A Year in the World Read Free Page B

baggage claim. He looks forlorn—he has arrived with a sinus infection, exacerbated by the changes in pressure while landing. I touch his forehead and find him hot and clammy.
    “When I left Bramasole, I was feverish but determined to go. I had to—you’d be waiting. At the ticket counter in Rome, I discovered I’d left my passport at the house. I wanted to climb into a luggage cart and go to sleep. I couldn’t face a two-hour drive up to Cortona and two hours back—besides, Giorgio had dropped me at the curb. I asked about the next flight and it was in three hours. I was totally screwed. Then—I don’t know why—the woman handed me a paper to sign. And she said, ‘You’re going on this flight.’ ”
    “You mean. You flew. Out of Italy. Without a passport?” I’m so shocked I can’t utter a whole sentence. This seems impossible, but here he is, his steady eyes smiling at the thought that he slipped freely across international boundaries. We’re waiting for my bag, but the remaining ones looping around the claim belt are fewer and fewer.
    “Scary, isn’t it?”
    “After September 11 they let a man on a plane with no papers.”
    “Maybe it was because I was wearing an Italian suit. Another guy, badly dressed, was trying to get on, and they didn’t let him.”
    My bag has definitely stayed behind in San Francisco or Paris. And I can’t find the envelope with the claim check tacked on. Where’s my damn ministering angel? I have been travelling twenty hours. We queue with a dozen others. Because I changed carriers in Paris, the pouty-mouthed Air France clerk assures me they have no responsibility for my lost bag, especially since I have no proof that I even checked a bag. A big Spanish man with a Zapata mustache takes my side, and two Australian boys start chanting “Air Chance, Air Chance.” Finally, Miss Cool decides she’ll take my hotel number and send out a tracer. As our taxi spins out of the airport on two wheels, Ed says, “Not for nothing is that etymological connection between
travel
and
travail
.” The rain looks sooty falling on lead-gray buildings. Suddenly the driver swings around a circle with an enormous fountain; then we’re on a tree-lined street along an esplanade lined with one grand building after another. Ah, Madrid. The hotel lights, blurry in the rain, look festive and welcoming. In our room we find a chilled
cava
, Spanish sparkling wine, sent by Lina, a thoughtful Italian friend.
    Ed falls into bed after stoking himself with various antihistamines. I pop open the
cava
, pour a glass, empty both little bottles of bubble bath into the tub, and immerse myself. Since dinner is late in Spain, we planned to drift out at ten-thirty, but we’re exhausted and instead decide to order room service. Ed feels dizzy. At eleven, the miracle of my suitcase occurs—there it is, wet, dirty, but delivered. I want comfort food. My first meal in Spain: spaghetti with Bolognese sauce. I sink into the down pillows and begin reading
Winter in Majorca
:
    The wind howled down the ravine, the rain lashed our windows, the thunderclaps sounded through our thick walls and interjected a lugubrious note into the children’s laughter and games. The eagles and hawks, emboldened by the mist, came down and snatched away our poor sparrows from the pomegranate tree right in front of my very window. The stormy sea kept the boats in the harbor; we felt like prisoners, far away from all intelligent help and any kind of proper friendliness.
    George Sand’s memoir of a horrid season spent with Frédéric Chopin in Majorca makes me long for California, where the hills are greening with the winter rains and already the daffodils are blowing their yellow trumpets in the new grass. Count this as an inauspicious arrival, Janus. In Scarlet’s immortal words, tomorrow is another day.
    But as I turn off the light, I invite Madrid to come into my dreams.
     
    Madrid on a bracing January Thursday. Wind cleared the air.