Incontinent on the Continent

by Jane Christmas

  I parked my rant while I wandered the rooms of Freddie’s somber castle. There were few windows in the place and even those were curiously undersized; bow slits permitted light on the eight towers.

  The towers each contained spiral staircases, lookouts, and even bathrooms—one of the few surviving examples of medieval plumbing. I hoped Mom would not have to test Frederick’s invention.

  It was sure different from its pink-and-playful exterior. Inside, Castel del Monte is dark, depressing, and suffocating. As you move through the rooms your eye is drawn to one of three portals leading into an octagonal-shaped interior courtyard that once displayed an octagonal fountain or bath. Frederick appears to have been rather fond of those crazy eights.

  The eight rooms on each of the two levels were all interconnected, making it impossible to leave the castle without first passing through every room. I could not imagine being thrilled to receive an invitation from Frederick to spend a weekend here. It seemed like a place more suited for punishment.

  After Frederick’s death, the castle was used primarily as a communications link in a network of fortresses, and much later, in the 1600s, it sheltered the area’s noble families from the plague.

  And then, inexplicably, the castle fell into disuse and disrepair. By the 1800s it was openly used by shepherds, criminals on the lam, political refugees, anyone, really, who wandered by. Vandals stripped it of its marble, mosaics, furnishings, and architectural integrity. Entire fireplace mantels and hoods are missing, and based on the massive size of the fireplace openings, taking them could not have been an easy task. But the overarching question you find yourself asking is, What level of greed or ignorance triggers the sense of entitlement required to strip a place—even an apparently abandoned one—bare? I suppose this is a question of trifle concern when you are in a country like Italy with a huge supply of heritage buildings and fabulous architecture.

  The Italian government belatedly stepped in and purchased Castel del Monte in 1876. It took them another fifty years to figure out a restoration plan, and the project continues to this day.

  We North Americans assume that historical preservation and restoration are somehow ingrained in the European psyche, but that is not always the case. Places like Castel del Monte were and still are left to the mercies of scavengers and squatters. These days it seems that nothing gets saved from the wrecking ball without unesco storming in and planting its World Heritage Site designation, which it did for Castel del Monte in 1996. And God bless unesco for doing so. Architecture is a visible record of a country’s history, and its preservation is a visible indicator of a government’s commitment to that history.

  But there is no point in saving a building if you don’t nail up a sign educating visitors about its significance. Italy fails miserably in this regard. Seldom is there an identifying label, sign, or explanatory plaque attached to anything of historic interest. You see tourists walking around in a state of utter panic and wonder, searching for something, anything, that will twig them to the raison d’être of the object to which they have been directed.

  Yes, there’s always a guidebook to purchase in a gift shop for five euros, but you get tired of carting them around, and by the end of your trip you’ve added twenty pounds of guidebooks to your luggage—books you rarely crack open again.

  In a little guidebook available in Castel del Monte’s gift shop—yes, I broke down and purchased one—the reader is assured by the Office for Architectural and Environmental Assets of Apulia that the Ministry for Cultural Assets and Activities has “adopted a policy aimed at improving both the quality and quantity of the expectations of the tourist inflow.”

  You know what would really help? A filing card tacked up beside an attraction upon which are scribbled a few facts. That would go a long way in meeting “the expectations of the tourist inflow.”

  I came across a staircase—unmarked, naturally—and followed it upstairs in my pursuit of information.

  I wandered from empty room to empty room and ended up in the sala del trono—the throne room. (This I gleaned from the guidebook.) Four worn stone steps led up to a cozy window seat, where I plopped myself down and let my eyes roam the countryside that stretched clear to the Adriatic Sea. A thick collar of firs and pines encircled the castle; this served as both a natural barrier and prime hunting land for Frederick.

  Of all of Italy’s historical characters, Frederick is one of my favorites. I marvelled at his diverse accomplishments, the most unusual being his book on falconry: De Arte Venandi cum Avibus (The Art of Hunting with Birds), the first scientific examination of ornithology pertaining to such birds.

