Chapter Four - Nightfall in Verona - Jenne' R. Andrews

Chapter Four – Wherein the Poet Takes the Wheel

He who will establish himself on a certain height must yield according to circumstances, like the weather-cock on a church-spire, which, though it be made of iron, would soon be broken by the storm-wind if it remained obstinately immovable, and did not understand the noble art of turning to every wind.  Heinrich Heine,  English Fragments (1828), Ch. 11: The Emancipation

For two days we had been hanging out in Zirl, one of the most picturesque and history-laden towns in Austria, high in the Tyrol.

One of us had gone missing, Caroline-- and we could only wait, and hope that she was all right and hadn't been sold into slavery.

At thirty, Caroline was a beautiful woman, with long dark hair and brown eyes, a wide smile. She had lost weight, and planned to keep it off. She tucked her shirt in and belted her slim waist.

Julia and I were twenty-five and she looked like a Baroque angel. She too had long hair, a lighter brown, a small heart-shaped face; she was slim and pretty. She was besieged by men wherever we went.

I had long dark hair, blue eyes. I always thought I was fatter than I really was. I would look in the mirror and see a fat girl, turning sideways to suck in my stomach. As there were few mirrors available to us, at least traveling as we did from campground to campground, I would steal looks at myself in store windows, glancing over at myself as we walked and walked, taking in the touted attractions and veering off on our own, down tiny cobbled streets to small bistros in rose gardens.

I needed to constantly affirm to myself that I was pretty, or perhaps, given that I had permitted myself to be plucked right out of my life, that I was still there.

Regarding the sorrows that had arisen in the St. James churchyard, I continued in moments to worry about not only the wounded lion of my lover and how he was, but back in Colorado, the parents who bobbed all day in the water of dishabille  filling up our house.  

After years in and out of psychiatric hospitals, subjected to many shock treatments and battling to get on her feet, my mother had succumbed to drug and alcohol addiction.  She was incontinent at 60, spending her days in an armchair in our study, helped to the bathroom by my father periodically to change her clothes.

My father had been diagnosed with emphysema in 1968 and was running out of air. He refused to use his oxygen; he had begun to shrivel up and he fought for every breath. He was utterly devoted to my mother, although I thought he should have parked her in a mental hospital and left her there to save us from the awfulness of seeing both of them decline. 

My father was not the sort of man to leave his wife, no matter what happened. This was not the modus operandi of his generation.

I had written of the pain of their deterioration and my inability to rescue them for a very long time. I had moved to Minnesota with a boyfriend in 1970 to get away, staying after he moved on.

Now, I had come to Europe in large measure, I had begun to realize by the time we reached the Alps,  for relief from the past via an immersion in antiquity, which at times in turn re-illuminated the problematic thread in the fabric of my life as had happened to me in the churchyard at Zirl. It was useless to deny that I had brought my parents with me in my heart. I could not jettison myself from them into some new life; I could not abandon them. I had written numerous postcards to them, feeling guilty every time I wired for a little extra money.

Julia and I settled into our bus. It rained and the town shut down and we dozed. I wrote and worked on my manuscript; In Pursuit of the Family, my small first collection of poetry, had Robert Bly's scribbles all over it. I wanted my work to be very good. I drafted small short-lined poems about our trip, reining myself in, subscribing to the lyrical-but-abbreviated imperative of contemporary poetics. Julia drew beautiful whimsical characters and creatures, and painted them with watercolors.

By the time Caroline returned, emerging from the mist with a big smile on her face, her lover in tow, Julia had an entire new portfolio of sketches and I had several new poems.

Caroline led her amour du jour up to the bus.

“Julia, Jen, this is Beni.”

“Beni”. I thought to myself. “Wow.”

She turned to him and kissed him.

He grinned at us.

“He doesn't speak any English at all,” she said. “But look.”  She nodded at him.

He stepped back and braced his legs widely apart and opened his mouth. He emitted a long, ear-splitting yodel that bounced off the peaks.

“High on a hill lived a lonely goatherd....” went through my mind like a ticker in Times Square.

