Chapter 12

The Museum of Torture

Patras, Greece

October 3

Since our day trip to Florence was such a bust, we decided to head south to visit her ancient rival, Siena. Siena was similarly mobbed with visitors, but it was difficult not to be seduced by its crenellated walls, medieval architecture, and narrow cobblestone streets. At one point, Betty strolled off to buy souvenirs with the kids, and Devi and I found ourselves alone sipping perfect cappuccinos in Siena’s sublime shell-shaped Piazza del Campo. In that moment, it was easy to ignore the shifting crush of tourists and drift back to the fourteenth-century world of St. Catherine when this same piazza was filled with farmers’ stalls, nobles in sumptuous robes, and Sienese knights fresh from battle with the Florentines. But this idyllic reverie burst like a bubble when Kara ran panting back to our table.

“What’s the matter, Kara?” asked Devi. “And why are you by yourself?”

Never one to squander a dramatic moment, Kara paused and replied gravely, “Betty’s locked in the toilet.”

“What do you mean?” asked Devi.

“I mean there’s a little building over there with toilets in it. Betty went in ten minutes ago, and now she’s rattling the door. I don’t think she can get out.”

“Where are Willie and Lucas?” asked Devi.

“They’re standing outside the toilet.”

With that, I frantically hailed the waiter and Devi took off with Kara. But before she got far, a visibly shaken Betty returned with the boys.

“What happened?” asked Devi.

“I went inside and the door slammed behind me, and it locked before I could find the light. Ay, it smelled awful in there.”

“How did you get out?” asked Devi.

“I pushed against the door and wiggled the latch ’til it finally flew open. I thought I was going to suffocate.”

Betty did look as if she could use some fresh air, so we decided to skip the crowded galleries in the nearby Palazzo Pubblico and wander the warren of streets behind the Piazza. We soon stumbled across the Pinacoteca Nazionale, a rather run-down public art gallery housed in an old palazzo. There were hardly any visitors there, but the gallery was filled with wonderful paintings from the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Sienese school. Many of the pictures were unframed or badly hung. The walls were stained; the pipes exposed; and the elevators were broken. But once we looked past all that, we found ourselves immersed in a fantastical medieval world that predated modern notions of perspective and temporal unity.

As in all galleries housing works from the Middle Ages, the predominant subjects were Christ, the Virgin Mary, and a supporting cast of saints and angels. Since the theme is so uniform, most adults tend to focus on stylistic differences. But children tend to see only one picture after another of Christ’s nativity and crucifixion. For children raised in a secular home such as ours, these tableaux raise prickly theological questions, and Kara fired them off like a Gatling gun.

“Who was Jesus’ father?”

“Is he really the son of God?”

“Who killed him?”

“Why did they kill him?”

“How did he rise from the dead?”

“Where is he now?”

I was quickly obliged to deliver an off-the-cuff New Testament exegesis that somehow reconciled our children’s Jewish/Danish Lutheran/Jain¹⁴ heritage. When I was growing up in Erie, Pennsylvania, the only decent high school in town was a Catholic prep school. Consequently, I’m pretty well versed in the basic catechism, but it still required a bit of picking and choosing to tell the story in a way that was sufficiently ecumenical. I used a lot of conditionals such as, “Some people believe …” and “Christians think …” and “Nobody knows for sure.”

In the middle of this ad hoc seminar, a middle-aged American woman with a sour expression approached me and asked, “Are these children Christian?”

“Part Christian,” I replied.

Maybe it was because she was surrounded by so much fourteenth-century religious propaganda, but she seemed upset by my response. “You can’t be part Christian!” she proclaimed. “You either accept Christ as your savior, or you don’t.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that, but I noticed the kids were listening intently, so I chose my words carefully. “By that definition, I suppose they’re not Christian,” I said. “But I still want them to understand various theologies, so they can shape their own spiritual life later on.”

The lady shot me a look suggesting that she wouldn’t mind setting me up with the Inquisition.

“What a way to raise children!” she mumbled, stalking away.

“What’s her problem?” asked Kara.

“Some people believe that there’s only one right way to think about God,” I replied.

“How do they know what the right way is? Does God tell ’em or something?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “But believe it or not, some people fight entire wars just because they don’t worship God the same way. In Ireland, two different types of Christians killed each other for more than twenty years.”

“That is so incredibly stupid,” Kara said.

I realized then if I could teach my children only one or two basic principles, tolerance of other people’s beliefs would be one of them.

Our next encounter at the Pinacoteca Nazionale was far less contentious. We were contemplating the work of the medieval Sienese master Duccio, when an effervescent young Italian woman entered the room. She looked at Willie and did a double take. Then she began chattering to Devi in animated Italian. Devi translated as she spoke.

