A modern trio in an old town

by Katharine Haviland-Taylor

The days that followed were dark and gloomy; the cold crept inside and every one was uncomfortable and almost every one cross. Sometimes I think that the weather really makes all the history, and certainly if it hadn’t been damp Leslie wouldn’t have been sick with a cold; and if she hadn’t had a cold she wouldn’t have quarreled with Viola; and if Viola and she hadn’t quarreled, Viola wouldn’t have told Miss Meek all about Leslie’s heart affair; and if Viola hadn’t confided it to Miss Meek, then Viola and Leslie might have patched up their difference long before they did. All this happened in the course of two dragging, rough-surfaced days, during which no one was happy. And I contend that the strain started from the clouded skies, and the chill which crept in to cling to the floors and live boldly in the passages.

Friday afternoon I slipped a slicker over my everyday suit, which is a belted tweed, and pulled a plain little felt hat low, and started out. It was raining miserably, but I thought that I could shake off the queer, unpleasant weight that I felt inside, if I walked hard, for I had done that before. But everything conspired to hinder me.

I suppose every one has pictures that they collect without meaning to; funny, little pictures that live in their minds and spring up at odd moments; and pictures that sometimes come, with time, to bring back no more than the feeling of the long forgotten day when the particular picture hung itself up inside.

Cats that step reluctantly and pick up their feet in their wet-hating, curly way, will, I know, always take me back to the damp air of that afternoon when I walked down past the fish market to the Piazza del Duomo, where the cobbles shone in the wet and reflected the bobbing umbrellas, and where, instead of the usual chattering crowds, there were empty spaces, which was bound to give a feeling of loneliness to any one who knew and loved the Florence of sunny days.

I went through this and down past the Loggia dei Lanzi, where there were no stalls or no hand trucks heaped with flowers, and then through the court-like street that divides the two upper floors of the big Uffizi Gallery, on under the little passageway that connects these, and then along the balustraded walk that overlooks the Arno.

It is lovely to walk by this river in the sunlight, because then there are women down below, on the shallow strips of beach that crop up here and there, who wash clothes by beating them on stones with stones, and who sing and joke, or call scornful taunts at each other, as they work. But this day it was empty save for a little boy who sat in the stern of a moored boat and fished—I suppose with a bent pin on his string—just as his little American brother might do in my own land.

After I had walked toward the Grazia Bridge, and crossed the street to see something I thought pretty in one of the windows of the shops, I turned and went back toward the Ponte Vecchio, which means “The Old Bridge,” and as I walked across this I considered what I would buy to take home to Mother, Father, Roberta and the twins.

I did this because the bridge is lined with little shops that have windows that twinkle from the gold and silver they hold and the gleaming of all the stones I had ever heard of and many, many more.

Then—and with the weighted, unpleasant feeling still with me—I turned in the direction that would take me home, and hurried as quickly as I could because the rain was coming down faster and it was coming on the slant.

The people in the shops I passed were idle, and the women huddled up with the stewpot little stoves they call scaldinoes tucked under their feet and skirts. They still sat in their doorways although a real storm raged, and I learned that day, truly, that most of Italy does live in the street.