“Bravo.” We didn't know what else to say. We clapped.

Caroline turned to Beni and kissed him again.

“Thank you. Danke.”

He bowed to her, and pretended to wipe a tear from his eye.

“Danke schein..for...da..yavol, gut focking... “

He walked away.

“Ready?” Julia asked, hugging Caroline.

“Yes,” she said. “Sorry I was gone so long. Is Jen going to drive?”

It was dusk, but it was past time for us to be on our way. I looked out and up at the tops of the peaks, trying not to see that the road appeared to climb nearly vertically up into amassing cumulus clouds.

“I'll drive,” I said. “But first let's have a little wine.”

We sat in our idling bus and I downed three or four tin cups of vino bianco.

Then I got behind the wheel. Now Caroline and Julia sat in the back like sightseers-- I was alone, in the front seat, charged with the solemn duty of somehow getting us over the Alps.

“So how was he,” I asked Caroline.

She laughed. “Most excellent pitch and woo,” she said.

“Nothing like red meat and mountain air,” I thought, hiding my anxiety.

I drove up higher and higher, nosing into the dusk. At least the road was dry. There wasn't much traffic. What concerned me was whether the bus had the horsepower to do this sort of thing. I had driven up Pike's Peak with my father in a V-6 US Department of Agriculture Chevy, a sturdy thing with a three-on-the-post you could gear down with for traction. We had also, years later, driven over the Continental Divide in our old Nash Rambler,  a V-6 as well. 

The bus was a sardine can, ironically enough made by Germans, whose history indisputably involved the making of solid things such as the Berlin Wall. It would and did tip over in high winds. I laughed when I thought of driving it in Wyoming, where immense tractor-trailers would fall over like Tonka Toys in 90 mph gusts.

I wondered about our tires, if we could count on them on the descent. I hoped that the combined weight of our bodies and belongings would keep the wheels on the road even if, as I had begun to anticipate, we would encounter mountain weather.

“Give me some more wine, please,” I said. They passed me the tin chalice we had begun to share.

I looked in the rear view mirror. They were curled up with each other, under a blanket, their heads touching.

“Great. Now it's all up to me,” I thought.

It never occurred to me to say to my friends: It's not safe to go over the Alps at night, on any night. We are endangering each other. We should wait until morning.

I was not to become that self-concerned and self-protective until much later, and certainly not on this trip.

As it was, a certain amount of wine can make you feel immortal and immune to danger. So it was that I had one voice saying: “Stop. Turn around now,"  a subterranean alarm going off in the recesses of my brain where there was a tiny bit of sober matter. The other voice was like its own wild horse, euphoric, elated, self-destructive; it said, like the soprano in La Gioconda, pushing her lover away, “Va!” Go.

I drove up the mountain road out of Zirl, gripping the wheel. It wasn't long before the route narrowed, and not long before I had to turn on the headlights. A flash of light on rock warned me of traffic coming from the other direction, the only virtue to night driving under these conditions that I could fathom.

“What time is it?”

No one said a word. My friends were out cold. This in a way was my chance to vindicate myself-- I had been the one who needed reassurance, scared to death to be away from where I felt safe.

“How safe were we now?” We were not, but I imagined that we were so that I could keep going.

I drove on through the night-- there had been small lights from chalets on either side of the road; they disappeared. I could feel the altitude; my ears popped. As they popped at about 10,000 feet in Colorado, I figured we were nearing the summit.

A deer flashed across the road and was gone. My heart flew into my mouth. That was Strike One, I thought.

I steered around a widened curve, encountering a steeper ascent than before. I pressed on.

Suddenly, we were on the flat. I could see a widened shoulder on both sides. I could also tell from the abrupt lines of those shoulders that there was nothing but a plunge down the mountain on both sides.

I pulled over, got out, squatted in the gravel, stretching my legs.

“Ladies. Wake up.”

Not a peep.

