Seven Italian Postcards
Card 5: Moonbeams at the Columbarium
After
a late dinner we made our way to the edge of the village,
where a narrow street ended at the base of tall hills. A
brick pathway rose from here, just beyond a small Carabinieri
station, so we took it, walking ever higher past stonewalls
and gardens, and an occasional small villa tucked behind
sinister foliage, the dim doorbell button next to each gate
glowing like an orange dime. The moon floated high overhead
and shone nearly full, lighting our way into these hills
of Monterosso, and as we walked the path got steeper, the
landscape brighter, and our sense of dark adventure more
strong. Our route followed switchbacks along the slope,
always climbing, and we passed a long ruin of stonework
that looked rather ancient, probably Roman. Its function
was lost to us - granary? cistern? fort? - but it stood
nevertheless, placid under moonlight, another reminder that
I traveled in an old country whose secrets were rarely mine
to claim.
As we walked higher the Mediterranean came into full view,
its lunar pearlescence visible for miles, and we stopped
on a promontory several hundred feet above the coast rail
lines. From here, there was nothing but the sea between
us and Gibraltar, and as we paused a trainload of boxcars
clattered north through the station without stopping, and
I watched it vanish into a tunnel hewn into solid cliff.
"It's hard to believe, but not too long ago those trains
carried people to the ovens," I said, then added: "Well,
maybe not exactly here." - "Here, too, I'm afraid,"
my girlfriend said, sadly, perhaps not wanting to acknowledge
the tragedy that had once infected this remarkable shoreline.
Maybe I was wrong to conjure wartime on such a romantic
stroll into the Ligurian uplands. After all, we had climbed
far in our love, and I had journeyed a long way to this
palm-licked moonlight. This act of kissing.
Card 6: Famiglia
Zamani