Chapter Seven
I got on the train to Arezzo the next day. It was a relatively easy journey, my Florence apartment hadn’t been far from the station and I arrived in plenty of time to buy my ticket, work out the right platform and grab a coffee before I boarded. The train itself was beautifully air-conditioned, with comfy seats. The only thing that pissed me off was that there was specks of mud splattered all across the windows of my carriage which meant whilst I could still see out, it prevented me from enjoying the Tuscan countryside to the fullest extent.
Upon reaching Arezzo, I made my way up the hill from the station and found the apartment I would call home for the remainder of my trip. I took the key out of the lock-box next to the door and after battling with the lock for a few seconds, eventually found my way inside. My first glimpse prompted a response that had only occurred on a number of occasions previously.
It had occurred the first time I read The Catcher in the Rye. I finished the last page of the novel and sat unmoved for minutes afterwards, scared to fully close it for fear of somehow breaking the spell it had cast on me. It happened the first time I had taken a bite of an enchilada in my favourite Mexican restaurant, or the first time I had tasted a really good cheesecake, or in later years a vintage glass of wine. Or when my uncle had allowed me a glass of his rum liqueur. I could still recall the sweet, pungent sensation that had lingered in the back of my throat.
It occurred the first time I had met Laura Finney. In my first year of secondary school. I became aware of when she got up at the front of the class to deliver an assessed presentation to our French class. I was immediately struck by her juxtaposed modesty and confidence. She looked intimidated, frightened even, and I could see a small tear was hanging in the corner of her eye. And yet she delivered the speech perfectly, really enunciating every last syllable and nodding her head slightly as she did so, as if she was physically willing herself on. She had a clip at the parting of her hair and at one point in the presentation, her eyes found mine, just for a moment. On the word jouer. I watched her retake her seat at the window. I remember the flaps of the blind blew gently beside her as she leant against the wall.
So, this was the sensation that hit me as I entered my Arezzo apartment. Something resembling love at first sight. The place was lit only by the rays coming through the double-windows in the near-right corner. It was remarkably cool, even though I knew in advance that there was no air conditioning. This was due to the stone walls on the left-hand side, left bare and exposed by design. Their thickness must have been great enough as to block the heat from fully permeating from the outside.
Fabio, the owner, was an interior designer and so it made sense that in every little corner, in practically every available space, there was a randomly chosen object. For example, on the stone wall in the kitchen-come-living space, there was a large superhero poster, lifted straight from the pages of a comic-book. Also stuck on the walls were stickers, showing different cars and motorcycles. Above them were shelves that held everything from decanters to reed diffusers to framed photos of classic American advertisements for breakfast cereals.
There was a breakfast bar that separated the kitchen surfaces from the sofa and TV. It was situated in front of charcoal grey cupboards mounted on the back wall and more shelves, this time covered with little plant pots filled with lucky bamboo and cacti. And on top of the cupboards were a series of bottles, three different soft drinks and then three Heinekens. I had no idea if they still contained drink and didn’t want to test them, in fear of somehow ruining the carefully-assembled ambience of the space.
Better still was the large clock that hung above the sofa, sporting roman numerals in bold, black font and in its centre, an inscription that read: “University of Heidelberg.” That had been the university I had attended on my semester abroad and it only furthered my feeling that I was in a place that would very much feel like home.
Walking through the open doorway into the living room, the large double bed was positioned under a map of the world, painted directly onto the wall. There was a mirror next to me and then a clothes rack opposite it. Everything seemed perfectly positioned; there was a flow that extended from object to object. Next to the mirror was an alcove, that contained nothing but a tray of books, organised in a deliberately haphazard heap. There were also bizarre cubbyholes built into the walls, which you could open and see straight through. One even looked directly into the shower in the bathroom. It was even fit for a voyeur. A pervert’s paradise, as it were.
Finally, my favourite touch of all was located in one of the back corners of the bedroom, above a comfy-looking barrel armchair. It was a sign with a faded globe in the background and then at its front, just the words: “Not all those who wander are lost.” I laughed out loud when I noticed it and felt an intense giddiness wash over me. It was like the apartment was winking at me. As if the walls had perceived me, in the same moment I had first perceived them.
The location of the apartment was incredibly central. If I was to step out my front door, I’d step over the low-hanging chains that connected two bollards just outside. I’d head right and pass a small leather shop on the corner. If I were to take a left then, I’d have a short but steep trip up to the Piazza de Liberta. Where the town hall or municipo proudly stood. I could continue past it, crossing the road to climb the steps that protruded out from the cattedrale at the top of the hill. Beyond that was a beautiful circular park with the Monumento a Francesco Petrarcha in its centre, a large marble sculpture of various figures that looked as if they had merged together as one. The wear and tear on the sculpture only added to this feeling, as the marks on the marble gave it a distinctly liquid quality, as if the figures had gradually melted under the heat of the sun. To the left of the sculpture was a stunning view of the nearby hills and farms that lay on the outskirts of the city. And if I followed the park’s path all the way around, I would eventually arrive at the Fortezza Medicea, an imposing ancient ruin with a wide gate at its head, acting like the jaws of this great beast of a fortress.
