November 2006

A GHOST STORY

I was reluctant to tell you this story, but I decided to let you make up your own mind.

We were happy to be on the northwestern coast of Italy, on the Ligurian Sea, after the long train trip and heat of the south. We left Sorrento on the Bay of Naples at 8 a.m., took the train to Naples, then grabbed a train for Rome. In Rome, we switched trains for the first class ride up the western coast and ate tuna sandwiches with Pringles and drank red wine as the train climbed along the western shore to the top of the boot into La Spezia in Liguria. From La Spezia we got on the local train to the Cinque Terre and arrived in Riomaggiore at around 5:30 p.m.

After we picked up our key from the agency, we climbed the four floors to our rented flat and collapsed in sheer joy. Alberto threw open the windows and the smell and roar of the ocean and the clatter of the street below, filled our bedroom.
I looked out the balcony window at the open air vegetable market below and the locals chatting on the benches in the lengthening shadows of the afternoon sun. The sky above the ocean was churning, smoky and atmospheric, the way coastal skies get when the sun and wind whip them around before a storm. I saw fisherman in bright blue and red dinghies coming into port with tomorrow's catch of the day.

Directly across the narrow street, four stories high, 3 young pretty women with long dark hair, obviously on holiday, were fresh out of the shower, still wrapped in beach towels and setting the table on the balcony. I was mesmerized by the activity at all the different balconies across the street. Next to the vacationing college girls, in the next building, were a group of handsome, laughing German men, their walking sticks piled up in a corner of the patio, then in the next, an unsupervised small girl was jumping up and down on a beach chair, perilously close to the balcony, I thought.

In the next, an ancient wrinkled Italian woman was taking down the white bed sheets from a laundry line. She caught me looking at her and smiled and nodded. I waved at her, and she waved back, her toothless grin got even bigger. I pointed to the sky and made the international gesture of falling rain and she nodded furiously. Then she pointed to the ocean and I could see the dark storm cloud coming from the south. She pointed to the northwest and made a setting sun gesture then continued to collect the laundry. My first conversation in Italian! Every day for the next 10 days, I would see her hanging laundry and rush to the balcony window, talk to her about the weather every day and she would laugh and say, Yes! Sunny today! Or no, the wind is from the west today, and so on. All with our hands. We were old friends.

Over the next ten days, I watched the other balcony with the 3 women melt into a married couple on holiday, a group of young surfers, more single women and then a retired couple. And they, or rather he was very poignant. As his wife stood at the glass doors to the patio with all the luggage, he came to the edge of the balcony and stared pensively at the street below and at the ocean for the longest time. And his wife, at the edge of the patio in the shadows, patiently and lovingly waited for him to finish soaking it in one last time. And I knew just how he felt. We were all going to have to catch the train eventually and go back to our lives, leaving this little paradise behind.
But not all of us would catch that departing train. And I am getting ahead of myself.

The flat was charming, in a building that was probably more than 800 years old. The bedroom ceiling had a bleached out, smooth and featureless tree trunk, probably driftwood, plastered into the whitewashed brick ceiling. Designed to keep the walls from collapsing in on each other, I supposed. We were on the top floor and from our perspective every building in Riomaggiore looked slightly tipsy as if they were leaning into each other until they could sober up.

Each building was wrapped with so many steep stone stairs and labyrinthine arches and tunnels and porticos turning and twisting up the mountain cliffs, it was as if we had fallen into the background art of Horton Hears A Who. We loved getting lost on these circuitous pathways, anxious to find a new way to this or that street above and below us. Most of the multi-level narrow alleys, called carruggi, had swallows nesting in the wooden rafters, swooping and chirping as you passed beneath them and at every turn, a new view of the town or the ocean emerged.

