I step off the
plane into Rome, and the first indication that I am really, truly in another
country is the announcement happening over the PA system—not in English. I am
only partially awake; I didn’t sleep much on the plane, and while it’s 9:30 in
the morning here, my body tells me it’s 3:30 a.m.
I drag myself
to attention as we collect our bags, as I change my dollars to euros, and by
the time we reach the rental car counter, I’m coherent enough to test my
Italian a little, trying to understand Michelle’s conversation with the man at
the counter. They both use a mix of English and Italian, so I’m able to follow
along as he asks if we’ve been here before (Michelle has), if we all speak
Italian (I understood what he asked, which bodes well), and where we’re going
on our trip. Michelle explains our route, and his face lights up.
“Italian tour,”
he says in English, looking past Michelle at me and Petra, standing with the
bags. “Molto buono! Italian tour!”
Michelle turns
to grin at us as well. “I told you—this will be your tasting tour of Italy.”
Michelle gets
the keys, and the man tells us the stall number our car is in. It’s brand new,
compact, and a stick shift.
“Automatic cars
are pretty much only for the old and disabled here,” Michelle explains. I
haven’t driven stick since I was 18, but I suddenly want to practice again.
Just in case I ever get to come back here and rent a car myself.
We manage to
squeeze our luggage into the hatchback, and then attempt to escape the cramped,
low-ceilinged garage. We pass Fiats, Puegots, Alpha Romeos, VWs. Everything is
tiny compared the Ford F150s, Suburbans, and even the mini-vans I’m used to
seeing.
We follow a
trail of blue and white signs that teach me my first new word: Uscita.
Exit. We emerge onto a busy street in what could be any modern city, to my eyes,
but Michelle knows better.
“Look,” she
says, pointing to the people on the sidewalk. “Puffy coats. Italians in their
puffy coats—always, doesn’t matter what the temperature is.”
Sure enough, in
spite of the weather being in the 70s this week, everyone is wearing winter
coats. The coats we can see are almost all black, and sewn in two-inch horizontal
stripes, making small puffy ridges.
“It’s a thing,”
Michelle assures us. “You’re going to see them everywhere.”
We head onto
the autostrada, the highway, with Petra navigating. Michelle has come prepared
with a map and GPS, but she explains to us that in Italy, you really just need
to follow the signs toward a major city in the general direction of where you
want to go, and it will put you on the right road. We are headed first for Monte
Cassino, south-east of Rome.
There are lots
of trees here, even in the city. Some look like we’re used to, but others look
like giant Bonsai trees, their trunks rising up and their branches spreading
out at the top, or like something you might see in a documentary about Africa.
We pass under
an overpass with “BLACK HAND” spray painted on it. We’re in a semi-industrial
area, yet there are tiny personal vineyards dotting the area, behind little
houses, down the edges of hills, right next to the main road. Everything is
growing here, even though it’s only the first week of April—grass, trees,
vines, weeds, everything.
We move south
of Rome. The hills wrap and fold around each other, villages clustered on the
peaks. Buildings huddle on the hilltops, old and new in a jumble of walls and
roofs and clotheslines and crenellations. Sun breaks through the clouds,
beaming in golden shafts on the mountainsides, lighting up cliffs, peaks, orange
roofs and pink walls.
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| Pictures courtesy of Petra Laster Photography |
The tallest
peaks stretch up into the clouds, which are puffy white and gray mountains in
their own right. These are the southern Appenines, and they remind us of the
Rocky Mountains. There are even windmills across the top of one, just like I
saw the last time I drove through the Rockies.
We make it to
Monte Cassino. We’ve seen two ambulances already, and I’m captured by their
sound and my need to capture and remember it. I grab my notebook and write
notes, counting the rhythm in my dance-teacher voice: “quick-quick-quick slow,
quick-quick-quick slow.” The sound always comes up suddenly, the notes shifting
drastically as it passes.
Every corner here
boasts a pizzeria. We pass a pink-tiled automobile diagnosticó—walls,
ceiling, floor, everything pink. The men inside have the same oil-stained hands
as mechanics back home. Balconies are everywhere, all shapes and sizes, and all
covered in potted gardens.
We start up the
mountain toward Monte Cassino abbey. The abbey was bombed horribly during WWII
when Allied soldiers thought German soldiers were hiding in it, but it turned
out the soldiers were in the hills around it, and after it was bombed they hid
more effectively in the rubble. The abbey was rebuilt after the war.
The switchbacks
are steep, and there’s almost no shoulder on most of it. We pass men on bikes,
pedaling their way up these brutal switchback.
I am less
interested in the bombing of the abbey than in the building of it. This
mountain is steep, rocky, and so, so high—I can’t comprehend deciding, without
the use of modern machinery, to tackle such a project. Even getting to the
abbey must have been prohibitively difficult, let alone getting building
materials to the site. What if those men toiling up the hill on bikes had been,
instead, carrying loads of goods up to the abbey? What if I had to drive an ox
cart up this mountain—without the benefit of paved roads? This abbey, in fact,
was built by St. Benedict on the site of an ancient temple of Jupiter, and
after he destroyed the altar of Apollo which had been set there. People trekked
to the top of this mountain to build here as early as the 7th
century B.C.
