Art, Literature, and Rooming Houses

In 1976 and 1977, I attended University in Perugia, Italy.

I received my degree (in an accelerated programme) after subjecting myself to two years there, studying what was termed Humanities and Interpreting.

The Interpreting part of the curriculum is straightforward; the Humanities, perhaps less so. My studies on that side of the fence were Italian Literature and Art History.

None of what I learned then developed into a job or career later, although the combination of art history and bilingualism did land me some work as a tour guide. (Perhaps, an essay on the woes of shepherding tourists around “sites of cultural interest” may come in the future; for the moment, suffice to say, it was dreadful work.)

What I ended up gaining, however, was a strange hodgepodge of facts and fictions, and the ability to hold my own in “salon” type conversations.

American High School

How I qualified for admission to the University is beyond me. I think a considerable donation must have been made to overlook my woeful academic record. Or maybe they didn’t care at the time — tuition was, after all, tuition.

I had just completed Grade 12 in an American High School located in northern Italy, part of a U.S. army base (SETAF, to be precise). My family was neither military nor American — it’s a long story… My grades were indifferent at best. I hated the base, despised my fellow students, and what I had studied there was pitifully backward. All I did was show up to ensure that I passed, ultimately receiving a diploma (to this day I have no idea where I chucked it… it was that meaningless to me).

The Rooming House

The University being far from home, arrangements had to be made for my room and (partial) board. I don’t know how my parents found it, but I ended up at a “pensione” or rooming house not too far from the centre of the city. It occupied the top floor of a large “palazzo”, had very high ceilings, many, many small and large rooms, and was otherwise unremarkable.

The woman who owned the floor was an Italian lady of a “certain age”. Respectable, attired in black, thick black hair that seemed like iron wires, house-slippers, hands like a catcher’s mitt, and over-developed calf muscles. She had what is sometimes termed a “gimlet” stare — piercing, missing nothing, coldly assessing, judgmental; that look that would surface later. When my parents took me to her place, she was obsequious, kindly, even somewhat affectionate. She assured my parents that her sole purpose in life would be to care for me. She showed them a lovely room where I would be housed and invited them to partake in a rather elaborate snack — cheese, salami, crusty bread slices, fruits, nuts, biscuits, wine… the likes of which I would never again see in her home.

Once my parents bade me a tearful goodbye and drove off, the Signora shed her kindly airs. Within moments, we were down to business. That pretty and cozy room we had been shown? Well, it wasn’t ready just now. I would be housed in another room, a much larger one bristling with beds. There was considerable turnover, but I would estimate that the room typically accommodated about ten or twelve girls; this was an all-female rooming house.

My bed was jammed up against the radiator and little did I realize how fortunate that would be. At that time in Italy, the government had mandated “austerity measures” which included legislated “time of day” heating, and the automatic extinguishing of lights by means of timers in common areas, such as stairwells.

One might think that limited heat wouldn’t be an issue in sunny Italy, but you would be wrong. It could be very, very cold and often very, very damp. The walls of this palazzo seemed to exude centuries old dampness, regardless of the temperature. Our beds had light sheets (more bone-coloured than white), with one thin blanket each.

Luckily, next to the radiator, I could reap the benefits of a couple of hours of heat. I would sleep as crushed into it as possible, trying to harvest and preserve some warmth for the cold hours of the night. I slept very little, shivering.

Of all the girls in that room, I remember three most vividly. One was an American girl from somewhere in the Midwest — I think her name was Debra. More about her later.

The Honourables’ Daughters

The other two were a pair of sisters or friends who looked astonishingly alike. They were British and were the daughters of “honourables”. They were disturbingly inseparable in a way I have never seen before or since. Although they were assigned two beds, they shared the one (perhaps for heat, but I really think it was more a preference), they took the same classes in school, walked together, ate together, and always went to the bathroom (the “loo”) together. They both showered and washed their hair at the same time.

When speaking with the “hons” (as they indicated we could call them), if you posed a question, they would look at each other, smile, perhaps titter, and one would answer while the other nodded. They seemed quite well-to-do, so why they were staying in such squalor was a mystery. Perhaps, they were slumming.

Still they were cheerful in a hearty and dreadfully “jolly hockey sticks” manner, but there seemed to be an undertone of bovine stupidity about them. Pale, pretty but in an unremarkable way, with straight shoulder-length hair the colour of cornstalks in autumn, they wore woollen skirts, woollen hosiery, sweaters, sensible but attractive shoes, matching handbags, tiny earrings, small gold chains with lockets. They didn’t exactly giggle, but they often laughed quietly at most questions or comments directed at them. When they weren’t looking at each other with secret amusement, their faces were as expressionless as eggs. They could have been aliens impersonating human beings.

