Monumento Dei Caduti

Visiting Tuscany

The Santa Maria Novella Station in Florence is huge and busy. After weaving my way through the jigsaw of people, I found not one, but two trains sitting end to end at platform 6. I tried a few doors as I walked beside the first train, but they were locked and no one was aboard. The crowd around me began filling the second train, but I stopped at the door. “Damn”, no train number on this beast either. In Germany, every car has an LED sign displaying the train’s number. Handy if you’re from out of town. I shook my head and muttered “It’s not like you to follow the crowd” and joined the last stragglers to board.

Stepping off at Pontassieve Station, I waited on a bench for my connection to Dicomano, my destination in Tuscany. An eighty-year-old friend back in Michigan once told me stories of her younger days there, of the quaint town and leisurely countryside. Over tea one afternoon she asked me to promise I’d visit. Then, grinning like a little girl, she extended her hand and said “pinky-swear”.

Cool air washed past me as I waited on the bench, and I was glad I’d packed my jacket. Beyond the covered platform, an overcast sky draped everything in blue-grey, warning a deluge could arrive any moment. Despite the threat of rain, these are my favorite days for photography. In fact, it’s even better if it rains a little. Greens are never greener and complements like yellow and red mute and glow. In this kind of light, people transform. Blemishes disappear, stray hair vanishes, and if there is a hint of back-light, a beautiful halo engulfs them. Heavenly.

The train to Dicomano finally pulls in. The door slides open, revealing fifteen excited school children. The boys rush headlong down the platform, trying the patience of the lone teacher. Next, the girls step off two by two, smiling, carefree, happily holding hands. Last off, the smallest girl takes up her teacher’s hand, and I catch myself longing for the touch of a woman.

In Dicomano, I photograph the bridges, cobblestone alleys, and old downtown. In front of City Hall, stands the Monumento Dei Caduti (Monument to the Fallen) and I study it for a long time. It’s huge marble base and bronze statute commemorates those lost to World War I. In the faint breeze, the heavy chain around its base sways and moans softly.

Several years ago, I started reading aloud names carved on tombstones and memorials. It’s a silly habit perhaps, but I like hearing their names spoken. How long might it have been? A year, a decade, a century or more? And I wonder, what kinds of people were they? What kind of friends? Did they realize their dreams?

Carved deeply into the memorials base, are the names of the fallen. Slowly I start announcing them one by one. Ottavio Aglietti, Francesco Alberti, Givseppe Arzignani… Then I reached Alfredo Innocenti, Angiolo Innocenti, Brvno Innocenti, Gvglielmo Innocenti, and Riccardo Innocenti. Five brothers lost to war.

I let the gravity of that sink in. The loss of five citizens, five brothers, five sons. And the melody from the swaying chain, sounded more like a mother’s lullaby.