Lake Como, Cernobbio, and the Artist as Communicator
The train station is more like a feudal city state than a building. If I were going to write an espionage thriller I would start it at the station in Milan. I never saw so many suspicious looking types. All ages. All shapes. All languages. All styles of clothing. And lots of entrepreneurs hawking just about everything imaginable. Truly Italy is the land of cultural latitude. If the Prussians represent rigidity, the Italians represent WHATEVER.
Daughter trundles off the train and we have a happy reunion before climbing back into the BMW and taking off for Lake Como, where they will find her a maid’s room at a cut rate, a lovely little room that has more charm than 95 percent of the houses built in the states over the past fifty years. She promptly becomes constipated and the next three days don’t yield any relief for the poor girl.
Strong With A Spear and I take ourselves to the only pharmacy in the village where Villa D’Este makes its home. Cernobbio.
A moment while I wax poetic about Cernobbio. If only I had trained as a travel writer.
Some places on this earth contain a kind of magic, an unseen force that imbues your time there with an otherworldly feeling that you can lose yourself to the space and yet return to your daily life as if nothing had happened to you and no time had gone by. They can do for you what Harvey did for Elwood P. Dowd. Such a place, for me at least, was Cernobbio.
Small crooked streets along the Lake rising almost immediately to steep roads that climbed forever toward the Alps beyond and the snow that rested there even in summer. Houses that I longed to explore, lush nearly semitropical trees and vines, flowers and shrubs. The whole region exists in a weather warp of its own, with palm trees at the lake level and snow capped mountains hovering high above.
The shops were a mixed bag of completely local and highly sophisticated so that I could walk along the cramped village thoroughfares and go into a shop that sold the most mundane shirts and shoes for a pittance or traverse the back street where twice a week an open-air market offered fresh vegetables and raspberries, T-shirts, scarves, eggs, apples, flowers, handbags, jeans, just about anything, and then go into a shop a block away and buy a Missoni.
I bought lovely little decorated white cotton string Tees at the open air market – the Lire thing had me a bit overwhelmed, everything being in thousands like that – that turned out to be six for five dollars, and some rather expensive but drop dead gorgeous Missoni scarves, shirts, shorts and sundry other items at the little store that was no bigger than a comfy armchair. I am not a shopper but the pleasure I remember of that day can only be ascribed to the magic of that little town on Lake Como.
The pharmacy was packed, it being Saturday and near closing time for all the stores.
So how do you ask for a laxative when you speak no Italian? And no Italian in the pharmacy speaks any of the three languages you do speak between you and your husband. That was another of the charms of Cernobbio. Although it is host to one of the world’s most famous watering holes for the rich, famous and worldly, the town itself has managed not to become corrupted by its grand neighbor.
“Pardonne.” Strong With A Spear stands at the pharmaceutical counter surrounded by Italians awaiting prescriptions, looking at the bottles and vials and cure alls stacked floor to ceiling behind the pharmacist. We just knew what our daughter desperately needed was right there in front of us. But which one was it?
“Si?”
After this the conversation took a series of unexpected turns.
“J’ai besoin d’un laxatif pour une fille, s’il vous plait. Vous parlez francais, no?”
The pharmacist gives my husband a bemused look and shrugs. Italians are extremely good at this gesture.
“Ich gefundgredunkeroptigut meinne dachter fundergrabbergunseit immmer dem klockschpeilebefrechten.”
Now the pharmacist shrugs with palms raised. He’s willing to do his part but no more.
“Do you speak English?”
The pharmacist, a professional fellow who wants to help us but just does not know how, smiles at my husband and says, “Goood morrrning.” He rolls his r very smartly.
Strong With a Spear looks at me, eyebrows raised.
I take out my pen and motion for a paper. Strong With A Spear watches in bewilderment. Have I hidden a dictionary in my purse? Have I been holding out on him and secretly learning Italian through some subliminal tapes while I slept next to him?
I begin to draw a rudimentary human. Unclothed. Italians love this. I have noted in passing that all their statues are naked. I draw my nude from behind (you should excuse this rather metaphorical descriptive phrase). I draw my nude standing next to a toilet. I put a huge X across the bowl.
“Ahhhh. La senora bellissima giuligantiscalorra con imaginario fundilussintari.”
Obviously he thinks it is a self-portrait.
With one swipe he hauls over a pink box and slaps it down on the counter.
“Quatro cente mille quanto cinque Lire.” He punches the cash register and grabs the drawing to hang on his wall. I don’t know if he ever framed it.
After a day and a half we achieve our goal and life proceeds. Daughter finds her way to a wildflower meadow high in the Alps above the lake and rents a horse. She takes the ride of a lifetime through the meadows under the snow capped peaks, with the blue blue lake far below looking like a Persian miniature in crazy perspective, faraway and altogether pristine.
***
I hike up one of the roads that leads from Cernobbio straight skyward. I climb and climb. By the time I stop three hours have passed and I am nowhere near the top. It is the time of day when all Italians take the post lunch three-hour nap break. This is what they mean when they say Europe is more “civilized.” They nap a lot. Americans just work straight through everything.
y the time I reach the lake again and hobble into D’Este, my right hip is hurting so much I have to bend over to walk. Unfortunately this affliction, whatever it is, will stay with me for the remainder of the trip.