I got back in and settled myself resolutely behind the wheel. I took another gulp of wine, replenishing it from the globe Caroline had handed me and that I had braced on the floor board on the passenger side. It was beside the point now that I was half-drunk.

Something flew across the windshield. Startled, I looked out, starting up the engine. Snow. Enormous snowflakes, coming at us like shooting stars.

I turned on my brights. That made it worse; refracted, they doubled in size, making the storm look worse than it was.

I thought about my father's tricks in such situations, when we had been caught by the weather unawares in our trips together.

I didn't want to do this, but it was the only way. I turned off the headlights, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the air filled with light thrown off by the storm. Then I put on the emergency brake, and eased into first gear.

I let the low gear help us, foot lightly on the brake, around one switchback, and then another. Whenever I could see a patch of shoulder, I would pull off to collect myself and close and open my eyes. Now I wasn't interested in any more wine.

I pulled back onto the pass, and repeated the procedure, barely seeing a few feet ahead of the bus in the driving snow. I felt our back wheels skid; I corrected the skid.

Suddenly, Caroline and Julia woke up. They popped up in the back seat like Punch and Judy.

“Oh my God. Oh my God.”

“Quiet,” I said. “You need to be quiet. And you might try praying.”

We were descending at a good rate. As long as I could see a few feet ahead, I could keep us adhered to the road, rather than soaring off into oblivion ass over teakettle.

The road widened again; it felt to me that we were almost down. Through the curtain of snow I could see farther.

Suddenly, we were on the flat, and out of the storm. The road had widened. There was no other traffic.

Caroline leaned forward. “Good job, Jen,” she said.

I pulled over, sagging with exhaustion.

They both looked at me with new respect.

“Did it snow the whole time?”

“Pretty much,” I said. “Would you drive now?”

Julia got out; I climbed out on the passenger side and went to the back of the bus. I could scarcely stand. I reached into my duffel bag for my nightgown.

Caroline laughed softly. “Get some rest.”

“I am going to. I need a few hours, but I don't want to miss crossing into Italy.”

“Jen.” Caroline's voice pierced my fading consciousness. 

“Did you take a detour? We have to cut over to the highway for Florence now, and we're not on the road I marked on the map.”

Oh, God. I leaned forward. “It was snowing. I couldn't see. Forever more in my imagination I will have brought us over the right road because it got us here.”

I couldn't believe I had gotten us into Italy. I began to comprehend that perhaps someone strong, competent, more than capable of rising to the occasion-- whose acquaintance I had not fully made-- lived within me.

 Please scroll down or use the drop-down archive box at the end of the blog for preceding chapters.  Comments may be left by clicking on the comment link or elsewhere.  I can be reached at jenneandrews2010@gmail.com.

Copyright Jenne' R. Andrews 2011

Chapter Five - Nightfall in Verona - Jenne' Andrews

Chapter Five  Wherein the Poet Comes Back to Life...

Caro Nome

Caro nome che il mio cor
festi primo palpitar,
le delizie dell'amor
mi dêi sempre rammentar!
Col pensiero il mio desir
a te ognora volerà,
e pur l' ultimo sospir,
caro nome, tuo sarà.

Rigoletto- Giuseppe Verdi

Sweet name, you who made my heart
throb for the first time,
you must always remind me
the pleasures of love!
My desire will fly to you
on the wings of thought
and my last breath
will be yours, my beloved.

Translation by Guia K. Monti

I came to after a short rest in the back of the bus. I dragged a brush through my hair, and pulled a lipstick out of my pocket, rubbing a little color into my cheeks. In my resourcefulness I kept a small tube of toothpaste in my pocket, and put a little on my tongue. I couldn't remember when I had last brushed my teeth.

“Where are we?”

“Coming up to the border,” Julia said.

I looked out the window where a dawn-tinged landscape flew by. I could see the outlines of clustered towns in the distance, across carefully laid out fields. There were tall, oval trees flanking the small, jewel-like towns. Suddenly I caught a glimpse of an expanse of water.

“What is that. Is that the ocean?”

