On the Cusp

On the Cusp

A kiss on my lips wakes me out of a deep sleep. I bolt upright in my bed.

“Who’s there?” I call out to the darkness.

For a moment, I forget where I am. Feeling for the bedside lamp, I snap it on. I glance around the dimly lit room. No one is there. But the kiss was very real, tasting spicy and exotic.

Was I dreaming? No. Too real to be a dream.

My third-floor hotel room is in an ancient stone building near one of the city gates in Siena Italy, a hill town in the heart of Tuscany.

Leaving my bed, I pad over to the open, screenless window. An aroma of Mediterranean herbs permeates the early spring air. I touch my lips, still feeling the kiss on them. The countryside outside the city walls is alive with shadows.

Below my window, I hear creaking, groaning, mumbling in Italian, a repeated thud of heavy hooves against the earth. Like a wooden cart being pulled by a beast of burden. Oh, come on Elizabeth! That’s impossible!

I’m still groggy. I boil some water for my instant coffee. Returning to the window, those strange sounds continue in the darkness below. I’m feeling uneasy, trying to understand what is real and what is my imagination. As the sun peeks up over the horizon, its light reveals a multitude of flora: the gray green of olive trees, sharp cypress trees pointing to the sky like Roman spears. Sipping my coffee, the intoxicating fragrance of linden trees, smelling of honey and lemon-peel.

The sky is light and now, cathedral bells begin to ring all over the city, blocking out all those weird noises. The sound of bells reverberates off the tile rooftops and between the buildings that line the narrow streets. They call the faithful to Mass, chiming as they have for over a thousand years. I love this cacophony of clanging metal. In America, there is no joyous sound like this, no exultation of bells.

In full daylight, I confirm that down below my window, there is no dirt path, no wooden cart, no beast of burden. You’re just imagining things. First a kiss and then, a cart pulled by oxen! You idiot! Get a hold of yourself!

I get dressed and prepare my bag for the day, notebooks, pens, guidebooks, and a camera. Descending the stone staircase then through an inner courtyard, I check my pocket for the large, heavy key I’ll need to reenter the building this evening.

Stepping out onto the brick cobblestoned street, I’m hit with bright searing sunlight. The smell of freshly baked bread floats from an unseen panetteria. I haven’t yet eaten breakfast.

Strolling to the grand piazza at the city center, paved in a fishbone-patterned red brick, I find a table at an outdoor café. I’m ready to enjoy a slow, relaxed breakfast after a rough start to my day.

Children chase flocks of pigeons and scare them into bursts of feathers, lovers lounge on the bricks as if they were nestled in a marriage bed, the snappy performance of my waiter, dressed in a crisp white button-down shirt and black dress pants like a conductor of a large symphony orchestra. He bows as he takes my order: Sì signorina. Piacere mio, signorina. Oh, how I’ve missed Italy!

I have come to Siena by myself to generate ideas and begin writing a novel set in the city. My husband Peter knows and understands that I prefer to revel in my own words in solitude. I chose the Bulgarini hotel for this very reason, with its quiet view of the Tuscan countryside from my window.

After breakfast, I head toward the ancient civic hospital, now a museum. Stopping outside a shop, I decide to buy a flag of one of the contradas or boroughs in Siena as a gift for Peter. Of the seventeen contradas, I like the look of the of the red and white Giraffa or the “Giraffe” neighborhood’s flag.

As I’m leaving the shop, a woman dressed in a long filthy black skirt and a loose-fitting blouse covered with stains runs toward me. She shouts, “Francesca! Francesca!” I turn to look behind me, thinking she must be calling someone else.

Her face is without makeup, hair long, black, and disheveled, and she suffers from rosacea on both her cheeks. From what I can see, she has terrible teeth, a front one is missing, and the remaining are brown and chipped.

But in fact, she is talking to me. With an expression of panic, she says, “Devi venire con me!”

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” I say to her, hoping she understands English. I try some of my remedial Italian, “Io non capito.”

“Tuo marito è malato,” she persists. I know the word “malato,” it means bad or sick.

“Malato?” I ask her.

“Si, si, devi venire!” she cries out louder and grabs my hand, causing me to drop my package.

“Wait a minute!” I say, pulling my hand away and picking up the bag with the Giraffa flag inside. Again, she seizes my hand and pulls me aggressively up the street in the direction of the hospital. Her hands are grimy and coarse with callouses. It is obvious she hasn’t showered in a long time. I snap my hand away.

“Stop it!” I yell. “Get away from me!” She’s probably one of those gypsies I’ve heard about who steal tourist’s purses.

She attempts to push me from behind and this angers me even more. I turn and shout in her face, “Stop it or I’m going to the police.” Immediately, she yelps like a hurt animal and runs away, up the street and out of view.

