On 22 August 1981, our train pulled in among the broad concrete platforms of Mestre. Venice's outer-suburban station. And I was surprised to find that I'd been here before--almost exactly a year ago. One year ago it was here that I'd stepped out from the precious carriage which had taken me reliably over half of Western Europe, and I'd stood on that platform, utterly lost. My first summer overseas. Waiting, hoping, for a train coming out of Venice for Greece. A twenty-one-year-old New Zealand student who'd just started his masters at London University--chance of a lifetime, onward and upward, per adua ad astra, go Kiwi!--utterly lost. Before classes even got underway, before I'd even made contacts in that vast new city, London, before I'd got beyond its margins, before I'd settled down and found useful things like the student cafeteria and the library and a clean loo, before I'd made friends, before all that, I was taking a trip to...somewhere I didn't know, and for reasons I'd never admit. Because I'd come to school early, with a couple of weeks before classes started. Because oh, you should go to Greece! said the old-timers who'd been at my hostel for twelve months or more, making it sound de rigueur. And that's why I did: to keep them happy as much as anything, these students who'd finished their year abroad and would be gone from the hostel when I came back--and in impressing them, I admit, to satisfy my self-image as the do-it-all, done-it-all hero of my own life's drama. But not to keep me happy--oh no. Because I was plain scared.
Travel propelled by narcissism. But back then, a year ago, I booked my cross-Channel ferry and the trains as if I was taking a trip home from Christchurch to Palmerston North for the weekend. Three days on a train!--I couldn't conceive of it, it meant nothing to me. Except to change at romantic Paris and Venice. Important, that. Those names sounded good, when I offered them and got looks of envy from other people. But I knew nothing about Greece, nothing about how to get there--you found an island, apparently, waiting for you. And in Venice station, I'd only have twenty minutes to find the other train...I didn't tell anyone that. So when I started, I was bewildered--terrified. All those exotic names! No one in New Zealand knew I was going, no one. What would happen? I went anyway. In Paris, I was shown around the famous sights for a hurried afternoon and evening, with my heavy pack bouncing about on my back, by a young homosexual. Norbert. Such a friendly man! he engaged me in conversation at the station. Took me under his wing. The metro, the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs Elysees, the left bank and look! Shakespeare and Co, had I heard of it? We did Paris. Luckily, he was much too shy to make a pass and try to do me. We had coffee instead. I'd no idea what he was up to until much, much later, when others back in London told me similar stories. The amazingly friendly Norbert pushed me by the buttocks onto my trans-continental sleeper and waved a fond goodbye. Paris: such a pretty city to tour in exchange for a brief grope of my arse. I had the better of the deal.
I shared a berth with a middle-aged Italian man and his bespectacled little boy. We communicated in execrable German. My talent for academic languages at high school back in Palmerston North--French and German, Latin but no Italian, and no Greek, the sort of arty stuff you felt guilty back there for being good at--it was all suddenly practical. I woke up in the morning near Switzerland's Lake Maggiore. Gazing on its bland, wet surface as if I was the only person on the train, the only one in Europe, only me in the whole wonderful world stretching all the way back to Palmerston North, ever, ever, ever! to have done this sort of thing. I could see intrepid explorer-me! There was nowhere to eat on the train. Nowhere to wash. I still had to manage the change at Venice. But for a while I didn't care. We rattled across the Lombardy Plains, and I watched the gorgeous, buttery afternoon-light on the fields and understood, at last, why the Italians were such great painters. And so I fell in love with it all and started thinking: Yes, I've already arrived here; this is where I want to be; and no one else anywhere understands what I'm seeing. I couldn't wait to impress somebody. Fortunately, my German just wasn't good enough to start explaining my insights to my companions.
