Читать книгу Beyond Paris - Paul Alexander Casper - Страница 19

10:00 AM, April 30, 1970

The morning sun was scorching when we landed in the Italian port of Brindisi. Our boat trip had lasted about twenty-four hours, and half of those were spent trying to sleep sitting up in a hard-backed chair. We wanted the cheapest ticket possible, and we got what we paid for. The boat ride was miserable but interesting, however.

First, I had discovered duty-free cigarettes. I could buy a carton of ten packs for what two or three packs cost. I bought one carton immediately and planned to buy another before I left the ship.

Next, we weren’t the only ones traveling economy, and our long boat ride gave us the opportunity to talk with young travelers from around the world. I was surprised to hear that most of those I spoke to were traveling without a plan. Some were students with time constraints, but many appeared to be wandering aimlessly with no goal or date set for their return home. Drugs—where to find them, who was selling and for how much—was a constant topic of conversation. I was not opposed to them, but I didn’t go looking for them either. Marijuana had been abundant in college, but it didn’t do much for me. For me, smoking pot was just a way to be social. I had never bought drugs and did not plan to. Other things were more important to me.

It was captivating to hear the stories these fellow travelers told. I had only been in Europe for three weeks, most of the time spent on trains or buses and now boats. There had not been many opportunities to socialize with young people from other countries, but now I was learning more about traveling and the life of travelers than I had in the weeks since I had arrived. There was good news and some most definitely bad. It was a condensed course in World Travel 101, and certain lessons required reading between the lines, especially when discussing hitchhiking and changing money when crossing into new countries.

It was clear young people in Europe were worldlier than their American counterparts. The size and proximity of European countries to each other makes it much easier to travel internationally. I was amazed to find that nearly all these young people spoke at least two languages. I’d enjoyed attempting the language of the countries we had visited so far and wanted to learn another language as soon as I could. Something besides Spanish, which I studied in high school with minimal success.

Little by little I was feeling more comfortable as I traveled: Europe was so different from my hometown, Mount Prospect, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. I was becoming a traveler, and a pretty good tourist. I had visited so many sites that many only dream of seeing in Paris, Istanbul and Athens. And now I would soon be in Rome—the Coliseum, the Roman Forum and St. Peter’s awaited me. It mystified me that many of my fellow passengers on the boat were more interested in finding drugs than exploring the historic sites of these wonderful countries. I was proud of all that I had seen; I was not a novice anymore. I’d seen Paris, I’d crossed the bridge from Europe to Asia in Istanbul, I’d walked the Acropolis in Athens. I refused to believe that Rome was where my travels would end.

Significant decisions would have to be made in Rome. My calculations about my remaining funds generated great concern. I was way too often pulling out a traveler’s check to cash it. If Rome was the end—well, my heart went much further than Rome, but how could I travel any further on so little?

Besides dealing with my financial worries, I had to decide how I might travel on my own. Whatever my next destination would be, I would go there without Doug. I could sense he thought it was time for us to part, he was being more distant—it was the money thing. He had been a good traveling companion; two heads really had been better than one. I could not have been luckier than to have been able to start my travels with him, and for the rest of my life he would be my “jumping-off-the-train buddy.” When we got to Rome we would have to take a hard look at expenses. I imagined Rome was a very expensive city, and Doug had more resources than me.

The rest of the night and most of the next day passed uneventfully. I had more conversations with fellow passengers as bored as I was, and spent many hours wondering about Rome, hypnotized by the continuous rolling waves of the open sea outside my window.

Just before disembarking at Brindisi, Doug and I met a Swedish guy, Liam, who was also going to Rome. He was returning from playing a small part in a movie being filmed in Athens. His plan was to hitchhike to Rome and then eventually home to Sweden, and he insisted we hitchhike with him. He knew some people in Rome; it could be good for us.

We quickly created a sign, “Roma,” and tried to get lucky with the cars and trucks driving off the boat. It didn’t take long; an Italian guy took all three of us. He said he wanted some company on the six-to-seven-hour drive to Rome.

We reached Rome at 1 o’clock a.m., when our driver left us off at the Piazza di Trevi, by the legendary Trevi Fountain, because it was too late to check into a hotel. As uncomfortable as it would be, I loved it. I had seen the movie, Three Coins in the Fountain, I had heard the song! Now here I was, my first night in Rome, and I was sleeping at the most famous fountain in the world.

