Bella Figura

by Kamin Mohammadi

  I took my breakfast outside as everyone in the bar stared. I cringed under their gaze but stepped out into the cold January morning anyway, compelled by the English need to soak up the sun at any given opportunity, and I settled myself, shivering slightly, on a bench to offer my face to the sun. Opposite the side door of Rifrullo there was a pizzeria, a tiny wine bar, and a swish-looking deli. Above all these, more apartments in spice-colored palazzi, two stories of windows fanned by open shutters. This short street led to a small square to the left where cars were parked at anarchic angles with mopeds squeezed in between, encircled at the far side by a crenelated wall, grass sprouting through the worn bricks: an intact part of the medieval city wall into which was cut the large open arch of the city gate of San Miniato. It was the same soothing sand color of my tower and its crumbling surface had protected the city for centuries.

  I sipped at my cappuccino, savoring its perfect mix of bitter coffee with creamy, frothy milk. When I was a child, one of my favorite aunts would sometimes pick me up from school and take me to a sophisticated café in Tehran, full of intellectuals wreathed in cigarette smoke, to drink café glacés—a concoction of coffee, milk, and vanilla ice cream served in a tall glass long before Frappuccinos were a glint in a marketing man’s eye. I had been addicted to coffee ever since and now smiled to think that here I would never have to drink a bad coffee again.

  After my coffee, I followed via di San Niccolò around a corner and found the plain façade of the church, its tower—the guest star of my kitchen window—set somewhere behind, invisible from where I stood. I placed my palms on the vast iron ring handles, molded by centuries of hands, and pushed open the heavy wooden doors as Michelangelo must have done, seeking refuge. I too had run away as surely as if I had tied up my belongings on a stick carried on my shoulder.

  The cool interior was disappointingly plain, not a fresco in sight. I took a pew and thought gloomily of the career that had turned sour. And I also allowed myself to remember the man whose love had, for a brief moment, burned away the dark corners of loneliness in that strangely empty life. I tried to push away the flood of memories; a year and a half had passed, but I was still haunted by the way Nader had ended our relationship: over Skype, by telling me that I was too good for him, that he loved me too much—a reasoning, not surprisingly, I had not been able to follow. A few weeks later an email whose words were seared into my mind—he wanted to tell me himself that he was about to marry his ex. My cheeks burned again with fury, with self-pity. He had loved me so much that he married someone else…It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. If it hadn’t happened to me.

  An old man shuffled into the pew next to me, smelling of cigarettes and stale urine. I wiped the tears from my face and left.

  * * *

  —

  Just five years ago, I had been on top of the world. At thirty-two, I had landed my dream job as editor of a glossy magazine. I was given a department to manage, new business to win, and within a year that one magazine had grown to three.

  My original dream, though, had been to be a writer. In my twenties, I’d worked for a guidebook publisher, combining writing and travel. I had fun all over the world, rejecting the security my parents had steered me toward—no husband, no mortgage, no business card. Just lots of unsuitable boyfriends and stamps in my passport. And then there was a new millennium; my twenties were behind me and life came to get me. I had been left stranded, homeless, and broke after a particularly bad breakup, and I needed some stability to get over it, to rebuild my life. The security of magazine work beckoned and I landed the Big Job. My parents made no secret of their relief. Finally I had grown up, I could hear them thinking, was settling down. A mortgage and a husband could be only a matter of time.

  That first two fast and furious years had been challenging but exhilarating. I didn’t mind the long hours, the breakfast meetings, the late nights, the weekend brainstorms—they kept me busy and I was learning a lot. Then, one evening at a restaurant, after a day of making difficult staffing decisions, a waiter asked me if I wanted still or sparkling water, and my mind went blank. I stared at him, and to my dinner companion’s amazement, I burst into tears.

  It may be the modern scourge, but I knew nothing really about stress and its long-term effects, beyond the bragging cry from every corner of our building of “Oh, I am so stressed.” After all, stress was the necessary fuel that oiled the wheels of deadlines and high-octane magazine production, an essential by-product of the coalface of creativity we toiled at.

