Chapter 23 from The Rotten Bridge, A Gypsy Love Story

23.
A long hill rises away from the Arno river and away from town. Luigi and I take a walled-up road that traces it's spine. The sun is high and there is not a stick of shade, and of course, we have no water. We inch along over the cobbled roadbed like two dried worms. Up we go, high over town, toward some squat castle forever pushing ahead of us.
When we get there we read that the medieval fortress is closed for restoration. We take in the overheated view for a minute and then make a few quick right turns, corkscrewing down the hill into a neighborhood that is bleached out by the spikes of midday sun. At this hour all is quiet and empty, turned in on itself. Roses droop to touch the sidewalk, sidewalks squeeze under gates, gates gird up fences that dissect strips of grass that tickle no one's toes.
It is a ghost town of gleaming white stucco and abrupt pavements with no beginning or end. The afternoon stillness drapes over us like gauze. More turns and gates, steps down and then up, pale ribbons of sidewalk crossing and re-crossing this colorful fabric of gardens and never a face in all this bright silence which regards us like insects buzzing up and down simultaneously in this Escherian landscape.
What ring of hell is this? How can there not be a single face? And why not a public fountain or a hose or a watering can even? What deserted daylight of inhumanity have we walked into?
I look down at poor Luigi - he is two inches from collapsing to the pavement. As for me, a thick yellow sweat is squeezing from my skin and my head feels as if someone has poured hot sand onto my scalp.
I wonder what happens to your blood in this instance - after all the water is siphoned off by your greedy organs? What is left to fill your veins, to keep you from clotting up and dropping dead?
And what of the dog? Can poor Luigi nourish himself enough to make it down the hillside, back to the steps of his beloved church where I found him?
Instinctively, maternally, I scoop him up off the stones and put all the iron in my body to work. Delirious now, I turn through the maze of private streets and walkways and come at last to a long public garden only it is our luck that it is walled behind stone, with no apparent entrance. I shield my eyes and curse the sun, wondering if we will ever see the stars again.
We walk on and on against that trifling comfort, knowing that it is green and cool just to the other side, and knowing that eventually these stones will have to break and let us in.
I am walking along the wall with my free arm out, my fingertips drinking in the moisture from the soft tufa face. I put Luigi's colorless tongue up to it. He is folded in the crook of my arm like a baby and I know he can taste, as can I, the rivers of shade that are on the other side of that wall. We have only to discover an opening - a chink or a loose stone or some locked bars that I can squeeze him through so that he might bring back a cart full of juicy lemons and grapes and figs.
I am trying to be optimistic. I don't want to think about the poor beast laying near death in my arms, and who only this morning slept comfortably, albeit hungry and stinking, but liquid, supple, his cells swimming on the cool white marble steps of a church where no doubt a few McDonalds frittas were tossed his way now and again. So what if he would eventually die of malnutrition or cancer - he was happy.
And then I come along and lead him on with soggy bread crusts and a tattered book binding to this - the poor trusting bastard, along with everyone else! When will they learn? Can't they see that it's my fate to be outside the garden? In full view of it, yes - but always outside.
I doubt right now that I would scale that wall even if I had the strength. Even before this great thirst I was digging my own well between the living and the dead. All my life I have kept to the dry, solitary pavements, to this barren place. Forgive me for bringing you here Luigi, along with everyone else, to wait as I have waited - remotely, patiently, thick-skulled and lifeless - with a strong back and a squeezing fist for a heart.
Finally we come to a stone bench. The lightest dapple of shade, an errant twig, has grown from the wall. Luigi collapses on his side, sprawled out. He is panting hard. I wonder if I have killed him too. Youth, hope, health, property - I have destroyed them all.
There was Hazel who died at 30 from complications of our seven year relationship and her subsequent drug habit. And Tara, her mother, who had to watch as she let go of her life.
There is Cassi laid emotionally barren, youth beside her now, still waiting for me. There are my parents without grandchild or daughter-in-law. There are the alcoholic tremors that I helped to cultivate in my youngest brother. There are all the dead and unborn from all the senseless rooting and scarring one-nights. And this is the short list - the one that fits on a flashcard in my wallet; the one that I see every morning before I open my eyes; it is my Pieta, my Ave Maria, summoning god and sermons whenever I enter a chapel.
It's no small curse to live with myself. That I have not killed outright is all I can say in my defense, but there are subtler and more insidious forms of destruction, and those certainly that we are all more or less guilty of. We all carry the power to condemn one another even if we don't recognize it. That is how we are built.
I scoop up Luigi. His breathing is irregular. I listen to it stop and then a rattle comes up in his throat. His eyes close and he sleeps in my arms. I lay back with him against the tufa wall and enjoy the thin shade, imagining that we are sitting atop an advancing glacier.

