Botticelli Blue Skies: An American in Florence

33. The British Institute Library, Jane Eyre, il Porcellino

With the arrival of our daughter, I suddenly become a specialist in Italian culture, a connoisseur of Italian life and customs. On the first rainy day of her visit, when she sees women across the courtyard hanging out clothes covered with plastic sheeting, I explain that the clothes dry faster outdoors under these “raincoats” than they do inside (whereas mine, hanging over cold radiators all around the apartment, tend to develop a moldy-dishrag odor). When we stop at the rosticceria on our way home one afternoon, I interpret the traditional take-out foods for her: the balls of spinach, the fried polenta, the patate rosta and patate fritte, the crostone pomodoro e aglio, the steaming pot of ministra di fagioli, and the shop’s main attraction , the pollo (or mezzo pollo)— chickens turned over a blazing fire till their skins are crisp and delicious and their meat is rich with the flavor of fresh rosemary. We buy a little of everything to sample tonight for our dinner and carry the greasy plastic bags home, feeling the heat from them warm our legs as we walk. Overnight, it seems, I have gone from being a beginner in matters Italian to being an expert. We pass the little church on the corner (where there is a small plaque to the Jewish war dead), and beside it are the offices of the Misericordia —the mercy team (or the modern paramedics), which started 154 33 The British Institute Library, Jane Eyre, il Porcellino out in the Middle Ages as a confraternity of lay church members who (wearing hoods to keep their acts of mercy secret) removed the dead during the plague years. There is a line of white ambulances outside the church, and a group of young Italian men and women, wearing shirts of a uniform color and style, stand talking amiably with one another, apparently waiting for emergency calls. I tell Becky what Cornelia told me when I asked her how we could get our flu shots in Italy. First we must go to the farmacia and buy the vaccine; then we must carry it to one of the paramedic stations and try to find someone who will be willing to inject us. We have not done this yet, not certain who provides the needles, not sure, exactly, how to ask someone to inject us—and not sure we want to. When we get to our building, Signora Carezza, the old woman who lives in the first-floor apartment, is out on her terrace and greets us. She wears her hair in a long gray-blonde braid down her back. Much of the day, when the weather is fine, she sits on her terrace and pets her orange cat, who lies in the sun and accepts the attention with haughty tolerance. Signora Carezza walks each morning, leaning on her cane, to the little church down the street, where she attends mass. When I announce that Becky is mia figlia, the old woman reaches across the low terrace wall to touch my face, then touches Becky’s. She studies us, then begins to talk very fast. In the crush of words she sends forth that I don’t understand, I do understand she is saying we look alike, like sisters , tutte e due, giovani, belle, belle. She smiles and nods. She holds up her hand to signal us: wait a moment. On her terrace is a small pomegranate tree in a pot; she plucks a fruit and offers it to my daughter. Becky accepts it with pleasure and says her first grazie. When we get upstairs into our apartment, I tell Becky the sad story that my landlady, Rina Masotti, told me about this neighbor: years ago, her only child, her son, committed suicide. She keeps his room as a shrine and tells everyone that he works in Milan, managing a bank, and that he speaks seven languages. The next morning, Becky and I ride into the city, planning to visit the British Institute Library (of special interest to Becky, since she is a Botticelli Blue Skies 155 librarian). We take the number #14 bus, which is already crowded when it stops for us. Even as I am explaining to her the uncertainties of the Italian bus system, our bus grinds to a sudden halt, throwing us against each other. On Via dell’Agnolo, one of the narrowest streets on the...