by Olivia Fane
‘I should think,’ said Thomas, ‘that it’s probably the most perfect medieval city on this earth.’
‘What’s the Renaissance?’ asked Josiah.
‘Haven’t you learnt about the Renaissance at school?’
‘Nope,’ said Josiah. He was watching a dragon-fly come into land on a rock in the middle of the stream, and was wondering what on earth could have induced it to have landed there, in such a precarious place, its wiry legs struggling to attach themselves to the slimy greenness. He told Thomas to hold on a minute while he took the role of rescuer, but it all took more than a minute, and the charming sight of Josiah balancing on rocks in the spray to save a beleaguered dragon-fly, who would probably have managed perfectly well without him, irritated rather than enchanted his educator.
‘Now, the Renaissance! This was the period when Western Europe said yes! to Civilization.’
‘I wish no one had ever said ‘yes’ to civilization. I don’t want to be civilized. I want to stretch out my arms for all I’m worth and have no one tell me ever that they’re stretched too far. Anyway, luckily Siena was built before civilization got a grip, is that right?’
‘Four large volumes could be written on that little speech, Josiah. Human beings are complicated. Man does not live on bread alone. First we are the animal, responding to nature; but we have large brains, and we make life easier for ourselves – we farm, we build houses, we live in communities – and that’s why we have to make rules for ourselves, and we have to obey them, for the good of everyone. Socrates was sentenced to death, accused of corrupting youth. His friends begged him to escape, but no, he drank his hemlock. The laws were bigger than he was. He never said, “Hey! I’ve been unjustly treated, I’m getting out of here!” And even now we’re struck by what he did, there’s a nobility about it, don’t you think?’
‘Not really. Some laws are good, some bad. I don’t think we should obey bad laws.’
‘There is a justice above justice, Josiah, and that justice would have us obey laws which were not perfectly just. I think Socrates was right. What if a poor man stole from a rich man and his defence in court was that he was obeying “a higher justice than the justice of the land?” He might even be right, in an absolute sense, but that’s irrelevant. Josiah, there’d be anarchy. Imagine in a court of law: was this man acting out of greed? Or because he had intuited an absolute of right? No one can see inside us, no one knows our motives, quite often we don’t even know our own.’
‘Do you believe in justice, then?’
‘Even you will, after your visit to Siena. Siena believed in justice, Josiah. What’s remarkable about Siena is that it seemed to spring from the very souls of the Siennese. In Florence you have a classical idea let loose upon it. It was the vision of an elite, those who had money and power. Siena is more like classical Athens, essentially democratic, whose true ruler was Virtue enthroned, and recognized by all.’
‘I’m hot. I’m going to lie down in the stream,’ Josiah announced suddenly.
‘What, here?’
‘Yes, right here. Don’t worry, it’s only six inches deep here, I won’t drown.’ Josiah took off his trainers and lay down fully clothed on the sandy bed of the stream. He closed his eyes and felt the cold water gliding over him.
‘That feels so good. Come and lie next to me, Thomas.’
And Thomas thought, ‘Why the hell shouldn’t I?’ And he did.
Their clothes were still damp when they reached the village of Buonconto. It was three in the afternoon, hot and dry, the old pale stone dazzling in contrast to the rich dark green of the valleys which surrounded it. Its one shop was still shut, so they sat at a table in the square with the sun on their backs and Thomas ordered two bottles of beer from the local trattoria.
‘Due birre per favore,’ he said in his best Italian to the squat old lady in a black dress and shawl.
‘Bene,’ she muttered and went to fetch them.
They drank their beers; Josiah said he wasn’t surprised that there wasn’t a god of beer because it was bitter stuff. He, like the, gods preferred wine. Thomas said that when he was fifteen he wouldn’t have been seen dead with a glass of wine, it was considered bourgeois and wet. Then a bus on its way to Siena stopped right by them and Thomas found out from its driver that the only other daily bus left at nine in the morning.
‘We’re going to be getting up early this week,’ he said.
