The Best Travel Writing, Volume 10

by James O'Reilly, Larry Habegger, Sean O'Reilly (ed) (retail) (epub)

  I have a very good friend, an American in her seventies, who has lived in Rome for more than half her life. She loves the city and wouldn’t give it up to live anywhere else. Long since divorced, she always tells me, “Get out while you still can. It’s fine for me not to date, I’ve already had a husband and kids—but you truly must leave if you want to meet somebody.”

  She says it so sweetly and yet so often that I have begun to believe she is right, though I usually just shrug. Then she will put her arm around me and whisper, “After you meet him, you can always bring him back.”

  This import-export technique actually seems to work. The foreigners who do manage to find an Italian who makes them happy usually hustle him out of the country and back to their respective homelands about as fast as I can slam down an espresso. As for the other women I know, aside from the many who have already jumped ship in spite of their best intentions to build a life here, most have had to import boyfriends and husbands from anywhere that isn’t Italy. They scour Europe first, arranging dates through Internet sites in London, Amsterdam, or Brussels.

  Even France will do. Sometimes, as my friend suggested, they’ll leave in search of a man they can couple with, and then they set about the task of convincing him to move to Rome. This is not so hard to manage. It is just incredibly difficult to convince him to stay once he realizes that his pay will most likely be cut by two-thirds and that it will take him more than a year to have an Internet connection installed.

  I suppose that’s why nearly all of my female friends in Rome are single. They are sculptors and scholars, chefs and architects; they are journalists, jewelry designers, filmmakers, and actresses. They are accomplished. They are fun. They are attractive. They are women who have never suffered so many harrowing stretches of singlehood anywhere else in the world. I am one of them.

  And yet, I remain.

  Elizabeth Geoghegan writes in English, dreams in Italian, and wishes she could remember how to speak French. She earned an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an M.A. in Creative Writing from The University of Colorado at Boulder. “The Marco Chronicles: To Rome, Without Love” was previously published by Shebooks and is a best-selling Kindle Single on Amazon. Geoghegan is also the author of Natural Disasters: Stories. She is currently at work on a novel set in Southeast Asia. She lives in Rome on a dead-end street between a convent and a jail.

  MICHAEL COOLEN

  What Is that Thing?

  Wild baboons got the best of him.

  The first car I owned in Africa was a Volkswagen Thing that looked rugged enough to climb Aunt Fanny’s Pantry in Yosemite with one tire tied behind its back. Instead of being rugged, however, it simply focused on the illusion of looking rugged. It had few amenities, a lousy suspension, and no front grille. But I loved it even though its nickname was the “Rolling Death.” I loved it even though it was so ugly that years later, it was voted #6 of the 50 ugliest cars in the past half century. I loved it because of Abbott and Costello.

  The old A&C routine “Who’s on First?” is comic genius, and my Thing permitted me to trope my inner Bud Abbott. For example, I’d park near Addy’s Tobacco Road Joint Bar, my favorite watering hole in Banjul, and a tourist would come out, look at the car, and typically start with the questions.

  “What is that thing?” he’d ask. Oh, thank you British tourist, I’d say to myself.

  “Yes, yes,” I’d say.

  “Yes?” he’d reply. “No, I mean, that thing. Parked right there. What is it?”

  “This Thing?” I’d continue.

  “Yes, that thing.”

  “A Thing.” I’d say, lifting my eyebrows.

  “No, no, no,” he’d say, a little flustered, touching the car. “This thing right here that I’m touching with my right hand? What is it?”

  “This Thing?” I’d reply.

  “Yes, that thing,” he’d say.

  “Good,” I’d say, shaking his hand. “You’ve got it.”

  “Got what?” he’d reply.

  “The name,” I’d respond.

  “The name of what?”

  “The Thing,” I’d continue.

  “What thing?” he’d ask.

  “That Thing you’re touching right there with your right hand,” I’d say, smiling.

  “No, no, no. What is the name of this automobile-like thing right here that we’re standing next to in front of this bar?”

  “The Thing,” I’d say, knowing he couldn’t last much longer.

