I’d watch people nonchalantly rolling cigarettes just steps from the crossfire. A group of battered young people walking arm in arm, saturated with juice, singing “When the Saints Go Marching In” in imperfect but exuberant English. I’d witness several so-called “baptisms,” in which a first-timer, or an arancieri otherwise perceived to be weak, kneels on the ground while a tight circle of his teammates whips overripe oranges at his face from inches away. “Is that blood?” I’d hear one young man ask another, examining his left ear. “It’s blood orange,” the friend clarified. Though I’d see plenty of actual blood too: crusting under nostrils, catching the sunlight on a dark, puffy lip. And from time to time, whenever the throwers aboard the carriages momentarily ran out of oranges, I’d watch them, one by one, raise their empty palms, remove their leather helmets and make a magnificent gesture of clapping for the arancieri on foot — who, just as graciously, returned their applause. There was a lot I found alarming about the Battle of the Oranges or that made me recoil. But this touched me every time: Everyone throwing and being thrown at, working together to have a good time.
That said, even minutes into that first skirmish in the Borghetto, I truly couldn’t imagine how everyone could keep it up for three more hours, then do it all again for two more days. The emotions being unleashed, the outpouring of ferocity mixed with joy, seemed unsustainable — a once-in-a-lifetime rush. Besides, the ground was already covered in an electric yellow mash. The juice bled out. The slurry congealed. Soon there would be three to four inches of it carpeting Ivrea’s piazzas end to end, mounds and streaks all over the adjoining streets. It was enough to suction your boots in place if you stood in it too long, enough to close a school district, if the oranges were snow. And when you put your foot down into it, it burped upward like a simmering marinara and splotched the ankles of your pants.
This material turned gray, then brown, in the afternoon air, all while other, fresher oranges kept exploding off foreheads, faces, cheeks and chests and touching down. At any given moment, you’d see bright, recognizable chunks of citrus smushed in at the surface of the mess. It looked exactly like vomit. It looked as if the city itself had thrown up. And somewhere in there, surely, were also pockets of manure from the horses, which, held stationary at the center of the battles, could be seen baring their teeth, then taking a crap.
This was the muck that Ivrea’s street-cleaning machinery would be left to confront, three evenings straight. And though the heroic little brush-trucks succeeded in sucking up the bulk of it, they couldn’t clean everything. They compressed the remnants into the channels between the cobblestones and left a colorless scum coating the surface of the town. It was superslick. Many people — delicate-looking older people, mothers with infants strapped to their chests — tread carefully without complaint. Others took running starts, turned sideways and enjoyed the ride.
