Where are la signora's shoes?
Heraion. Agrigento, Sicily
"In la stessa stanza e una anciana, anciana vecchia, prossimo, prossimo a morte. Ella respira cosi, 'gasp,..., gasp,...,gasp'. In la stessa stanza la figlia di la vecchia in sopratendenze. In quella stanza e un tavolo di lignea, in forma triangolare, in un angolo, cosi. Sulla tavola e tre jacke, uno azurro, uno nero, una bianca. Anche gli scarpi di la mia moglia, due scarpi nero."
Occasionally in Sicily we would get into minor difficulties and, having resolved them, everyone would wish us 'Buona Vacanze!', 'Have a nice vacation!'.
On November 20, S and I were in Piazza Armerina which is a town in the south-east quadrant of Sicily. People go to Piazza Armerina to see the great mosaics on the floor of a local villa and which were probably made about the year 300 A.D. They cover 3500 square meters. At a cheerful and well-lit family-owned restaurant that night we had roast chicken, pasta, mushrooms, shrimp, cheese, etc., etc. and all washed down with a good local red wine. A royal meal. Immediately after this S began to complain of abdominal pain. It's a difficult situation to know, in a foreign country, when to seek medical help for a partner and in this instance I may very well have waited too long and subjected S to unnecessary suffering. S kept telling me that the pain was diminishing. But then it would come back. The next day we drove to Agrigento in order to see the Valley of the Temples; a series of Doric temples built by the original Greek settlers. That day S ate little or nothing but at evening-time she did eat some pasta in the restaurant which was attached to our hotel.
At 2:00 a.m. that same night, on November 22, S woke up and complained again of abdominal pain and feeling faint. Agrigento is in the far south of Sicily and no place that I would have chosen to get sick in. I regarded the immediate future with foreboding. But I had misjudged. Our fears, like our hopes, sometimes don't work out.
What could it be? S had asked about appendicitis; 'What did it feel like?' I didn't know. Was it the mushrooms? Mushroom poisoning can be fatal but I had eaten mushrooms from her plate. Did the restaurateurs of Piazza Armerina pick their own mushrooms in the woods? It seemed unlikely. Were the shrimp bad? I had eaten them also.
I went downstairs in the hotel to call an ambulance. There was no one at the front desk and I went back upstairs, trying to think what to do and I encountered the young man who watches the hotel at night. This was Marco. He called an ambulance for us and (I'm convinced that it was no longer than five minutes) two ambulance ETs, in orange turn-outs and looking pretty much like ambulance personnel anywhere in the world, came up the stairs. I explained to them that 'La signora ha un grand dolor', motioning with my hand around the area of my abdomen. S could walk so they walked her downstairs and had her sit on the gurney. They hoisted her up into the ambulance, told me that I could not accompany 'la signora', and left.
Marco offered to drive me to the hospital. So off we went into the Agrigentan night at speeds up to 160 km/hr. At the hospital S was at 'Pronto Soccorso', Emergency Care. For the next 12 hours I was in the position of translating all medical questions and information back and forth with a vocabulary I had gained primarily from opera librettos and restaurant menus. (For example, the Italian for 'liver' is 'fegato', like 'Fegato alla Bolognese'). Those of you taking language classes and plan later go to where your new language is spoken should remember this incident.
From 'Pronto Soccorso' S was taken to a preliminary examination room where a drip ('per la dolore, Signora.') was placed into her arm. Blood was taken from the other arm and then S (I was helping to push the gurney) was taken to a room. I had no way of knowing this but this was just a waiting room while the staff geared up for a series of extensive tests and examinations.
We were not alone. In the same room was a very old woman and, to judge by her breathing, she was quite close to death. She took a shuddering breath about once every two or three seconds. Watching over her was her daughter a woman my age and all alone. We regarded each other stoically. I finally spoke, 'La vostra mamma?' She nodded. It was her mother. I opened my hands and said 'Me dispiace.' 'I'm sorry for her.' The daughter slowly gave a shrug and turned her palms outward. Old people die. She wasn't glad to see her mother die but that's how things are. We were silent.
S was now subjected to a series of examinations. First X-rays. There was blood-work, urine tests. Then she was brought to a surgeon who performed an examination. Il dottore was, perhaps 35. Short in stature, dark piercing eyes, an abrupt and arrogant manner; he was the possessor of a piercing intelligence. He asked question after question of me and considered the answers. He wanted to know what she ate and when she ate and on and on. I was frantic and not a good translator but I did my best to keep up with him. He wanted to know all about the mushrooms (fungi) and anything else 'la signora' had eaten and exactly when.
'Has she vomited?'
'Si.'
'Quando.' ('When?')
'La mattina seguenza.' ('The following morning.')
