Seven Seasons in Siena (7 page)

I have to stifle a laugh, wondering how his elders would react to such a sentiment. They, after all, had to endure a
four-decade
dry spell between the Caterpillar victories of 1955 and 1996. Within the contrada, theirs is what was known as the
sfiga
generation—“sfiga” being slang for “unlucky” whereas their children and grandchildren, who have now seen three victories over the course of just eleven years, are known as the
culo
generation, after the expression
“Che culo!”
—meaning “What luck!” And this
cittino
with the carrots, who can't be more than seven, is even luckier, having been born into a world in which the Caterpillar winning is something that happens every few years.

My detour to gape at Elisir has made me even later, so I end up loping down Via del Comune's steep decline, to the point that I almost take flight. I can still salvage this opportunity, if I'm abject enough and work sufficiently diligently. I'm certainly more than willing. If every member of the contrada contributes some manner of labor to the common cause—a notion I find hard to imagine, given their sheer number—then I, too, will roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty.

But no, my hands had better stay scrupulously clean, because I've been assigned to the kitchen—a source of some trepidation for me. I've never worked in a restaurant, never even waited tables, nor am I on an easy footing with the Italian system of measurements, and my home cooking method is basically to keep throwing stuff in until it tastes good. Still, I'm pretty certain I won't be set to work making piecrusts or mixing mayonnaise. If this dinner is to be anything like the others I've seen here, it will be a basic plate-and-serve affair: salad or antipasti, followed by a pasta dish, a meat course, and a prepackaged dolce to round it off.

The sun is low in the sky when I arrive, casting a gorgeous persimmon glow over the trees and hedges that line the property. As I descend the steps I spot Silvia, who's conferring with a couple of burly Bruco males. If I read her gestures correctly, it has something to do with moving the entire garden six inches to the left. I wave to her over the railing and call out, “Ciao, Silvia!” as though she were the person in the world I'm most eager to see—realizing too late that the reverse can scarcely be the case.

In fact, she gives me a sort of fixed smile, then turns to her two companions and says something I don't quite catch—but I can imagine it's along the lines of, Please excuse me while I go and find some place for this American friend of Dario where he can do the least harm.

Even so, she's extremely courteous as she leads me to the kitchens. She's making some amiable chatter and I'm too intimidated to admit I only understand about thirty percent of it. I just smile and repeat,
“Sì, sì, sì,”
like an idiot. For all I know she's asking, “And do you have any experience in the slaughter of livestock?” and I'm telling her Yes, yes, yes.
Please lead me to your doomed sheep and poultry. “And did you bring your own knives?” Yes, yes, yes. I carry them with me always. They are my children.

Fortunately, once we enter the kitchen I can see that the evening's carnivorous offering is already quite oven-friendly. There are chicken parts everywhere, being systematically dressed with olive oil and rosemary. I'm introduced to the chef, who's called Biondo, which means “Blond”—despite which his hair is carrot red. (Later I'll learn the nickname comes from a restaurant he used to own, Il Biondo in Via Montanini.) He's a tall, broad-shouldered man in his forties who smiles and welcomes me with carefully pronounced consonants, perhaps having been forewarned of my stupidity. Then I meet another worker, Antonella, in whose lap Silvia more or less deposits me before beating a hasty (yet elegant) retreat. Antonella is a pleasant-faced woman with golden ringlets who asks me to wait a moment while she finishes ladling a large tray of lasagne with meat sauce, during which time there is a small silence that proves awkward only for me, as I'm the only one standing around doing nothing. I decide to fill it by asking Antonella if she is in fact a native-born Caterpillar, which must be akin to visiting a convent and asking one of the nuns if she is in fact a virgin.

“Sì, sì,”
she tells me with a proud toss of her head,
“sono bruca pura.”
I am a pure Caterpillar. I feel suddenly stung, as though she's stressed her inviolate bloodline over the kind of compromised-at-best status I myself might achieve, if I'm lucky; but then I realize it's just civic pride again, no different from a Manhattanite boasting about being a native New Yorker. (Even Luigina herself isn't bruca pura.)

