Tom Foran Clark

While Emery had set out on his journeys with his sights on visiting every art museum, shrine, memorial, or gravestone known to art historians -- exploring, listening, drawing, and writing it all down -- Pike was entirely on the side of serendipity, coincidence, and just seeing what happens. "Everything is significant," he liked to say, "but nothing matters." At this point in their journey, that way of thinking was helpful to Emery. Pike operated along the lines of "Well, let’s just see what turns up," which was just fine with Emery now. Pike knew his friend was downcast. "Just ride the bike," he recommended.

The two enjoyed occasional jocund banter, but by and large it was a lot of silence that they shared. And hard work -- shared hard work. Riding in Italy was not flying a kite. It could be grueling. The two felt they were both becoming accomplished riders -- persevering riders, anyway. They’d come through much together. At this point, they were used to -- or abused to -- one another. They relaxed. There was no nervous need at all to fill an empty space, or kill a golden silence, by talking.

The inflated notion "wasted time" lost its clout, falling like scales or feathers from a moulting bird or reptile. They had all the time there is. Time was not passing; they passed through it. Did they miss something -- a sight or sound? What could it matter? Let things fall as they would. Emery even picked up Pike’s mantra -- "Newton, Newton, Newton, Newton." This kept Emery mellow -- and it kept the pedals churning.

Neither was unflappable, however. When Emery took a spill one day, he said he knew it was Pike’s fault. Emery wanted justice.He wanted Pike's head on a platter. Pike yelled at Emery, it did no good to place blame. He said Emery had been daydreaming again -- Emery simply hadn't been paying attention. Here's what Emery said happened:

Riding along smooth as cream in coffee, Pike had suddenly applied his brakes. (He insisted he’d seen a dead cat in the road. A cat! There was no cat.) The two had been sailing down a hill, neither of them pedaling, just freewheeling -- two riders having the time of their lives -- when Pike had suddenly felt compelled to stop and take a photograph. He'd reached for his brakes. Emery's front wheel touched his back wheel. Pike shot left and Emery went right. They each quickly adjusted their bikes’ courses. Pike again sideswiped emery. His left handlebar got somehow entangled in Pike's protruding rucksack. Pike came to a gentle halt but Emery's bike lurched right, insisting on a horizontal flight. As it fell sideways to the unforgiving pavement, Emery somersaulted forward and somehow landed on his feet, upright, sprinting on ahead like a runner emerging first through a finish-line banner. It could not have turned out better, of course. Still, Emery was righteously indignant. (Dead cat in the road, indeed.)

Yes, and it was winter in Italy -- as cold a winter as Italy had ever had, let the record show. The two arrived shivering at a brick and cement block house under construction, abandoned for the winter -- perhaps abandoned altogether. There was considerable outgrowth of weeds and grass sprouting from the concrete all around. Pike and Emery pulled up grass and piled it in a corner of the house, making a soft mattress, and pulled a tarpaulin over themselves. They put on every article of clothing they had with them and got into their sleeping bags and slept full fourteen hours.

They did not go anywhere the next morning. They studied maps, wrote postcards, and focused on just staying warm. At dusk, in order to warm themselves, they went for a walk. They headed for the nearby village of Poggibonsi. Sniffling and sneezing, they took refuge in a combination café/tobacconist’s shop, buying stamps for their postcards and hot cappuccino. They sat at a table near the stove. They took turns using the toilet and washing up. Now warmed and refreshed, they took a walk through the town. As it turned out, Poggibonsi was in the middle of Chianti country. In every store were big Chianti bottles at rock-bottom prices. They got a big bottle, bread and cheeses, and half a dozen candles. They were glad of the long and warming walk back to their outpost late that night.

Early in the morning, under a low silver ceiling of sky, Pike and Emery rode right on through Poggibonsi out to the open road. There were citadels and castle ruins atop the encircling hill tops, many of them having been referred to by Dante in his Inferno, as signs along the road pointed out. They entered lush, wet forests and emerged onto farmlands again. They still had to make several more steep hauls uphill to get to Siena. They passed through an arch and followed signs to the city center -- to il Campo, the central plaza, a beautiful sloping bowl of most elegant red brick, and the Palazzo Pubblico, the peoples’ palace, whose adjoining tower poked high into the low-lying, ominous gray sky.

