Botticelli Blue Skies: An American in Florence

17. Fiesole and the Etruscan Sigh

On the #7 bus to Fiesole, which we board at the stazione, two lovers— the ages of Romeo and Juliet—travel up the mountain with us. They sit in facing seats, profiles stamped against the passing slopes of Mount Ceceri, their eyes locked, with each breath inhaling the image of the other. Such a pure and perfect love touches my injured heart. Since my camera is in my lap, ready to memorialize the scenery, I take apparent aim at the vista beyond the bus window, focus my lens upon their yearning faces, and capture this icon of young love. Italy is exploding with lovers, all of them energized, I suspect, by the great erotic statues that fill the city squares, gardens, and museums. A copy of Michelangelo’s David, naked but for his sling in the Piazza della Signoria, towers above the onlooker in such a way that the eye is drawn naturally to the heavy bulbous parcel between his legs. The bodybuilding Neptune, bursting upright like a lord of his fountain, is a pillar of sex. Even the horses lurching from the fountain seem to have their veins engorged with passionate blood. (I think of how, in the movie A Room with a View, E. M. Forster’s heroine Lucy Honeychurch faints in view of these statues while resisting the attentions of George Emerson, with whom she falls in love against her will.) The young lovers in my camera’s viewfinder hold hands and stare 64 17 Fiesole and the Etruscan Sigh into each other’s eyes; if the bus went over the edge of the cliff, I doubt their gaze would waver. I look to my husband’s face. Where is his gaze focused? Not upon me, of course, and not upon the lovers, but out the window, at the scenery. The Teatro Romano—a short distance from Fiesole’s main square, where the bus lets us off—is a ruin; everything in Italy takes on an awesome quality when the word “ruin” is attached to it. Or “Roman.” If you put them together—“Roman ruin”—you have your heart’s desire, all that Italy can offer. We pay our entry fee and make our way into the stone theater, where, it is said, unlike the bloody events at the Colosseum , kinder spectacles went on. They are going on now, in fact. We see young and old visitors alike sitting peacefully on the stones or lying back against the sloping grass, their faces turned gratefully to the sun. There is not much to see, but just to be here may be quite enough. Being here is the single overwhelming attraction of Italy—to be able to say to oneself: I am in Italy. This is Italian grass, above us is Italian sky, the quality of light is Italian. (We all know what masterpieces that light inspired!) Soon, in fact, we will be hungry, and the food we eat will be—above all—Italian food. We walk the edges of the arena; we stand and observe the nearby hills, in which the long span of the San Francesco monastery, whose arches resemble that of an aqueduct, stretches out like a train on its way to heaven. In the small museum, we examine unremarkable broken objects, shards, chips of statues, pottery slivers, stone lions and miniature horses but, even so, feel we are in the major presence of history, art, and beauty. Everything we see today is a balm. Looking outward together helps us begin the process of healing ourselves from the morning’s astonishing conflict. If we can’t understand it, we recognize that it is best simply to leave it behind. As we walk down a long sloping road and find ourselves coming toward a wooded area, we see, at the same moment, a nun, all in white, Botticelli Blue Skies 65 stepping into the tangle of trees and undergrowth. Her habit is a sheen of brightness against the dark. Like an apparition, she begins to disappear into the woods. I aim my camera and catch her just as she bends to collect something—mushrooms, perhaps. Or truffles. I have seen for sale in the windows of shops the black fungus (tartufo nero) famous for being an aphrodisiac and for its exquisite taste. These tubers (un tubero d’oro, the Italians call it) are discovered deep in the woods, by pigs (and perhaps by nuns?). Just...