Seven Seasons in Siena by Robert Rodi

Author:Robert Rodi [Rodi, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-52107-1
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-06-21T04:00:00+00:00

HISTORY and LEGEND

…

HAVING RENEWED MY ACQUAINTANCE WITH GIULIANO Ghiselli at the captain’s dinner, it seems almost natural that he should show up the next morning on C3 Toscana, Siena’s TV station, talking at me while I have my cup of orzo and biscuit as breezily as he addressed me the night of the cena. This, it turns out, is one of his documentaries—Fra Cronaca e Leggenda, or “Between History and Legend,” in which he tours some of the less renowned streets and byways of Siena, offering conflicting accounts of how they’ve come to acquire their names, including both the official version and the folkloric alternative—most of which, Dario tells me, he just made up. He’s an amiable, engaging host, and I enjoy myself tremendously, though the folkloric accounts all seem to hinge on idiomatic phrases that I don’t really understand. But even through the thicket of wordplay it’s clear that Giuliano knows Siena backward, forward, inside out, and upside down (and some of the camera angles make this quite explicit, to the point that I actually get a little dizzy).

So I arrange to meet him for a drink. He’s a fount of knowledge on Caterpillar history and legend, and I’m eager to soak some of it up.

We’re to rendezvous at the nameless bar the brucaioli patronize so loyally. Despite the briskness of the air I seat myself at one of the two small outdoor tables; it’s still a kick for me, feeling sufficiently confident to place myself here at the literal crossroads of Caterpillar society, where you can see, and be seen by, everybody. Not that anybody much is out and about today; the streets are noticeably quieter in late autumn than they are in high summer. But that just makes it easier to spot Giuliano when he comes ambling up the street, hands folded behind him. After we greet each other and sit down, he initiates the first of many steps involved in lighting his pipe, a process which, for me, compares with the Japanese tea ceremony as an example of mere consumption elevated to civilized ritual. It takes a certain kind of man to smoke a pipe, a certain gravitas, which Giuliano, despite the nimbleness of his wit and his readiness to laugh, seems to possess in spades.

We get a round of drinks; I order a Sangiovese, thinking I still have to learn to drink like an Italian, but Giuliano pulls a fast one on me by ordering coffee. Too late for me to switch; but the Sangiovese will at least take the chill off. Then we get down to talking. I have a few very particular things to ask him, the first of which concerns the Palio straordinario of 1945, held in celebration of the end of World War II and hence called the Palio di pace—the Peace Palio. Ironically, it ended in a piazzawide fistfight—with the Caterpillar at the center of it. I of course understand that after so many years without a race (the contrada

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