The center of the city seemed familiar, as if they’d seen it in their dreams. All of Siena was imbued with this mysterious, calming mood of inevitability. Stand where you would you could not but find a scenic view. For camera-clicking Pike, Siena was close to heaven. He excused himself from museum-going, but Emery just had to go and see the City Hall mural, The Effects of Good and Bad Government by the Lorenzetti brothers and, naturally, Sienna’s celebrated illuminated hymnals. In the afternoon, Emery walked out of town to a meadow and laid on his back and simply looked into the changing sky. The solid sheet of gray had given way to steel blue. Cloud flotillas floated over. Occasionally the sun would attempt to break through, but the cloud swarms made short work of that.

Back at the main plaza, he found Pike lying back on the Sienese bricks, taking serial photos of this sky. The two might have continued loafing through the rest of that afternoon, but a serious wind kicked up suddenly, taking them by surprise. They had to hold their upper arms against their foreheads when they departed the square, which was now a kind of dustbowl. Picturesque this was not. Dirt and gravel flew so hard across the plaza, it stung their eyes.

They had it in their heads that they would go to Rapolano after seeing Siena. Now that they literally could not see Siena, they sallied forth on automatic pilot, resolved to get on the road to Rapolano. The hills were low, the valleys wide, and the wind halting -- it didn’t even enter their heads that they should not go counter to this harsh wind. They got to Rapolano and kept right on going. They made it all the way to Sinalunga -- it was only in Sinalunga that the wind finally died down.

That evening, they trudged up a steep hillside to Foiano della Chiana and pitched their tent on the outskirts of the village. In the morning they rode along Lake Trasimeno, passing through the village of Passignano. Having pedaled almost perversely to get to this point, they eased up now, spending the next four days traveling at a very leisurely pace, enjoying their ride over the lolling Umbrian mountains on the long and winding road that took them to Perugia.

They rolled into the city on the Corso Vannucci, which carried them to the Cathedral of St. Lawrence! Pike ("Lawrence of Lawrence") took dozens of pictures there -- not for art’s sake, but for sharing with family and friends back in his Massachusetts hometown. When Pike had got his fill, the two went on to the Piazza Picciano, where they met a group of svelte, elegant, ebony-black Nigerians enrolled in Perugia’s International University. When Emery asked them what they studied, the Nigerians unabashedly said they were going to be -- in fact, they were already -- pimps. Did Pike and Emery want girls? Did Pike and Emery have money? From their native villages, the Nigerians had been importing their girlfriends and the girlfriends of their girlfriends to come here to be prostitutes. The Nigerians said the Italian government was only too ready to look the other way. The Nigerians were prospering -- and that was not all. They said they were also learning Italian.

Pike and Emery assured the Nigerians politely that they were not just then wanting prostitutes. This was fine with the Nigerians -- they let it go. They danced around Pike and Emery and graciously invited them to come see the University, and even to stay overnight in their dorm rooms, if Pike and Emery so chose, compliments of Perugia and Italy.

"We didn’t make this dog-gone world," Pike whispered in Emery's ear. "We only live in it. Let’s do it."

Even as the two set forth with the Nigerians to be introduced to the campus, snow began to fall. The Nigerians were thrilled -- as effervescent, excited, and delighted as little schoolchildren. Their sincere lightheartedness was totally contagious. The Nigerians ran around in circles with their arms held wide and their tongues out, catching snowflakes. The snow came faster, and soon began to stick, covering the ground, and a few of the Nigerians laced their arms into Pike and Emery's, and a couple took charge of their bikes, and they all ran together to the dorm rooms.

