by Angela Long
The moon truly shone over Naikoon Provincial Park as we navigated our way along the dark forest path. At the top of the hill leading down to the bakery, Giuseppe shone his flashlight up into the trees. I stopped. “Wait,” I said, craning my neck to see the tops of the spruce crowns. But they soared higher than the beam could reach. All around us tall dark forms reached up into the night, branches touching stars. In that moment, I remembered we lived in a forest. A magnificent 179,500 acre forest.
Had I turned into one of those people who couldn’t see the forest for the trees? You’d think a place of such grand dimensions would inspire me to embrace the bigger picture. But what if you had no idea what the bigger picture was? Then you baked macaroons.
The macaroons wouldn’t stick together at first. But we managed to plop them onto the baking tray and they managed to come out looking somewhat edible. Of course, it didn’t matter. We were laughing again. At nothing. At everything.
Tuesday, North Beach
There are mountains here, riverbeds, glaciers, forest floors. Here, in a handful of stones. Obsidian, agate, red jasper. Geographies worn to their essence. We collect things: the spinal discs of whales, sea lion skulls, kestrel vertebrae. I suppose we think they’re beautiful. They line our sills – sun-bleached, salt-leached, fragments of death. We admire their contours, the honed grace of it all. Caress cavities where a heart once lay.
The Princess and the Poet
There’s a story about a prince who grew up in an opulent setting in the foothills of the Himalayas. The prince married a beautiful princess and they loved one another deeply. But the day came when the prince grew disenchanted by wealth and earthly pleasures, and yearned to wander the tiger-infested jungles in search of the true meaning of existence.
The princess was saddened by the prince’s news. Nevertheless, on the eve of his secret escape from the castle, she arranged for a horse to be saddled, his travelling cloak to be laid out, and a basket to be filled with provisions. She pretended to be asleep when he woke in the middle of the night, donned his cloak, and touched her cheek for one last time. She didn’t want him to see her tears. And his story continues. Without the princess. But she is still there, lying on the silk sheets, listening for the hoof beats. She is wishing she won’t have to wake in the morning and drink chai alone on the terrace where they had always sat together watching the sun rise above the castle walls.
Such stories repeated themselves. More than 2,500 years passed. The prince was a jazz musician, the princess, a poet. They lived in a two-room cedar-plank cabin on a remote island, nearly two hundred kilometres by ferry from the mainland of British Columbia, surrounded by temperate rainforest and the sound of frogs singing after dusk. The poet had just returned from an eight-hour waitressing shift at the Trout House Café. The musician was sitting on the couch in the dark with a fluffy tortoiseshell cat on his lap. The poet lit a few candles. Immediately, she knew something was wrong. The saxophone had been packed away in its case. The compositions were stacked neatly on top of the desk. The musician’s eyes were red, as though he’d been crying. “I can’t do it anymore,” he said.
“What?” she asked, and for a moment she thought he was talking about music. About a tricky rhythm, a catchy melody.
“This,” he said, and swept his hand across the cabin until it rested on her. “It’s not me. I’m not meant for this kind of life.”
She knew how the story went. She knew all about disenchantment and disillusionment. How could she write without them? She even knew that this day was inevitable. She’d met him in Bodh Gaya, after all – one of the holiest Buddhist pilgrimage sites in the world. At first she’d thought he was a monk with his shaved head, ultra-bright eyes, and the way he’d paid such close attention to everything she said. “Where are your robes?” she’d asked. “I’m too Italian to be a monk,” he’d laughed.
The poet and the musician. The Canadian and the Italian. The atheist and the Buddhist. She should have known it would only be a matter of time – but we can’t skip from the beginning of a story to its end. There was a middle part to be lived: the rising action, the climax.
