The Umbrella Man
On the edge of the public fountain, where three narrow lanes come together, the Umbrella Man sat perched like some Robin Hood alighted only for the moment. He wore a brimmed hat with the tail feathers of a cock pheasant stuck through the felt. His shoes were brown leather curled upward at the toes, and the soles were of wood, rubbed shiny. When he lifted his arms one could tell that his jacket had once been bright green. Now it was powdered by dust—not gray dust, not brown, but tawny red—testimony to long days of walking the hills of Tuscany.
Yet with all his traveling the Umbrella Man showed no sign of weariness. His eyes, dark and beady, sparkled in delight, as if this were a day he had long awaited, as if it held a special quality, rare and magical.
"Buon giorno! Buon giorno!" He opened wide his arms to welcome his friends who came laughing and breathless to greet him. One other boy brought a sagging umbrella, and a girl carried a pitcher with a broken snout. They, with Giorgio, placed their crippled possessions at his feet, like precious offerings laid before a god.
Before starting to work, Uncle Marco looked from face to face, beaming. He was actor as well as tinker. He had certain little curtain-raiser habits to whet the excitement. First he made a ritual of taking off his hat, running his fingers over the bright glinting feathers, and putting it back on again at a rakish angle. Then while his audience watched in growing impatience, he took a copper mug from his pocket, and let the fountain water flow into it. He drank long and heartily, sucking the water through his ragged red whiskers with a loud hissing sound.
"Bello! Bello!" he sang out. "No water so delicious as water of Monticello!" His voice rolled strong and vibrant, full of the juices of living. "Bello, bello—Monticello!" he sang again, clapping his hands, chuckling over his rhyme.
At last, with a grand flourish, he unhooked the pack on his back and spread out its contents on the cobblestones.
The children craned their necks to see umbrella ribs made of canewood, patches of green and black and purple cloth, rolls of thin wire, an old fish tin, a needle curved like a serpent's tongue, and a wondrous drill that looked for all the world like a bow and arrow. With a jovial wink in Giorgio's direction, the Umbrella Man now took up the broken bake dish.
"Giorgio Terni!" he pronounced in his best stage voice. "With you we begin. Of the world beyond the mountain, what is it you want to know? Ask, boy."
Giorgio's heart beat wildly. He swallowed; he gulped. Emilio, his little brother, and Teria, his sister, crowded in on him, nudging him with their elbows. "Ask it!" they urged. "Ask!"
Giorgio knew what to ask, but he muffled and stammered the words so they ran all together. "YoujustcomefromSiena?" he whispered.
"Eh? Speak out. Speak out, boy! Forte!"
"You just come from over the mountain? From city of Siena?" This time the question could be heard by everyone, even by people leaning out the windows.
The pheasant feathers danced and nodded a vigorous "yes," and the twinkling black eyes looked up, encouraging the next question.
"You see the big horse race? The Palio?"
"I see it, all right. I see both July and August Palio!"
Everyone pressed close, heads canted, listening.
A spotted pig wandered into the crowd, snuffling and snorting, but went unnoticed. All eyes were fixed on the Umbrella Man, watching fascinated, as slowly, deliberately, he worked on the bake dish. First he loosened the bowstring of the drill. Then he sawed away clockwise, then counterclockwise, making the tip of the arrow drill a neat little hole in the dish.
Impatience mounted while he drilled three more holes and inspected each one carefully, nodding in approval.
"We wire and glue later. Now then," he sighed, with a glance to the far-off hills. "Now I carry everyone over the mountain to old, walled city of Siena!" He opened up the big green umbrella as if they could all hang onto the spokes and fly away together.
"The Palio," he began, taking a deep breath, "is fierce battle and race all at same time. If I tell you, you must listen. Even if it makes the hairs on your spine to quiver. Even if you do not believe it can be so!"
The fountain place was so still that the drip-drip from the spigot sounded like hammer strokes.
"Anciently," he went on, "in old, old times before anyone remembers, city of Siena was very powerful nation."
Giorgio nodded to himself. This was going to be good. Not a tall tale but a true one.
"Inside her high old walls she is divided like inside this umbrella. Only instead of cloth and ribs, she is divided sharp and clean into districts called contradas."
Giorgio opened his mouth. "Do they have names?"
"Oh, splendid names—mostly for animals. One contrada is the Dragon, another the Panther, the Eagle, the Porcupine, the Wolf, the Owl. Like that," he said, ticking them off on his nimble fingers. "Seventeen they number in all."
The pig came back, stole a piece of apple from a child's fingers, and scampered away again. But the child did not even whimper. There was just the Umbrella Man, his eyes hypnotic, his voice carrying his audience along, farther and farther from Monticello.
"In Middle Ages, each contrada was great military company of knights in armor, and each had beautiful flag with emblem in gold. And they fought blood wars."
Suddenly the Umbrella Man's face beaded in sweat. His skin paled.
"Uncle Marco! What is it?" an elderly man asked anxiously. "Are you sick?"
"No, no." He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. "How can I explain how fierce, how strong, how loyal are feelings in each contrada even to this day?" He shook his head in despair. "Just for suppose: A father belongs to the Contrada of the Panther, the mother to the Dragon, one son to the Eagle, the other to the Ram. You see, it's where you're born that makes you Eagle or Ram or Panther or Dragon."
He stopped to blot the perspiration with a bright red handkerchief.
"How do I explain? All year long this family lives together in happy feelings. Then come the preparations for the Palio, and—pffft!—they are enemies! In the father the Panther blood runs like fever. He forgets home; he goes to the meetings. Every afternoon, every night, in every spare time he joins the other Panthers. They make questions. 'Who will be our jockey in the Palio race?' 'Shall we make the alliances with other contradas?' 'Who shall paint with gold the hoofs of our horse if we win?' 'Who shall be in charge of our Victory Dinner?'
