Without Reservations (29 page)

“What does this mean, the last slow dance?” Naohiro asked. “It sounds sad.”

I didn’t quite know how to answer him. In a way, the last slow dance
was
sad. I tried to tell him about the custom at high school dances of ending the evening by announcing the last slow dance. “In some way,” I said, “it’s what everyone’s been waiting for all
evening. The chance to release all that pent-up teenage emotion by holding the other person in your arms.”

“We have nothing like that in Japan,” he said. “But perhaps we could turn on the radio and you could teach me this last slow dance.”

We turned on the radio. The sound of Fred Astaire singing “The Way You Look Tonight” filled the room. Naohiro held out his arms. I entered them. We danced, our cheeks touching. He was an excellent dancer. I closed my eyes, lost in the music and the feel of Naohiro’s arms around me. It was the high school prom all over again. Only much better.

When the music stopped, Naohiro said, “That was not sad at all. It was a very good last slow dance, was it not?”

“The best last slow dance of my life.”

“Well, then, we should make a habit of doing the last slow dance each time we meet,” he said.

An hour after arriving at the hotel in Milan I had unpacked and was ready to hit the streets. I needed a destination and had picked Milan’s most famous attraction: the Duomo, a huge wedding cake of a cathedral, with 135 spires and over 3,100 statues. I marked on the map the location of my hotel; then the location of the Duomo. I drew a red arrow between the two. Maybe I’d get there and maybe I wouldn’t; that was beside the point. What mattered was that when I stepped out of my hotel I knew which way to turn. Once I did that, the flow of the city would carry me along. Perhaps even to the Duomo.

Outside, the rain had stopped and the sun was struggling to
break through the clouds. The busy street that ran past the hotel was not very inviting; its gray buildings, mostly offices with a few banks and dreary coffee shops scattered between, depressed me. But I continued to walk, turning one corner and then another and then another. At the last turn I found the Milan that spoke my name.

Before me, at the center of four tree-lined streets, was a small green park, where two young women were walking, pushing babies in their strollers. An old man sat reading the newspaper. Children ran up and down the paths, their high-pitched voices shrieking in delight. A woman sold gelato from a stand, filling the cups with pale green pistachio ice. I bought some.

It was then I heard it; the sound of a tram rumbling around the corner, its
clang clang clang
as familiar to me as Grandmother’s voice calling me to supper. It was the sound I grew up hearing in Baltimore, where trolleys plied the streets like pleasure boats, ready to take you wherever you wanted to go. They’re gone, now—the streetcars of my youth—but here and there some of the metal tracks still gleam above the asphalt surface of a street.

I stood at the Piazza Quattro Novembre and watched the tram approach. It looked exactly like the Number 8 streetcar that Mother and I took downtown to see the newest MGM movies at the Century Theatre. So strong in my mind was this connection that when the tram stopped to let off passengers, I jumped on without a second thought. What did it matter where it was going? I thought. Getting lost was not a consideration. I was already lost—if lost means not having the slightest idea of where you are.

The interior of the tram was charming. I settled back into one of the polished wooden seats next to an Art Deco lamp and looked through the window. As the streets and shops and neighborhoods slid by—streets and shops and neighborhoods I’d never seen before
but recognized anyway—the dislocation I felt dissolved. Odd, I thought, how the past makes its presence known no matter where we travel.

I spent most of the afternoon riding on trams, hopping off whenever I saw something interesting: a neighborhood, a church, a piazza, a street. By this time I was in love with Milan.

I was particularly drawn to a neighborhood called the Brera. Once the center of Milan’s bohemian life, the Brera now combined an art student ambience with unique shops and galleries catering to the upscale shopper. Bookshops, bars, boutiques, and restaurants of every kind and price dotted its meandering cobblestone streets. After stopping to study the menus posted outside several of the restaurants, I decided to come back to the Brera for dinner that night.

Before returning to the hotel, I walked back through the Brera to La Scala. Although musical performances did not begin until December, guided tours through the beautiful opera house and its museum of operatic memorabilia were offered. I found the museum particularly fascinating. Verdi seemed to be the star here, with more than half the museum space devoted to his career. I studied his scores, in awe of the man who marked down these black notations that expressed so much in such small strokes.

A man’s voice, that of an Italian speaking English, suddenly broke the silence. “He was a wonderful man, a great man, our Verdi.” I looked up and saw an elderly man standing next to me, studying the scores. He was dressed in a dark suit, one that had turned shiny from too much cleaning and pressing, and a white shirt frayed at the collar.

We began to chat about Verdi. “When he died a great crowd turned out in the streets,” the man said. He then went on to tell me of the Rest Home for Musicians that Verdi financed and built.
Composers were given preference at the Casa di Riposo per Musicisti, followed by singers, conductors, and orchestral musicians. As he spoke I wondered, but didn’t ask, if he was a resident at the home.