“I want to become a monk,” he said, stroking the cat’s head. The poet struggled to stay calm. She’d been practicing for six months: breathing deeply, walking slowly, paying attention to the moment. But she felt vulnerable right now. Her feet were aching, and she was slightly grumpy from dealing with fickle customers. “It has nothing to do with you,” he said, and some wild creature took over the poet, sucking her into its vortex. The cat jumped off the musician’s lap and meowed to be let out. Couldn’t he see that it had everything to do with her? That she would be the one left lying on the silk sheets, listening to hoof beats? Her mind rushed ahead to the dénouement – to the days ahead where they would unravel everything, disassemble their union. Pack boxes. Book flights. Oh yes, she knew the story well, knew it by heart.
She tried to smile despite the fact she wanted to run screeching into the icy Pacific. She tried to smile despite the fact she felt angry, betrayed – they were the musician and the poet, they were supposed to live in Naples, line their windowsills with geraniums and create great works of art. She tried to smile, to remember that she loved this man. Shouldn’t she wish him happiness? But she couldn’t smile; she couldn’t even cry. She wished she could be more like the princess – saddle the horse, lay out his clothes, pack a basket.
And the story continued. The pair sat in their cedar-plank cabin and looked out at the trees. They were mostly silent. The cat purred. A week passed. A month. The dénouement continued without them. There were no angry outbursts. They held one another like never before. But soon, someone would have to take action. Soon a tourist visa would run out, a lease would expire.
It was the musician who broke first. “Why don’t we move to Italy?” he asked.
The poet should have said something then. She should have realized it was time to let go. Hadn’t she met him in a place where the happiness of others was as entwined in your own wellbeing as the tiny, interconnecting veins of a leaf? But she didn’t have enough faith. She feared being alone again. She thought she needed him upon this new path. Not to mention, she’d always wanted to live in Italy. “Let’s go,” she said.
The Human Realm
We exist where cats sleep at the foot of beds and woodstoves glow with last night’s embers. We have Earl Grey, rain on tin roofs, beaches swept by tides – a smell so fresh, so laced with life. And death, he tells me. He tells me to detach from the rise and fall of the cat’s breath, from the taste of bergamot, from the raindrops pooled in starburst leaves glittering with sky. “It’s all suffering,” he says as I bend to touch my reflection. All suffering.
La Dolce Vita
The journey began at Masset airport, where the daily flight departed at 11:20 a.m. and the locals checked in at 10:50. Security checks hadn’t made it to these parts. The only precaution was to close the door leading to the tarmac. Airport staffers were more vigilant about things like wayward deer than terrorists. Just a few weeks ago, an incoming flight had hit a doe on the runway. The accident made the front page of The Observer, rallying the community to cull anything four-legged in the vicinity.
Two juice boxes and one packet of Dad’s cookies later and we were in Vancouver. In just a few hours, we had gone from heating rainwater for our morning bath to eating French éclairs at Fratelli’s. After a few days, we boarded a flight bound for Milan. In London-Gatwick, we waited eight hours for the final leg of our journey, eating edamame-watercress salad from Marks and Spencer while watching the world stream out of Arrivals.
After an airport shuttle, subway, and train, we walked towards Via Scapardini 9 where Giuseppe’s family awaited. It was always during these jet-lagged, hazy moments that things become clearer. Not even a week had passed since we’d left our off-the-grid refuge, and I was drawn to the energy of the Italians like a moth to the light. I was drawn to the floodli
t windows of pasticcerie piled high with creations of flour and sugar, to the caffés, to the sparkle of glasses against mirrored walls.
As we walked, the wheels of our luggage trolley joined in the cacophony. When we reached the Chiesa della Madonna del Carmine, I gazed up at the floodlit statue of the Madonna with her arms raised up into the night, and I realized, even though I hadn’t slept for twenty-four hours, just how alive I felt.
The feeling continued. It continued through meal after meal of dishes curated by an Italian housewife. The sharpest pecorinos. The ripest persimmons. “Mangia! Mangia!” Giuseppe’s father insisted. And I did. I ate. And I ate some more. I filled myself with the energy of a country fuelled by the quest for la dolce vita.
