Twenty-three has been my favorite number since high school. I don’t remember why or how it gained such status, but when the number of my choir folder in my freshman year at college showed up as twenty-three, I was thrilled. The number had already shown itself in various other ways around the same time – in what ways I’ve since forgotten – and the folder’s numeration was enough to tie a sense of destiny to its appearance for years, thereafter.
By my count, this is day twenty-three of the Italian lockdown. I can’t honestly say that I noticed much difference from day twenty-two, or day fourteen. We’re into our fourth week. From here, this climb goes up rather steeply for awhile. Patience is wearing (not just mine) with no ready outcome. It’s time to breathe and remember that we’ve advanced towards the goal, however jerkily. This is no time to slip.
This morning I was seized by a sudden fit of machismo. It was cold out, a clear, sparkling, picture-perfect day, but my foray to the street to retrieve the recycle bin for plastics was enough to convince me to wait before I walked. Then I checked the weather – currently +4c, with an expected high of +8c. I decided to stay in for as long as I could. Now you may wonder what about that was macho. Well, I told myself I didn’t need a walk at all. If the weather was going to be that cold, fine, it could go right ahead and be cold without me. I’d be happy and warm indoors, thank you very much.
By 15:30 I was paying dearly for that strut, so at 16:30 I swallowed pride and put on my coat and scarf.
Now, I’ve been pretty consistent about starting my night walks between 22:00 and 22:30, and when I see anyone at all, it is usually from among a group of the same four or five people. We’ve begun to exchange greetings, smiles, nods, and eye-contact as we hug the walls on either side of the lane so as to keep a proper distance. It’s not exactly the evening passeggiata but it is a ghost of normality, and is luxuriously social, in its way.
At 16:30, it’s a whole new crowd. Right off, there was a mother and her two little children up ahead, taking their sweet time. I like to walk fast, but to be respectful of distance – especially with little ones whose trajectory was not all that predictable – I decided to cut that leg of the walk short and turn around. Turning around put me behind a man of more years (or at least a slower gait) than mine, so I turned again, caught between the young and the old, and was forced back onto my street heading home.
As I approached home, the smoker with the sweet smile stepped out from his door. I waved, sent him a salve, turned and walked quickly away. (I’ve got to remember to look up the Italian for “back and forth” so I can explain to the guy what I’m doing, that I don’t just turn around to avoid him.) At the other end of my street I encountered another young woman and her meandering offspring, so turned right instead of the usual left, only to come up against a man at the narrowest part of the lane, and standing smack in the middle, examining his phone. Trapped again, I hugged the wall and squeezed past him towards the little bridge with the window.
The shutters were open again – or still open, for having not walked this morning I may have missed an episode – the curtained half seemingly innocent of watchful eyes. The little girl I imagine there jumped forward in time, today. No longer did I picture myself as her in the tiny observation chamber of some pre-lockdown past, counting her favorites, eager for the map-totting, utterly lost tourist, but as a child of the twenty-third day of lockdown, yearning to see her friends and relatives pass once again on the street below, and further, able to run to surprise them before they escaped down Via Montemarte. Even more, able to follow them, if she chose to, towards the umbrella pines of the ex-caserma, the friendly plane trees on the Confaloniere, or the enormous tree-choking wisteria in the garden before Liceo Artistico. Instead, she watched all that in her mind – the people, the trees, the vines – she saw them at her favorite times of year, and sighed for not being able to share in their special qualities of scent, sound, and sight – for not being able to hug them, run her fingers on bark, kick leaves, giggle and wave.
Memories are good, they whisper to us that the past is a living part of the present, but we are not made to be so alone in such numbers. Here and there the hermit or the anchorite, sure, but the mass of us (even those made nervous by crowds) enjoys experiencing a mass of us at least every once in awhile. So, I will stroll at 22:15 tonight to murmur salve and nod and smile to the people I’ve become used to seeing at that time, and revel in that small society; sparse, spaced, and spread. Every night the smiles sweeten, the eyes soften, and the wave becomes more playful, and for all of us, we are reminded of our town’s promise to reconstruct itself once these times are past, as it has done so many times before.