1966 Chronicle of a Special Year
1966
Chronicle of a Special Year
Brigitte & Kit
„On ne voit bien qu‘avec le cœur. L‘essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.“ — Le Petit Prince, chap. XXI
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944)
1966
1. January, On the „Fair Sky“
2. February, Italy and Michelangelo
3. March, Swiss Mountains
4. April, Perugia 1
5. May, Perugia 2
6. June, Perugia 3
7. July, The Cave
8. August, Siena 1
9. September, Siena 2 – Zurich
10. October, Vienna
11. November, Zurich
12. December, Paris
13. Epilogue, 1967
1. January: On the “Fair Sky”
A well know New Zealand disease is: “going overseas”, “doing the big trip” or as it was still called in the 60s “visiting the old country” or even “going home” (to Britain). It is a direct consequence of being planted on a couple of islands as remote as is possible from everywhere else in the world. The nearest neighbour, Australia, was in those days to all but the very rich, at least two days sailing away and if you went to the trouble to save enough to “go overseas” then rather a bit more for a bit further and rather not to a country with exactly the same culture and problems as New Zealand.
After four years of teaching mathematics at Linwood High School, I had saved enough to be able to “do the big trip”, but in my case I was determined not to do what everybody else was doing. My aim was to learn more about my main passion: Composition. Although I could have done this very well in “the old country”, I was quite sure I wanted to do it somewhere else — anywhere else, where the culture would be different from everything I knew so far. My mother, Betty, had already done such a trip, a three months course of study at the University for Foreigners (L’Università per stranieri) in Perugia. She had returned from there a few years earlier and had started teaching Italian at Victoria University (in Wellington) and in so doing she was fulfilling a life long dream of involvement in an academic life. As I left the university with my science degree she had started her arts course and her enthusiasm for Italian language and culture had not only given her a first class degree, it had inspired me to learn the language too.
In the middle of December 1965 therefore, I boarded the “Fair Sky” with four hundred pounds in my pocket and a ticket to Italy where I would first extend my basic knowledge of the Italian language and then find an Italian composition teacher. My first choice of teacher was Luciano Berio in Milan, but Berio had already left for foreign shores and was working in America. The fact that I really didn’t know another name in Italy didn’t bother me too much, I was quite sure I would find someone.
On the wharf to see me off were my parents and a few friends:
But yes, it was awful, the departure from Wellington cos a ship goes away much more slowly than a plane. I left it till the very last moment to go on board. All went well and after a while I lost sight of the family and group of friends who were there all together in the middle of the enormous crowd. Then all of a sudden I saw Betty — she was waving her coat or something large. It was very funny and then very sad. I had to cry.
Two days later we reached Sydney and for one day we were allowed to roam the city. I found out that in fact Australia was quite different from New Zealand. It was bigger and hotter and had many more flies and the centre of Sydney was blessed with a most interesting modern architecture — tall buildings on slender supports, something I hadn’t seen in earthquake prone New Zealand.
A few days later we sailed up the Brisbane river and stopped again for a whole day. This time I visited a sort of open zoo and saw my first kangaroos, emus and koalas. The hot dry eucalyptus smell was certainly not like New Zealand bush.
From here the ship travelled further north between the mainland and the Great Barrier Reef, rounded the corner at the top of Australia and headed through tropical waters towards Singapore. I was delighted with shipboard life, we celebrated Christmas, New Year and Crossing the Equator all in quick succession. I found lots of interesting people to talk to, to eat and dance with. Dancing on board was particularly amusing, because if the ship rolled a little all the dancers could find themselves suddenly in a pile on one side of the dance floor.
Since it was an Italian ship there were Italian lessons offered which I was delighted to take part in and I also tried to overhear what the crew members were talking about together. I was bitterly disappointed; I understood not one word. Later I heard that most of the crew were Sicilians and therefore had been speaking their dialect. I also got to know Jenny and Peter Murray who were on their way to Britain to further their studies, Peter as an English doctoral student with special interest in Jonathon Swift and Jenny a historian.
Singapore was the first really foreign port. Everything was different: the climate (unbearably hot and damp), the Chinesey faces, the busy clean look. I joined a tour which took us to the botanic gardens where we were suddenly surprised by monkeys which descended on us out of the trees like trapeze acrobats. These were rhesus monkeys we were told and it was here in Singapore that the original work on blood groups was done with monkeys of this species, which gave its name to the Rh factor.
From Singapore there was now another long sail to Colombo (where I was shocked to see a taxi driver lean out of his car and spit blood red onto the pavement — not knowing it was betel nut, I thought he had some terrible disease!) and a further even longer stretch to Aden, the largest city of Yemen at the foot of the Saudi peninsular. Here we were warned not to go ashore but I was too curious to stay on the ship the whole day. I was fascinated with this poor dry country where people often had their beds on the street and were anxious to sell us the little that they had. There was a very strong military presence and people and cars were often stopped and searched. I returned to the ship in the evening thankful to be still in one piece but delighted with these new experiences. As we sailed away into the Red Sea I looked back on the city with its backdrop of a stone mountain riddled with holes and completely void of green. Here was a culture much older than anything I had seen before but apparently without the barest essentials (vegetation and water) that a culture needed.
The Red Sea although no different in colour from the other seas was comforting in that land was always in sight. It can be very disturbing sailing for weeks without being able to see land and one wonders how our forefathers managed with this problem, who travelled from the “old country” in sailing vessels which took about three times as long as modern ships. No doubt the strict discipline of shipboard life, cleaning, preparing food and taking part in the church services three times a day would have helped to distract them from the psychological stress of the endless ocean.
Before we reached the Suez Canal we were informed that those who wished to visit Cairo could leave the ship at the Port of Suez, travel by bus to Cairo, visit the Pyramids, Sphinx and Cairo Museum and then go on by bus to Port Said to pick up the boat again after its passage through the Canal. It was a difficult decision because, attractive as the trip was, it meant forgoing the experience of the Canal itself. But I decided on Cairo and set out in a full bus through the dry treeless landscape. Next to me sat a girl who after an hour or so confided in me that she needed to go to the lavatory. It was obviously quite urgent or she would never have spoken of such a thing. I offered to go to the driver and ask him to stop. She looked out again at the desert on all sides and it was painfully clear that there was not the slightest shelter for her to relieve herself without being in full view of everyone in the bus. She refused my offer. After that she spoke very little and tried as best she could to bare the pain. Before we arrived in the city, tears were rolling down her cheeks.
