What the Hell is This?

It’s been an eventful week on the boy front, and I was absolutely right about my tendency to get distracted and even derailed from my original intentions by my (sometimes multiple) incidental infatuations. Lord knows some more aware part of me has been watching the more unconscious part of me go running around like the proverbial headless chicken for the last thirty-odd years! I’m just glad that I happen to be reading that wonderful Trebbe Johnson book now — she universalizes my cravings and obsessive tendencies in a way that both gives them their due and helps me keep my wits about me.

(I do want to observe, based on my unfolding friendship with the increasingly complex and sometimes volatile character known as “Rick,” that sometimes our passing attractions to people turn out to be unlikely opportunities to develop underdeveloped aspects of ourselves, and to exchange strengths. I don’t think it’s sentimental to say that nearly everyone — even the ex-felons and the chemically challenged — has something to teach us, if we’re open to listen and learn and not make everything about us.)

At any rate, upon my faithful German reader’s encouragement, I thought I would perform an exercise in self-reminder. That is, I thought I would remind myself of what I recently acknowledged as my Big Dream by sharing with you fine readers some, if not all, of my Italy diaries. Because I feel a little as if I’ve lost my way…

As I mentioned, I felt then as if I had finally found my place in the world, living these experiences and writing about them. I hope they don’t disappoint…some of my friends at home, Sonny included, were hooked, as if on a TV series. They do start off on the factual side, as I get acclimated, and become more introspective over time.

Most of the names have been changed, as is my custom on this blog.

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PART ONE: CULTURE SHOCK

So: I’ve realized that I’m no Elizabeth Gilbert.

The delightful and funny woman who wrote “The Last American Man” and “Eat Pray Love” has a genius for travel. She can land anywhere without a plan or a knowledge of the language, and by the weekend she’’ll be staying in someone’s house being toasted by a table full of locals. She makes it sound so easy.

Maybe it is…for her.

Sometimes you’re just a beginner. And I haven’t felt like such a rank beginner in quite some time.

1. Mi Dispiace, Non Parlo L’Inglese

The flights were uneventful, although I wasn’t able to get much sleep on either leg, not even the eight-hour transatlantic flight. (Both flights somehow managed to show “Big Momma’s House.” One viewing may be more than it deserves.) When I reached the tiny airport in Milan I exchanged my dollars for Euros, incurring more than $15 in service charges. Outright theft (!), but I suppose you could consider it the fee one pays for being a greenhorn. The bus was easy enough to locate — I spoke a few words in Italian to the driver and felt so very proud of myself — and the ride to Novara gave me a chance to check out the landscape. I was struck by how much the quality of the light is like the American West’s — bright and direct, shining down out of an expansive blue sky. But it’s much greener here. On the highway, you think you could be anywhere (it resembled the American Northeast) but the inhabited areas are full of palms and other more exotic Mediterranean flora, even this far north.

We drove through a few small towns, after which some American resort towns seem to model themselves, with familiar red tile roofs and beige facades — some of them crumbling picturesquely. Everywhere I saw old women riding bicycles. The motor traffic seemed to regard the many bicyclists as legitimate vehicles, even on these narrow streets. In Novara, traffic slowed to a halt near the stazione, but it seemed to have been the natural order of things. No one so much as honked a horn.

Inside the station I managed to buy a train ticket to Pettenasco (in Italiano), but once outside I had no idea which track I needed. The direction I had been told was Domodossola, but there was no ‘Domodossola’ on the signs. This is when I first found out that, generally speaking, no one in the smaller towns speaks English. The people at Centro confirmed this later. (Thank God I know how to ask where the restrooms are in Italian, it was the first thing I taught myself! I could go off on an ugly American’s tangent here about my experiences with Italian public restrooms, and how the station’s was barely a Port-o, but I’m sure you don’t want to hear it.)

