Florence in Ecstasy Read online

  “We train together for years,” Stefano says. “Since…” He puts his hand at waist level. “Questi ragazzi sono i miei—how do you say?—old friends.”

  “Best friends,” Gianni shouts, taking his place in the boat, followed by Sergio.

  “Sì. I miei grandi amici,” Stefano says expansively.

  They all nod except for Luca, who looks up at me, unsmiling. “My great friends? Io, no,” he says, “I don’t like these guys,” provoking a chorus of moans.

  “Allora, Hannah. You practice today?” Stefano asks.

  “Inside on the machines.”

  “Ci vediamo presto, okay?” Stefano gives my arm a squeeze before taking his place in the first seat.

  “Alessandro, vieni qua!” Gianni shouts, and an adolescent boy dashes past me and climbs into the front of the boat, facing Stefano, his legs folded beneath him. He grasps a rope that connects him like reins to the rudder behind him. The coxswain. They push away from the dock and pause.

  “Pronti!” Stefano’s voice cuts a straight line, and the boy adjusts the rope, pulls it taut, as each man lifts his oar in preparation. “Via!” Stefano calls, and they dip their oars in unison and begin to row with small strokes, using only their arms. They move slowly up the Arno toward the Ponte alle Grazie, where they carve a diagonal and then bring the boat around so that their backs are to the club. They come to a full stop, a single breath in and out, before I hear Stefano’s voice again—“Pronti… Via!”—and with a deep whoosh, they are off with unbelievable speed, using their legs now, too, as Stefano calls, “Tutti insieme! Uno! Due!” When they pass the club, I can see that they move as one, their bodies folding and stretching, folding and stretching, their muscles flexing and releasing in time.

  “Uno! Due! Uno! Due!” Stefano’s voice echoes across the water as they approach the Ponte Vecchio. Within seconds, they are in the bridge’s shadow and then lost to the sunlight on the other side. Four months ago. I stood in front of an annunciation surrounded by people, all potential donors. It was a special tour I was chosen to lead because I’d studied these things and because one of the prospects spoke Italian, and I’d studied that, too, though as soon as he began speaking, my blank stare stopped him.

  It was bright in the gallery, hard to make out the features on the faces around me, except for the well-heeled woman in the center, the one who’d asked, Aren’t you warm, honey? at the beginning of the tour, nodding at my cardigan. It was May, but I was always chilled then.

  I was talking about perspective when the ground grew unstable and the faces blurred, as though someone were erasing them, one by one. And then I must have fallen, hard. Darkness. Nothing. Then a voice, light, a face that I knew. One of the guards helping me stand. He liked me. He wouldn’t tell, didn’t tell. But someone did. Someone had.

  Because the next day, Claudia invited me to lunch. She was so unlike me, but we had history. She’d helped to hire me five years before, became my mentor and then my friend. I trusted her.

  We went to a café by the museum. The sun was merciless, the traffic screaming around us, but Claudia was composed as always—seated cool and tall, her lips a decisive line as she looked over the menu. I hesitated. Ordered fruit and yogurt, a splurge.

  “You haven’t been yourself, Hannah,” she pressed as soon as we were alone. Her eyes—sharp and blue, blue, blue—didn’t leave room for questions or doubts. “You’ve been making mistakes.”

  I nodded. I’d always been good at my job. Not good like Claudia, who handled the major gifts. But I could smile and smile. I was competent and, most of the time, invisible. Unless I made a mistake. Which I had, more than once.

  “These aren’t small errors.”

  There were gaps in my days. The details consumed by the next meal, the exercise to negate it, whether I’d need to throw up and how and where. And then that voice, always that voice. If only you were. Each day I felt closer to it.

  “They cost money.”

  I’d grow dizzy scanning the screen, pull the wrong file, approve the wrong payment—

  “That e-mail was a bomb.”

  —forward the wrong message. And suddenly I wasn’t invisible at all.

  “And there was a complaint about the event. One of the guests said you collapsed.”

