A modern trio in an old town

by Katharine Haviland-Taylor

It was hazy inside, for incense was floating, but the chill of the outside air that had come with the rain was gone, and the candles on the big altar made a pretty bright yellow blotch in the center of all the gray.

To people who only know churches in America, churches in Italy won’t be understood, for Americans go to church stiffly, and then hurry off criticizing the sermon or complaining about the hymns that were sung; they never would think of standing around to talk in church the way the Italians do; or think of going into church carrying a live rooster by the feet, or of sitting down in the back of a church to eat a loaf of black bread and a slice of orange-colored cheese. But the Italians do this, and all sorts of informal things, and it does make the churches seem very home-like and warm, and it’s nice to go in them. I wandered around, and I even thought of eating a cream puff, but I decided I wouldn’t because I hadn’t been brought up to it, and because it would spoil my dinner and because cream puffs sometimes squeeze out when you bite and I had on my best suit, so I carried them in that tender way that a person carries cream puffs and enjoyed the real Italy that one finds in the churches.

There was a soldier from the ranks talking with his mother—I heard him call her “Madre mia”—which means “Mother of mine,” and she smiled up at him until her face looked like a little winter apple—it was so full of wrinkles—and kept her hand on his arm which she kept patting.

Near them, on her knees by a confessional—which is a little box that looks like a telephone booth but really holds a Priest who tries to help you, instead of something that squeaks out, “The party doesn’t answer,”—was another sort of Italian, a woman who was beautifully dressed, and behind her was her maid who wore the gay costume of the Roman peasant and who carried the beautiful lady’s little white dog.

Officers stood in groups chatting. Others came, dropped to their knees a moment, crossed themselves, and then joined them.

And a shabby old man with a lump on his back came in, got down to his knees very stiffly, and there looked at the altar for a long, long time as his lips moved. I don’t know why that made my throat feel cramped, because he was getting help, and for that moment all of the big church was his, and his God was close to him, I know. But I did feel a little funny, and so I hurried on, to look at a statue by a man named Michael Angelo, who died nearly four hundred years ago, but whose work is still in style.

After that I watched a little boy and girl who were sitting on a kneeling chair, listened to the Priests, who were having a service up by the main altar, and then I went out.

I had been inside quite a little while, I knew, after I saw the outdoor light, for it was much darker, and the rain less a rain and more a fog. The people who hurried across the shining square with their funny flat umbrellas, looked like big black toadstools, and all the lights reflected in the puddles, and the bright windows were hazed.

I didn’t want to put up my umbrella, because I love the feeling of a little moisture on my cheeks when I walk fast and get hot, but I had my cream puffs, and my best suit on, and so I did. And oh, how lucky it was that I did, for if I hadn’t—but that comes later.

I went down the steps, and across the Piazza del Duomo, keeping my eye out for the trams, (they call street cars “trams” in Florence) the cabs with their shouting, huddled up drivers, and the purring motors, and I turned down the street that would take me past the English Pharmacy, for I needed a toothbrush.