“What are you doing to your underwear?” she asked, and then, “Do you live here?”
It took me a minute to understand her little kid’s version of Italian. “Now I do. This is my brother’s house.”
“Beniamino is your brother?” The girl snagged an orange blossom from a branch above her head and tucked it into her shirt, then scrambled out of the tree. I decided not to discuss death with a child I’d never met.
“Yes.”
“I like him,” the girl said. “He gives me really nice pens.” She paused. “Do you have any pens?”
“I think so,” I said, which apparently satisfied her. She came over and introduced herself. “I’m Felice Guerrini, and I’m five and two-thirds,” she announced. “Want to come have some gelato? We’ve got nocciola.”
I met the Guerrini family over hazelnut ice cream. Felice proudly announced her discovery of Beniamino’s sister, and the Guerrinis welcomed me warmly. Donata, the mother of the family and an art historian at the University of Siena, looked like a figure from a Botticelli painting with her long golden hair tied up in a careless knot, but she acted like an ordinary human being. She pulled me aside to confirm what had happened to Ben, but we postponed further discussion.
Our house was in the Civetta—little owl—contrada, one of seventeen remaining medieval districts in Siena. Donata and her husband, Ilario, rapidly determined to make me an honorary Sienese, or, specifically, a Civettina, loyal to our particular neighborhood. Besides Felice, they had two other children, Gianni (eight), and Sebastiano (six months), each noisy in a distinctively age-specific way. It was a nice antidote to my last few days of self-imposed solitude.
My indoctrination into the intimate life of the contrada came a few days later, when the Guerrinis invited me to Sebastiano’s baptism in the Civetta fountain.
The feast day of Saint Anthony of Padua, La Civetta’s patron saint, marks the time for all the contrada babies born within the previous year to be baptized in the ward’s own font. At noon on Sunday, Sebastiano, along with other infants and their families, waited his turn. Sebastiano was a perfect cherub of a baby, with golden curls and plump, dimpled arms and legs. At this moment he was angelically asleep for the priore’s words.
“I, in the name of Saint Anthony of Padua, sprinkle you with the waters of this noble fountain, so that from your heart the love for your contrada will flow eternally, blessing you with the great heritage of your ancestors.” The priore dipped his fingers into the fountain and sprinkled Sebastiano’s smooth forehead with water, at which point he promptly woke up and began screaming. Donata expertly folded down a flap of her shirt and shoved her breast in his open mouth. Draped with the black, white, and red silk scarf of La Civetta that would be his forever, Sebastiano realized that he was not being abandoned to starve to death on a mountaintop in the pouring rain, and soon dozed off to sleep again, to the obvious relief of his parents and the rest of the Civettini.
* * *
The next morning I woke up at dawn. Too restless to read or write, I dressed and left the house. In the faint gray of early morning, I wound through the narrow streets toward the Piazza del Campo. As I came around the corner of Via Banchi di Sopra, I saw a train of workers carting wheelbarrows piled high with yellowish dirt. A reverent silence hung over the men—as if for a religious occasion, rather than a menial task. Then I saw that the line wound its way down to the outer rim of the Campo, where the workers began to lay down the yellow earth, La Terra in Piazza, which would soon be a racetrack for ten Palio horses. I watched the workers, their manual labor imbued with their spiritual purpose, until I was too hungry to stand there anymore, and went to get a bottle of water and a wheel of panforte di Siena. The dried fruit and nut cake dusted with powdered sugar was delicious enough to transcend any demeaning fruitcake jokes, and it was dense enough to get me through the afternoon.
In the evening, the Sienese began to come to the Piazza to touch the earth and pay their respects. The Guerrinis found me there and invited me for dinner, which, after a day of panforte, was a welcome change. Felice and Gianni led the way back to Vicolo del Coltellinaio singing and chanting pro-Civetta songs boisterously all the way home.
Sitting on Donata’s living room couch, I held the dozing Sebastiano while Donata and Ilario worked companionably in the kitchen preparing dinner. I’d never had the luxury of holding a sleeping six-month-old before. A sweet, powdery smell rose from his skin, and he radiated warmth against my bare arms. His chest rose and fell with his peaceful breathing, and every now and then a fleeting smile crossed his face. I looked up from the world of infant bliss to find Donata looking at me.
“No bambini, Beatrice?” She said my name the Italian way, with four syllables. Bey-ah-TREE-chay. It sounded impossibly romantic. “But I see you feel his magic.”
I smiled, reluctant to break the wordless pleasure I had in Sebastiano’s sleeping company. “I had no idea they could be so . . . magnificent.”
Donata laughed indulgently. “Enjoy him while he’s peaceful, I’ll finish the risotto,” she said, and went back to the stove.
I watched Donata as she stirred the risotto patiently, and vowed to slow down. Certainly with Sebastiano in my arms exerting his hypnotic dreamy power, I wasn’t doing anything fast. Just as we were sitting down at the table, Sebastiano opened his mouth and turned his head toward my chest, searching for sustenance. Since I had nothing to offer him, I handed him over to Donata. He latched onto her breast with ecstatic concentration and ate with eyes closed, bliss personified.
That’s when it happened again. First, sudden silence. Then I could hear Ilario, Felice, and Gianni talking, as if from far away. The scent of Parmesan from the risotto sharpened, and I felt the warmth of my left arm where Sebastiano’s head had rested. Then I had a sensation I’ve never had before, first a gentle but persistent tugging on my nipples, then a rush of little electric shocks in my breasts, sparking downward, then a wave of heat and fullness, and an overwhelming feeling of peace, and I realized—I’m breast-feeding. Or more accurately, Donata is, and I’m in there with her. Donata was lost in a little world with Sebastiano and she didn’t notice my intrusion, or my retreat.
The rest of dinner passed without incident, unless you count the moment when Gianni upended his glass of ice water into his sister’s lap. After dinner, Donata and Ilario kissed me soundly on both cheeks and I walked the few steps through the courtyard to Ben’s house, let myself in the massive door, and made my way to bed, with the sensation of Sebastian’s evening meal still tingling in my body. It took me a while to fall asleep.
* * *