The Oscar stories # 09: That night of November 4th in Florence

 

"Come on, Oscar, let's go have a drink and listen to some good music in that place on the Lungarno .."

This was the pressing invitation of the American friend with whom I had shared the first Vespucci Tour, organized by the Rotary club of Florence in 1964 in the United States.

He had come back and since he was a bit clingy but nice, I made myself available to spend an evening with him in a Florentine nightclub. 

It wasn't that I really wanted it because the flood of the Arno was increasing dangerously after those months of continuous rain that had dampened every optimism of the twenty years.

It was almost midnight, my friend had shot himself five whiskeys and was staggering. We had managed to defeat the numerous attempts of the girls of the place to push us to order champagne.

Luckily my American friend had found a room in a nearby hotel in via dei Bardi where I accompanied him supporting him because he was swaying like a pendulum.

After dropping it in the hotel lobby I headed to the Ponte Vecchio to go home.

My apartment was in via Torta, he says the name came from the design of a remote Roman theater.

However, a narrow street where all the noises, even the most subdued, echoed and I lived on the third floor in a shabby studio and I heard all those noises especially in the morning when all the craft activities in the area were set in motion.

Crossing the Ponte Vecchio I was surprised by the people who had stopped to look down at the river which had now reached the maximum vault of the arches.

What impressed were the vibrations of the ancient structure that had managed to survive even the fury of the Nazi armies.

After 10 minutes of walking I reached via Torta where my apartment was on the third floor of a building built on a structure of 1500.

Whether it's because of the whiskeys drunk, or because that had been a hard day at work I got rid of my clothes and got under the covers and fell into a heavy sleep.

In the dream resurfaced images of the river breaking against the ancient structures of the Ponte Vecchio, then the people crowding the banks of the river to see that overwhelming water that almost reached the edge of the road, 'My Madonna here everything comes out' ... they said but with an almost soft tone of voice without shouting and this made their speech even more dramatic even if it was almost covered by the thunderous noise of the flood of the Arno which was carrying an infinity of trees and things against the structures of the bridges.

This I had seen and this bounced in my mind in that ramshackle dream largely motivated by stomach acid. Maybe it would have been better before going to bed to throw down a little water with two teaspoons of baking soda.

But in that dream I felt surprised by that splash of water that came to my ears from below and it was not the impetuous scream of the river's water mass.

And then a strange silence not interrupted by any real noise of the Florentine life of the Santa Croce area that was awakening.

But that dream was not a dream and I realized it once that the wobbling of restless sleep had given way to an awakening with an excruciating patina in the mouth because the liver just wasn't working.

A strange silence and that swish. I got up and opened a window. 

Via Torta had become a Venetian canal submerged by a foul-smelling liquid mass due to the regurgitation of the sewers, to the scattered naphtha, to all the other filth that the river, now overflowing, was dragging on that part of Florence that it had invaded during the night.

According to the third floor that stream had reached almost under my floor at a height of seven meters.

Those who lived on the lower floors had moved above the other tenants who could accommodate them.

No one had knocked at my place because they were sure there would be no room in that small studio.

It must have been six in the morning and other windows had now opened and the women were conversing softly with great concern because that absence of habitual noises that had entered your head for years and were part of your way of feeling, were now gone to that eerie atmosphere.

'Now what do we do?', This was the phrase that was exchanged several times between the windows.

The next day I went up to the top floor along with others I knew in passing. There were windows open so we went up to the roof of the building.

Piazza Santa Croce invaded by water, the monument to Dante with the poet who seemed to lift his cassock so as not to get it wet, all the cars including mine covered with water that would become shrunken mud after a few hours.

Enrico Mattei, the legendary editor of La Nazione, had managed to have copies of his newspaper printed in a company that had remained dry.

Animated by a sacred fire, I ventured out of the house and after endless vicissitudes, struggling with the mud, I reached the headquarters of the company where I worked in Borgo Pinti and together with a group of hard workers we began to shovel to pretend to start again live. 

What an incredible feeling to have to pick up the cabinets of the new IBM center that had just opened.

One evening, returning home wearing the high fishing boots that I had managed to buy second hand, I lit up the mailboxes in the entrance hall with my portable lamp.

An absolutely meaningless gesture because the mud had plugged all those mailboxes. And then the electric light had not yet been restored and who knows when they would have done it because there was a danger of short circuit and being electrocuted.

Strangely, on the crack of my mailbox I saw something white in the light of the Pila. They had restored the mail delivery service, you think in those conditions, and that was a letter written by Franca who had gone to Mexico with her sister to find an uncle.

The story with that girl, I met a few years earlier in Grado when I was playing with my band, was very strange.

We had remained in correspondence but it was something very mysterious because her letters or my postcards from the places where I came to visit for my profession (thank God I had left music and I was able to find a 'normal' job ) crossed paths automatically, even though we rarely wrote to each other.

Franca was the girl to whom I said "you want to be my girlfriend for 15 days ?", at the end of my musical contract with the local in Grado.

After that letter found in the box overrun by mud, we saw her again and one evening in a pizzeria before taking her back to the station to take her train back to Udine, I told that beautiful blonde that it would be nice to get married.

She said yes and indicated the date of February 18th that she had already planned.