Walking Backwards. Mark Frutkin

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СКАЧАТЬ matronly woman with a friendly smile is signing me in, I discover I’ve left my passport in Rome. I’m stunned. How many times was I told never to forget my passport when travelling? By my parents, by the school authorities in Rome, by the government officials who issued it in Chicago, by the Italian passport officials at the airport. Never, ever, forget your passport! I was left with the impression that a forgotten passport would lead to having to sleep on the street or in jail, perhaps getting mugged, maybe murdered. Never forget your passport!

      “Scusi, signora, ma …” I try to explain in my halting Italian that my passport, my lifeline, my veritable identity itself does not exist on my person, but is back at the university in Rome.

      Instead of immediately telephoning the police, she shrugs, waves a hand at the air, says, “Non problema,” and signs me in.

      I go to my bedroom that is just down the hall from their sitting room where the old man relaxes in an easy chair, reading a newspaper while she putters about in the kitchen doing this and that. As I enter the bedroom, throw my knapsack down and test the bed, I’m starting to notice that my stomach is not happy. In fact, it feels as if it’s barking like a fish that wants out. And, in fact, it begins to feel as if a fish with rows upon rows of stiletto-like teeth is desperately trying to chew its way to freedom. Within minutes I am doubled over with intense cramps that threaten to tear me open. What to do? What to do? I’ve already been more of a problem for these good people than is justified for the mere handful of lire they receive for a night’s lodging. But I have no choice.

      Out of the room I go, holding my stomach, and, once again, test my halting Italian on this motherly saint of infinite patience. She is all concern and knowing care. Immediately, she digs a package out of a cupboard, rips it open, pours the contents into a glass of water, and motions for me to drink. I gulp it down without hesitation. I’ll try anything to allay the pain twisting in my guts. Within moments, my stomach has settled and I am filled with gratitude for the easy compassion of this mother away from home.

      If you are travelling alone, and you are young and innocent and lucky, I learn that the world will sometimes take care of you.

      In mid-afternoon of the next day, after giving Perugia a cursory going-over, I head down the road for Assisi. A short ride brings me out into the countryside of low, rolling hills and wide, fertile fields with higher hills in the distance. I walk down the quiet road lined with trees, sticking my thumb out when the odd car or truck passes. Assisi is only twenty-five kilometres east of Perugia and, since the autumn day is warm and sunny, I don’t mind walking part of the distance, my knapsack light on my back.

      In fact, it is a glorious day. A woman passes me with a large wooden wine barrel balanced on her head. I nod as we pass one another walking alongside the road. She doesn’t nod, for obvious reasons, but smiles instead. I stop and look about and suck the clear air deep into my lungs. I notice the light. There is something peculiar about the light here. I have never in my life seen the world lit with such clarity. The air sparkles. The sky, the trees, the nearby fields, and distant hills all glow with a luminosity and a radiance I have never experienced anywhere before. The sky is the deepest blue imaginable, on the verge of indigo. It is as if the light itself is lifting me, refreshing me, washing me clean, flowing through me. For a moment, I wonder if St. Francis was the result or the cause of this environment bathed in clear light. I walk on and catch a few short rides and eventually arrive at the little city famous for its good-hearted saint.

      Assisi, sitting on the side of a broad, sweeping mountain, is nothing more than a tiny, ancient village. I climb into its serene narrow streets as if I’m walking back into the Middle Ages. The place is extraordinarily quiet. The summer pilgrims are gone. The place is empty. It feels as if nothing is happening here, as if nothing ever happened here, and that is just right, the way it’s supposed to be. Assisi feels almost austere in its serenity. A deep peace pervades it.

      The cheapest place I can find to stay is in a convent at the heart of the city, nearby the Basilica di San Francesco. A short nun leads me up wide stairs and down an empty hall lined with doorways. She stops in front of one of the doors and lets me in, holding out the key while warning me that the front door is locked at 10:00 p.m. She turns and leaves.

      I enter and consider the room. It’s a monk’s cell. I can tell we are on the convent’s top floor because the ceilings slope in at odd angles. The room whispers of simplicity: a narrow bed, an unadorned desk, and a small, square window that is caught in the angles of the ceiling. The window, no more than a foot square, is open and looks out on the wide distant valley to the west from a great height. I watch for a long time as the sun descends on the far side of the valley, a red dissolving gong, as if the sun’s setting is the faint noise of the world fading away. Silence penetrates the room. I have no desire to go anywhere or to do anything but sit and watch the light in its dying splendour. It is as if I too am slipping away. I think it wouldn’t be so bad to lead a life of quiet contemplation in such a place.

      Breakfast quickly cures me of that notion. Early in the morning, I look straight down from my high window to see a courtyard where a dozen nuns and short-term residents are seated at a long, wooden table having breakfast. I dress and head down, not wanting to miss the breakfast that’s included in the cost of the room. I join the sitters and eaters, all chewing in silence. A nun serves me a bowl of cornmeal porridge with a teaspoon of milk on top. On the table is a basket of tough, tenacious peasant bread and a pitcher of water. That’s it. A simple breakfast, indeed. I eat, trying to savour the simplicity, the unelaborated flavours, the raw, basic nature of it all. It’s probably exactly what I need after my struggle with the fish.

      I finish my meal, grab my knapsack and head out for a cappuccino. Later that day, after a quick exploration of Assisi’s sights and highlights, followed by a series of quick rides, I am back in Rome, at the school, preparing for the next day’s classes.

      Greece

      Thanksgiving break is coming. We have ten days to go somewhere. The most time off I have ever previously enjoyed for American Thanksgiving, in all my years in school, was four days, but the school is aware that students are here to travel and travel they will.

      Lebanese Michael and I sit talking over lunch in the school cafeteria, which is located in the basement at the rear of the school villa. We dig into our pasta. Since we have arrived, we have eaten pasta twice a day, every day, and have grown to enjoy it because it tastes like no pasta we have ever had before. Light on the sauce, always cooked al dente, it proves the highlight of every meal. Whenever the Italian cooks, all middle-aged women built like bears, try to prepare something they think North Americans will like, such as hamburgers or steak, it’s a disaster. Burgers the size of fifty-cent coins and gristly bloodless steaks no bigger than the heel of a shoe are the inevitable result.

      The other delight of every meal are the little panini buns which the students have taken to stealing by the dozen in order to use them in the daily panini battles that occur in the main stairwell that spirals up four storeys through the centre of the villa.

      The Jesuit administrators, led by the head of the school, Father Felice, don’t quite know what to make of these insane North American students who seem to be more and more out of control every year, “but never like this year, never before.”

      In an irony of grand proportions, the Italian word, felice, means happy. Father Felice is said to have fought in the underground against the Nazis during the war and looks the part — straight jaw, short, but tough-looking with killer eyes, he strides the halls in his black robes with grim purpose. He stands before the crowded cafeteria and raises his hand for silence. The conversations cease immediately. He is the only person whom the students in the school fear because he seems unpredictable and perhaps a bit mad. With the atmosphere of anger held precariously in check that he carries around with him, he is the only person who can control this tribe of spoiled malcontents and cracked СКАЧАТЬ