But the landlady adored them.

All ten or twelve girls, and perhaps more from the other rooms in the rabbit warren of the top floor, all shared one bathroom. The rule (one of many explained in emphatic detail by the Signora) was to be quick. Quick to wash, quick to groom, quick to attend to bathroom business. But the most stringent rule pertained to hair. NO HAIR IN THE SINK. And NO HAIR IN THE BATHTUB (there was no shower).

On occasion, the Signora would come storming into our room, her slippers angrily slapping on the marble floors, clutching a disgusting clump of straw-coloured hair and scream accusations. Most of us had different hair colours, and the light corn-silk strands seemed a perfect match to the “hons”, but no, that was impossible. They were too well-bred, and not crass like the rest of us peasants, or so the Signora declared.

Breakfast of Champions

We had what was termed “half”-board, meaning only breakfast was provided. Breakfast was available in a dismal common dining area. The table — which could seat maybe six people, although I never saw more than two disconsolate girls at any given time — was just around the corner from the kitchen and the Signora would pop her head out from time to time like an unpredictable jack-in-the-box, to see whether we were eating the right amount. She set out dry rusk crackers, a dish with a tiny blob of plum jam, and a largish cup of café au lait.

The milk in the coffee was that dreadful UHT milk from a box carton (like a juice-box). It would never, ever go bad and was kept at room temperature on the table, forever and ever, amen. The coffee was weak and watery. No sugar in sight.

And that was breakfast. Oddly, the Signora was very concerned with us both eating enough but not too much of her food. Think a combination of Goldilocks and Baba Yaga.

The Expulsion and a New Eden

The Signora had met my boyfriend, a fellow southern Italian who lived elsewhere at the time, She was completely enchanted by him (no surprise; he was very charming). She was not however enchanted with me.

We had a curfew and one evening I got back perhaps thirty minutes late. My boyfriend had phoned earlier to speak with me, and the Signora, with (I gather) no small amount of satisfaction, told him I was still out —with other “men”.

Now my relationship was in tatters (temporarily), and the Signora threw me out for breaking the rules. Debra, the American girl, had been wanting to leave, so we both headed out the next morning to seek another place to stay.

We found another rooming house right in the centre of town. Once again a top floor with a warren of rooms. Our room was beyond lovely. Flowery wallpaper, normal beds with proper linens and blankets, towels provided (at the previous rooming house there were no towels given to us; we had to blot ourselves off with our dirty clothes). The (shared) bathroom was conveniently right across the hall. A large bedroom window overlooked a quiet backstreet. No breakfast provided, but that was fine.

The landlady was a 40ish woman from Calabria, who I believe was divorced or widowed. Neither curious nor judgmental, she would rent to anyone with cash who wouldn’t overly disturb the peace of the floor. She was courteous but supremely disinterested in her lodgers.

The Nigerians

My floor-mates were numerous — maybe some 30 people, some students, some not. There were about ten Nigerian men who shared a couple rooms. Although they were never overtly bothersome, they had this unusual way of staring intently at whatever woman was either entering or exiting the bathroom. They would also closely inspect (but never touch) any undergarments hung to dry on the communal laundry lines. Otherwise, they seemed innocuous.

The Berber Women

I vividly recall two utterly gorgeous Tunisian women who lived there. They wore an odd sort of head covering, like a cross between a keffiyeh and a hijab, but ephemeral, diaphanous and sparkly. Far from emphasizing modesty, it oozed eroticism.

They would be out all night and return early in the morning to sleep during the day. They were “champagne girls”. Not prostitutes (at least, I don’t think so), they frequented dance clubs and bars, cozying up to male patrons and recommending the purchase of champagne and other pricier drinks. The establishment would then cut them a commission for whatever was sold at their table.

Friendly enough, they explained to me that they were not Arabs, but rather Berbers. The proper name for them was Imazighen, which means “free people”. They themselves came from Tunisia, but their people lived across the Maghreb, the north of Africa from Morroco to Egypt. When I asked what language they spoke (overhearing them speak together, I could not make out what it was), they said it was “Berber”. They could speak Arabic, English, Italian, German and several other languages. Well-educated, unbelievably beautiful, and always flush with cash, I would have liked to have been able to know them better, but they usually slept when I was awake, and were also rather private.

I hope their lives were good ones.