Although very commercial the Pyramids were most impressive. The pictures we had seen at school of slaves pulling these massive blocks of stone, rolling them over tree trunks, up slopes of earth that would later be removed, had given me no real idea of the enormity of the task. And about how the blocks were cut in the first place nobody had ever spoken. We were taken as a group into the bowels of one of these World Wonders, a long dark passage with even longer staircases to reach the burial chamber of some long forgotten and long plundered pharaoh. Leaving this chamber and returning down the stairs was (for me at least) a more difficult operation since it had obviously been constructed for much smaller people (which makes the miracle of its construction even greater). There was almost no light and one had to grope as best one could, holding a railing with one hand and feeling for the steps with the feet and at the same time doubled over forwards because of the low ceiling. In this rather uncomfortable attitude I heard something drop very close to me and immediately after noticed something soft on the step I was about to place my foot on. I bent down and picked up the object. It was my own passport which I had fondly imagined to be very safely stored in the inside pocket of my jacket. But because of my bent-over stance it had been free to drop out and lose itself in an Egyptian pyramid had I not by chance felt it with my foot.
After a camel ride we drove off to the city centre to visit the Cairo Museum. At this time it was very difficult to assess what this place had to offer. It promised to offer very much, but it was so badly exhibited that it was almost impossible to see the wood for the trees. If a tenth of the objects had been well set out, one would have come away with a much more positive feeling of having learnt something about ancient Egypt. So we left the museum rather despondently and gathered in a street café where the locals were drinking coffee. One elderly gentleman addressed us in beautiful English and asked where we came from. We were all New Zealanders. “Ah”, he said, “you’re pakeha” (pakeha = non-Maori). To hear this Maori word outside New Zealand was very unexpected. But he went on to explain. The Maori battalion had been stationed in Cairo during the war. From there they left to fight the Germans under the legendary General Rommel, the “Desert Fox”. The Maoris obviously had had the sympathy of the Egyptian people. The elderly man went on to defend them, even although nothing had been levelled against them. We assumed that sometimes their behaviour had been a bit rough, a bit too boisterous for guests in a foreign country. “But if you knew” he went on, “that you may not return from the next battle, you would also want to enjoy your last sure moment of freedom”. We all sat there, admiring his wisdom and being proud to be from the same country as this famous battalion.
Before we left Cairo we were told that the plans had been changed. Since our ship was still waiting in a queue to enter the Suez Canal and we would therefore return to Suez and be on board for the trip through the canal.
I was very excited and was up before dawn keeping watch over every movement the ship made. It was so big and the canal so narrow it was hard to imagine that it could possibly fit. Of course it did, but there was no room for passing or overtaking. For this there were “parking bays” something that looked totally surrealistic: a ship parked in the desert. Alongside the canal there was a narrow strip of green and beyond as far as the eye could see sand and more sand. And then like an apparition with its under parts covered by sand dunes, a waiting ship. The passage took a full day so I was eventually forced to go to bed and when I awoke next morning there were the happy painted cascades of coloured buildings in Port Said. We had entered the Mediterranean.
And we had also entered winter, not bitterly cold but it was the end of the swimming pool on board and the beginning of pullovers and jackets. The ship sailed northwest towards the Straits of Messina and just before Naples there was one last surprise: Stromboli was active: This island volcano was glowing in the night with a stream of lava from the tip down to the sea.
I packed away my few possessions, said goodbye to Jenny and Peter Murray who would disembark in London and arranged to meet them again in Italy. Told the cabin steward that I was not prepared to carry his hubble-bubble through the customs for him and descended onto Italian soil.
2. February, Italy and Michelangelo
On a cold sunny morning in early February I waved goodbye to my friends on board and set out on my own to discover Naples. The city was lively and friendly but it was ugly and poor and the scares of the war were still visible after more than twenty years. Rather than “dying for the sight of Naples” one was reminded of the corruption of this saying that came from the air force bombers of the second world war: “See Naples and dive”. There was hardly a block of the city near the harbour that didn’t still have a ruined building, a bombed out house. But it was the people who caught most of my attention, fishermen for instance who stood at the street corners with big gong shaped dishes of frutta di mare: shellfish, sardines, scampi, whatever was portable and could be kept alive for a few hours in a bowl of water. I was watching such a man standing alongside his wares, talking and gesticulating to a second man and then as I watched he bent down casually and picked up a shrimp and popped it into his own mouth. I had completely overlooked the fact that someone like myself, a fascinated, even a mildly shocked observer, was at least as interesting to him being observed as he was for me. He had seen me and he beckoned me with his finger. As I approached he dipped into his aquarium again and pulled out another shrimp which as I came closer, I could see struggling between his fingers. He motioned to me that I should eat it, and I knew I would have to try. I took it, felt its frightened movement in my mouth, chewed it and swallowed it as quickly as possible. I thanked him and left before he could offer anything else. Both men laughed uproariously and I pondered on having tried my first live scampo but on having absolutely no idea of how it had tasted.
One didn’t need to speak to be spoken to — everywhere I went people approached me and offered help even if it wasn’t required. A man in the vegetable market tried to teach me Italian: arrancia, limone — words I already knew, but he was not to be put off by such a minor detail. During this Italian lesson, I heard a loud noise, which sounded like a carnival and so I left the lesson politely and walked in the direction of these very shrill sounds. Soon I saw a parade of people blowing whistles and shouting. I asked someone what this was: “Oggi è scioppero”, he said. I didn’t know this word scioppero so I looked it up quickly in my dictionary: Strike: “Today is strike”. How curious, almost like saying “today is market day”, something that happens every week — a strike every week?. This was in fact, sadly for Italy, not far from the truth. The word scioppero would be a frequently used part of my Italian vocabulary. What they were striking about I didn’t find out, instead I decided it was urgent for me to deposit my cases somewhere if I was to be able to see any more of the city. I asked a young man where the Youth Hostel was and he replied that he would take me there. This was something that happened a number of times when I asked directions in Naples. People seemed to have time to go on long walks. In this case it was a very long walk because the Youth Hostel was some kilometers away on a headland overlooking the sea and somewhat outside the city centre. We walked and talked, he helped carry my bags and at the end I looked for a coin to give him but this was evidently not what had motivated him to help me. I was later to be stolen from and cheated but there were many more Italians who were kindly just because they enjoyed company and this was evidently one of those. The Youth Hostel was almost empty, in fact I was lucky that it was open at all in mid winter. It was clean and comfortable and so I stayed there a couple of nights.
There were two cultural things I knew to look out for in Naples, one was the city art gallery on Capodimonte (which hill was visible from most parts of the city) and the other was the opera house San Carlo. I decided to look for this. I walked to the place where it should have been and found only a busy looking shopping area. I asked someone: “Dov’è San Carlo?”, “è lì!” he said and pointed into the middle of the busiest throng. I walked to where he had pointed and saw that it was indeed the entrance to the theatre. I enquired what was on today: “Lucrezia Borgia” by Donizetti. I’d never heard of this work although I did know that this lady was the daughter of one of the most infamous popes in the Renaissance. I bought a ticket for a seat in a loggia for that afternoon.