The English the Nigerians spoke was impeccable, as if they’d studied at Oxford -- except they spoke very fast. The Nigerians took a sincere liking to Pike and Emery. It wasn’t long before Pike was mimicking them, echoing their elegant manner, style, and bearing. He told them of the journey to Perugia, which the Nigerians punctuated with joyful cries of "Yes! That is a fact. Yes, yes. That is a fact!" They were amazed to learn Pike and Emery were riding their bicycles south through Italy without financial backing from any government. This seemed very risky to them. That surprised Pike and Emery -- that the Nigerians should think the venture was not a reasonable undertaking, but instead an unrewarded pain.

As the night wore on, the Nigerians began, more and more, to speak among themselves, falling into their own rhythmic native tongue -- a clicking, fluid hot-cho-bojo-jamba sounding language. This all came to a sudden halt. It was the end of their day. The lights went out, and there was then not a sound.

In the morning, Pike and Emery were served bread and jam and tea while the Nigerians took their time preening themselves, dressed in two pairs of everything. They put on comical black hats decorated with brightly colored ribbons. Everyone departed the dorm rooms laughing, agreeing on where we’d be meeting that evening. "Yes! That is a fact. Yes, yes!" Pike took their joy at face value. Emery conjectured unspeakable suffering in desperate circumstances had made the Nigerians immoderately ingenuous and giddy. This also explained the unconscionable pimping? Arm-in-arm, laughing, they stepped lightly over the fresh-fallen snow toward the Collegio to do whatever it was they did.

Pike and Emery went forth in search of palaces and galleries. They went first to the luxurious Palazzo dei Priori, the National Museum. After, they had a big brunch and then went over to the Basilica of Saint Peter, where the Caravaggios, Peruginos, and an exalting Pieta by Benedetto Bonfigli moved them deeply. In a side chapel, friars chanted in a low and haunting hum that touched their hearts. Emery remained within, contemplating, while Pike, camera in hand, roamed the Basilica’s frosted corridors and courtyards. Then the two had a good long walk in the town. They meandered idly, both simply eager that evening roll around again -- to be shared with their mysterious new friends from Nigeria.

The Nigerians met them at a bar on the Corso Vanucci. Pike and Emery had beer; the Nigerians had tea. Pike tactfully resumed asking them about their pimping. The Nigerians enthusiastically explained they’d organized into syndicates and, with the backing of Italian or Albanian mob bosses, the syndicates paid to have the girls flown in from Nigeria. The syndicates recouped their investments when the girls paid them back through their earnings. When they left the bar to return to the Collegieo dorm rooms, strolling arm-in-arm through the quiet streets, Emery kept his eyes peeled for any signs of streetwalkers. He saw none. The talkative Nigerians were in top form that night. Between just the eight or ten of them, they must have had a dozen different conversations going.

This chatter continued into the night, as in the evening before. Emery asked the Nigerians what happened if one of the prostitutes didn’t pay back the money owed the syndicate for bringing her over. The Nigerians laughed. If this weren’t paid back within a certain time frame, she would be raped, slashed, beaten. But, the Nigerians happily concurred, this seldom happened. When Emery insisted he hadn’t seen any prostitutes in the streets, they reminded him it was winter. They also pointed out with glee that Emery could not see what he did not want to see. "That is a fact, yes, yes! That is a fact!" The Nigerians volunteered to take Emery on a tour of nighttown the next evening, but he and Pike were set for leaving in the morning. Now it was time to sleep. The laughing and talking immediately ceased. At the flip of a switch, they slept.

At 6:00 sharp in the morning, the congenial talk and laughter resumed. There was clockwork in this. The Nigerians again shared their bread, jam, and tea. While preening themselves before mirrors, adjusting their hats, they asked Pike and Emery questions about their journey and their plans -- all of which they’d asked, and the two had answered, the night before, the previous morning, and the night prior to that. It was as if they’d only just met Pike and Emery.

With visible pleasure, the Perugian Nigerians walked with the two bike-riders to the top of a hill. It was not only another day; it was not only a new day. For the Nigerians, it was the first day. A whole new thing was happening. From that hilltop, lightly powdered with snow, they gave Pike and Emery hugs, recited blessings, and sent them forth. The two were glad to go. The Nigerians raised their hands and whooped and cheered and made a great and joyous noise when the riders pushed off, sailing out over the checkered farm plains toward Assissi.