On a sheet of paper I drew a complete schedule of everything she had eaten for the last two days. I asked him, 'E un appendicite?' Appendicitis.
Il Dottore: 'No.'
The exam went on. Finally he stopped and explained to us something that I found out later was true. Whatever the problem was, there seemed to be no need for surgery at that moment. Back to the room with the dying old lady where S and I awaited further exams.
The old woman's breathing became even more labored and the daughter turned to me and demanded, 'Aiuta me.' 'Help me'. I went over to her mother's bed and we both worked to turn the old woman on her side. I placed a long pillow under her back to keep her in that position for a while. Her breathing improved. I had been lugging S's shoes and our jackets around from exam to exam. I placed them on the table in the corner.
I went back and sat with S. La figlia and I quietly contemplated each other. After a few moments S was taken for more examinations and consults.
The final examination took place at 7:00 in the morning, about four and a half hours after we arrived. It was an ultrasound scan. I sat with S while the doctor scanned her abdomen and I looked at the screen, fascinated. It was like watching a voyage through an aquarium. We turned S on both sides and the scan continued. Finally the doctor finished the exam, looked at me, and said:
'La signora ha un' calculo.'
Incredulously I said to him, 'Uno calculo?'
'Si.'
'Una pietra?'
'Si.' He smiled, 'Una pietra.'
Instantly my fears vanished. Mushrooms, shell-fish, appendicitis, all the fears that had plagued us in the middle of the night, were now simply dust. My own self-reproach for waiting to get medical help took longer to dissipate but I knew now that what S had could be treated. It had been no one's fault; it had not been caused by any specific food. It's just that we had eaten a big rich meal.
I turned to S and said, 'Congratulations, you have a gall stone.'
Now S was not taken back to the emergency ward room where the old lady lay dying. She was placed in Women's Medicine, part of the gynecology ward, and I was not allowed to accompany her.
It was 7:30 in the morning. I sat in the large waiting-room all alone except for a large statue of the Virgin Mary who gazed at me balefully. Besides me there was only the cleaning staff mopping the floors. A nun came in and rearranged the flowers around the statue. It had been a beautiful dawn. From the windows I was certain I could see the temples in the morning sun and remembered that it had been Artemis who was the Helper of Women. Artemis Eileithyia.
I owed her flowers.
The quiet was refreshing. I knew that S was sleeping and I slept too while holding myself upright on the sides of a chair. But it was not for long.
At exactly eight o'clock the room filled with enormously pregnant women, their mothers, their husbands, their sisters, fathers, cousins, aunts and uncles, and all carrying large plastic bags with every supply that a woman giving birth could want. There was the young girl of about fifteen who seemed so excited about becoming an aunt for the first time that she kept sneaking into the ward to see her sister. There was the young man about to become a father for the first time who looked as though he had just stepped off the Via Veneto. He had a fashionable five o-clock shadow, wore tight jeans and an earring, sparkling silver tennis shoes and he had that indefinable self-satisfied 'la dolce vita' expression that seemed violently at odds with anything on Sicily. There were hand-shakes, cell-phone conversations, whispers of 'Auguri'. Periodically the nurses would come out and shoo away everyone who was not immediate family. Five minutes later the room would fill up again. I watched all this while looking even less Italian than usual.
By two in the afternoon S was ready for her final consult and release. All the tests had been done, all the reports had been written; we only awaited the surgeon's final consultation.
But this could not take place because no one, least of all me, could locate la signora's shoes or jacket. We were stymied. They weren't about to discharge S in her socks. In the middle of the night I had placed them on a table in a room with a dying woman. I explained this to everyone and they thought I was crazy. No one in Gynecology was dying.
Ultimately I was assisted by an orderly. He was very energetic, out-going, skinny and active. Calogero. He took my story seriously and he had a good idea where la signora's things were. They had to be in the Emergency Ward rooms down on the first floor. He dragged me down the steps all the way speaking rapid-fire Italian and, I'm pretty sure, scolding me for being Italian and not speaking the language. He wanted to know about California, about America, etc. etc., how our stay on Sicily had been, had we seen i templi?, and so forth.
In Emergency he drafted a nurse and a Security Guard into our little army in searching for i cosi della signora. It was to these three that I performed (no other words fit) the worst Italian discourse that has ever been committed to paper; the one with which I opened this narrative.
"In that room is an old lady, very old. Close to death. She is breathing like this: 'Gasp ... Gasp ... Gasp' With her is her daughter watching over her. In that same room is a wooden table, triangular in shape and placed in a corner. On that table are three jackets, one blue, one black, one white. And on that same table, la signora's two shoes. Black."