The shop was tiny but half of it was devoted to fresh cheeses and dried hams; and the two sat on its steps eating large wedges of gorgonzola before setting off home with two large bags of supplies. In the evening, which was to become a regular fixture of their day, Thomas read Josiah passages from Dante’s Inferno, or they translated The Aeneid together. Their desire was stilled, even somehow satisfied. They were tired, fulfilled, happy, and they both thought there were no more questions to be asked, now they knew how to share a bed.
By the time they were on the bus the following day Josiah knew these things about Siena: that it was built on three hills, and that farmland still came right up to the city walls, and that its geography was so integral to it that walking down one street you might just glimpse another a half a mile away running up another hill. He knew about the Council of Nine Good Men, men chosen to be ‘Defenders of the Commune and the People of Siena’ in the fourteenth century, and men chosen, quite literally, on account of their goodness – proved first and foremost by their having been fair and kind employers, whether they were bankers, spice-dealers or goldsmiths. If you were from the nobility or were a judge, you had no chance, too many vested interests, you couldn’t even put your name forward as a candidate. Siena’s rulers must come del mezzo – from the common people – they must be ordinary: and with an extraordinary level of trust invested in them, the Nine Good Men were able to transform Siena. They had ideals, they had passion, they really believed they could make things better. They broadened the main streets, they gave instructions to the citizens on how they should build their houses, and above all they commissioned artists, not just for the pleasure of the elite, but for everyone. They built the Palazzo Publico in the main square, and its bell tower, the Torre del Mangia, perhaps the most famous landmark of Siena, and from the top of which the beauty of the city can be held in the palm of a hand.
Thomas proved a good guide, Josiah a good and curious tourist. On that first morning they walked up to the Duomo, the cathedral on the summit of the Castelvecchio, resplendent in dark green, pink and white marble.
‘It took nearly two hundred years to build,’ said Thomas, ‘and every Sienese artist and craftsman of any distinction worked on it. The citizens themselves oversaw the project at first, but when the Nine Good Men were in power, their plans for it grew even more ambitious – the whole of the Duomo would be a mere transept of a cathedral which would outdo in magnificence Brunelleschi’s dome in Florence, which funnily enough had been built to rival this Duomo – there was no end of these Tuscans vying with each other. But the Black Death put a stop to those plans, probably rightly so, in my opinion. I’ve never asked you if you’re religious at all?’
Josiah said, ‘My mother baptized me in Polish vodka. I was about three when she told me. She told me it was very special stuff for special boys. Of course I didn’t have a clue what vodka was, I thought it was a Polish word, I thought it was something very mysterious you could only find far away.’
‘How old were you when you knew the truth?’
‘I was quite old, eleven or twelve, the residents of The Hollies don’t go in for vodka much. Even so many years on, I felt hugely betrayed by her, like I was a butt of her joke. My father was the good, consistent, reliable one, he was the grown-up.’ Josiah paused. ‘You wouldn’t think that now, would you? How could they let him get so fat in there? He was never fat like that.’
‘He’s ill, Josiah.’
‘No he’s not. He’s just sad. Sometimes I think I make him even sadder. Perhaps he felt better when he had forgotten all abou
t me.’
‘He wouldn’t have forgotten you, ever.’
‘Probably not,’ mused Josiah.
‘Do you know what happened to your mother?’
Josiah shook his head.
‘She’s not dead then.’
‘She might be.’
‘Perhaps one day she’ll just turn up.’
Josiah shrugged, as though it didn’t matter whether she did or not.
On the road up to the Duomo they passed the strange, separate inhabitants of the late twentieth century world. There were middle-aged women in shorts with bulging stomachs under white tee-shirts; there were babies in sunglasses lolling in their high-tech, fat-wheeled pushchairs; whining children complaining in a half a dozen languages; sullen, sweating fathers cajoling them, present in body, and absent in mind. There were Americans buying postcards, photo-shoots when faces momentarily lit up; Siennese shop-keepers looking anxiously for trade. A particular eager one approached Josiah and Thomas with a basketful of flags, and on every one a different animal, perhaps a goose, dragon or giraffe.
‘Go on,’ said Thomas, ‘I’ll buy you one.’
