"I wanted to ask you why you stopped at the Isle of Elba."
"It was to carry out an order from Captain Leclère. As he was dying he gave me a package to deliver to Marshal Bertrand there."
So that was Edmond Dantes’s excuse—a deathbed promise. Cadfael and I had no such noble focus. Did you know that Dumas decided to write The Count of Monte Cristo after visiting Elba himself? He was traveling with a nephew of Bonaparte’s, and as they sailed back from Elba he saw the other islands in the Tuscan Archipelago——Gorgona, Capraia, Pianosa, Montecristo, Giglio, and Giannutri——and vowed to write a novel in memory of the trip. So there must be something captivating going on there. . . .
I visited Elba during my heady days of travel with my friend the Benedictine monk Cadfael. We were visiting Tuscany, and I wanted to be a completist, so off to Elba we went, driving southwest from San Gimignano to the port of Piombino for the ferry to Portoferraio, the city of Napolean Bonaparte’s first exile.
Our first foray to visit the Emperor’s town residence--Palazzina dei Mulini, located in the highest part of Portoferraio between Fort Stella and Fort Falcone--was nearly thwarted by the port’s tiny stone streets, and the fact that there is no place to park. Being a New Yorker I thought I understood the meaning of those words, but I was close to weeping after circling through an eternity of narrow stone streets that wouldn’t allow us to get where we needed. Luckily, Cad is deeply unflappable, and an extremely skilled driver. He piloted the Micra onto sidewalks, performed the drive-backwards-up-an-entire-hilled-street maneuver, and coaxed the mighty Micra down a flight of stairs—all to outflank those one-way signs.
Cad won, as usual, and the Micra was finally parked. We bounded up to the Palazzina only to see “Chiuso,” those most dreaded of Italian letters. Undaunted, we took ourselves to the Emperor’s summer residence, Villa di San Martino, at 6 km from Portoferraio along the road to Marciana. The man was only on the island for a total of 10 months, but decorum at all times.
I am not an imperialist at heart, but I was jazzed to be walking through the exiled Bonaparte’s bedroom, and his study, and to look out where he surveyed the sea, when we finally got into his town residence the next day.
But what I remember most about Elba overall is color and sky: the pink of Bonaparte’s town residence under a huge, tropical blue sky. Later in the day we drove west, away from the towns, on a mountainous road above the sea. The sky there was huge, majestic, and humbling, and we drove into layers of grey and blue offset by the sun’s gold. Peter Gabriel was our soundtrack as we egg-and-darted along the rising road, going deeper and deeper into that space between sea and sky. I understood what could have made such an impression on Dumas.
It was September 2002 . . .
This trip had a very poignant timing. I got on a plane in New York on September 12, 2002, the day after the first anniversary of the attacks. It was still a sad, dark, heavy time, and unease all around, as we didn't know if there would be more murders a year after. But as we said, we have to keep moving, and so to the airport I went to start this trip.
We spent our first Elban evening in the hotel. The lobby was pleasant—-the white tile floors spoke to the beachiness of the location, and the décor was clean and modern. To the left of the bar was a baby grand piano. Cad plays by ear, and has a good tenor voice. He asked the manager if he could play for a bit, and he said yes. There were small clusters of guests scattered throughout the lobby, mostly German tourists.
Actually there are so many German visitors on Elba, and the language is so prevalent, that it is a little disorienting. “M.A., can we please go back to Italy?"
At the piano, Cad’s repertoire is easy listening on the sentimental side, but with a musician’s flair. I sat by his side as he sang Piano Man and She's Always a Woman and joined in for some harmonies on Thunder Road and Four Green Fields. He sang out, but it was not intrusive and we could hear the soft conversation buzz throughout. There was some sweet applause when the set ended. It was nice.
Ah, the drink break.
Refueled, Cad started playing again, noodling around a theme, then playing it straight out: Oh my gosh, it was America the Beautiful. I was stunned to hear the tune. I hadn’t been thinking at all about home, and that haunting melody can put a lump in my throat at the very best of times.
To keep from crying I tried to focus on Cad’s expressive phrasing, and somewhere in the second verse I heard myself adding the harmony. Cad modulated during a verse interlude, and we sang the last verse in a higher key, putting the “alabaster cities gleam/undimmed by human tears” into a stronger part of vocal ranges.
When the song ended, we realized that everyone in the room had stopped talking. I felt a little numb, very self-conscious, and a little embarrassed. How cheesy was this? Would we come across as obnoxious Americans?
There were several beats of complete, palpable, silence . . . and then the conversation buzz picked up again. A hug from the strangers in the room would not have felt more embracing.
Cad went to get us drinks, and we sat and drank, for quite a while.
The next day we left to go back to Rome.
1 comments:
chills! you gave me chills.
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