Then, also fortunately for me, the grave Italian man and his son began to be interested in the silent, skinny, dirty-haired youth who'd woken up in the carriage with them that morning. Who looked European, but wasn't. Who seemed intermittently so happy and so nervous. Who appeared intelligent, moderately, but was obviously too stupid to bring food or even some local currency with him from wherever-he-came--so that he'd eaten nothing all day and his stomach rumbled. And this overgrown boy, he had to change trains in Venice; he'd even shown them the tickets. In twenty minutes, in that crowded station: him. Not a chance. So why not get off at Mestre? At what? At where? They laboriously explained that the train would make the suburban stop, then go on into Venice, and the new train for Trieste-Zagreb-Skopje-Athens (all those exotic names!) would come out and stop. At Mestre. Where I could just get on. They said that they, too, were getting out at Mestre. And the truth was, I was reaching the limits of my geographical knowledge. I'd no idea what was out there. Couldn't even put Trieste on a map. I'd simply trusted the train would arrive, one day, just as the plane had arrived with me at Heathrow. At London. So I thanked them. And then I punished them for their good deed, when we alighted, by losing my nerve completely. Begging them to show me my platform. I had no idea how to read even the arrivals/departures board--oh, I didn't even understand where I was! who I was! nothing! They took pity on me. I stood where they left me. Exposed before strangers, before everyone, before what I'd become: lost utterly for an hour. Close to tears.
A year later now, with studies done, a Eurail pass, a lighter pack, a copy of Let's Go Europe and some lira--yes, the sort of cool, here-and-there veteran who understands train-arrivals and departures, I watched Mestre station go by. I was still too naive to know the expression 'grand tour'. But that was what I was trying to cram into my 4-week pass. I went, because that was what you did...same reason as before. You went to places like Venice and then bragged about it. There were thousands of us backpacking around; we kept bumping into each other again and again in youth hostels and at sightseeing spots. Amazed at meeting each other once more on our world travels, looking each other over and then talking up where we'd been. I'd met Trish and Lee outside the youth hostel in Munich. Do you speak English? they'd asked me hesitantly--what, did they think I looked German? I was secretly thrilled that they might. Because Trish was from New Zealand and Lee from Australia. And I was from...well, I just hoped that Palmerston North was a long time ago. Trish and Lee had already teamed up and, even though they were ordinary antipodeans like the former me, I joined them. Well, they were good company. We travelled together through southern Germany, Switzerland and Austria, and went on bumping into the same Americans, Norwegians, Brazilians and so on again, everywhere. Where had they been? The same places we had. And we were secretly grateful to find them, people just like us. With a Canadian guy we knew from Germany we spent a strange night out in Zurich, sleeping in a public park because the youth hostel was full, relying on his company for protection.
At last, Trish parted from us one night at Vienna station, to return to London. And Lee and I headed out on the 11pm to Trieste, hoping to sleep on the train. Calling out confident goodbyes to Trish across the platforms. No returning for us! As always, Lee insisted that we go into first class, and she'd put her finger over the second-class sticker on her Eurail and smile when the guards came. Lee had a thin, slightly beaky face, but large blue eyes and shoulder-length red ringlets, and she had a passably good figure and a tan. I wanted desperately to sleep with her. So far there'd been no chance even to try; youth hostels were divided into men's and women's quarters. But sexy smiles had worked well for her and Trish on the railway guards in Germany...I envied those guards. No good with me along, though. With me present as a complication, the three of us had been turfed out--smiling maniacally--from first-class carriages all across Switzerland and Austria. And so by midnight on the way to Trieste we were being herded into an already overcrowded second-class section by a red-faced, myopic Italian guard. The train bumping too much and too hard to sleep easily. With--wake up, anyway, you!--more ticket checks, more passport controls, more red-faced, incorruptible guards. Because we had to change trains very early in the morning at Udine. And after that, Lee led me by the nose back into first class--I was horny, I wanted to be able to brag...a would-be Don Juan, I was desperate to please her.
The compartment that we chose contained a small, neatly-dressed, crew-cut young American, who greeted us and started an excited monologue as soon as we tumbled in. As if he'd been waiting for us. He was in the mil'tary. Stationed in Germ'ny. Working for mil'tary intell'gence. That was hard to believe: he'd got a good-ole-boy accent and seemed thick as a post. Lee and I exchanged superior glances. As he yabbered about having gone on leave and where he'd been, I thought lofty thoughts. Upper-class army-officers had been fatally out of touch with reality at Gallipoli. So, were these troops any better?--these bumpkins, these products of erroneous union, these cerebral disaster-areas protecting us from the red menace across the hills. Then our protector told us that American planes had shot down two Soviet-built Libyan aircraft in a dogfight the day before--hadn't we heard? It was all over the news; I mean, where had we been? Because those F14s, boy, they really fly... He was off to report his whereabouts to an air-force base, just in case there was a war going to happen, and everything in his manner suggested that he sincerely hoped one would. We nodded a lot, said we had to sleep. He was a bit scary. For the rest of the night I kipped on the compartment floor while Lee stretched out on the seats beside the American mil'tary man. When she began to doze, she told me later, he started fondling her leg...adrenaline, I don't know. Ready to make war and love. She fended him off, several times, didn't know what to do and thought of waking me up if it got worse. But from what little I'd learned about Lee, any feeling she had that she was out of her depth with men was a fantasy--as phoney as mine when I told myself that I really understood the world's dangers. Just as well she didn't try to wake me; sexual jealousy would probably have made me do something stupid, something out of character, something that could have got me hurt.
