[February 1966] Saturday
[journal]
Remember the sun on the Spanish Steps! I sat on the wide stone balustrade
high over the steps, while three gypsies in long floating skirts flirted
and begged from the tourists, played with their baby brothers, sang, drummed.
The women going up and down the steps were often beautiful. (My bluejeans,
my boots seem a liberation from all forms of social constraint. I can eat
bread from a paper bag, lie flat on my back in the sun like the Italian
boys, whistle, put my hands in my pockets - yet I know that my face is pretty
and my neck is very feminine. I'm content. My good clothes would be far
outclassed by Roman elegance.)
One group of Teddy boys came over and surrounded me: loud, pushy, arrogant,
annoying but beautiful, especially one brown-eyed raggazo with a slender
freckled face and long dark hair who ran up the stairs calling over his
shoulder: I could see him in a toga too, as one of Cesar's (or somebody's,
I know no Roman history) spoiled brat darlings.
Two kilos of Somalian bananas, bought for the 200 lire, a wonderful illustrated
Botticelli book for 450, and - maddening folly! - an Italian translation
of Dickens' Christmas Carol - Canto di Natale de Carlo Dickens.
Mitchell arrived as I waited for the tram back (appuntamento for a job:
nothing yet, but a look at the interior of a wealthy Roman home, a glimpse
of the villa district, a contact who perhaps ...), in good humor for a change,
glowing with his account of an afternoon at the Forum Romanum. We were nearly
comradely on the way back to the hostel and managed to talk to each other
with as much interest as we give other people in this hostel for an hour
in the evening before going to bed. (In the morning "Sole!" on
the paradisal palms among the yellow villas on Monto Sacro.)
Sunday
Looking for rooms on Via Emmanuel Filiberto - Santa Maria Maggiore with
two australesi on the steps looking at their carta - ran down the steps,
sideways - found magnificent entries followed by stairwells hung with laundry
and bags of food, front rooms full of junk, clean room with pictures of
a saint above the bed.
Then a long street and - the Colosseum. More about it later: I'm impressed
by the bare design when I sit high on the walls, the concentric encirclement
by ruined stone. I wouldn't be impressed by the Colosseum new, but the Colosseum
in ruins moves me: and I like the hundreds of cats who sleep in the sun.
The view across to the Forum and the Palatine Hill, Constantine's Arch,
the Arch of Titus, all names become piles of ragged rock. (I distrust the
battered curbs of every street of being more ancient than I can believe.
Mitchell had a rage at the entrance gate. I laughed at him, whereupon he
was cool all through the palatial splendor of the Casa di Augustus, di Livia,
di etc, although he did pick me an orange from the wonderfully beautiful
orange trees above the Forum before we wandered down the ancient chariot
way to read inscriptions on the pedestals of the Vestal Virgins. We were
trying to read the last on the templi end when a well-dressed Italian with
a camera supplied a word, began a conversation, and as a "dilettante
archeologist" gave us a thorough and humorous tour of the entire Palatine
Hill and the Forum, and then took us for a driving tour to SS Paolo e Giovanni,
past the Baths of Caracalla, to the old stone bridges across the Tiber,
back to the railroad station. We were both crevé: Mitchell has gone
to his new room and I'm on my own now. The hostel is clammy, two cretins
who work here have hung around, but none of the good looking Australians.
Tomorrow, cerco Antonietta.
Monday
The morning sweating in brilliant sun, the afternoon and evening moled
away in the clammy Pensione Aurora with my clothes drying on a line outside,
the floor cold, my nose cold, naked because I had to wash every stitch,
stuffed with bargain pears bought at 130 lire the kg, a low, marshy spot
in my life at Rome! And the morning after, waking to a still-soaking pair
of bluejeans.
Tuesday
Sun and shade, the Pantheon seen with Mitchell, the beautiful ceiling
cross-hatched in light and shadow, the beautiful portico with its pillars
and Grecian apex, the vast round hall which was once dedicated to all the
gods now full of hideous Christian tombs and sculptures.
16 February
[letter]
We are such a scattered family: Judy and Paul still in Sexsmith, Mother,
Father, Rudy I don't know where (no mail has caught up with me since Strasbourg),
and me sitting in the Goethe Institute library in Rome, leaning against
a stack of architecture books, writing you.
Rome delights me. I've decided to stay for a month, until the 10th of
March when my rent runs out, to read, write a short story, learn Italian,
walk, sun, eat pizza and spaghetti until I've had enough and not
work until I get to Athens. Financially this is even a feasible project
because it is possible to live extremely cheaply.
But before getting lost I'll go back to beginnings - Mitchell and I arrived
in Rome the Friday night after leaving on Tuesday the first of February,
went straight to the youth hostel. Thereafter followed several days of wandering,
looking for baggage, looking for work. By Monday I felt so dirty that I
knew I would break out into hives if I didn't wash. But having no change
of clothing (the bags had not arrived yet by train) and the hostel having
no hot water, I couldn't bathe or wash my clothes separately: a shower in
the railroad station and a trip to the laundromat was out! So I took a room
in a chilly pensione or boarding house for the scandalous price of 1500
lire (bartered down from a more tourist price) (which works out to $2.50
a night). After I'd bathed there was little warm water left but I washed
everything, jeans, underwear, sweater, shoes, even the flight bag, and hung
it out to dry from a cord out the window. Then went to bed because I was
naked and the room was twenty degrees colder than the air outside. Stayed
there until noon the next day. My bluejeans aren't dry yet! Well, I refuse
to pay another night's 1500 lire to that sour old woman so I put on the
cold heavy bluejeans and walk around in the sun until they dry, hours later.
But Wednesday is a good day, sunny, light-hearted. I scuff through the
crowds of elegant people on the sidewalks feeling arrogant because I am
so ragged and so free and so happy. In the morning I go to the Colosseum
- I've sent you a postcard of it - and sit on a block of ancient brick-rubble
reading a French book, very good, called Le grand Meulnes. Then I
go to a sidewalk café and read for another hour with a cup of cappucino
(digression: you must understand cappucino to understand my Italy! It's
coffee, thick and mellow, into which has been poured the same amount of
milk that has been heated by a jet of steam so it is beaten to a froth.
