by Marianne Rogoff
After all day and all night of buses, moving walkways, escalators, planes, and trains I woke up alone in a big bed in Arezzo, strange because I was not traveling alone. I unpacked my rain hoodie to stroll the wet grounds of the inn and found my guy already at breakfast, the cook Gabriela predicting bigger storms as dark clouds barreled through a drizzling blue-gray sky.
“What’s that say on her ass?” Jeremy asked, hunched over his plate of good-looking eggs. He pointed at the backside of Gabriela’s slouchy sweats: in dazzling rhinestones, the word RENAISSANCE.
“What’s that mean? Her ass is reborn?”
I pondered possible meanings. “Her past is behind her?”
Gabriela came close to pour our coffees, and her rhinestone signage — or my dumb comment — must have conjured up the past because suddenly Jeremy started telling me how last time he was in Italy, he was in Venice with a diamond ring, two years ago.
“Can you picture me down on one knee?”
“Hmm.” Is this something I might want from him?
“Picture the look on the girl’s face when I ask her to marry me. Like a deer in headlights.”
“Why wouldn’t she marry you?”
“I’m too old.”
“Your past was too much with you!”
Jeremy stared at me. He was older than me but not by that much.
“I just left her there,” he recalled, “fired up the Ducati and drove away.”
“Left her behind?”
“Ha ha!”
Finally, the man laughed at one of my jokes. But I didn’t need to know any of this. I wanted to start the morning over, for the trip to be about me and him, our future, or at least our present.
I said, “What if we both could just be, here now, no regrets, no expectations?”
I proposed this concept to this man who I liked very much. But he seemed not to notice I said anything as he mopped the last of his egg yolk with toast and Gabriela delivered my portion of fresh-baked bread, local jam, and pat of butter on the smallest, most delicate, blue-glass dish.
“RENAISSANCE? What’s that about?” Jeremy asked the waitress.
“We are in Italy! Have you never heard of Michelangelo?”
I was still waiting for my own good-looking eggs to arrive when Jeremy announced that he was full and wanted to walk to town in search of camera batteries. I wanted to stay and eat my breakfast then venture forth with my sketchbook and colored pencils into the light, supposed to be super-special on Tuscany’s green rolling hills, regardless of weather. We agreed to part ways and I was aware of how much more at ease I felt once he left.
A little time apart, good, we’ll recalibrate, settle in to where we are.
Dove siamo? Where are we?
Starting over, punto e accapo: me here with Jeremy not Lee, my dearly beloved ex-husband; Jeremy revisiting the country of his recently rejected marriage proposal. We’d been dating for over a year, the connection loose, no strings, him away working in another state half the time, solving problems for the U.S. Department of Defense, me tied to the academic calendar, teaching college students how to read and write and research and reflect.
I studied the Italian phrasebook as I dipped bread in the yolk.
Vuoi essere il mio ragazzo? Would you like to be my boyfriend?
I stopped at the room to get my sketchbook and leave Jeremy a note: See you around the pool! And then I was the only one up there, on a hill in the vineyard, except one worker on his tractor moving slowly row by row through the vines. Non ci posso credere, I can’t believe it. Where is everybody? Abundant birdlife, warm breeze rustling feathers in the grayness, grapes hanging heavy amongst the bright green leaves. Just be. I settled my tall healthy body on a very comfortable chaise longue and drew lotus mandalas then sketched the outlines of the exceptionally beautiful, multi-green landscape, swatting gnats in the misty glare, noting that I was no Michelangelo, no Leonardo, not even as good as the frazzled amico hawking velvet Jesus at the airport yesterday. I took snapshots of my bare feet in the lush scenery, which made me a little bit happy, though I’d thought by now Jeremy would have found my note and made his way up the hill to join me here in this most-romantic scene.
I returned to the room and found him napping. Okay, yesterday was a long travel day and the time zone was new. My turn to walk to town and I wandered, excited to be in Italy at last, a place where I had never been.
Back at the Inn, no boyfriend in sight, I changed clothes for dinner and found Jeremy already in the dining room, Gabriela’s table settings extravagantly strewn with rose petals, red crystal goblets, red glass dishes, lit candles on every surface.
I splashed the tasty red Montepulciano around in my mouth. “The wine is perfection, the food is the best. Sono inamorata! I am in love!”
“Bene,” Jeremy said.
I directed a new Italian phrase his way. “Mi rendi felice. You make me happy,” I told him, unsure if that was true, and then Gabriela was suddenly at my elbow with carbonara, believing all the love was for her.
“Si, bella bella!”
I laughed.
I could love this man if everything that needed to be changed about him could change. Or was it me who needed to change, for him to feel that way about me?
We ate with gusto then lingered in the candlelit room and chatted with a family of travelers at the next table, consuming Gabriela’s handmade limoncello and the thinnest cookies while a storm picked up in the dark outside. We could hear leaves being pulled from grapevines, scattering down the hillside.
Retreating to our room, we undressed each other slowly in the wild warm night as the gigantic cherry tree outside the window burst into bloom and the wind blew petals through the open window. Jeremy stroked my nakedness and I stroked his; experts at orgasms we gave them to each other, then slept, to dream.
Mi manchi. I miss you, I whispered to the air. Who did I miss? My soulmate ex, other lovers, this unreachable man in the bed beside me?
Next morning I paused to notice the particular purple of wine grapes in June, shades of gray in the marching rainclouds, and so it was my fault that we missed the train to Florence. Jeremy was not happy. In Arezzo, the main piazza was under construction and on that day museums were closed.
“What else is there?” Jeremy wondered.
“Voi vi innamorate?”
“Kill ourselves?”
“Fall in love!”
He did not react.
We caught a bus to Siena and visited the Torture Museum: draw-and-quarter, chastity belts, guillotines.
And we were happy there.
We managed to catch the train to Florence next morning. Crowds and tour groups, school field trips, hordes, and couples converged there with us on the longest line in the world, where now we waited under an umbrella for an hour, then two, before the rope dropped to grant us entrance to the famous museum.
Was it, after all, the statue of David I came all this way to fall in love with: Perfect Man, “Renaissance interpretation of the ancient Greek theme of standing heroic male nudes.”
I made my way step by step as on a wedding march toward the arched gallery space, through the long wide corridor where Michelangelo’s famous Prisoner figures are ever-emerging, breaking free of the huge blocks of white marble that contain them.
And David is SPLENDID! Larger than life! Better than expected!
The domed setting enhances his splendor: 17 feet tall, built of smooth white Carrara marble, exquisite muscles in the legs and torso. His head and hands are oversized because he was made originally to stand on a cathedral roof, to be viewed from below. According to interpreters, David’s stance, “a relaxed contrapposto pose, contrasts with the tense expression on his face and represents the moment between conscious choice and conscious action.”
É un piacere conoscerti! Nice to meet you!
Jeremy says, “I don’t get Art.”
I assume the contrapposto pose, poised between conscious choice and conscious action as I realize, yes, this is why I’m in Italy: to meet David, make peace with my ex, and accept the fact that Jeremy will never love me. I’m on my own in the world, and the world is full of wonders. (Cue Louis Armstrong.)
“Cio che ora? What now?” I ask.
Jeremy says, “If we hurry we can be in Arezzo in time for Gabriela’s risotto. She claims it’s the best in the world.”
“Bene, sono affamato. Good, I’m hungry!”
Marianne Rogoff’s travel stories have appeared in The Best Travel Writing and The Best Women’s Travel Writing, among others. She is the author of the memoir Silvie’s Life and the story collection Love Is Blind in One Eye, with six of those stories nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
After the Art 