‘Palio, Palio,’ said the shopkeeper.
‘Si, si, Palio,’ said Thomas wisely, and looking to Josiah, he said, ‘On the sixteenth of August we’ll be coming to the Palio, the greatest and the oldest horserace in Western Europe.’
‘Is there a racecourse round here?’
‘The racecourse is the town. Siena is everything,’ said Thomas proudly, as though he’d been born there.
Josiah had chosen a flag with a black eagle splayed across it. He was waving it as happily as if he were a boy of six.
‘Now,’ said Thomas, ‘there are, and always have been, seventeen contradas in Siena. Think of them as electoral wards. No, don’t think of them as something so banal! Each has a different animal and a different colour, and in the Palio every horse is decked out in its contrada’s insignia, and ridden bareback round the Campo. We can’t miss it, Josiah. You’ll remember the sight forever.’
‘I’m sure I will,’ said Josiah absent-mindedly.
They’d nearly reached the Duomo, and they squinted in the sunlight to admire it in its entirety.
‘Do you think the people who built this amazing thing were building it for God?’ asked Josiah.
‘They all believed in God in those days, and they took it as a given that everyone they met would be a fellow-Christian. There was no soul-searching, no new-age stuff, no pick-and-mix religion. When the great Siennese artist Duccio completed his Maesta, which means ‘majesty’, Josiah, and always depicts the Virgin Mary and her worshippers, there was no one who questioned that its rightful place was above the high altar in the Duomo. And the night they carried it there, every single inhabitant of Siena, every man, woman and child carried burning tapers and processed around the Campo, and all the bells of Siena pealed the Gloria. They would have walked right up this street, as we are, and they’d be carrying the insignia of their contrade, perhaps they would have been waving flags like yours, and all the while they would be offering prayers and giving alms to the poor. Why did we ever have to become individuals, Josiah? Did we ever realise it would be such a curse?’
‘I don’t think it’s been a curse. Crowds are dangerous. They all believe the same thing. That’s spooky.’
‘Believing different things doesn’t make us any happier.’
‘But you’re a truth-seeker, Tom. What has happiness got to do with anything?’
‘I’m happy now,’ said Thomas, seriously. ‘I’d say, quite a lot.’
They entered through the great medieval door of the Duomo della Santa Maria dell’Assunto, as sure in each other’s love as a bride and bridegroom, and for a boy who had never even seen inside a church the effect was mesmeric. Josiah was to say that it didn’t feel like being in a building at all, there was no sense of prosaic things like walls, floors and ceilings; it was rather like being inside a jewel, where every surface had been cut with only beauty in mind, or perhaps heaven, or perhaps this was the place where the two became one.
‘Marmor lapis deorum est,’ said Thomas, because nowadays the two had taken to speaking in Latin when the spirit moved them.
‘Vere dicis,’ replied his companion.
And if marble is the stone of the gods, not only was the floor paved in it but every wall and column was carved in stripes of black and white, ascending high into the ethereal hexagonal dome, as though it were a work of nature rather than art: and the very highest point of it was studded with stars. Josiah, being only a boy, lay under that dome on the marble without a thought in the world, and because his expression was one of awe rather than mischief, no one disturbed him.
The following days they were more observers of the particular: Pisano’s pulpit, with its seven panels depicting scenes from the life of Christ; the frescoes in the Chapel of St John the Baptist, the plaster busts of a hundred and seventy popes made in 1570, and the third century Roman copy of the Three Graces in the Libreria Piccolomini, and a hundred other things which enchanted the pair hugely. But perhaps these two felt at their most intimate poring over the illuminated anthems of the fifteenth century, written in Latin, of course, which instinctively made them feel, somehow, conspiratorial: for these songs of praise were written in their language, and lived only for them.
The Duomo led them to the Basilica, and St Catherine of Siena’s head, stolen by her adorers in 1380 from Rome and smuggled here in a bag along with one of her hands. So her body with one hand was buried in Rome; while her head was mummified along with the other hand in Siena. Which city had the greater prize? St Catherine herself would argue that neither did, that the body should be mortified to reveal the spirit within it, and if it wasn’t actively being flagellated by her religious order – both by friars and her fellow sisters – it should at least be being starved.