  “You know, chap,” he’d say, walking away, “too much exposure to the sun causes brain damage.”

  About this time, Addy would come out and hand me a cold Heineken.

  “Someday,” he said in his lilting Liberian accent, “somebahdy’s gonna clahbah you.”

  Addy knew about “clahbahing” because he used to be the heavyweight boxing champion of West Africa. His bar was about the size of a bathroom at a Starbuck’s. But he had a nephew who would guard my car while I drank cold imported beers and listened to some of my favorite songs on his juke box. I always played Janis Joplin’s incredible rendition of “Me and Bobby McGee.” I once played it twenty-six times in a row. When I came back the next day, Addy had removed the record from the jukebox. He’d replaced it with Sinatra singing “My Way.” I knew better than to complain, so I switched to Joplin’s version of “Mercedes Benz” until that, too, was eventually removed.

  Officially my car was called the Volkswagen Type 181 and was known in Germany as the Kurierwagen. Volkswagen had developed it as a rugged off-road military vehicle for the German military in the 1960s and 1970s. Although the company used World War II versions as models for it, the Type 181 looked more like the kind of war machine the Klingons would have built; the 1990s Klingons, not the wimpy 1960s pseudo-Klingons.

  In addition to the military versions, however, Volkswagen also sold commercial versions of the Type 181. In England it was known as the Trekker, and in the United States it was called The Thing.

  My first encounter with a Thing began shortly after I arrived in The Gambia. Between collecting for the museum and conducting my own research, I needed a vehicle to get around the country. It was shan’hal’lak (Vulcan for “love at first sight” . . . I was fluent in Vulcan, by the way) when I saw that 1969 dusty orange Thing parked in front of the Peace Corps office in Banjul. It was owned by a guy from Catholic Relief Services who was leaving the country and had heard I was looking for a car. I bought it that morning for 2,000 dalasis (about $1,800).

  My Thing was a convertible that came with a top that disappeared two days after I bought it. My top had probably been “borrowed” by a local entrepreneur. FYI, the word entrepreneur comes from the French word meaning “to borrow my roof like a thief in the night with no intention of returning it.”

  A couple of weeks after I bought the car, I learned that Alex Haley of Roots fame had visited The Gambia the year before. During that time, he traveled to Juffere, the village near which Kunta Kinte had apparently been abducted so long ago. You know Kunta Kinte? Roots and LeVar Burton before he was Geordi La Forge on Star Trek: The Next Generation?

  In a newspaper interview I read, Haley recounted his arduous journey to Juffere. His trip had involving crossing the Gambia River to the North Bank in a fragile pirogue. For the point of clarity, a pirogue is not pirogi. A pirogue is small, dugout canoe. A pirogi is a meat dumpling. The two have something in common, though. Neither floats very well.

  It was a dangerous and tough trip by Haley’s account, and only the most devoted researcher would have undertaken it. Certainly, it must have been terrifying to cross a river filled with crocodiles and hippos a century ago. There were still crocodiles in The Gambia, but you’d find them at Kachikally Crocodile Pool in the tourist-oriented town of Bakau. Tourists, the sick, and barren women made pilgrimages there to cuddle with one of the sacred seven-foot crocodiles who live in the sacred healing waters of the sacred pool adjacent to the sacred cash register.<
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  Given my interest in the cultural and musical connections between The Gambia and America, I needed to go to Juffere to interview historians and musicians and find out what they knew about Kunta Kinte, who apparently was making a drum when he was captured. Fortunately for me, I wouldn’t have to take a pirogue. I could also get to Juffere via a ferry from Banjul to Barra, followed by a ninety-minute drive along some dirt paths. Apparently, Alex Haley hadn’t noticed the ferry.

  Early one morning I loaded up my Thing with my Minolta camera equipment, Nakamichi battery-operated portable tape recorder, tapes, some food and water, and a variety of presents to give to the elders, including two fifty-kilogram sacks of rice. The ferry ride lasted about ninety minutes, including drifting for a while after the ferry’s engine cut out. Shortly after driving off the ferry, I found myself ambling along a back road off another back road. The Thing handled exquisitely at twelve miles an hour. Without a top, I could look out and enjoy the dramatic panoramic view of baobab trees with vultures in them, although I didn’t like the way they were looking at me.