The waiter sets it in front of you in a glass on a saucer, sprinkles chocolate
onto the foaming top from a silver shaker, and pushes the sugar bowl toward
you. It costs 60 lire or eight and a half cents and is MAGNIFICO). Suddenly
the effect of the sun, the book, the cappucino, the Colosseum, the whole
mad city of Rome, cumulate and I say excitedly "No, this month I will
not work because I am going to stop procrastinating and write a story."
(The story is about Madame Matter and Jean-Jacques and me.) I'm afraid to
actually start because I'm afraid to find that I'm really no good at all,
but it is time to stop saying later and to actually write. So I've
begun. [I didn't write it.]
There is a park nearby and I go there, and am sitting on a fountain,
exhilarated and liberated by my decision, looking at the Colosseum over
the trees, happy about the sun, writing a letter to Bill Volk, when three
high school boys come over. They speak fragmented French, fragmented English,
and I fragmented Italian: they have several hours until afternoon classes,
they're gay and arrogant. We make friends. I call them "mi chici"
which is certainly not Italian, but an invention of mine from the Spanish
word chico - "little boy" - italicized. It means "my little
ones," and they rub their beards at me in protest, but we get along
very well.
They leave and go eat, and I take a random street leading away from the
Colosseum. I notice a sign, "Affitisi Camera" room for rent
and think, "Nothing is lost in looking, I need a room, the neighbourhood
looks cheap enough," so I ring the doorbell of an apartment on first
floor. The bell grates somewhere inside. The window beside the door, an
almost blind window looking out into the dim hallways, is opened. An apparition
looks out at me from a completely dark room. I can make out an old woman
with grey hair straggling around her face. She seems to be wearing a nightgown,
then a slip, then an apron, then a shawl. She says "What do you want,
Signorina?" I say "Cero una camera." She backs up in the
darkness and turns on a dim light. "This is the room" she says.
It is about 6' by 9', with a bed, a dresser and a wrought iron washstand.
There is no other window. What I can make out doesn't look very clean. "How
much?" "Come in, venga, Signorina," she says, and I follow
her into a dim hallway - no light - full of stacked anonymous packages covered
with newspaper. Somehow she finds the door of another room. This one has
a window and more newspaper-covered piles. "10,000 lire" she says.
That's cheap enough, but it's a horrible room, I'll see if I can bargain
her down. There's no budging her. She tells me about her dead husband, her
feeble-witted daughter (whom I see sitting like a bloated statue in an armchair),
the taxes to be paid tomorrow. I tell her my story (all in Italian).
Still she won't budge. She says "You take it, then?" I say, "How
much, 9,000?" She says "10,000." I say "9500."
She, "10,000, why quibble about 500 lire?" I say, "9000.
Why quibble about 500 lire?" She says, "10,000. You take it, then?"
I, "Okay," with a long pained sigh for her benefit. Ten thousand
is cheap enough and maybe she does need that thousand. She must be
about ninety and her daughter is a mound of vegetable matter. Okay, Signora.
As I leave, promising to move in tomorrow, she calls after me "Venga,
Signorina, be sure to come back! Venga, venga!" And all the way down
the stairs I call back "Si! Si!"
When I arrive next morning she's half-promised the room to somebody else
but since the ten thousand was burning a hole in my hand, she said "Well,
too bad for that other one, it's yours." Relations with the Signora
that day were quite sweet. They have not been so sweet since - see the story
of the Lampidina Battle later in this letter - and she no longer calls me
cara, "dear".
So I'm living at 238 via San Giovanni in Laterano. The kitchen, where
I wash in cold water, is without doubt the foulest, smelliest, dankest room
I have ever seen or smelled or felt crawling over my skin. More piles of
newspaper-covered bundles. A floor of paving stones, filthy especially in
the corners and between the cracks. One feeble light bulb on the high ceiling.
(Roman rooms all have high ceilings and consequently interminable
stairways for even squalor must be grandiose!) No windows, but a set
of narrow wooden doors leading to a balcony onto which a small gabinetto,
toilet closet, has been tacked among more strange dirty bundles and a washline,
all this above the square courtyard where fifty other balconies display
each family's spare junk.
Back to the kitchen - piles of pots and pans on the floor, no clean dishes
to be seen except for two cups and saucers. Two shriveled lemons cut a week
ago and not used since. (Or perhaps nibbled at every night?) Clothes lines.
Heaps of objects which are so crumbled in my memory (due to their age and
dirtiness and the lack of light) that they seem half-decayed - quite impossible
to make out. Garbage spilling out of a cardboard box on the floor. A stone
sink into which water drips incessantly. Scraps of soap, shreds of steel
wool.
When I back up into my room I always lock the door to keep out the detestable
yellow 16 watt light and the newspapery bundles. But you know me: I'm thrilled
at last to be living in utter romantic squalor.
My room is dirty - she didn't bother to change the bed linen for me -
and at first I was always itchy just from the thought of the bugs who might
be gnawing at my scalp. But there are no bugs and I've swept out the spider
webs. I've also torn down the blind doll from her dusty velvet shelf and
put the picture of the Virgin under the bed. My books are on the mirror
shelf, several twigs of apple blossom are in the ashtray, two really lovely
Botticelli portraits are on the dresser and - there is a 40 watt light bulb
in the dangling socket.
And this is the story of the Lampidina Battle.
The day after I moved in, my bulb burned out. I told the Signora, "No
light!" She said, "No problem, Signorina. You just go down the
street and buy another lampidina." I said "Me?" in
astonishment and she said "Si, si" with all possible serenity.
Oh you witch you, I know how to fix you for making a poor student buy
her own lightbulbs! So I bought a forty-watter, installed it, and went off
to spend the afternoon walking with Mitchell. When I came back at ten p.m.
there were the Signora and the Daughter sitting in front of the door waiting
for me. They'd forgotten their key. And the Signora was furious. "La
sua lampa è troppo forte," mutter, mutter, in the rasping Italian
of all fat old Roman women. "Si, si," I said, pretending to understand
nothing and closed my door "Good night Signora! Sleep well!" At
midnight, when I came into the kitchen to wash, both women were asleep beside
the kitchen table, elbows among the newspapers, leaning together like two
vast statues, heavy and rounded in the half light. The daughter, who is
about forty but ancient as a mountain, was propped against her mother with
her hands under the Signora's heavy breasts. Both were stunned by the sound
of the door opening. "Signorina, what time is it?" the Signora
managed to say they have no clock at all, they have no sense of time,
they sleep until ten or eleven, sometimes until one thirty in the afternoon,
I think because the mornings are cold. Then "Oh, Signorina, Signorina,
lampa sua è troppo forte, è troppo forte, è troppo
forte" as I vanish behind the door.
