Beyond hot, my scalp prickles with sweat and my face gleams. Blinking my eyelids requires far too much work; the simple effort mimics exercise. My eyelids feel slick, my feet slide dangerously in my open-toed sandals thanks to puddles of sweat; and my fingers have too much weight on them, the nails pressing like ten tiny sweaters. I'm on the station platform in Modena, Italy, the last leg of my own personal Nondescript-Career-Persons-Gone-Wild trip in Europe and the earth broils relentlessly to the point I feellike I've stumbled into the eye of global warming.
It's August and a scorched-earth 95 degrees. Here in the refreshing north of Italy where my friends live, Italians consider this an escape from the smashing heat found in the southern parts of the country. I think they're all mad. True, Jacky did warn me some months back that stores, boutiques, theaters and some restaurants would be closed and why: "It'll be hot, so the shops will be shut," she wrote via email. I thought, "How hot can it be?"
Four months later in my cupboard-sized hotel room on the tip-top floor in the brown village of Serra, I think about those words as I lie on my single bed with nothing on but cold, wet towels sizzling my burning skin. "How hot can it be?" I mock to myself. I have just taken a cool shower I actually sweated through. No breeze wafts from the loosely shuttered balcony. No birds flit and chirp. I'm sure their vocal cords have dried up. Even the hot-weather musicians, those cicadas, have packed it in and sailed for Greenland.
From my vantage point on the damp white sheet, the street waves in the heat, not a person in sight. Just past the oil-streaked auto repair shop rests the square, anchored with sturdy white stone benches and squat cement planters from which tired daisies droop. The square sits quietly under the blaze of sunshine, but last night, lights strung merrily around the gathering place transformed the scene as flashy mustachioed accordion players kept time while dancing brown Italians led and pulled by turns, showing off their partners' skills, a quick step there, a breathless twirl here. Clapping and laughing spectators ringed under the fairy lights, tapping time and shouting praise.
Reminiscing about the festive square and the tiny, boiling hotel room fades into the reality of the morning heat. My trip overseas ends today, which is why Jacky and I find ourselves standing on the lip of an oven which stretches in a shimmery light as far as we can see.
We actually stand on a train station platform, not an oven, and Jacky and I are leaving Modena, headed to Milan so I can catch my plane. Standing quietly near us on the baking platform a handful of Italian matrons also gaze down the silent, empty track. I am always intrigued by Italian matrons, and I study them now with their stoic expressions, slightly bent backs and neat pale blue or cream skirts and heat-trapping polyester blouses decorated with brown, twisting branches or large feathery blooms. Always the epitome of decorum and propriety, the women wear heavy gold earrings and long cross necklaces and smallish rings pushed onto biggish, arthritic fingers; and solid chunky black heels that are not too high. The heels bring them to about 4'10". Primly, they wear tan nylons, "knee-highs" that reach only to the space between their ankles and calves. They must save their full pantyhose for the winter months. Matte faces devoid of perspiration (perspiration wouldn't dare grace their T-zones), they grip their stiff woven handbags and wait in silent solidarity with us.
Jacky listens to a muffled, loud announcement, obviously able to decipher the secret code. "Babble babble, mutter Roma, babble Firenze bab--," sudden silence, "something something, babble Malpensa something--." A small, sharp electronic shriek and then silence again. The words, trumpeted through a shorting PA system sound as though they ricochet up from inside a well, blasted into the surrounding area via a tin can. "The train is fifteen minutes late," Jacky translates.
I realize my shirt is sopping as a tiny dark-haired boy in green shorts and a white tank flashes by me with an ice cream. My back wet from sweat from simply standing motionless, I lightly jump up and down to remove my backpack, nearly passing out from the effort. I set the pack down on the concrete, sure I have set the pack in gum, gum that is now the consistency of Karo syrup. My stone-colored khakis hang pathetically, any idea of a crease laughably gone. They are far too warm for wearing; I think any idiot could have just worn a swimsuit today and been fine. I pluck at my shirt, trying to get a breath of air to cool my skin. No breaths of air, here, however, and I know the next rush of wind will actually be hell-like, carried by the train.
Perhaps this is hell; maybe I died in cool, green Bavaria and don't even know it. Ah, Bavaria, where the non temperature-challenged people in their sweet dirndls and lederhosen live with their pretty, big-eyed, bell-necklaced cows in the rapturous shade of the gray-blue Tyrolean Alps. Why did we leave Bavaria? Why?
"It's going to be hotter in Milan," Jacky warns as she eyes the reader board and coolly shifts her khaki canvas bag to her left shoulder. A lazy drip of sweat runs into my eye, and I can tell by an ill-timed turn of my head my deodorant has given up and effectively resigned from guarding my armpits. I will now become a social outcast. "Maybe we should get a taxi from the train station to the hotel," I say desperately. The train station in Milan is supposedly 200 meters from the hotel, but you know what hateful liars information center people can be when they’re fanning each other with posters to keep from bursting into flames. "Nah, why would you want to do that? We'll just walk, Jacky says cheerfully, turning from the board and beaming pinkly at me.
I wonder why I travel with such a cruel and unreasonable person and ponder if it would be bad international manners to steal the boy's ice cream and stuff it down my pants.
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