Malta 4

March 7, 2012

Rain dimpled the pools on the roof under my window at dawn, but the excursion to Gozo was on. For a while there was a simple endless drizzle, but through the afternoon it became one of the most spectacular downpours I’ve ever witnessed, spigot-thick water in the air, driven by gale force winds. We stopped for lunch at Marsalforn, and when it was time to leave we almost literally could not get out the door for the wind and the imminent danger of drowning in the open air. Huge waves were breaking over the wall that defended the town from the tossing blue bay. Joseph, my driver, said I could not leave without seeing the Azzure Window– more the Fenetra Grigio at that point-- and that I should go across the top of the cliffs so I could see the water as it entered the arch. I did this, in the fiercest downpour imaginable, aiming the umbrella just right to keep from being swept over the precipice. I was in the midst of the ordeal when the thunder and lightning came upon us, and me at the stop of a stone cliff with rain all around and the metal rod of an umbrella poking into the air. Didn’t know whether I wanted to survive it or to be put out of my misery. The roads of Gozo (maybe of the whole nation, I don’t know) are made in a way idiotic to American eyes. The curbs are raised up on the sides of the roads, and there are no drains or gaps in them, certainly no storm sewers, so water fills the roads to the very top almost instantly, makes them into troughs, into gutters, into aqueducts, and traffic sluiced along in floods easily over our hubcaps. The flooded towns were alarming. Water shot out of holes in walls and cascaded from roofs. It was as if it never rained in Malta, and nobody had thought what to do about it if it did. I was soaked and miserable and every second thought was at last of the ferry home. Joseph was panicked, though he didn’t admit this unbtil later. “Now I am sure I will see my baby again” he said when we hit dry pavement.

Joseph was an entirely different kind of guide, much easier in the role, much more informative and practiced. We were on back roads most of the time, whereby I knew there really is open land on Malta, and not just the endless necklaces of cream colored villages. He was friendly and personal-space-invading, the way one pictures Mediterraneans. He was solicitous of me without making it look like a drain on his time. On the ferry ride to Gozo he wanted to be by himself, and so I didn’t see him till it was time to depart, but on the ferry ride back to Malta, we sat together, and he talked intimately–about his life, about Maltese politics-- constantly touching my hand as he talked. He has three daughters, one born just four days ago, eleven years younger than his middle daughter. He showed me pictures of this daughter and of the dog he says is jealous whenever he gets near his wife, whom it loves. Elections are approaching, and he lamented the corruption of the Nationalist party, and observed that he got in trouble if he even brought a Labor newspaper into the hotel. He clucked and sighed over the important places my guide of the day before had left out, and indeed there was a notable difference between their levels of commitment, and, I assume, expertise.

We saw an immense church build by the townspeople in the 50's, Saint Lawrence, I think, and a windmill with all the accouterments appertaining. The Ggantia Temples, so called because only giants could have build them, are impressive, but a bit less so than those we saw the day before, perhaps because in less excellent repair. A Japanese kid kept wandering off the path asking me “More? Is there not more?” Even in the rain, though, their situation was glorious, big churches and hilltop citadels dotting the horizons. They were surrounded by a display of wild flowers which inspired me to but a Wild Flowers of Malta book at the gift shop. Joseph showed me all the ones his wife loves. We saw the salt pans where they make salt in the summer. Maybe my favorite was the path you take to a high cliff where there’s a platform built where you look over at Calypso’s Cave. Why a goddess would have chosen the most gale-infected, exposed and rugged spot on earth for her boudoir I don’t know, but there it supposedly is, and whatever the truth of the matter, it’s been venerated as the Homeric site long enough that the veneration alone has gathered to a richness. A group of Maltese school kids were at the top, and I took many pictures for them of their group holding hands and leaning out into the gigantic wind, with the sea and stone beyond. Maltese kids are loud and giggly and happy. I like being among them.

Joseph accompanied me inside the basilica of Ta Pinu, an immense church in the Maltese style (Baroque, domes, two flanking towers in front), built after certain apparitions of the Virgin Mary. He loved this place and followed me around showing me things, bidding me appreciate (which I did) the buttery pale stone, the letters and gifts from those healed by the Virgin there, the photos of the visitation of two popes. Maybe he was just more comfortable with me then, or maybe the church changed him to an ebullient teenager, full of enthusiasm, and that enthusiasm possessed of a certain darkness. He hung on me like an overcoat, anxious to turn me everywhere important. He prayed audibly to the Virgin when the roads were the greatest peril. There was great red fort that, because of the rain, he chose not to see.

Monuments here need little effort of look spectacular, for it is all either high cliff top or a valley looking up to a high cliff top. There is no flat land whatsoever. Even farming is at a tilt.

The native stone is amazing, soft and easy to cut, it is nevertheless very heavy, and of the palest gold imaginable. If maintained it looks like new four hundred years after construction. In situ it is also amazing–it was that I was clamoring over to get to the Azzur (sic) Window, and even underwater it was not slippery and, if touched, warm. It is the reason Malta looks like a complex of unpopulated natural cliffs from a distance; everything is made of it and it is exactly the right color, being its own setting.

Joseph and I shared a meal of mixed fish at a restaurant looking over the storm-angered waves. The food and service were distinguished, and I think the owner was British. In any case he had red hair, which the Maltese do not, and a British accent.

J’s level of friendliness was charming, but also exhausting, because one wanted to accept in full the free offering of affection. This led to long conversations comparing the price of things in Malta to the price of things in the US. Shockingly, I really don’t know the price of a quart of milk or a loaf of bread, since I don’t buy those things, or apparently anything else, for at length I was ground down to murmuring, “Oh, it’s about the same in the US.” There was also the effort to insure my continuous pleasure, which resulted in my saying at least three times a minute something like, “Oh, yes, I thought that was just amazing. . . .Just BEAUTIFUL. . .Really? Is it that old?. . . .The Three Broken Stones Lying Together at Zumbex’kklefex? Oh, do let’s see that!” I mock in memory of being wet and cold and tired, but Gozo is an amazing place, and Joseph was the perfect person to show its wonders. I remember him better than some of them. Wish I’d had him for Malta, too. He and Michael unite in nostalgia for the old, scenic Maltese busses, now gone, though I saw one still in service.

In the evening, changed into dry clothes and went out. Bought tape, which doesn’t work, and nose spray, which does. I was going to cruise the waterfront, but I was tired and it was cold, so I had went to a showing of devotional art– altar pieces, images of saints, dioramas of the inside of churches or of heaven. I couldn’t read the labels, except to know that ordinary people had made them and entered them. It was like a devotional State Fair. Kind of shocking. The Roman Catholic–no, now that I think of it, the Christian–mind is surprisingly bloodthirsty, reveling in images of torture and death and ghastly martyrdoms. One had taken a Carravaggio severed head of John the Baptist and rendered it life sized and in ghoulish 3-D. Beautiful church music was playing, though, and I sang along, hoping the people there would think I was an angel. When I climbed back onto Republic Street, a handsome young man was playing an instrument that looked like a cross between a lute and an autoharp, and singing to it a Handel aria, in a voice half gypsy, half opera. It was one of those beautiful moments that hang upon memory as a bright jewel, and I stood a long time listening. I gave him money. I wanted to buy a CD, too, but he never stopped singing and playing, going from one to the next, and I was not going to be the one to interrupt. He was the angel on the night street, and people passed by as though he were an ordinary busker.

On my tombstone: He Was Not Going to Be the One To Interrupt.