Botticelli Blue Skies: An American in Florence

Sciopero! (Strike!)

The weather has turned suddenly bitter—rain, wind, lowering skies—and Joe and I have both caught the germ that the students have been sharing among themselves by offering one another licks of their gelato cones, sips from their four dollar cans of Coke, and by their constant hugging, kissing and grooming of one another. This physical need they have for touch and for sitting in one another’s laps (at least the girls do this) must be a function of their being far away from home. The girls spend hours, often in public places, braiding and arranging one another’s hair, and three of the boys have hired Rosanna to dye their hair brilliant red, orange and purple. They think it a lark to call one another “Pomodoro,” “Arancia,” and “Porpora.”

In the apartment today there is no heat and no running water. I call downstairs to see if Maria or Patty or their landlady Paola knows the reason for the trouble, but no one is home. Joe is getting ready to take the bus to il centro to teach his class. He bundles up in sweater, raincoat, and hat. I—rather than stay in the apartment and freeze—decide to go to the tabaccaio and buy “francobolli”—stamps for the postcards I want to send to friends.

We part at the bus stop; Joe rarely has to wait more than five minutes for a #14 bus, though—if I’m with him and one passes by just as we approach the corner—I always cry out, “Oh no, oh wait, wait!” as if this bus is the last one on earth. As I walk the two blocks to the tabaccaio, (a capital “T” is posted outside the store as an indication that bus tickets and stamps may be bought within), I look in the window of the pasticceria, where the most luscious fruit pies are displayed, along with cream puffs and lemon cakes (but no bread! This is not a bakery.) I pass the libreria (the book store), and the macelleria (where beef and chicken parts hang on hooks in the window.) Much further down Via Aretina is “David Due”—a trattoria and pizzeria that has a statue of David (wearing a green loincloth) in the entryway. (Their pizzas, like most pizzas in Italy, are baked in a wood-fired oven, and come out deliciously thin and crisp, with every possible adornment, including tonno, speck, funghi, prosciutto, cipolla, melanzane, and all varieties of cheese. It’s always eaten with a fork and knife, never by hand.)

The rain is coming down hard now—I think of getting back to the apartment, lighting the oven, and sitting in the kitchen to keep warm. My problem is that I only manage to get the oven lit half the time. Most of my efforts conclude with the match burning down to my fingertips so that I have to drop it and then mash out the flame with my foot. That, or the gas simply does not ignite. When the smell of gas becomes too strong, I give up, in fear of an explosion, and open the windows to air out the kitchen.

The last time I visited Santa Croce, however, I sinned in the desire to get my oven lit. Although I put 200 lire in the offertory under the table where votive candles are lit, I didn’t light a candle. Instead, I put one in my backpack and took it home in order to light the oven with a long taper instead of a one-inch match.

Today in the tabacccaio the young woman greets me who has sold me stamps before. She knows my routine—I tell her that I want “dieci francobolli per cartolina USA” and she does the rest of the figuring out. Each stamp to the US is 1,250 lire; they come in denominations of 1,000 and 250. There is no way I am able to say in Italian, within a reasonable frame of time, the numbers represented by the necessity of buying ten 1,250 lire stamps. She knows my dilemma; she even puts the stamps in a little cellophane bag for me. She takes my money, she gives me change.

I indicate “freddo”—it’s cold out. I further indicate—by a pantomime and a serious mangling of her language—that there’s no heat in my apartment. I also indicate somehow that the “fiamiferri”—the matches—are too short for lighting the stove.

She smiles and offers me solutions. First she presents me with an “accendigas”—a flint lighter for the stove. Like the toys of my childhood that used to spin and produce a wheel of color, this device, by a simple squeeze of the handle, produces a spark which lights the gas without a flame. I’ll buy it!

She then produces the next item to help me through the winter: a hot water bag! It’s made of bright green rubber, with a red stopper. She indicates that I can fill it with hot water and take it to bed with me. (Yes, if they ever turn the water on in the building, and yes, if I can light the stove to heat the water…and if I can fill the hot water bag without burning myself…)

I leave in high spirits, having spent a good deal of money, but with the prospect ahead of warmth and comfort.

It’s pouring when I get home, and it promises to be a long dark day. My little Walkman radio plays comforting tunes of America—Cher, Elvis, the BeeGees. I do manage to light the gas burners easily with my new accendigas, and I sit reading in the kitchen till suddenly the key turns in the lock, and Joe appears in the doorway, completely bedraggled and soaking wet.

“What happened?”

“No bus came,” he says. “I waited and waited.”

“All this time?”

“Yes, till a man on a motor scooter passed me by and said didn’t I know there was a ‘sciopero?’ A bus strike?”

“You waited all this time? In the pouring rain?”

“He said in Italy there’s a strike every few days—trains, mail delivery, banks.”

“Well, don’t worry about missing class. Most of your students who take buses won’t be there either,” I remind him.

I help him peel off his wet clothes. On the stove (lit with success by the accendigas), I heat the water that’s still in the teapot and fill the hot water bag with it.

We get under the covers with the rubber bag between us. The sheets begin to warm at once. I offer Joe one of the Walkman’s two ear pieces, and fiddle with the tuning dial until I find music: Puccini’s “La Bohème.”

Perfect. We snuggle together listening to the tragic tale of love in a freezing garret while thunder rocks the countryside and lightning illuminates the sky.