At Trieste, with the sun just up in the morning, we checked our packs in at the station--we knew the drill--and were free to wander around the rawly wakening town. The peace was pleasant, though the wind was cold and we felt wrecked from lack of sleep. We ordered coffee in a cafe, used the toilet there. A squat toilet, of the type I remembered from Greece the year before, so I sighed and knew it was southern Europe again. The sort of place you should be grateful that your bum didn't touch the seat. Outside, we climbed to the top of some steep-ish hill, principally because it was in our way, and looked out over the unlovely city, under a sky of heavy cloud. Then we wandered back down into the back-streets of the old town. But in amongst it all once more--well, the neglected, piled-up, blue-and-red buildings were surprisingly beautiful. I admitted it, to myself. In southern Europe, I reflected, the dirt, the smell, the squalor, which in New Zealand would have been just that and no more, somehow contrived to transform itself into 'atmosphere'. Or maybe it was just me, responding to the essential distancing of the exotic. But I didn't think so--my imagination simply wasn't that good. At London University I'd specialised for my masters in James Joyce. That provincial boy, that genius, that literary demigod whose vast imaginative power had taught me to face my own inadequacies. I wondered if he'd felt the same way when he arrived in Trieste. Having escaped dirty Dublin with vainglorious literary longings in his pocket and Nora to take care of. Both of them having dreamed of Paris but skidded by mistake to the far end of Europe, the unfashionable end. In the middle of the day, Lee and I bought some bread and sat to eat it on a windswept park-bench. Still the only people about. Like a horror movie where everyone else has vanished. When we started eating, we were mobbed by pigeons. Yes, pigeons--don't feed them, we told each other. Flying down, more and more of them. Scrappy, chewed-looking grey things, marching on us. Not like normal creatures, they wouldn't scare. We even tried to kick them away. Dropped the bread--take it, go on. Gave up and ran. Poor Jim, poor Nora...
Late in the day we arrived at the youth hostel, situated by the shoreline at Miramare Castle. Maybe a famous place: a castle, anyway. We sat about, enjoyed the beautiful sights--the fortifications and the long, tree-lined sweep of road we'd just trudged round--and waited for the hostel to open. Lee, who was always telling me how much she liked the sea, bought a peach and sat tearing off the skin by the shore. Wiping the juice from her hands on her blue cotton trousers. I watched her push the sunglasses up on her forehead; it emphasised the mannishness of her hooked nose. The weather had finally lifted: hot, sunny, making her hair seem redder. My own nose starting to redden again, another layer peeling. Three Portuguese arrived, two young men and a woman--we began to chat. Have you been to Portugal? No? Ah! but you should. They told us the best beach to visit at the other end of Europe; we made notes. More good-humoured chat. And then, suddenly, Trieste was all right. Not just a pretty view of an old castle. The hostel opened, and we sat around with the Portuguese threesome into the evening. They read out snippets from the Italian newspapers--what they could manage--about Princess Diana. She'd married the month before and was following us around Europe, as she honeymooned on the royal yacht. The Portuguese asked us about her--we pretended to know more than they'd just told us. But me, I'd not even seen the wedding. Staying just down the road from St. Paul's, I was, yeah; but I was so sick of the fuss that, in the end, I'd ignored it. I only remembered rain every day for a fortnight beforehand and then, magic, it came out fine for the ceremony. That I told them. Ah! they said. We went to bed early, slept like logs. Next morning, Saturday, we caught the 12.45 to Venice: an espresso-train that seemed to stop every few minutes. Five of us in the carriage: Lee and I, a Yugoslav who'd been in Trieste for some shopping, and a Swedish guy with his beautiful Dutch girlfriend. I looked at her long, fine blonde hair and thought, God, how horny I was, surrounded by women like this all over Europe. The sun shone on vineyards beyond the windows, with that buttery Italian light, and the corridor filled up with dirty backpackers who couldn't get a seat. And we stopped at Mestre--and then kept going.