Next day, I come home in the evening, nobody's home, but she has switched
my bulb! Where's my 40 watt dangling bulb? I stamp around in pretended rage,
inventing obscure curses, looking for it behind bundles, in cupboards, in
the garbage. It's vanished.
Next day, I buy another 40 watt darling. This time, when I leave, I take
it with me and substitute the other in the socket. My symbol of Light amidst
Darkness is saved! We'll see how long it is before she discovers the trick.
Thursday, 17th of February
Rained this morning, rewarded myself for getting up by a cappucino and
doughnut at the caffé four doors down on Via San Giovanni in Laterano,
where the bartender in his white jacket always shakes a little extra cioccolato
onto my cappucino, and does it with such a smile! Then, a ten o'clock appointment
at the park with mi chici, the three mousqeteers who have offered to take
me sightseeing. We go to the Campadoglio, one of the classic hills of Rome
which used to be a religious centre for very very early Romans. It is now
a large square with a town hall at the end, reached by a long line of steps
designed by Michelangelo, and flanked by beautiful twin palaces which are
now museums. A fountain, a bell tower, clusters of statues, steps - this
is a detailed description of the city of Rome, which is one palace, church,
statue, stairway, fountain, bell tower, cupola, after another, all set amid
the odd clumps of marble and brick which are anonymous ruins. (In most other
cities the ruins are swept together and put into museums. Here they are
left where they fell.) The city is a crazy bake-shop full of wedding-cake
palaces - it's an antique shop full of ornate, unlovely, dusty and decaying
antiquities.
The spaces between monuments and assorted junk are green: wonderful parks,
palm trees, laurels, flowers, lawn. All of the city's peach and apple trees
are in bloom, irises have appeared in the parks. Some, a few, of the buildings
are moving - the Colosseum where I sit and read high in the fifth tier of
the old gladiator arena when it's sunny, bell towers, the Spanish Steps
with their flower sellers, the fountains of the Naiads, where water has
stained the sculptures a deep rusty yellow and the central jet moves and
glitters with the wind. There's much I haven't seen. My Italian is improving,
I can almost talk in sentences. I try to spend three hours a day on it,
and practice it with mi chici.
Yesterday was glorious. I bought a large blue balloon painted with yellow
- the first balloon I've ever had which floated at the end of its string,
a real hydrogen balloon. It's tied to a rung of the chair in my room.
An important subject still uncovered - FOOD. Oh Italy! Pizzas,
with mushrooms, with onions, with potatoes, with sardines, with olives,
with eggs, with artichokes, with any kind of covering, crisp, oily, cheap,
delicious. And spaghetti! Cheap. And filling - for the coils slide
into every corner of the stomach and pack it tight. Bread - just down the
street is a paneteria with a large window. If you stop and stare into the
room behind you see three men in what looks like white flour-sack pyjamas
tossing dough into rolls; putting the rolls onto a long, light plank; opening
an oven door and flicking the plank into it so that the rolls stay on the
inside surface and the plank comes out clear; opening another oven door
and thrusting in a large flat fork; pulling the fork out full of freshly
baked rolls and dumping the rolls into waiting baskets. They know me by
now, and always look up to wave and say ciaou to the peculiarly dressed
Americana.
And the market... Near where Mitchell has his room is a large rectangular
park, all around which are set up the canopied tables of the vegetable and
fruit vendors, the meat vendors, the Friday fish vendors, the flower vendors,
the pens of live chickens, the stacks of merchandise. You walk between the
stalls, scuffling through lettuce leaves and wrapping paper, while all around
you the vendors shout invitations to buy "lovely pears only 160 lire
for a kilogram!" Some even reach out to touch your sleeve, "Venga
Signorina, venga, venga, è buono." Fruit's often cheap, especially
pears and oranges and dates or figs exported from Africa (which is nearby,
really). You can buy a large paper cone of chopped salad greens for three
cents, or a lot of raisins for seven and a half. Carrots are cheap too,
and vegetables like onions and artichokes. All the Roman housewives come
with their string bags. First they buy salad greens, which are put into
their bags without wrapping, then three kilos of oranges, dumped on top
of the greens, then more until the bag is full.
In the meat stalls, unskinned rabbits hang from hooks, sides of beef,
pork legs smoked to a grey stony hardness, chickens who still have their
necks and heads covered with feathers. In cages, ducks and hens squirm together,
beautifully colored pheasants trail their long tails. On top of the cages
a live rabbit sits motionlessly, tied to the cage by a string on his leg.
Real gypsies with long skirts and tangled hair scream back and forth
to each other: they're as dirty, ragged, and graceful as the romanticized
storybook gypsies. Bums of all types sit on the park benches eying the food.
(On Saturday night when the stalls are packed away onto pushcarts and the
rubble is swept up, you see them and quite a few respectable housewives
poking about for a lettuce leaf or an orange that's not really spoiled.)
The cats of Rome sit near the meat stalls, casually waiting around. They're
all big and sleek, the thousands of them that live in the ruins, the immense
black toms, the tabbies, the wary white aristocrats. I wish I knew the ruins
as they do, and could slink through the miles of underground passages that
only they know, as they do.
Roman beggars do not fare as well as the cats. On a sunny day you see
them sitting on a sidewalk along a church wall displaying their amputations
or their crippled limbs or simply their bony faces. On the Spanish Steps,
gypsy children pull at the coats of tourists, laugh at them, tease them
into giving 100 lire. Often a fat old woman will stand at a corner and,
as you pass, wordlessly poke her cupped hand out at you with a shy and almost
imperceptible gesture. Mitchell gets upset because, as he said yesterday,
"See that old man selling chestnuts? This afternoon a beggar was standing
beside him. All sorts of people were giving the beggar money, but nobody
bought any chestnuts."
The streets are full of hawkers of all kinds - Somalian bananas, postcards,
guide books, addresses of pensiones, black market radios. Often, at night,
a family will burn wooden packing cases against a pillar for warmth and
stand calling out the names of American cigarettes they're selling at black
market prices. The police don't seem to notice.