Later, on my way back to the hotel, I thought of Verdi’s Rest Home for Musicians and its similarity to Gertrude Jekyll’s Home of Rest for Ladies of Small Means. Perhaps there are similar rest homes, I thought, scattered around the world like an aberrant chain of Hilton Hotels.

In my hotel, I stopped at the door of a room filled with voluminous bridal gowns. Inside, a short, heavyset woman stood ironing the hem of a dress. The deft manner in which she moved the iron across the tricky satin material was as delicate as a butterfly landing on a leaf.

As I stood watching, a pink-cheeked young woman who obviously had been out running—she was wearing a gray sweatsuit and Nike running shoes—paused at the door. “What’s going on?” she asked in a voice that was unmistakably American. I told her about the trade show. “So if you’re looking for a wedding dress,” I said, “you’ve come to the right hotel.”

Just then the woman ironing the dress gently removed it from the board and transferred it to a padded hanger. “Ah, look at that one,” the young woman said.
“Bella,”
she said to the seamstress.
“Molto bella.”
The seamstress smiled and replied with a nod. She began moving toward the door, carrying the bouffant gown high above her head. But a struggle ensued in the doorway: she was unable to get both herself and the dress through the opening.

“Avanti dritto
,” the American said, taking hold of the front end of the dress and guiding it and the seamstress through the doorway.

“Grazie,”
said the Italian woman.

“Prego,”
replied the American.

We watched the woman and the dress march down the hallway together, a happy couple who, unfortunately, would soon be parted.

“You speak Italian?” I asked, turning to the American.

She laughed. “No. That’s pretty much my entire repertoire. Except for
quanto costa.
”

She had an easygoing way about her, the kind of outgoing attitude that often is associated—rightly or wrongly—with Americans. Her appearance matched her manner: long, copper-colored hair casually pulled back into a ponytail and no makeup except a pale gloss of lipstick. I judged her to be in her early twenties. I asked if she’d been in Milan long.

“No. I arrived this morning. At least I arrived at the airport this morning. By the time I found my way out of there and got to the hotel it was afternoon.”

“Ah, yes, the enchanting Malpensa,” I said. “I had the same experience when I arrived there today.”

After a few minutes spent in exchanging war stories about Malpensa, she asked if I knew of a good place for dinner. “A place where I would be comfortable eating alone.”

“Not really,” I said, explaining I didn’t know Milan at all. “But I walked through an interesting neighborhood today. It’s called the Brera and it’s loaded with places to eat. I thought I’d head back there tonight for dinner.” I hesitated, then decided to go ahead with what I was thinking “Would you like to come?”

“I’d like that very much,” she said. “What time did you want to go?”

I suggested we meet in the lobby at 8:30. She agreed.

“By the way,” she said, putting her hand out, “I’m Carolyn.”

I laughed. “I can’t believe I didn’t introduce myself,” I said, shaking her hand. “I’m Alice.”

“The place we’re looking for is somewhere near the end of a little street called Via Fiori Chiara,” I told Carolyn, after consulting my map. The taxi driver had dropped us off in front of the Piazza della Scala, just opposite the opera house. From there we set out to find the Tuscan restaurant I’d spotted earlier that day.

The streets were pleasantly crowded with both locals and tourists out enjoying the evening. Carolyn and I fell into step, strolling along at a leisurely pace, stopping often to peek into a lobby or bar. We were in no hurry to reach our destination. In fact, we almost jettisoned the Tuscan restaurant plan for a piano bar that served pasta. But when we stepped inside, the noise level forced our retreat back to the street. After walking another block or two we arrived at Via Fiori Chiara. Ten minutes later we were seated in the Tuscan trattoria, raising our wineglasses in a toast.

“Cin
cin!”
Carolyn said.

“Cin
cin!”
I echoed, clinking my glass of Chianti against hers.

We decided to share several dishes offered on the menu. Each of us was surprised, pleasantly so, to learn the other ate little meat. After much discussion we narrowed down our choices to bean soup with pasta, baked omelet with artichoke hearts, and “Treviso salad,” a combination of two varieties of radicchio. Dinner was a leisurely affair, with each course separated by as much as half an hour. By the time our warm zabaglione arrived, Carolyn and I were exchanging life stories the way old friends do.

Carolyn, I learned, was twenty-four and a graduate student in art history. She had interrupted her studies, however, to join her boyfriend, Rob, in Italy. They were engaged to be married.

“He’s doing a year’s graduate work in Florence, and it was too good an opportunity for me to pass up,” she said. “Finally, after all the years of looking at pictures and reproductions of Renaissance art, I’ll get to see the real thing.” She planned to spend three days in Milan before taking the train to Florence. “There’s some wonderful art in this city that I’d like to see. And who knows if I’ll have the chance again?”

It was her first trip to Italy, but not to Europe. The daughter of a military man who moved from place to place, she had lived a few years in Germany during her early teens.