“It's probably Lake Garda. We're too far inland, “ Julia said, pulling over to let someone in a Ferrari roar past, generating a tail wind that shook the bus.

“You'll have to talk to them,” Caroline said. “You know Spanish-- that's close to Italian-- “ She handed me the Berlitz Guide to Traveling In and Dining Out in Italy.

I paged through the book, where useful phrases such as “Where is the train station?” were set forth in Italian. The language was half-familiar to me, from art songs taught to me by a voice teacher in high school, arias that I loved and imagined I could one day sing, from being in a few local operas back in Colorado. Still, the lyricism, the fusion and blurring of words inherent to a line of spoken Italian, what has often been referred to as its own messy Latin, was daunting.

“We're going to stop in Florence, and then we'll go on to Verona,” Julia said. “You'll love these places, Jen.”

I knew I would. I pulled the curtains, spread a towel on the seat, sat down and took a sponge bath in the back. I tamped myself dry, rubbing a talcum powder underneath my arms, putting on a fresh top and jeans.

“Are we going to do laundry soon? I'm running out of underwear again.”

They laughed.

“I'm sure we'll find a campground at some point, Caroline said. “We're out of wine and hearts of palm too.”

I poured water into our small dishpan and briefly submerged a bar of soap in it. Then I took three of my pairs of bikini panties that I had tucked into my duffel bag and rinsed them out, and hung them to dry on the cord that held the curtains we pulled across the rear window of the bus. They swayed there like pastel flags as we chugged down the Autostrada.

“Get ready,” Julia said. “Get out your passports.”

We pulled up to a toll booth, where several men in border patrol uniforms were waiting.

One came up to us as Julia rolled down the window.

He was gorgeous and when his face broke into a grin, he was even more gorgeous.

“Ah, regazzi Americani,” he exclaimed, motioning to his friends.

His cohorts came over to the bus.

American girls! They peered into the bus. One of them saw my panties hanging from their makeshift clothesline. He nudged his friend. They all laughed.

We handed them our passports. They pretended to frown over them, as if there was a problem.

I was frantically paging through my booklet.

“Dov 'e... dov 'e Verona?”

“Ah. Verona. Va Bene. Il piu bel citta nel mondo.”

“What's he saying,” Caroline asked.

“I think he said Verona is the best city in the world,” Julia replied.

“No, I think he said it's the most beautiful one. Piu bel,” I said, assuming the authority of the would-be linguist. “Bel. Bel canto. Beautiful singing. Mondo. World.”

“Ha buon viagge,” our new friend smiled. Buon viagge, American girls.

“Wow,” I said, as we pulled away. “He was edible.”

“Certainly was,” Julia said, keeping her eyes on the road.

In twenty miles, we came to a sign that read,“Firenze....Pisa... 100 km.”

Now Caroline was rapt.

“I want to see the David again. And Jen, you've got to see the Medici palace.”

We zoomed up the Autostrada, turning off to the road to Florence. Firenze. Va bene. Firenze, Verona. I liked the sound and heft and inference of these words. I took out my journal.

“I got us over the Alps,” I wrote. “I have no idea how, but we're in Italy now, just came across the border... they're going to drag me into some museums....va bene. That's good.”

We pulled into Florence at noon and parked near the Duomo, the great domed cathedral built by the Medicis, towers glittering with gold inlay rising up against indigo sky. Pigeons wheeled in the air from their perches under the rococo tile roofs. We found a cafe and sank gratefully into small chairs with striped damask cushions.

We ordered white wine-- un biquieri di vino bianco, I had practiced.

Julia and Caroline ordered small salads with shaved carrots and radiccio.

I ordered a loaf of bread and some cheap brie.

Caroline looked at me askance.

“I came to Europe to eat,” I said.

We set out with a map of Florence, and found our way to a museum. I was wearing a cream wool poncho from New Mexico my mother had given me one Christmas. It had kept me warm in Austria as we walked in the Zirl graveyard, and on cold walks while we waited for Caroline to come back from her Tyrolean tryst.

It was warm in the museum and in my eagerness to view the paintings, I threw my poncho over a bench.