Traffic is generally mad, rush hour steadily from seven in the morning
until midnight. Pedestrians cross streets by simply stepping out into the
flow and darting between cars, who pass on both sides like water in a stream,
furiously and often without slowing. It is exhilarating - I enjoy it, especially
when the street is a point of influx for five or six other streets, and
the traffic turns in all directions. It demands 3000 per cent concentration
and as much foolhardiness, especially on a rainy night when streets are
slick and lighting is poor. Peril, squalor, liberty, and a story to write
- what sort of life could be better?
It's midnight, the hallway outside the window is full of voices and footsteps
until late at night. The Signora and her daughter are asleep in the kitchen
again. Tonight is Carnivale, and the streets are full of confetti. All evening
families paraded their children among the crowds downtown, for they all
wear costumes. Thousands of little girls in lacy ballgowns with silver wigs
in the style of the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. Tonight there were
grand balls all over Rome. I've just come in from a walk along the medieval
walls - huge buttressed masses of stone with crenellated tops. It was pouring
rain. The sky was full of reflected light.
Next day, 18th of February
Up at 6:30 this morning to watch the market unpack and the sun rise over
the Forum from the Campidoglio. Breakfast was rolls still hot from the bakery
oven, with butter, eaten on a park bench. It's noon now and I've found a
sidewalk café where the cappucino is cheap. Hot sun! A view across
the Forum ruins! All afternoon to write and study Italian and eat bread
and butter for lunch.
Priests or students at Catholic seminaries walk by in pairs, all wearing
long black gowns that make them very tall, very graceful. A Negro boy just
passed in one of the black robes and a cape - beautiful.
The elder Italian women who go by are not beautiful. Nearly all
are fat with hostile, wary little black eyes. Older men are aggressive -
like all Romans I've seen - but not ugly. They cannot pass a woman without
speaking to her, whistling, hissing, trying to catch her attention. It's
irking and even more so because it is such an uncritical and universal attention.
Any mail mailed before or about the 25th or 26th goes to c/o American
Express, Piazza di Spagna, Roma, Italia, and any mailed after that to c/o
British Consul, Athens, Greece.
PS Do we know anyone in Saint Paul Minnesota? I've just picked up another
friend, a 16 year old called Andy, who escaped alone from Rumania three
weeks ago and is being sent to Saint Paul as a political refugee by the
American Embassy. It would be nice to give him an address there. He leaves
the 7th of March.
PS This morning saw the prison where the apostles Peter and Paul were
kept, here in Rome.
[link to a description of the month in Rome written in London four years
later]
[letter from Grandpa Epp]
- 3. Marz, 1966
- Stewart Rd
- Yarrow, B.C.
-
- Chère Allie
- Dein Brief erfreute und er [?] uns.
- Es waren hier sehr schöne, sonnige Tage - für 2 Wochen. Wenn
jemard meinte, es würde schon so bleiben, dann wurde er ausgelacht.
Was denkst - vor 3. Tagen, eines morgens kam Schnee, viel Schnee, doch
ein Chinook machte den auftauen, undzwar bis zum Abend. Den 2. Tag aber
kam wieder viel Schnee mit gutem Frost.
- Ich sehe, während ich schreibe, die weise Schneedecke, ganz wie
es im Winter ist.
- Hier ist gegenwärtig viel Krankheit. Viele sterben am Schlag -
Jüngere u. Altere.
- Dur wirst wohl tief im Studieren sein, u. wollen dich auch nicht viel
hindern, aber doch viel Mut u. Gesundheit wünschen. Kannst auch die
Leute dort von us grüssen.
- Wir denken viel an dich. Wenn wir von Strasburg lesen denken wir an
deutsche Lieder, O Strasburg, o Strasburg, du wunderschöne Stadt zum
Beispiel, u. andere.
- Now, don't forget to pray!
- Grosm u pa grüsen dich!
- $5 zum Geburtstag
- Schreibe, ja!
March 14
[postcard]
Am in Ischia, the small Italian island off the coast an hour's boat ride
from Naples, waiting to take the ship Appollonia to Athens on the 16th,
a three day voyage. Am here with my friend Jerry and we are camping out
in the closed campground, where we have to climb a twelve foot gate to get
in. The sea is blue, purple, green, turquoise, all at once, choppy, still
cold. The island has forests, hills terraced very high with vines, fishermen's
boats like the one on the card, white houses, narrow streets, cheap oranges,
groves of lemons, sandy beaches, no tourists yet because the season hasn't
started, and this castle, where we intended to camp but were chased out
by a ridiculously self important man. We spend most of our time sitting
on the sheltered sun side of a wall eating bread and reading.
Athens, 18 March, Youth Hostel
[letter]
The man who answered my ring at the British Consulate this afternoon
was a furry-haired little Briton who said "Oh, we are closed, yes,
but for mail ..." and gave me all the letters under E. In gratitude
I promised him all the stamps on all the letters and then ran across the
street to read them while two guards reappeared from time to time to see
if I were still at it, and try to read over my shoulder. (A female in bluejeans
is an even greater curiosity here than in Rome.)
Hard to believe but:
- 1. letter from Olivia, who is still thriving
- 2. card and hanky from Gma and pa Konrad, Grandma may sense that I've
been wiping my nose solely on stolen toilet paper in various degrees of
European cardboardlike roughness. But a fine linen handkerchief with embroidered
lilac flowers - not my style or my philosophy. But I'll soon have a landlady
I can send it to, or Madame Matter!
- 3. letter from Gpa and ma Epp, almost long, in red ink and precise
angular handwriting. Grandpa says it's snowed and a lot of people have
died and are sick, and they don't want to disturb the studying I must be
deep in, but would like to send birthday wishes. Und ganz unten steht's
"Now, don't forget to pray! OK."
- 4. long letter from the Harveydycks, the first they've written, dated
January and full of my 'next nearest relatives,' all five's, doings.
- 5. letter from Rudy, size of a postage stamp
- 6. letter from Paul, which will get special side comment
- 7. letters, two, long, from Judy
- And
- 8. the ONLY letter you wrote from Mexico and the last two letters from
La Glace.
