On March 29, Joe and I boarded the Saturnia for the 14-day trip (and 14 sleepless nights) to Naples. I don’t remember sleeping a wink the whole way. Either the slow-changing time zones screwed up my body clock, or was it the sound of water sluicing by the bulkhead? We were in a third-class cabin, below the waterline, shared with several others.
I became a member of a group of somnambulists who wandered—zombie-like—the decks and staterooms of the Saturnia from midnight until dawn. Many were children, who had apparently crept from the family cabin while their parents slept. Nobody spoke, we became nodding acquaintances as we came to recognize each other from our sleep wanderings night after night. My peregrinations inevitably led upwards from steerage to first class, where the only man on duty was the bartender, happy to have a customer at 4 a.m.
The Saturnia finally docked in Naples, home of pizza and the laundry line. Never in my life had I seen so much wash hanging out. The alley cats squalled all night, fighting or fornicating on the rooftops around our pensione.
We trained south to Paestum to visit the temples. This part of Italy was once part of Magna Graecia, one of the colonies established by Greek city states around 800 BC. Paestum was eventually abandoned because of malaria and incessant internecine quarrels. We got off the train in the middle of nowhere, just a little shack with the word PAESTUM on a sign. The day was hot and the land flat, with waist-high fields of artichokes in every direction. I had never seen artichokes growing before. These were baby ones, about halfway between a baseball and a golf ball, the size Italians relish.
We could see the temples in the distance above the artichokes, swimming in the super-heated air. They were not ivory white, but made of a kind of grayish-brown stone, all in perfect condition. We had the place to ourselves.
Those were magic moments, sprawled on the warm stones of the fully intact temples dedicated to Demeter and Poseidon. Butterflies fluttered about, and a myriad of insects pollinating the flowers. The inventors of democracy seemed to have only recently departed. In the distance the sea shimmered and beckoned. No one came to disturb the peace and tranquility we shared with 3,000 years of history.
We trained to Rome, and settled at the Pensione Forte, on via Margutta, near the Spanish Steps. We ate our meals at Taverna Margutta, where I discovered calves’ brains fried in butter. I was still tortured by the insomnia acquired aboard the Saturnia; as a consequence I managed to finish Swann’s Way.
Proust was Joe’s bible. He’d read the whole thing while he was in the army.
At Princeton he was known as “Rebel,” not just because he came from the Deep South: he kept a motorcycle hidden in a garage off campus, which he rode into New York to see Tennessee Williams’ plays. A star in the English department, his intellectual reputation made him a big man on campus, which was unheard of for someone who was not a top athlete.
In Peru he had said, “Johnny, you have just graduated from one of the finest universities in America, and you are illiterate.”
It was true. At Princeton I had concentrated on my political-science courses and had barely cracked a novel. He set me a rigorous reading course beginning with Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. I think Joe compared me to Mann’s hero, Hans Castorp, who goes up the mountain knowing very little, and comes back down a great deal wiser. This was followed by such classics as The Brothers Karamazov, Anna Karenina, and, his personal favorite, Lord Jim. I had been pushed in at the deep end and, to my astonishment, gobbled them up and begged for more. It was a pleasure I had been denying myself for years. We discussed these books on our endless tramps through the slums of Lima, late at night in the dives around the Plaza de Armas, and sprawled on the beach, dazed and refreshed from plunging beneath mammoth Pacific rollers. Along with the excitement and adventure of seeking our fortunes in the jungle, Peru for me was truly a monumental learning experience. All thanks to Joe.
At the American Express office near the Spanish Steps I received a letter from Sam with all kinds of tips on how to get to Kenya. Plane direct to Nairobi. By freighter via Suez. Around Cape Horn. But we had already made up our minds how we were going to travel: by motorcycle. We checked out the Italian models: Ducati. They looked fast but somehow untrustworthy. First we wanted to see more of Italy.
Every day we scanned the English-language newspapers for jobs to keep us going. In the Rome Daily American I spotted an ad that looked promising:
WANTED:
READER FOR A BLIND ENGLISH WRITER.
ROOM AND BOARD. TEL. 47146
I made the call. An English voice answered. Name: Jocelyn Lubbock. His elderly uncle needed a companion and reader. I said there was not just one, but two of us. Both Princeton graduates. All the better, he said.