We wondered through the galleries and even in my consummate exhaustion, I was spellbound.

At one point, we stood before Raphael's The Madonna of the Goldfinch. I tried to imagine the hand that had painted this masterpiece of the Renaissance: a marrying of a living, natural being-- a small, fine-boned bird, with a sensual spirituality. Everywhere, there were feasts for the eye-- Botticelli, Michelangelo.

Someone had once said to me that I had a Botticellian body; looking at the paintings I was ambivalent. In the end, the great painter had captured the quiescent, erotic spell cast by the flesh while not masking its imperfections, bringing to the fore the inviting bread of the womanly body, its fullness exaggerated.

People were walking quietly through as if they were in church, in the great cathedral of art, on sacred ground.

I turned around and instantly saw that my poncho was gone.

I grabbed Caroline's hand and took her off in a corner.

“Someone stole my poncho.”

“It'll turn up. They'll realize their mistake and turn it in; we'll check in the lost and found.”

I knew I would never see it again. Everything I had brought with me was still a source of security for me in this new, uncharted, terrifying and exhilarating journey. I needed my poncho. I needed to feel its softness against my cheek, to curl up against it.

We went out into the courtyard where the Michelangelo David stood, magnificently burnished by sunlight, a paean to virility against a courtyard boundaried by walls trellised with pale pink wild roses.

I found myself at eye level with the best part of the David.

Punch-drunk on exhaustion I led Julia over. “Look. Right here in the open air,” I teased.

“It's art, Jen. This is a work of art.”

Indeed it was, but I was tired and longed for the safety and security of our bus.

“We should have left you in Salzburg,” Caroline said.

We sauntered in the sun through throngs of tourists and Italians back to the bus, and pulled out onto the Autostrada again. It was mid-afternoon.

“Next stop Pisa,” Julia called.

I groaned.

“Don't you want to see the Leaning Tower?”

“Sure,” I said, swaying in the back, spilling wine into my lap. “Absolutely. Wouldn't miss it.”

My travel-hungry companions switched places; Caroline at the wheel, we sped toward fading light, where the lights of a small town glittered in the gathering shadows of afternoon.

We drove up to the Leaning Tower of Pisa to see, to our complete astonishment, lights on in the base of the tower.

More astounding was that there was a sign jutting out above the door. The sign read, “Disco.”

Oh, God help us, I thought.

“Yay, look. A disco, in the Leaning Tower,” Julia exclaimed.

“It's too early to go dancing,” I said.

“In Europe it's never too early to go dancing,” Caroline said. “You can stay in the bus and sleep and we'll check on you, or you can come in and sit in a corner; I'll just keep buying you wine.”

Now we were at odds, and I felt badly.

“I'm sorry.”

“It's o.k. Keep our purpose in mind; to have fun, fun fun. Think adventure.”

I was thinking exhaustion, of my bed back in St. Paul, of snowstorms, wondering about my parents, with fleeting thoughts of how my problematic lover was bearing up.

I brightened. “Is there a shop? I'll buy some postcards. My mother has probably been beside herself since the day I left.”

We went in to the Pisa discotheque; this time there was a jukebox, Italian pop songs pouring from it. Young, plaintive voices were singing the hit du jour: “Il mio piccolo grande amore....” against soughing over-orchestration: “My little big love.”

“That's me,” I said, sinking into a booth at the edge of the tiled dance-floor. “I'm your little big love”.

Now our ritual had taken shape.

The waiter came. “Ah. Regazzi Americani. Buongiorno. “

“Buongiono,” we said. To me we didn't look unlike some of the other girls in the disco. How could they tell we were American?

“Mi piace biquieri di vino bianco, prego, grazie,” I said, in my first complete utterance of Italian.

The waiter was surprised.

“Parla Italiano? Brava.”

Brava. This was illuminating. Brava. How nice that there was a feminine version of “Bravo”.

Suddenly I was alone at the table; two Italian men had emerged from the shadows and taken my friends out onto the dance floor.