All this made my head bulge in and out: besides the ground seems to sway
like a ship (still effect of the Appollonia).
The hostel dining room is full of bearded boys writing or talking, only
two girls at the moment, both long haired and bluejeaned and beat looking
yes, me too, all this time my hair has been getting longer and bushier
and dirtier. And as for the bluejeans - you know what happens to my bluejeans'
zippers Mother, they're all kept together with pins. With one pocket over
a hole in the seat and the other over a knee, they must hold now
or else.
NEWS: I've stopped biting my finger nails. For good. Health, excellent.
Constitution: heroic. Spirits: mostly high. Morals: fine. Finances: there's
a story that needs background. Later. Friends: said goodbye to too many.
Now, none.
How to get from Rome to Athens when a solitary female with too much
baggage to carry and too much budget.
On the tenth of March, the rent ran out and that meant I had to leave
Rome, much as it hurt. The day before, Mitchell and Jerry and I went to
have dinner together for the last time in our cheap Italian restaurant where
we'd spent so many evenings until late in the night, arguing, howling with
laughter, singing raucously (Mitchell sings badly, Jerry has only two notes
which denote high and low, and mumbles along from one to another, but enthusiastically),
teasing the fat Mama who runs it, finishing our quarter litres of white
wine as slowly as possible. Then we screwed up our courage to say goodbye
to Antonio's parents, very sadly because we really loved them and they'd
fed us all a lot of good Sicilian spaghetti and we'd had so many good evenings
with them. Antonio wasn't home - we struggled to hide our relief from his
parents. We'd said goodbye to Antonio once before, when he went away for
three days to Genoa, and not only did he walk us home with his arms around
our shoulders, but afterwards he wrung our hands again and again, then jerked
around and ran away to hide his Sicilian tears. One goodbye with Antonio
was enough. We gratefully left him a note and said many "Bonna notte's,"
"arrivederci's," "auguri's" as we fled down the stairs.
Went home and packed in a fit of angry depression. Got up in the morning
to brilliant sun - so Athens might be as good as Rome, might. One last cappucino
at the little coffee shop downstairs, a goodbye wave to the four baker men
in their underwear, a hand-shaking scene with all the waiters in our favorite
dinner place, a last walk through the market, and by noon, Jerry and I were
standing beside the boulevard down a bit from the Colosseum with our thumbs
out, Jerry carrying my bags! Two rides, one right after the other, got us
to Napoli - in Italy no girl waits long when she hitchhikes, but heaven
help her if she hasn't a man with her.
Napoli. The countryside on the way is beautiful, hills, rocky with stone
farmhouses half in ruin, simple and sculptural. Naples - bus to the youth
hostel along the edge of a cliff over the sea. The city is beautiful, with
a fortress on top of a high hill and the slope down to the water's edge
covered with the town. Fishing boats offshore and on the beach, nets being
mended, a fisherman carrying a bucket of water with what seems an enormous
lung gasping and sucking in it - an octopus.
The hostel is funny because it is surrounded by young prowlers who peep
through the windows at the girls (in the girls' john, I noticed that one
of the slats of the shutter had been raised with little sticks stuck in
crosswise - I lifted the shutter and there was some Napolitan boy flat on
the ground hiding in the shadow - when I laughed at him he slunk away.
Next day, as we lay on the grass in a park in the sun (after lunching
on two huge Napolitan doughnuts which are crusty and slightly salty under
their heavy crumbly sugaring - the sugar sticks to your chin like a white
beard), two policemen came and kicked Jerry's foot and told him that this
was Napoli where people do not lie on the grass in public. One of them made
fat gestures down the street and insisted "You come, police station"
but when Jerry muttered "American Embassy" he gave up and left
us alone. We found another park.
Said goodbye to Mitchell, who was going back to Germany for next term
at school (he'd come down to Napoli on the same day).
On the third day we decided to take a boat to Capri. In our usual ill-thought-out
way, we lay on the grass too long with sugar muzzle, then ran sweatily to
catch the ferry with our bags but arrived at the dock just in time to see
the ferry disappear with an uncaring hoot in our direction. Jerry - who
has the most wonderful temperament I've ever seen in a man - raised his
eyebrows and said "So - we go to another island. We go to Ischia. There's
a boat in half an hour."
So it was Ischia instead of Capri. The story of Ischia - after we got
there in the cold and swells and dark - is on the postcard. Came back on
the boat in time to catch the boat from Napoli to Greece - the Appollonia.
Had to say goodbye to Jerry because he's going hitchhiking to Spain through
northern Africa and Gibraltar. He brought me to the boat and said goodbye
and walked off down the long pier with his duffle bag over his shoulder
getting smaller and smaller - the boat was playing sweet Greek music and
I was crying over the railing.
The Appollonia - traveled 'deck class' which was cheaper and had envisaged
sitting on the deck among the spray with my belongings in wet bundles around
me. But it turned out to be a 'hold,' below deck and closed off from the
other classes but comfortably furnished with airline seats. And only students,
with the exception of a balding South African man who made himself ringmaster,
cheerer-upper, of the group. The first night was good: hot shower, sound
asleep on the floor in the sleeping bag. Next day, grey and windy, becoming
rougher and rougher, everyone becoming sick, except me and Zorba the South
African. I was all arrogance, sewing in my new bathing suit (birthday present
to me), singing, going on deck to watch the magnificent white wake we were
leaving, washing bluejeans, reading hundreds of pages of Thomas Mann's The
Magic Mountain. Then the waves became higher, we began galloping irregularly
from crest to trough, the helm rolled under the blows of the waves - I succumbed.
Later, when we'd both thrown up all we had and the room was put to sleep,
I had a long good talk with a hollow-cheeked burning-eyed young Jew from
Toronto.
Woke to even worse waves. We were supposed to arrive at Pireus, the port
of Athens, at 6 a.m., but arrived at noon because the narrow Straits of
Messina were blocked with fallen rock and we went 'way around. Met a couple
of German students who insisted on talking English - so I talked German
in reply to their English! Sometimes we all spoke French - Germans, Canadians,
Italians, Greeks. Languages become more and more interesting. Is it possible
to learn Greek in a few months? (Oh for the good feeling of being at least
half comfortable in a language: to be able to argue prices and ask directions
- Italian - but here the alphabet is even different and nothing is comprehensible).