  I found it remarkable that a man who ruled a vast empire— he was king of the Romans and king of Italy, Germany, Burgundy, Sicily, and for a time Cyprus and Jerusalem—who was always sparring with the Church, who managed to hang onto his far-flung empire despite a constant stream of marauders trying to wrest it away from him, who built a slew of fortresses and castles, still had time to tend to his birds and to write an academic treatise about it, to boot. Frederick wasn’t the type of guy who slept in.

  A staircase in the tower adjoining the room in which I stood led to the rooftop terrace where Frederick practiced his falconry. I was told quite emphatically by one of the castle staff that no one was permitted on the roof, but that didn’t stop me from jiggling the door latch in case someone had left it open.

  Sadly, it was locked, so I turned my attention to the interior of the room, and to its slender, soaring ribbed vaults, its complex brickwork pattern, and its clusters of columns—some elongated and fluted, others embellished with a profusion of acanthus leaves. You could see where vandals had stripped away the pink marble that would have framed a delicate, sweeping arch or doorway. Even by today’s standards the precision of work visible on the remaining decorative features was rather breathtaking.

  I imagined this empty room decorated and furnished: Was the bed placed over there? Did a servant hang or store garments in that niche? Was a large, plush, ruby-colored carpet, a gift from a Persian sultan perhaps, rolled out on these floors?

  It is a game I constantly play with myself. First, I imagine a room decorated during the peak of its ancient glory. Then I mentally clear everything out and furnish it with my own stuff (or stuff I wish I owned). By the time I leave I feel a sense of ownership. It’s sort of like a dog that urinates to mark its territory.

  A brief gust of wind rattled the window. A shudder rippled through me, and I felt it best to leave.

  I returned to the first floor, where I found Mom speaking excitedly to two people behind the ticket wicket who had absolutely no grasp of English.

  “I’ve lost my daughter!” I heard her say. “You have to find her for me.”

  “Is everything OK, Mom?” I asked, walking briskly up to her.

  “Oh there you are!” she exclaimed rather agitatedly. “Where were you? I was going to have them send out a search party for you. I thought something bad had happened to you.”

  “I just went upstairs,” I said, looking at my watch and noting that I had been gone barely fifteen minutes. “Are you ok?”

  “I’m fine! I was just worried.”

  Why was this woman always thinking she would lose me? I took her hand and guided her outside and down the steps to our car. She had always been an independent, self-sufficient person, but I was beginning to notice in her the neediness and fearfulness that comes with age.

  As we drove away I glanced back at the castle. Its pretty pink coloring was vivid against clouds like steel wool that were gathering ominously behind it.

  We stopped at the restaurant at the entrance to the castle’s driveway and were greeted inside by the warmth and cinder smell from an open fire.

  I ordered us each a glass of red Castel del Monte wine and perused the menu.

  The waiter tried to push the orecchiette, the small lamb’s-ear- shaped pasta for which every place we had visited so far claimed the best recipe and preparation. I had n
o intention of offering up my taste buds as a guinea pig again. Instead, I chose the antipasto—prosciutto, bocconcini cheese, provolone, artichokes, grilled eggplant, and zucchini. It was a tasty repast.

  “Thank God you ordered this,” said Mom, tucking into her lunch. “I couldn’t have faced another plate of pasta.”

  Sufficiently fed and watered, we returned to the car and jacked up the heater.

  I pulled out my trusty road map and with a finger traced a westward route that might lead us to a bed for the night.

  “Where to next?” asked Mom brightly. She is always perky after a meal.

  “Melfi, I think. It’s not too far. We’ll spend the night there.”

  “Do we have reservations?”

  “Nope. We talked about that this morning, Mom. We’re winging it today. Remember?”

  “What’s in Melfi?” she asked.

  “Haven’t a clue, but I hope it has a hotel,” I said, starting up the car.