I sat and watched, trying to fathom yet again that we were here in the midst of antiquity with a slice of America embedded in it.

Abruptly, I was taken by the hand. A diminutive Italian with a mustache half-bowed to me, leading me out into the middle of the parquet.

Someone turned on a makeshift strobe light over head, a little ball with rectangular mirrors glued to it; the ball spun in the low lamplight from old sconces on the white walls.

My partner was wearing very tight white pants against which he bulged, and when he turned, swiveling, that revealed the outline of bikini underwear.

Finally I too became caught up in the dancing. More 45 rpm records of Italian pop songs dropped down on the spindle of the jukebox; we danced on, gyrating, laughing, swinging our heads, unbinding our hair.

We took a pass and returned to our booth, toasting each other.

“See,” Caroline said. “You joined in and had fun.”

“I've been having fun,” I said.

We went back out into the night and drove the bus to a campground.

I made up my bed in the back of the bus and put new batteries into my small flashlight, and opened my journal.

Caroline and Julia put on their t-shirts and unrolled their sleeping bags, pulling down the seat.

“Why are you writing,” Caroline asked. “I thought you were tired. We're all tired. We have to rest. Tomorrow we'll drive the rest of the way across Tuscany to Verona.”

At last.

I'm just making a quick note.... I never want to forget that there was a disco in the Leaning Tower of Pisa.”

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Chapter Six - Nightfall in Verona - Jenne' R. Andrews

Chapter 6 – Wherein Natural Laws Take Effect

“This is the soul of the Italian since the Renaissance. In the sunshine he basks asleep, gathering up a vintage into his veins which in the night-time he will distil into ecstatic sensual delight, the intense, white-cold ecstasy of darkness and moonlight, the raucous, cat-like, destructive enjoyment, the senses conscious and crying out in their consciousness in the pangs of the enjoyment, which has consumed the southern nation, perhaps all the Latin races, since the Renaissance..”.


– from Twilight in Italy, D.H. Lawrence

We woke in the campground on the outskirts of Pisa to a soft golden light breaking over clustered cypress trees. At the height of summer tourists from every corner of Europe and stateside crowded the campground. There was a multilingual river of language like the buzzing of honey bees. The line to the low-to-the-ground partitioned toilets, and to the shower appeared everlastingly long.

Rested, we patiently stood with our caches of shampoo and soap, running in to duck under freezing water; there was a tarnished button you pressed and water jutted out in a thin stream. As it was timed water with others waiting, we had to act fast, soaping upward from our ankles and twisting, turning, bending in every direction to rinse.

Then we stepped out into a curtained area and toweled off fast, pulling on our clothes.

We sat in a tangle of trees and sunlight, combing out our hair. We made a small pot of coffee on our camp stove, and ate fruit, bread and cheese we had picked up and kept in our cooler on the way through Pisa.

Caroline got out our map.

“It's about a day's drive to Verona,” she said. “We should be there by dusk.”

“I'll drive for awhile,” I said, rinsing down a piece of bread with the coffee.

We were going to Verona before we found our way to Rome, we thought. Our guidebooks touted the Arena di Verona and it was opera season. There were sidewalk cafes and museums, a conservatory, and a central piazza where there was a sculpture of Dante. This was a poet's city.

Again, I longed to rent, just for one night, a little pensione, a little room, in one of the time-faded villas that seemed so exquisite; they reminded me of the pueblos where I had played as a little girl and imagined having my own clean and spare room, looking out over the desert, solitude and private space, yet with others close by.

I had begun to fall in love with the music of the Italian streets and the community of people walking arm in arm at all hours of the day. I longed to somehow penetrate Italian culture, merge with it, abandoning my worn identity as someone in pain, a flower torn asunder in a break up.

In this state of mind I gratefully took the wheel of the VW bus I now regarded as trustworthy. It had gotten us through the blizzard high in the Tyrol. It had become our home on wheels.

