Tuscany’s majestic river, the Arno, has burst its banks this week. The flood has devastated the beautiful city of Florence, known to Italians as “Rome’s sweetshop” for the mellifluous beauty of its architecture. The schools have been closed for several days now; shops are boarded up, and museums closed to the public. So it is with nature; such things may not be foreseen, and the Florentines have taken the flood as an attack on their precious culture.
Although the Arno has now settled back into its riverbed, it has left traces of its passage in the thousands of pieces of refuse littered around the city. Babies’ nappies, glass and plastic bottles, papers, wrappers, all the hidden detritus of Florentine society. The elegance of the Tuscan city has given way to Neapolitan ugliness, to the sort of filth so often decried and looked down upon by Italians of refined sensibility. The Florentines looked on in horror as the mud washed over their beautiful piazzas and cobbled alleyways. The Duomo cathedral was unrecognisable, the Galerie Dell’Academia besmirched, the Ponte Vecchio utterly transformed. The city’s residents were sickened by these sights and emerged from their homes determined to restore their city’s intimate charm. Michelangelo’s David had been moved to a safe place, along with da Vinci’s Last Supper. In the neighbouring countryside, men and women summoned their courage and came to Florence to help clear away the debris and clean off the city’s stone facades. As if answering a call from God and his angels, they came in their thousands to help the city dwellers. The Florentines called them the “Mud Angels.”
“This is Florence, by God!” thundered a soldier, contemplating the disaster. The army had come to provide assistance to the citizens. Florence was a tourist city, one that had to remain perfectly preserved. But what would they do with all this waste, this wave of detritus the Arno had washed over Rome’s sweet shop?
“Throw it all back in the river,” the general ordered.
“But sir...! This isn’t Naples, we’re not savages.”
“What belongs to the Arno shall be given back,” the general repeated.
The soldiers obeyed and fed the river back everything it had vomited up. They shovelled along its banks; it was easy to throw all that paper into the river, and even quite fun once you got into the swing of it. Some scraps of paper flowed along on the water’s surface, while others floated and then disappeared into the currents. The sicker they made the river, the better the city of Florence would breathe. Who would ever go into the river anyway? They could get rid of what was no longer useful, what was shameful or ugly; they could dispense with anything that sullied the image of Florence. Florence was an anachronism, a postcard frozen in time, and could not be subjected to the ravages of modern society. “Throw it all in the river!” the general insisted. Passers-by were incensed as they saw the army vehicle dumping all that waste into their river. The image seemed unreal, but here they were, witnessing this sacrilegious act with their own eyes. But what could they do? After all, the important thing was for everything to go back to the way it was before so that this could all be reduced to a bad memory, for nature to once again be domesticated, invisible and silent. As long as Florence could be Florence again. As long as the tourists came to buy their trinkets and gaze at the statue of David, as long as pizzas were hot and the schools were open, as long as the palaces, churches, academies, museums and piazzas were cleaned and repaired. Not many wondered how long that might last.
Alan Alfredo Geday
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