  What I really wanted was a rest. The constant driving was unravelling me. I wanted to find a place where I could flop onto a sofa and receive hourly injections of gin and tonic. I didn’t want to have to think or plan, make a decision or answer a question.

  “Look at that snow cloud up there,” Mom remarked, peering through the windshield.

  “Nonsense,” I scoffed. “It’s the first day of Spring. Besides, this part of Italy doesn’t get snow.”

  Within the hour ankle-deep drifts were lining the road. I looked down at the open-toed sandals on our feet and let out a long groan. What happened to global warming?

  We somehow missed the exit for Melfi and found ourselves reading signs for Potenza.

  A tough wind began buffeting the car. Snow swirled in front of us, wisps danced on the hood of the car and shot madly into the sky. I pressed the accelerator pedal harder in order to make Potenza before nightfall.

  It was 6:00 PM when we checked into the Grande Albergo Potenza. Standing sheepishly at the front desk in our light clothes and sandals, we looked like refugees beside the bemused businesspeople in sensible dark wool coats, hats, and gloves.

  In our hotel room we raised the blinds to an evening sky and faced a snow-covered mountain range and twinkling lights in the distance. Below us, cars sloshed through the street bearing inches of snow on their roofs. It looked as if we had been transported to a Swiss ski resort. It was enough to make me double-check the road map to make sure we hadn’t made a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in the Alps.

  The next morning a light dusting of snow was added to the previous day’s accumulation. I dragged our bags through slush to the car. By now I had learned to ignore the stares and gasps from people when they saw sandals on my feet. I pretended to belong to a religious order that had taken a vow of immunity against fashion and weather.

  We joined the morning rush hour out of Potenza and slipped back onto the e847 heading west toward the Amalfi Coast and Sorrento.

  Surely it would be warm and sunny there.

  10

  Amalfi Coast, Sorrento, Capri

  The last thing I expected on the Amalfi Coast was snow, but that’s precisely what we got.

  We had just come through some of the densest fog—la nebbia as the Italians refer to it—I have ever seen. It was like driving through cotton batting. We could not see signs or lane lines or other cars. The fact that our car was on a tilt was the only clue I had that we were on an incline. It was thoroughly scary. Then, inexplicably, the sun broke through, and we were reading road signs for Salerno and the Amalfi Coast.

  “Andiamo!” I blurted at the interminably pokey and lumbering garbage truck in front of us in the right-hand lane. Honestly, when you are in a hurry to get somewhere, a garbage truck can always be counted on to pull in front of you.

  I boldly pulled out into the middle lane to pass. As I did, the exit sign for the Amalfi Coast appeared. I could not get back into the exit lane in time, and we sailed past it.

  In Italy impatience is punished by a dearth of exits for many, many miles. Off-ramps and on-ramps are not always paired up in Italy, as they are in North America, where a travel error can be corrected fairly painlessly. In Italy, there might be an off-ramp to a city, but its corresponding on-ramp might be ten miles away, if one exists at all.

  Twenty minutes and a litany of profanity later, we reached an exit, turned off, and doubled back through a maze of traffic-clogged narrow streets in Salerno.

  It had been my New Year’s resolution to give up swearing. I had regarded my meltdown that first night in Italy as a one-off— and seriously, I defy anyone to get into a car in a foreign country at night after twelve hours of flying and not swear. I thought I would be able to atone for my transgression somehow, but I was hopeless. It was probably a good thing that my mother was hard of hearing.

  Still, I don’t like swearing. I’m really trying to break the habit. I swear.

  “Next time I take a holiday,” I promised God, “I’ll spend it at an ashram or a convent. I promise to make this up to you.”

  In the midst of a chaotic, traffic-choked, horn-blaring section of Salerno I somehow managed to spot a very small sign that read Costa d’Amalfi with an arrow pointing to the right. I slid the car over to the right lane and followed the sign. Within seconds, the crowds and cars disappeared, and we were motoring along a spectacular road. That’s the thing with Italy: a scene, like a mood, can change without warning.

