christmas in verona

After twenty-three days in Latvia, we wanted the sun so that we could see each other better. We flew to Bergamo, arriving late on a Saturday night. Our pension had a small restaurant that had no room for us, but they directed us down the street to a bar which they said might have something for us to eat. It was three days before Christmas, and the streets on the outskirts of that little town were very quiet. We wandered down the road and saw three old men standing together, smoking, and dressed impeccably. They noticed us, and with their hands gestured to us to come over. This was the bar, we reasoned. From the outside- through the stained glass door- it looked oppressive, and all one could see were small and dejected cakes in a display counter, a coffee machine, and some other old men sitting at the bar. But we were hungry. We stepped inside, and this bar- this little bar- opened into an enormous noise. There were dozens of tables, families, and over them Roman arches and various plates and masks and other traditional items. There were huge families, groups of old men, and the attendants were hurrying with large flasks of red wine to one table, with espresso to another. I looked at her and my soul became bright. I looked at her and understood that together we were dreaming.

We paid a nominal sum and were given a flask of red wine and access to a table in the courtyard which had, variously; olive, cheese from a buffalo, meat from a buffalo, leaves from Naples, oranges from Catania, pasta from Apulian wheat. I looked more closely at the walls and saw almost hundreds of old and presumably rare ornaments; Venetian masks, relics from fallen empire, and many old books.
“So people do live like this,” I exhaled, “with history.”
The pasta filled me, the legumes and wine excited me, the strange arrangement of beef that was brought thereafter disturbed me (but I needed disturbance) and the gelato and espresso, delivered unto us without question, made that wonderful meal already a memory, as if a letter sealed, or a good afterword to a delightful book. And we were enthralled with one another.

We carried warmth back to our room at the pension and on Sunday, long after the sun had risen, we were awoken by the distant tolling of a Catholic bell.

***

We took breakfast in the small room with the other guests- a couple from Ukraine, a young family from Spain- which was an assortment of muesli, preserved fruit drink, and, of course, espresso- and made toward that tolling bell, resounding, as it did, from the summit of the magnificent hill on which the old town stands. With her suitcase on my head, we ascended four hundred Roman steps, the passersby laughing when I said, “This contains her cosmetics.”
T was very worried that I would hurt my neck, but it was Sunday, I reasoned, and so high time for a minor ascetic struggle.

We took rest at small bars, on the steps outside an old church, by a fountain where young men were stopping to wash their faces. We spoke of a future where we had a small home on the hills that gazed across into the old town, and where, once or twice a year, we could bring family together. Looking at T as she spoke of this hidden dream, so wondrous and correct in her humble assumption of happiness and love, I felt that perhaps that dream of hers could cause me to work where all other motives had proved irresolute. And the wind that caused gentle disruptions in the Oleander and Lemon trees, or Cypress- Cipresso - seemed so caught up and contaminate with this moving memory. A moment when one is assailed at the same time by joy and grief, for joy like the joy I experienced that morning, by T’s side, runs underneath a man like a river. Man, always a little lonely, needs his bridge and wishes he needed it not.

T and I went into a Catholic church where the choir was practicing, and then descended the hill on the other side of the Old Town, toward the Accademia Carrara, where, alone the previous year, I had come across a moving exhibition of the lesser known Caravaggio. Trundling down this hill, her suitcase still on my head, I marvelled at this fact; a year ago I had been a pilgrim to this town, and for the whole duration of that adventure I had secretly nestled the hope of one day returning with someone I loved. There was romance on both sides of that, other, hill; the romance of solitude, with all the colour and urgency of dream and aspiration that solitude does compel, and the romance of this new love, which was like a return to childhood, where it was not necessary to think to know the preciousness of moments in the sun, or with loved ones.

We rushed past Botticelli, Raphael, arriving at a small cafe and taking more espresso and more photos. I looked over Sunday roofs to a lean spire which was catching a moment of sun and then beyond, to ambiguous hills and the movement of a bird, all of this caught between a few strands of T’s hair, which had been released by the breeze.

***

For the next few days, and on Christmas, we were in Verona, where we saw the house of Juliet, a river, an old bridge which we became fond of. We became familiar to the gelateria across from our apartment. We drank too much Aperol Spritz, the young gentleman delivering up nuts and olives whenever I stood to pay. We soon realised the value of topography in this land of resplendent aqueducts. In thirty minutes you could become ignorant of the city and her provocations if you climbed a nearby hill, and, summiting one, you could turn your head and sight another slope to climb, all the while ascending further into a meaningful silence, where words became more consequential, our breathing more passionate.
”It goes further,” T would say, turning to me.
And in the echo of her gentle words we would ascend a hidden spire to reach a second part of the garden, where new trees grew and a young woman slept under poplar. We entertained very serious conversation; family, the value of trees. And then we would stand, looking over the landscape, and realise that, whereas in our country man’s ambition is announced by mirrors that he imagines scrape the indomitable sky, here, in Italy, there are only a multitude of spires and us, atop a hill, there to meet them. You could imagine all those peoples below us, by fountains and moving through narrow streets, and forget that you were in the new age. And still the wind, with all the inevitability of some new impression.

***

One day we were at the Lake Garda. T had dreamt of visiting since she was a child.

***

On Christmas, for lunch, we dined at Hosteria Il Punto Rosa, with red wine and more buffalo products, and with the hour that remained in Verona we took our shortbread to the old bridge and stood where the turrets used to be, while a man strummed his guitar. I felt an urgency in my soul; it wanted to say something, and was fussing for the instrument. I offered it voice and it became frustrated. I offered it silence and it was saddened. I didn’t have a pen, so I gave it the phone, which, though offending its sense for romance, it nonetheless deemed suitable to catch the cough of beauty which it was oppressing. I asked T for a moment while the poem was being written. She kissed me, and under the sun words appeared.

They stormed the fortress,
In the coldness of night,
They stormed the fortress,
The anxious tremor, my knight
Under cover of cloud they conquered,
and by sunrise decried,
That this kingdom they had come from,
Was darker than darkest night;
This anxious tremor,
This lonely night,
They cried ‘conquer,’
Not wanting to reside,
There, as they had,
As I have many a night,
Resided in that darkness,
The only darkness: a man without God’s light.

Then upon this stone,
Under Verona sky,
I pray I never return,
To that lonely night.
Pray that I remember Him,
Under Verona sky.

***

After lunch we collected our luggage and caught the train back to Bergamo. We ate the shortbread on the platform. We watched as the mountains of Lombardy disappeared. We fell asleep. In Bergamo, we paid too much for a taxi and arrived to the same pension exhausted.
”Oh and sir?” the young lady said to me, after we had checked in, “There is no bus to the airport tomorrow. It’s a holiday.”

At four a.m the next morning, under cover of darkness, we walked the five kilometers to Bergamo airport, laughing and excited, and then silent, contemplating the winter to which we were returning. Though Latvia would have no sunlight, no busy streets or loud arguments- nothing Roman- this apprehension, neither worried or vivid, but appropriate, was the apprehension of homecoming. Latvia was missing us, as all happy homes do.

When we arrived to our apartment at three in the afternoon, time enough to watch the sun gently withdraw from behind the low clouds, T made Borscht and then took from her fridge a local dessert, Sirok, which is a very good tasting cheese. She took the camera from me, with the all the artistry of her kind and unannounced understanding of things, Italy became this memory.