Seven Seasons in Siena

…

 
IT TAKES ALL OF NINETY SECONDS
.
TEN SLEEK, TAUTLY
muscled racehorses tear into the sandy track, hurtling themselves forward at nearly lethal speed. Their jockeys crouch low to minimize resistance; some lash out at each other with their crops, and those hardest hit tumble off their mounts and scramble frantically out of the way of the flurry of surgically sharp hooves. Once around the piazza … twice … three times, the roar of the crowd escalating to a cosmic howl. Then the horse in the lead sails over the finish line—a cannon sounds, like the pop of a Christmas cracker against the citywide roar of ecstasy—and my friend Dario Castagno looks over his shoulder at me. I meet his eyes and nod to him, mouthing the words
Vai, vai via!
Go, go on!

He leaps down the length of the bleachers and joins the throng of spectators who are flowing over the railing onto the track, like a wave of human magma; the last I see of him, he's fighting off another man for the honor of pressing his lips to those of the victorious horse.

The bleachers are trembling, quivering beneath the feet of the scores of people who are descending in a kind of rapturous fury. Only Jeffrey and I remain in place, the mass of humanity
diverting around us as though we're an outcropping of rock in a river. There's no particular reason for us to stay rooted to our seats; but neither is there any enticement to get up. Where would we go? Everywhere we look, we see only tumult; the Piazza del Campo, the beautiful medieval square at the heart of Siena, is overrun with its citizenry, who are in various stages of agitation, ranging from the merely ecstatic to the kind of violent rapture most Americans ever see only in revival tents.

This, then, is the immediate aftermath of the Palio, Siena's annual bareback horse race around the perimeter of its central piazza. It's an ancient rite, an explosive expression of municipal pride, and both Jeffrey and I find it a head-jarring thrill. Why else would we have ventured to Italy in August? It's the month of the
ferragosto
holiday, when seaside resorts fill up with refugees from every city in the country, leaving virtual ghost towns behind them, their shops shuttered and their restaurants dark, so that American tourists wander the empty streets brandishing their MasterCards in vain. The sole exception is Siena, which has its ancient, inimitable business to attend to.

The race itself lasts only a matter of heartbeats; but there's a historical procession that precedes it—a gorgeous display of medieval costumes, heraldry, and gasp-inducing flag-tossing competitions—that requires a few solid hours to make its way around the Campo. Hence the bleacher seats, or
palchi
, which Dario has obtained for us at an exorbitant cost. The seats are small and hard, yet they're far more comfortable than watching the race from the vantage point chosen by most of the populace—which is within the piazza itself, shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, buttocks to belt buckle.

“What do we do now?” Jeffrey asks me, and I really ought to have an answer. It's our agreed-on division of labor: I'm responsible for all things cultural, Jeffrey for all things sensual. I'm supposed to know which cathedrals have the gaudiest relics, he, which restaurants the highest Michelin ratings.

I admit I'm not sure. I'd been counting on Dario to shepherd us through this part of the experience; he's the native, after all, the one who actually had a stake in the race today—a winning stake, as it turns out. He's a member of the Bruco, or Caterpillar,
contrada
, or city quarter, and he warned us earlier that if they won, he'd be leaving us to our own devices—which is exactly what's happened. It's the Caterpillar horse that has triumphed, the Caterpillar jockey who's now being stripped half naked and carried aloft by the jubilant members of the contrada, the Caterpillar constituents who are now forming a human pyramid to reach and claim the beautiful painted banner, called the
drappellone
, which is the sole prize awarded to the Palio's victor. And it's into this seething well of activity that Dario has flung himself, mind-melding with his Caterpillar brethren as they reach a kind of collective nirvana.

We can't blame him for leaving us. We're excited for him—and we feel a kind of remote kinship to the Caterpillar itself, as Dario has given each of us its kerchief—in Italian,
fazzoletto
—to wear tied around our necks, in the Sienese manner. The Caterpillar's distinctive blue, gold, and green mark us out as being part of the victory today, and we're basking in the association, however tangential.

“I think,” I say, summoning up all my powers of concentration, “after the race everyone goes to the Duomo for a thanksgiving service.”

Jeffrey looks at me dubiously. “Are you sure?”

“I'm not sure of anything right now. But it's all I've got.”

And so we begin our descent from the bleachers into the roiling cauldron of the post-Palio Piazza del Campo. We wend our way out into the streets of Siena—narrow, cobbled, and lined by elegantly simple buildings in earthen colors with terra-cotta roofs—usually the scene of a hundred different tableaux all expressing easygoing Tuscan urbanity. But today there's no diminution of emotional intensity; the streets are as riotous as the piazza.

In fact, the sheer violence of the joy on display takes me aback; I try, and fail, to come up with anything I've seen to compare with it. We live on the north side of the Windy City, home of the Chicago Cubs, so we're familiar with the euphoria that barrels through the streets whenever that team clinches a division title—the kind of euphoria that can, whoops, result in broken windows and overturned cars—but it's not really the same thing at all. For it to be analogous, the Cubs would have to be one of
seventeen
ball clubs in Chicago, each one specific to a certain neighborhood; fans would have to have been baptized in the Cubs church and grown up identifying themselves not as Cubs fans but as Cubs themselves; the Cubs would have to be not merely a beloved team but a family, a community, the foundation of our very identity.