Have You Fear? Have You Fear?
Underneath his flowing wig, perspiration is streaking down Giorgio's
temples, and at the nape of his neck it trickles down and wets the
ruching of his collar. The great historical pageant is about to begin,
and he will be in it, and Gaudenzia will be in it. But she will walk
riderless, and he will ride a mighty warhorse clad in armor of steel.
Already his contrada is forming into a tight military company--the
drummer first, the two flag-bearers next with their enormous
blue-and-white flags, and then Captain Tortorelli in coat-of-mail with
unsheathed sword, and a major page and four minor pages. And then he,
Giorgio, will come on his warhorse, and last of all Gaudenzia, led by
her groom.
Giorgio's whole body is on tiptoe, on the brink of a great happening.
He can feel himself growing pale, the skin of his face drawing tight
over his cheekbones. A dark-bearded groom is offering his hand as a
mounting block, to help him climb aboard the huge warhorse.
Giorgio stiffens. If he can mount Gaudenzia bareback, he can certainly
put a foot into a stirrup and swing up without help. But the real
stiffening is a feeling he has, not exactly of jealousy, but of concern
that someone else is handling Gaudenzia. Will the man know how to
soothe, and be firm too, amidst the jostling of people and the throb of
drums, and the great race only a whisper of time away?
A nudge from the groom brings Giorgio up sharply. He waves the man
aside, puts the ball of his foot on the stirrup, swings into the
saddle. He feels awkward with a saddle between him and the horse--like
the times he straddled a chair when he was young, and made believe it
was a horse.
The groom thrusts a great iron lance into Giorgio's hand. "Hold it
firm!" he warns, as he anchors it in the socket of the stirrup.
"_Attenzione!_" The Captain booms his command. And now the whole
military company moves forward, the drum beating out in somber
vehemence. On both sides hundreds of people are moving with them in
swirling waves, upstream toward the highest hill of Siena. Where the
streets narrow, the people flatten themselves against the buildings,
then come forward again, like waters rushing, receding, rushing.
Giorgio sways along on his mount like a sailor on a flat-bottom boat.
The paddling gait of the warhorse is never in step with the beat of the
drum; it gives him a seasick feeling. Or is the churning in his stomach
a mixture of fear and joy? He glances back at Gaudenzia. She is jibbing
her head, actually lifting the groom off his feet as if he were a
puppet on a string. She too wants the race to start, and even now wants
Giorgio's hand on her leadstrap. He feels better then, in a shamefaced
way, and the seasickness leaves him.
His contrada is atop the hill now, moving past the ancient hospital
where nuns and patients are craning out the windows. Before the great
black-and-white Cathedral the company halts, and the flag-players fling
themselves into action, paying homage to the Archbishop in a window on
high. Bending, swaying, leaping over their banners, they toss their
flags skyward, making the blue waves on the white silk ripple and roar
like the waves of the sea.
On the wide steps of the Cathedral a great throng watches steadfast,
clapping in admiration. They stand with heads uncovered to the hot July
sun. Some have missed the intimate blessing within the church of their
own contrada, and have come to witness this final benediction for all.
Giorgio has passed this way before, once on the warhorse of the Shell,
once for the Panthers. But those other times were blurred. Then the
final benediction had not seemed a direct communion from the white
hand of the Archbishop way up there in the dark of the window. It had
not been direct to him, but a kind of general blessing for all the
contradas as they went by.
But now, on this day of July the second, 1954, Giorgio needs
benediction as truly as if Time had spun back, and the year were 1260,
and he was going into the Battle of Montaperti--or whatever the name
of that great battle was. Now he needs the strength that the white hand
up in the window can give him.
He stretches his neck, looking up, and he thinks of himself as a
parched bird, head back, beak open, begging a drop of water.
There! The hand is moving. Two fingers. No, three. They are making
the sign of the cross. The benediction is communion direct to him,
to Giorgio Terni, and it is coming right from God, with only the
Archbishop in between. Suddenly he is ready, calm and ready for battle,
and he nods a little to the figure up there in the window to let him
know he has received the message. His hand tightens on the lance.
He sways along on his broad-backed charger and leaves the Cathedral
Square; he and his whole company--the flag twirlers, and the Captain,
and Gaudenzia, and all the others--and they wind down from the hill,
and down, and down into the core of the city, a tight military company.
As they approach the entrance to the Piazza, the bell in the
Mangia Tower begins tolling a sonorous _bong, bong, bong_, and the
spine-tingling reverberations blot out all other sounds.
