White Shotgun

says.

I believe he is 100 percent serious.

Instead, we lock the bag of cocaine in the trunk of Cecilia’s car, and after checking again on the sleeping boy, and the policeman reading a newspaper outside his door, the three of us jam into the Ferrari.

“I’m glad you will see the blessing,” my sister says stiffly. “The ceremony is very beautiful.” Winding down the mountain in the open car, Nicosa in glamorous Prada sunglasses and Cecilia and I with Oca scarves tied over our hair, we look like we should be in an Audrey Hepburn movie, but the tension is far from romantic.

“So now we have a spy in our house,” Nicosa says.

“I’m sorry if it looks that way.” “Things went bad the minute you arrived,” he decides, and then, essentially, invites me to leave. “Vatene!” is the command.

Cecilia snaps, “Non parlare a mia sorella in quella maniera.” Don’t talk to my sister that way!

“I’m curious about tua sorella.” Nicosa’s voice becomes louder as he goes on. “Is she here to report on us? Does she carry some kind of list in her pocket, and when she sees someone America doesn’t like she calls the FBI? Because I don’t understand. Explain to me.” He catches my eyes in the mirror. “What are you doing here?” “I’m trying to protect your family from people like the mafia boss I saw in the hospital. It did not start out that way. I was invited by my sister,” I say, and the taste of the lie is sour on my tongue.

“How do you know this man you saw in the hospital?” Nicosa asks.

Cecilia cuts in quickly, “I never spoke his name.” “He had a bodyguard, and he looked like a crook,” I say, covering. “I’m trained to know.” Nicosa bears down on the accelerator.

“He looks at you crooked so you make a terrible and false accusation?” The anxiety in the car ratchets up with the rpms. The curves come and vanish. We are rigid in our seats.

“Can you tell me what this man was doing there?” I say.

“I am delighted to tell you. He is a friend of the family,” Nicosa replies. “He came to express his concern for our boy.” I imagine Cecilia rolling her eyes behind the dark glasses.

“How do you know him? What does he do?” “He is a businessman,” Nicosa says.

“Fine.” I’m getting used to the Italian game of deny-what-we-both-know. “The important one here is Giovanni. As I told Cecilia, your son is in danger.” “Leave it to us to protect our son.” He hits the gas and we suck in the silence until we screech up outside the walls and stride without speaking to Oca headquarters, where the procession to bless the banner is about to begin. Nicosa gets out, lobbing something in Italian that makes Cecilia flinch, and joins a group of men. She and I are left standing in the sun, filled with malevolent adrenaline.

“What did Nicoli say just now?” “You don’t want to know.”

“Did he threaten you?”

She doesn’t answer. I try to read her face, but all I get are fireballs reflected in the dark glasses. She glimmers and glitters with evasion. What is she still protecting?

“Don’t worry about us,” she says finally. “We will be okay. It is like the civil war in my country. You get used to it. You learn how to survive.” The tamburino drowns her out, banging a commanding pulse. People are chanting a poem about it—“In vivo porta il morto / E ’l morto suona” —how the living drum brings the dead to life. The cycle of Palio goes on. Lines of men and women are forming. And now, this is it. We truly are going to war, marching with an animated throng of Oca contradaioli through the sinuous streets, behind the drummer and alfieri carrying the flags of the crowned white Noble Goose. The boy substituting for Giovanni must have been practicing all year as well, because the two flag bearers are perfectly matched.

The soldiers at arms are dressed in pewter helmets and shoulder armor, leather tunics with mail skirts, carrying spears. The costumes are impeccable, down to the embroidery and finely turned swords. There are more men in tights than a Russian ballet, and it’s no joke. Their faces are dead serious — no smirking or waving back at tourists, no awareness of them — as if the authentic Sienese among us have truly been transported back to the fifteenth century.

“Come with me and walk with Oca,” says Cecilia.

“Am I allowed to?”

“You’re wearing the colors; it is fine.” We are part of a long procession that includes all seventeen contrade. I feel like an imposter, walking with the Oca women — young girls, arm in arm, singing boastful victory songs, then mamas and nonnas in sleeveless dresses with pocketbooks hanging over their flaccid wrists. Ahead of us are teenage boys in baggy shorts, and men in business suits, including Nicosa and Sofri, way up front.

“What happens if you marry someone from a different contrada?” “You will not see him. During Palio he will go back to his parents’ house.” “Is that true?”

“Wives and husbands often separate for the week of the feast.” Cecilia gives a rueful laugh, still smarting from Nicosa’s parting shot. “Sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it?” she says.

It is disorienting to be inside a parade instead of protecting it, to be the focus of dazed tourists backed into doorways, nobody understanding what in hell is going on. It’s the folks in modern dress who look out of place, because the contrada procession dominates the streets, sweeping forward with the force of absolute commitment that carries the tall, elongated Palio banner through history to the church. A new one is commissioned each year from a local artist. This one is a bright abstract of the virgin, with multicolored garlands trailing like the tails of fanciful horses.

There are a couple of relaxed-looking provincial cops in light blue shirts with epaulets — and, if worst came to worst, those guys with the spears. Is it possible there is one spot on earth where there is no need for security or suspicion of petty thievery, kidnapping, or terrorist attack? If so it must be here and now, at eleven in the morning, along this sun-kissed stone passageway thronged with believers, where the smells of deeply cooked complex sauces for the celebration lunch are beginning to drift through the aqua shutters of kitchen windows, where ghosts of ancient arches are still visible in the brickwork, and where plants grow arrogantly out of the walls.

Finally, giving in to the spirit, I march downhill to the rhythm of the drums, ending up in Piazza Provenzano, a small square facing the white facade of Santa Maria church. The doors are wide open and the procession keeps pushing inside, a giant traffic jam, as the parishes of each contrada enter behind their alfieri and tamburinos.

The church has simple smooth white walls and is filled with light. In the apse, a golden altar is topped with mosaics and covered with flowers. The moment we enter, a change comes over Cecilia. Never mind that the pews are overflowing, and the atmosphere is as rowdy as a ball game — this is a sacred space that is obviously a deep comfort. It seems natural for her to make the transition from the outside world, murmuring prayers without the slightest self-consciousness.

Sensing my curiosity, she tries to explain. “I am asking for help. I believe it will come.” “Me, too,” I say, although I have no idea what I’m talking about. Help? From where? To do what? Make all of it just go away?

Cecilia and I stay close, but we have lost sight of Nicosa and Sofri in the multitude. I can’t help snapping pictures on my phone. It’s like being inside a wedding cake — round pillars of butterscotch marble topped with creamy rosettes, framing giant oil paintings of lessons and miracles. As more and more people crowd in, Cecilia and I are crushed beside a rack of gowns where altar boys are suiting up. It is touching to see their young faces full of self-importance, but my eye is caught by a single nun in white — older, head bowed, a point of stillness in the pressing crowd.

At last the Palio banner enters and the church erupts with shouts and drums.

Cecilia cries, “Touch it for luck. Go! Go!” Pushing toward the center aisle as the banner is slogged through, reaching with mad ardor like everybody else — shouldering past gray-haired ladies and wide-eyed children, all of us greedy for a touch of magic — I cannot stretch my fingers far enough to reach the cloth, but then I am an outsider; why should I share in their good fortune? The banner continues toward the altar, where it will be blessed by an archbishop dressed in red and white lace. I snap a photo of the nun, a quiet eddy in the current, fingers curled against her fuzzy chin, eyes peering through smudged glasses. I envy her tranquillity.

“Is it too late to become a nun?” I whisper to Cecilia. But Cecilia doesn’t answer, because she is no longer there.

SIXTEEN