on this gray day. I stop for a coffee, but the place seeps in, holds me there, and I stay from early afternoon into evening, alternately reading and watching people battle the rain through the wide window. I return the next day and the day after that. The waitstaff has no qualms about my making the transition from a coffee and salad to a glass of wine when the café empties and they have their staff dinner, scraping at plates and laughing, while I watch the gray light stretch across the tables in shifting bands and catch in my glass.
I’m still reading about St. Catherine. As a teenager, she pleaded to join the Mantellate, a group of older widows cloistered in the Basilica of San Domenico, but her parents refused—she was not old and was not a widow. She would be married. Until she grew ill, so ill that even when her father took her to the thermals baths, the boiling waters had no effect. Her illness was a sign from God, she said, and so her parents acquiesced, allowing her to join the widows in prayer, and Catherine was healed.
Her career began with a movement inward, with visions and ecstasies. When in a trance, she did not wince at the needles that disbelievers jabbed into her feet. This and her vision of a mystical marriage to Christ secured her celebrity. As she grew older, she looked outward beyond San Domenico. She cured the lame, drew poison, and drank pus from the sores of the sick. She learned to read and became politically active, composing letters of criticism to the pope.
And she made herself empty for prayer. By age eight, she was slipping meat onto her brother’s plate. By sixteen, she ate only fruits and vegetables, then used instruments—a stalk of fennel, a quill—to throw them back up.
As another steaming dish arrives nearby, the thick, smoky smell drifting my way, my stomach turns over—with desire, then revulsion—and in this, I understand the saint’s denial. I remember well when my days became punctuated by sharp sensations:
Chills.
Sunlight too bright.
Sounds attacking.
Counting. And with the counting came praise and with the praise came questions. How do you do it? Claudia asked, one of a chorus when I began losing flesh, December into January into February. There was admiration in their voices, and I knew what they were asking: How do you cut so close to the bone? By the time Catherine joined the Mantellate, she had stopped eating almost entirely. This body of mine remains without any food, without even a drop of water: in such sweet physical tortures as I never at any time endured. She was empty, open. I’d like to think that she belonged to no one but herself, that the sweetness of the pain was hers alone. But she writes, My body is Yours.
Love. Her letters are filled with the word. The soul cannot live without loving… The soul always unites itself with that which it loves, and is transformed by it. I envy her ecstasies, emptied of everything. Is that love? All that emptiness and the trance that follows? Love is a tunneling, I think. An envisioning and then a tunneling of vision, the edges disappearing until all that remains is the beloved. I had hoped that I would feel that with Julian, that with him I might escape the mornings when I woke tamped down and pressed myself back into dreams that did not soothe. But he was no match for the other solace I found. He fell away with all the rest.
By the second day of my residency at the café I’m almost all the way through Catherine’s life. The soul is always sorrowful, she writes, and cannot endure itself. Outside, people are hurrying through the rain to the evening service. The bells begin to clang furiously, ricocheting off one another as one of the staff appears.
“Un altro bicchiere?” he asks, lifting my glass.
“Sì,” I say, wanting him to leave me to listen to the bells. They are playing a hymn. It is familiar to me and I feel a rush of happiness, uninterrupted. Even in this gray light it grows, and I’m afraid of the moment when I’ll slip over the peak and feel it dissipate. I close my eyes and the bells continue. They are asking a question: Are you searching for? Are you searching for?
On the third day, the sun returns and still I do not go to the club but to my café, book in hand. I’ve promised myself that when I’ve finished reading it, I will look for work. Three weeks left here. Three weeks.
I take a table outside now. The street is different in the sun, and the corner where this café sits is suddenly a stopping point for many. First a young woman leans against the building, high heels shining. She pitches her head back, laughing at her companion’s joke. She’s replaced by an older man who stands with his eyes closed.
I’m afraid that with the good weather I’ll see someone from the club, and, sure enough, just as afternoon is becoming evening, Francesca rounds that busy corner with her daughter in tow. She’s almost as tall as Francesca, but she must be only eleven or twelve—she still has the face of a child. She is holding a balloon, a smiling sun that hangs from a piece of bamboo. She looks up at it as Francesca hurries her on, speaking emphatically, and a moment later I hear, “Hannah! Come stai?” and they are standing over me.
“Bene.” I hope my voice doesn’t sound off. Her daughter looks at me and then looks back up at what I now realize is not a balloon but a paper lantern. She twists it slightly so that it swings side to side, the metallic paint catching the light.
“You really dropped out of sight,” Francesca says. “Where have you been?”
I shrug, not trusting my voice to say more. I take a sip of water.
“Have you met Adriana?” She pinches her daughter’s arm lightly and the girl puts out her hand.
“Buonasera,” she says, looking me straight in the eye. She flashes a smile but it disappears when her mother’s voice cuts in.
“What are you reading?”
I show her the cover of my book.
“Santa Caterina? Interesting. You know they have her head in Siena?”
“I do. I’ve seen it.”
“Allora we’re on our way to Piazza della Santissima Annunziata for the Festa della Rificolona. You know it? It’s a lantern festival—for the children. Little children, really.” She drops her voice. “But this one wanted to go.”
Adriana glances at me again.
“You should come. It’s all kids and tourists, but you might like it. We can talk.”
I feel light-headed and take another sip of water. But I can’t think of an excuse not to go.
“Okay,” I say, and stand carefully, leaving a few bills on the table.
We walk to the river, where the light off the water is blinding. People are crowded outside the gelateria at the end of the Ponte Vecchio and the jewelry shops lining the bridge are still open. The club is visible through the break in the shops—with the sun, the old men have returned to their posts outside, and Stefano stands at the edge of the dock, shading his eyes and shouting directions to the teens. I scan for Luca but I know he won’t be there.
“I was wondering when I didn’t see you at the canottieri,” Francesca says, as though reading my thoughts. “You avoiding someone?” She raises her eyebrows expectantly.
“No.”
“Well, it happens.”
“I’ve been busy,” I say, but Francesca doesn’t seem to hear me.
“Anyway, it’s pointless. Florence is a tiny village. I don’t care what people tell you. There’s no avoiding anyone.”
“Boston’s the same. I guess most cities are like that once you get to know them.”
“Not like Florence,” she says, and shakes her head. As we approach the piazza, the crowd grows dense, and more children appear with lanterns. Francesca pushes Adriana along ahead of her and raises her voice to be heard over the chatter. “I came here from a city and I thought I was moving to a city. That’s what he said. Center of culture, history. All that. Instead I’ve got this tiny village. Don’t