We trained to La Spezia. We were met at the station by Jocelyn, a gray-haired gentleman about 40, nephew of Percy Lubbock, a distinguished man of letters. (Joe had never heard of him.) We could tell he was fairly desperate to find a reader for the old man, who was very demanding and had sent a series of mainly women readers packing back to England almost the day each of them arrived.
We had no idea what to expect. Shack or chateau?
The latter. Villa Medici was tucked away in an olive grove and perched on a promontory (Gli Scafari) overlooking the Golfo de La Spezia. Elena opened the door to high ceilings and marble floors. Jocelyn led the way upstairs to meet the great man. He was sunk in a wheelchair on the loggia, overlooking the sea, which he could hear and smell but no longer see. Our arrival perked him up. Mario pulled him up straight in the chair. Percy was drawn to Joe’s southern accent, and asked if he would read Tennessee Williams’ plays. Joe said he would do so with pleasure, and described his motorcycle rides to New York.
Preceded by cocktails, lunch was served al fresco. First course: baby artichokes! Followed by seafood pasta and strawberries. Strong coffee. Plenty of Italian wine. Mario was our bartender. He was also a fisherman. He caught those fish.
Percy: “Every Italian strawberry wishes it were a Kent strawberry.”
After lunch came the hour of the siesta. Mario wheeled Percy away, and Jocelyn showed us our room: two huge four-posters draped with mosquito netting, marble floors, views over the Golfo. We thought we’d hit paradise.
Our daily routine:
At 11 o’clock Mario wheeled Percy onto the loggia. For an hour or so I read from the pink, lightweight airmail edition of the London Times, which miraculously arrived early each morning. After that I used my newly acquired Italian to read from one of the Italian newspapers. We chatted about America and England and the literary figures he knew and admired or did not admire. He knew E.M. Forster when they both worked at a military hospital in Cairo in 1915, and Rupert Brooke. He was a friend of Henry James and Edith Wharton. Percy was a mine of literary gossip going back 50 years. James’ pocket watch and chain were produced for our inspection.
From perusing his shelves I gathered that his titles included The Craft of Fiction and Shades of Eton.
I came across an article in the paper that said that Aldous Huxley’s house in California had burned to the ground, with his archives and papers in it.
Percy positively rejoiced.
“Serves him right for writing such rubbish.”
Brave New World.
Reading was followed by pre-lunch drinks—Campari soda, gin and tonic, etc. Joe appeared from a swim in the sea, and Percy declared that he could smell the brine on his body. He clearly enjoyed the company of young men. Then another delicious pasta lunch from Elena’s kitchen, wheeled out by Mario on a trolley. Lunch was followed by the inevitable siesta, during which Joe and I headed down to the rocks. We had bought snorkels and flippers, and explored the waters around Gli Scafari.
At four in the afternoon Joe took over (T. Williams). This was the longest session. At seven cocktails were served, followed by dinner, maybe followed by a “settling” Scotch or brandy. After dinner another session. It was my turn again now. By ten o’clock the old boy was ready for bed. Mario answered the bell and wheeled our host away, prepared him for the night. Percy had a huge paunch, but his legs were weak from lack of use. Mario was strong, smiling and strong: he and Elena had a good deal there.
The next day our hours were reversed. Joe started off; then I took over, etc.
On this day in June, the day of my sister Susie’s debutante party in N.J., one week after Percy’s 82nd birthday, I find myself sitting in my bathing suit on a rock off a headland known as Gli Scafari in the Mediterranean. I have come here for 24 hours—one day and one night—and have brought the following items:
SLEEPING BAG
UNDERWEAR
AIR MATTRESS
20 CIGARETTES
BATHING SUIT
2 PACKS MATCHES
RUBBER PARKA
2 BALLPOINT PENS
SOCKS
THIS NOTEBOOK
TOWEL
SWISS ARMY KNIFE
SWEATER
MEDIHALER SPRAY
BLUE JEANS
WRISTWATCH
TURTLENECK SHIRT
FLASHLIGHT
T-SHIRT
CANVAS SHOES
LEATHER STRAP
I hand-paddled the air-filled rubber mattress (the English call it a “lilo”) with the above items packed in a plastic bag under my chin. It is three o’clock in the afternoon. I have been here 45 minutes.
This was Percy’s idea. During one of our reading sessions, I mentioned that I had kept a diary of our adventures in Peru, how much I enjoyed doing that, and was beginning to think about becoming a writer. He said that to test my resolve I should come out to this rocky islet, stay completely alone for 24 hours, and think, meditate, fast (I have brought neither food nor water), and write down whatever comes into my head.