My anxiety mounting, I approached a fiftyish gentleman who had come to look at the schedule of destinations and track numbers. In the United States, fifysomething gentlemen are nearly always favorably disposed toward me, even when no one else is, and I hoped that the rule might apply internationally. Mi scusi, I said, Me scusi, non capisco. Sono Americana. Dov’e…? and I pointed at my ticket. He peered at my ticket and at the schedule and seemed to be as flummoxed as I was. He told me (as best as I could understand) to follow him, taking my suitcase, and I trotted after him up the underground walkway steps to a uniformed man by one of the tracks. They conversed rapidly in Italian and the uniformed man consulted a map, pointing out (quite serendipitously) the train behind us that was about to leave. Mille grazie! I cried to them both, and ran with my bags to the train. My Samaritan followed, sitting across the aisle with another middle-aged man in a baseball cap and sunglasses. He only rode three stops, but I heard him tell the other man that I was an Americana.

At the next major train station the train stopped, and everyone, including the conductors, began to deboard. I looked in confusion at the man in the baseball cap. Che stazione? I asked, and he said “Borgomanero.” I must have looked crestfallen. He reached out for my ticket. “Pettenasco,” he murmured, and then said something that sounded like Ven conmigo, which means “come with me” in Spanish, along with a string of words I didn’t understand. I followed him out of the station, and around what appeared to be a major construction project. Maybe that’s why the train stopped there? At any rate I was becoming nervous. Perhaps I should find a phone and call Centro. Where was this guy taking me? “But the train was supposed to go all the way there,” I said, and he turned around. Mi dispiace, signora, non capisco…non parlo l’inglese. Sorry, ma’am, I don’t understand, I don’t speak English. For all I knew, he was leading me to his den of iniquity, or into some international slavery ring…

But instead he led me to a bus that said “Trenitalia” across the front of its window, whereupon he spoke more rapid Italian with the driver, apparently asking if he went to Pettenasco. The driver nodded. Si, si, Pettenasco, he said, motioning to me to board. I didn’t have to pay — apparently this was some sort of extension of the train service. We both got on the bus, and I sat up front behind my second graying savior, who proceeded to engage in a long, animated conversation with the driver and a sweet-looking puckered old woman who was sitting behind the driver.

The bus wound its way up into the mountains, on impossibly narrow streets, through Orta (which shares its name with the lake) and into Pettenasco. Signore Baseball-cap helped me with my luggage and I told him and the driver Mille grazie, siete molti gentili. Thanks a million, you guys are very kind.

There was a phone kiosk just across the street, and I went over to it only to find that it took neither coins nor my credit card. Well, I’d made it that far…maybe I could use someone else’s phone? I pulled my luggage up the street and noticed a sign on a building that said something about an ufficio and turismo so I went behind the building as directed and found a small office full of pamphlets — but no people. I had just gone behind the desk there to inspect an old, non-working telephone when a woman with a name tag hurried in looking purposeful. I came toward her gratefully, full of explanations, but she shook her head and raised a hand to halt me.

Non parlo l’inglese, she said.

It seems they don’t speak English in the tourism office here either. I managed to communicate my needs with telefono and Centro d’Ompio. She led me into a small, much more modern back office where I was able to call Centro, and they were able to send Günter (who is from Germany) down with a car.

2. Centro d’Ompio, Bisetti, e la ‘Meltdown’

Günter is a full-time employee at Centro, a cheerful but serious taskmaster whose chosen mode of leisure dress could be described as heavy-metal-musician-meets-bondage-master. He likes to go shirtless, and is so hirsute as to qualify as furry. Günter oversees the center’s groundskeeping, and manages the working guests’ residence, Bisetti, a half mile down the mountain from Centro.

Günter drove me at breakneck speed up a slender road full of hairpin turns, honking his horn to alert pedestrians or other cars. There was hardly room for one car to pass, so I’m not sure what happens when there are two going in opposite directions. We arrived in the gravel parking lot at Centro and went up to the office on the second floor of the main building, where I was introduced to Paola, the pleasant young Italian woman who helps run the office. Paola took me downstairs, whereupon I met several of the other working guests immediately — Christian, from Norway, Stefan, from Switzerland, Hanna, from Finland, and Alessandro, from Canada. I also met Cosmo and Mila, full-time kitchen workers who are native Italians. Stefan was leaving in a day, but the rest will be my companions for the majority of my stay here.