Each loggia had about five or six seats and the loggias themselves formed a large curving wall opposite the stage. This meant that not only the stage was well visible but also the people sitting in the loggias on the other side. I have long since forgotten anything about the action or the music on stage but the action in my loggia was unforgettable. The audience reminded me of a football audience at home. Everything that took place on the stage was followed and commented on with the same precision and passion of a rugby fan in New Zealand. Every aria was greeted with load applause and with shouts of “bravo!” (for male singers), “brava!” (for females) or for groups “bravi!” or even “brave!”. The man sitting next to me was especially excited and especially loud and kept me informed about all his opinions (although I understood very little of what he said). Suddenly after a particularly enthusiastic applause and vocal appraisal he jumped up, left the loggia and was gone for some minutes. When he returned he explained: Someone in a loggia on the other side had called out: “cane!” (dog!) which didn’t agree at all with his assessment of the last aria and so he’d gone to have a private argument — all part of the Neapolitan opera game.
The next station was the art museum Capodimonte. When I now read the catalogue of works from this museum I am struck by what I did not see. But looking at pictures is more difficult than just opening the eyes in front of a picture. In general one sees only what one already knows. What one doesn’t know is therefore invisible. This is the only explanation I have for why I missed seeing works there by Masaccio and Caravaggio, two painters I was later to learn to appreciate greatly. I have had no formal training in art history, but my interest in music history had already widened to include painting and sculpture and before leaving New Zealand I had read Irving Stone’s book about Michelangelo “The Agony and the Ecstacy” which not only made me want to see as much as possible of Michelangelo but also gave me a strong interest in renaissance painting in general. I knew enough before going to this Neapolitan gallery that there would be no Michelangelo here, but I was hoping to see earlier renaissance painters, and of course I did. In fact one picture dominated my visit: It wasn’t even an Italian work, it was Breugel’s “Parable of the Blind Leading the Blind”. Why this should have had such an impact I still don’t know. It is a very fine picture, but there were certainly other good pictures there too. Curious is, that I didn’t know Breugel very well at all and yet I saw it! I did however know the biblical story which is so brilliantly portrayed and this must have helped me to see this work. Another important fact is that the picture is very un-Italian. It must have been very striking by contrast with all the other pictures — its pale sombre colours, its North European landscape and the figures themselves (frighteningly demented faces) are not Italian. Whatever the reason, this picture has remained with me, and all others have faded into obscurity.
The strong association with this picture was strengthened by a copy we had on our dining room wall in Christchurch in the 70s. I still like it very much, even although I now see (having seen much more Breugel in the mean time) that it is quite atypical of his work in general. Here the figures are large and in the foreground, the background of church and fields is relatively unimportant. Although his other more famous works do often have figures in the foreground (the musicians in the “Peasant Wedding” or the ploughman in “Icarus”) they are not the main object of the picture. Here, however, the figures are the picture and they are painted with a remarkable attention to detail giving us a social portrait of the poor people of thepainter’s day. Most have a scull cap as well as a “normal” hat, the men seem to be carrying all their possessions attached to their clothes — one can look into the picture and see more and more. In fact it fulfils one of the main criteria for good art in that one can always find something new in it, one can never know it totally, one can always be surprised by it.
Before leaving Naples I decided to make a trip to Ischia. I had heard of this island in the Bay of Naples because I knew that the English composer Sir William Walton had a villa there. Just before leaving New Zealand I had met the New Zealand composer and harpist Dorothia Franchi who had talked to me about Walton. In the previous year Walton had visited New Zealand to conduct a performance of his “Belshazzar’s Feast”. Dorothia, who had played in the orchestra which he conducted, had given him a copy of the record “Six Carols for Christmas” which contained a work of hers and of mine. I thought, if he has a recording of a work of mine, then surely he would be pleased if I visited him! At the wharf in Ischia I looked around for a taxi, which would take me to Walton’s villa. All I could find was a furgoncino (also called ape = bee), a cross between a motorbike and a delivery van. I squeezed into the only seat alongside the driver whose steering wheel was the handlebar of the motorbike part of this tiny vehicle. We bounced over narrow roads in this precipitous landscape to the side of the island most remote from the harbour. When we arrived at the villa I was surprised to hear the sounds of loud Italian pop music coming out of the garden. I rang the bell at the gate and after a minute a young man with a cultivated British accent opened the gate and greeted me. I knew well enough what Sir William looked like to know that this was not him. He explained that the composer had fallen ill and was in a hospital in London. As the noise from the gardener’s radio continued, he looked apologetically at me and said: These sounds would never be heard if the master were here. And so I climbed back into the furgoncino and wondered if it was not, in fact, a good thing that Sir William and I had not met. What would I have said to him, or asked him? I really hadn’t thought very clearly about what I had hoped to achieve by this visit and I (and he!) had been spared an embarrassing moment.
My next station was Rome, the Eternal City. I was excited to make my first real contact with Michelangelo. I booked into the youth hostel and early next morningset out for the Vatican City. However the first thing was to go the Central Post Office for mail from home. Betty had agreed to write to me here c/o posta restante. But Rome is enormous and a simple operation like going to the post office can take hours. To be sure I was moving in the right direction, I asked a boy on the street and, as I had experienced in Naples, instead of giving me instructions, he said he would show me the way. We walked and walked and I tried to talk to him as best I could. It seemed strange to me that a child of this age would be on the street at all at this time. I asked him why he wasn’t at school: Ho marinato la scuola (literally: I have marinated the school = I’ve wagged school). Like seeing only that which one has learnt to see, one hears only that which one has learnt to hear. No doubt much of what he spoke to me I didn’t hear, but once in my Italian lessons I had come across this curious expression which I was delighted to understand at this moment. Unfortunately I didn’t know enough Italian to ask why, or for how long, that would have to wait until later. He left me at the Post Office where I was rewarded with several letters from home.
From here I found my own way to the Vatican. I knew what I wanted to see most and I was not disappointed: Michelangelo’s “Pietà”. It was a very emotional meeting — the first real contact with a work which I already knew so well from reading and from pictures. It was like finding a long lost friend — tears rolled down my face.
But there was more Michelangelo to be seen — the Sistine Chapel. This was much more difficult to see and consequently a less emotional meeting than with the “Pietà” — all the frescos were so far away. Those on the ceiling were not only very distant, you had to crane your neck backwards to be able to see them at all.
There were mirrors, which solved the neck problem, but then one was seeing a reflection (reversed image) and not the real thing. Some people had binoculars and lay on the pews gazing upwards. The “Last Judgement”, on the wall behind the altar was also wonderful (one single picture instead of a collection of scenes as the ceiling is) and could be seen without lying down or bending over backwards.
I was especially interested by the figure of “Minos” in the bottom right corner and by Bartholomew holding the the skin of Michelangelo. Twenty five years later we visited this chapel again with our children. What a different experience! There were now so many visitors that it was no longer quiet. In fact there was a priest on duty at the front whose sole job was to try to make people be quiet. In order to do this he had to make a louder noise, after which the crowd-noise subdued but then grew louder again until he was forced to call again: priest shouts, quietness and then crescendo, priest shouts again, quietness and then crescendo, and so on.