My elation was short-lived. After an hour or two trying to sleep and freezing our asses off, we were abruptly awakened by the local Polizia. The irritated officer scolded us: “This is not a hotel to sleep; it is only for Italian movie producers!” I was relieved; it was too cold out there anyway. We started walking, and after almost two hours, we found a barely-hole-in-the-wall hotel and finally got to sleep about 5:00 a.m.

Six hours later Doug, Liam and I were up and ready to take on Rome. We made our way to one of the city’s most popular meeting places, the Spanish Steps, where Liam told us to wait while he searched for the people he had mentioned to us. While we waited, we looked around and soon found out our first day of exploring Rome was doomed. It was the 1st of May, May Day, and everyone was on holiday. Everything, and I mean everything, was closed.

Our spirits were lifted when, a couple of hours later, Liam returned with good news. He had found his friends, three American girls who worked for one of the English-speaking newspapers in Rome, The Daily American. These girls, Maria, Penny and Karen, had just moved into a new apartment, and though it was sparsely furnished, there was room enough for all of us. And as a soon-to-be-part-time tourist, I got excited. The apartment was only about a block from St. Peter’s.

All six of us, the girls and the guys, started having meals together while we got to know each other. As pleasant as that was, it forced me to look once again at my financial predicament. Rome was even more expensive than I’d anticipated, and I had to decide what my next step was going to be. For about ten days now I’d felt like the proverbial “Man in the Middle” going back and forth between risking adventure or being sanely conservative, to make sure I had enough money to get home. I had to make a decision. I hadn’t totally bought into the conversations I’d had in Greece suggesting that the travel gods would protect me on my journey and ensure my passage home.

It was a godsend to me that the girls sharing their apartment weren’t charging us. This enabled me to live frugally while waiting for a miracle. Unfortunately, that ended suddenly when their landlord announced that he did not approve of so many people in the apartment and we had to get out by that night.

Doug began to search for a hotel. Liam packed his bag to begin hitching north. I went back to panicking while I counted and recounted my money. Maria, Penny and Karen had come to like me; of the three guys, I was the only one they spoke to more than briefly. Maria and I got along best. They all wanted me to stay in Rome and thought I could give private English lessons to rich Italians. The idea was intriguing; they had connections through their newspaper and thought I could make up to 5000 lire an hour. (At that time, 625 lire were worth $1.00.)

We spent hours discussing what it would be like to teach English. I could not picture myself trying to teach someone English when I couldn’t speak their language. Karen said not to worry; she had heard it was like teaching a baby how to talk.

“You don’t know baby language, do you? Well, we all get it done eventually, and the baby starts to speak in English,” she said.

Maria said that when the teacher doesn’t know the host language he or she forces all the students to speak English; it was called the direct method. During these conversations, I kept thinking that if my Father or my high school English teacher knew I was considering teaching English to unsuspecting innocent people they would have thrown up their hands in disbelief. They had both been witness to my English papers and grades. Karen said she could put a small free ad in her paper tomorrow, but we passed on the ad for the time being while she checked on a couple of things back at her office that might give me some leads.

I did think I could try the English teacher route. I didn’t know how to get clients, though, and I would have to get an apartment and make a deposit, which was a real commitment, a scary one. I’d be betting everything I had on this one idea.

After saying goodbye to Liam, and thanking him for his help, I went to find a quiet place to think and stretch my legs. While walking I stopped at the American Express office, hoping to find mail from home, but nothing was waiting for me. I kept on walking until I found my quiet place in the chaos of St. Peter’s Square, the plaza in front of the Basilica and Vatican grounds. I took a seat on a bench and began to draw.

On that day, at that hour, I was the only artist in the square attempting to draw, centuries later, what Michelangelo had created. A little group started to form, watching me. They looked over my shoulder to see what I was drawing and tried to talk, but we were all speaking different languages and conversation was difficult. No grandmothers pulled out chairs to sit beside me and chat like they did in Istanbul, but many shook their heads with approval at my approach as I drew—with an ink pen now instead of pencil, which I had left in Istanbul. I am sure most days there were many real and aspiring artists attempting to reproduce on paper the divine feeling of looking at St. Peter’s for the first time. The square was just breathtaking; seeing it on television did not do it justice. As I sketched, I anticipated the awe I would experience when I entered the Basilica tomorrow. I planned to spend all day at the Vatican church, museum and grounds and was looking forward to being overwhelmed by being in the presence of the history there.

I began to lose interest in drawing the structural aspect of St. Peters and needed to try my hand at something more freeform. As I looked at the art surrounding me, I was drawn to one of the numerous statues everywhere in Rome. This one was of a riderless horse and appeared to be part of a narrative connected to a sculpture across the street. Wondering what that story was, I stared, and began to remember another muscular horse in my life.