The only thing between me and this broad, flat yellow rock is the “lilo,” my bed for the night. Very pleasant to be nearly naked and warm in the sun. Peace pervades me as I listen to the sound of the sea bumping and nudging the rocks beneath.
Joe will be reading in my place this evening. Now he is watching me from the rocks below Villa Medici. He is not waving or shouting, just gazing and wondering.
Joe desperately searches his heart and soul for meaning. He is troubled while I, on the other hand, must seem to him, in spite of my chaotic family history… fairly serene. Like a mole, he tunnels toward confrontation. He thrives on it; it is the one thing I do my best to avoid. It satisfies him, but it wearies me. Me, I’ve had enough of confrontation. Only two years separate us, but he is my teacher, and I am his first student. I am content to stay on the sidelines with my pen and notebook. He watches while I write it all down. If I don’t, the amazing experiences we have already shared in less than one year may get lost. Besides, writing brings peace. Sanity. Solitude and distance are what I need. They contribute a semblance of order to the whirlwind life we have been leading. Six months ago I was drifting down the upper Amazon on a balsa raft; now we are going to paddle up the Nile!
Hot now.
I have been swimming, and the body feels comfortable in the sun. With my knife I prized a handful of mussels (cozze in It.) from the rock. I wedged them open, one by one, slicing through the hinge, scraped out the still live animals and swallowed them whole.
The rocks here are jagged and sharp: I scratched my knee as I hauled myself out of the water. With this heavy yet predictable swell, you have to wait until it sweeps you up to a place that you can cling to, then clamber up on one of the ledges while the water recedes.
The taste of these mussels is not much different from the raw clams they serve at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station in New York, which is where this adventure got started.
Soon it will be the cocktail hour at the villa, our favorite hour to be with Percy, with dinner served on the loggia. But I am content here. Peaceful with the vibrant murmuring and thumping of the sea as it claws and sucks at the rocks.
Smoked one cigarette. Good taste after the salty swim.
We have been looking for what Percy calls the “Eton fish,” a black and blue denizen that comes out only at night. So far no sightings, even though we swim with lights.
My coming to spend a few hours in complete solitude on this rock was also inspired by a book I have just read: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. It’s a young man’s book. This book is remarkable in many ways, and will require more than one reading. I was struck by the extraordinary control the Samanas exert over their bodies. The soul gains control over body and senses. Indeed, the Samanas abhor the sensual world. Such mind-over-body control is unknown in the Western world.
The lesson Siddhartha learned is that wisdom cannot be obtained from another: it must spring from personal experience. Like from this rock.
But Joe and I have a lot to learn from each other. We have already—mostly I from him. We complement each other. A good traveling companion is hard to find. Without him I would never have attempted this epic voyage that awaits us.
The sun is going down, faster now. No hunger or thirst. Not yet. Just boredom.
Bugs are crawling all over this rock, perhaps attracted by the shattered mussel shells, which I now scrape into the sea. The ones with wings are biting—sent to try our patience, as Percy would say.
The Germans in their camping ground are having supper. That’s where the lovely Sonia dwells, with her mother, in a tent.
We watched the ocean and sky together,
Under the roof of blue Italian weather.
SHELLEY
Ah, the sun has momentarily reappeared from beneath a cloud before bidding goodnight. The bay, even the German camp, and especially Tellaro are all beautiful now.
I was glad to read Joe’s poetry last night, even though I couldn’t fathom it. Delicacy infringed upon by chaos. When did delicacy ever win against chaos? Only when reinforced by determination. In Joe, delicacy and chaos may have become allies, maybe.
I hope Susie’s party will be a grand success. I hope my unhappy sister will find a man to take her away. The divorce changed our lives forever and she, being the youngest, the only one still at home, suffered the most when the earth shook, and all that she had thought secure started crumbling beneath her.
The last bathers are leaving the rocks across the cove. I alone am left. Not much of a sunset—choked off by clouds. These bugs are eating me alive. Some raindrops on my arm—could be a bad night ahead.
I am reminded by this rain, the biting bugs, and this orange parka of my first night on the Huallaga River in Peru. Miserable night that (in December), alone on a parked balsa while Juan and Ossorio visited an Indian village in the jungle. I stayed behind with my .38 revolver to guard the cargo (beer). That river trip seems very clear to me now. Seven days on the Huallaga from Tingo María to Bellavista.
