the edge of my sleeve and leads me to the back of the church, to a small fresco.
“Conosce Santa Caterina?” he asks.
I nod. Catherine of Siena. I studied her in college—or paintings of her, anyway, and this one is familiar. She wears a black-and-white habit and holds a stalk of lilies. It is pre-Renaissance—her features are flat, her almond eyes lowered without expression, the proportions slightly off, and she has a greenish glow. Eerie. On each of her hands sits a drop of blood, the stigmata. What else? She had visions and ecstasies like St. Teresa, I think. And she claimed that she had married Jesus in a dream.
We stand for a moment longer, the priest gazing up at the portrait and shaking his head. He looks close to tears. Then he takes the edge of my sleeve again and we are off—he speaking and I not understanding, his feet shuffling along the marble floor with a shhh, shhh, shhh, and I try to step more lightly. He walks me up the left side of the church, stops at several paintings along the way, gestures to the ceilings and I catch a series of dates. When we get to the front of the cathedral, he points to each of the stained-glass windows, naming them. Then he leads me to a chapel that is frescoed on three sides. At its center is a small ornate shrine, a mini-cathedral.
“Questa è la sua testa,” he says gravely.
“Her head?” I ask.
“Sì, her head,” he confirms.
Indeed, within the shrine is St. Catherine’s mummified head shrinking into a crisp white habit. The cheeks are sunken, the nose almost gone, the upper teeth visible, the eyes closed but the eyebrows seemingly raised. I look around to see if there are any children who might be traumatized by this medieval mummy, but it’s only me and the priest and St. Catherine now.
“E anche il suo dito.” He gestures to a glass case off to the side where a single finger, crooked, points heavenward.
“Her finger?”
He nods happily and points upward, too. He keeps smiling—this must be the end of the tour. He shakes his head when I offer him money but gestures with great enthusiasm to the frescoed walls of the chapel and bows slightly before disappearing.
I leave the dismembered saint to herself and look at the frescoes, which piece together Catherine’s life. These images are more relatable. They must have been painted a century or more after she died. They have perspective and expression, and instead of a blank background, Catherine is out in the city, architecture and landscape behind her. In one image she is collapsed, receiving the stigmata. She looks upward in ecstasy, her body not her own. On another wall, she prays for a man’s soul as he is executed. His head, like hers, has been torn from its body.
The third fresco stops me short. St. Catherine, right hand raised, stands over a young woman possessed by demons. A crowd has formed, but the people peer at her from behind pillars or hide their faces, shrinking back from the scene. Cowards. Only St. Catherine is calm, her eyes down, her raised hand unmoving. The possessed woman writhes on the ground beneath her, her arms straining up at unnatural angles, her head thrown back.
Which of these women am I? The one straining madly toward something unseen, or the calm one looking on? I have been both. In this past year, I have been both. I have been the madwoman screaming, straining, digging ditches around the bone. Sculpting.
When did this start?—my sister’s voice, a flat note as she watched me disappear. And still I could not stop digging, could not stop sculpting. I would be well sculpted. But I was not mad. I was calm. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t see that I was not only taking away. I was reaching for something. I was creating.
I stand for what must be a long time in the little chapel in front of this fresco. Catherine’s face belies nothing as she gazes at the possessed woman, but even the saint, I decide, was more than her patient reserve. I look at the first painting of Catherine in ecstasy and then back to the image of this writhing woman. They seem the same, and I wonder if, in looking at this madwoman, St. Catherine recognized herself, frozen in one of her ecstasies, envisioning. Of course, she had been told that the woman was inhabited by an evil being, not God. Still, it seems to me that Catherine is looking in a mirror, and I wonder if she realized this and if it struck her as odd that she had been asked to heal her own reflection.
I stop in a gift shop, the only place open, and find a book on the saint’s life. But as the train pulls out of the city at dusk, I can’t focus on the words. I put the book on the seat beside me and close my eyes.
I see myself already back in Florence. For a moment I am in two places at once. It is always this way when you travel. You exist in two places at once, as two people at once. There is the place you are now and the imagined place you are going, where you are already wandering streets, having dinner, strolling back to your hotel. There is the you that is here and the future you already there, smiling and confident. And that future place is not a busy intersection in Florence at night, or a darkened alley where words chase me. It is not the place I feel I am perched, always precariously perched, these days. The future place is better and in it is a better me. Not the me riding lonely on a train, running from everything I knew and everything I was, but the me that is knowing, flirtatious, unfettered, savvy, healed. The thought is reassuring, but then it turns and is terrifying. That future woman is not me and I know how she will look at me, the past her. I know how she will pity, patronize, want to expunge, destroy. She will say, I remember what I was, before I learned. She will want to erase what is mine. But this is me and this is mine. This lonely train ride is mine, too.
Out the window is a parade of shadows and I am a single point in the dark, one lit window passing by. This is the first day, I think, looking out at the darkness and seeing suddenly my own face. This is the first day of the rest of your. The rest of your. The rest. This is the first day. This is the first. The rest. Your life. Then: The rest of your life. What if this is the rest of your life?
But this is the place where I am: on a train in the dark. And, in truth, the place that I’m going doesn’t exist. She does not yet exist.
At the stadium the next night, the crowd is roaring before the game has even started. The rain has kept no one away. As I take out my ticket by the entrance, I hear my name and I see someone running toward me, his umbrella flying behind him.
“Hey!” He grins once he’s upon me. The American student. His cheeks are red, his nose dripping. “I’m Peter. From the club.”
“Hannah.” I put out my hand, but he swings an arm around me, gives me a wink, and exclaims, “I know!”
We enter together and I scan the bleachers for familiar faces as we make our way closer to the field where the serious fans cram together, all purple and red, the colors of the Fiorentina.
“Isn’t this amazing?” Peter shouts as we pull out our tickets for another official and walk down a level. “First game of the season. I bought a scarf at the market, even though it’s too warm for it. Damn, this is great. Ever been to a game?”
“No, I haven’t!” I try to match his enthusiasm, an impossible task, especially as I’m beginning to feel uneasy. High Plexiglas walls on either end of our section separate the home fans from the visitors. I look across and down, across and down, and finally see a row of red windbreakers that identify the club members, Stefano and Luca somewhere among them, but before we reach them I feel a hand on my arm—Francesca.
“Ciao!” Her eyes are wide, encircled with dark makeup. “Come here, you two. Sit by me.”
I want to join the rest of the group, but I don’t want to go down there alone, so I squeeze past Francesca and take a seat next to the clear wall. She and Peter immediately begin speaking in Italian, and I look away and find an old woman staring at me through the divider. Beyond her is a sea of bodies, all in yellow. The Parma fans. I turn my gaze to the field, where the players are warming up. Aligned behind the goals are police officers with guard dogs and guns. Francesca and Peter are still completely