Given the deprecatory nature of our relationship, I wasn't surprised to be taking the trip to Liguria alone. It was meant to be a cooling relaxation, a reprieve from the drinking and partying. I'd been in Paris almost three weeks without having seen anything other than the moon and Picasso Museum. I'd gone for the food and stayed for the booze.
It was six or seven in the evening and I struggled to right myself over the cobbled streets like a bike with a bad wheel. Earlier, I'd sat in the waters off the beach at Monterosso and sipped at a bottle of barolo half-submerged in the sea against the rocks. Nude grannies and residual Americans sunbathed in the October sun without their tops on.
I sat with my back to the rocks as the waves pushed against me. My back pounded against the rocks in salty corporal mortification.
I clutched at the rock on which I was perched so as not to get pulled out. Equally, I clutched the bottle and struggled to keep my thumb over the opening so as to limit the contamination the sea water would bring. I took another drink. It was terrible and salty. Like cooking wine, I thought.
Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I recounted the tale of how cooking wine came about. Chefs had regular wine but kept drinking it before they could use it in their dishes and so the only wine allowed in the kitchens were wines that were heavily salted so as to hinder direct consumption.
In tangential evolution, my thoughts wandered to the story of some Cheyenne Indians on a distant reservation who made, what they referred to as, ..Cheyenne Champagne... They took a can of hairspray, pierced it, and mixed it with a gallon of water for consumption. The alcohol content alone was enough to get the five of them drunk. Drunks will do anything to get their fix and I decided, as I sat there in the sea against the rocks with the bottle, that the story of the cooking wine must be bullshit.
My thoughts towards V had held themselves in check to a surprising degree until I reach the city of Genoa.
Against my better judgement, I'd had another gin 'n tonic on the train. The rocking made it impossible to hold myself and I thanked the gods, allah, and santa claus when we pulled to a stop.
It was too late for the aquarium and for this, I was genuinely disappointed. The Genoans have the second largest aquarium in the world and, given my failed marine biology background, I would've loved to wander through that attraction and take in the sites. As it was, my dip in the Mediterranean at Monterosso had cost me the pleasure.
I wandered down the via Sottoripa and came upon a small but busy restaurant. In the window, a large swordfish hung surrounded by a sea of prawns and shellfish under a sign that read, "Da Vittorio". Looks almost like an aquarium, I thought as I stepped inside.
It was hot, much too stuffy but I was hungry and tired and needed to rest myself. I hadn't yet secured a train ticket back or a place to stay but had the devil-be-damned attitude that can arise from too much drink. I greeted the host in Spanish in case there were any Americans around.
The booze churned once more in my stomach and I asked for the bathroom in Italian.
"Sinistra", he replied as he set the menu down on the table.
."Merci", I responded.
It occurred to me, as I pushed the door open carelessly, that I'd not eaten since the previous day. The door swung violently and almost knocked over a small boy who was walking towards the sink.
"Scuza", I said.
"Bitte", he responded. He was small and blond, maybe four years old.
A window was open and the cool air from the sea blew in and hit my nostrils, making me nauseous. Outside, I could see the top of a flagpole with two flags on it. I wrinkled my brow and noticed the standard Italian flag but, also, there was a flag that looked exactly like the English flag. Years later, I would find that England, and the city of London in particular, had adopted the flag of Genoa in 1190 to benefit from the protection of the powerful Genoese fleet in the Mediterranean. But as it was, I felt cheated and taunted by the past.
"What happened there?" V asked. We lay, prostrate, on the sheets that smelled too much of us as the busy streets of the Quartier Latin came to life in the night beyond the window. I looked toward the balcony. Every apartment in the Latin Quarter seemed to have a wrought iron balcony.
"What happened here?" she repeated. She traced the scar on my abdomen, just under my right ribcage with her finger.