I was twelve years old in 1959 and a sixth-grader in Mrs. Andrew’s second-floor homeroom class. Although we changed classes during the day, Mrs. Andrews was also my history teacher. We had been studying ancient Rome, and one day, so she could grade papers, she instructed us to draw something about the Roman Empire that had made an impression. She handed out oversized sheets of paper for us to draw on and we all jumped in quickly. In short order, there were drawings of awkward-looking coliseums, rickety bridges flying flags over the Tiber River, and suspicious renderings of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

I watched my classmates for a while, not wanting to draw what everyone else was drawing. I caught Mrs. Andrews giving me the evil eye because I wasn’t doing anything, so I put my head down and pretended to sketch. Suddenly I envisioned a bold horse, a significant horse. I thought a moment and added a Roman soldier. I quickly sketched the boundaries of the drawing and decided I wouldn’t show the entire horse or the full figure of the soldier. The horse would be fierce and maybe a little mad, with flaring nostrils and mane flowing. The soldier would have a strong hold on the leather reins and look ready for battle. As I started to draw the horse, I exaggerated the entire scene, creating an unusual close-up with extreme angles portraying power and movement.

My drawing was progressing nicely when I noticed Mrs. Andrews walking around the room and looking over shoulders to see the different drawings. She made her way over to me and stopped. She didn’t say anything, which unnerved me. I kept on drawing until she sat down in an empty chair and moved it closer to me, looking over my right shoulder. She still had not said a word. I remember I was afraid to even look at her—was I really off-course with my subject? As I continued, she still didn’t say anything, which worried me even more. Had I had done something so wrong she was speechless? Intrigued, several other kids wandered over and started watching me too.

Suddenly Billy Cuttingham cried out, “Hey, that’s not a building or church. Casper is cheating! Mrs. Andrews, you should give him an F.” My pal Billy, always looking out for me. Mrs. Andrews turned toward him and gave him her Quiet, Billy look.

She looked at the class and said, “I have to say, everyone, all your drawings look very good, but I had to stop at Paul’s. I know some think he’s not doing what he’s supposed to do by drawing something out of the box. Something so different. I know Billy especially thinks this.”

Again, she turned to him, giving him the evil eye. “But I have to say, Paul has stopped me in my tracks. I just never expected anything like this.”

Just then Chrissy Johnston informed those who didn’t know, “Yea, he’s a good artist. Mrs. Hart in art class is always talking about his work and hanging it up.”

Mrs. Andrews watched me for a long while but said no more before she got up to continue with the class. As I walked out, she called me over to her desk. She said she hadn’t wanted to say too much about one person’s work over the others, but now in person, she could. She said I had a special talent. Not only could I draw what I saw; I could see things differently, as an artist would. She was going to hang up some of the drawings in the room, but mine would be hung in the hallway with a sign telling kids they could look at the others when the room was empty. Taking out a box of notepaper, she wrote a quick note to my Mother, saying she believed I had a special talent and hoped that my mother knew this and would nurture it going forward. She put the note in an envelope and said, “Please give that to her tonight.”

I smiled to myself; I hadn’t thought about that moment for quite a while. It gave me confidence at a time when I sorely needed some. Thank you, Mrs. Andrews. I began to sketch again, no horse this time, but a quick study of St. Peter’s in the fading Roman afternoon light.

As the sun set, I remembered yesterday, before we went to the Spanish Steps. I had spent some time on a bridge overlooking the Tiber, the third largest river in Italy that flows through the middle of Rome, on my way to the Coliseum. Once there, I sat for hours imagining the goings-on of over 2000 years ago. I was so moved by being in the actual place and structure where the events I had read about or seen in movies had occurred. These became real in the in the Coliseum, a place alive with the vivid and mysterious spirits of the past.

I finished my sketch and thought that my Mother would love to see it. Suddenly I realized I hadn’t sent any postcards home recently about what I was doing or what my plans were. When I was in Paris, I knew I was going to Istanbul and dropped a postcard to my Mother, Father and younger sister Joyce to let them know. When I decided to go to Athens, I sent another postcard urging everyone to contact me in care of the American Express office in that city. But it had been a month and no word from home. Strange, but I hoped it was par for the course for mail going back and forth at that distance.

