.
[...] I can't believe the things you've seen, but am grateful for your having seen them, the sacrifice of putting your body and soul in the way of them, come what may.
You know, I've been thinking a lot lately about the ten days I spent in Certaldo, Italy when you were there, which seems like a lifetime and a world ago now. I remember waiting for you in the piazza, under the statue of Boccaccio, as a funeral procession began. It could have been plague times, just like in The Decameron, or just like right now. I can't remember how I finally ended up getting a hold of you since I was late, since I had gotten the number [in]correctly. But I had your address, 2 Via Valdracca, written on the fly leaf of my copy of Pounds's Cantos. But you came down to meet me, laughing and pointing at the mourners, and saying, "Hey, a funeral!" As if you had arranged it, as if it was part of the many sights to be had. And then you must have walked me to that hopeless hotel, Albergo Esperanza [Speranza], and checked me in using the Italian you had picked up from reading tabloids and news. I remember the hotel was dark, dank, and empty, little trace of hope anywhere except perhaps that it existed, that it was open and taking guests. I remember my erstwhile hotel room included two beds that looked troublingly like hospital beds. Or maybe I have the sequence wrong. I think we then took a stroll around the Certaldo Alto and beyond the walls, so you could see the hills and the dark human shapes like giants that the cypress trees made. Your time in Italy was coming to an end then, you didn't know where was next--would you really return to Philly, with Diem? Days I played tourist, trying to navigate the Italian train system, seeing Firenze, Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa. I got off at the wrong station once and was surrounded by Chinese people. I can't remember where that was [probably Empoli]. I don't remember many of the famous cathedrals or museums, though one I do remember walking through the bowels of the Santa Maria della Scala in Siena, looking at the frescoes depicting the sick and the dying, someone tending to a man whose wound on his thigh opened like a mouth. I couldn't understand what anyone said. I remember hoping to see the daughter and grand daughters of Monica Vitti, but all I saw were pigeons and old men in the squares. Eventually, I remember, I'd arrive back at 2 Via Valdracca, and we'd sit at your little table in your little cozy cave, and you'd talk and tell stories. One of those nights it happened to be Lunar New Year, but we had forgotten, yet observed it in our own way, by accident. Did we drink beer or wine [had to be chianti]? I can't remember if we snacked on things that either you or Diem might have prepared. I remember the black brick of your lap top, how you apparently wrote on your stomach or with your head too close to the screen, like you were trying to ram your head through the screen or peer beyond it. I remember giving you a copy of Sebald's Rings of Saturn or maybe it was Vertigo or The Emigrants. I remember reading your manuscript of Love Like Hate back in my hotel room like a convalescent. I remember a feeling of great joy amidst uncertainty, of kinship and purpose. I remember voices in the hallway, the motion lights of the hallway, that would lighten wherever you stood, so that you were always surrounded by darkness behind and in front. I remember those days and nights as some of the best of my life! What do you remember?
[...]
.
1 comment:
The street I was on, Valdracca, was also a joke, since it sounded like "baldracca," meaning "whore." Walking up the hill to Certaldo Alto, Italian tourists would crack up when they saw the sign, "Via Valdracca." Inside my kitchen, I would hear them laughing.
Post a Comment