The flat had every thing we needed except for food and we rushed out the first day to go shopping for dinner - fresh sticky green-veined gorgonzola cheese, espresso, panini bread,  fresh olives marinating in twigs of oregano and thyme, local white peaches and yellow nectarines. At first, we were hesitant about picking out our own fruit from the unattended wooden display tables. In Spain, you must absolutely not touch anything from the vegetable stalls. the vendors get furious with you. Usually the vendors are on a platform above you, the slanted displays wrapped around them, like a cantaloupian pyramid of Giza. It is their job to carefully select the fruit or vegetables for you. You are peppered with questions, "Is this for today or tomorrow?" What are you planning to do with them?" Are you going to want some for Thursday, also? Then based on the information, each item is carefully selected and more often than not, their hands disappear beneath the counter to get a bag or paper sack and to replace one or two items with bruised and over-ripe pieces, quickly snuck in the bag in an amazing sleight of hand. Maximize the profits and minimize the costs, especially for 'guin', foreigners they never expect to see again. At the Boqueria, a huge covered market off the Ramblas in Barcelona, I watched a steely-eyed vendor with her hair pulled into a severe bun, her face in a permanent frown of displeasure, reach down over the fruit and with lightning speed and accuracy, deliver a blistering slap to a German tourist right in the face -  for picking up a tomato. He was so shocked, he dropped his camera and then began to laugh. I would have thrown a melon at her head..

This kind of lay-person's para-medical interrogation seemed common in Spain. When I went to the pharmacy to buy some Spanish version of Vick's NyQuil, the clerk-pharmacist sympathically drilled me first about the consistency, color and life history of my mucoso, thoughtfully stroking his face, feeling my forehead for fever, taking my pulse, asking me to cough (wet or dry cough?) and mentally racing through the inventory of what apparently were thousands of possible antidotes that would speed my recovery. (Imagine that happening at your local Sav-Rite). I liked that attention, who wouldn't? But por favor, let me pick out my own kiwis.

It couldn't be more different in Italy. Housewives poured over the selection, poking and prodding, hefting the weight, turning them over and over, discussing the merits with the sister-in-law, strangers offered advise, recipes were discussed. The sellers acquiesce, resigned to the eternal truth - never, ever get into an argument with an Italian housewife who is buying food, especially food to cook for her family.

"Signore, this fish had glazed eyes. When did you catch it? Where did you catch it?"

God help you, you may get the curse or the evil-eye cast over your business. Bad juju for everyone..

Later, when we returned to Barcelona, Alberto got into a big fight with a fruit vendor about choosing fruit,

"Señora, in Italy I pick out my own __"

"Then go back to Italy!" she snapped, obviously a sore point in the tangle of cultural inter-European Union commerce and customs. The vendor two stalls down motioned us over and threw her hands up in  a display of surrender, an invitation to "go italian on her", "My mother-in-law is Italian," she whispered. "Go. Pick." The two women vendors glared at each other. I wondered how long that had been going on.

But this was Italy and we were happy in Riomaggiore. By the third day, we were sunburnt, salty and had shaken off the big Italian cities and the need for speed. There were no personal cars or motorcycles allowed in the coastal towns and we had all but forgotten about Vespas and crazy taxis. We had hiked to the other towns along the Via dell'Amore behind huge groups of Germans on holiday, each with their two crazy walking sticks that looked like ski poles. On one morning hike we stopped for an impromptu picnic in the dappled shade of an olive grove on a steep hill overlooking the ocean and the hill town of Corniglia, kicking off our shoes and laying back in the fresh grassy flower-covered hillside of late May, partly drunk on the fresh tasting red wine we brought, but completely drunk on the sticky, spicy smell of wildflowers and the smell of black earth, ocean breezes and the perfume coming from olive tree blossoms.

On the evening of the third day, we made a delicious ragú of fresh tomatoes, red wine, caramelized onions and garlic, oregano and olive oil, poured it over fresh local tagliatelle pasta, filled the table with spicy arbequina olives and steamed artichokes covered in shavings of parmesano reggianno and made a cold salad with roasted pine nuts, roma tomato wedges, persian cucumbers and red onions, drenched in olive oil and lemon juice, happily drinking a bottle of vino tinto dell' tavola.
That night, we pillowed the way long-time married couples who are still in love do, with all their history of being together and looking forward to what may come in the future, so happy to still be together. Our 17th anniversary was only 2 weeks away.
We left the balcony windows open on the warm night and curled together like spoons and drifted to sleep listening to the waves crashing below.

It was 11 p.m.

At 2:15 a.m. my cell phone rang. It was Alberto's dentist at UCLA Medical in Santa Monica.
"Hi, Craig, I'm just calling to confirm Alberto's appointment on Friday for a cleaning. Is 9 o'clock okay?"
"Margaret?", I said groggily. "We are in Italy. And it's 2:15 in the morning."
"Oh my God!", sald Margaret, laughing. "Craig, I am so sorry. Well, have fun and call me when you get back!"
"Ciao," said Margaret and quickly hung up.
"Ciao, Margaret," I said and put the cellphone down and wiggled over next to Alberto on the other side of the bed. Through half-lidded eyes I saw a big orange moon over a silvery sea through the window.