  Once stress had moved in, it took over completely. Life was a storm and I was just battling through it every day. Harder to ignore was the weight that started piling on and the spots that erupted. Two years into my job, a few months after a new boss had been put in charge of my department, I was covered in acne. I was already in a daily battle with clothes that pinched and pulled, but with my skin so marked, I could barely face the day. Increasingly, a blank feeling washed over me, and when I wasn’t required to deal with urgent situations, my mind fogged over.

  I thought I was just tired. But on the first morning of a trip to an exotic resort in the Maldives—one of the perks of my job—I could not get out of bed, waking up crying for no reason, filled with an emptiness that made it impossible to know how to get through the day—even though all it promised was sunshine and the sea—let alone the whole lifetime that stretched ahead of me.

  Burnout. I had lain in that vast bed with its high-thread Egyptian cotton sheets and I thought how appropriate that expression was. I did feel burned out: emptied of all joy, my energy in cinders, all curiosity in myself, the world and others a pile of ashes.

  It didn’t help that I was single and my figure did not conform to the emaciated proportions magazines like mine glorified—I myself had fallen victim to the deep dissatisfaction with real bodies that magazines so shamelessly promote with endless pictures of impossibly skinny young things whose pubescent bodies and youthful skin are retouched to an unattainable perfection that we beat ourselves with. The irony did not escape me.

  But here’s the curious thing: I wasn’t overeating. I wasn’t drinking gallons of champagne at every launch and fashion party, stuffing chocolate on the sofa late at night. I had nutritionists and experts coming out of my ears. I had embraced the sweatiest forms of yoga. I had found a healer and experimented with my diet based on the allergies and food intolerances she diagnosed. I gave up smoking and drinking and eating meat. I carried with me a pillbox housing an assortment of vitamins and minerals, tiny bottles of Bach flower remedies, and miniature homeopathic pill dispensers. The fridge in the office overran with sheep’s milk yogurt, my usual desk-bound breakfast. I did everything I was told to do by my experts, embraced every health-food fad going.

  Nonetheless the weight kept piling on.

  One day, in the thick of this, one of my male friends had bluntly told me that I needed to lower my sights to men of my own “level of attractiveness,” his pointed look at my muffin top telling me how far I had plummeted. In bed that night I had wept hot, angry tears, hating myself for caring so much about what he’d said.

  At work, the pressure only increased. The size of my department’s second-year profits had attracted the attention of management. I had been summoned up to the seventh floor—the executives’ floor. We needed an attention-grabbing appointment to bring even more profits for the company, the managing director had told me. I was excited. The appointed new boss with her stilettos and bulging contacts book was a woman I had admired and longed to learn from. But that feeling didn’t last. She sowed the seeds of discord and disunity so expertly it took me a while to see what was going on. Divide and conquer—I had been warned by other editors in the building to expect this—she had plenty of past form. But I had proved too innocent for such games. So over the ensuing years, I had allowed myself to be slowly demoted in all but name and eventually had accepted the severance she had offered.

  I remembered so clearly the day I left. How,
in the end, as I walked out of the doors of the building for the last time—the building I had been coming in and out of since I was nineteen, the longest relationship of my life—it had suddenly struck me as the most hilarious thing, that I was being paid to not come back to work. This life, this job, that had seemed so serious, so very much my raison d’être, suddenly felt like nothing at all. My life, when it came down to it, had proved surprisingly easy to put away.