The incision had been made in my third week of life. As I struggled free from the womb, I began my acsetic ways early, repenting and fasting for sins I'd yet to commit. I couldn't take any food. Given the quality of the doctors at the free clinics on the reservations in my early days, it wasn't surprising that it took them almost three days to accurately diagnose my condition. By that time, I was three days without food which, I hear, is not good for a newborn.
"Knife fight", I responded.
I lay there on the bed with my mother weeping over me and barely enough strength to move or cry. By that time, what should've been a routine operation, became a massive concern for the attending surgeon and nurses. Given the delay at proper diagnosis, I was too weak for surgery.
"Really?" she asked in an unbelieving tone. The proper, British, accent that had, at first tortured me into infatuation, went unnoticed.
The anesthesiologist walked down the hall in her frumpy white shoes towards the room with the weeping Indian woman and her newborn son. She walked in and spoke a few words with my mother and then approached my crib which was really a plastic bin like the kind they put newborns in.
"How are you doing tonight?" she asked me.
I cooed with my remaining strength. My mother wiped her eyes and chuckled lightly. She hasn't worried about me since.
"Oh I think he'll be okay", the anesthesiologist said.
"No, what really happened?" V asked. She removed her naked leg from atop my thigh and was resting on her elbow above me now.
"Pyloromyotomy", I responded.
"Pyloromyotomy", I repeated aloud as I finished at the urinal. I flushed with my elbow and turned away from the window with the flag of Italy and Genoa.
As I walked to the sink, the little German was still there. He was hanging over the counter and his legs swung freely below him. He was trying to reach the faucet to turn it off and was having a devil of a time trying to accomplish the task. I reached over and turned it off for him. At which point, he jumped down from the counter and faced up to me, squarely.
"Grazie", he said.
"Bitte", I responded.
He smiled and became a kid again. He turned briefly to the towel dispenser, which was also out of reach. He sighed in frustration as he wiped his hands on his pants and hastily pulled the door open.
"What's a Pyloro..", she paused.
"Pyloromytomy", I said.
"What is that?"
"When I was little, I had a problem with my stomach. It tightened up and wouldn't let anything pass. The mortality rate of a pyloric stenosis is generally around a fraction of a fraction of a percent. But I almost died."
"Are the doctors that dodgy on the Reservation?"
"They were then at least. I think they're better now. Do we have any more wine?"
The waiter approached with the bottle of wine and promptly opened it. I had a moment of lapse and my facade of sobriety left; I rudely gestured him to pour the entire glass.
With the drink, I became lost. My thoughts jumped from V to the aquarium to my aching back with no anchor to hold me steady. The young boy waved in my direction and yelled.
"Ciao!" he yelled for a second time, pausing as if to emphasize that he wasn't leaving without a response. His mother leaned down and pulled gently at his coat but he refused to budge.
I lifted my glass and responded, "Tschuess!"
He smiled and turned on a pivot with the efficiency of a military officer. The mother smiled briefly at me before following her min-general out the door.
As I left the restaurant, the door closed swifty behind and the lights in the window were dimmed. The swordfish was gone as were the prawns and the lobsters and the shell fish. The aquarium was apparently closed.
I walked down the street towards the flagpole I'd viewed from the bathroom window. A couple walked past me and I screamed at them, "Happy Cristoforo Colombo Day!"
I'm the reason people hate Americans.
The flagpole stood in defiance of my past with the flags themselves waving bravely high above me. The wind had increased coming inward from the sea and swirled around the piazza so that it flanked me and coerced me toward the pole. I walked to the flag and pushed it as if I were Ira Hayes at Iwo Jima..attemting to raze the flag.
An old man shuffled past me and stared without fear.
"Che ora e?" I asked.
"Undici"
Fuck, I missed that last train. My things were still in a small room in Vernazza that smelled of sand and damp wood.
I picked myslef up from the stones and wandered down to the beach. I needed to find a secluded place to sleep in the birthplace of the man who discovered the land of my ancestors.
dep're'ca'to'ry.. [dep-ri-kuh-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee]
1. of the nature of or expressing disapproval, protest, or depreciation.
2. apologetic; making apology.