And it was in Venice where I truly found my dolce vita. A courtyard. A fountain. Houses fitting into one another. Geraniums spilling down thousand-year-old walls. A woman opening green-painted shutters to tilt her face towards the sun. I crossed tiny arched bridges and ducked through porticos. Drank a cappuccino beside a floating produce market. All along, I could have been doing this instead. I could have been hanging my laundry across a canal calling “Buongiorno!” to my neighbour. How could I ever have lived anywhere without marble tiles and frescoes? The Venetians managed all this splendour long before any sort of electrical grid had existed. Why is it I hadn’t even managed to sew a pair of curtains?
Such questions lingered all the way back to Vigevano. They arose over and over while vineyards – and the place where Romeo met Juliet – flashed past the windows of the train. In this frame of mind, even the graffiti inspired me – Ti amo tanto (I love you so much), scrawled in black across white stucco. “I love you too,” I felt like calling across the tracks.
Sights Unseen
Sometimes, if the windows weren’t too covered in graffiti, I could see the Alps from the train. And sometimes, if there wasn’t too much smog, I could see them from the Letteratura Americana room at the library.
At main intersections, blue signs with white lettering pointed towards place-names that belonged in films with starlets wearing dark glasses and silk head scarves: Torino, Pavia, Alessandria. And just on the other side of the station beckoned a street called Corso Roma – the way to Rome.
But I sat there at Via Cairoli 4 – a studio apartment in Vigevano. And I was happy to sit there.
Travel guidebooks told me I should hike my way to happiness, gaze awestruck at the works of Tintoretto, wander along winding, cobblestone side streets dotted with prosecco-sipping locals.
But I was rather fond of the grocery store down the street. On most mornings its aisles were packed with seniors filling baskets with thinly sliced meats, borlotti beans and litres of red table wine. I liked the ladies who wore furs and heels at 9 a.m. I liked it when they asked me if I could reach the sparkling mineral water on the top shelves.
“Grazie,” they said as I passed them a case. “Grazie,” they said again, and I felt the thrill of an Italian word blooming in my mouth. “Prego,” I said, louder than necessary.
I liked to watch the cashiers sitting on swivel chairs scanning purchases and joking about things I couldn’t understand. I didn’t really know why I liked these things so much – maybe I would have liked the Alps more. But I didn’t think so.
Lately, it seemed that travelling was best done while sitting still. I didn’t know when exactly I discovered this. Maybe it was in India after visiting one too many ancient temples that drew tourists, as the Lonely Planet described it, “like moths to a wondrous flame.”
Maybe it was when I read somewhere that collecting experiences had become a western trend. I’d never been a trendsetter. But for the past eighteen years I’d been collecting experiences. I’d collected Varanasi, the Louvre. The Blarney Stone, the Sahara. Now I was sitting here at Via Cairoli 4, the splendour of the rest of Italy a mere train ticket away. And I was content to go to the local piazza.
The piazza was large and bordered on all sides by arched walkways, caffés lit by chandeliers, Renaissance murals of birds and mermaids and vines, and copper drain-pipes shaped like dragons jutting from tiled rooftops.
I was the only tourist there. On weekdays from ten in the morning until noon, the cobblestones were dotted with trios of old men standing and talking. A policeman rode up and down the pathway through the piazza’s centre on an old-fashioned bicycle with fenders and a horn. Everyone rode similar bicycles, the women’s with baskets on the front.
The women wore pointy-toed boots, patterned tights, and miniskirts while riding. They wore scarves thrown over their shoulders and the right shade of lipstick. If it rained, everyone held colourful, grand-domed umbrellas aloft with one hand while steering with the other. I liked to watch these things while standing on stones laid in the pattern of radiating sunbeams.
I learned a lot by observing. I observed the produce vendors at the market examine radicchio for imperfections, trim artichokes, proffer segments of Sicilian clementines that still bore their leaves. “Very sweet,” they promised, “very fresh.”
I observed the couple at the mill scoop the perfect amount from bags filled with grains, rice, and nuts. I observed how the line-up snaked past the chicken feed. The couple remained calm trying to decode my Italian. The wife taught me how to say mandorla – almond. The husband heaved bags filled with soybeans and lentils into the centre of the room. “These are from your country,” he said, opening the bags so I could see inside, the tiny beans and pulses running through his fingers.