Christian is bearded, lanky, and ponytailed, and smokes expensive cigarettes. He works in a clothing shop back home in a small Norwegian town, and speaks English fairly well. He makes me a little nervous, however, with his lingering, sultry looks…such unabashed boldness strikes me as a marked cultural difference, something tres European, along the lines of nude beaches and legalized weed. I meet his gaze and smile…but not for too long.

Hanna is a sweet, shy young slip of a thing still in university, with scholarly glasses and delicately pale skin. Her English is decent, if limited, but it’s all we have to work with as I don’t know a word of Finnish. She looks at me with an almost awestruck expression, which I doubt I deserve, and speaks to me with the utmost fondness. What did I do, sweetheart?? Please tell me so that I can repeat it everywhere I go.

Alessandro is (in my humble opinion) the resident beauty, dark and stunning, the child of Italian parents who reside in Canada. The poor fellow has dual citizenship in Canada and Italy — can you imagine a worse fate?! — and ultimately wants to move here. He would rather be a waiter in Italy than an accountant (as is his training) in Canada. Six months ago I would have surely and rapidly alienated him with a clumsy and singleminded pursuit, but at this point I’m content with just talking and looking. To be honest, we don’t have a whole lot in common, but he’s good-hearted and sincere, with an almost childlike quality. Our conversations actually remind me of the sort I have with my nine-year-old nephew.

Cosmo recalls to mind some character actor from the 1970s I just can’t place. He has frizzy graying hair and sly dark eyes that suggest to me that if I understood what he was saying half the time, I’d find him hysterically funny. Mila is slim, fortysomething, no-nonsense, but good-natured.

Centro d’Ompio stands on the side of a mountain overlooking Lake Orta, with the little island of San Giulio, on which sits a medieval monastery, visible from the pool terrace. The lake itself is surrounded by steep green mountains. It’s a dramatic view. At the moment I’m unable to download pictures from my bargain-basement digital camera onto my computer and I’m not sure why. Otherwise, I would show you. Centro has several peacocks — one of them completely white – wandering the grounds and emitting haunting, catlike cries. They have no fear of people, and weave amid the outside tables at mealtimes. Seeing them after so many hours of not sleeping was a completely surreal experience.

What’s odd to me is how much less infatuated I am with it all than I expected to be, how unreal the scenery feels, almost like a photographed backdrop. I can’t explain why this is. I half anticipated feeling Frances Mayes’ instant sense of belonging.

But belonging is the opposite of what I felt my first evening…

After lunch, Günter drove me and my luggage down the hill to Bisetti, the guest worker house. He showed me my room, which was private (at least I didn’t have to share), located up two flights of outside stairs and then up a sort of ladder. (All of the rooms, toilets and kitchen included, let only onto the outside, like motel rooms.)

The sky had by this point clouded over and it had grown quite cold. I noticed that there was only one thin quilt in the chilly and unheated little room, and I wondered whether, with my tendency to get cold under the best of circumstances, I might in fact freeze to death.

The closet-sized toilets, shared by all, were on the ground level, and both contained a small cold-water sink. Then Günter showed me the showers. Two coed, communal showers, off of a room with a hot water trough-style sink for washing up and brushing teeth. One of the stalls wasn’t even in use, due to a leaky pipe that had flooded the adjacent laundry room. I looked at it all in a sort of despair. Was I a completely square American prude that the thought of showering within sight of the Norwegian, or for that matter anywhere where absolutely anyone could come and have a lookyloo, completely creeped me out? Was this how they did it in Europe?!! And what of the infernal swamp in the next room? Would laundering my dirty clothes be out of the question? I thought, I’m sure all my little anarchist friends with their communal housing and free love and unflushed toilets could cope with all of this just fine, but I’m an old broad who craves a few basic creature comforts, like a little bathing privacy and a warm bed. I said something to Günter about whether there was a protocol for the showers. He looked at me as if I were a completely square American prude, and said that there was not.