I am shaken and disoriented. I grab a wet towelette out of my bag and clean my hands. At the next coffee bar, I order an espresso. Standing at a high granite counter surrounded by locals and tourists in animated conversations, I add three packets of sugar to the demi-tasse and down the coffee in one gulp like a shot of whiskey. Feeling somewhat composed, I continue on to the hospital.

At the top of a steep hill, the bricked street opens out to an expansive courtyard where the main cathedral’s eight-hundred-year-old black and white marble structure stands. Although I have seen the church many times, I’m amazed again by the arches standing without adjoining walls or a roof and the bright blue sky shimmering through glassless windows. I recall reading that in the 1300s, the Black Plague took 50% of Siena’s population, halting expansion of the cathedral. Its skeleton has been left unchanged. In America, if the construction of a building had been stopped for some reason, that structure would be torn down at once and a newer, “improved” one built in its place. Not here. Everything in Italy is history, even half built churches.

I glance around the square to make sure the woman who attacked me earlier is nowhere to be seen. Feeling confident she’s gone, I head to the hospital, Santa Maria della Scala, across the square from the cathedral.

As I wander through the first few rooms, I’m still shaking from the woman’s attack. I can smell her unwashed body and feel her rough hands touching mine. Who was she? I take more deep breaths to calm myself down. Forget about that woman—she was just a crazy person.

It’s early morning and there aren’t many tourists in the hospital yet. In the Pilgrims’ Hall, several frescoes, painted in the 1400s, depict hospital activity including pilgrims arriving, giving alms to the poor, and healing the sick.

In the fresco, “Endowing the Hospital with Walls,” the perspective is off; the cathedral in the background appears tiny against the workers who carry baskets of bricks on their backs. They climb rickety ladders and pass the bricks off to builders who stand on spare wooden scaffolding.

Joining me in the hall is an American couple, pointing to this and that as they discuss the artwork in hushed voices. The woman is strange, her hair cut so short, I can see the purple spiderweb of veins on her skull.

As I study the fresco, I notice the couple is whispering to each other, then looking at me, then whispering again, pointing to something in the painting. They continue this for some time until I finally amble over.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“Look!” the woman says with a smile, pointing to a female figure in the painting. “She looks just like you!”

I crane my neck to examine the lady. She stares out at us from the confines of the fresco. She has my reddish blonde curly hair and straight, narrow nose. Wearing a long burgundy dress, sadness radiates from her soft eyes.

“I don’t see the resemblance,” I say shaking my head.

“Well, it’s you, there’s no doubt about it.”

“How’s that possible?” I scoff.

“I’m surprised you don’t see it, Francesca,” she says. That’s the name the horrible vagrant woman called me.

“That’s not my name,” I say. “And if you don’t mind, I’m going to continue on my way.”

I stroll to the next fresco that depicts the chaos of a medieval hospital. Among infirmed peasants and malnourished elderly patients with visible ribcages, a wealthy man lies on a bed draped in silk bedclothes, his head wrapped in a brocade blanket like a turban. A bored fat friar listens to the dying man’s last confession.

“Look!” the strange woman cries, throwing her arm around my shoulders. She points to an elegant female in the center of the painting who displays the same features as the other identified woman. She says, “There you are again! Francesca, it’s you!” My stomach begins to roll and churn.

“Get away from me! Who are you anyhow?” I ask.

“We have come to warn you, madam,” she says.

“What the hell? Warn me of what?” My head is spinning, and I feel as if I could faint.

“You will see, Francesca. You should prepare yourself,” the woman says.

“You don’t know anything about me! Please, just leave me alone,” I say. What the hell is going on?

Edgy and jittery, I peer up at the painting again and, I have to admit, the woman does sort of resemble me. Maybe I didn’t eat enough breakfast. Am I still suffering from jet lag? Bursts of light pulsate in front of my eyes. Glancing nervously around the room, it seems the couple has disappeared. I desperately need somewhere to sit. I head for the exit, holding onto the walls for support. I never make it.

#

When I open my eyes, I’m lying on a hard surface, my long hair tangled under my shoulders and back. I smell roasted chestnuts, horses, and dust. Why am I lying in the middle of a dirt road? A crowd of people and horses weave around me, the cacophony of sound and movement disorienting. I struggle to stand. When I’m upright, the black and white striped Siena cathedral is before me. I turn around and there is the hospital, but it’s still under construction. Workers are hauling bricks in baskets, climbing ladders in their bare feet while others are atop primitive scaffolding, constructing the walls of the hospital. The builders wear scrapped together breeches and burlap tops and jabber in Italian as they work. One construction worker, high up on the rickety scaffolding, is whistling a joyful tune. This is all wrong.

Townspeople mill about while watching the masons work, women in long skirts and tight fitted bodices, men in loose trousers and blousy shirts. Wealthier men wear brocade or heavy woolen capes and even the horses don ornate leather bridles. People wave to each other over the din, yelling greetings in Italian. Some stop to peer up and point to the workers high above their heads on scaffolds.