Now we are on the Italian shore, lapped by this magical sea of a hundred blue hues. My quarters have been upgraded from muddy Amazonian riverbank to Italian villa. And we are planning a trip across Africa! God, we are moving fast! Not too fast, and not too haphazardly, I hope. The voyage ahead already seems engraved in stone. A monumental fate we cannot avoid.
One thing about the divorce: my mother and father still love us passionately and are riddled with guilt over the misery they have caused.
“So you and Joe want to go to South America and buy a coffee plantation in the Peruvian jungle (while all your friends are getting jobs in banks or business or going to law school and getting married)? What a great idea!”
“And now you want to cross Africa by motorcycle. Sure! That’s fine!”
They feel too guilty to say no. They’re afraid I’d run away. Now they’re worried I won’t come back.
More drizzle. Must shield this notebook with the sleeve of my shirt.
Feeling alone and isolated here. Almost as much as on the Huallaga, which I now look back on as a turning point in my life. That river made me an explorer; this rock will make a writer of me, maybe. Joe and Percy are on the loggia. Joe has turned up the Victrola and is shouting that Elena has prepared calamari and spaghetti alle vongole—all from Mario’s boat and my favorites. Joe is taunting me to come back and shouts that Percy says no mosquito ever wrote a novel.
Dark now (writing by flashlight). The lighthouse has begun its flickering rounds. Three flashes in five seconds, then dark for eight seconds. Approx. four revolutions per minute. As the sea quiets, the regular thumps subside: what remains is the monotonous washing.
The fishing boats are heading out for the night. Putt-putt-putt they go as their lights search the depths. Four cigarettes gone. Many clouds. Looks like rain. I have all my clothes on and feel ready to face the night. Ugh! What I took to be flakes of scab on my finger, where I cut it yesterday, when examined under flashlight turn out to be a colony of tiny bugs chewing on the wound and gulping my blood.
Cold and damp now.
Now the lights have come on. At Porto Venere across the bay, at Tellaro, in the house, and in the German camp where Sonia will be bedding down beside her protective mother.
The bug brigade have sent in their heavy bombers. The shaft of my flashlight catches them like German aircraft in searchlights during the Battle of Britain. Peaceful now. I am not tired and do not expect much sleep tonight.
Goodnight, sun. You are gone. You are shining in other lands and on other people. I hope you will shine on my sister.
I follow the headlights of cars. Difficult to see now, except by flashlight, which attracts more bugs. I know what the people I left behind are doing. Will they ever find out what I am doing? Maybe through this notebook. Maybe.
Good night. Bonne nuit. Buenas noches. Buona notte.
My eyes must be deceiving me. My Peruvian poncho seems to be giving off some green light.
Good night!
Wide awake and up at 4:15 a.m.—already bright but approaching dark clouds portend rain. Someone just went off to work on his motorcycle. Must be the milkman.
Slept quite well—as well as I could in a sleeping bag. Both shoulders sore. Fishing boats putt-putting out for a day’s work.
No hunger or thirst yet. Just a hollow feeling in the stomach.
Slept again from five until eight. Early morning snoozes are the best. Woke up stiff in all my joints, plus a headache.
Went for a swim and did some loosening-up exercises. Better now.
Morning heavily clouded—drab and dreary and made worse by the sound of bulldozers working on the road. Joe has been watching through field glasses.
I have learned something new about this rugged pile of rocks. There is an underwater tunnel beneath it, right under where I am sitting now. Down there the water pulses back and forth with each successive wave. But when the waves meet in the middle, the shudder from the impact can be felt all through the rock.
It’s odd to see Joe or Elena waving from the house. They seem to have drifted away. Or maybe it’s me who’s done the drifting. He who returns from a solitary venture is not the same man who left. You can’t stick your foot into the same river twice, and so forth.
Have these hours on the rock taught me anything? I do want to go on experimenting with fasting and solitude. Africa. The hours have passed quickly. A few twinges of boredom. Nothing like solitude and empty time to fill the pages.
I wonder how Susie’s party went last night. The family wanted big brother to be there, to escort her. I feel guilty I did not.
Time to leave. Sea rougher. It looks like a challenge to get off this rock and keep these pages dry.