I'm having a quiet breakfast that reminds me of nasty cardboards I've eaten and paid for in the past.
Maria enters the room and motions to the waitress and they both come to my table, speaking like I understand a word of Italian beyond buon giorno and grazie. What did I do now, I ask myself.
I catch the word "forte." Maria points at my coffee cup, the tone of the sentence ends with something that sounds like a question mark.
"Yes, very forte," I reply, thanking the gods in my elementary days who gave me an idea that if I understand the Latin or Roman roots of words, I'll be fine.
My day starts with the lady in the kitchen asking me if I want Italian coffee or American coffee. I choose the latter.
Indeed, it was forte. Forte enough to awaken dead elephants and prompt them to copulate. I stop the thought, not wanting to think if they should have skeletal baby elephants or real baby elephants that we slather with the word cute in zoos.
I got to Palermo under yesterday's chilly morning rain. I got off the bus dragging my sunken spirit and almost soddy luggage through several blocks, trying to find the bed and breakfast that turned out not to have a sign.
I have wisened up a bit after last week's six days of maps and walks and meetings. Via Lincoln, 160. My hands are freezing and not even my pockets could warm them. There's no refuge from the cold. This is the industrial-commercial part of the city, I guessed, that's why it's cheap. Well, Europe-cheap, Asia-expensive.
I find the bed and breakfast. A woman named Maria answers the buzz and her voice sounded that she expected me when I said my name.
I was shown a room. Agata, English. Here. Wait.
Agata walks in half an hour later to tell me the rules of the house. Breakfast served from 7 to 10. No smoking indoors. Turn everything off before you leave. Here's my name and number. Call me if you need anything. I think she's a neighbor who just wants to help.
She then helps me find a place to stay in Corleone, and how to get there. I have to go to the bus station and get their schedule.
I venture out and my heart sank some more than it did when I first heard the news before leaving Belgium. Rains to hit Palermo. Flights may be cancelled.
With the mercury, my adventurous spirit fell. The whole island seems unfriendly, wanting to spit me out, to send me back to warm Asia.
I walk to an old church where cameras are forbidden. Even that is cold.
I got hungry and realized that aside from the salty biscuits served by Alitalia, I've eaten nothing else. I duck inside a Mediterranean deli and promptly felt forlorn not knowing how to order.
I wait at the sideline and when someone ordered something that looked edible and exciting to me, I motioned to the waiter that I wanted one, too. With my thumb I said it's to go. He looked grateful enough that I have solved the problem of serving me, for both of us.
I walk to the fridge and got a bottle of Coke, thankful that the language on the plastic bottle is not in Italian. I pay and leave.
It's 5PM but my spirit already feels like midnight. Physically, I'm inviting fever. I eat in my room.
I turn the heater on, trying to summon Dante and his inferno. No dice. Hades must be cold, not hot, I think. For how can anything be gleeful in freezing weather such as this?
I now understand Frank McCourt and his description of Limerick and his childhood.
I wake up at 2AM. I always keep waking up at 2AM since I hit Europe. Then I do the math. 2AM here is 7AM in my smoldering Asia. I pray for the cold weather to pass, read for two hours, then slept some more.
I wake up to the tinkering in the kitchen. I can't waste my day in bed, I think, no matter how warm and inviting.
I don a light blue t-shirt, a red sweater on top of that, and cover it all with my black whateveryoucall it thing, sweater.
Then I realize I'm not wearing a bra.
Fuck everything that moves, my mind says. HU KERS? Even da ker bears don't ker. Who would notice under three layers of thick clothes?
"There was only one woman who burned her bra in a protest in the 70s, but the whole world thought all women in Sweden threw out theirs to make huge bonfires all over the country," Marie told me once. She's Swedish and was my training supervisor when I was in Stockholm years ago.
I smile at the recollection. Yes, blame the media. Or the properly shocked and stupidly conservative world of the past.
Maria makes the server work the coffee machine to churn out something more proper, perhaps more American.
I finish a cup to help down the bits of cardboard that passed for breakfast. I ask for a second cup.
I step out of the building and see something that lifts my spirit. A cactus.
Even in this cold, the cactus survives. And thrives.
So will I, so will I.
So will my dream of seeing Corleone. It's just a bus ride away now.
Hapi tots, hapi tots. Warm tots. Warm tots.