  The Amalfi Coast is a thrill ride. Yes, the autostrada in Sicily was exhilarating, but this was an entirely different kettle of fish. This was iconic: Huge rock faces on one side; a sheer drop to the Mediterranean on the other. When rain, then snow began splattering our windshield I refused to surrender to any sensation less than sheer excitement. It is also a breathtakingly narrow road, a point quickly reinforced when your car encounters a gigantic tour bus that comes screaming around a tight, rocky corner from the opposite direction like a Tyrannosaurus rex chasing its dinner.

  We would not, however, be enjoying sun-drenched seaside cafés or darting into the tiny shops that crowd the main road through small, sexy places like Praiano and Positano, the sort of places where you should be strolling along in stylish sandals, white slacks, and large, white-rimmed sunglasses, your hair held back by a Hermès scarf. Not for us. Not this time. Not in the friggin’ snow.

  “Let’s stop for lunch,” said Mom. But because mia madre è allergica a pesce ed a tutti i frutti di mare our options were rather limited. It didn’t help that in the slushy downpour, driving had turned into a nail-biting exercise of dodging tour buses, cars backing out of garages chiselled into the rock where you didn’t think a garage could exist, or delivery trucks blaring their horns at you to move along when you became mesmerized by garages chiselled into the rock face.

  THE SUN was beaming and mopping up the remnants of a sloppy morning when we arrived at our hotel in Sorrento, the small, charming, family-run Hotel Villa Margherita.

  At the check-in desk I asked about meals but was told that the hotel’s restaurant, shown on the Web site with an enticing lemon-grove patio and hanging lanterns, was closed until April. Ditto for its rooftop terrace with a clear view of Mount Vesuvius. I had stopped counting the number of off-season letdowns.

  However, precisely because it was the off-season and there were only one or two other guests registered, the owner offered us separate rooms at a reduced rate.

  Without consulting one another or making eye contact, Mom and I lunged at the offer.

  “That sounds . . . ”

  “Fine, yes . . . ”

  “We’ll take it.”

  The owner—Maria—arched a delicate eyebrow, and a glimmer of a smile appeared on her lips as she made the necessary adjustment on our registration form.

  “Really, I think it’s best for us, and . . . ” Mom said quickly to me.

  “Absolutely,” I nodded vigorously. “No need to . . . ”

  “We both like our privacy . . . ”

  “And you’ve been so i
ll, you’d be more comfortable . . . ”

  “Besides, we’re here for four days . . . ”

  “You’re absolutely right.”

  The thirty euros extra this would cost us each over the course of our stay would preserve our sanity and our relationship. The price even included breakfast.

  The rooms were comfortable and clean; mine had the bonus of a small balcony, though the weather was too chilly (and as it later transpired, rainy) to use it. The bathrooms were cramped affairs with the smallest shower stalls imaginable.

  “If they’d just get rid of that useless bidet there would be room for a proper shower,” Mom remarked. “What is the point of them anyway? I’ve been using them to store my curlers and makeup.”

  We wandered back to the lobby to inquire about places to eat. Maria suggested we dine at nearby La Campana, a place within easy walking distance, though not so easy for Mom.

  We arrived at the restaurant at 6:00 pm. We were the first people there. An unctuous waiter greeted us and led us to a table.

  I tried to figure out the theme of the place—there was a South Seas vibe going on amid the grass-hut interior, or maybe it was supposed to be a maritime look, with its fishing nets and paddles as décor art.

  The food was mediocre but hearty, definitely geared to the tourist trade.

  When the bill arrived I discovered we had been grossly overcharged on a few items, and two other menu items had been added on.

  I called the waiter over and pointed this out. He expressed mock surprise, bowed, and went to confer with someone in the kitchen. When he returned he admitted with more bowing and apology that, yes, the bill had “a few errors.”