  I nodded dumbly. If we could just keep the conversation to work, to my many mistakes.

  “I told them you were sick,” Claudia said. “Robert doesn’t know about it.” The director.

  Our food arrived and I watched her eat. I didn’t defend myself. I thought it would end there. But she had arrived with knives.

  “I think you have a problem,” she said, her eyes catching mine again. They looked right through me.

  My yogurt sat cold in front of me. I couldn’t lift my spoon.

  “Hannah?”

  I took a breath, tried to assure her that I was all right. She didn’t realize, perhaps. But I couldn’t look her in the eye.

  “I don’t think you understand,” Claudia said. “You have a real problem.”

  Something stopped in me. The scene began to unravel. I was not a reliable source, I knew, and still.

  “I’m fine,” I said quietly.

  “You’re not fine, though. You’re starving. Look at you. Your eyelashes are falling out.”

  This image would stay with me, maybe forever. It wasn’t true, but it stuck. This was the end of our friendship. I lost other friends, too, though not in quite the same way.

  I meet Francesca at the end of my first week at the club.

  I’ve been here every day, working out on an ergometer in the room below the Uffizi, and the movements of this new routine are slowly growing familiar: I position myself on the rowing machine’s small sliding seat and grasp the wooden handle. When I push with my legs, the seat slides back along the metal bar. I draw the handle all the way into my chest, the pressure of the cord it is attached to mimicking the resistance of water. Then I allow it to pull me back toward my feet, the seat sliding in, my body curling forward, my knees folding up to my chin. The spinning wheel exhales a breeze that cools me before I spring back again. I’ve lost so much muscle this past year, and the first few pulls are difficult—my arms and legs shaking and the seat shuddering beneath me—until I get into a rhythm. Curling forward, springing back. Slow and then faster. The movement is a relief; the expended energy counterbalances the ever-expanding list, my inventory. Still, I don’t look at myself in the wall of mirrors. I keep my eyes on the handle, on the wheel, on my feet.

  Finding me battling the machine in these first days, Stefano has helped. I’ve spoken with only him and Manuele, not with any of the others, all men, no matter what time of day. In the morning, the old men’s banter echoes through the corridors with the clang, clang, clang of the weight machines. Midday the working men arrive to train while the city has its siesta. After school, it’s the boys—they flail about on the river as Stefano calls instructions from a speedboat, his reassuring smiles interspersed with grimaces as they teeter and totter and cut too close to the rubbish-filled banks of the Arno. The old men are still on the embankment at that hour, rounding out the day with criticisms as the silhouetted teens slide past in small wooden sculls.

  All men and boys. And then I enter the locker room on Saturday and find Francesca bent over the sink naked, examining her eyes in the mirror. They are red-rimmed.

  “How are you?” she tosses my way in flawless English. “I’m Francesca. You’re the American.”

  “Hannah.” My voice sounds strange.

  “Hannah. You a student?”

  She must be flattering me. “No. Not studying. Just visiting.”

  “How long are you here for?” She spreads cream under and then over her eyes, massaging it in.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Huh. Well, watch out—time is different here.” She rubs her fingers together. “Slippery. It feels like it’s moving slower, but it’s a trick. You see my face?” She eyes me in the mirror as she pulls her sk
in taut. “You can always tell how I’m feeling. I can’t be too sad. You see it right away. It sticks, you know.”

  “You mean—”

  “Wrinkles. Age. Anyway, you’re too young to know. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “Huh.” She returns to her reflection. “I thought you were younger.”

  Her comment would irritate me, except that I’m more concerned with how I’m going to change. Normally I wouldn’t undress out in the open, would avoid the glances that might become questions. Even after I began eating again, the flesh kept falling away, and still my bones protrude. And then there are the bruises. They appear some mornings, without cause, blooming across my body like evidence. But there are no private spaces here, and so I change carefully, trading one piece of clothing for another. I look at Francesca. I’m not frail compared with her. I am an Amazon—much taller, with large hands, large feet. Some echo of the women of my past. Francesca is of different stock. Petite and lithe. She must be in her forties, but except for the lines around her eyes, she seems ageless.