Before and behind are other companies. The contrada of Lupa is entering
Il Campo, and Onda will be next. Yes, he will be next. And he will be
really seeing the historical parade for the first time. Those other
times he had moved like one in sleep. But this is real. Now he knows
that the pageant is more than a parade; it is a bright fuse burning
itself around the shell of Il Campo until it blazes into the fire of
the Palio.
And at last, at last, he is riding into the square! His eyes blink at
the awesomeness. The facades of the palaces are alive with thousands
upon thousands of heads. And within the railing of the shell is a
heaving sea of heads, like flowers in a pot too small--rootbound and
gone riotous in bloom. And all those heads have bodies and souls,
and they have come to see him and to witness battle and bravery and
bloodshed; and he, Giorgio Terni, must fight off nine warriors before
his white mare can capture the golden banner.
He _has_ to do it because it is like keeping a promise to himself and
to those thousands of people. There are so many he dizzies trying to
separate them. And all those eyes are asking for the most beautiful
Palio in history, and Gaudenzia will give it to them!
The bigness of it all makes him afraid, and then he sees the small boys
who have been waiting in the sun since noon, sitting there on the white
posts that fence the shell. One looks up, focusing right at Giorgio
with his shiny, worshipful eyes, and Giorgio knows he wants to win for
him, and he wants to win for all the little _colonnini_, and for Emilio
back home in Monticello, and for little boys everywhere.
At thought of home a smile crosses his face, and even through the
bonging of the bell and the dinning of drums he can hear his mother
say: "Giorgio Terni! Tell me! Tell me! What contrada comes first? And
who next? And what happens then?"
He longs for a camera, but it would be no use. He has only two hands,
and one is frozen to the lance and the other guiding the reins on a
warhorse big as a battleship.
All right! He will be eyes and ears for everyone at home. His gaze
moving, he peers around, taking pictures in his mind, explaining.
"Mammina! Babbo! Teria! Emilio! I have a lofty perch on my warhorse.
I see across heads.... I see the whole procession. The members of the
parade are not the people of today, but what they look like--the people
of long ago.
"First come the red mace-bearers stumping along tall and straight, like
their maces. They make way for the black-and-white flag of Siena.
"Emilio, you should know this flag! It stands for Romulus, who founded
Rome, and for Remus, who founded Siena. Like us they were brothers,
only they were suckled not by a mamma, but by a she-wolf. One day those
brothers build fires, and the one fire makes white smoke and the other
black, and so the flag is for them ... black and white.
"Teria! You would like better the plumed knights and nobles in their
velvet costumes, and the musicians blowing on their silver trumpets.
"And Babbo! The magistrates of the guilds _you_ would like--the silk
workers, and wool workers, and stone and gold workers, and builders,
and painters, and blacksmiths, and apothecaries."
Giorgio's eyes sharpen, dart ahead with the unbroken cavalcade as it
winds triumphantly around the Piazza. How can he remember it all? How
can he possibly make his family see those flag-players tossing their
great flags into the air, making them soar in a hundred ways? "Oh,
Mamma mia, look. Look, right now! Our boys from the Onda are doing the
jump of the snowflake. Look how they leap high in the air, making the
great banners unfurl, _horizontal_!
"Oh, I give up! Some day you must come. Those boys--they send their
souls up with their flags into the sky. You _got_ to see it. Yourself!"
Giorgio stops a moment, tired, bewildered. His brain goes blank with
taking pictures, as if he has run out of film. He squirms in his
saddle, forces himself on.
"Yes! All this you got to see." He tries to pick one last scene
to remember, and his eyes light on the very young page boys linked
shoulder-to-shoulder by green garlands. "Look, Emilio, they are no
bigger than you yourself. See how they separate the ten contradas who
will run from the seven who will not! And, Babbo, you would laugh
how much those little boys with their loops of green look like the
grapevines between our fields."
Giorgio stopped. He was out of breath. A hush had fallen over Il
Campo as the parade came to an end. From the tail of his eye he saw
the magnificent gold _carroccio_ winding up the procession. Was this
battlecar the same one as last year, and last century? He knew,
of course, that it must be, but today he saw afresh the brilliant
paintings on its sides, the gilded wheels, the resplendent Palio held
aloft--the banner he and Gaudenzia must bring to Onda.
The hush deepened. The rolling of the drums stopped. The bonging of the
bell seemed far away in the sky, but within the battlecar the silver
trumpets were weaving a dialogue, the high notes calling, the low ones
answering.
Giorgio straightened in his saddle. To him the high notes were not a
summons, but a question--insistent, unvaried, probing over and over and
over again:
"_Have you fear? Have you fear?_"
And the silver-blown answer piercing the air:
"_Courage is the law of the Palio._"