Of course all I wanted to do at that point was take a hot shower and go to sleep.

I opted to try for a nap. Layering up, I curled into a little ball under the white (yes, white) scrap of quilt and shivered. Eventually, after some yogic breathing and a Buddhist exercise in surrendering to “absolute cold,” I dozed off. I woke just in time to hike up the hill to dinner. At least the hike warmed me up. I ate with some of the Italian kitchen staff and Bettina, one of the people who worked in the office. I told Bettina about being cold, and she told me she could give me another blanket. I asked her about the showers, and her response was, more or less: you’ll deal with it.

She left the table, and I tried to have a halting conversation with the others, but both sides lacked crucial vocabulary and I wound up feeling even more like a stranger in a strange land. Mila did understand somewhat about the showers, and she said that maybe I could come up to Centro and use theirs. Her tiny bit of sympathy made me feel dangerously close to tears.

But she left the table, too, and I left Centro for Bisetti, feeling more profoundly lonely than I have in years. Sometimes being surrounded by a hundred people is lonelier than being alone, when language and culture prevent some sorely needed understanding.

But I was also trying to suck up and buck up and not appear needy, square, or uncool. I wasn’t going to be the whiny, high-maintenance American. No, no one was gonna see me sweat. I wouldn’t give them any more chances to judge me. I was afraid Günter and Bettina already had.

These efforts, however, were about to go straight to hell.

Bisetti is home to a number of small stray cats, about which I had been repeatedly cautioned. Don’t let them in any of the rooms, they’ll shit everywhere! They seemed to be regarded like pests, including the small, rather dirty 19-year-old deaf and blind cat that spends most of its day on the kitchen steps. One of the residents had kicked the poor thing out of the way before. This cat was on the steps when I arrived back. I bent to pet it, and it began to purr like a tiny motor.

Suddenly I saw myself in this helpless, despised, affection-starved little creature, and I sat down on the step beside it and started to weep quietly, stroking its bowed head. A small black cat (drawn, no doubt, by the purring) came running and jumped up in my lap. This second cat couldn’t get enough love either, and that’s when I really lost it, wetting its silky back with hot tears.

Just then Bettina came through the gate, and stopped.

She came over to me and sat down beside me and pulled me into a fierce embrace. It was no use hiding it anymore; I sobbed. She clucked sympathetically and said — You’re tired, and overwhelmed, and it’s your first day, and I know it’s all a bit much. We’ll get you a blanket, and if you like you can take a shower up the road at Leibich, our house. (The full-time year-round employees live in another, more traditional house a few doors down.) I can even give you a hot water bottle, if you wish.

And that’s exactly what she did. She gave me a wool blanket and a hot water bottle and showed me the perfectly lovely accommodations (complete with bathtub) at Leibich. We went into Bisetti’s rustic kitchen to heat water, and there I met Raffe, short for Raffaella, Centro’s cleaning woman. She is of indeterminate age, my height, pleasantly round, with large, kind green eyes and dark burgundy-tinted hair. I love the name Raffaella — it’s the name of the angel, played by Natassja Kinski, who watches over Karl (the angel who falls to earth) in Wim Wenders’ “Faraway, So Close,” one of my favorite films.

And yea verily, Raffe immediately sensed the state of my soul and began to minister unto me, that very evening, and from thence. Her English is not great (still much better than my Italian) but we manage to communicate in other ways. She felt the shower situation was undesirable too, and encouraged me to lock the door (as she does) when I went in. She heated the water for my water bottle and stroked my hair and kissed me and called me “Bella,” something she has done ever since. She always greets me with an Italian-style kiss on both cheeks, and it gives me a greater sense of belonging than just about any other thing or person here.

That night I locked the door and took a hot shower, right there in Bisetti. Afterwards I sat in the kitchen and drank tea with Cosmo, Mila, and the soon-departing Swiss. And later, I crawled under a warm blanket with a hot water bottle, lovingly prepared by my angel Raffaella.