‘She was mad,’ insisted Josiah, peering through a thick glass window to survey the thick leathery hide of St Catherine’s sunken cheeks.
‘She was also charming, apparently. Everyone loved her. And the greater and more acute her physical pain, the greater her spiritual exultation and the closer she felt to Jesus. She had visions lasting three months. And then she would emerge and help the sick and the dying – she was fearless, death was nothing to her. Yet she wasn’t mad. Far from it: she was quite at home in the world of church politics and reform, and impressed every Pope who met her. Even on her death bed she was issuing instructions on some aspect of reunification. Denying the fleshly demands of the body was considered part and parcel of the life of any Christian. St Catherine dedicated her virginity to Christ when she was only seven.’
‘How did she know what virginity was at that age?’
‘She was the twenty-fourth of twenty-five children in a dyer’s family. Perhaps she’d overheard her mother nagging her father to keep his hands off her. She would probably have shared a bedroom with them.’
‘So what would St Catherine say to me?’ asked Josiah, guilelessly. ‘About desire.’
‘I don’t get you,’ said Thomas, less guilelessly.
‘According to our biology teacher, it’s natural for adolescent boys to think about sex almost constantly.’
‘Do you? I don’t think you do, do you?’
‘Sometimes I feel like an industrial electrical cable which has been cut down, and there’s a vast current running through me which doesn’t know where to go.’
Thomas’ lips puckered responsibly. ‘I think St Catherine would tell you to fast.’
Josiah looked disappointed.
‘The last time I was here you could buy replicas of St Catherine’s scourge in the gift shop. Perhaps I should whip you mercilessly.’
‘I should like that,’ said Josiah.
Thomas couldn’t tell if he was joking. He stood back a foot to survey Josiah’s beauty. ‘You’re not serious!’
‘I think I see the point of a sound whipping,’ said Josiah, flirtatiously.
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�Which is?’
‘If you’re in pain, it’s as if you don’t exist anymore. You can’t plot and plan, you can’t say one thing and be another. It’s too complicated. You’re literally, beside yourself in pain. Doesn’t “ecstasy” mean, “standing outside yourself?” The thing about pain, is that you’re set free from being you, and sometimes being you is the greater pain.’
‘How did you manage to get there, Josiah, at your tender age?’
‘Aha, Tom, I still have secrets.’
‘As I have from you,’ said Thomas, aware of sounding childishly competitive.
‘I bet you never had your parents disappear into thin air one day, boom!’ Josiah clapped his hands, like a conjuror. ‘You’ve never had to ask, day after day, year after year, “Where are they?” to the only wankers who could possibly help you, and who barely seem to notice you’ve asked a question.’ Josiah was shouting, gesticulating. People were beginning to stare. Thomas put a finger to his mouth and pleaded, ‘Shh.’
The boy obliged. He spoke so quietly Thomas could barely hear him. ‘Sometimes I just want to lose myself. I just want not to exist.’
Thomas’s every instinct was to hug the boy, but they were in the Basilica, the large, empty public space which invited God’s presence, not human intimacy. So Thomas patted him – oh a pat isn’t very good when you wish to be taken up in someone’s arms! – and he said, ‘At least you have your father now!’ But these words failed equally miserably; Josiah looked at him as if he was some alien who could never understand him, and he said, ‘You call Gibson a father?’
Thomas took Josiah out of the Basilica, and out of Siena, and they didn’t go back there for a week; the bus left too early, and there was too much lying together to be done. If truth be told, half a single bed would have been ample for them, and in the morning they watched the sun rise in their own chapel, the red, musky glow giving way to a white sharp light. Thomas kissed the boy’s hair, often and happily; Josiah held onto Thomas’ hand under the blankets as tightly as Michaelangelo’s Adam had yearned to take the hand of his God. Then, at eight in the morning, with Josiah lying in the crook of his arm, Thomas said, ‘I think Plato was wrong to be so dismissive of shadows.’