When I got back to the apartment, Doug was packing. He had found a hotel, and casually mentioned what it would cost. There was no way; it was too expensive for me and I couldn’t join him. We had been together since we had arrived in Paris, but he understood my situation, wished me luck and walked out the door. Not how I would have liked us to part, but it was inevitable, and I had bigger problems. I needed to out of the girls’ apartment by dark. It looked like I’d be sleeping at the railroad station.

I was ready to say goodbye to the girls when they surrounded me and said, “You’re not going anywhere. We’re going to make it okay for you to stay a while longer. You can believe us or not what we told you guys about the landlord. But what mattered to us was that they needed to go; the vibe wasn’t right. On the other hand, your vibe is wanted around here.”

They took me out to dinner that night and gave me a great briefing on what to see at St. Peter’s the next day. The girls really were angels, smart ones at that. I wondered, were they living Jake Barnes’ life in 1970, expatriates looking for…? Good question; what were they looking for?

Monday morning, I got up early, ready to start my day at St. Peter’s. I was glad I got the lay of the land the other day when I sketched in the square. The exterior was magnificent, and I couldn’t wait to see all the art and history inside. Thirty minutes later I finally entered St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.

I was not disappointed. My first thought was that this glorious structure could have only been conceived and built with the help of God. I was so awestruck, I had to sit down in one of the pews.

A baby was being christened at one of the fonts and across a row of pews, a small choir was rehearsing. The Basilica began to fill with music that made the beauty all around me even more overwhelming. The choir sang in Latin, and I didn’t understand a word, but it remains one of the more perfect experiences of my life. It was literally heavenly.

I sat in my pew and listened until they finished, all the while gazing at every detail of the main portico. The altar was such a surprise, so different than anything I had ever seen in the States. Of course, I reminded myself—Michelangelo designed and managed the construction of this stunning structure.

It is no exaggeration to say I felt the presence of God while I was in St. Peter’s. If God can be found in art and music, I was right. The entire time I sat there, I had goosebumps. Eventually, I rose to walk around the free-standing altar. There were easily 200 other visitors and I wasn’t alone, but the enormity of St. Peter’s made their presence slip away while I walked the exquisite marble floors.

I knew when I began my day that I would not have enough time to see all I wanted to see. The Vatican Museum is attached to St. Peter’s and contains history upon history and some of the greatest art in the world, but I could not go there next. From my discussions with Maria, Penny and Karen, I knew I had to leave enough time for the Sistine Chapel.

To get there I had to leave the Vatican hallways, make my way out to the street and walk around the entire city-state of the Vatican. When I reached the entrance to the Chapel I had to wait in line with the rest of the tourists. The line was slow and long, and I worried I wouldn’t get in and began to question my plan.

Once inside the Chapel, so small compared to St. Peter’s, I saw immediately why the girls had insisted that I visit. The Chapel ceiling was breathtaking; Michelangelo’s images were so powerful. I could almost hear Rex Harrison yelling at Charlton Heston in that great movie, The Agony and the Ecstasy, “When will it be finished?!” As I squinted my eyes, I could see the swaying scaffolding and hear the nervous movements of Michelangelo’s assistants working feverishly on the Chapel while Pope Julius II paced below. It was all worth it: however long it took for Michelangelo to finish his masterpiece, it was the perfect amount of time.

As they had when I visited the Acropolis, the guards had to literally escort me out when the Chapel closed. While the sun set, I walked back to the entrance of the Basilica in front of St. Peter’s. I stopped not far away, at a little hole-in-the-wall café, and had pasta and a couple of beers. Almost overcome with emotion after spending the day immersed in beauty and history, I struggled to find the words to describe in poetry all I had experienced.

My day ended with a large pale moon rising behind Vatican Square. I had decided: the next phase of my adventure was about to begin. Tomorrow I would begin to hitchhike by myself through Europe. The teaching English plan? I didn’t see myself as a teacher. It was obvious I would have to leave Europe soon, no matter what, and I wanted to see as much of it as possible before that time came. I was nervous. I was going to be totally on my own, with very limited resources, making my way through foreign lands. Anything could happen, and if it did, I would be on my own. Yes, I was nervous, but I was also ready—I’d gotten my feet wet traveling this first month. I knew there was more waiting for me out there; first Beyond Paris and now Beyond Rome. My first solo destination: the Cannes Film Festival.

As confident as I was in my decision, I still worried constantly about how to get more money. After Cannes, I had no idea what I would do. The recent information I had received about cheap airline tickets home in London might work, or if all failed—I was very dubious about this—I could go to the American Embassy and ask them to send me home. That slim hope of that gave me the impetus to start the next leg of my adventure. Tomorrow could be very good or very bad—or even something else?