It was a slower process than travelling, this observing, this sitting still. Sometimes it was even boring. At one o’clock in the afternoon, the streets of the town were empty. Everyone was at home eating. Everything was closed until four. Giuseppe was teaching music somewhere in Milan, every day, for twelve hours a day. And so it was just me left, sitting on a bench, and the pigeons cooing and pecking at things growing between the stones.
There was a kind of silence. The silence of people indoors, eating together as they’d done since before Rome existed. I thought of them at the table, pouring a glass of sparkling water. I thought of the women unzipping their boots and putting on slippers. I closed my eyes and imagined pulling out a chair and sitting down with them. I imagined how they would drizzle olive oil on the radicchio and encourage me to mangia, mangia. And I would sit there. Sit still. Let them collect me into their fold with a crusty roll ripped in two. A spoonful of lentils.
This is Sunday Lunch
Lunches were quiet at Via Scapardini 9. Father. Mother. Son. And me, the girlfriend from Canada. We ate in the kitchen with the ticking of the clock, sometimes an Italian soap opera. We all had our places around the table. Mine was beside the radiator with my back to the television. I faced an armoire bursting with all manner of pot and platter, and kitchen appliances stored in their original boxes. I faced Giuseppe’s mother.
I learned many things at my place beside the radiator. I learned that no matter how full I was I should always ask for seconds. If I didn’t, they’d arrive on my plate anyway, and everyone was much happier if I’d asked for them first. “A good appetite!” the father would exclaim and beam in the direction of his son. I learned that bread sat directly on the tablecloth, pears were presented chilled and covered with water droplets, grapes were to be broken off in bunches, oranges peeled with a knife. I learned that cheese from Sicily, the region Giuseppe’s family was originally from, was always best; “Sometimes Sardinia,” the father may have said if he was feeling gracious.
I learned that even though I didn’t normally drink coffee, I should drink one when all was said and done. I should down the thick, black espresso served in a tiny cup like a shooter. “It helps digestion,” the mother said, stacking the cups the moment the last dregs were drunk. It was time to do the dishes. This was my cue to select a tea towel from the drawer. “No, not that one,” the mother inevitably said as she filled the sink with soapy water. There were certain towels, I�
�d learned, for certain tasks – hand drying, glassware, pots. Although, in my opinion, they all looked exactly the same.
While I waited with the proper towel in hand and a mind buzzing with caffeine, the father prepared the leftovers for distribution to Bricciola, the family dog, and the flock of chickens. Nothing was wasted at Via Scapardini 9. Every fruit peel was minutely diced. Every cheese rind slivered. The father sat at the table while doing all this, big farmer’s hands grasping a tiny pen-knife reserved just for this task. Leftover pasta was thrown into Bricciola’s saucepan, topped with all the scrapings from our plates, and sprinkled with fresh Parmesan grated from a block half the size of my head.
When the father was finished, his son removed the tablecloth and carried it to the garden to shake out the crumbs. If I still didn’t have a dish to dry, I went out too. I turned my face towards a sun that always seemed to be shining. I watched Giuseppe, knowing this had been his chore for thirty-one years. He shook out the tablecloth with a precise snap of his wrists. Crumbs settled gently on basil and arugula. He looked at me while folding the cloth into a perfect square. If no one was around, I clasped his hands where the corners met and kissed him.
This was Sunday lunch. It took me a while not to feel nervous every time we rounded the bend of our street and faced the statue of the Madonna rising into the blue sky. Her white marble form rising from the pinnacle of a pink-stuccoed church marked the entranceway to Via Scapardini. On a really clear day, the Alps a backdrop for her outstretched arms. Every time I rounded that bend I was reminded of two things: first, that Italy was beautiful; and second, that I was not Italian. I was a straniero, a stranger, a foreigner in the polite sense of the word.