All I saw going into Venice station was my own damn pack; as the carriage got more and more crowded I had to hitch it up on my lap. My pack. Given to me before I left New Zealand, because I'd got nothing, by a friend who'd used it for years tramping in the Tararua ranges. Made of tired orange canvas, mouldy in places, with its metal frame broken down one side and bound up with twine. It smelled like a tent, it made an eccentric rattling noise when I pulled it on. In the youth hostels round northern Europe some of the backpackers made fun of it. Arseholes, carrying brand-new, as yet untravelled packs. But then my status among the other backpackers, the less naive backpackers, the experienced travellers there, it would shoot way up. Yes! the ones who counted, who went around without fancy equipment, who'd watch as I endured this ribbing with the good-natured forbearance of...well...because I never explained why my pack was so old--because a real veteran wouldn't, would he. And so I pretended to be one of those people we seldom, in fact, saw much of on our tourist routes. People like Bert. A Kiwi I'd met a year ago when my train pulled into Athens and I heard a voice behind me in the money-changing queue say: 'Nao. Oim frum Timaru'. Bert: who'd been through South America, Eastern Europe and was heading for Africa. Bert, who was taking a break from tough travel--who'd been given the address of a good place in Athens and would I like to check it out with him? Who saved me from being lost and lonely when he took me along to the Greek islands. Oh yes, that sort of status, status! it was important in our little community, bunched in around youth hostels and guide-book sights. I loved my pack--my mate Bert knew a real pack when he saw it.
General chaos on the concrete platforms. We climbed down from the train. Lee and I went in search of a bite at the large Tavola Calda in the station. We figured it out: buy a ticket, go to a counter, pick up the food. A couple of bread rolls later we found ourselves a table and a waiter came over. What would we like to drink? Due cappuccinos, please. Venice--this is it, I mused, looking around the shop. The place all tourists, but somehow with nothing organised for us. Basically no organisation anywhere, not like northern Europe. A hole in the ground for a loo. The waiter returned and announced, in Italian, it was 1,800 lire for the coffees. Expensive, but Lee handed over some money for the two of us. She took charge. She was the one who spoke a little of the language--well, her boyfriend back in Australia had Italian parents, she told me now. In fact, she had plans to go down to Naples and meet some of his friends, in a few days. My heart plunged onto the cool marble floor. What...what on earth would I do? And the waiter was still there. Demanding another 1,800 lire. From me. Snarling something, pointing towards a service-charge sign on the wall, in Italian and English. He wanted a tip. Eighteen-hundred lire. Oh, suddenly he'd organised something all right, the son of a bitch! Lee asked to see the bill. He put down his tray, pulled the paper out of his pocket. Eighteen-hundred lire. We'd paid it, we said.
And now he got angry. Not angry like us; we were just indignant. Just a little pissed off. But he got theatrically angry. Shouting. Gesticulating up a storm. Everybody in the shop heard that he was angry. People in the next street heard that he was angry. Yelling, waving, jumping angry; everybody in the whole goddamn city knew he was angry! At me. I owed him money. Who did I think I was? Eighteen-hundred fucking lire, baby! He had my number, he had my address! He had my wife and children in a cabin in the woods! Why, he'd tear my tits off with hot tongs! For the price of two--just two more!--hideously expensive cups of crap coffee. Yes, I had to pay! I had to fold... He was an old pro at being angry. And maybe it was just that: because it was such a shameless rip-off. Or maybe I wanted to impress Lee. Or maybe it was displaced sexual disappointment--or some weird thing where I'd been pushed around too often in the school-playground long ago. But I got angry back. Sitting down. Looking up at him in his white shirt. Wondering if he was going to hit me or something, or call the cops and have them hit me. I bawled that I wouldn't pay. In English--he got the idea. He bellowed more: we ordered, we pay. I pointed at the coffees and waved extravagantly and bounced in my chair and screeched, all right take it away we don't want your bloody coffee take it away! take it away! we won't pay! ...and he stopped. Shocked. Then he produced a sort of hysterical snort, like a child who can't have a toy. No more theatre. He stamped his foot. He put his tray under his arm and stalked off among the tables, without the coffees. Ready to fillet the next person who ordered a drink. Lee and I drank our tepid cappuccinos, buzzing with excitement. Venice. Gosh.