I was happy to have my new cellphone that worked all over the world, I could stay in touch in family emergencies. I sighed and smiled to myself at the thought of how the world's multiple time streams finally converged in my reality through a quad-band cellphone over something as mundane as a dental prophylaxis. I closed my eyes. Then I opened them again, quickly.

Someone had just sat down on the edge of the bed behind me. Then I felt it move closer and lay down right behind me, full weight, pressing against me. I felt the pillow sink a bit and the sheet slid slightly away from my feet. I was paralyzed with panic. The room looked hectic and distorted. I felt the hair rise on the nape of my neck.

There is a word for goose-flesh, goose-pimples. It's called horripilation. What a great word that is. I was awash in horripilation from head to foot..

Now here is an odd thing, in the middle of a even odder event. I could see a luminous, glowing cocoon-like shape, amorphous, not truly fully-formed but rather like a body bundled inside a shimmering pupae, laying next to me. It was about one meter long. It's perimeter edge was not sharply defined, instead it glowed and shifted.

It began to "sink" into me. That is to say, it seemed to merge into me, our visible edges blurring, I could actually feel it inside of me next to my spine. I tried to move but I could not. And then my mouth began to form words.
I said, "Doe-vay." And I said it out loud. Then I said it again louder. "DOE-vay EEE."
Here is another odd thing. With it partly inside me, I began to feel profoundly sad, lost and lonely.
Not scared.
Not completely freaking terrified and pissing my pants to get out of there, the way anyone would. I was overwhelmed with "infinitely lonely and lost and sad."
Not "jump out of a window" crazy-sad, but rather, lost-sad; bewildered-sad. I tried to move an arm and an leg, to no avail.

I said again," Doe-vay."Doe-vay eee." It was loud this time and I could see Alberto stirring. My arm began to move and I hit Alberto on the back to make him roll over and face me.
He sat up. And pulled on my arm. "Craig, wake up." "Are you okay?"
"Doe-vay ee?" Doe-vay ee?" I said.
"Estas aqui, mi amor. tranquilo," said Alberto." You are here, honey, relax," said Alberto, rubbing his face, rising up on one elbow.
Alberto speaks some Italian, and what he heard me say was, "Dove i?" "Dove i?" Where am I?" "Where am I?"

At the instant he pulled on my arm, I felt the pulsating glowing presence next to me begin to move away, then it was gone. And I could move freely.
"Alberto", I said sitting bolt upright, gasping. "I do not want to frighten you, but something is in the room with us."

I was shivering now - really freezing in a blast of arctic cold. I could see my own foggy breath. My teeth chattering, I pulled the blanket up around me. I reached for Alberto's arm, and it was hot. His t-shirt was soaking wet. He was sweating profusely.
There was a deep indentation in the bed sheets next to me, rising slightly, as it will when you get out of your bed in the morning. I blinked at it and made a mental note to remember it.

The room was nearly pitch dark as clouds began to cover the moon outside.

"I feel it," said Alberto. And we both did. The room was deathly quiet.

In unison, for some unknown reason, we simultaneously slowly turned our heads to the left and looked at the entry to the bedroom.

There was a glowing shape about one meter tall, against the black, dark space of the open door.

It was as if the air in the room was full of wild static electricity. There was a very slight smell of acrid ozone in the air. There was a palpable presence in the room with us. Something was there, in the dark rectangular space of the open bedroom door. It did not feel threatening and evil. It felt benign and lost. Lonely. Bewildered. Sad. Incredibly sad and lost. It seemed incredibly old and because of the one meter height, somehow child-like at the same time. I moved back in a spasm of shock and my hand knocked over the water glass next to the bed, crashing and rolling across the floor.

"LEAVE NOW" said Alberto. "ANDARE!"
And it was gone. Instantly. We both felt it. The glowing form disappeared.

The moon came out from behind the clouds and filled the room with shadows. It looked familiar enough. There was the luggage, the beach towels. the window. I looked up at the tree trunk cemented into the roof of the bedroom. Normal enough, considering everything, I thought. I took a deep breath. I quickly turned on the light next to the bed.
 

"Did you get a phone call?" said Alberto. "What time is it ?" It was 2:35 a.m.
I explained what had happened, everything, and Alberto was silent for a while.
"But it wasn't evil, Alberto. It seemed lost," I said.