Halcyon Days

I’ve always liked the word “halcyon”. Evoking a sense of peace and tranquility, the word itself has an interesting origin story.

In Ancient Greece, there lived a princess named Alcyone who became a queen when she marred King Ceyx, the son of the Morning Star. Deeply in love but also extremely proud, they sometimes jokingly and fondly called themselves “Zeus” and “Hera”. This was, of course, very offensive to a thin-skinned Zeus, who struck Ceyx dead with a thunderbolt, while the latter was at sea.

When Morpheus, the God of Dreams, told Alcyone that her husband had been killed, she threw herself into the sea.

The other gods, taking pity on the couple, resurrected them, turning them into birds. In their avian form, they built nests on the seashore, and Alcyone’s father, a God of the Wind, caused the weather to become calm and still so that the couple could attend to their nest and their eggs.

From here (and there are other versions of the story, and some twisted etymological paths), we arrive at the expression “halcyon days”, or a period of calm in between storms.

To me, my time at the University represented a period of halcyon days — although I didn't realize it at the time.

Literature

Stumbling down the steep lane from the rooming house to the University, bleary-eyed at 8am, I was to learn Italian literature.

While we did study the classics like Dante, Boccaccio, and the like, for some reason I have a more vivid recollection of a few more obscure writers. One bizarre writer was Torquato Tasso who prayed fervently for a “40-degree fever” in order to suffer for God.

Another was Elio Vittorini who authored Conversation in Sicilia (Conversation in Sicily), where he morosely wrote:

Vedevo manifesti di giornali squillanti e chinavo il capo; vedevo amici, per un'ora, due ore, e stavo con loro senza dire una parola, chinavo il capo…

Translation:

I saw blaring newspaper posters and I bowed my head; I saw friends, for an hour or two, and I stayed with them without saying a word, I bowed my head...

Carlo Levi was another author for whom I somehow developed a passion. In his masterwork Christ Stopped at Eboli he wrote:

Noi non siamo cristiani, – essi dicono, – Cristo si è fermato a Eboli –. Cristiano vuol dire, nel loro linguaggio, uomo: e la frase proverbiale che ho sentito tante volte ripetere, nelle loro bocche non è forse nulla piú che l'espressione di uno sconsolato complesso di inferiorità. Noi non siamo cristiani, non siamo uomini, non siamo considerati come uomini, ma bestie, bestie da soma, e ancora meno che le bestie, i fruschi, i frusculicchi, che vivono la loro libera vita diabolica o angelica, perché noi dobbiamo invece subire il mondo dei cristiani, che sono di là dall'orizzonte, e sopportarne il peso e il confronto.

…Ma in questa terra oscura, senza peccato e senza redenzione, dove il male non è morale, ma è un dolore terrestre, che sta per sempre nelle cose, Cristo non è disceso. Cristo si è fermato a Eboli.

Here is my exceeding clunky (and abridged) translation:

We are not Christians, they say. Christ stopped at Eboli. In their language, “Christian” means “men”… what they often expressed in this phrase was an inconsolable sense of inferiority. We are not Christians, we are not men, we are not considered to be as men, but rather beats of burden – actually less than beasts, but rather only rustling sprites who live their lives between the diabolical and the angelic. We have to submit to the Christian world which … is beyond the horizon, to bear its weight and confront it.

But in this dark land, without sin and without redemption, where evil is not a moral but is rather an earthly pain present in everything… Christ did not come. Christ stopped at Eboli (a town closer to “civilization”).

Heavy stuff for 8am!

Art History

I can still identify many schools of artwork, many painters, styles. And I have a rather peculiar memory and fascination with the odd religious symbols embedded in early artwork. I was captivated by obscure details like a square halo, meaning that the holy person being portrayed was alive at the time the work was rendered; St. Lucy holding eyeballs; St. Agatha serving a platter of breasts; a bare-legged St. Roch. Tobias and his dog; and St. Jerome and the lion. Of course, I was delighted with the more grizzly and gruesome images. And I was so happy to learn the encoded messages and stories.

I made it a point to visit as many museums and churches as I could, particularly those sanctuaries that held “incorrupt” remains of saints, various relics (i.e. body parts) and other macabre symbols of devotion. There’s nothing quite like a mummified saint — “pace” Lenin.[1]

I can’t say I regret a moment spent on this arcane knowledge.

Diversity

I have already mentioned the Nigerians, the Honourable British, the Tunisian Berber women. I can also briefly mention some Vietnam vets, American ex-soldiers who languished in the city square, in the alleyways, in front of the bars: Haunted, belligerent, touchy, mercurial, and depressed. I did not speak with them, so “foreign” did they seem, so injured in spirit, but also so potentially dangerous.

