argue postextraction strategy with another brucaiolo, Cristiano, who insists, “We don't have any hope of winning the race, so we should just focus
instead on winning the Masgalano”—the award for most elegant contrada.

I'm about to stagger back to the San Francesco when Dario, noticing the time, says, “You know, if you head to the Campo right now, you may be in time for the first
prova.
”

Well … all right, then. I guess I can spare a few minutes. And so off I go to the piazza, while Dario and Rachel head back to their car.

The
prove
are essentially rehearsals for the race and are held twice a day between the extraction and the actual Palio; the purpose is to give the jockeys and the horses time to grow accustomed to each other, to forge a working relationship—and to become comfortable with the ungainly course. They always attract a sizable crowd and manage to provoke a little thrill of excitement even though the results count for nothing. Today's prova is a lovely thing to watch—a kind of energetic frolic around the track—and five minutes after it's over I've already forgotten who “won.”

LATER I'LL HEAR A RUMOR
of a brawl between rival contrade that occurred shortly after the prova. This kind of thing apparently happens all the time. Dario likes to tell the story of two factions going at it hammer and tongs, when someone called out that he'd lost his wedding ring. Everyone stopped fighting to search; one of the rival members found the missing item and handed it back to its owner, who thanked him, placed it back on his finger, then balled his fist and socked his benefactor in the jaw. And the rumble continued happily apace.

…

 
I LURCH UP FROM MY NAP, NUMB-FACED AND ALARMED
. I'm late for kitchen duty, having succumbed, too late, to a prosecco-weighted slumber that needed to run its full course. Not the ideal way to begin my official relationship with the contrada. If, as Dario says, the brucaioli will respond to my undertaking humble labor on their behalf, then I've screwed the pooch already; how humble is it to report for duty half an hour after your stint begins? Nothing, in fact, could better demonstrate arrogance than strolling on in whenever I damn well please.

I pull myself together and surge on out the door. I slip my fazzoletto over my neck as I clatter down the stairs; it's de rigueur for the days of Palio—if I showed up without it, I'd be the only one in the place with a naked neck, which would only compound my original offense.

As I burst out the San Francesco's doors, I spot the horse Elisir, handsome and in high spirits, out for an airing near the stables. Several children of the Caterpillar have gathered to gawk at him. That's the way of it in Siena; the horse, once chosen, becomes the contrada's hero.

I take a few moments to sidle over and join them. Elisir shakes his head at my approach, as if to say, “Buddy, you got business elsewhere,” which of course I do, but I pause long enough to say to one of the kids, who's brought a couple of carrots as a kind of divine offering, “Do you think he can win?”

He looks up at me for a moment, as if gauging whether I'm worth speaking to, before deciding that my ungainly Italian is outweighed by my Bruco fazzoletto. “He has to,” he replies with complete sincerity. “It's been three whole years since we've had a victory.”