  I had no idea how long my severance money would last. With no savings and a mountain of credit cards that needed paying off, I took the (irresponsible, according to my mother) decision to use the money to come to Florence instead of sinking it into my debts and starting again with another job. I had calculated that I could make it last a few months if I lived carefully, perhaps a whole year if I lived very frugally. It would be a challenge—my salary had regularly petered out before I reached the end of the month, spent at first on the designer labels my job demanded and then on expensive diet plans, personal trainers, and sessions with health gurus. I had no firm plans for Florence; the agreement with Christobel had been for me to stay for the winter, and then we would see. I had bought a small notebook in which to assiduously write down every penny I spent, determined to get a grip on the art of budgeting while I was here. But anger and bitterness raged inside me alongside defeat and self-pity, the voice in my head repeatedly telling me that I had achieved nothing and would now fail too at being a writer.

  * * *

  —

  The Ponte alle Grazie, the bridge of the graces, mocked its own plainness with its name. It was simple and undecorated, with five concrete arches, defying the dazzling beauty of the Ponte Vecchio just upriver. Tourists were visible through the open arches in the middle, the small windows of the Vasari corridor blinking along the top, catching the light. During the bombings in the Second World War, orders not to destroy the “Old Bridge” had come from Hitler himself.

  I was retracing the taxi’s route from last night, attempting to ground myself. Over the bridge and along a road with pavements so narrow that every time a bus hurtled by I had to breathe in sharply to avoid losing a rib. Giant gray stone slabs made up the walls of the looming buildings, in places revealed through plasterwork that had fallen away. Enormous arched doorways opened into shops with bleached wood floors, sparkling vitrines, and artfully arranged clothes, large windows framed by a border of rough gray stone, some latticed by ancient-looking protruding iron bars.

  I reached the Piazza Santa Croce, just as magnificent in the daylight. Standing in the middle of the piazza in a pool of sunshine under a sky that could have been painted by Tiepolo, the puddles from last night’s rain reflecting the clouds, I caught the drifting notes of a hand-held harmonium. A new feeling punched its way through my depression: an almost overwhelming desire to dance. To whirl and twirl my way through this vast space, to pirouette, Gene Kelly–style, over to Dante at the far end, to tweak his nose and laugh in his grim face.

  Some years ago, on a romantic weekend in Venice arranged by an ex-boyfriend, I had been so moved by its beauty that I had burst into tears. It probably wasn’t how he had envisioned the weekend going, but I was so overcome by the exquisite city that I practically sobbed at each new discovery: the art, the architecture, the Grand Canal with its gondoliers, the contrast of sweeping piazzas with quiet little bridges stealing over secret canals. Christobel had warned me of Stendhal syndrome, the well-known condition affecting visitors to Florence who actually became ill from a surfeit of beauty, and on packing for Florence I had slipped in plenty of tissues.

  And yet, despite the grandeur of the Piazza Santa Croce, the detail on the Ponte Vecchio, the light bouncing off the buildings, and even in spite of my broken heart and defeated soul, I did not feel the urge to shed a tear. Not even when my walk landed me in the middle of the Piazza del Duomo, my mouth falling open yet again at the ornate white edifice of the oversized cathedral. The massive terra-cotta dome—Brunelleschi’s marvel—soared up behind the façade, the whole building so huge it dwarfed its piazza. The cathedral felt crowded by the paraphernalia of its own fame: men at easels drawing caricatures, horse-drawn carriages waiting for customers, their horses pawing the ground, tour groups following leaders bearing flags. Tourists teemed all around it, like Lilliputians pinning down Gulliver, but the Duomo, ebullient and preposterously vast, refused to cower.

  From there, I was led to Sant’Ambrogio’s open-air market by the noise. Working my way through deserted back streets, I shuffled around a drab corner and the scene burst to life. The market was hemmed in by parked vans and scooters, and pedestrians were weaving through them, some heading to the market, some heading away, carrying bags with bunches of flowers and green leaves sticking out of the top. In the center stalls, rainbow-colored produce collected around an indoor market hall—through the large open doorways I could see stalls selling cheese, salamis and hams, bread and dry goods. Outside, fruit and vegetables were laid out under a corrugated-iron roof; inside, sacks of dried beans and chickpeas stood in huddles, bundles of oregano, packets of dried chilies and herbs lining the walls, rows of dried and fresh pasta laid out on shelves.

