Il Duomo

One day I’ll go back through the Tuscan hills, which to me are mountains, past the vineyards and the olive groves and the cities set surprisingly beneath a pale yellow sun. I will cast my blue-black shadow over sage grass and foot-worn paving stones, and watch the sunset spring from cloud to cloud in daring acrobatic glory through the pitted surface of a window on a winding train. Somewhere past Cortona, on its tipsy seat, before the perfect dome of Firenze is visible above her crowded streets, I’ll find myself inside the rough arms of an ancient Etruscan city called Arezzo, and I’ll feel at home.
It was the walls that made the city mine. I had to pass beneath them every time I entered, through the arches waiting stoically atop the hill. They made the city feel alive, embodied. American cities sprawl, their edges broken by the tire tracks of SUV’s, sprouting suburbs like fungal faerie rings in concentric circles. They are indecisive. They are an operator’s nightmare, making 411 a game of guess and check with patient callers digging through their memories for different county names to try. My Italian city set its limits and simply made the people chose the safety of the wall or the freedom of the hills beyond.
You cannot be ambiguously in Arezzo, with its shortened towers and it steeply climbing hill - there is in and there is out. It shrugs its shoulders at the baking midday sun, sending cobblestones shivering down it back in crowded streets. Piazzas throw themselves open to the café tables of osterias which open barely long enough each night for a slew of languid dinner dates before they tuck themselves away and watch the people come out and fill the streets with talk and window shop at ten in the evening, pushing children in strollers, making dates, meeting friends.
From where I stay, without the city walls, the throng of people that it holds will disappear, recede behind the stony heights. At my window I count the cypress trees, I trace the aqueducts with a careful finger. There are the city fields, where I would make my stand in time of war, a soupspoon waving proudly above my silver kettle helm. There are the chestnut trees along the swooning track I risk my life to run before I eat and start the day. Gallantly the road sweeps bows to every stuccoed ochre villa, nodding at the gated drive of a minor palazzo where the Count is still a presence here above the town, surrounded by his carefully tended hedges, protected by a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary and her child.
And in the distance, my church. A spindly, cobblestone thing, red clay roof and sandstone floating on the lights of the town below it like a lonely vessel on a silent sea. My church, amidst the fairy lights, the eerily fixed reflections of a thousand stars that quivered and hid in the glare from their earthly doubles until the incandescent amber glow was more authentic than the sky above.
I’ve never been. A dozen steps, as long across as the space allowed, set the church apart in the crowded piazza and leveled ministering stares at passerby. They stood like frozen sentries and gathered dust and leaves and tourists until the cold of autumn slowed the summer winds that blew them in and only snow was left to settle there from Sunday night to Saturday. A thousand times I passed them, swept away the smeared edges of forgetfulness with darting glances that kept them crisply marching in the corners of my mind. Occasionally I brushed along their lowest tier, feet finding purchase on the grey gold edges of the rounding blocks of stone, but then some business called me back into the warren of the winding streets. From time to time the evening crowds would force me up along the sagging ranks to make my way as best I could with one leg longer then the other, but I never made it to the top. Something always kept me hobbling along, at cross-purposes to the heavy steps; though I felt their solemn gaze, I never bathed the polished handles of the doors in cooling sweat from palms that clenched unconsciously against the cold until the incline filled my lungs and legs and face with heat that spread beneath my sweaters and my jeans, and struggled through my tangled curls. The heavy doors remained austerely still.
In the morning, my church peaked through the shutters at me, blinking in the early sun. At dusk, the light sank gradually behind its spire: first the yellows, then the oranges, and, finally the reds, until at last only a dusty pink lingered in the mountains, curling through the blue and violet cypress trees, and licking up the gravel roads they walked. And all day in between the pino grigio sunrises and the vin santos sunsets, the light was drawn and dragged and pulled across the layered tiles, as though the spire of the church were acting like a lightning rod for the midmorning sun.
I flirted with it, when I ran, or walked along the hills, or into town. Here and there the olive groves broke apart and let a piece of ancient wall pass in among their ranks, and through these cracks, I could watch my church grow larger or smaller, turn this way and that. I saw it winking at me in the frost, through streams of breath grown heavy in the chilly air. At night I let it walk me home, say goodnight before I went to sleep and wish me pleasant dreams. I saw it every morning when I woke and let it welcome me when I returned from traveling, let it lead me home and wave me off.
And still I never entered it. If the city walls contained me, then my church contained my wanderlust. I could be happy in the grip of Etruscan walls and let my curiosity run through darkened rooms that held the whole of what I’d never seen. Inside the doors I never opened lay a world of things to contemplate, waiting patiently for me to think of them, calling plaintively like pealing bells. I would be happy to be confined and find myself a traveler in the changing light that filtered through the swelling clouds and picked out angles I had never seen although I watched them as I went about my day.
Leaving Arezzo, I felt some part of me tear, my friends running along behind the fleeing train, the chiseled edges of the city softening with distance and a darkness that was tender pink. I sank into the seat, the musical Italian on the speaker like a scratched record I ignored, and felt some part of me that would not leave the loving walls. Against the rushing fields that were flinging me away, I saw the ground rise sharply toward my steadfast church, the buildings leaning on each other for support. I followed alleyways that wound me upwards until at last I caught my breath and leaned a hand against a solid, silent door. I could see it only in pieces, it was so great – the cast iron of the handle and the gleaming white of wood worn down with so many Sundays worth of hands. I felt the heavy grain curl softly and laid my palm against a dark knot. Inside the sound of music whispered through the keyhole and for the first time I thought that I would do it, enter it, confront myself, admit my curiosity was stronger than this strange compelling superstition which told me I would lose all of it if I ever went inside…
The train lurched and I realized that the light had left me staring at my reflection on a darkened windowpane, fled behind the mountains that were leaving me as well and only taking more time in taking leave.
One day I’ll go back through the Tuscan mountains, I’ll take a train towards Florence and get off before that city has the chance to say hello. In a small town called Arezzo, I will buy a bottle of wine and push my legs against the leaning streets until I’m hot and sticking to the inside of my shirt, until I think I may have lost my breath and wonder how I ever made the climb. When I reach the top, a church will be there waiting for me in the sun or covered by a thin layer of snow. It will be empty, or open, or full. I will admire the many steps, the terracotta shingled roof, the well-carved wood of the heavy doors…
And, after a moment, I’ll move on. I’ll pass beneath the walls and out the other side, find a road and follow it as far away as I can get. I will look back, as I go my way, but see that the city no longer holds me in its arms. Instead, a little piece of me has fled inside the church.