After two or three of these rooms (I was starting to recognize the pictures on the walls of which I had been only dimly conscious twelve hours before) I knew we were close. And in the very next room was the dying old lady and her daughter. Improbably, however, the old woman looked much better. Propped up on a pillow, and surrounded by her family, she seemed alert and cheerful. The daughter lit up when she saw me and pointed to the window sill where the never-sufficiently-to-be-cursed shoes were. She had been watching over them until we returned. She was explaining to the family. 'E lo straniero qui me aiuta colla mama.' There were smiles and hand-shakes all around and I wished them buona fortuna.
In Sicily it seems a bit more obvious that one should help perfect strangers in the middle of the night.
At the final consult S was pronounced dischargeable. The doctor explained about the gall stone, told us what she could eat and not eat, above all no fats, and admonished her to drink plenty of water. There was 'no urgencia' but that she should, of course, see her own physician soon after reaching home.
I looked around for the payment office but didn't see it. Because of my poor Italian no one could explain what the payment procedure was. I went back to Pronto Soccorso and queried in my best Italian, 'Ove pagare?' They practically laughed in my face.
It had all been free.
The ambulance ride, the ETs, the emergency care, the examinations, the scans, X-rays, blood and urine tests, doctor consults (I can remember five), ultrasound, copying of the records for us, etc. All free.
And then came the inevitable: 'Buona vacanze Signore.'
Thoughts on Life and Death
Killed fighting 'Against the Spartans'
It's pleasant, an hour or so after sunset, to walk down the Hadrianou in Athens. The shadows are a deep rich blue and the windows of the antique and souvenir shops glow softly gold and yellow. These Athenian souvenir shops, more than any other place I've been, seem to feature art reproductions of carvings, of vases, of jewelry. Most come with a tag stating where the originals were found and they can be very high quality and command surprisingly high prices. Most interesting is the pottery painting; here is Achilles playing draughts with Ajax. There is Dionysus converting the Tyrrhenian pirates into dolphins. Here a funeral procession and there a troop of satyrs or maenads engaging in acts which, well, remind us that the Greek 'breakthrough' was in more than just the Dialectic. You can also find good funerary art and rare the shop that doesn't have a bas-relief of a husband bidding a sad farewell to a beloved wife or wife to a husband. And there are heartbreaking works of children getting ready for the journey to that 'country from whose bourne no traveller returns'.
One afternoon S. and I took cameras and video to the place where much funerary art can be found: the Kerameikos. The Kerameikos is a district located right on the other side of the Acropolis from the Adrianou. These days it is a park but in the old days it encompassed a section of the Athenian city walls and two large gates. Outside the walls the Athenians buried their dead and, though no one has been buried here for hundreds of years, it still has a solemn and peaceful air. A little stream, the Eridanos, flows through it and the stream course is marked by tall bushy reeds which conceal tortoises among their roots. You can walk down the 'Street of Tombs' admiring the funerary art still in place (the originals are mostly moved into the excellent Kerameikos Museum). Here a giant stone hound guards the grave of the master who hasn't called him to dinner these 2400 years. Over there is a relief carving of the twenty year old cavalryman killed in 394 BC 'against the Spartans'. Further down is a life-size (or nearly so) marble bull commemorating the death of Kollytos; a young man whose death shocked his family into this act of marmorial gigantism.
It was while admiring these various carvings and stele that S. and I became aware of a knot of people gazing intently at something on the ground. We walked over and discovered that they were watching two tortoises in combat. One, who I'll call 'Tortoise A' seemed definitely to have the advantage of the other, 'Tortoise B'. Tortoise A snapped and lunged repeatedly at his rival who was thoroughly cowed and trying to retreat. At one point Tortoise B did retreat but Tortoise A caught up with him and resumed hostilities. I considered separating the overmatched B from the aggressive A but at that point Tortoise A mounted Tortoise B from behind and began to engage in an act of coitis tortuginis. Far from a combat we had been watching a mating ritual. There was something touching about these two armored behemoths from a distant past shouting a magnificent tortoise 'Yes' to the face of all this funerary architecture and I took some snapshots of them.
Of course, S. got video.
Passages on Venice
Narthex of San Marco, Venice
Other Italians will solemnly warn you against Venice; 'It's not healthy, Signore. The cold, the damp, molto arthritico.'
They're right. To live here would be an agony; it's cold, misty, foggy, and damp in the winter. Spring brings warm rain and the mosquitoes (in 2002 I killed a dozen in my hotel room). In summer the canals smell like drains .. and not good drains either. The acqu'alta is likely to strike at any time. Always there is the plague of tourists. (And it is a plague; only Waikiki could possibly be worse.) Only Autumn (late September or October) is really bearable.
Venice is always an enigma; it is the home of esoteric knowledge, of Hermeticism, of Kabbala, of the Tarot. Why has it never found its Lawrence Durrell?* It's a scheme; Casanova planning his next conquest or your restaurant man passing off shark as scallops. For me Florence is rational, a dream of the Renaissance emerging from the Medieval in a shower of rose-colored glories. Venice is a grey contemplation of the Hidden and Revealed, of Hermes Trismegistus arising from the Gothic. Venice represents the best proof that Giambattista Vico was right because Descartes has no place here.