And I snorted at myself derisively. I couldn't believe what I was saying.  I don't actually believe in ghosts.

Then what was that thing in the bed? I wondered to myself.

Alberto got up and padded into the living room, I heard the zippered luggage open, then he rustled around a bit in the kitchen, and then he came back in the bedroom. In one hand he had a tiny flask filled with holy water that he had collected from a stone font inside the Vatican a few weeks earlier, a gift for his mother in Guadalajara. In the other hand, he had three drinking glasses filled with tap water. he put a few drops of the holy water in each glass, and placed them at the window, the door and under the bed.
He stood in the middle of the room and murmured a prayer in Latin, his hands and arms wide open, his feet spread out to steady himself. And then with his finger over the top of the flask he threw preciously few tiny sprinkles of holy water in four directions, the way you often see catholic priests do it in the movies.
"Andare!"
"Andare!" "Andare a casa!" "Andare alla luce!" "Leave. Leave. Leave this house. Go to the Light." said Alberto. Then he went back to the bed, kissed me good night and promptly fell asleep. And so did I, eventually.

The next morning. Alberto went to the market, then came back with a small paper package, opened it, spilled out a small pile of resinous rocks, took it to the stove and ignited it infusing the flat with smoky frankincense, copal, he calls it, and then hung crucifixes on all the walls. This didn't surprise me. On every trip we take, there is a small zippered cloth bag that he fills with crystals, crosses, magic stones, amulets. (We always agree to make room for it, and I have decided to find it charming. And the suitcase was full of crucifixes and other gifts from the Vatican for family in Mexico. But where did he find frankincense?) The sad, sad creature, or whatever it was, never returned again the whole time we stayed there.

I don't know what it was. I am left to ponder the possibilities. The building, the town is ancient. Each of the charming towns in the Cinque Terre was built to be inaccessible, with watch towers and thick stone walls to withstand invading Spanish pirates and then, marauding Moslems, Saracens, and before that- Vikings. The ancient Viking influence can still be seen in the occasional fair-skinned, red-headed children of the native villagers in the region. Ancient bulwarks still lined the hills built to stop the constant assaults and kidnappings of young men and women who were then sold into sexual slavery.

I want to believe I was really asleep and that it was just the rich dinner and wine. As Scrooge said to Marley, 'You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!’

But I wasn't asleep. I was awake. And I have had my share of nightmares and creepy dreams. But I was awake. I have to say, I did not like being "invaded" as it were, without my permission. That part was unsettling. What was this thing trying to do? I wanted to help, but I didn't want to be "taken over" involuntarily, even to make a therapeutic pronouncement.

I am willing to accept the possibility that there is an afterlife, although not in any way, shape or form that I was taught as a boy in Vacation Bible School, at the First Baptist Church in Pasadena, Texas. I live with a Mexican. And in one vein of the rich Mexican literary tradition, and to many Mexicans, spirits move freely in and out of the lives of the still-living, continue to participate the decision-making, contribute to the general welfare of the family. I myself, have a uncomplicated theology but it does allow for the possibility of an afterlife. I accept the obvious scientific truth that we don't know everything. But I don't need a religious conversion to sustain my trust in an as yet incomplete cosmology.

In fact there is a phenomena called hypnogogia, a not quite dreamlike state between waking and sleeping that is conducive to anomalous subjective phenomena, like sleep paralysis. A more in depth psychoanalysis might say, I was manifesting my own anxieties about our future, i.e." Where am I?" And maybe that is what happened. Maybe. And the rest of it? An overactive imagination? We see what we want to see. Maybe. My rational mindset was in rebellion.

There must have been many people who lived and died in this room. And perhaps spirits or souls or whatever, lose their way occasionally. I have always read stories about this, but doubted them. But what is the meaning of this? And if I am to believe my own eyes, what happened to that poor wretched lost soul?. Is it that it needed a moment of companionship, to talk, to express the sadness, to ask out loud with my voice, "Where am I?"

"Should we have helped it?" I asked Alberto. I asked him if he would mind terribly if I 'invited it into me', as it were, under more controlled circumstances, for another chance to help it get out of it's fugue, it's cycle of lost, mewling despair.
Alberto said, "Absolutely not, we are not Italians and we are on holiday."
And it never bothered us again. But I hope it finds a way home.

So that is my ghost story.
Take it anyway you want. I hardly believe myself.