CHEAP THRILLS: A RANDOM ENCOUNTER IN THE SOUTH OF ITALY

“He was not of an age, but for all time!”

Ben Jonson

The flat was by the railway tracks. At night, the last train that ran from Naples to Salerno rattled the second-hand bed frames as it hurtled past at exactly 10:43p.m.. Nothing else stirred. Winter evenings were quiet and uneventful in Scafati.

Once or twice during the Christmas period I found myself sitting by the window at twilight, bathed in the yellow light from the bare overhanging lightbulb, my eyes hovering on the skyline far ahead, chewing on my musings. It was bizarre to be back, even touching on the surreal. This town had been my last stop before flying home for the first time in three years in November 2019, just before the pandemic thwarted any chances of travel for two long, drawn-out years which I had to wait out in good old Concordia. Yet now, looking back, it all seemed to have passed by in a blur - had it really happened? Had I ever left this place at all?; time might have come to a silent halt in this corner of the world. At a glance, everything looked the same as I had last seen it: the worn-out, brown covers on the single beds; the hollow, weathered flowerpot sitting in the corner of the balcony; the seatless toilet; the loud neighbours.... 

Scafati itself is located at the foot of Mt Vesuvius, halfway between Naples and Salerno. The flat is a seven minute walk from the train station, a proximity I'd been thankful for, at first because handling my luggage was a hassle, and later because the way out of town for weekend escapades was a stone's throw away. Truth be told, the appeal of the offer - bed and board in exchange for a few hours of teaching a day- lay on the far side of the neighbouring mountains, which were the backbone of the Sorrentine peninsula and separated the Amalfi coast from the (much) less glamorous scafati. 

Scafati on the day after Christmas. A ghost town.

I suppose that begs the question, why go back to this ailing old town that felt almost like stepping back into a rather shabby version of the 80s? Well, I had a mission. The proof of my Italianness - a birth certificate dated and issued in July 1857 in some now forgotten parish church near Venice- had finally been posted to me. At that point, only the Italian bureaucratic system stood in the way of what I considered to be complete and absolute freedom, so now I would put myself in their hands and hope for the best. This, however, was a business that had the potential of becoming a Kafkian experience, as I knew too well, so I was intent on reducing the risk factor as much as possible. In this sense, coming back to a place where work and accommodation were guaranteed from day one removed a good deal of the uncertainty which, in general, is part and parcel of all my relocations. I really don’t mind it if it comes in reasonable amounts -in fact, I believe that a mild dose of uncertainty helps keep the long-term effects of the often crippling routine at bay; but, just as anyone else, I’ll try to avoid the kind of uncertainty that washes over you and keeps you awake at night. Needless to say, managing to get a lease that would legally make me a resident in Italy, finding casual work on a tourist visa to cover rent costs and navigating the Italian bureaucratic system in a language I wasn't functional in - all within a time frame of 90 days, didn't seem like the kind of uncertainty I'd usually welcome into my life, least of all after two years of lockdown.

Coming back had its perks, though, and they did outweigh the downsides which, for a backpacker, weren’t that much of an inconvenience. I’d have to share the house with two other volunteers who typically stuck around for a maximum of 6 to 8 weeks and didn’t really have much time to settle in before it was time to pack up again. That had been me the first time in 2019, but this time I'd be facing a longer stay, so I hobbled into the flat pushing and pulling at my luggage thinking I’d have to make this place feel like home. 

The other two people who had been living in the flat flew home for the Christmas break shortly after I arrived, leaving me to my own devices. New volunteers wouldn't show their faces for at least two weeks so I had ample time to settle in comfortably, which of course meant I had first dibs on the room -and pretty much everything else. The first morning I woke up to an empty flat, I cleaned and dusted and rearranged the furniture and moved my stuff into the room with the table, which I wouldn't have to share. This place had seen better -and cleaner- days. Volunteers didn’t stay long enough to concern themselves with either cleanliness or the disposal of the bits they decided not to take back home with them. A lot of stuff was left behind for the next person to find, much like people do in hostels when they pack up and realise they have more than they can fit in if they don’t want to exceed the baggage allowance of low cost airlines. I found and binned green hair dye, an arsenal of empty beer bottles, old t-shirts smelling of mould, worn-out shoes, lip balm and sunscreen, birthday cards sent by affectionate parents by post, dodgy looking nonperishable food and other bits and bobs that had been gathering dust under the table, in cupboards, the top shelves of the wardrobe and blind corners. I had no use for most things, but by the time I had emptied every drawer, dusted every surface and swept every corner, I had found two things that would do a great job distracting me from the winter dread of town life: a watercolour set and a book. I recognised the watercolours as those that Daisy, my artistic co-teacher in 2019, had left in that same drawer before leaving. She actually came out to Scafati for a visit this time, after which I was secretly inspired to use them. The book, however, caught me by surprise.