"And Mamma? She is not like Mamma at all. She lets the spaghetti burn. She snips and sews all day for the Dragon—mending their silken banners and the velvet costumes for the parade.
"Mind you," Uncle Marco shook his forefinger wildly, "some costumes were designed by Leonardo da Vinci! No wonder the Mamma's hands tremble while she works ... so great the honor is!"
Giorgio interrupted. "Uncle Marco! What about the two brothers?"
"Well, those boys, they grow warlike against each other and their father must separate them; he sends them to stay with friends or cousins in their special contradas."
"For both Palios?"
"For both!" The man shrugged helplessly. "Who can understand this mystic feeling—mad, wonderful?" He waved his hand in staccato rhythm. "It is war! It is history! It is religion! All year long the Palio is a fire banked. Then it stirs; it blazes; it comes like flames sweeping down the centuries. Oh, how beautiful the faces light up and the voices sing and the banners wave!" He closed his eyes to see it all the better, and the quiet was like an intermission, only no one stirred.
Giorgio waited in a torment of suspense until at last he had to break through. "But Uncle Marco! Speak of the race! Please!"
The man shook off his trance. "I enter into that now." He shivered in excitement. "First comes the story parade. Is it a common parade?" he bellowed to his rapt audience.
"No!" they roared in reply.
With an elfish chuckle, he clapped his hands approvingly. "Siena," he sucked in a long breath, "lives upon remembrance of her ancient glory. Each year, for seven hundred years, she is celebrating the Victory of Montaperti. Even the gold battle car is there in the parade. And the people watch in awe, remembering their blood is the blood of their fathers shed to win that battle."
"But the race! The race!" Giorgio insisted.
"All right! All right! When the parade is over, a bomb explodes bang! And out come the horses wearing the bright colors of their contradas. Away they go like quiver of arrows shot all at once. Around the town square—one time, two times, three times! And the fantinos who ride them sit bareback. They cling like the monkey. They risk life. Heads broken. Shoulders. Legs. Arms. Only the brave...."
"Uncle Marco!" cried Giorgio. "Must the fantinos belong to a contrada?"
"No, no! They are outsiders, from beyond the city walls. But listen!" He lowered his voice to a whisper. "That race course is death trap. Up, down, up, down, and around sharp curves. Dizzy-high buildings come so close they bump the horses, almost.
"But now comes the best part!" His voice rose in power and excitement. "If the fantino falls off, the horse can win all by himself—if...."
"If what?" the children cried.
"If no one has knocked off his spennacchiera."
The children's eyes popped. "His what?"
Uncle Marco pushed back his hat and held three fingers upright against his forehead. "This is my spen-nac-chie-ra," and he spun out the syllables until they seemed to have springs in them. "You see, my friends, it is like colored plumes in the headband of each horse. It is the badge of his contrada."
With his free hand he now picked up an umbrella rib. "This is my nerbo," he explained. "It is fierce whip of ox hide, used always by fantinos since olden years." In make-believe anger he used it to whack his fingers away from his forehead.
Emilio and the younger children all made imaginary plumes of their fingers and some tried to knock off their neighbor's until the audience was in a shrieking uproar.
While Uncle Marco waited for quiet, he went to work on the green umbrella, snipped out the offending rib, and with the long, curved needle sewed a new one in place.
Giorgio watched with unseeing eyes. He was still far away in Siena. When the noise died down he said, "Uncle Marco, the contrada that wins, what does it win?"
"What does it win! Why, it wins the Palio, the silken banner!"
"Only a banner?"
The needle went in and out, fast and faster, and the man's face darkened in displeasure. "Only a banner! How can you say it? The picture of the Madonna is hand-painted on it! Why, the winning of the banner is like...." He rummaged around in his mind for something big enough ... "is like finding the Holy Grail."
"Oh." Giorgio's face went red. He lowered his head in embarrassment.
The time for asking questions was nearly up. The Umbrella Man was mixing cement in the old fish tin, gluing the broken dish together, fastening it through the drilled holes with fine wire. While his fingers worked, his eye stole a glance now and then at Giorgio.
"Maybe some year you go to Siena? You see a Palio?"
Giorgio's head jerked up. Of course he would go! Then his eyes widened in sudden panic. Suppose the race stopped before he had saved enough money. Suppose next year, or the next, there should be no Palio!
He spoke his fears aloud.
"Ho! Ho!" The Umbrella Man rocked with laughter. "Palio has always been! That is fine reason why it always will be. You go any year. Time only sharpens the appetite."
At sundown that evening, with the mended dish put away in the cupboard and the umbrella, good as new, hanging on its peg, Giorgio stood before the window at the end of the long room. It was flung wide to the hills of Tuscany, but the boy did not see the trees flaming from the touch of sun, nor the swallows tumbling in the sky, nor the mountains growing bluer with the oncoming night. All he saw was the clay model of the horse in his hands. As he pinched and shaped the legs to a breedy fineness, a piece of leftover clay fell to the floor. He picked it up, examining it in disbelief. Did he imagine, or could anyone see it for what it was?
"Emilio! Teria!" he called. "Come here! Come and see!"
He held up the fanlike piece of clay, the smaller end between his thumb and forefinger, and he moved it toward the head of the horse. "What is it?" he asked, scarcely daring to breathe.
"Why, it's a spen-nac-chie-ra!" the answer came in chorus. "A spen-nac-chie-ra!"
Giorgio laughed out loud. He moistened his finger tips and firmly pressed the bit of clay on the poll of the horse's head. "Let no fantino knock it off!" he spoke to the little image. "You win all by yourself, you hear?"
Already the seed of the Palio was bursting in its furrow.