The following morning I went to see “Moses” in San Pietro in Vincoli. This Michelangelo sculpture shows Moses sitting, with horns like a devil, receiving the Commandments. Apparently the Hebrew was wrongly translated and the description of rays of light (divine inspiration?) that shone onto his head were translated as horns. Throughout the Renaissance he was always portrayed with horns. This is a huge piece and Moses looks truely authoratative, and quite capable of destroying any group of religious extremists being silly enough to worship a golden calf.
I went on to the Galleria Borghese, not being quite sure what to expect. There was a wonderful Caravaggio chiaroscuro of St Jerome whose bald head on one side of the picture is nicely balanced by an inspirational skull on the other.
This was the start of my interest in that controversial of all painters, Caravaggio. Unfortunately I didn’t realise that the works of his I would later admire most (“The Calling of Matthew”, “The Conversion of Paul”) were also here in Rome, so I missed them. The other work here in the Galleria Borghese which I have never forgotten is Bernini’s “David”. I had prepared myself for Michelangelo’s “David” (about to throw the stone) and Donatello’s “David” (standing triumphantly over the severed head of Goliath) in Florence but here in Rome Bernini is showing us a David in full action just after the stone has been set in flight — body twisted round, the hand with the sling behind his right leg which is thrust forward and most memorable of all, his face is grim with tension and concentration and he is biting his lower lip.
The next day I kept away from galleries. I walked to the Coliseum and I walked to the Forum Romanum and I walked to the Pantheon and I was exhausted. About three o’clock I found myself near the Tiber and the Castello Sant’Angelo looking for somewhere to sit down. There was of course nowhere, but then I heard a voice, an American voice, asking if I spoke English. It came from a small Italian car that had pulled up not far away. I wandered over to the car and the man explained his problem: he needed someone who spoke English and Italian — Could I speak Italian? I said I could and he suggested I might like to sit in the back of the car and act as interpreter for him. Never was I so pleased to sit down! He wanted to goto General Motors and he was being driven by an Italian who didn’t understand English — could I tell the driver where he wanted to go? I tried something like Generali Motori and immediately the driver understood and we set off through the winding narrow streets for Generali Motori. We arrived somewhere — I had no idea where — and the American got out of the car and disappeared into the crowd on the footpath. As soon as he was gone the Italian started to explain to me how he came from a town on the coast and every day he went to Fumicino Airport with his tiny car to try to get work as a private taxi driver. In this case he had had the misfortune to be hired by a man he couldn’t understand (all this in good Italian). After about 10 minutes the American returned and said that the General Motors Office was shut and he hadn’t been able to get the money he had hoped to. The problem was that he had been on a trip to South Africa buying diamonds. The plane had stopped in Italy and his diamonds had been confiscated by the authorities and he required about $1000 to get them back. I didn’t really understand all this but then it didn’t concern me, I was just the translator, so I tried to tell the Italian as best I could what the other had said. He was very interested. The American went on to say that fortunately he had three large diamonds on his person, which he had managed to smuggle out and he wondered if the Italian would be interested in giving him the money he needed — he could pay him with these diamonds which were much more valuable. Again I translated and the Italian grew even more interested. The only trouble was that he would have to travel all the way back to the coast and then back to Fumicino by which time the American’s flight would already have left. Then the American turned to me and said that perhaps I could help, did I have any money? If I was prepared to help just until this evening, I could keep the diamonds as security, and the Italian would arrange to meet me later tonight with the money. I didn’t care much about helping the American but the Italian seemed a very nice man and if he was so keen to have these diamonds, I decided I would help him. The American scribbled away on a small block of paper converting pounds to lire to dollars until it seemed in the end that my contribution, together with the little he had himself, would be enough to save the situation. They took me to a bank where I changed NZ£200.- in travellers’ cheques (half my total fortune) into Italian lire. In those days Italian paper money was enormous, one really had the feeling of having a lot of money and I came out and exchanged it for the three large diamonds wrapped loosely in soft paper. The Italian and I agreed to meet between 7 and 8 pm in a nearby restaurant and off the two went waving almost too friendlily.
Although I was far less tired than before, a new discomfort was descending on me, so I walked to the railway station and hired a cabin to take a shower. There in front of the mirror I took out my new diamonds and tested them. I knew that real diamonds were harder than glass and so very discretely I made a tiny scratch on the side of the mirror. The test worked positively. Nevertheless a nagging doubt remained. At 7pm I returned to the meeting place and waited. How long I waited I can’t remember, probably until 9pm but no nice Italian ever showed his face there and so I returned to the Youth Hostel and the next day I left Rome for Florence.
I’ve often thought about this story and about what it should have taught me. There’s no doubt I’m a little more careful now than I was then but in spite of losing half my savings I still believe in people and I still believe in trusting them. What it told me was, that trusting people is important, one cannot do the simplest of operations in our society without trust, but from time to time this trust will be taken advantage of and this will cost me something. But to worry about always being taken advantage of was certainly not what I was going to do, there are many more good people than bad in this world, but curiously it’s the bad that often make it interesting.
At the Rome railway station I met Patrick. He was Chinese but spoke English with an Australian accent. He had trained for the priesthood but had left before taking the final binding vows. Now he was like me, travelling around in the origins of his culture. Although he had rejected much of Catholicism he was steeped in it and was also interested in its impact on the visual and aural arts. I explained that I wanted to study music in Italy but that I would first attend a language course at Perugia University for Foreigners. Since the train to Florence took us past Perugia we stopped and walked up to this lovely ancient town although I knew that the University didn’t open until the beginning of April. It was bitterly cold and even a little unfriendly so we returned to the railway station and continued our journey to Florence.
In many ways Florence was the goal of my travels. Florence for me was the centre of our culture — especially as far as painting and sculpture was concerned, Florence was the city of Michelangelo, the seat of the Medici Family, the home of Masaccio, Donatello, Brunelleschi and Ghiberti, it was the very cradle of the Renaissance. It was however a very different Florence that met my eyes — and nose. There was a strike (ancora uno scioppero!) of the garbage collectors and on every street corner rubbish was piled several metres high. It was fortunate that it was still cold which reduced the danger of infection and contained the evil smell which would otherwisehave been unbearable.
Patrick and I signed into the Florentine Youth Hostel (a rundown Villa from better days) and started discovering the treasures of Florence together. One really has to discover (or uncover) them, with the exception of the fabulous Duomo or the Palazzo Vecchio they do not leap out at you. I was determined to see as much as possible of Michelangelo and so we visited the Accademia (“David” and the magnificent unfinished “Captives”), the Bargello (“Bacchus” and “Brutus”), the Casa Buonarotti (early works including a newly rediscovered wooden crucifix and the “Madonna of the Stairs”), the Uffizzi (the “Tondo”) and the “Pietà” in the Duomo (later moved to the Museo del Duomo).