I found it sitting under a fine layer of dust on the chest of drawers that  I later moved into my new room. It was a hardcover copy of Shakespeare’s complete poems, and it was evident the people I had taken over from hadn’t so much as touched it. This finding made the idle mental chatter that had been going on along with the cleaning fade away.  Wonder who left this here? I thought to myself examining the book, mildly excited. Shakespeare wouldn’t have been my first pick. A few years earlier, in the hope of rekindling the avidity with which I used to read at uni, I had got myself an annotated copy of Othello which, to this day, I have never read. After graduating in 2012, I had hardly been in the right frame of mind to read that kind of literature - or any kind at all. But there is something about second-hand books past their prime that I find appealing. Stumbling upon them makes me feel like they choose me, but it might also be the yellow tinge of the ageing paper - they seem to plead  'no one has read us in a while, will you?';  Whatever the reason, they are like an unspoken challenge and I feel strangely compelled to pick them up, so when I came across it I put down the damp cloth I was using as a duster, sat down heavily on an unmade bed and flicked the book open. There was an inscription on the front page that read as follows:

The words left in books by previous owners sometimes tell intriguing stories and I was amused by this one. The man of Jen’s dreams appeared to have been dreaming of something else himself if he had so unlovingly left this book behind. For a moment I forgot the house around me was upside down and sat there creating a fanciful story that would account for this forgotten dedication: Jen, a staunch believer in fairy-tale love with a taste for soppy lines, had sadly misread the whole situation - or had read too much into it-, causing ‘the man of her dreams’ to run for the hills.

As I sat there speculating about Jen and her Prince Charming, coming out from behind a passing cloud, the winter sun shone mercifully through the open balcony window and I caught a glimpse of the dusty nightstand. Oh yes, the house. Hot mess.  I put the book down and went back to my chores enthusiastically. Suddenly, the prospect of winter gnawing miserably at my toes in the cold, dreary evenings to come was countered by a great ability of mine - that of living for the cheapest thrills. I now had something to look forward to.

There was no Wi Fi access in the flat so in the evenings I read Shakespeare, watched Blind Dates in Italian in an attempt to pick up new words, doodled, and played with watercolours while keeping a tea mug full to the brim at all times.

Sitting with my newly found book after sunset became a daily ritual for a while. Sure enough, the first poem in the book was Venus and Adonis, a 20-page long narrative poem which explained why Jen had underlined the word my in her dedication. Imagine my amusement when I read the poem and found out that what I had imagined to be Jen’s story was actually  Venus and Adonis’ story as portrayed by Shakespeare. 

In a nutshell, Venus falls madly in love with Adonis, a mortal so incredibly handsome that the stars, the moon and even the gods pale in comparison. Our goddess pines for him throughout the poem and becomes a real nuisance to a reluctant Adonis who has a hard time trying to extricate himself from the situation because, of course, a god will always have their way. Despite Venus’ advances, Adonis appears utterly uninterested, shows disdain for the mere notion of love, and  makes it abundantly clear that he’d much rather give himself over to leisure pursuits from which he derives real pleasure, like hunting. Ironically, he finally dies after being fatally stricken by the wild boar he sets out to hunt as soon as he manages to disentangle himself from Venus’ arms - or claws, to be strictly accurate. She, who has foreseen a bloody outcome, tries to dissuade him with passionate entreaties, but he refuses to listen and walks contentedly away, never to return to her again. Later, and in spite of Adonis’ nonchalant manner during their final encounter, Venus collapses at the sight of his limp body lying lifeless on the hunting ground and, plunging into despair, curses love out of spite and grief:

 ‘Since thou art dead, lo! here I prophesy,

  Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend:     

  It shall be waited on with jealousy,

  Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end;

    Ne’er settled equally, but high or low;

    That all love’s pleasure shall not match his woe.

 

  ‘It shall be fickle, false, and full of fraud,     

  Bud and be blasted in a breathing-while;

  The bottom poison, and the top o’erstraw’d

  With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile:   

    The strongest body shall it make most weak,

    Strike the wise dumb and teach the fool to speak.

 

  ‘It shall be sparing and too full of riot,

  Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures;       

  The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet,

  Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures;

    It shall be raging mad, and silly mild,

    Make the young old, the old become a child.      

 

  ‘It shall suspect where is no cause of fear;

  It shall not fear where it should most mistrust;

  It shall be merciful, and too severe,

  And most deceiving when it seems most just;        

    Perverse it shall be, where it shows most toward,

    Put fear to velour, courage to the coward.

 

  ‘It shall be cause of war and dire events,

  And set dissension ‘twixt the son and sire;        

  Subject and servile to all discontents,

  As dry combustious matter is to fire:

    Sith in his prime Death doth my love destroy,

    They that love best their love shall not enjoy.’ 

I think I had never come across a stretch of language that could make a bundle of misery, tragedy, loss and bereavement sound so beautiful as this poem, and I mentally thanked Jen's Adonis for leaving the book behind. 

I also wondered whether Jen had been as unrelenting as Venus in her pursuit of love; whether she had read the poem at all and how she had handled the estrangement I imagined - not too well, I presumed, but I never found out. No one at school seemed to know who Jen was or who the man of her dreams might have been. Nonetheless, I was happy enough to stick with my version. 

It wasn't the first time that the spontaneity of a random encounter made a few winter days more bearable and, as long as I keep going, I know it won't be the last.

P. S. Go on then, read the whole poem!