We pitch our tent on a dirt terrace in the trees, between two other tents. Everything is silent. People walk to and fro, commuting to the sinks and the shower block. Their flip-flops slap against the soles of their feet as they pass. They carry wash bags, dirty dishes, boxes of detergent. They glance at us beside our tent. When we ourselves walk to the shower block, the people by their tents glance at us. It has grown dark, though we were not aware of the sun setting. The light drained unremarked from the wadded sky with its screen of hills, and left behind an arid darkness. We go to the bar, which is empty. After a while a man comes through, and we ask if there is anything to eat. He thinks there is not. He says that he will go and talk to his wife. The wife appears: they are not serving food, but she has cooked spaghetti alla bolognese for herself and her husband. If we think that will be satisfactory, then we are welcome to share it. She will serve it on the terrace by the swimming pool, with a bottle of wine from their vineyard.
We go out and sit on the terrace. There is no one there. The sky is full of stars. The pool is inky, inchoate, flecked with silver. It has soothed us, this encounter with the man and his wife, but it has aroused our emotions too. It has awoken our love for Italy just as we had entered the gray prospect of leaving it. We are nervous, a little shaky. We discuss our plans, the two nights that remain after this one before we catch the boat. I want to stay here, on this side of the border. I don’t care what the campsite is like. I don’t want to leave. The children run around in the dark. The woman brings our food in a big silver covered dish. She is worried it will not be enough, but when she takes off the cover we see that there is almost more than we can eat. Later the husband comes out to see how we are getting on, and when we praise the spaghetti he becomes eloquent, descanting gently in the starlight on the glories of his wife’s cooking as he clears the plates. This was our last supper: it was difficult to recognize it, to understand it, until it was complete. We go to our tent, and lie listening to dogs barking somewhere in the valley.
The next day we find ourselves in Dolceacqua, wandering aimlessly through its dark viscera of alleyways, where tiny doors lead up to dwellings of unimaginable exigence and dilapidation. In the sloping, deserted, pockmarked piazza the church bell is tolling. Through an open window high up in a crevice-like street I hear someone playing a song by The Cure. The river runs between its dry, dusty banks. We climb up to the ruined castle and stare into its blackened interior. Coming down, we take the wrong path and find ourselves in a car park surrounded by wire fences. It is too hot to go back up. We pass through a gap in the fence and down a steep, narrow stairway that twists and twists across a derelict, litter-strewn hillside. It leads to a kind of catacomb beneath the village, a dank network of tunnels and passages where we stoop beneath the low ceilings, searching for a way out. Suddenly we are tired of being here. Here is where we neither want nor have to be. It is one or the other, duty or desire, freedom or responsibility. That is the pendulum swing, the inescapable arc of life. But this place we have the power to leave.
We go back and pack up the tent. The pool is full of children again. Their parents sit prostrated in their white plastic chairs. There is the sound of splashing water, and of people calling to one another in German. At four o’clock we are on the road down to Ventimiglia. We take the exit to Nice, fly through a checkpoint where a traffic policeman in a beautiful uniform waves us on with his white gloves, and enter a tunnel that passes straight through a hillside into France. We come out, blinking, in the bleached light of the Côte d’Azur. It is strange, that the violence of leaving Italy should occur without sensation. It was a single blow, swift and numbing, virtually painless. But when we stop to get petrol and water outside Nice, I feel a nameless sense of bereavement. The French words are uncomfortable in my mouth. The girl behind the till is busy, distracted, sullen. I stand before her; I feel that I have something in my hands, something large and shimmering and important, something I am aching to give. There are people behind me in the queue. They are impatient; this is a big place on a hot motorway where needs are processed without sentiment. But sentiment is what I require; I require feeling, acknowledgment, kindness. I ask whether they sell road maps — we have lost ours. She doesn’t hear me, so I ask again. This time she understands. She is incredulous, disgusted: it is outrageous, that I have asked her such a question. It is as if I have robbed her of something. I am struck by the economy of her outrage. It takes a second, no more. She points to the shelves. Go and look, she says.
We can’t find a place to camp. We drive around the empty French countryside. It is late afternoon, the sky still and gray, torpid. Everything seems stunned, anesthetized. We pass a place where little white houses made of corrugated tin rise in rows up a denuded hillside. It is a holiday park. The man tells us they have an area for tents. He is tall and broad and ruddy, like a farmer, but one of his arms dangles shrunken and deformed from his shirtsleeve.
We go into his office, a wooden cabin that stands on a circle of gravel. He writes down our details using his good arm. While we are standing there a family come in. They are Dutch, a well-dressed couple and two fair-haired children. The father instantly starts to shout. He shouts in English. He is shouting at the top of his voice, at the manager of the holiday park, who continues carefully writing. After an interval, the manager looks up. The Dutchman is beside himself: cords of muscle stand out around his neck, and his pale eyes look as though they might fly out of their sockets. He is still shouting: his wife ushers their children outside. He shouts that they have been tricked, deceived, misled. The manager is a villain, a liar. They have come here all the way from Holland, all the way here for a two-week sojourn at the holiday park, and what do they find? I pay attention: I am interested to know what they have found. Despite his aggressive manner, I am even a little sympathetic. I expect him to say that what they found was a dump full of tin huts, instead of the Provençal idyll doubtlessly advertised. But he does not say that. He barks his accusation with a mouth rectangular with rage, like a letterbox. Its substance is that they have been given a different tin hut from the tin hut they booked at home, on the Internet. But monsieur, the manager says with a shrug, the huts are all the same. At this the Dutchman screams. I refer to the position of the hut! The position of the hut is inferior! A fusillade of expletives issues from his mouth. Suddenly I am afraid for the manager. I think the Dutchman is going to kill him. His anger is delinquent, bizarre. He is a narrow, colorless man, a suit. The manager, with his deformity, seems like someone he might choose as a victim. The manager rises from his chair: he is twice the Dutchman’s size. But he is somehow broken, wounded. He doesn’t seem to care whether the Dutchman kills him or not. He has a withered arm; his holiday park is a dump. It would almost be better if that was what the Dutchman was angry about. He tells him to wait; he is going to show us where to put our tent. When he returns, he will see if he can rectify the problem. The Dutchman immediately stalks out of the cabin. Later we see him, standing on the gravel with his family. He is very upright, rigid, as though with the shock of his own significance. His face is white. He has a puny, triumphant air: he has been fobbed off, but he is telling himself that he acted like a man.
We follow the manager up a dirt road that zigzags interminably through the white tin suburb and then comes out at the top on a stony ledge. The stony ledge is where we are permitted to pitch our tent. It is too late to argue: we put the tent up and get back in the car. It is nearly dark, and we need to find something to eat. There is a village a few kilometers away. When we get there we are surprised to find that it is packed with people. The center is completely closed off. We park the car and walk. In the square a giant screen has been put up, and the buildings are all strung with flags. It is the World Cup finaclass="underline" France are playing Italy. The square is crowded, with old ladies and children, with gangs of kohl-eyed teenagers in black drainpipes and plump middle-aged couples. Everywhere there are shirtsleeved delegations of men locked in endless, cheerful conference.