It's very warm in the kitchens, and I feel my skin prickle
and flush, then bead up. I hope I won't be asked to wear an apron, because lashing me into yet another layer of fabric is only going to aggravate the problem. When I think no one's looking, I swipe my arm over my forehead, and it comes away glistening and slick. I slip my fazzoletto off my neck and stuff it into my back pocket; I don't want to soil it with my sweat.

Having finished the tray of lasagne, Antonella takes me to the very back of the kitchen—where the air is thickest—to a counter on which two dozen loaves of bread are piled high. There's a cutting board with a serrated knife resting on it, and a basket containing a small quantity of bread slices. Half a loaf sits primly next to the knife. Clearly, someone has abandoned this post—probably to attend to something more urgent.

Antonella asks me if I'm able to cut the bread—as though my awkwardness with the Tuscan dialect might be symptomatic of an overall ineptitude that extends to my motor skills. I assure her I can cut these loaves of bread very well indeed, that I have been complimented on my carving skills, and am just short of claiming to have won awards for it when I regain control of myself and shut up. Satisfied, she smiles and leaves me to it.

I start in on the unfinished loaf, carefully examining the pieces that have already been sliced so that I can match their width with mathematical precision. Antonella will surely be astonished by the uniformity of my work. Possibly I will be asked to give a short seminar on bread cutting afterward. I start to rehearse it in my head, so that when the time comes I'll have the proper vocabulary at hand. While I'm trying to think of the Italian for “calibrate,” I carelessly produce an uneven slice. I can't put it into the basket with the others; it isn't
worthy. Not knowing what else to do with it, I stuff it into my mouth. Mm. Pretty good. Nice crust.

I work my way through the loaves, eating my mistakes, until I've filled several baskets for distribution to the tables. My slices are models of conformity; each one contains almost exactly the same amount of bread. I've even allowed for the curve of the loaf by cutting slightly thicker pieces toward the ends. It is a masterwork of egalitarianism; no one who partakes of my bread will be at a disadvantage to his neighbor. All will receive an equal share. I'm puffed up with pride and wonder why I didn't try my hand at kitchen work years ago. I could have had my own reality show by now. As I clear the crumbs from the work surface, I debate the merits of signing with Bravo over the Food Network.

I've worked up a sheen of good, honest sweat, so I run my arm over my forehead again to make myself presentable, then catch Antonella's eye and motion her over. I display my brimming baskets and smile. She smiles as well—though not with quite the sense of awe I'd hoped—and gives me an odd kind of look, like she doesn't know what to make of me.

“You're bored now?” she says. “You want to try something else?”

I blink. Does she not see my artistically arranged baskets? I gesture toward them and say, “Well, yes. Because I'm done here.”

Her eyes flicker tellingly past me, then meet mine again with an even more questioning look.

I turn and notice for the first time resting against the wall an enormous sack of bread. There must be three hundred loaves in there. I don't know how I can possibly have missed it before. It's the size of a body bag.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” I blurt out. “I didn't even see those. Of course I'll finish the job.” Embarrassed, I fumble one of the topmost loaves out of the sack and start hacking away at it.

“It's all right if you'd prefer not,” she says.

Oh, no, I think; nosiree, no bruca pura is going to get the chance to tell her friends about the shiftless Americano who couldn't even finish a simple task like cutting a hundred thousand pieces of bread. Nuh-uh. I came here to win these people over, and that's what I'm going to do. They asked me to slice, goddammit. I. WILL. SLICE.

“Thank you,” I reassure her, “I'm fine.” And she leaves me sawing madly away at the crust, sending golden flakes flying everywhere, like sparks.

Now my embarrassment has twined with the closeness of the air to make me sweat in earnest. Pools collect in my eyebrows and in the tip of my beard and start to drip onto the floor at my feet. I have to stand several inches away from the cutting board so that they don't splatter right onto the bread. That means I have to extend my arm all the way to hold the loaf, which makes it look as though I'm afraid something's going to jump out of it and bite me.