There were also students from Communist China, all walking in tightly grouped clusters, led by an older handler. All dressed in identical grey outfits and shoes, all studiously avoiding any contact with other nationalities.

I recall a red-headed white American girl, who claimed association with the Puerto Rican Liberation Army, a radical organization at the time. What she was doing in Italy was obscure to me.

North Vietnamese students could be found posting lurid pictures of dead American soldiers captioned with slogans such as “Death to American Imperialism”.

A Hindi couple cooked me my first curry, which we devoured while sitting on the floor of their apartment.

There were bouncy, rich American girls, with blonde flouncy ponytails. There must have been American boys too, but I don’t remember any.

My Group

This was my posse:

• Kate — a white Australian woman who was in her 50s of 60s;
• To — a North Vietnamese student;
• Wasan — a Taiwanese student;
• Amanda — a white student from what was then called Rhodesia;
• Satar — a wealthy Libyan student.

The six of us would travel together by bus and train, visiting historical sites, museums, remote villages. We were an improbable group, often stared at when outside University towns. My companions were all wonderful and wonderfully unique.

I only kept in touch with Satar for, perhaps, another five years through shaky correspondence. Around the early 1980s I heard nothing further from him and suspect that his family may have run afoul of Gaddafi’s new government (Satar had left Italy rather suddenly, summoned home by his father). Or perhaps he simply got on with his life, married and settled down.

I do have one thing left from him. He gave me a beautiful hand-woven keffiyeh, the black and white variety, which I proudly own to this day. And I can still understand and speak a smattering of Arabic, thanks to his patient tutoring.

Being Alone

Not every day was a school day and not every evening and weekend was filled with social interactions. Early in my stay at the newer rooming house, Debra had some family crisis and had to return to the USA. I now had a room to myself. I was often alone. Lonely, but defiantly so.

And I had to eat.

With nowhere to cook and wanting to eat decent food from time to time, I decided to treat myself once every couple of weeks to a gourmet meal at a fancy restaurant.

Perugia stands on the top of a hill, and the restaurant was perched on the edge of the city, overlooking the plain lying between it and the town of Assisi. It was when looking over that plain I developed an interest in St. Francis of Assisi. A wealthy youth, he had been a soldier fighting on that plain and had been taken by Perugia as a prisoner of war. At some point he had an epiphany, renounced war in all its forms, gave away all his money and clothing. His family had an utter fit, and the town was split in their opinions of Francis’ actions. (He even had a medieval religious groupie: St. Clare. But that is another story.)

So, I would contemplate Francis while eating a lovely meal.

I was certainly incongruous. Eighteen years old, blonde, skinny, clearly not Italian. At the time I was dressing in what now is termed “hippy chic”, an expression and look not really known at the time. In warmer weather I often wore leather Indian sandals (the kind with one toe strap holding them in place), a purple or deep blue sari, a hand of Allah pendant, a heavy silver bracelet, a light gossamer scarf, and carried an odd canvas sewing bag, with large wooden handles in lieu of a purse. In colder months, I would don a battered suede and fur jacket, or a black Tunisian djellaba wool cloak. When it was very cold I wore my Libyan keffiyeh over an Austrian dull greyish-green woollen loden coat, the warmest coat I have ever owned. Footwear in the winter was usually a pair of wooden Dutch clogs with heavy knee-high woollen socks.

What is Hippy chic now was just “different” then. In the summer, gauzy and spare, like Haiku. In the winter, just peculiar.

And there I sat, alone at this fancy restaurant with crisp linen tablecloths and napkins, crystal glassware, bone china plates, silver cutlery, and a finger bowl ready to splash into. I would order a full meal, with all the courses, which would include the sherbet between the fish and meat dishes to “cleanse the palate”. Then a dessert followed by a “digestivo”.

What the waiting staff and fellow diners made of me, I cannot know. Me, well, I was hungry, defiant, wanting to project an air of mystery and confidence. Inside I was deeply lonely.

Still, despite bouts of deep isolation and loneliness, melancholy and a sense of aimless drifting, I completed my studies and finally boarded that final train home to Northern Italy. Halcyon days indeed, sandwiched between military high school and various post-University jobs.

To quote George Orwell:

Such, such were the joys.

[1]  pace (preposition): Derived from Latin, and first used in English in the 19c., it is the ablative singular of Latin pax ('peace'), and means 'with due deference to (a named person or authority); despite'.

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