You're up to date now. The back-tracking to Rome comes later.
Money - again, a couple of miracles. Listen: left Rome with just enough
money for the boat ticket, plus maybe a dollar and a half to live on for
a week and to get me a job once in Athens, and to live while finding the
job. Narrow?
First miracle: the day before leaving, Jerry, in his usual state of intoxication
with the sun in Rome, invested 400 lire in a box of colored chalk. Early
in the morning we bought a loaf of bread for 70 lire (10 cents), a bottle
of wine for 160 lire (23 cents), two pounds of raw carrots for 50 lire;
I put on my hoop earrings, and we trudged across the city with the carrots
in a plastic bag slung over our shoulders, to the Spanish Steps, where we
sat and gathered our courage. Procrastinated a little more by having a cappucino
(when one is already broke there is no point in economizing - spend it and
have faith).
What is all this for - the chalk, the wine, the carrots, the courage?
We're going begging - but with style, with class, with gaiety! Sidewalk
chalk artistry, in short. Took the skull out of the carrot bag and set it
on the pavement where the cement was smoothest - a crowd gathered immediately,
and we were committed, no chickening out now. They asked what the skull
was - "Ma, è mia madre," we explained and showed them the
inscription. That caused a bit of a laugh - we had the crowd's sympathy,
mostly teenagers with long hair, Andy-style.
The first chalk line was a little circle, with the inscription above
it saying "For the sustenance of life" in English, French and
Italian. To illustrate, we set the skull beside the circle, with its wire
eyeglasses, and stuffed ivy leaves into the eye sockets. We had a slug of
wine "per corragio," for courage, and scattered the chalk and
began to draw. While Jerry did some abstracts I did a madonna and child
in rich bright colors - something for everybody. By this time, one of the
Spanish Step loungers, a young man dressed flashily in a cheap suit, had
appointed himself business manager and barker, and was exhorting the kids
not to stand there gaping, give these talented starving artists something.
Some good-looking gang leader, with a large gesture, threw in a couple of
tinny 10 lire pieces which rolled neatly into our circle. There was a rain
of them as the gang followed his example. We were giddy from so much sun
and adventure by now, had taken off our shoes and jackets, and grinned brilliant
thank you's at the kids; this brought another laugh, because it was "thank
you for nothing" - 10 lire is a penny and a half - and they knew it.
But we'd picked up the spirit of recklessness that sidewalk beggars need,
and began to ham it up, chomping carrots hungrily, gulping wine, offering
it around, making eyes at the spectators and fools of ourselves, joking
in Italian, laughing at each other and giggling at ourselves, drawing with
flourishes and concentration - the crowd was changing, older people and
tourists passed. I scribbled the SUPA slogan "Make love, not war"
and a passing tourist said "With that slogan you'll win the war"
in his long Texas drawl. We began to get a few 100 lire pieces. A photographer
walked all around getting nearly forty shots from different angles. Mitchell,
who had been sitting on the wall watching and pretending not to know us,
told us later that he'd looked like a newspaper reporter, but we never found
out. Then an American woman with a little girl stopped - the little girl
was at our level and extremely interested. Jerry tossed her a piece of orange
chalk and she joined us, to the delight of her, us, of the crowd, and even
of her mother, who didn't care how full of chalk she became (I was proud
of that woman! She even refused the sponge we offered her afterward to wipe
off the baby's hands; "Doesn't matter.")
By now Jerry was doing cubistic wine bottles and oranges and voluptuous
Coke bottles and I was doing a caricature of Ursula Andress (movie star
very popular here) in ripe, ripe color, next to the Virgin. There was a
loud chink on the pavement - someone had thrown in a 500 lire piece!
I looked around to thank the donator but was too late, because the American
woman was already hurrying away, with her skinny neck bent forward and her
grey streaked bun very tidy, and her iron ankles jerking in their heavy
oxfords. We just gaped after her.
After an hour, when the circle was full of small coins and Jerry had
just finished a portrait of Gino our grinning waiter (and put a wreath on
his head) labeled "Cesar," and when I'd come to the end of my
artistic repertoire, and when the wine bottle was empty, we saw a large
shadow fall over the drawings. Two pairs of thick Italian blue-clad legs,
policemen! "Can't do that here," they said. "Non è
permiso" they said, but with grins. "Okay" said Jerry, and
shoveled the chalk and money together with a magnificent disregard. We joked,
the crowd joked, the policemen joked. (But there was a long-faced Italian
girl who didn't joke - she told us mournfully, "When I tried that the
policeman took all the money.")
Enough work for one day. We ran off to the Borghese Gardens and ate the
rest of the carrots and gloated over our earnings - 2030 lire in all, over
three dollars for an hour's playacting.
Those three dollars kept us for the days in Naples and Ischia before
the ship sailed, so I still had the original dollar and a half.
Second miracle: the boat company gave a student discount, about a dollar
and a half - now the total was three dollars.
Third: the letter J gave me to read after I was on the boat contained
five US dollars and a note saying "This is an involuntary loan. Please
don't be angry." The fool is broke himself and has to get all the way
from Naples to Spain before he gets money again! But he doesn't have a particle
of greediness or even self-preservatory sensibleness in his whole 6'1' soul.
8 dollars now.
Forth: Gma Konrad's letter, a dollar bill, 9 dollars.
Fifth: Gpa Epp's 5 dollars for birthday present, 14 dollars!
Easily enough to live and even eat until getting a job.
So much kindness is upsetting; it's necessary to deserve it somehow.
Enclosed:
1. picture of Jerry
2. photo of Jerry, Mitchell and me the day of the excursion to Ostia-Lido
3. photograph of Andy, the Self-Made Man (He gave a picture to J too,
signed "with friendly, Andy.")
4. postcard for Rudy, not sent, from Ischia
[Was in Athens from mid-March to the end of May but only two scraps of
journal remain from this time. Unrecorded are a room near Lycabettos where
Jean-Jacques Gaté lived with me when he was stranded, a morning job
governessing two young children for an Athenian judge who took me to Agrinion
to his family's home for the Easter week, an afternoon job governessing
Lellie and Lucia, the two daughters of Harry Stathatos and his wife, who
I think were running a garment business, weekend hitchhiking excursions
with French friends, loss of my passport and money on a hitchhiking trip
to Delphi.]