Muddled identities, ambiguous sex. Misrule; upset; reversal. Love affairs by small bridges, of fights, strange cries and obscure alarms in the dark. And how much is just oneself? The other day at sunset on the balustrade in front of San Marco, standing beneath the bronze horses, we heard a muffled thud; it sounded as though half of Venice had blown up. Only New Year's fireworks; and perhaps I'm the only one who heard it.
Everywhere is the smell of fresh pastry. It's the cries of the watermen like birds of prey swooping by in their barchieti. And everywhere the bright shop windows. Last night a shop woman said, 'You speak Italian well!' At the time I was paying her 80 euro for a turquoise necklace. Damp and dirty, decaying, decrepit (in San Marco the marbles are in ruins and cold as death); even to me the city seems to have gone downhill since I first visited in '93. The garbage lies in corners; filth and decay, and then you wake up to a blanket of virginal snow.
Reversal and change is the great theme of Venice. Whenever I dream in Venice I'm always in a library. I'm hauling down some musty volume of Casanova's Vita or of Piccolomini. I'm surrounded by Nock, Festugiere, .. , even Marx. There's a sense in my dream of real urgency; I'm always about to learn ... it. I wake to the smell of sewers.
The other day, (today?), S. and I crossed over the Ponte 'Storto or 'twisted bridge'. Who are they kidding? They're all distorted. And don't get me started on the campanili. They all lean at different angles (Santo Stefano looks on the verge of collapse); Pisa has nothing to boast of with just the single leaning campanile.
*Although in the Alexandria Quartet there's a brilliant bagatelle which has Venice as the setting. Subject? Vampires.
Remembered Lines
Bells of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice
Venice - Middle of the night.
I lay there in the dark listening to the quiet murmur of surf on the Lido.
But it was only S. breathing quietly on her pillow.
Florence - Christmas Morning, 2007
The bells riot in a bronze-tongued frenzy. 'He's born! He's born!'
Spring Journal, 2005
The Zanipolo, Venice
There's no denying the feeling of strangeness that comes suddenly upon the traveler after having been in Venice for a few days. Being lost there is not as it is in other places. Being lost in the medieval warren that is Toledo in Spain is being lost in only two dimensions. You're merely displaced in linear space from where you wish to be. But when you're lost in Venice you're lost in three dimensions; you're not only displaced in a linear fashion from your desired destination, you feel as though you're lost in some third, unspecified, dimension. That's confounding because Toledo is on a hill and Venice is as flat as a board. There's no way you can be lost in vertical space there but the creepy feeling is that you are. Or perhaps it's time that's the missing dimension. You have the feeling that not only are you not at your destination - that quotidian hotel, albergo, restaurant, cafe, or campo where you have arranged a rendezvous - it may not even currently exist. It doesn't help that the map of Venice, when turned upside down, still looks right-side up. Nor does it help that Venice is, even at noon, in a perpetual twilight and that every shop looks like one that you've seen just moments ago. That paper shop; how familiar it seems. Those are the identical leather bindings that we saw half an hour ago. That shop of mascherie looks very much like the one we passed in the Ghetto. Same owner? Same shop? Or is it coincidence? Perhaps we're not lost at all; we simply haven't the wit to recognize that we're at our goal.
Your senses are already overloaded by the exotica for sale: Paper goods, glass vases, parti-colored fish forever fixed in the glassy interior of a paper weight (85 inches around), masks, costumes, leather-bound books, capes, cloaks, tricornes, Punchinellos, faux antiques and reproductions of paintings - Canalettos, Titians, Veroneses - all glowing goldly in the Venetian midday twilight. Objects endlessly recurring in a riot of feathers, papier mache, leather, and silk. A welter of swords, canes, and objets du vitrail.
A friend of mine explains in a restaurant - "A few years ago there was a butcher shop on this street and a drug store, - you could live here - Now it's all masks, costumes, leather, and glass." He's right.
Signs point in opposite directions - both say 'Rialto'.
Another acquaintance says: "Street names mean nothing here, signore."
But I was speaking of being lost. Here's an example of what happens.
Some time ago I determined to visit the Church of the Zanipolo (Venetian dialect for 'Saint James and Saint Paul') and off I ventured. I followed the map very carefully and - for my pains - was led to the Church of Santa Maria di Formosa. A charming and important church, certainly, but not my destination. I sat down, consulted the map and set off again. By following the map to the letter it was no more than half an hour before I was led ineluctably back to Santa Maria di Formosa. In despair, and like the prophets of old, I lifted mine eyes into the sky and, to be sure, I could see the top of the Zanipolo's dome. Keeping it before my eyes - like the proverbial column of smoke - I was able to guide my faltering steps there.