“She says her son looks exactly like Willie … That he has the same face … the same eyes … the same missing front teeth … the same ears that stick out.”

Willie was now touching his ears.

“… the same skinny legs …”

Willie looked at his legs.

“… And the same big feet.”

Devi didn’t realize exactly what she was translating until after she said it, and poor Willie wasn’t flattered by the description. After the friendly lady pinched Willie on the cheek and moved on, Willie said, “My legs aren’t that skinny, are they, Dad?”

“No, they’re not,” I said. Then Devi and I both assured him that in our eyes he was the best looking boy in Italy.

Our last stop in Siena was the local Duomo. At this point, it takes a good deal of persuasion to drag Kara and Willie into a church. In a way, I don’t blame them. The kids have been to so many basilicas, cathedrals, churches, chapels, and sanctuaries in France and Italy that Willie thought we were calling the Sistine Chapel the “The Sixteenth Chapel.” But when it started to rain again, we trundled everyone inside—and wow, what a place it was! The nave and aisles were banded floor to ceiling in zebra stripes of black and white marble. The vault and dome were painted deep cobalt blue with gold leaf stars and the floors were covered in mosaics. Even the thirteenth-century octagonal pulpit by Nicola Pisano was supported by a menagerie of life-size stone lions.

The Sienese Duomo isn’t the most important cathedral in Italy, but it may be the gaudiest. The kids were delighted despite themselves—especially when they saw a relic purporting to be John the Baptist’s arm bone along with a bronze sculpture of the saint by Donatello. (Guess which one intrigued them more.) At the end of the day, everyone agreed that Siena was a delight, and Devi and I were particularly thrilled to find a church and a museum that the children not only abided but enjoyed—both in the same day.

The next day we found another museum that the children enjoyed—a little too much in fact. This time we were in the enchanting medieval hill town of San Gimignano. Known as the “Manhattan of Tuscany,” San Gimignano has more than a dozen tall brick towers that give it a distinctive, picture-book skyline. But it wasn’t the towers or San Gimignano’s graceful squares that intrigued the children, it was the Museo di Criminologia Medievale.¹⁵ Devi desperately wanted to give this place a pass, but Willie got us on a technicality.

“This is just a huge collection of torture implements,” said Devi, reading the poster in the window.

To which Willie replied, “I thought you wanted us to go to museums.”

“Normally I do,” said Devi. “But not this museum. It’s all about hurting people.”

“Yea, but it’s historical,” said Willie grandly. “Don’t you want us to learn about history?”

“Not this kind of history,” said Devi.

“History isn’t only about good stuff,” he replied.

Devi didn’t have an answer for that, so with some trepidation we entered what proved to be a two-story assemblage of stocks, racks and iron maidens. This collection was obviously assembled by a sick mind—but not nearly as sick as the folks who thought up these implements of torture in the first place. Medieval Europeans—particularly Spaniards and Germans—apparently possessed a genius for inflicting pain. We saw spiked interrogation chairs from the Spanish Inquisition, beheading axes, and saws for cutting people in half (lengthwise). Each of these implements was accompanied by a medieval-style woodcut showing precisely how it was used, so little was left to the imagination.

Devi couldn’t stand the place and she took Lucas outside after only a few minutes. That left me to explain the gruesome displays to Kara and Willie. I thought I was doing reasonably well until we got to a rusty medieval chastity belt replete with sharp iron teeth in the appropriate spot. I hoped against hope that the children would stroll by this grisly contraption without noticing it, but of course they were drawn straight to it.

“What the heck is that?” asked Kara.

“It’s called a chastity belt,” I said, hoping that naming it would be sufficient.

“What did they use that for, Daddy?”

I usually try to tell the children the truth, but there’s no good way to explain a chastity belt to a nine-year-old girl unacquainted with the facts of life.

I pondered for a moment and said, “It’s sort of like armor, honey.”

“Ohhh,” Kara said knowingly, “so your private parts don’t get hurt in a battle.”

“Something like that.”

“It doesn’t look very comfortable,” she observed.

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Did boys wear ’em?”

“No, only girls.”

“I’m glad we don’t wear those anymore,” she said, and blithely skipped off toward the next abomination.

When we finally left this house of horrors, I had a morbid urge to ask the children which they liked better, the San Gimignano torture museum or the Louvre.

They didn’t hesitate for a moment. It was the torture museum, hands down.

After six days of rain, our last afternoon in Tuscany was warm and lovely. Indian summer had set in, and at suppertime a spectacular sunset of pink and salmon lingered over the rolling vineyards for nearly an hour. The next morning, we loaded the van and headed north toward Venice. We skirted Venice proper and took the car ferry directly to the Lido, the thin oceanfront island across the lagoon from the city. Once the stomping ground of Byron, Goethe, and Evelyn Waugh, the Lido is still a fashionable beach resort. But that’s during the summer. When we arrived, summer was long gone, and the place was practically deserted. For once, our guidebook was helpful, and we checked into a lovely little hotel, the Hotel Albergo Quattro Fontani, that looked like a misplaced Alpine chalet.

