“This is a special room. You know why?” I look at the quiet ergometers, the placid water, our reflections in the mirrored wall, until Stefano points to the ceiling, smiling wryly: “Uffizi,” he says, letting me in on the secret. “C’è state?”
“Of course.” I smile, really smile, for the first time in days, maybe weeks. We’re right below the museum. I imagine the crowds wandering the galleries above, and that could be me, had been me, and yet in a month, a day, a single afternoon, you can become something new, can become undone but also transformed.
And so when Stefano tells me the cost of membership and says, “It’s okay?” I nod, though I barely have enough to get through the month, but still I nod.
“It’s perfect,” I say.
“Okay. Tomorrow my assistant is back—you register with her. Then you begin here, in this room—to practice, to learn, okay? One week, two weeks. And then the river!”
“So quickly?”
“Sì. Certo. And why not?”
“And why not,” I echo, taking the warm hand he offers me.
Before I leave, I walk up and down the hallway lined with wooden boats. They are overturned on shelves, spines raised, bodies stretched, stacked floor to ceiling in rows running from the largest eight-man boats to the small one-man sculls at the far end. I have the sensation of the past hovering just below the present, as I so often do here, my own past leaping out, fast and fierce, and suddenly I remember. I walk slowly, examining the names stenciled in white block letters along their sides—FORTUNATO, BOREA, PERSEFONE. I search for inconsistencies in the repeated symbol of the red-and-white rowing flag that ripples across each boat, trying to find a place where the human hand had wavered.
Boston. The museum was dark. It was a Monday in July and after hours—it had been planned this way, so that I could come and go barely seen, and now I was going, or was supposed to be. I ducked into the bathroom, eyed my face in the mirror, hollowed. I threw up.
Then I walked through the vacant galleries, clutching the envelope—a severance, handed to me with lowered eyes because I had brought myself to this place, to the bottom—until I reached the painting. A sea-filled nocturne. Blue and silver, but up close, mostly gray, a fog heavy with shadows, the only break in the haze a few orange gestures, the brightest near the center—a fire on a distant shore?—but so faint and far off you knew you’d never reach it. That was how I had felt. For years, maybe. As though everyone around me had figured something out that I couldn’t quite grasp. And so I remained in this fog.
I was exhausted, in fact I could barely stand, but still I stopped in front of this painting to stare at that bit of orange near the center, that place beyond this place where I found myself, inexplicably. I put my hand out to touch it—and why not? what could they do to me now?—to touch, only lightly, that vanishing point where everything disappeared and came together. It was a shallow valley, rough under my finger. I felt the events of the previous months slipping away. I felt a door opening, the crack widening into something I could slip through.
“Hannah?” A voice came from the end of the corridor and I hurried out into the gray summer evening without looking back.
I choose my evening meals in Florence carefully. Early on I made the mistake of going to a traditional spot, candlelit, with couples who eyed me suspiciously. I had not anticipated such stares. Disapproving and reproachful, they presented a uniform front, said, This place is ours, as I took too long reading the menu, inevitably falling on the contorni—the side dishes—and then ordered quickly, avoiding the waiter’s skeptical gaze: È tutto? Yes, that’s all. When my small plates arrived, the stares returned, the pairs glancing up from their own dishes piled high with meat or pasta—glistening, those items stared at me, too. I took in their stares and ate quickly.
So I choose carefully. There is Fuori Porta, or “Outside the Gate,” a wine bar just beyond one of the city’s large doors, the last lit building in a trendy quarter before the road winds up into the dark hills. Between six and nine each night, appetizers line the counter. I dine on pickles and carrots. I drink three glasses of wine. I listen to the hum. When the young bartender asks if I would like a fourth glass, I smile and say no. I’m meeting a friend for dinner, I think, for all he knows. I always leave Fuori Porta feeling better. Something in the walk home through the silent streets, past the dusty buildings, and across the Ponte alle Grazie—bridge of thanks—leaves me lighter.
And then there is Shiso, a sushi place where I go when I feel alert enough to face conversation with the owner, Dario. Tonight I turn the corner to find him arguing with one of the drunkards who fill the square outside—their hair is stringy with grease, their eyes drained of color. Sometimes I feel their hot breath as I pass and a phrase is thrown my way, but they go no further. I am no threat to them. And there is something of them in me, too.
“Dai! Dai!” Dario shouts at one of these shades, a cigarette hanging from his hand. When he catches sight of me, he drops his voice low and presses something into the man’s palm. Then he throws his shoulders back and inhales deeply, looking off into the distance as the man disappears down the alley. He’s pretending he hasn’t seen me.
“Ciao,” he says, overly familiar once I’m upon him. “Come stai?”
“Bene. How are you?”
“Busy, always busy,” he says with a sigh. This is his mantra, though there are never more than a handful of people in the restaurant. I am, I believe, his only repeat customer.
He puts out his cigarette and opens the door, placing a hand on my elbow to guide me in. The interior is steel and red, about a decade too late to be modern. This place is his passion, opened after his travels in Japan. He explained it all to me one evening. Very good, I lied, picking at the small strips of overpriced fish. Because it’s good, sometimes, to be known. I let him walk me home one night, let him kiss me outside my door. But not tonight. Tonight will be different.
There is only one table occupied—a young American couple—and the waitress, unsmiling, doesn’t move from her post by the kitchen. Dario wipes down the counter and pours me a generous glass of wine.
“A good day?” he asks.
“Very good,” I say, meaning it for the first time.
“You are lucky to be on such a vacation. For me it is always work, always busy. What is your work—in Boston?”
It catches me off guard. “I do fund-raising,” I say, as though it were still true. “For a museum.”
“Cosa?”
“I work with art.”
“Ah. An artist.”
I don’t correct him. What would be the point of explaining that my job had nothing to do with art—though that was why I’d taken it—and everything to do with money. I was good at it at first. Pretending that I gave a shit, I mean. Pretending that it mattered.
“Then you understand what it is,” he continues, “to be always busy.”
I nod. His confidence is aggressive and catching, and I, too, act as though I don’t see the empty tables, the waitress’s frown as she takes my order, the sweat that beads on Dario’s forehead and scalp where his hair is thinning. I accept a second glass of wine and eat slowly once my food arrives, thinking back on the day. Dario crosses his thick arms and commences a fresh monologue.
“I have this place for three years, you know. Tre anni, almost.”
As he speaks, I begin my necessary ritual—the list. I construct it carefully in my mind.
“I think, sometimes…”
The coffee this morning—no milk, no sugar.
“…è brutto, Hannah. Davvero.”
On top of it I place the toast—two slices, choked down.
“Sicilia.