On the way we discovered unexpected treasures: like Pisano’s delightful hexagonal relief sculptures on the Giotto Campanile and in the Uffizzi Simone Martini’s Annunciation. Here Patrick was ready to make fun of things which during his earlier life as a young priest would have been sacrosanct: Maria is listening very coyly to the message of the archangel telling her that she has been chosen to be Mother of God, to which she seems to be saying incredulously (we decided), “Who? Me!”:
And no visit to Florence would be complete without a visit to Ghiberti’s fabulous Baptistery doors which Michelangelo called la Porta del Paradiso. These works took the artist half a lifetime to complete and the originals were still placed on the Babtistary doors alongside the Duomo (later moved to the Museo del Duomo).
In reading about Michelangelo I had learned of another artist who had influenced him profoundly, Masaccio (1400-1427). In his very short life he made the decisive leap out of the gothic style and with just a few pictures created a new direction which was to be studied by many of the great names of the Renaissance. Most of Masaccio’s work is concentrated in the Brancacci Chapel of a little church, Santa Maria del Carmine, on the “other” side of the river Arno. To get there you cross the Ponte Vecchio and take a right turn down through narrow streets lined with tiny carpentry, upholstery and other one-man businesses until you reach a godforsaken piazza packed with cars and with a very uninteresting looking church on one side of it. Even the inside of the church of Santa Maria del Carmine is no different from thousands of other small churches throughout Italy, only the Brancacci Chapel makes it special and here you can see Masaccio’s “Tribute Money” fresco as Michelangelo and Raphael also saw it over five hundred years ago. It tells the little known story of a visit Jesus and his disciples made to a town where they were asked by a “customs officer” for the tribute money before entering the town. Apparently they had no money because Jesus directs Peter to go to the edge of the nearby lake where a fish will swim up with a coin in its mouth. The painting is like a comic with three episodes in one picture: we see Jesus in the middle surrounded by the apostles and talking to the tribute collector and to Peter. Peter is also on the left removing the coin from the fish’s mouth and again on the right giving it to the collector. Described like this it sounds quaint and certainly not world shattering but the experience of the real thing does “shatter”. All the faces are “real” – obviously Masaccio has had real models. He does bow to tradition with the hallos but these are unobtrusive, and, most remarkable, the (renaissance) building in the background has been drawn in perfect perspective (we know that Masaccio’s friend Filipo Brunneleschi had just discovered the use of a vanishing point in drawing perspective).
Just before leaving New Zealand I had been present at an excellent talk at the Dante Society in which not only the enthusiasm of the speaker for the Brancacci Chappel had impressed me but also the names of the artists: there was Nasty Tom (Masaccio: Tommaso shortened to Maso and then lengthened with the negative suffix -accio) and Nice Little Tom (Masolino). Having seen the work of both Toms I now think that Masolino’s pictures would probably never have been specially noticed had he not had the extraordinary luck to be able to exhibit them alongside Nasty Tom’s frescos. It obviously needed an inspired, clever and determined character (i.e. a rather uncomfortable, “nasty” person) to break with tradition and give the painting world a brand new direction.
After three or four days in Florence I sent a telegram to my friend Luke in Leysin, Switzerland, saying that I would be taking a train the following day to visit him. I said goodbye to Patrick, copied his address into my book, and set off early in the morning on the journey north. Uppermost in my mind was the fact that there was another important Michelangelo which I specially wanted to see in Milan: the last, the “Rondanini Pietà”, an extraordinary work, done when he was very old and still experimenting. This unfinished work is in the Castello Sforzesco and shows the dead body of Christ in greatly elongated (almost El Greco) proportions.
I had worked out that I could leave the train at the Milan Main Station, take a quick look at the façade of the Cathedral, jump onto a tram for the da Vinci “Last Supper” at Santa Maria delle Grazie and onto another for the Castello Sforzesco and the Michelangelo sculpture and then be back at the railway station for the second half of my trip to Switzerland. It is one of the rare times when such a ridiculous schedule actually worked. I saw all three things: the Cathedral rather fleetingly, the da Vinci rather sadly (he had evidently experimented with the colours and the medium is now being attacked by a fungus which seems impossible to halt), and the Michelangelo, not with tears as I had had with his Roman “Pietà” but with quiet fulfilment, with the feeling of having come another step closer to the master.
3. Swiss Mountains
Train journeys in Italy are always entertaining, Italians enjoy talking to their neighbours and don’t seem to worry at all if the neighbour’s Italian isn’t very good. Interesting is that the same train which is so friendly and chaotic in Italy can change abruptly as soon as it crosses the border. Some years later I was to read on a train seat, written in indelible ink by a frustrated Italian travelling in the opposite direction: Perché, che questo treno che funzione nella Svizzera normalmente, appena attraverso la frontiera diventa un treno di merda? (Why is it, that this train, which functions normally in Switzerland, scarcely has it crossed the border, becomes a train of shit?) My train emerged from the Simplon Tunnel into the clean and polished landscape of the Rhone valley and started its well ordered but less friendly journey through Switzerland. It was not far to Aigle where I descended and lugged my suitcases across to the train for Leysin which, in comparison to what I had just left, looked as if made for a model railway. This little train set off, more like a tram, through the streets of Aigle and then halted at the bottom of a slope. There it made a jolt and a clatter and then continued in loud but slow motion. Only then did I realise that it was a rack and pinion system and that the rack had now engaged with the pinion to be able to scale the steep slope up to Leysin.
Although the distance was comparatively short the train took a whole hour to arrive at its destination. At the top I looked out expectantly, descended with my bags and looked around further, but no Luke. I knew that he lived in Club Vagabond which even with my bad French pronunciation was clear enough for someone to tell me the direction to walk in — in fact I soon found that Leysin had such an international clientele in the skiing season (which was still in full swing) that I could easily have used English — or even Italian. Club Vagabond was a cheap hotel for young skiers. Like many buildings in Leysin it had been a Cure Resort for TB patients in the 1930s and had been put out of business by the invention of penicillin. Now it looked somewhat sad and neglected and smelled strongly of heating oil as one entered. However the magnificent view of the mountains on all sides more than made up for the hotel’s run-down look.
I asked at the desk for Luke and in a moment he was there and fell on my neck and made me very welcome. I thought that perhaps he hadn’t received my telegram — he had, I just hadn’t said exactly with which train I would be coming!
I had met Luke first on the Wellington wharves in the late 50s as I was working as a tractor driver during my university holidays and he was also doing a summer job as a tally clerk before the winter when he would return to the mountains as a ski instructor. One day he had greeted me (he later confessed he had mistaken me for someone else whom he didn’t even like very much!) and I had seen him carrying some long playing records (the latest in high fidelity then!) and had asked him what was on them. He was fascinated because most “wharfies” if they asked such a question at all would ask: What’s the rock ‘n roll? He had had among other things Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, of which I’d never heard. So he lent it to me and, during that summer, many other records of music quite new to me so that through him my knowledge of music advanced rapidly. If it rained, then work on the waterfront stopped, and so we could go to his flat near Oriental Bay and listen to music. There I heard Mahler for the first time, a composer who was seldom to be heard on concert programs in New Zealand in the 50s. Luke was a Dutchman (of whom there were many in New Zealand immediately after the war) and had come with a self-paid ticket and not as most had come as assisted immigrants who were being offered a new start in life after the horrors of the Second World War. He was kept in music by record parcels sent to him by his mother, and although this music was his life blood, he could just as easily sell it before the winter to buy new skis and skins (for ski-mountaineering) only to do the same procedure in the other direction before the summer.