After Betty and the kids were settled, Devi and I took a vaporetto¹⁶ back to Venice for dinner. Even though it was so ferociously crowded that you could barely find room to put your feet, Venice was still extravagantly romantic. The silent gliding black gondolas, the twinkling lights reflected in the Grand Canal, and the smell of moist decay all lent the city an air of melancholy passion. Couples kissed on nearly every corner, and I soon understood why Proust wrote, “When I journeyed to Venice, my dream became my address.”

The next morning, back in the hotel restaurant, we met a couple from my hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania. I had never met the McBriers before, but it turned out that my dad knew his dad, and Erie is such a small place, we inevitably had friends in common. In fact, they were joining another couple from Erie—the McLaughlins—for dinner that night. I went to high school with Sean McLaughlin, so when the McBriers invited Devi and me to come along, it sounded like fun.

I hadn’t seen Sean McLaughlin for twenty years, but we recognized each other immediately. I was going to give him a hug or something, but then I remembered that he was now a federal judge, and somehow, that didn’t seem appropriate. We had a magnificent, overpriced dinner, and then strolled over to the Piazza San Marco for a nightcap. Each of the four or five cafés in the huge piazza had its own orchestra on a small raised stage, and these ensembles took turns playing songs, one after another, around the perimeter of the square. After four months of dining with our little barbarians, it felt terribly cosmopolitan to sip cognac in a Venice café while an orchestra played Nino Rota tunes.

Eventually, one of the bands struck up “Volare.” It was corny, of course, but everyone in the square—patrons and waiters alike—sang and swayed with the music. A flock of pigeons, startled by the noise, fluttered up over the Palace of the Doges and sailed past the moon in silhouette.

We would have lingered in Venice for a while, but frankly, we couldn’t afford it. Drinks run ten bucks a pop here and one visit to the laundromat set us back $150. (You heard me.) So after four days, we hiked over to the docks and booked a ferry to Greece.

After our rough passage from Sardinia to Rome, Devi was understandably reluctant to take another long trip on a cheap ferry. But the booking office had an illustrated brochure, and the ship looked reasonably comfortable with clean cabins and a large restaurant. There was also a picture of the ship’s discotheque that looked like a Greek version of Saturday Night Fever. That intrigued Kara, and I promised to take her dancing our first night on board.

The morning of our departure, we loaded our bags onto a water taxi and sped toward the pier. The taxi couldn’t tie up near the big ships, so we had to walk the last half mile. In marked contrast to our disastrous luggage convoy in Burgundy—when we all wiped out on the railroad tracks—the whole family rolled smartly toward the ferry without incident. On board, we checked in and found our cabins. They weren’t exactly staterooms, but everything was clean and functional. As soon as we were settled, Kara reminded me about the disco, and I renewed my promise to chaperone her.

The disco didn’t even open until 10:00 P.M., but a promise is a promise, so Betty and I took Kara inside the moment it opened. On the way up the stairs, I noticed that Kara—who isn’t always a stickler for personal hygiene—had taken the trouble to put on her satin shirt and velvet jeans. She even got Betty to paint her fingernails.

The three of us sat at a small table near the tiny dance floor and drank Cokes. The music pounded and a mirrored ball shot flecks of light around the room, but for the first hour or so, we were the only customers there. Eventually, a group of fifteen or twenty European teenagers lumbered in and sat down. After a few rounds of beer, one couple began to dance. Then, slowly, a few more kids, mostly girls, wandered onto the floor.

As Kara watched them, she seemed torn between intense interest and laughing out loud. I asked her if she wanted to dance with me, and she reluctantly agreed. We shuffled around a bit, but Kara quickly got embarrassed and we retreated to our chairs. Although she’s very talkative once she gets to know you, Kara has always been shy in front of strangers, so I figured that was that. She wouldn’t go out on the dance floor again.

But a few songs later, she walked out by herself. She swayed back and forth for a few minutes, and then she slowly joined the rhythm of the song. During the next tune, she sloughed off her inhibitions, and danced up a storm. It was a startling transformation. One moment, she was a gawky little nine-year-old girl who couldn’t bear to be looked at, and the next moment, she was all grace and confidence. When the song ended, some of the teenage girls patted her on the back and offered her encouragement. It was a bittersweet moment for me, because I knew, in the blink of an eye, she would be one of them.

¹⁴ The ancient Indian religion of Devi’s father

¹⁵ Museum of Medieval Criminology

¹⁶ A Venetian water bus.