After my visit I turned my back on it and crossed a little bridge away from the Campo di Zanipolo. On the other side I turned - like Lot's wife - and gazed back. This giant Gothic church (the largest in Venice save for San Marco itself) had disappeared as utterly as though it had never existed. It had gone back into the same imaginative space where we keep Aladdin's cave - or Samarkand. For those who call the Zanipolo their own parish church the exterior world with its linear streets and strictly numbered houses must be as alien and disconcerting as the warrens of Venice are to the outsider.
Alexi the Albanian
Travel is difficult. The flesh-crawling anxiety, the endless waters, coffees, half-eaten pastries in wax paper; the uncertainty about where the bathroom is. And then the difficulties with the hotel reservations and the corrosive effect of being constantly lost. But of course, that's why we travel. If we want to be found we can stay home. It's cheaper.
True, there are countervailing influences. The guides, the cab-drivers, train-conductors, bus-drivers, air hospitality hosts, hotel clerks, porters, waiters; all these form an enormous infrastructure dedicated to your not getting lost in the first place. They answer your inane questions, hide their irritation with your complete unfamiliarity with even the most basic local customs and your consequent inadvertent rudeness, patiently puzzle out your fractured language and speak much better English to you than you can speak French, Italian, Spanish, or German back to them. And they don't get paid much for doing it, either. And once in a while they go above and beyond, like Alexi the barman.
I was in Venice for four weeks in 2003 and I found a restaurant there to which I went every day (except for Thursdays; they were closed). I would show up about 8:00 p.m. and stayed until the place shut down - about 11:30 p.m. When not eating I would be working on my Venice journal - writing and drawing right at the table. I would draw the other customers and the proprietor would show the drawings around; I became a 'character'. I was even formally invited to submit my works for the restaurant walls.
Other American tourists would approach me in a respectful hush and inquire as to whether I might be 'a writer' or 'a painter'. But with them I pretended to speak only Italian.
I drank more there than I've ever drunk anywhere. The prices were outrageous but I cheerfully paid them just so that I could enjoy an oasis of familiarity in the endless variety of Venice. Finally they began to feel guilty and started giving me drinks. A dinner rarely went by without a liqueur.
'Gratuito', they'd murmur softly. 'Free.'
Cafe corretti (coffee with grape brandy) came and went. That was in addition to the 'mezzo litro' of wine I'd already had with dinner. My hotel was only two doors away, thankfully.
I upped the ante; started going there for lunch as well. I threw caution to the winds and, dispensing with the menu, would tell them to bring me whatever they thought was good that day. This resulted in my getting pasta plates with fresh baby shrimp, 'alla bianca', as Italians say. I'd paid them so much money that they became desperate; free desserts began to appear - strange gelato bombs - spherical things like pineapple-flavored grenades. They started to knock euros off the bill; my wine, it appeared, was now to be free. I wondered what I would get if I started showing up for breakfast. Perhaps they would waive the bill entirely and start paying me a small stipend? My sojourn in Venice ended before I had a chance to find out.
In all of this the bar-man played a central role. He was about 28, handsome and lively. An incorrigible flirt; he would have the female customers in stitches. His name was Alexi and he was from Albania.
'I am twelve years schooling - Albania!' he would declare; thumping his chest.
Whenever a free drink appeared on my table it was usually Alexi's hand that was putting it there.
I was back in Venice recently and very gratified to discover that the proprietor still remembered me. His face lit up when he saw me - I'd also been a generous tipper.
I discovered that all the outsider art that used to adorn the place has now been replaced with completely horrid modern sculptures involving women's shoes - as though that's what you want to contemplate during dinner.
I noticed that the bar was now being run by a young woman. I thought it might be the proprietor's daughter but I didn't ask. I asked, instead, about Alexi. The proprietor feigned ignorance.
'Alexi - your barman. Is he still here?'
'Chi?'
'Alexi. He was at the bar when I was here three years ago.'
He pretended to be lost in thought but he was shaking his head.
'Ales..sandro?' he said, hesitantly.
'Ah! Si! Alessandro! Where is he now?'
He shook his head mournfully. The whole ugly story spilled out. It appears that Alexi had gone back to Albania.
'To open a restaurant', said my host.
The stink of betrayal hung in the air. He sounded as a hi-tech CEO might sound whose chief scientist had left to found a competing firm. This is how Ghirlandaio would have sounded when Michelangelo left his apprenticeship. 'Too bad about that Buonarroti kid; he had a lot of potential!'
'Ah, well', I said with a shrug and a what-can-you-do sort of gesture. 'Giovani' ('Young people.')