We reach the
top and park in a lot just below the abbey. We are high enough for my breath to
come harder as we walk up to the abbey. We’re early for our tour, but the lady
at the information desk tells us we are welcome to walk around on our own until
then.
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| Pictures courtesy of Petra Laster Photography |
The abbey is
huge and open, with little green courtyards around a big one covered in
flagstones.
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| Pictures courtesy of Petra Laster Photography |
Two white doves walk on the grass near a small fountain in one of
the hedged green courtyards, a symbol of perfect serenity.
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| Pictures courtesy of Petra Laster Photography |
Arched balconies
lead off the big flagstoned courtyard, looking out over the valley. I lean
against the balcony rail, and wind tumbles my hair around my face.
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| Pictures courtesy of Petra Laster Photography |
On the other
side of a stone wall from the parking lot, a neat-rowed vineyard goes down off
the side of the mountain, running out to a far older, crumbling wall that runs
to a cliff edge. This place would have been largely self-sustaining once. How
often would people have traveled up or down the mountain from the city at the
base? What types of supplies would they have needed?
The dedication
of men to long-term projects has always amazed me. In our world of instant
gratification and quick results, how would you motivate someone to dedicate his
life to a building that would not be completed in his lifetime? But go back
only a few hundred years, and that was simply the way things were done.
I am fascinated
by the doors here. Every door is different—huge arches of plain dark wood,
rectangles split into rectangles split into rectangles, twisted curls of
ironwork, plates of cast bronze, engravings in Latin, elaborate carvings of
saints. I want to enter every doorway, but especially the one with the
ironworked X’s across it that leads down into what looks like a much older
section of the abbey. The crypt, perhaps?
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| This door leads into St. Benedict's cell. Pictures courtesy of Petra Laster Photography |
We move around
a group of young priests on a guided tour, go up the extra-wide steps between
the statues of St. Benedict and his sister St. Scholastica to reach the upper
courtyard before the chapel. Statues line the walls, some saints, but more
kings and dukes, financial sponsors of the abbey’s past.
The chapel is
huge. Marble is everywhere, cloudy gray, mottled green, pure white, burnt
orange, goldenrod yellow, black with white swirls, some that looks like granite
put under a magnifying glass so the differing color patches are the size of my
hand. The marble is inlaid in circles, hearts, fleur de lis. Columns are made
of two colors twisted like a unicorn’s horn. Every surface is embellished,
through inlays or relief carvings. Candles nearly as tall as I am stretch
toward the vaulted ceiling atop the altar at the front of the room.
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| Pictures courtesy of Petra Laster Photography |
Two priests and
a nun go down an almost hidden set of stairs and through a little door under
the altar stand. They begin to sing, their voices echoing through the
near-empty sanctuary. It fits, here, in this place, like there ought always be
singing, a capella and not always on key, but no one caring because it is not a
performance.
My lack of
sleep is catching up with me. I’m a little lightheaded, and I can hardly take
in the beauty of this place, from the mountains surrounding us to the whorls of
the ornately carved wooden choir seats at the front of the chapel. And when we
take our official tour, that overwhelm becomes even more intense. We go down
into the old section of the abbey, the part that survived the bombing. We
descend between walls that have lasted centuries to visit the cell of St.
Benedict. We climb the steps in the passage I’d peered down so longingly
earlier, and the walls are set with artifacts recovered by archeologists after
the bombing. Bits of carved inscriptions in Latin, jagged pieces of marble with
medieval Italian words in red ink that still maintain their color, a statue of
a lion, a perfectly carved human foot.
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| Pictures courtesy of Petra Laster Photography |
Hundreds of
years of art, of religion, of dedication, of life, destroyed on the chance it
might have been harboring enemy soldiers.
I care more
about the bombing now.
At the end of
our tour, the guide says the priests are preparing for vespers. We go to the
chapel and sit, wanting to hear them sing. Gregorian chant in this place feels
like it would be more beauty than my soul could handle.
Suddenly the
dim chapel is flooded with a warm orange light, bright as though someone
flicked a switch. The golden Easter candle shines before the brilliant
gold-leafed altar.
It’s the
sun—the setting sun has come through the clouds and is shining through the
orange windows at the back of the chapel.
The bells begin
to chime, and I hurry to open my phone’s recorder. I want to remember their
deep voices, the rhythm of their call.
The priests
don’t come, and thunder booms. We’ve been hearing it coming, could see the
clouds across the valley earlier, but now it is here. We walk out through the
carved wooden doors of the chapel and thunder breaks against the stones of the
abbey, while fat drops splat against my head and bounce on the stones of the
courtyard.
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| Pictures courtesy of Petra Laster Photography |
It smells of new life, fresh and wild and birthing possibilities. This
mountain, the foundational stones of this abbey, have broken more thunderstorms
than I can imagine, and still I feel as if, with this storm, everything is new.
Or maybe I am new.
As we drive
down the steep switchbacks away from the abbey, the rain pauses, and a double
rainbow stretches between the mountains.
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| Pictures courtesy of Petra Laster Photography |