  I felt like I had landed on a Technicolor movie set.

  I wound my way through the open-air market, tripping on the little dogs and wheeled trolleys of housewives. I watched the women as they held lengthy debates with the stallholders. I stopped at a fruit and vegetable stall with strings of chili peppers hung like a curtain at the back and a sign saying: peperoncino—viagra naturale! Seeing me smile, a jovial man with a mop of thick gray hair and round red cheeks came over. He had a black hat with a bobble pulled over his ears and he was slapping his gloved hands together, regarding me with crinkly eyes. When I reached out to touch a plump red tomato, ribbed and sculpted in segments as if carved, he called out “oooooh,” in a voice that could have carried across mountains. I drew back as if stung. He addressed me in rapid Italian, indicating that I shouldn’t touch the goods. Instead he picked up a brown paper bag and filled it with a few of the large ribbed tomatoes, a handful of frizzy lettuce, a deep green zucchini, a small bunch of tapering carrots with long bushy tails, a very white round onion, and a clove of garlic. Unbidden, he threw in a bunch of broad-leaf basil for good measure. We communicated in a two-handed mime and as I paid, he grinned, slapping his chest and saying: “Mi chiamo Antonio!” He stuck out a black-clad hand. I shook it, introducing myself, surprised that his glove was made of cashmere.

  “Piacere, Kamin.” He looked amused. “Allora ci vediamo domani!”

  On the corner I paused at a café with small tables outside set with yellow chrysanthemums. A middle-aged man stood sentinel, looking like a garden gnome in spite of his smart blue shirt and the navy apron at his waist. He greeted me in English, opening a wooden door, inviting me in. The interior was just as charming, with wooden wainscoting, framed advertisements from the 1930s hanging on buttercup-colored walls. The chairs were red plush theater seats and instead of windows, the front and street side of the café were made of more glass doors, lined with worn wood and closed with stained gilt fittings. The ceiling was a mesh of carved wooded squares, each inlaid with a band of gold, blue, and red paint. The friendly gnome explained: “Is, how you say, Romanesque, from thirteenth century! All windows are from old ville around Tuscany.”

  The gnome then took my hand and bowed low over it. “My name is Isidoro,” he said with a flourish, “and this is Caffè Cibreo, the most beautiful café in Florence. There”—pointing to a restaurant diagonally across the road—“is Cibreo, the famous restaurant. And there”—indicating through the window a large entrance across the other road—“is Teatro del Sale, a members’ club and theater. We all one family!”

  His enthusiasm was infectious. I introduced myself and asked him for a cappuccino to take away. He looked at me with incomprehension.

  “Er”—I dipped into the phrasebook in my bag—“per portare via?”

  He was now installed behind a small curve
d bar dominated by a huge Gaggia coffeemaker at one end and at the other a glass cabinet displaying small rolls, tiny bite-size pizzas, glazed croissants, and cakes. Behind Isidoro, wooden shelves were crowded with bottles of spirits, a line of silver cocktail makers. He was puzzled. “But why? You have no mocha at home?”

  I wanted to drink my coffee as I walked home to San Niccolò, I explained to Isidoro.

  He stared for a minute and then started laughing. “Ma no!” he exclaimed, wiping tears from his eyes. “But why so much rush?” I shrugged. He went on: “But where is the pleasure? How you taste your cappuccino? Dai”—he indicated a table by the front windows—“sit and I bring you. Così, you can enjoy.”

  I did as he said, and the Gaggia machine gurgled to life. Pleasure—a new concept in my adult coffee-drinking career. I thought back to London and the preternaturally tall cardboard cups of horrible coffee that I carried around with me everywhere. I hadn’t passed anyone this morning carrying a cardboard coffee cup. In the land of coffee, I wondered how this was possible. But then, I hadn’t seen any coffee shop chains either. Somehow Florence—at least the parts I had so far discovered—seemed blissfully divorced from modern cities and their globally branded paraphernalia.