'Si, giovani.'
Your Friend, the Traghetto
How to go on a gondola ride for next to nothing
This is for the males among my readers. You've been looking forward to your vacation in Venice for a long time but your spouse has some doubts about a place with flooded streets. You've reassured her but she doesn't really warm up to the place until you actually get there and she sets eyes on her first gondola.
"Are you taking me for a gondola ride?", she asks innocently while looking up at you sideways with that adorable look she has.
The immediate reply that pops into your brain, 'Not in this universe' might be unsuitable. So instead you say, 'Sure, sounds like fun.' But now you have a problem. Paying $60.00 to $90.00 a pop ~ you should see the gondolier's dexterity with the credit card machine ~ for a ride that goes nowhere offends your practical soul. Let's face it, you're not the biggest Romantic in the world. And you secretly wonder what people do on a gondola ride? Does the gondolier sing? Should we sing along or would they be offended? How do I kiss my wife in front of another man? Is this a day-time thing? a night-time thing? How soon can we get to Florence?
So at first you try to stall.
'I'd like to see the Correr's religious pictures collection again', you plead.
But that only works for so long. Time is running out and the situation is growing dire. What to do?
Fortunately I'm here to help. I've been where you are. I know what to do.
Incredible as it may seem to you the gondola, that asymmetrical and most impractical of boats, actually solves a real problem, namely, how to get across the Grand Canal while staying dry and not being Jesus. Thousands of Venetians face this problem of getting across the Grand Canal every day and they solve it very inexpensively. How do they do this? The traghetto.
What is a traghetto, you ask? Simple. It's a kind of gondola ferry that goes directly across the Grand Canal, a distance of about 40 yards. No reservations are required. They leave about every 10 minutes. They're available in at least a dozen places along the Grand Canal. The trip takes about 5 minutes, tops, and, best of all, it only costs 0.85 euro. That's right folks, for just 85 euro-cents each (about $1.15), less than the average tip at Sizzler, you can have all the gondola rides you want. And you can make it fun. To your blushing bride you say this:
"Honey, instead of walking across the Accademia Bridge, let's throw caution to the winds and take a gondola!"
Warning: It's 1.70 euro for two which is about $2.30, you big tightwad!. Sorry, that just slipped out. You walk her over to the Sant'Angelo or the Giglio traghetto and you're in business. You cheerfully come up with the change and half-way across, right in front of the other passengers, you give her a big kiss and say,
'Just because I felt like it, that's why.'
Forever afterwards when she says, 'Are we going for a gondola ride?' you can say, 'But Honey, we already went for a gondola ride, don't you remember?'
Then you pause and with a far-away look in your eye you say, 'Gosh it was romantic.'
Cousins
San Donato di Ninea is not on any map.
That's not because it doesn't exist; it does. It's just so small that even the Italians have never heard of it. In the 1920s, my father emigrated to America from San Donato and never returned. In 1972, my wife and I decided to spend three months in Europe on a student travel bargain; while we were there we decided that we would go south from Rome to San Donato to see our unknown cousins. We didn't know exactly where it was, only that it was "north of Cosenza someplace." No, it wouldn't be hard to find. After all, we had a letter from my father to his cousins. We could show people that letter -- surely they'd help us find them!
By train we traveled along the western coast for two days into the most southern part of Italy and disembarked in Calabria, at the town of Belvedere di Marittimo. That's "Belvedere on the ocean side" to distinguish it from Belvedere proper, which was on the uphill side. My wife and I were dressed in hippie-casual, which had metamorphosed into hippie poverty-stricken after days of travel. This appearance of penury was, unbeknownst to us, the only thing we had in our favor. The villainous-looking taxi drivers of Belvedere took one look and spontaneously took pity on us. One stepped forward and offered us his cab after we had explained -- as much as we could without speaking Italian -- our situation and showed him the magical letter.
We embarked on a wild ride over the Appenines in search of San Donato di Ninea. Two days of travel on Italian trains had made my wife quite ill, and our cab ride on the twisting roads of the high Appenines was interrupted by her having to get out and throw up on the side of the road. I was frantic. What an idiot I'd been to drag her into this situation -- you can imagine my thoughts. We came down the eastern side of the Appenines into a small town, and after the cab driver asked a few questions, a local man appeared, read the letter and then dismissed us with a curt shake of his head. Our cousins were unknown in that part of Italy. The cab ride continued until late afternoon, when we pulled up into the main square of another tiny town.
A crowd quickly formed while the cab driver presented our letter to some local worthy who was wearing -- I know it's hard to believe -- a yachting cap with a gold braid on it. We waited while a long conversation between the cab driver and the sailor ensued.
The crowd was saying (we now realize):
"Where are they from?"
"America."
"Oh! America!" Then doubtfully, "They don't look very rich."
