This is the story of Montalcino. I have never told this story to anybody, not even myself. I remember it often, but I rarely recall it. There are many details that have been lost to time, to injury, to my own sense of misremembering and childish naïveté. That's all okay now because it's time I told this story.
It comes in two parts and I will tell you that neither part has a happy ending. Watch him carefully, for him there is never a happy ending. Watch closely and listen. Please, listen. Don't make the mistakes he did.
In September of 2006, I had left the US to visit Italy in true tourist fashion. I had a camera, a suitcase, sunglasses. I just needed a wide-brimmed hat, a fanny pack, and a floral button-down. Years later in Brisbane I would learn to blend into the background when visiting a foreign city. For now, though, I was still young. I wanted to see things.
I went to Venice, to Pisa, to Rome. The cities were beautiful and the country was even more. I took hundreds of pictures in Venice and Pisa. I took none in Rome. I saw nothing in Rome. My eyes were open and accepting the reflections of light, but all I can remember is the airport, boarding, flying away, waking up half a day later in Atlanta. I was an empty shell of my former self and that's when I started drinking.
I now force myself to go back over the events of those weeks. I want to brush past them. I want to let you know that something happened, but not actually tell you what transpired. I hate myself for that.
On the drive from Pisa to Roma, I took the country roads and saw the country sites. For all of the images that exist of beautiful places in cities, there are none that can compare to the beauties of the country. This is true in Japan, in China, in France or Brazil. Perhaps not so in Canada. But maybe there.
My plan was to spend one week around Venice, a week in Pisa, two weeks in Rome. Every day, I would actively do something, unlike the other vacations and excursions I had previously taken, which usually meant relaxing by the pool and ordering dinner. The plan was solid, until...
I had never heard of Montalcino until I drove through it. I stopped for lunch at a cafe--I had coffee, much-needed after the several hours of driving and even more to come. Montalcino is wine country and I have never had an interest in wine beyond the very occasional glass (and I don't care to know the difference between a Cab and a Zin and a who-cares-what-else).
The city was pretty, but not very interesting to the me of 2006--until I saw the fortress. Montalcino is a town on a hill. At the top of the hill is a fortress and I love fortresses (see the notes from my trip to Alcatraz). I had to see the fortress and that was my priority right after lunch.
I stopped at that cafe, I sat down. I was hungry, needed caffeine, and wanted as much information about that fortress as possible.
I saw her. Details can't describe her the way I saw her--and that memory belongs to me. It is one thing I will never give up and it will always be mine and mine alone. Suffice it to say that she was beautiful. The language barrier, however, makes for a world of loneliness. I had been used to it over the past two weeks, communicating with strangers and ordering food by consulting a pocket dictionary. That cursed language barrier.
As hungry as I was, I only ordered coffee so that I didn't sound like an idiot fumbling my way through an order in what broken Italian I could manage. I ordered coffee with a smile--a genuine happiness I wouldn't feel again for several years.
"Anything else?" she asked in accented English.
And the barrier was broken. I found out later that Montalcino is a tourist city for wine types. Most of the cafes, hotels, and bars are prepared for tourists. They speak English and usually pretty well.
I didn't make it to Rome until the day of my flight. I stayed in Montalcino for two weeks, I had lunch at the same cafe every day. I saw the fortress twice (the first time I was alone). I went to a wine tasting (she thought I was visiting for the wine). We laughed about it later. I forgot about my camera. I would give five years of my life right now to have just one photograph of my time in Montalcino. Just one photograph of her.
My happiest dreams couldn't compare to those days. There would be a time, though, that would compare. A time that would surpass those days. For now, though, watch me board a plane in Rome headed back for the States. I am a shadow of my former self, longing for the place I had left. For the future I might have abandoned.
Watch me, like a stone skipped across a lake, taking flights from Rome to Atlanta to Chicago to Seattle to an airport in Japan to Kadena, Okinawa. A new place. A new face. Still longing for Montalcino.