Without Reservations_ The Travels of an Independent Woman - Alice Steinbach [100]
Since Hal and I had agreed to meet at the square—the Piazza del Duomo—I headed in that direction. The fresco Hal was looking for was inside the large cathedral on the west side of the piazza.
I was about to climb the steps leading to the cathedral’s entrance when I saw Hal. He was standing at the opposite side of the piazza, leafing through a book. The sight of him in his familiar brown tweed jacket, his red hair shooting off sparks in the sun, made me smile. I waved. He didn’t seem to see me.
As I started to walk back down the steps to cross the square I heard the music. It was the same sound of recorders I’d heard earlier. Hauntingly beautiful, the music reminded me of Andean folk music, sad and delicate, filled with longing. I spotted four men standing at the entrance to a street; they were playing different-sized wooden pipes. The limpid sounds floated through the piazza, each note hanging in the air like a memory of home.
As I listened, a strange, mixed-up feeling came over me. Part of it had to do with standing in a small Tuscan hill town waving—waving good-bye, really—to a man I liked and admired. But another part was about the past, about wanting to wave good-bye to my father. Not the kind of good-bye that was forever, but the kind I waved to Mother when I left on the bus for Girl Scout camp or to Ducky Harris when we parted after walking home from school.
I thought of all the years I’d spent trying to piece together a picture of my father’s face. Now, for the first time, I wished he could see me, see what I looked like, see who I was.
I wanted to say: This is me, Dad. This is your little girl grown into a woman. And I’m standing here far from home, alive and excited and thinking of you.
Instead, I said to the red-haired man running up the steps of the Duomo toward me, “I was wondering if you saw me. I’ve been waiting for you.”
16
PAST PERFECT
Dear Alice,
I think it was Jung who pointed out there is a big difference between falling and diving. At the beginning of this trip I was falling, I think; a figure at the mercy of gravity and whatever passing object I could grab on the way down. Like maps or friendly cafés or people who spoke English. Now, even though my form is far from perfect, I am better able to dive into new waters, leaving behind barely a splash as I enter.
Love, Alice
It was to Asolo, a Renaissance town perched high in the green foothills of the Italian Dolomites, that Freya Stark came to live out the end of her life. And it was to Asolo that I had come to pay my respects to Dame Freya and to end my trip.
It seemed the right thing to do, to spend the last days of my journey with a woman who had become my travel companion. Over the months I often had relied on her spirit to guide me when I hesitated, uncertain of the way. Usually it was her idealism and desire to understand that inspired me. But Freya also made me laugh. Sometimes out loud. Who else could offer up, after writing with elegance and insight about the culture and people of Baghdad, an observation such as this:
“I suppose that, after the passion of love, water rights have caused more trouble than anything else to the human species.”
The irony was that had I come to Asolo just seven months earlier I might have run into her. Indeed I might have seen Freya at the very villa where I was staying; she was said to occasionally take dinner there. But just as I was beginning my trip in Paris, Freya was ending her lifelong journey. She died in her beloved Asolo at the age of 100 and was buried in the local graveyard. In Arabian robes, so the story goes.
No wonder she loved this village, I thought, as I sat drinking espresso in Piazza Garibaldi, the central square