VII
Well past our bedtimes, Annalisa rested her head on my shoulder and started to nod off. By then, the lounge was empty—the other patrons long gone. The weary barmaid approached our table, announced last call, and began clearing away our empty glasses. As I closed our tab, I asked for a plastic bag to protect my book.
Helping Annalisa up, I said, “It’s time to call it a night.”
“No,” she protested feebly. “It’s raining out.”
“It stopped,” I lied. “Besides, I have a long trip ahead of me, and I need to get going.”
Pouting and beating my chest with her tiny fists, she looked up at me with her bewitching Stygian eyes and whispered, “Stay with me.”
I wanted to. Lord knows, I wanted to.
“Don’t tempt me, mora.” I kissed her furrowed brow.
Back in the day, we would’ve broken night together, talking till dawn. But that was a lifetime ago.
Many a night we spent together staring at the stars, dreaming of better days. I remember us holding each other for warmth beneath the blankets in my first apartment, and sleeping tangled together in the back seat of a car on long road trips. Little did I know those nights would be among the dearest of my life. Too many to hold onto—perhaps those memories should remain undisturbed.
“You still can’t handle your booze, I see.”
“I’m fine,” she assured me. “Just a little tired.”
“C’mon, go get some sleep.”
“It’s been ages since I’ve gone out drinking,” she said, trying to play it off. “I must look awful.”
As I gently traced the gooseflesh on the back of her arms, lightning lit up the night sky, briefly betraying our sorrowful countenances.
“Quite the contrary.”
Saying our reluctant goodbyes beneath the darkened arcade by the hotel entrance, we promised to stay in touch via cell phone and social media—options that hadn’t existed when her family first pulled up stakes.
Leaning on one foot, she gave me a warm embrace and a soft peck on each cheek. Normally, I would have walked her back to her room, but I didn’t trust myself. With anyone else, it wouldn’t have been a problem—but with her, it took Herculean might to let go and walk away.
On the subway ride back to Brooklyn, I tried reading some of the poetry from the book she gave me, but it was all I could do not to think about her. Unlike so many people from my past, Annalisa had not abandoned her roots, her culture, or her convictions for a culturally hollow American identity. Immensely proud of her Calabrian heritage, she is devoted to her parents, intelligent, witty, vivacious, and refreshingly feminine (especially by today’s low standards). I only wish she had found God.
Perhaps reading more into it than I should, I found myself lingering on the same lines from a poem by the renowned Occitan troubadour Bertran de Born:
“All her suitors depart from her reluctantly, the sight of her has such savor; everyone who sees her believes that his eyes never saw a more beautiful woman.” [1]
Despite my romantic feelings, my intentions were not impure; I harbored no profane desire (or so I tried to convince myself). That night stirred in me something deeper, rooted in the noble ideals of chivalry, courtly love, and dolce stil novo, the sweet new style of love that seeks to ennoble the soul and lead it toward the divine.
In its highest form, courtly love was not carnal but contemplative: a disciplined longing that elevated the lover through reverence for the beloved’s beauty and virtue. For me, Annalisa was not an object to be possessed, but a reflection of divine perfection, drawing the soul upward from earthly desire to spiritual fulfillment. True love became a pathway to God. Like the great 13th-century Sicilian poet Giacomo da Lentini, I want to see my loved ones in Paradise.
For it would bring me great delight
To see my love in glory’s realm [2]
While I did not succumb to temptation, I did consider it. In a fleeting moment of weakness and longing, I second-guessed my decision not to spend the night with her. After all this time striving for inner discipline and higher meaning, it seems that, with the right sort of woman, I’m still a beast at heart, governed by appetites I thought subdued. Haunted by my past, my predilection for base pleasures remains a stark reminder of my fallen nature. And yet, wanting her only intensifies my quest for transcendence and shows just how far I still have to go.
Unable to sleep when I got home, I poured myself the glass of absinthe I had wanted earlier. Aside from the occasional glass of wine with dinner, I rarely drink alone anymore. But this was more than a nightcap—it was an incantation, a ritual of remembrance.
Slowly stirring in some cold water, I watched the spirit cloud into its celebrated milky green—its la louche, its alchemical bloom. Preferring the bitter anise flavor, I skipped the sugar cubes.
Taking that first sip, I remembered how reading Hemingway and Wilde with Annalisa back in high school first turned me on to la fée verte.
Sitting at my desk with my Pontarlier and laptop, I vainly tried to pen her a poem worthy of the Fedeli d’Amore or the Sicilian School. I wanted to sing the praises of the “lovely daughter of Tropea” like the cantastorie, the Minnesänger, and the troubadours of old.
Alas, we are no Orpheus and Eurydice, Tristan and Isolde, or Ruggiero and Angelica. We may be star-crossed, but the poets will never sing of this love that never was. With each sip, the veil thinned, and my memory bled into absinthe dreams. Inspiration faltered, and the words would not come—for ours was no fin’amor, no refined and ennobling love of the medieval lyric tradition. And yet, from that silence, this sprawling lament began to take form, a different poetry—my elegy for a past life.
Notes
[1] Sel qui camja bon per meillor, edited by William D. Paden, Jr., Tilde Sankovitch, and Patricia H. Stäblein, The Poems of the Troubadour Bertran de Born, University of California Press, 1986, p.138
[2] 27 Sonetto, translation and notes by Richard Lansing, Giacomo da Lentini: The Complete Poetry, University of Toronto Press, 2018, p.125
