The Fountain

memoir part 16

This is part 16 of my memoir. Here’s part 1: The Trick is to Drink it Quickly

Part 17:

The Sticks

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The Fountain

The days are getting shorter. In the meadows, the dead grass is coated with frost. There’s a wild feeling in the open country that we hadn't noticed before. Winter is coming. I want to go north, to Bavaria, Austria, Switzerland, the Alps. I imagine big mountains and picturesque little villages covered in snow. I’ve seen the Sound of Music. I can picture us cuddled up under an eiderdown in front of a roaring fire in some alpine inn. 

We head north toward the Dolomites. It’s almost night when we get to a village. In the middle of it is a square with a fountain. We fill our bottles with the cold water. Wogart puts his head in the basin and drinks.  

When the bottles are full we sit down on the edge of the fountain. It’s quiet in the square. I move closer to Jesse. His arms are wrapped, tight, around himself.

A bell rings out from the church tower. I count: one, two, six times—it stops. The sun is down. Lights start to go on in the houses. I can see smoke rising out of the chimneys. A few people walk by, dark figures bundled up in scarves and coats. A neon sign blinks on and off over the door of a cafe. A new sound follows the ringing of the bells. Sheep, bleating, close by. The noise fills the air. 

A door opens in a house across the square. A man comes out, carrying a pail. It swings from side to side as he walks. He goes over to a small stone barn that stands in the yard. The bleating is growing louder, insistent. 

“Basta!” we hear the man say. There’s a sloshing sound of the pail being emptied. Then it’s quiet again. The man comes out of the barn and goes back to the house. He opens the door—light spills out for a moment, the sound of voices—he goes in and shuts the door. We can see the shadows of people moving around inside. I try to imagine what might be happening behind the curtains.

     “Someone’s cooking soup in the kitchen,” I say.

Jesse nods.

     “I can almost smell it,” he says.

     “The other people are sitting around in the living room, there’s a fire burning in the fireplace, they’re all cozied up, just kicking it on the couch. Pretty soon they’ll go sit down at the table, and someone will bring the soup; big, hot bowls of soup, and crusty bread.”

     “And beer, don’t forget beer.”

     “Alright. And hot chocolate, for dessert. And after they eat it will be time for bed. But first, a bath. A hot bath. Man, can you imagine?”

Jesse shakes his head. We’ve gone for weeks now without even showering.

     “Maybe it’d be better if we don’t think too much about it, huh?” he says.

     “Hey, if I can't even think about it, I'll fucking kill myself.” 

     “Yeah, I guess you're right. Don't let me stop you.”

We pick up the water bottles and carry them back to the van. Wogart settles himself down for sleep on his mat under the loft, and I tuck the big wool blanket in around him. We get undressed and climb into bed. 

The van is cold. I wish we could afford a hotel, just for one night. Maybe it would be a cheap, shitty hotel, but it wouldn’t matter because our room would be warm and there would be a bed, a real bed, and a bathroom. I’d pee in the toilet and flush it too. I’d take a shower—there would be lots of soap, I’d be clean. The sheets and blankets on the bed would be clean. Maybe I’d take a nap. Wogart would stretch out across the foot of the bed. Maybe I’d wake up and have another shower, just because I could.

I think about it for a while. I’m hungry. I think about how after our showers Jesse would go out and bring back some Ciabatta, some cheese wrapped in wax paper. Maybe this hotel would be in Genoa and we would have a jar of that sweet Genovese pesto, and there would be olives, the oily, chewy kind. Maybe there would be a TV and we would watch something, bad shows in Italian probably, but it wouldn’t matter. We would eat good food and watch bad TV and laugh.

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