  I had been driving about 45 minutes when I saw a smoke column in the distance. I stopped, turned off my Thing, and grabbed my binoculars to get a better view. It was soon clear that it was a large grass fire, and it was blowing in my direction.

  It was also crystal clear that it was blowing hundreds of frightened animals in my direction. Leading the charge was a shitload of baboons, which have really, really, large canine teeth. I tossed the binoculars onto the passenger seat and tried to start up the car. And tried to start up the car. And tried to start up the car. But my Thing had done one of its things. It refused to start up. It didn’t take me long to flood the carburetor. I sat there mesmerized as the terrified primates approached. I began to imagine the letter that would arrive back in the U.S. confirming how my body was consumed by a gang of baboons. My nephews and nieces would be so proud that Uncle Mike had died in such an unusual and dramatic way; death by baboon. However, my fate was worse. Way, way worse.

  As the baboon teeth were almost upon me, I lay down on the passenger seat, hoping they wouldn’t notice me in their fright. But . . . but . . . have I mentioned that my Thing was a convertible with no top? Have I?

  Like most primates, baboons tend to lighten their body weight when fleeing from something frightening, and before I could say baboon pee and poop, they were pouring over and around and on top of my Thing. My sunglasses were the first to be hit by something really foul, and soon I was wishing I had worn sunglasses over my nose and mouth, neck, hair, forehead, as well as shins and knees.

  They fled over me and my Thing, depositing what seemed like half their body weight on me and in my car. I lay there on the passenger seat, gagging and wondering if death by canine might have been preferable. There would be no letters to my nephews and nieces about this particular incident.

  I sat up, wiped off my sunglasses, and wanted to assess the damage. But there wasn’t time to do that because the grass fire was continuing my way. In a moment of what must have been automotive self-preservation (selbstbewahrung in its native language), my Thing started right up, and I was able to hurry back down the road. When I was out of immediate danger, I pulled over to the side of the road. Almost immediately I felt the first drop.

  It was mid-August, and the rainy season had begun. To appreciate the significance of an August rain in The Gambia, I should point out that the average rainfall during August is over fifteen inches, with ten more inches in September. It rains. A lot! So much so that when you ask Gambians how old they are, you ask them how many rains they’ve lived through.

  You know that scene in The Shawshank Redemption when Morgan Freeman describes how Tim Robbins had escaped by “crawling to freedom through 500 yards of shit-smelling foulness?” And then Tim Robbins celebrates by lifting his face into the downpour that washes off the shit-smelling foulness on his body? Remember? That was me as the rain fell on me and my Thing that day in The Gambia. I sat there for twenty minutes, face up while the rains washed over me. All that was missing was Thomas Newman’s great soundtrack emphasizing how noble and brave I had been. When the rains subsided, I started the Thing again, and I drove slowly back to the ferry, driver-side door open, dribbling a trail of dark brown and yellow rainwater behind me.

  I got rid of my Thing a few weeks after I got back to Banjul. I had cleaned it thoroughly with soap and bleach, but I couldn’t bleach away the memory. And every time it rained even a little, it seemed to emit a subtle, shit-smelling foulness. I traded it to a local entrepreneur/taxi driver for a 1966 Renault Dauphine, which was much smaller but had a roof. It had no illusions of being anything special; it just worked. I later learned that the Renault Dauphine was voted #9 of the ugliest cars in the past half century. But at least I was finally through with the sorry saga of my Thing. Until . . .

  About two weeks after I sold it, I saw my Thing again. I was having a beer and a meat pie at a café near the Central Taxi Car Park in Banjul. The September rains were coming down in their torrential glory, and there was my Thing, all shiny and sparkly, and it was doing very well in the rain because, well . . . because it now had a roof. And not just any roof, but MY roof, the one that had been entrepreneured off my Thing, which, by the way, was the only Thing in the whole country. That’s how I knew it was my roof.