One rainy day when I had turned up at his place to talk music with him he tried to explain to me “the other reason” that he had left Europe. To do this he asked me to read a passage in a book by André Gide — something which taxed my school French beyond its limits. But the word for homosexuality is very similar in French and although as an 18 year old I was very ignorant about exactly what this was, I understood enough to realise that he preferred men to women. However, I still didn’t understand why this should have led to his coming to New Zealand, which at that time was every bit as restrictive in its laws against homosexuality as any European country. Curiously I wasn’t in the slightest perturbed that he might have been hoping to seduce me, and this trust was rewarded by a long friendship in which both of us respected the other’s sexuality.
Now ten years later, sitting in his plant filled room in Club Vagabond, we were able to pick up the threads of conversation as if it had been only a few weeks since we last talked together. There was, however, a difference, he now seemed much freer than he had ever been in Wellington. He no longer needed to hide his homosexuality and obviously felt at home in this multilingual environment. Here he would chat to his colleagues and owners of the club (Canadians) in English, to the locals (including the gendarmerie with whom he got on very well) in French, and to his latest boy friend, Horst, in German. He arranged for a small room for me for the month of March, showed me where I could eat and fitted me out with skis and boots –– something which filled me with great apprehension, but he assured me he would have me skiing in next to no time.
The following morning he took me out with this uncomfortable equipment and we went by cable car up to the Berneuse. I was taught to brake and to stem-turn and that was all. We started our descent to Leysin. The weather and view were superb but compensated in no way for the agony I went through. My muscles were not ready for this new exercise and certainly not for this degree of exertion. Later that day in the bar of the Vagabond when people heard what I had done they said: “What, Luke made you ski down from the Berneuse on your very first day on skis? The bastard!” But Luke remained sure that his methods were best and so day after day I went out (usually alone) and subjected myself to this torture. After a week or so a new friend of Luke’s arrived, Bragi (g = gutteral ch), a young Dutchman who had emigrated to the USA only to have been grabbed by the military and did service in Vietnam. Bragi had also never skied before, so we were sent out together to teach each other. I suppose this teaching did work, although I suspect that normal lessons would probably have had the same result much more quickly.
Bragi left after two weeks and in my last week Luke took me on a couple of ski tours in other regions, one to Verbier and an unforgettable visit to Les Diablerets. The plan was to go to the top of the mountain plateau by cable car and then to spend the whole day skiing down again in easy stages. The first stage was, however, quite steep. We stood at the top of the slope where more experienced skiers were zigzagging down and vanishing as tiny points in the distance. Up till this time my technique for negotiating such a slope was to ski along a “zig”, stop, turn round by swinging one ski after the other around my head, and then to ski along the “zag”. Luke decided it was the right moment for me to learn to do a moving turn. He demonstrated it a few times, repeated the rule: “Keep the weight on the lower ski”, (which is not so easy since this very operation requires that one changes which ski is the lower one). But, if he thought I could do it (I reasoned), then I would try. It didn’t work. My weight finished up on neither the left nor the right ski but on my tummy and I was flying down the slope head first. The movement reminded me of Newton’s First Law of Motion: “Every body continues in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line unless acted on by some external force” — but there was no external force except gravity and the reaction of the slope and so I continued on my tummy and along my straight line. I had time to wonder where I was going and why I couldn’t stop and also to think that it was not at all unpleasant, it didn’t hurt, the only problem was the uncertainty of it. After a very long time my uniform motion in a straight line did stop and as I looked up I saw Luke ski up alongside me. He had been collecting my belongings which I had unknowingly left lying in the snow: glasses, camera, cap — my skis were no longer on my boots but the straps had prevented them from leaving my legs. Luke didn’t say much but we continued somewhat more cautiously — he had obviously been forced to accept that my innate lack of coordination had to be taken much more seriously. Shortly before lunch he stopped to talk in French to a colleague and later I heard the following: This colleague had been teaching a rather nervous young woman to ski. Both had seen my fall and both had been aware of something of which I was completely unaware, namely that I had stopped only a few metres away from a precipice. The woman he had been teaching was so shocked she had given up and gone home.
My clumsiness on skis caused another minor accident. While I was out alone one day, I fell forward so that one ski actually drove over my left wrist, cutting it dangerously near to the artery. As soon as I got home Luke sent me off to his doctor who fixed it with two stitches. I had never considered having medical insurance. New Zealanders never needed such a thing in those days, it was all paid for by the “wellfare state”. I never received a bill and didn’t even think to ask Luke what it had cost. Only years later after learning how the Swiss health system works did I realise he must have paid for it himself without ever telling me.
Luke had long been interested in drugs and had read Aldous Huxley’s “The Doors of Perception” in which Huxley describes heightened perception and awareness under the influence of the drug “mescaline”. Luke had discussed this with a member of the club who had promised to bring him some LSD (a similar drug) on his next visit. This he did and for some weeks this sugar cube with impregnated LSD lay open on a saucer in Luke’s room. Not long afterwards he had a visit from the gendarmerie who were concerned that drugs might be coming into Leysin and they asked for his help in reporting anything suspicious to them. Luke was able to tell them that he had indeed heard that LSD was sometimes smuggled in the form of cube sugar and he picked up the piece that lay nearby: “… just like this one”, he said. They thanked him and left oblivious of the fact that they had had some LSD under their very noses.
Luke was anxious that I should sit with him when he tried the drug. He knew enough about LSD to know that it could be dangerous. On his free afternoon I came to his room and sat down opposite him. He swallowed the lump of sugar and set in motion a reel tape recorder, which he had borrowed for the occasion. In the half hour before the drug started to take effect, we talked about all sorts of things: His early life in Indonesia, where his father had been head of a museum and seldom at home. How his education had been largely from his mother with whom he still had a much closer relationship. When the second World War broke out and the land was taken over by the Japanese, he was put in a prisoner of war camp for men and the mother and older sister in a similar one for women. These six years as an adolescent in a society of only men must have been a major reason for his homosexuality, either in forming it or in furthering something that was already latent.