"No. And the wife is sick."
"Yes, the husband's a fool, like all husbands."
Soon the cab driver went to the trunk of his cab, put our luggage on the ground and drove away! The sailor made placating motions with his hands and then said, "You wait, it's OK." We had some money, so I thought we could find a place to spend the night and then catch the train back to Rome the next day.
It was almost pitch dark now. My thirst for adventure was quenched, I can tell you.
Then, from out of the darkness, a woman appeared. She said a few words to the sailor and then, without one word to us, seized our luggage in both hands and walked off with it into the dark. The sailor said to us, "It's OK, you go with her." So we followed her up a steep street, up large stairs, and when we reached the top, we were ushered into the living room of a pleasant, well-lighted home. There were several other adults there. We had no idea who any of these people were or why we had been brought there. They didn't speak English; we didn't speak Italian (although by that point I don't think I spoke English either). We were given a polite but noncommittal greeting; a pack of photographs was placed into my hands. I thought, "They want to show me their photographs. How quaint! Better play along."
I idly leafed through the photos of strange Italians I had never seen. The last photograph was a picture of my father and mother and me in our backyard at home. In the photo I looked about 12 years old. I jerked my head up and stared at my cousins in astonishment.
But it seems that they'd known all along who they were.
A version of this appeared in Salon Magazine, October 28, 1997
Lunch in Venice
An Albino Shade of Pale
It was hot. The Venetian afternoon was sweltering and sleepy. I sat by myself at the table across from San Moise. S. and I had quarrelled and I eyed my luncheon glass of wine grumpily. Across the street two giant Africans were selling knock-off purses from a blanket laid out on the ground. They were being watched by two bored Carabinieri.
His sudden appearance startled me. He was huge; 6'3" or 6'4" and dressed in monk's robes. He had close-cropped pale hair and his skin was white. White as snow. I felt like I could see right through him. "Maybe he's an albino", I found myself thinking.
"I've been looking for you", he said.
I blanched.
"Look", I said. "We've been all through this. I can't do anything for you with this Brown guy", I said. "You don't actually think he'd talk to a lowly travel writer do you?"
"O.k.", he said. "But I need you to get my story out, you know? If people just knew the real me. I'm a really sensitive and caring individual. I love flowers and kittens. I actually have a pet Corgi and how wimpy is that?" He paused for a sip of mineral water. "But he didn't talk about any of that in his book. Oh no! He made me out to be a monster and that's not the real me, you know?" He realized that he'd gotten off to an awkward start and he held out his hand. "Call me Silas, ..., or Si," he said in a forced conversational tone.
I took his hand cautiously.
"But I come off in that book like a freak and it's upsetting. All that Latin stuff!" He frowned. "I don't speak Latin; didn't like it when I was in school. Just a couple words, see?" He was getting pugnacious.
I wondered if I could just discreetly signal the Carabinieri across the street.
"And another thing!" He was drawing stares from the other patrons. "All that nonsense about the self-torture. It's just a couple of glancing blows now and again. It's more for form's sake than anything. And it's nothing, nothing! I've hurt myself worse by getting my finger caught in the car door."
"But what about all that stuff about the nun and Saint Sulpice?" I tried gingerly.
"Cheap lies! Exaggerations!" He was shouting now. "Numquam eram in Parigi! NUMQUAM!!"
I jerked upright at this and when I looked again he had vanished.
~~
The afternoon quiet had returned. I took another sip of wine. Tourists sauntered down the street towards Saint Mark's Square as though nothing had happened.
I glanced across the street again. The Carabinieri had left but the African purse-sellers were still there.
I wondered whether S. would like a purse.
Listening to Mariah Carey in Florence
An incident in Italy
Near the end of a long journey a wounded traveler finds healing.
I'd forgotten about all the tunnels between Rome and Florence; a spur of the Appenines or something. From the last long tunnel the train debouches into the valley of the Arno and the sudden daylight catches you by surprise. At Santa Maria Novella we queue for a cab and, for 7 euro, we're whisked around the city center; the centro storico, and are dropped off in the Oltrarno, at the foot of the Ponte Vecchio. The cab-ride has allowed us to see nothing of the city's special allure. We might as well be in Poughkeepsie.
While settling in I have an idea about how I want S. to see Florence and immediately I take things in hand. I usher her out the front door, across the Ponte Vecchio and, following the corridoio to the right, we come to the two magnificent alae of the Uffizi. We pass along them and - there it all is. The Piazza Signoria, the Loggia dei Lanzi, Cellini's Perseus. And those bronze letters sunk into the pavement which always give me a chill because they evoke the simple power of memory. I see again the beautiful Italian participle: 'collocata' and I think 'dopo quattro secoli', it's taken four centuries for men once again to speak of Savonarola and remember him.