  “Sach-kat!” I yelled at the driver. I had just called him a “thief” in Wolof. The driver took one look at me, panicked and then ran to the Thing, got in, and pulled away. I jumped up from my table and yelled at him again as he pulled away.

  “Sach-kat,” I repeated, even louder, but I don’t think he heard me yell it the second time. The rain beating down on my convertible top probably blocked the sound of my voice. I could only hope that my roof helped intensify the shit-smelling foulness the rain would evoke.

  Michael Coolen is a composer, pianist, writer, and actor who lives in Corvallis, Oregon. He was a Professor of Music, Ethnomusicology, and Music Technology at Oregon State University for many years until he retired on April Fools’ Day, 2010. His area of specialization was the music of Africa, in particular Senegal, The Gambia, and Zimbabwe. Over the years he created and performed with a variety of marimba and steel drum ensembles, even forming a group in Copenhagen, Denmark. He has taught in the U.S., France, Denmark, Africa, and New Zealand. This tale is taken from his memoir titled Eat, Pray, Practice: the Adventures of an Adequate Pianist.

  KEITH SKINNER

  Inside the Tower

  A pilgrimage to Robinson Jeffers’ Tor House.

  As we walked into the room, I first noticed the bed—broad, slightly concave, uncomfortable-looking—covered with a thin, antique quilt. But it was the west-facing windows, unusually close to the floor, that caught my attention and brought back the words.

  I chose the bed downstairs by the sea-window for a good death-bed

  When we built the house; it is ready waiting,

  Unused unless by some guest in a twelvemonth, who hardly suspects

  Its latter purpose. . . .

  A chill rippled across my skin as I realized that we were standing in that very room and the bed before me was the subject of the poem—the deathbed in “The Bed by the Window.” Robinson Jeffers had written the poem as a young man shortly after building the house. Many years later, he had indeed died in the room, thereby fulfilling its destiny.

  I had first read the poem while browsing a Jeffers anthology in a bookstore, a volume entitled The Wild God of the World. I knew little about the man but kept bumping into him in other writers’ work. Noted authors and bohemian celebrities were always dropping in on Jeffers when passing through Carmel. There was often some degree of awe or reverence ascribed to these occasions, but very little mentioned about the man himself.

  I picked up the book and, by chance, opened it to “The Bed by the Window.” It was an eerie poem. More than eerie—it was downright creepy. It wasn’t as though Jeffers had used death in a gratuitous manner; it wasn’t a cheap, dramati
c device. The bed seemed to be a fetish of sorts for him as he worked through his feelings about his own mortality.

  I often regard it,

  with neither dislike or desire; rather with both, . . .

  Still, meditating on death in a poem was one thing; anticipating a lingering death in the distant future while still a young man, and building a room in which to die, was quite another.

  As I read through several more poems, the voice, at times, seemed almost feral. The ruggedness of the language, the starkness of the imagery—Jeffers prowled like a lone wolf or, more accurately, a rangy coyote skirting the edge of civilization: hungry, suspicious, and angry. He seemed dark and self-absorbed. If Whitman was a Telemann concerto, full of trumpets and bright brass celebrating the world, it seemed to me that Jeffers was a melancholy cello solo played mournfully in a dim, candlelit room. For some unexplained reason, I felt compelled to buy the book, though it wasn’t long before it was abandoned on a bookshelf and I had put Jeffers out of my mind.

  Several days before I found myself standing in Jeffers’ bedroom, and nearly a year after I had bought the anthology, I was staying in Big Sur and came across an article in a local magazine about the building of Tor House, Jeffers’ home. I knew the house was in Carmel but knew little of its history. The article recounted how Jeffers had purchased an uninhabited plot of land on Carmel Point and had hired a stone mason to build a house for him. He apprenticed himself to the builder so he could learn how to set stone himself. Once the house was finished, Jeffers spent nearly four years building a forty-foot-high tower on the property, hauling boulders from a nearby beach and hoisting them into place by himself using only a block and tackle.