Cannot Stay by Kevin Oderman

Author:Kevin Oderman [Oderman, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780990322108
Publisher: Etruscan Press

I was thinking of my father as I climbed the great ramps from the water up to la ville haute at Bonifacio—because here the mirage is not dissipated by the sailor’s arrival, here the city remains improbably suspended sky high on chalky cliffs. At the southern tip of Corsica, the upper city of Bonifacio looks across a narrow strait to Sardinia. The drop is sheer on all sides, more than sheer on some, the limestone cliffs having calved away to present the town on a tee. The situation looks so unlikely that approaching the great gate you wouldn’t be surprised to meet a smiling magician, perched on a rock, his hand elegantly gesturing toward his finest apparition.

At the top of the final incline (la montée Saint-Roch), I crossed the heavy planks that have replaced the drawbridge, drawn up often in more dangerous centuries. Now it’s a stroll through the fortified gate into the old town. Most of the buildings that crowd the thumb-shaped promontory date from the occupation by Genoa: hundreds of years of standing here, most of them three to five floors over the narrow alleys that wind through their mud-colored walls. Like my father’s fishing villages in the far north, la ville haute is real enough, though sufficient magic clings to it that travelers arrive from around the world just to walk here. In season, I’ve heard, they crowd the alleys liked schooled fish, rubbing against one another to get through. But I walked unencumbered at the end of May, eyes on the brown buildings, noticing how the walls flare out near the street to bear the immense weight of the limestone. Many of the larger buildings have stone buttresses, and flying buttresses cross the alleys overhead, here and there, to discourage leaning.

If you’re not looking out from the upper city, peering over the ramparts, you wouldn’t know you were so high up, walking in the sky of those down around the harbor or out at sea. No, in la ville haute you walk as if at the bottom of stony defiles. You feel low down rather than high up. The years have sifted deeply into these alleys, these old buildings, and in their age they have achieved an almost impenetrable stillness. You feel the way they have settled into time and endured. Walking these alleys, you wade through the years. The old buildings speak low in a guttural growl, like a big dog that means it. It is necessary to walk quietly to draw close, to avoid sudden movements.

Around the few tiny squares and the wider, if still narrow alleys, a ribbon of bright tourist shops masks the massive gravity of the place. I reminded myself, walking by, that such shops everywhere reflect the desires of their clientele. Although travelers are called here by the suspended city, they crowd around the only bright things in sight, the taut awnings and racks of shiny postcards, the varieties of kitsch, the rushing waiters carrying out plates of food to be set down on loud tablecloths.

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