During all this conversation his ability to think straight was not apparently affected but his perception of the world was. Gradually colours became more intense and he had the feeling of being able to fly, that he could have stepped up to the window and walked out. Obviously though, his mental faculties were able to restrain him, because he never left his chair. Before he finally went to sleep he repeated: “This could be very dangerous. This could be very dangerous…” After this he was satisfied that he knew from first hand what LSD was like and as far as I know he had no desire to try it again or indeed any other drugs. Although I had made a small start as a skier, the most memorable times of my visit were the hours of talking with Luke about music, his colourful life and our general philosophising. These conversations didn’t always move very quickly, the problem not being with him who was using a foreign language but with me who often got bogged down searching for the right word only to be helped out by him who seemed to have my language as well as several others at his finger tips. I had told him that after studying music in Italy I wanted to go to Darmstadt, which was the centre for the very latest in New Music — and that meant learning German too. He said jokingly: “I don’t know how you’re going to learn all these languages, you’re not even fluent in English.” He was right — I wasn’t even fluent enough to be able to respond to that challenge, but I think fluency and having something to say are two different things.
*****************************************************
I left for Italy some days before the first of April (the starting date of the new trimestre in Perugia) because I had an appointment with Signorina Monti in Florence. Helena Monti had visited us in New Zealand. She was the closest family member of Betty’s Italian teacher, Dr Sorani at the university in Wellington. She had arrived on Sorani’s doorstep and he had know idea what to do with her. This “piccolo uomo” as Betty used to call him had buried himself in his ivory tower in Wellington and, apart from his few students and the people he met at the Società Dante Alighieri, he knew nobody. His aunt Helena Monti was however quite different. She loved people, she loved travelling and talking and experiencing all things and so when he introduced her to Betty all problems were solved: his and hers and ours, since we now had a contact in our favourite European city. Betty showed her around in New Zealand and then stayed with her in 1963 when she was at Perugia and had now arranged that I could visit her. She lived in the very centre of Florence, just a stone’s throw from the Palazzo Vecchio whose tower you could see from one of her windows. A shaky little lift, like a cage for two people, brought one to her third floor apartment. The floors were marble and were decorated with sculptures, especially of sleeping angels, lying like exhausted babies on it. I assume many of these “artworks” were inherited, because her taste in art and music was excellent — and she seemed to know all the important “art people” in Florence. She knew I was in Italy to learn the language so that I could study composition and so the first thing she told me was how she had attended a recent concert at which Stockhausen had spoken (in Italian!) about his own works. She went on to say that she knew Luigi Dallapiccola and if I wished she would accompany me to visit him and I could show him an example of my work. I was in awe! But the thought of visiting the great pupil of Arnold Schönberg and one of Italy’s most prestigious composers was rather frightening. What would I show him? And what would I ask him? I wasn’t prepared for such a meeting so soon.
The next morning we set out on foot, Signorina Monti with her tiny hand holding on to my arm. The impression I had had that she knew everybody was confirmed as we walked along, time and time again she was greeted by people on the street or in shops near her home. She said: Mi vogliano bene (They like me). As we walked past a flower shop she explained to me that it would be appropriate if I were to buy her a flower for her button hole, which of course I was delighted to do but dreadfully ashamed that the thought of doing so had not occurred to me.
Finally we arrived at our destination — where it was I don’t remember, I assume it was the local conservatory. Dallapiccola was a little man with short grey hair and a friendly look. Throughout the whole time I had been with Signorina Monti I had spoken Italian — she knew that it was more important for me to practise my Italian than for her to improve her English. But I had barely managed to stutter to Dallapiccola “piacere …”, when he burst into English and so we stayed in that language. He looked at the score I had brought with me, my “Concerto for Violin and Orchestra” which had been played at the Cambridge Music School in New Zealand a year before. He said nothing for a couple of minutes and then he closed the score and turned to me and said: “In Ibsen’s famous play, Peer Gynt makes a journey to Egypt to ask advice from the Sphynx. Its advice to him was: Know yourself!” and the same advice he was now offering me. I was speechless. Like any young artist I had been doing the only thing possible, studying the most recent models I had. In my case it had been Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, although I doubt whether that was possible to read from my score. I can only assume that Dallapiccola had seen that the score didn’t show him anything he hadn’t seen before, and he responded with a piece of advice which he had given many times before. Whatever the reason, the advice was by no means bad, and whether or not I have achieved this self knowledge I will probably never know, but I have never forgotten the man who gave it. We parted cordially and he and Helena Monti talked briefly together in Italian, but I was in such a numb state that I couldn’t follow what they said.
The following day I left for Perugia.
4. April: Perugia 1
What a new look Perugia had! The sleepy cold city of a few months ago was warm, alive and bustling, even welcoming. I went straight to the foyer of the University for Foreigners where there was a group of people arranging accommodation for new students. I had already decided I wanted to live with an Italian family and I wanted full board. I accepted the very first offer: Signora Tosti in Corso Garibaldi. How grand it sounded, one could just picture the triumphant leader of the resurgimento with his band of followers parading into the city along this “Corso”. But the wide avenue I had imagined was so narrow you could almost put out both hands and touch the tall buildings on either side. I was soon to learn that there were Corsi and Vie Garibaldi, Manzoni, Cavour, etc in every city of Italy, roads the heroes of the 19th century probably never saw.
Corso Garibaldi was just round the corner from the university and led up a steep hill to a lovely little ancient roman temple, built in the round for some pagan god or gods until it was taken over by the Christians. Half way up this alley (as it would certainly have been called in an English speaking country) was the Casa Tosti. The Signora was very friendly, offered me a tiny room upstairs (almost on the roof) with a fabulous view out over the roofs of Perugia to Assisi in the far distance. Here I was to spend the next three months of my life and I was free to decorate it as I wished: details of Caravaggio’s Calling of Matthew which I pinned to the ceiling so that I could enjoy them lying in bed, and a small goldfish which I bought complete with bowl on a trip to Orvieto some time later. The Signora spoke a good clear Italian and so I was confident I could learn a lot from her. I didn’t realise, however, that I was only one of five foreign students who would all be wanting the same: there was Cambis from Iran, Renato from Brazil and Annemarie and Bernard from Switzerland.
After unpacking my things I went back to the university for my first classes. I was in the Corso Medio (second year because I already knew some Italian) and this in turn was divided into language groups — Sezione Francese, Tedesca, Mista and mine, the Sezione Inglese. We had the same Professoressa which Betty had had some years earlier: Amalia Viscardi. In general we spent the first part of the mornings with her learning grammar and vocabulary and then went to Professore Proscuti for Italian Literature (a huge class for the whole corso medio) and in the afternoons (after the siesta) two other big classes: Italian History and Italian Art. This last also organised guided tours to historical centres within reach of Perugia, such as: Assisi, Spoleto, Orvieto and Rome in the south and to Siena, Florence and Arezzo in the north, and many more.
A normal day for me started with prima colazione; caffe latte and fresh bread rolls which the Signora had already bought before we had stirred. There was also a Signor Tosti whom we saw only occasionally. He was reputed to be a bath-maker by trade, an instrument which the Casa Tosti also possessed but which was always filled with flowers as if a signal warning us away from this tub. There was no shower nor even warm water but I was to learn that one can clean oneself very well with soap and cold water from the hand basin. After breakfast I performed these cool ablutions, gathered up my books (including a huge dictionary which I carried everywhere) and wandered down the Corso Garibaldi to the Università. The English class was a group of about 20 students and we sat in a tiered baroque class room with the Professoressa behind a large box-like desk on a raised platform in front of us. I sat as close to her as possible, not only to hear everything with optimal clarity but also to be able to see every movement of her face and her body language.