We checked our packs in at the railway station--the drill, again--and started to walk in the direction of the Piazza San Marco. Hot, muggy, we headed into the shade of the back-streets. Bush-bashing (as I thought of it) our way to the square--no more navigating by guide-book landmarks. The narrow streets and whitewashed walls were nice, and the water in the small canals we crossed seemed cooling...so this was Venice. So picturesque. And so quiet! Staring up at the filigreed-iron balconies of the buildings as we passed, I had the impression it was the backs of the houses we were glancing into, at something intimate. We reached the bridge at the Rialto, over the Grand Canal. Once across, everything changed like magic. More of everything: more people, more shops, more tourists like us. Everywhere, more and more, until at the square it was a crush. Everyone milling about, packed in, looking. Tourists, and vast numbers of pigeons fighting for space to land and crap, then settling for our heads. And this Darwinian struggle, it was maybe the most interesting thing about the place. Because the square looked tacky--tired in the hard light, the grime baked on by the sun. Except for the birdshit, we could've been in a museum. The vaguely oriental church-thing in front of us was falling to bits; the colours of the Doge's palace as we walked around it were all faded; the Bridge of Sighs at the back was clogged up with queuing, camera-pointing versions of ourselves. 'The finest drawing-room in Europe': it was more like the snack-bar at the Odeon...and I couldn't imagine Byron hanging about on any bridge here: that self-regarding, self-promoting, self-pitying drama-queen, my hero. We wandered on and wandered about, and it was all like that. People watching glass being made. People watching gondolas on the canals. People watching people trying to sell gee-gaws to anyone else. The river police charging up the canals to the latest trouble-spot. Pretty or not-so-pretty sightseers and, jostling among them, somewhere, the Italians.
Well, that was the tourist stuff: done. A small cafe for dinner; it looked reasonably Italian (to us), not too specially priced for visitors. No strong-arm tipping. We sat outside in the heat: pasta, goulash, assorted fruits. A conversation with an English couple at the next table, they'd once tried to emigrate to New Zealand. He'd been turned down, solemnly told that civil engineer was not a required profession. How could that be? He was bitter; it was the rejection--didn't our consulate advertise for British migrants? For once I understood--contradictory rules: New Zealand's rampant anglophilia and furtive xenophobia. A cock-tease scheme designed to let us feel loved without consequences. And oh dear oh dear I sympathised out loud, but said no more--I just reached hard for the red wine. Tipsy by night-time, and we strolled back toward the station. And now Venice was different. Rubbish and grime partly hidden in the startlingly suggestive shadows. Atmosphere acquired, while we weren't looking. Columns, the rows of windows, balconies: they peeped out of darkness across the canals; the courtyards, the calle were trailing off into enigmatic corners. And the San Marco! Floodlit!--I don't think I'd ever seen that sort of lighting done before--the bits of exotic, decayed buildings leering at us out of the night in their wild colours. Only a facade, but what a facade! I don't know what Lee was thinking; I ignored her as I took it all in. The wannabe-writer in me felt I should find something delicious to say about all this Venice. This heart of Venice, this what I'd come for--or would have, if I'd really planned my trip, not just followed other people's ideas of where to go. And their famous ideas were here too. It was...it was...but I couldn't. I'd no experience to help, I'd been prepared for it but under-prepared--I'd imagined but never watched a flirtatious old whore, one dressed in her threadbare stays and hidden behind her thickest make-up, giving that glad eye, that welcoming come-on, that you-know-you-want-it shimmy to all and everyone who might pass by. Something like that, I suppose. The tourists were here still--as subdued by their surroundings as I was. They knew the sordid stuff beneath this allure--seen it earlier in the day--and we shared in Venice's sexy decadence.