If I were to take a right at the leather shop instead, I could either follow the hill down and come to the Basilica di San Francesco and perhaps stop for a glass of wine or a gelato under the watchful eye of the statue of Vittorio Fosambroni, an austere-looking figure that overlooked the adjacent piazza. Or I could take a quick left and follow the small street of Via Bicchieria which I knew roughly translated as ‘way of the glasses’, fitting for the stretch of restaurants that lined it. I would also pass a grand entrance to a theatre, of the ancient amphitheatre style. A welcome little snapshot of Arezzo’s Roman ancestry.
This route would lead me on to the Corso Italia, the longest and busiest street in the city, jam-packed with high-end retailers, cafes and restaurants. It was a strange juxtaposition of a street, seamlessly blending the ancient and the modern. I could still spot the odd mural or fresco on the weary limestone walls, but they would be tucked between women’s fashion stores and a video game shop. If I followed the long road all the way down, I’d eventually find a set of offices. And finally, the Piazza Guido Monaco, a roundabout with another sculpture as its midpoint, surrounded by pedestrians playing chicken with circling cars or flocks of pigeons, flapping and hopping their way across the grass.
The city’s main attraction lay just beyond the Corso Italia and was again only minutes from my front door: the Piazza Grande. It had been what I had most wanted to see in Arezzo, mostly due to my knowledge that it had featured in the Roberto Begnini film, Life is Beautiful. I was a shameless cinephile and would regularly visit somewhere if I knew it had some kind of cinematic heritage. It always seemed to me that it was life imitating art and not the other way around. As if the place existed in the film first and in reality second. And that by visiting, I had therefore ceased to exist in the present for the moment and had instead briefly stepped inside the sphere of the silver screen.
The Piazza was a wonderfully abstract place. It wasn’t actually much of a square at all but rather a sloping, lopsided oblong. It was steepest in the near side to me, with the squares of the courtyard tilting up as they ran along the side of the church and heritage museum. The museum had four matching front windows, all with large iron bars that bulged out of the frames, wider at the bottom so they looked like chequered metal water jugs. In true Tuscan style, it seemed that even the window bars required some kind of artistic expression.
At the back of the Piazza was the Vasari Logge, a tall, aqueduct-like structure that offered shade and shelter to the cafes and restaurants within. It was made up of a series of stone pillars that rose up to create arches, ensuring the piazza life could still be viewed and enjoyed. And then the rest was formed of a mishmash of old, stone buildings, all of different widths and heights, with cafes and tabaccherias at their entrances. They were adorned with flags of the region, vivid shields of differing colours, showing lions and eagles and wolves as their insignias. It was a square that I could just as easily imagine playing host to a coronation or a royal wedding as a public beheading. It belonged to a different age, an age of knights and scrolls and epic ballads. There was a deep, dusky well just in front of the arches of the Vasari Logge. Presumably where they used to dispose of the heads of the executed.
Arezzo had lived up to my expectations. It was just as cultured and surprising and stylish as I remembered. And with my trendy studio home right at the heart of it, I felt I had managed to be more than just a visitor. I had successfully sewn myself into the fabric of the place, if only for a few weeks.
Chapter Fourteen
During the time I had to myself whilst Chiara worked at the museum, I returned to my new hobby of finding random excursions in Arezzo and the surrounding areas. I had read in a guidebook mention of the Ponte Buriano, a famous bridge located a few miles out of the city, that was believed to have been painted by Da Vinci, in the background of the Mona Lisa
It was essentially just a bridge in the middle of the Tuscan countryside, with no real encouragement or incentive for tourists to visit, in the form of any direct public transport or car parks. This only appealed to me more, with the bridge becoming the object of a kind of spiritual pilgrimage that I wanted to undertake.
I made my way to a bus stop on the edge of Arezzo, wandering up and down the street a few times before deciding I had located the correct spot. Buses in Italy were imbued with the same vigilante spirit as the cars. In the sense that one never really seemed to arrive at the time advertised, often bore no relation to the expected number, whilst most tellingly, the drivers would not stop unless you were essentially already hanging halfway out the door.
By these standards, my bus journey was relatively straightforward and stress-free as I followed the route on my phone as we drove along the winding country roads, making sure I pressed the button and was standing ready at the door well in advance of my stop. The driver pulled over slightly to his right, on what appeared to be no more than a hard shoulder on the edge of the bridge. I muttered a “grazie” and hopped out.
My surroundings were, as I had expected, wholly bare and unremarkable. They were so unremarkable in fact that if I had successfully stumbled across the ‘nowhere’ I had sarcastically informed Ben that I was searching for. There were a series of signs to mark the bridge and a map of the nearby nature reserve that had faded beneath the moss that had grown over it. Opposite me was an ordinary street corner with no sign of commercial life, except for, of all things, a unisex hairdressers. There was a barn-like structure on the river bank, consisting of some half-finished stone walls and a patched-together-roof. A Da Vinci painting, this was not.