  Laughter from the men’s locker room bursts through the vent.

  “They’re crazy.” Francesca rolls her eyes toward the sound and strolls back to her locker. “Those men, crazy. There was an Australian girl here—she got burned three times! Three times!” She pulls on her own small leggings and glances up at me soberly. “She was thirty-three. You think she would’ve known better. Acted like she was about thirteen. Bad news, these guys. That boy from Chicago seems nice, though. Have you met him?”

  I nod. Peter. The student. He’s a serious rower. He walks around the club with his toned arms held slightly out from his body as though they’ve just been inflated. He’s young, even for me.

  “American boys are nice. Simple. I spent some time in America. I should have stayed—ha! The guys here, you just can’t tell. Three times she got burned.”

  “What do you mean… burned?”

  Francesca purses her lips and makes a motion with her hand. “She was humiliated. Everyone knew. And two of the guys were married.”

  “Didn’t anyone tell her?”

  “Tell her what?”

  “That they were married.”

  “I thought she knew! You think she would have been smarter about it. Thirty-three years old! It got so she couldn’t show up here. What can you do?” Francesca returns to the mirror, twisting her hair up into a coil, silent now, and I hear another eruption of laughter from the adjoining room. Our area feels like a vault, a mausoleum. We are rarities, like the red tiles scattered across the stark white walls. Chance blocks of color.

  “Not a lot of women at this club, huh?” I ask.

  “A few.” Francesca shrugs. “It’s mostly men. Doesn’t bother me as long as my husband isn’t one of them. If he was a member here, I wouldn’t be. That’s for sure.”

  I don’t say anything, but she locks eyes with me and continues. “I don’t see him all day. Just a half an hour at night. Then I go walking with the dogs so I don’t have to see him.” She pulls on her little ankle socks and the cloud passes over us, forgotten. She’s practiced at transitioning, but I’m curious now.

  “Are you from Florence?”

  “Me? God, no. I’m from a real city. Milano. I’ve been here twenty years.” She sighs at the burden. “Like I said—you lose time.”

  “Did you meet your husband in Florence?”

  Another sigh, a flick of the hand. “Yes. I was twenty-one. How old are you again?”

  “Twenty-nine,” I repeat.

  “Ah, sì. Twenty-nine. So you understand. I was only twenty-one. Too young to know better. He’s one of those real loud types, you know? Real neurotic. I see it in my daughter sometimes. She’s at that awkward stage—all pimply, short hair.” She pauses. “Peter’s single, isn’t he?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, he’s a student.” What is she thinking?

  “Yeah, he’s single. All men are at that age.” She closes her locker decisively. “You going to the game Monday?”

  “I don’t think so.” Stefano has distributed invitations for the event—a soccer match, one of the first of the season. He bought tickets for the members at a discount, and though I accepted one and said that, yes, I’d see him there, I’m not sure I will. It’s one thing to come to the club, to exchange a few words with him over a smooth shot of espresso. It’s another thing entirely to see people out in the world.

  “You should come,” Francesca says. “I could use another woman there, you know? And the game’s wild. Well, take care. Ask me about any of these guys.” She pauses to glance back at herself in the mirror. “I appreciate it, you know. The bad thing.”

  I’m not sure anymore whom or what she’s talking about.

  “It’s taught me. But it’s a shame to learn like that,” she says, then strolls to the door. “Ciao.”

  “Ciao,” I say, but she doesn’t appear to hear me as she smiles and joins the voices on the other side.

  Later in the afternoon, I’m again struggling with the ergometer, intent on getting it right. I look down at my arms, which seem thicker, and look away. My face in the mirror is red, growing with the heat. I can feel it growing. Look at you. I close my eyes, slide the seat forward, roll my body in, push back with my legs, and pull with my arms. I hear footsteps and Stefano enters followed by Luca, who has a bag slung across one shoulder. I watch their reflections.

  “Eccola,” Stefano says. “Troppo veloce.”

