A New Attitude Comes to Light
Every evening before she goes to sleep in her tiny cluttered apartment, Aurora Tosi carefully opens lace curtains to fill the bedroom with the most enduring symbol in sports.
“My nightlight,” she says.
And every evening, from the other side of the bed, partner Valenti Giuseppi climbs up and closes those curtains.
“It’s too bright. How are you supposed to sleep?” he says.
Every afternoon, Antonella Girola walks out to her seventh-floor balcony and basks in the most recognizable flicker on the planet.
“I come out here and I feel hope for my children, hope for their children,” she says.
And every afternoon, next door, Maria Grazia walks outside and moans.
“Oh, that light, that light, will somebody, please put it out?” she cries.
*
For 17 days, it is the brightest boulevard in the world.
The wide, loud, smoggy road begins as Corso Giovanni Agnelli, then comes Corso 4 Novembre, the two apartment-lined stretches sharing but one thing
Their streetlight is the Olympic flame.
Burning atop a tall serpentine stem outside Olympic Stadium, about 20 yards across from the weathered brick buildings, it is a city flame, an urban burn, a symbol that singes reality more than any flame in recent history.
As an afternoon with an interpreter reveals, it has warmly lapped against the steadfast psyche of this reserved city like the Olympics themselves.
Its light fills the insides of hundreds of homes.
“It’s like, here, I have this giant fireplace, raging through my place,” says Maria Grazia, pointing to the flame while standing inside her seventh-floor apartment.
Its glow dances across brightly colored walls and hardwood floors and ancient chests.
“It’s like somebody turned on a light and never turns it off,” says Lorenzo Gamarlero of his fourth-floor pad.
Its heat fills kitchens.
“Everywhere in the apartment, since Friday, it’s like the air is warm, the flame fills everything up,” says Antonella Crema, standing in the family-owned gas station below her home.
The residents here are even close enough to smell it.
“It’s like somebody turned on the gas,” says Antonella Girola.
It drives some to love.
“At night, it is so romantic, isn’t it?” says the elderly Tosi to her aging Giuseppi.
“Romantic? I can’t sleep!” Giuseppi says.
It drives others to debate.
“Let’s stop and look at it,” says Dina Vassarotti, tucking her gloved hand into the bundled arm of Lucia Raineri as the two retired women stop on a busy corner below their apartments.
“I may never see anything like this again,” says Raineri.
“I was thinking more like, what a waste of energy,” says Vassarotti.
“It’s so beautiful,” says Raineri.
“But what cost?” says Vassarotti.
And so it goes, back and forth, the basic argument of these entire Olympics crystallized on a street where the flame is not just a heartbeat, but a houseguest, uninvited but not entirely unwelcome, both strange and wonderful.
It makes some misty. It drives others mad.
Antonella Crema, who lives on the second floor, threw a party for her family during the opening ceremony.
They watched the caldron being lighted on their big-screen TV.
Then they ran outside to watch it for real.
“We were going back and forth, back and forth, like we couldn’t believe it,” she says. “The flame was inside, then outside, then inside, then it was just there.”
And there it will stay until it’s extinguished in 10 days, much to the worry of divorced grandmother Grazia. On a table near her balcony, she keeps a photo of the Olympic park without the flame, to remind her of the good cold days.
“I wish there was a way they could have turned it on just for the opening ceremonies, then turned it off until the closing ceremonies,” says Grazia. “It’s just so big.”
In some ways, many feel that way about the Games themselves.
Attendance at the events has been awful. Children have been brought in to fill up seats. The other night at the men’s figure skating short program, one of the premier events here, the arena was barely half full. Earlier this week, a snowboarding finale played to half-empty stands.
But in other ways, they are starting to understand. Residents who say they can’t afford tickets have filled up the downtown medals plaza for the nightly celebration and have filled the streets with Olympic talk during the day.
“Everybody has been recharged,” says Katerina Baldizzone, manager of two buildings across from the flame. “Everybody is more positive about things.”
For the first time Wednesday, a cab driver actually smiled at me. For the first time, a serviceperson actually acted glad to see me.
For the first time, through an interpreter, a local even asked me what I thought about the city.
Back on the most unusual boulevard in the world, they are slowly embracing it.
“Having the light inside our rooms, it makes us feel like part of the rest of the world,” says Salvatore Sanna, who lives in a third-floor flat above his pizza joint.
“You see it, and you understand the world is looking at us.”
And who would want to draw the blinds on that?
“The flame becomes more emotional than physical,” says Lorenzo Gamarlero.
Emotional is what is happening in Corso Giovanni Agnelli, No. 10, the flat belonging to Tosi, 67, and Giuseppi, 73.
Her husband died nearly a decade ago. He has been divorced for more than 30 years. They found each other eight years ago and have been together ever since.
He complains about the flame, but he held her hand while staring at it through the window on Valentine’s Day.
She loves the flame, but she sleeps on the far side of the bed, so it is closer to him.
On gray winter days in the past, the curtains would never be opened.
Today, together, they open them every morning at 6:30 a.m. to bask in the light of their new friend.
“It is like we are all beginning again,” she says.
An old couple, an ancient town, a new start, on a street that burns.
Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.