Most worryingly, I couldn’t actually see the bridge at all. I followed the road around the corner and came to a small tabaccheria that was boarded up. A fitting allegory for the whole place. If it hadn’t have been for some cycling teenagers, I might never have found what I had come looking for. They appeared over the road from me, riding down a dirt-track that I had disregarded as part of someone’s private property. Their appearance made me inspect the area more closely. The sight of a children’s play area of slides and swings was encouraging and then a public service sign of what you could and couldn’t do suggested that I was in fact allowed to be there. I continued on past the strange, deserted yard and was delighted to see a series of benches spaced out along the edge of the river and the famous arches of the Ponte Buriano finally within view.
It was completely empty, save for one man sat on a bench a few down from the one I selected as my own. I greeted him with my cheeriest “ciao” as I passed and he offered me a nod of acknowledgment. I took my seat and looked out to take in the scene unfolding in front of me.
The Arno was stretched wide between the two banks and the water lay perfectly still. Blossom had fallen from the overhanging trees and created a thin carpet that extended through two of the bridge’s arches on either side. Plants grew tall on each bank, reaching over my head height, with green and brown weeds tucked beneath them, rising from the level of the water. However, amidst all this untamed foliage, there were still touches of beauty, as specks of lavender had started to grow out at the top of the banks, granting drops of purple to the otherwise mossy green reefs.
And then there was the bridge. Still perfectly intact, and sturdy enough for waves of cars to pass over every few minutes. Made from a combination of different stones, ranging from sand-coloured to an almost silverish grey; with seemingly not one individual brick having fallen from it. Moss grew out of the pillars on either side, settling in wiry tufts on their tops, to give the illusion of stone pineapples. And then the arches. Short and wide, giving a big enough gap that it looked like the bridge had taken long, measured steps across the river.
And even on a uncharacteristically grey day for Tuscany, their reflective power was still on show. The bridge was perfectly mirrored below it, to the extent that the arches ceased to in fact be arches at all and were instead complete circles, separated only by the water level. It was two bridges in one. The reality a practical passing point for commuters in and out of the Arezzo area and beyond; its reverse image a reminder of its timeless, artistic credentials.
As I observed it, I noticed splashes and ripples, no bigger than the press of a finger, start to appear sporadically in the water. And I felt a drop a moisture briefly glaze the back of my neck. It had started to rain. Ever so gently, and not to an extent that would sour the experience. Instead, it just brought the landscape picture in my mind’s eye sparking into life. The river rippling and flickering like a dormant piano that had suddenly and spontaneously released a tune.
The man down from me left his bench and walked nonchalantly to reach his car, parked on the curb nearby. I watched him drive off and disappear round the corner, next to the raggedy old barn. I was fascinated by him. He had clearly come for no other purpose than to find some time for himself, with only the famous, old bridge for company. It was like he was visiting an old friend, able to silently speak and share with it secrets he could tell no-one else.
I think it must have been his actions that inspired me, but I began to have the urge to explore further into the countryside. To delve a little more into the wilderness. I looked at my location on my phone and saw what was around me. The nearest sign of civilisation was a town called Castiglion Fibochhi, which was about an hour’s walk away. I considered it for a few moments before I rose from the bench and headed away from the Ponte Buriano and off on a mini adventure.
I discovered fairly quickly into my journey that the path would mainly consist of walking on the sides of some busy roads. I figured my random expedition wouldn’t be as effective or enjoyable if I was killed en route and so I decided to get off at the nearest junction on the route and head off-piste. It was as I was walking along the meandering, narrow roads that I subsequently discovered, with rows of grape vines and sunflowers on either side of me and the dusky hills in the background, the feeling of freedom I had been craving. I unbuttoned my shirt and raised my arms in the air as I stared up at the sky, basking in my own glorious isolation.
I continued to stray further from the initial route by cutting down one of the gravel paths that dissected two of the vineyards. I had no idea if it was private land or if I was trespassing, but I didn’t care. There was not another soul that crossed paths with me for at least an hour, and I continued to tread along the dusty walkway, deeply embroiled in nothing but my own thoughts.
Eventually, I came to a tiny monument, that looked like a worn-down confessional with a small statue of an angel at its peak. Beside it was a graveyard, with a locked gate at its front, but with the graves still visible within. I peered in to read them. The writing had faded on the small, square tombstones but there were fresh flowers laid at the base of some of them. I supposed that there couldn’t have been more than twenty-five graves in the entire plot. It was the kind of graveyard you could surely only find by accident, as I had managed to do.
And it was there that I made a vow, spoken out loud to no-one. I would be buried in this plot. I would need to tell somebody, probably Seb, of my intentions in the time leading up to my death. Perhaps I would write him a letter, complete with instructions and some loose co-ordinates of where to find the graveyard. And I would set him the goal of burying me there, or at least overseeing the process of me being buried there. It seemed so perfect to me. The middle of nowhere, in a place you could only find by accident. My remains planted in Tuscan soil, with a flower brought there every few years by any who still remembered me. Maybe someone could pluck some of the lavender that lined the banks by the Ponte Buriano, thus copying and honouring the journey I had taken myself. The thought made me smile and I finished the rest of my walk in excellent spirits.
George F Brown 