We don't pause for long.. I practically carry her up the Calzaiuoli, past the Bisone, the Gucci, the Rolex stores, almost pushing her into the wall on the right side of the street in my anxiety that she not step a foot to the left for fear she'll see it too soon. We come to the corner and - that last step into the open we see - it.
I noticed that it was looking a little dowdy; they were cleaning it and the apse is partly scaffolded. When I was here in 1993 it had been spotless. But even S., not very demonstrative, was stopped cold. It's not so much the height or the blinding whiteness of the thing. It's the sheer bulk that halts you in your tracks. And the Duomo is not something you can experience at a distance as you can in Pisa. Before you even see Florence's Duomo at all it's right on top of you. Green and pink rectangles, arabesques, triangles, gargoyles, and ogees endlessly replicating themselves in dizzying heights way above you, "spinning in infinity", until you have to look down to clear your head.
It's four days before Christmas and the weather is cold, 30's. In my hurry I hadn't quite dressed for it and we're both hungry. We walk around the apse end, past the Museo, and into The Bottegha of Donatello for a hot meal.
Over lunch I'd been thinking what a different person I was from that young army sergeant who'd first seen the Duomo in 1972. In those days I'd never have stayed in even a one-star hotel. What was the name of that old hostel, Pio Dieci? Now when I travel I take cabs, not the bus. Today S. and I had even dined in the train restaurant car. In the old days I would have toughed it out. I thought of those other young travelers we'd seen a week ago in Atlanta wearing sand-colored fatigues. I sincerely hoped that our paths might cross again.
After lunch we entered the first of innumerable stores, this one paper goods. These paper emporia are among the most common stores in Florence and they're exactly like something you'd see in Rowling's Diagon Alley. Their product line is spectacularly impractical and, of course, endlessly fascinating. Leather covered journals, sketch-books, dip pens with steel nibs, dip pens with glass nibs, inks, sealing wax, book-plates, glass paper weights, and wrapping papers off-printed in various original designs. It turns out that these days leather-covered picture albums are huge. While looking through the stock I became aware of the sound-system. A woman singing English-language Christmas carols in a full-throated pop-ecstasy. I'd never heard anything even remotely like it. Perhaps I was responding to the simple fact of their being in English; just homesick and tired of using my limited Italian for so long. But Christmas carols? What could be more banal? Well, obviously I'd never heard 'Oh Holy Night' as it was meant to be heard; as I was hearing it now.
"The stars are brightly shining. It is the night of our dear savior's birth."
The singer was mad with joy. It was intensely religious. In wonder I turned to the proprietress and asked who it was.
She replied offhandedly, "Oh, it's Mariah Carey."
"Fall on your knees, oh hear the angel voices"
I asked what album it was.
"I don't know. It was ripped."
"Oh night divine, oh night when Christ was born..."
I simply stared at her and then back at the speakers. 'Angel voices' indeed.
~That night I had the old nightmare again; the wound. And tinged with annihilating blackness as the true nightmare always is. In a panic I fought for consciousness. Once back in the world of health and sanity I slid out of bed without rousing S. and opened the bathroom window. I leaned against the sill in the dark; drinking in the cold December air.
Down the Via Barbadori the domes were lit up. There was a hint of dawn behind the hills and beyond that the overcast sky was clearing. I realized with a start that I was seeing the stars for the first time since we'd come to Italy.
And I stood there, in Dante's city, remembering
"puro e disposto a salire a le stelle."
"cleansed and ready for my journey to the stars"
Cefalu, Sicily Nov. 2007
We were walking up a steep medieval street towards the Cathedral and it was pouring a frigid rain. We huddled in doorways trying to shield the cameras from the wet. Down the middle of the street the water gushed in torrents. We didn't have umbrellas because we'd been too smart to waste our money on such things in sunny Italy. I thought of the scene from Young Frankenstein in which the doctor and Igor are digging up the corpse. They're standing in a grave trying to dig and hoist the coffin simultaneously.
Doctor F.: What a nasty filthy job!
Igor: Oh, I don't know. It could be worse.
Doctor F.: How? How could it be worse?!
Igor: It could be raining.
There's a beat in which they stare at each other. Then there's thunder and lightning and, yes, rain.
Well, at least here in Cefalu it was already raining. 'It can't get worse', I thought.
Then it began to hail.
Rome, Nov. 2007.
We found the door to the Headquarters of the Knights of Malta the easy way. There was a crowd of tourists around it. We waited in line and, when it came our turn, we stepped up and peered through the keyhole. Sure enough, a perfect picture of St. Peter's dome was visible and surrounded by rather aesthetic-looking trees. I watched others take pictures through the key-hole and so I put my lens to the door-knob, peered at the view screen, and took this picture. All very nice but would it kill the Knights of Malta to just open the door?