  “Too fast?” I ask.

  “You must wait.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “Spingi e poi—”

  “Stefano!” A voice from down the hall.

  “Scusi,” he says, and disappears.

  Luca watches me in the mirror and I stop moving. He smiles but says nothing. He’s a person at ease with himself and the world. It makes me nervous.

  “You must wait,” he says finally, crossing the room. “Push with the legs e poi pull with the hands. Try.”

  I lean forward, curl in, and then spring backward, pulling the handle with me.

  “Too fast,” Luca says. “Di nuovo. Slow.”

  I lean forward, curl in, and begin to pull, but a pressure on my back stops me. I glance at him in the mirror. He’s leaning down, his hand supporting me. I look for a loaded smile, wait for a line.

  “Aspetta” is all he says. Then, “Push with the legs.”

  He keeps his hand steady, releasing the pressure gradually as I slide back. When my legs are almost straight he says, “Adesso,” and I draw the handle all the way into my chest.

  “Così,” he says. “You understand?”

  I nod.

  “Di nuovo.”

  I repeat the motion, alone this time.

  “Brava.” He stands up, smiling, and skin gathers around his eyes. Like Francesca, he must be older than he looks, but he does not carry the weight of age or the gravity of too much experience.

  “Grazie.”

  “Di niente.” He turns to leave.

  “Are you here tomorrow?” My voice echoes loud and he turns around, surprised.

  “Domani? No.” He looks confused. I’ve done something wrong, misread his casual kindness for something else. “Tomorrow is Sunday,” he explains. “The canottieri is closed.”

  “Oh.” Of course. Sunday.

  “Allora, until soon. Maybe Monday, yes? At the game?” He tilts his head, smiles, and is gone, leaving a lightness in his wake that I try to hold on to as I curl forward and push back, waiting to pull with my arms. I stop then and let the wheel spin slowly to a rest.

  Chapter Three

  Sunday. The club is closed and the city is closed, too. It isn’t the soft closed of American cities—the change in hours or the farther walk for groceries—but an imperative rest that shutters all the shops. I should begin looking for jobs back home. Instead, I hurry to the train station, buy a second-class ticket to Siena, and leave Florence for the first time since my arrival.

  As the
train pulls out of the station the car doors inhale and then exhale a small man in wire-rimmed glasses. He grips a cigarette, looking down the aisle for the smoking car. Across from me are two young women: one with large eyes and tiny doll lips reads aloud self-assuredly from a novel to her companion, whose feet rest on the large backpack on the floor between us. I try not to stare as she reenacts the story with great hand and facial movements, her eyes growing wider in one moment, narrowing in the next, her free hand rising up and then dropping back to her knee each time she turns a page. With every gesture, she is a new painting. In a few minutes, we’re in the suburbs of Florence. We’re in the hills by the time she pauses for a breath and stretches her arm comfortably across the seat behind her friend, glancing at me wisely out of the corner of her eye as if she knows I am searching for a crack or a defect. Finding none, I close my eyes, glad to know these girls exist.

  The sun is not quite up and the hills are swallowing us now, one side green and the other black like a shadow puppet theater. We are going south. Nothing sounds better and it feels good to know, as the train stops and starts at each city along the way and the sun emerges hazy behind the clouds, that I’m going somewhere new on this gray day. With each curve, we burrow deeper, the surroundings growing more remote, until the homes disappear and there is only land for long stretches broken by blocked letters on train platforms. MONTELUPO. EMPOLI. CASTELFIORENTINO. How many of these first impressions will come undone?

  Across the way the listening girl slides out from under her friend’s arm and extracts from her bag an enormous cucumber and a pocketknife. She passes it to the first girl, who flips open the blade and begins to peel away the skin in strips without looking at it, still reading from the book somehow, no energy lost or wasted, and again she is a painting. She knows where she is going just as she knows how to peel that fruit, tracing easily the skin and losing none of the meat. Something in the gesture reminds me of my own history. Somewhere I had the confidence of that girl.