I lost track of the hours, measuring time by the hues of the sky I could see as we flew along the Autostrada. On the flat I pushed our bus to the limit. Still, we were passed by Alfa Romeos and Ferraris shooting past like silverfish bugs, barely catching glimpses of someone in sunglasses hunched over the steering wheel.

As the sun rose we crested a hill, and pulled over. All of northern Italy was spread before us as if a curtain had lifted over a grand opera's opening act.

Small towns lay in the center of fields and olive groves spread out around them. Rows of ancient villas stood clustered together, their stucco sun-bleached shades of pink and beige. I wondered if hallways connected families to each other, if generations of Italians lived together this way-- cloisters of families, people at every stage of life.

Perhaps at that very moment, two lovers were embracing in the shadows of one of the rooms, or someone was breaking eggs into flour in a rustic kitchen.

I caught a glimpse of a woman in long black dress, wearing a bright red scarf, taking a bucket to a pump. I opened and closed my eyes to try to focus, to take in, as if I were taking a snapshot and storing it in my mind. I hungered to remember every detail.

We pulled off the Autostrada to eat lunch and sip wine. We breathed a calmer air that didn't take our breath away like the Tyrolean ether. Julia photographed the towns in the distance. Caroline journaled. I looked down at the ribboned highway disappearing into a glittering, unexplored mist, trying to find a strand of imagery with which to begin a poem.

I was silenced by the beauty of antiquity, a holy quiet, a sense of prescience overwhelming me, as if something as rarified as an aria, yet with the purity and simplicity of the village life so beautifully chronicled by writers that had come before me, were about to unfold.

We stopped briefly in the exquisite port of Rapallo to buy vegetables and bread. Then we sped along again, under low clouds that cast shadows over the road.

Off in the distance, late in the afternoon, I could see the spires of a cathedral; the traffic picked up.

"Il piu bel citta 'nel mondo" lay ahead.

Julia at the wheel now, we exited the Autostrada and the road curved past small farms and olive groves, terraced up the hillsides on either side. We descended into a valley, and there, bathed in late daylight, was Verona-- a radiating jewel of antiquity, cut into cypress-covered hills.

Julia expertly drove along the Pontevecchio, the historic bridge into Verona, until we were at the center of the city, on its roundabout. Now there was teeming life all around us.

I couldn't help myself.

“Where are we going to stop?”

“I don't know. I'm going to drive around another time, to see if I can find a way to get across town. Watch for signs for parking."

It was no use; we drove around and around, police blowing their whistles at us to allow swifter local traffic to pass.

Then, abruptly, we veered off the road into the parking lot of what appeared to be a monastery-- an austere building built against a cathedral which faced away from us; between the church and a row of shops I could see a teeming piazza.

Julia pulled in between two Fiats and braked to a hard stop.

“We can't park here. They'll tow us,” I said.

I went to the clothesline where my panties hung and took them down and pulled the curtain.

“Really, we shouldn't. What does the map say about a campground.”

“Nothing,” Caroline said. “We'll have to go to the piazza and relax, and find someone to ask. “Here.”

She handed me the Berlitz Guide.

“We mustn't stay here,” I said again. “It's not fair. What if all of the other tourists came and parked here?”

At that moment two men in long robes and skull caps came out of the monastery, stopping short when they saw our bus. They looked at us, one shaking his finger. They walked away, around the corner.

“See. They don't care. They've seen it all, even if they are monks. Look, we're just going to park here for a few hours while we get our bearings. Come on.” Caroline tucked lire into the pocket of her jeans.

We got out, locking up the bus. We walked around the corner of the cathedral into the square.

Now it was nearly dusk. We found ourselves standing on an immense piazza boundaried by storefronts and cafes. Caroline took our hands.

“Let's go over there.” She had seen a picturesque spot: a small cafe out of the way, with white wrought iron tables and chairs outside, under striped umbrellas that each read "Cinzano".

We sat down. A waiter appeared in a snowy shirt with carefully buttoned cuffs, slicked back dark hair.

My friends looked at me; this was my true debut.

“Ah, grazie."

He stood patiently.

I looked at them. "The usual?"