Have I woken up on a set location of a historical documentary? Then I realize I’m wearing a long heavy dress. Where are my jeans and T-shirt?

In the middle of the crowd, four men carry a sick patient on a stretcher. They push through the mass of humanity toward the hospital, yelling in Italian for people to get out of the way. I step back to let them pass and observe the infirmed man’s face, ashen and taut, like a death mask. He’s draped in silk clothing and his head is wrapped in a brocade blanket. Oh my God! I say out loud. It’s that dying man from the fresco!

Now a beautiful young woman approaches me. “Francesca,” she says. Although she’s speaking in Italian, I understand her every word. “Your husband is very sick. You must come to the hospital at once.”

“Yes, of course,” I respond in Italian. How do I know the language so well? “What is his illness?”

“You will know everything after you talk to the doctor.”

As I follow her, I ask, “Madam, what year is it?”

“Why, it’s 1348, of course,” she says with a laugh.

When we enter the hospital, a smell hits my nose as infirmed patients and healers pass, a smell of the unwashed, a stench of body odor and garlic, a whiff of vinegary wine and rotted fruit.

“Follow me,” the woman says and we wend our way through the chaos until we reach a large room. A man with a huge, bloody gash in his right thigh is being tended to, his bare feet are washed. “Here he is, Francesca,” the woman says.

The man in the bed appears to be very ill. He is thin, emaciated, with almost translucent skin. I am shocked. Here lies a man who looks like my husband, Peter. A rotund friar in a long black robe is listening intently to what Peter is saying. Then the friar sees me.

“Francesca, my dear. Please come,” he says, gesturing to me. “Look, Peter, your wife is here.”

I pad slowly to his bed and take his hand in mine. It is cold and lifeless although he smiles.

“Hello, my love,” Peter says.

“Hey! How can you be here? You look terrible.”

“It came on so fast.” He whispers in a weak voice. “Remember last evening, I had that terrible headache and then, during the night, a fever?”

“Um, I’m not really sure I remember that. But how did you get to the hospital?”

“While walking to market this morning, the sores under my armpits were so excruciatingly painful, I fell down in the street. I don’t know how I got to hospital.”

“Oh, no,” I say. “Do you have the flu?”

“Francesca, the doctor tells me the Great Pestilence has taken hold of me.”

“You’re such a healthy guy,” I say. “It can’t be true.”

A doctor arrives. “You mustn’t stay long. Your husband needs his rest.”

“Does he have the plague?”

“I am sorry, my dear, your husband has been stricken by the Great Mortality,” the doctor responds. “He doesn’t have long now.”

I quickly say my good-byes to the sick man who looks like Peter but doesn’t act like him.

A sick feeling in my stomach, eyes blurring as lightning bursts again before my eyes, vision narrowing to a faint light in a tunnel. A chill down my spine, terrible nausea attack.

I squeeze my eyes closed as a headache throbs on the back of my skull. When I open them again, I’m outside, sitting on a curb in the main square. The cathedral and the hospital appear as they had when I first arrived this morning.

A bump on the back of my head pounds. An American college-age woman asks, “Are you ok?”

I hear the shrill siren of an ambulance heading in my direction.

She says, “You must have passed out.”

“What year is it?”

“2020.”

“Oh, good.”

She gives me a strange look. “Why?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” I say. She offers her hand to help me stand. I feel dizzy, but my nausea has disappeared.

I ask, “Were they filming a documentary or movie here today?”

“No,” she says. “I’ve been in the square most of the day. Nothing like that was going on.”

An ambulance arrives and they ask me a lot of questions that I can’t understand. They take my blood pressure, check my heart rate, examine the bump on my head. Finally, one of them asks in broken English, “You need hospital?”

“No, no, I’m fine,” I say with a smile. I wait until they’re packed up and gone. The college girl waves good-bye.

I brush the dust off my jeans. As I slowly head back to my hotel for a rest, I call Peter on my cellphone. It’s morning on the west coast and the month of March is always rainy. I can envision him drinking his first cup of coffee, gazing out the window at the misty drizzle.

“Hey, how’s Italy?”

“So, you’re ok?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a little soar throat, body aches, but nothing unusual. I’ll get over it.”

“Go to the doctor immediately!”

“Why?”

“I’m sure you’ve read about this new plague that’s spreading around the world.”

“I just have the good old-fashioned flu.”

“Please see a doctor,” I say. He finally agrees to call his physician after we hang up.

Back at my hotel, the window is open, and a sweet breeze from the countryside blows gently into my room. As twilight approaches, a large flock of swallows, fly around and around in an elliptical whirl. Each rotation brings an explosion of birdsong in unison.

I fall into a deep sleep. Did I sleep for days, or weeks, or years or centuries? I don’t know. As the sun rises over the city walls, I am awakened by a soft kiss on my lips. I bolt upright in my bed and turn on the light. No one is there.