When I wake up Luigi is gone. Not a trace. I look all around the ruined wall and call out to him even though I'm quite sure he doesn't know my voice yet. I keep looking under the bench too, as though. Finally I call out to some students.
One of them - a young man with a clear face - approaches and talks calmly.
"You have lost your dog?
"Yes, we were here resting and when I looked up he was gone.
"Are you sure it was here? For some reason he is dubious. The others remain a few feet back.
He continued, "But you are not a Fiorentino? Who then is your dog exactly?
"Oh - I found Luigi on the steps, near the Dante statue. You know the church?
"Of course we do. So, you will make a pet of this Luigi for your own amusement and then leave him? You must be from America, yes?
"Yes, I'm traveling for the summer.
"And this is how you treat Italians then?
"I didn't see any harm in giving him a bath and some company.
"Maybe it's your company he doesn't want or need.
"You don't understand. We were lost and he was thirsty.
"But this is Florence. How are you lost like you are in a desert?
"Up there, I pointed.
The students look up at the quaint hillside and laugh.
"Oh yes, the Mojave! Tell us, how long have you been in Firenze?
"One very long night.
"Well, we are going to class now. Go see the Duomo - it is safe there. If we find your Luigi, where are you staying?
"Near the station. But..
"Oh, so you don't trust us either?
"No, it's just that I don't know if I can keep him there. I you want you can leave a message. It's the Ferretti.
"Of course, we know it."
The rest of them roll their eyes, urging this spokesperson of theirs to hurry up. I only hear Americano but they all split a gut over it, whatever it is, so I laugh too. I am a feverish, panicked, sweaty mess. Of course I want to tell them that if it is swagger they want I can give them a lesson or two, just not today, but they turn and walk away.

Luigi comes back to me just as I find the main road that seems to go off in the direction of the bridge. He is covered in something, something that he has rolled in no doubt and it is bad again, worse even, only I am so relieved I don't care.
Here we are once more, hoofing it down the sidewalk of faces and cars, back among the living. We stop for a gelato and some water. Luigi carries the cup in his mouth as we walk. When we come at last to that little row of shops and scooters next to the bridge we make one more pass but the girl is gone. In fact the store is empty and I imagine that she is in the back giving it to herself real good. I stand in the window for a moment. Luigi is at my side with his cup. We stand and wait. Nothing.
At the foot of the bridge, under an old marquee, there is a bag lady with four trampled black and white mutts all leashed together and seated in front of individual plates of pasta with tomato sauce. None of them are eating. It's one of those moments you see that would tear your heart out if you didn't know it was staged for the Sunday edition magazine.
I stop to take a picture and the old woman crows because Luigi gets too close, although I don't think any of her dogs can see. I give her some coins and apologize and Luigi and I cross back over the bridge to a more comprehensible and forgettable place and immediately everything is as it should be - the crowd is cheerful and dull and the monuments snicker behind their polished facades.
It is yet another World Cup soccer night and we walk on against a tide of hooligans, shoulder to shoulder, carrying their teams upon their chests, and we continue our search for a suitable owner.