“Yes. Si.”

“Prego, biquieri di vino bianco,” I said once more, in my best Italian.

He smiled, and bowed. "Bene."

I was relieved; I had again made myself understood.

He came back with a white porcelain pitcher brimming with cold white wine and three long-stemmed glasses. He filled each of our glasses.

“Cin-cin,” he said, bowing away.

“Cin-cin,” I mused.

“Cin-cin, then, I said. We lifted our glasses. Then it made sense: Cinzano Vermouth, written on the wine card, must be the signature drink in Italy.

“To us,” I exclaimed, refilling our glasses.

“To life, to art,” Caroline laughed, lifting hers.

Julia reached for my language manual.

“We better figure out where we're going before we have any more wine.” Her cheeks were rosy in the fading light.

Suddenly, someone began to sing "Volare", from another cafe. His voice carried over the square.

Pigeons wheeled around us. We were already giddy.

“Give me that,” I said, grabbing the guidebook, furtively looking around to see whom I might approach to ask about a campground.

The tables around us had filled up. I listened for the sound of English, but all I heard was a river of Italian, barely audible in moments as “Volare” blared across the air.

I turned around to see who was seated behind us.

Three young men were stretched out in their chairs, lounging at their table, drinking wine. When I looked at them, they each raised their glasses.

“Cin cin.”

“Cin cin. Seguia. Salud.” I was a bit tipsy.

I turned back around and thumbed through the Berlitz. I found again the phrase "Dov' e... for “Where is...”. I could not find an Italian word or idiom for campground anywhere.

I turned again, working up my nerve.

"Dov... dov e' camping, I asked, smiling.

They laughed. Then they looked at each other and me, and over at Caroline and Julia.

One of the men was older than the others; he seemed our age. He had dark, close-cropped curly hair and a mustache and sideburns. His shirt was unbuttoned part way, and a crucifix gleamed from his chest, nestled in dark profuse hair.

The other two seemed to be about seventeen. One of these leaned eagerly toward me.

“I speak Anglish,” he said, smiling. “I study language in la scuola.”

“Va bene,” I said, “Bravo. Dov e' camping.”

Now we all laughed. They stood up without further ado and turned their chairs around, joining us.

“Buona sera, regazzi,” one of the two younger ones said. “Mi chiamato Fortunato...Lucky”.

I quickly paged through the Berlitz.

He said, 'Good evening, ladies, my name is Lucky,' “I said to Caroline and Julia.

The man our age sat down next to me. "Guiseppe,” he said, smiling at us, pointing to himself.

“I am Francesco, Franco,” our  self-appointed interpreter said.

Lucky stood up and gave a brief whistle, startling us. "Vino ancor," he called across the tables.

“Si,”came the waiter's faint voice.

“Wow,” I said. “You just stand up and call for more wine.”

"Only man do this,” Franco said, turning to say something to his friends.

“Everyone go camping?”

Uh-oh. "No.” I said. “We have a bus.”

He looked puzzled.

“Ah. Autobus. Autobus. Ah.”

They looked impressed. “Where is autobus?”

I pointed in the direction of the cathedral.

“Monastery,” I said. “Church. We parked there until we find a campground.”

“Ah. You park for Church?” He looked incredulous.” He translated for his friends. 


They laughed again, toasting us, ordering more wine, this time ruby red Valpolicella, Verona's signature wine; Caroline had touted the virtues of this wine, with its one-glass suffusion of recklessness.

We huddled together as a few raindrops spattered down on our umbrella. Should we excuse ourselves now, or stay. I looked at my friends, who continued to toast nearly everything, ever more voluble and laughing.

Thanks for reading me!  Ch 7 will go up tomorrow. Scroll down for previous chapters-- they're up in reverse order.  Five chapters at a time will appear on the blog.  The others will be archived-- scroll all the way to the end and click on the archive box to view.  There are twenty-two chapters total.  There are comment boxes at the end of each post; I'm also on Facebook, and you can reach me at jenneandrews2010@gmail.com .