Back at the station. We got our gear from our packs, then checked them in again. No hostel in Venice, we'd been warned in advance--everyone in our little community had inside information. I'd got my sleeping-bag and, in preparation, Lee had stolen a sheet and two blankets from the youth hostel in Trieste. We'd done this sort of stint before, that night in Zurich. The four of us in that park, in a row with our packs as pillows. No chance then to play Casanova with Lee. And men shuffling about on the gravel paths deep into the night, lurking. The others fell asleep immediately--I fought to stay awake, my new Swiss-army pocket-knife unclasped in my hand under the pack. Frightened...till I woke up. And now, here, my already-dwindling second-chance as Casanova vanished as we found a spot just to the left of the station's front steps. Among a hundred other people also camped out in the warm night. The stars up in the strange northern sky. Someone playing a guitar. A party! Magic. I'd slept on a roof in Athens, on the beaches at Milos and Sifnos--on the rubbish dump at Platis Yialos one night when Bert and I were too drunk to notice in the dark--yes! places you could brag about. But this was fun. It wasn't going to match the sex-drama of myself I'd written in advance in my head--but these guys, they were undeniable fun. We listened, we chatted, we hung about. I slept soundly. At six, awakened by someone approaching. A group of policemen, going round tapping everyone with their feet, quietly, firmly. Take the hint. One guy complained and refused to move and was hauled off, his hands pulled up behind his back. I felt a moment of craven gratitude: he wasn't me. But now, thinking, I imagine the police let him go just round the corner--a story for his friends.
Up and about, Lee and I boarded the river-bus for San Marco. But instead it went to the Lido--like Thomas Mann's tragic hero, we found out on the open sea. So I thought of him, poor von Aschenbach, as we floated, as I lived his drama and giggled: no small boys, please. And on the boat a chatty Italian couple: a balding businessman in cream-pale suit, the woman in pastel-purples, her hair in a motherly bun, and (yes!) their pretty little boy. The Lido, so wondafal, they said. Is most-see. Zey communicate with us is English--they were practicing, really working. And we, arrogant tourists, just thought them hard to understand. On arrival they bought us coffee and worked up the Lido, they built it for us in their Berlitz English. Without listening I marvelled: living in Venice, seeing it everyday and, instead, they want to know us. Inviting us to dinner the next night, but we knew we'd already be gone. Lee to meet her boyfriend's friends and I...I'd head someways south with Lee. I was on a Eurail--I'd done Venice. Just one month for all of Western Europe, the cradle of my sense of civilisation; it didn't pay to get too attached. Lee and I strolled down the hot beach: how nice the Italians were and oh! look at the cool blue sea. Lee, as in Trieste, was enthralled by hopes of a swim. She'd no mind for the ancient culture. Instead, she despaired: no togs, no place to skinny dip. Nothing to do but paddle. I sat, too hot, too tired, too absorbed by her legs, just burning my nose badly and suddenly bored--bored, bored! in fucking Venice! I watched Lee collect some little striped shells, piercing them, threading them into her wire earrings. Making her own wild art and stuff. I actually envied her indifference to any more culture. Then I dragged us back to the river-bus, to the Accademia. Pushed us in to have a go at the paintings. Ah!--some of the worst lighting I'd seen in Europe, dingy, shadowy and the place crammed with so much junk. Because I'd learned something: any European gallery's got enough to keep my art-pretensions occupied for a natural lifetime...so just find me the good stuff. A run-through quickie for me. For my things I knew from books, while my back-muscles could manage all that looking up. But my most-see, my Giorgione's atmospheric 'The Tempest', ah! it was behind a thick slab of glass doing a wonderful job of reflecting me trying to see through it.