The ungainliness of this approach makes it nearly impossible to cut the slices with any degree of regularity, so that soon I'm producing carbuncle-shaped hunks that look like a species of albino sponge. But what can I do? I can't stand any closer without contaminating the bread with my schvitzing, and even if I could, I don't have time for exactitude—I've got too many loaves to get through. Every time I check the bag, there seem to be even more of them brimming over the top, as if it's the sack Jesus blessed when he fed the multitude.

I cast furtive glances over my shoulder. Everyone else is
working away quite contentedly, laughing and joking, and no one appears to be gushing great quantities of their bodily fluids. What in God's name is wrong with me? Why am I the only freak who's sweating like a packhorse? Fortunately, I'm wearing all black, so the widening stains at my collar and under my arms aren't likely to show. If I can just quietly keep working, maybe I'll stay beneath everyone's radar; no one will even notice me …

“Hello,” says someone, interrupting me in midthought. I whirl with a start and almost slip on the small reservoir beneath my feet.

A young man is standing at my shoulder; midtwenties, a head full of dark, curly hair, a pleasant smile. I return his hello, realizing only now that he's addressed me in English.

“My name is Duccio,” he says, also in English.

“Lucio?” I ask, thinking I've misheard him.

“Duccio,” he corrects me. “It is a Tuscan name.” In other words: you're an outsider. I lift my hands—covered with sweat and crumbs—to show him I'm in no fit condition to shake. He nods and says, “Silvia told me you had arrived. I am in charge of the kitchen tonight; I'm sorry I wasn't here to greet you.” He plonks an open bottle of red wine and a plastic cup next to the cutting board. “Thank you for your help. Please let me know if there is anything you need.”

“I will,” I say, and he gives me one last smile before he turns to go. As soon as he does, I'm free to flick away the drop of sweat I feel hanging from the tip of my nose. With any luck, he never even noticed it.

The wine is a very civilized gesture and reduces my anxiety somewhat; it's also exactly what I need right now, because all the bread I've eaten has rather lodged in my gullet. It feels
good to wash it down, especially with something so rich and smooth and … and.…

 … and warm. I realize after only two or three swallows that it's having an entirely disastrous effect on my body temperature. I was sweating profusely before; now it's as though I'm made of wax. Sweat runs into my ears and down my neck. It collects in the little V beneath my lower back. It moistens my socks inside my shoes. When I shift my footing, I squish. And beneath my feet is a virtual pond; it must look as if I've wet my pants over and over.

And I still have dozens of loaves to go.

I'm not going to make it; I can feel it. I can't be in this much physical distress without something bad happening. I'll swoon, or faint, or—I don't know, just collapse inward, dissolve into a little gelatinous blob.

I put down the knife and try to pull myself together. Panicking isn't going to help. I force myself to relax my shoulder muscles and take a few deep breaths. I remind myself that the sweat glands are the body's own air-conditioning system. Sweat is what cools us down when we're overheated. Sweat is our
friend
. Soon I will have regained my equilibrium, and I will feel perfectly fine.…

Twenty minutes pass, and screw that science shit, IT'S NOT WORKING. I can't move at all without creating a fine spray in the air behind me. Anyone taking even the slightest glance my way must notice how alarmingly drenched in perspiration I am. My only comfort is that the kitchen is now in full swing—the dinner service is under way—so no one's likely to look at me, not even when they come rushing over for my baskets of bread. I'm at least safe from that mortification.

“Rob!”
calls a voice from across the kitchen, shattering even this small comfort.

I turn, and there at the doorway stand Dario and Rachel. They look crisp, cool, and collected, as though they've just stepped out of the shower and into freshly dry-cleaned clothes. Rachel even carries a jacket over one arm. I glare at them in horror.

I manage to smile and give them a wave, creating a shimmering mist along the arc of my arm.

“How's it going?” Dario calls out.

“Great!” I say, willing him not to come any closer.

“We're just on our way to dinner,” he says.

I wrinkle my brow in confusion. “You're not eating here?”

“No,” he says, grinning. “Someplace quieter.”