“Shutters (Torgiano, Italy)”. Photo by Jerry Miller. May 2013

CHAPTER ONE
In Umbria that year it seemed that August might never end. In the night people dreamed of September, of crisp mornings, warm, quiet afternoons, and late evenings waiting for the moon to emerge into a cool, starlit sky.

But when they woke, August was still with them. The heat remained omnipresent, lifting sheer curtains lazily during stifling afternoons when even a brief nap was impossible to capture, and bed sheets held one in a damp and breathless grasp. It was a time to go somewhere else and hope the devil sun did not follow.

But what would Ferragosto be without the sun?

* * * * *
August 13. The soft, peach-hued dawn gave way to a blood-streaked sun, which rose grandly and ominously behind the mountains east of Assisi, chasing the peace of night before it. The intermittent breeze that had roamed through the sleeping medieval alleys of Perugia during the night had given up, and retreated to wherever it went throughout the day to hide from the unrelenting heat and pulsing brilliance that at high noon made it all but impossible to see.

The Fontana Maggiore, pride of all fountains in Perugia, came to life with the birds, who had bathed in it before sunrise and now were playing in its spray, dipping and diving for fun, and afterwards retreating to the eaves of the haggard western façade of the cathedral to preen their feathers. The cathedral steps, which later would serve as a reviewing stand of sorts for those who chose to sit and watch the piazza in the heat, were still in deep shade.

The aroma of coffee gradually embraced this corner of the city, and the metal gates of Pasticceria Sandri rose with a crash. Waiters in starched, street-length aprons emerged from within and uncoiled hoses to wet down the street in front of the bar, spraying each other from time to time, and taking quick sips from the hose lip. They claimed the dampened pavement in front of the bar with green metal tables and chairs, and flapped down bright red tablecloths, securing them with clips against the unlikely arrival of a breeze; that done, they moved into the shade for a cigarette, their shirts damp with sweat under their arms and against their backs.

For the sun was already advancing steadily down the Corso as if it were leading a legion of Roman soldiers, and it was still August, the day before Ferragosto Eve.

From Chapter 20
He coughed several times again. Now he was really trembling, and he curled up and wrapped himself in the blankets, but this did no good, he couldn’t get warm. Maybe I should sleep after all, he found himself thinking. Just for a few minutes. I’m so cold. And soon he was drifting high above the tiny lights beneath him, borne on the familiar lift of the night winds from the hills, and he thought, Maybe I’m on a 747, flying to Jakarta. Soon the dawn will come, and I will smell the coffee, and the cabin lights will come on and people will yawn and go down the aisles, stretching their legs. The window shades will slide up and the sun will be rising over orange and pearl layers of cloud, and beneath me will be a grand ocean, perhaps, or a land of heroic colors, and I’ll feel the plane bank and begin its descent gently, from its great height, and I will be arriving somewhere! Somewhere I have never been. And this arrival will be happy, because although I’m in a different world, a familiar joy will still be with me; there will be a familiar sense to all of it, in fact, if I just pay attention, and a peaceful bed at the end of the journey. And when I rise from it I will throw open the windows and see a place I may not know, but one that has been expecting me all of my life.