Afterwards, the 3.06 to Florence. At the station early, we handled the confusion, dodged the crowds, got compartment-seats. Luxury. Lee and I sat with an Italian family. At Padua, people got on till the train was chock full--the corridors outside sweaty and noisy and jammed with people standing. But not us, seats for us. Then a second Italian family actually pushed into our compartment: father and mother in stiff best clothes, an elderly woman entirely in black, assorted garish kids. The underprivileged dressed up and with somewhere to go--they were crowding between the two rows of seats. Jabbering away in excited fashion. Actually reaching above us, putting their luggage up onto our racks. And then they demanded our seats...our seats! Poppa in his funny grey suit, so red-faced, so officious, he rounded on me. These seats he'd reserved, he'd reserved this whole compartment. Get out of his carriage, get out of his train--his world was reserved; get out of his hemisphere. Yelling at me! Because I was tall, unshaven--I was foreign. Yes, I was the hard man you dealt with first; I was the one you had to shift. Or maybe--because I was just a boy, a soft target; I'd fold and the others would follow. Hell no, I shook my head. The other family with seats in the compartment was backing me up. So Poppa was threatening, he'd fetch the conductor. Vibrato Italian, getting in close, talking hand to hand, the conductor! And wham!--the dressed-up Momma sat suddenly among the family opposite, making a space with her juggernaut bum. And the old lady in black was coming for between Lee and me. We strained to make room--all we could do to stay on our seats. So I spoke to Poppa and I'd learned how: use the diaphragm, get it out loud. Ah! go on, fetch him, fetch your conductor! He went.
Lee and I concentrated on the view: nonchalant cornfields and vineyards. The talk among all the Italians continued rising, explaining perhaps to each other (Lee said) there was no 'reserved' sign on the compartment-door. But somebody smiled, and then attention turned towards us. So, did we like Italy? Oh yes, bella. More smiles. And we were from...? They'd never heard of New Zealand, but Australia, yes--lots of emigrants there. I hid my disappointment. Lee's boyfriend's parents were Italian-born--oh! They were thrilled, and Lee was the centre and...I was with Lee. The old woman beside us came from Catania, in Sicily. We were going there? We looked sad; everyone was delighted. When Poppa brought the conductor, it was all going too well for a fight. The compartment was reserved--well, Lee and I moved out to the corridor. The other family sitting would get off soon and then we'd all squeeze back in together. But once outside, the door to the next compartment opened. Another family from Sicily--they'd heard us yelling; would we sit with them? So, do you like Italy? Bella, etcetera. Soon there was space for us in both compartments. So we ate their snacks; they drank our mineral water. And we were popular. More and more popular--Italians from other compartments began changing seats to spend a few minutes with us. We got off the train at Florence to pinches, to kisses, to hugs, to crying, to waves. Come eat our meals, come drink up our wine, come live in our houses and marry our children and give us babies, forever! forever! forever!
And I thought this is Italy, where life is grand opera. In northern Europe and back in New Zealand, people manage a violent restraint; and Greece is a struggle to survive--or a lie in the sun until the struggle starts up again. But the Italians! Such expansive, such self-admiring, such mutually sustaining drama! How I suddenly loved it, the catharsis in it all. As I walked away across the busy station. Lee to head south, and I'd have to go north again, I sighed--but not a sigh for missed opportunities to play Don Juan. I was thinking with embarrassment of my self-parading return from Greece to my hostel in London a year ago, so full of my haphazard adventures, so sated, in truth, by my own relief that I couldn't stop bragging. And at last a professor from New York, at lunch one day, he quoted the aunt from Tom Jones about me: 'I have seen the world.' And I, I was thrilled, I never guessed he was being ironic--there's only room for one on my stage, after all. So, walking away, I thought that no matter how beautiful this next town might be--and Florence was the most downright beautiful city I've ever seen--as part of the drama of my Italian visit it would have settle for being in the second act.
One year ago it was here that I'd stepped out from the precious carriage which had taken me reliably over half of Western Europe, and I'd stood on that platform, utterly lost. My first summer overseas. Waiting, hoping, for a train coming out of Venice for Greece. A twenty-one-year-old New Zealand student who'd just started his masters at London University--chance of a lifetime, onward and upward, per adua ad astra, go Kiwi!--utterly lost. Before classes even got underway, before I'd even made contacts in that vast new city, London, before I'd got beyond its margins, before I'd settled down and found useful things like the student cafeteria and the library and a clean loo, before I'd made friends, before all that, I was taking a trip to...somewhere I didn't know, and for reasons I'd never admit. Because I'd come to school early, with a couple of weeks before classes started. Because oh, you should go to Greece! said the old-timers who'd been at my hostel for twelve months or more, making it sound de rigueur. And that's why I did: to keep them happy as much as anything, these students who'd finished their year abroad and would be gone from the hostel when I came back--and in impressing them, I admit, to satisfy my self-image as the do-it-all, done-it-all hero of my own life's drama. But not to keep me happy--oh no. Because I was plain scared.