[random photos] Delphos, Alain Oliveau, a Greek house.
[undated scrap]
Sounion
Stubborn coldness for all of last night, desire to test Alain's submissiveness,
contempt for his softness and irritation at not being left alone. Defensiveness
sandwiched between guilt for being unsocial and unkind. Thinking of Father's
coldness and feeling guilty because of it. But flat desirelessness. Ridiculousness
of A's pouting voice as he picked up his sleeping bag and stalked off with
it, too skinny in his white shorts to carry it off effectively.
But the sudden wakefulness at 2 a.m., soft and sensual, desiring him
and waking him. But very quickly disgruntled and cold again, even this morning
waking with one eye open to see the sun on a poppy. He isn't stupid! "Je
bouille. Je suis en ébouillition. C'est que je suis égoiste,
propriétaire, et tu m'échappes." "Mais ce qui me
fait bouillir le plus c'est ton mutisme."
[undated scrap]
I'm thinking of the downstairs room in the Athens Youth Hostel, the long
dark room on the right side of the corridor, where I had a bed next to Chrisusa's
and lay in my bottom bunk looking between the iron bedposts at Isabelle
undressing across the room in front of the windows. I would lie staring
at her abdomen because her face and legs were cut off by the bed and the
top bunk - her huge pregnant belly stretching her white slip, when she had
taken off the corduroy jumper and the cotton smock and hung them over one
of the iron cross-supports at the head of her bed. Then she would lie down
awkwardly in bed, and lie immobile until she slept. Chrisusa would come
in much later, and undress awkwardly, modestly, in the narrow space between
my bed and hers. She never took everything off - when she put the cotton
nightgown over her head it was always over her brassiere. She had a dark,
wolfish face with savage black eyes and a rough Arabic-guttural English;
when I saw her first at the other youth hostel on Alexandrius Street, she
was sitting in her slip on a bed staring up, a sharp cleft between her dark
breasts and sharp hollows under the bones of her dark face.
One evening Isabelle wasn't there, and I wondered. Next day I rushed
out to tell Alain, Jean-Jacques, Fernando, that she was gone, and it was
true - she had a baby girl. Lellie and Lucia and I picked flowers for the
baby on a forbidden hilltop which we found, behind the stadium, when Lellie
stubbornly pushed her way through the bars - wild iris on delicate stalks.
Istanbul Wednesday June 8
[postcard]
I'm sitting in a café eating yougourt and drinking something exotically
Turkish called Koka Kola, writing a postcard to you which shows the scene
that I once saw on a travel poster of Turkey and which made me decide to
come, listening to the conversation of three American beats with shoulder-length
hair, looking out to the Blue Mosque. I got here after leaving Jean-Jacques
[Gaté] in Thessalonika, meeting a South African millionaire sitting
on a rock in a beautiful village called Kavala (he invited me to see his
Africa!), drinking coffee with a Greek van driver in Turkish-Greek Xantia,
sleeping near a vegetable truck near the Turkish border, walking two kilometers
over the border, and getting a 240 kilometer ride directly to Istanbul with
an Iranian truck. The mosques and minarets are very beautiful. My hotel
is near Hagia Sofia.
Kotor
[undated postcard]
This is the village in Yugoslavia where I'm spending a few days at a
camping ground: tanning, swimming, reading, talking to the other Polish
and Czechoslovakian tourists who feed me regularly, with the warmth and
generosity I'm coming to associate with the people behind the Iron Curtain.
Kotor, the village you see, is strung out along both sides of a fiord
of the Adriatic where the water is clear green, warm. And in the hills high
above the town, I know of a cherry tree - this bohemian life and way of
travel gives me much contact with the people - one of my favorite memories
is the night spent with a family of happy-go-lucky Turks in their hovel.
I stopped to ask for a drink of water and they gave me six glasses of it,
shelter from the rain, supper, a baby to hold and some potatoes to peel,
a pair of old bluejeans because they find mine too rotten, a bed for the
night, breakfast and goodbye kisses. A beautiful family too. The mother
twenty six with five children of whom the eldest is thirteen, was really
stunning. The granny, toothless but grinning in her red Turkish trousers,
was a coquette.
Further on, a morning in a Yugoslavian high school. Two days with a family
in a resort town. In Bulgaria, also a night with a family, treated everywhere
as a royal guest.
Munich
[undated postcard]
I've just spent several bemarveled hours at the art museum here and now,
as I pass the concert hall on my way to the auberge, the Schumann Concerto
in A Minor coming down through an open window in a rehearsal room.
Left Wien yesterday in pouring rain and got here at midnight in pouring
rain too late to get a bed in the hostel - they grumpily let me sleep on
the floor - there's the second movement now - I'm writing this on a wall
- but in between there was a very enjoyable ride and lunch with an elderly
Briton, witty, worldly, skeptical but warm.
Strasbourg 9 July
[journal]
I've just come from Darinka's wedding and I'm burning to put it on paper.
Madame Matter told me yesterday that Darinka was to be married at the
Mayor's office at 8:30 this morning. On the way I stopped and bought a bouquet
for Darinka with the five francs Bill gave me to buy fruit for lunch, a
mixture of spring flowers in reds and yellows and blues. In the large reception
hall a woman in a white uniform stood holding a bouquet of roses and a camera.
I looked through the keyhole of the door with the red-dyed welcome mat before
it. A group of people were signing papers - I couldn't see Darinka. In panic,
I asked the woman holding the roses whether the weddings were already finished.
She said I could ask, and led me in. Three or four groups stood or sat in
the plush-carpeted antichamber, some of the brides wearing cheap veils,
some in long dresses. And there against the wall sat Darinka, looking pretty
with her hair in a high chignon, French roll, a stern white suit with a
sterner white blouse, her hands folded in her lap, looking intensely nervous,
on the edge of tears. I grabbed her hand, "Darinka, ça va? You're
pretty!" and thrust the flowers at her. She was confused - "Ellie!
Ca va? Ca va?" Hamit was sitting on one side of her, smiling in his
dark suit. "Ca va bien?" He looked composed - his face is small
and wrinkled, almost bald, with an indescribably wise and affectionate pattern
of expressions. Only then I realized that Mademoiselle Ziechelmeyer was
sitting on the other side of Darinka - in a black hat and suit, black gloves,
black shoes, shriveled and bent, her small eyes red-rimmed, her large lower
lip quivering a little. I was uncertain - the last time I saw her had been
unpleasant. We'd both been upset. "So you see me after all?" she
said. "I'm so ..." I began and held out my hand to her. She didn't
take it. "What are you becoming?" She seemed on the verge of tears.