This last had fascinated me from the very beginning of my time in Italy. I had been under the mistaken impression that body language was universal but quite early I realised that the Italian body gestures were just as foreign to me as the spoken language. While eating, for example, someone would smile and put his index finger to his cheek and rotate the hand back and forth, which meant, I decided: It tastes good.
Soon after I started my course I met an elderly English woman by chance in the bar of the University. She asked me how old I was. I was 28. “Good”, she said, “still young enough to be able to make the necessary mouth changes.” Up till then I had never realised that every language had its characteristic mouth shape, that in fact all sounds which seemed to be the same as those in one’s own language were slightly different and to be able to pronounce these new sounds as they were in the new language, it was only possible by forcing one’s mouth into the shape used by the speakers of that language. Months later, in Siena, this was made even more clear to me when I was in a class containing Italians, a Frenchman and two Englishmen. When an Italian was looking for a word he would say: “eh”, the Frenchman, “öh” and the Englishman, “ah”. I decided that these sounds probably corresponded the mouth shape of these languages in its “rest position”. Now, here in Perugia, in my Italian class I could see, for instance, how the lips of Amalia Viscardi were thrust forward for the Italian “u” and then stretched almost to a smile for the “e”, both sounds which don’t exist in English.
Professor Prosciuti’s literature class was always interesting and always full. The course started with Dante and Marco Polo and over the months I was there, continued through the centuries touching on Machiavelli, Lorenzo il Magnifico, Michelangelo, and so on up to the present day. He managed to make the subject very moving often through the connections he could draw with other languages and other cultures and also by sometimes inviting good Italian speakers to read; I still hear the lady who read from Jacopone da Todi’s Donna de Paradiso:
O figlio, figlio, figlio!
figlio, amoroso giglio,
figlio, chi dà consiglio
al cor mio angustiato?
O son, son, son,
son, loving lily!
son who gives advice (comfort)
to my anguished heart
(As if spoken by Mary to her son Jesus hanging on the cross. I attach the English for understanding but unfortunately it contains absolutely nothing of the emotional music of the original.)
Before leaving for pranzo there was time to go and check the mail and often there was a letter from home hanging on the wall. Why I never kept these, nor why Betty apparently never kept mine to her, I don’t know. It would have made these lines much easier to write!
The midday meal was always preceded by the call: “gli spaghetti sono pronti!” (The spaghetti are ready!). Spaghetti con sugo was followed by a main course of meat and vegetables, the latter usually lukewarm and swimming in oil — one ate well and copiously at the Casa Tosti. All the other students would be present and talk animatedly about their morning at the Università: Cambis, the Iranian, who should have been at both the Sezione Mista and at the Italian Literature had gone to neither. He spent most of his days playing billiards in the bar. At the end of his stay in Perugia he spoke Italian fluently but ungrammatically. By contrast, I knew what was grammatically correct because I used to spend the siesta time every day doing my home work, but I was not fluent. After some time I realised that I was not making as much progress as I should have been and so I decided to help the signora with the washing up so that I could chat with her. This helped considerably, but I was still not as fluent as Cambis!
After the siesta (until 4pm) there were generally two classes, political history and art history. Both of these had very good lecturers and were therefore well attended. In the first I learnt about the Ostrigoths and Visigoths, the dark ages and then the beginnings of the renaissance through the power of money — people like Cosimo de Medici, who, by collecting papal money and lending it before delivering it, was able to become so rich that he could start a dynasty that was to rule Florence. The lecturer took great delight in explaining how these first bankers were so named because they laid their money out on banks or benches and if one of them was unlucky or stupid enough to lose his money, a state employee would come along with a big axe (and this he mimed with exaggerated movements) and cut the bank in half: hence the word bancorotto (bankrupt).
The art class was taken by Professore Scarpellini, whose special interest was the painter Signorelli and was, in general, an authority on renaissance painting and sculpture. His course also organised the weekly trips to see the original works which he talked about and illustrated with slides in class. Smaller trips were also made on foot on Wednesday afternoons (which were normally free of classes). These trips would be, for example, to see what was in Perugia itself, like the Fontana Maggiore, whose relief sculpture would occupy Scarpellini for an hour or more.
Between the end of the last class (6pm) and the evening meal with the Tostis (7:30) there was time to go shopping or to visit an early concert. Perugia had the support of a benefactor who enabled a series of very attractive concerts with world class artists. In the few months I was there, I heard more interesting music than I did at any other time in that year: Bartók string quartets by the Vegh Quartet, Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, the Berg Violin Concerto, to name but a few works. Cena at the Casa Tosti was also a cooked meal but without spaghetti. It was always punctually served which was good, because there was often another concert at 8:30 or 9 pm. How much I paid for my board and keep I don’t remember, although I do remember thinking it was rather more than other students were paying. But I was happy with the Tostis and later I was to realise that there were other good reasons for staying here. During that first month I had a visit from Luke’s friend Bragi. I introduced him to the Signora and she immediately offered him a bed for the night. The following day we wanted to travel to Sardinia. Although we set out very early there were already two lunches ready to take with us. The same thing happened one other time and I was never expected to pay more than my normal rate. I started to see and love the Italians for their generosity — they would happily steal from you with one hand and pay it back with the other.
The five students at the Casa Tosti got on well together, although we met only at meal times since we were in different groups at the university. One evening we decided to have a party in my room where we all sat on the floor eating snacks and drinking chianti. The evening went very well, even quietly, until Annemarie, who wanted to leave and go to bed, stood up suddenly. Unfortunately someone had been sitting on her rather full skirt and when she stood up, the skirt stayed on the floor. The poor girl was mortified and snatched up her lost skirt and what remained of her self esteem and left as quickly as possible.
The other Swiss, Bernard (from the Suisse romande), told me one day about a film he had seen which impressed him greatly: A young man had trained himself to be a pickpocket. It involved a heightened awareness of every part of his body, knowing at every moment what all his muscles were doing, being conscious of all sounds and smells and above all of everything that he touched or that touched him. Bernard told me how for days after seeing the film he went round trying to feel like the pickpocket and was convinced that he was living more intensively. His description was so graphic that I began to feel like the pickpocket myself and with a concentrated effort I could heighten my own sensitivity.
Professore Prosciuti asked me to a party. Why he should have invited me I don’t know. I was just one of about 100 students who attended his class and I had never even spoken a word to him. I can only think it was because I sat near the front (watching his face as he spoke!) that he asked me. It took place in his garden where he had arranged to have a pig roasted on a spit — porchetta, a speciality of Perugia. The sight of the poor animal being cooked is not beautiful but the taste of the meat, flavoured with rosemary and other herbs is absolutely superb.