"What am I becoming?" She awkwardly accepted my hand now. "What
are you doing since you leave us?" she repeated in English. As I opened
my mouth to tell her, she leaned forward still more to look at me - "How
can you come here? In torn blue jeans - aren't you ashamed?" "No."
"What would your parents say if they knew you were running around in
torn jeans like a beggar? Would they approve?" "Yes. They know."
"You aren't sérieuse. I can see you aren't sérieuse.
You weren't sérieuse when you were at the hotel either. You weren't
studying," and in English, with a shaky laugh, "you were making
romances." I explained that I was coming back to university in September
but she hurried on, "Don't you have a needle?" "Yes, but
..." "Everybody is looking at you. You're making fun of everybody
here by coming here like this." "It's not that I'm making fun
of them, I just don't care about them." "And you don't care about
the opinion of an old woman like me, you don't care about that either,"
this in a perfectly level tone. "I do care that you have an opinion
different from mine, and that is why I want to explain to you, but it is
difficult, I am sérieuse, but in my own way." She was rushing
on again, "They won't let you into the wedding room like that, there's
a man who'll stop you - but it was good of you to come, you wanted to wish
Darinka well because you love her." She turned to Darinka, "Darinka,
it was good of her to come wasn't it." Darinka jumped, coming back
from far away, clutching the bouquet, confused, near tears. "Oh yes
..." But Mademoiselle Ziechelmeyer jumped back at me, "You're
a rebelle, you want to say to everyone that you're different." "Yes,
because ..." "Don't you have any self respect?" "I have
a great deal of self respect, and ..." "Then it's false self respect.
The way you keep yourself shows how you are inside." "Mademoiselle
Ziechelmeyer, this is all I have here." "You should work."
"I find it more important to travel at the moment. I find ..."
"You have your own system." "Yes and I find that you pay
too high a price for respectability, to be bien rangé."
Darinka was far away again, her face was too carefully held. Other brides
were coming in with bouquets and veils. Mademoiselle Ziechelmeyer had her
hands clutched together, "It makes you an outsider," using
the English word, "do you want to be an outsider?" "Yes,
I am, and ..." "It embarrasses me to see everyone staring at you.
It embarrasses me to speak to you, you should go, they won't let you in
anyway." She was near tears again. "You'll see in twenty years,
that I'll have six well-raised children and two books published ..."
and I smiled and took the hand she'd offered me because at last I'd understood
that she loves me, and that she loves me for what she disapproves of. With
a sudden, trembling, smile she said all in a rush, "I believe you're
a brave gosse at heart, you're really a good child underneath."
So I wished Darinka happiness - and courage - she smiled desperately
from somewhere far back in her mind full of fears and disappointments -
and I hugged her and left, to run home and write about Mademoiselle Ziechelmeyer
- who is real and soft after all - and about Darinka who is signing away
the rest of her life and is unsure that she has sold it for a high enough
price, who has no one from her family here to see her marry, who has no
real friends either who will take her through the rest of the day on the
reassurance of their well wishing and gaiety.
Sérieux - the French word means more than the English serious:
it implies a hard-working, money-saving, well-dressed, church-going, unimpulsive
conformity which is careful to avoid self-questioning or illegal emotion.
Bien rangé - 'well arranged,' socially respectable
[photos from excursions with Bill in the couple of weeks I remained in
Strasbourg]
- Bill in the Schwarzwald
- Vue-des-alpes
- Basel museum
- Picnic
near the factory he was consulting for
- Picking cherries
Strasbourg July 12
[undated letter]
Three letters here in Strasbourg, two of them sent on from Athens.
Are you haying? Everywhere in Europe, everywhere I was, people were haying
beside the road, often with sickles and forked sticks. In Jugoslavia I saw
one old woman walking along the edge of the sea with a haystack tied to
her back with bailing twine. Other places the Jugoslavs were piling hay
into narrow boats. Many hay wagons were pulled by oxen. Often the hay is
piled on a pyramid of sticks to keep it off the ground, but in Austria it
is tucked between and over the branches of slim trees.
I'm in Strasbourg, keeping Bill Volk company until he goes home and until
I go to Jean-Jacques in Paris for Bastille Day on the 14th. I live in a
convent
where my curfew is sometimes 9 p.m. I have magnificent dinners with Sugar
Daddy every evening and last night - in pigtails and sneakers - I went to
a diplomatic reception at the American Vice-Consul's with him to celebrate
the 4th of July.
The sisters here smile a lot - my room has hot water, an eiderdown, grey-flowered
wallpaper, blue-flowered drapes, red-flowered bedspread with one red-flowered
cushion, and an orange-flowered tablecloth, with another orange-flowered
cushion; a view into a courtyard where an old woman in downtrodden bedroom
slippers talks in loud grumbling Alsacian to her cat while she cleans fish.
It rains a lot of the time but the sunny days are beautiful, now that the
grass is green along the canals where the little boys fish. I read and write
and sometimes go to the country and walk and windowshop and wait anxiously
for supper because it's my only meal!
The stamps are for you-know-who: they are a present to you, Rudy, from
Peter Dyck (who was here when I came but has gone to England hitchhiking).
If Janeen is really in France and in Paris, Mother, please get her address
for me and send it as soon as possible, even if you have to phone Mrs Postman,
because Peter and I are both anxious to contact her especially as we'll
both be in Paris for some time in July and August.
About the bank loan, please see about starting procedures on it so I
can get it by the first week in August or so. I'll need $200 because it's
possible I'll not be able to get one of Jean-Jacques' charter flights. I've
been thinking that I should go pick apples or something for several weeks
in order to make a little clothing money.
Today (the 12th) I'm going to Domrémy where Joan of Arc grew up;
and tomorrow I leave for Paris so's to be there for their wild fourteenth
of July celebration on Thursday.
I'm excited about Paris and especially about going back to school in
September.
-
part 5
- raw forming volume 5: september 1965 - september 1966
- work & days: a lifetime journal project
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