Five Countries-3 of 5
DATE BOOK FOR SUNDAY, APRIL 27: Lounge to 11 getting laundry and eating, and wind and rain and sand to Gazelle D'Or, lost, and great lunch and to Tizi N'Test at 6 and great view of clouds and rain and down to Marrakech at 9, dinner in hotel and bed at 11. DIARY: Up at 9, nevertheless, and JJ goes out for breakfast at the pool (he said the flies were horrid), and I come and wash awful pine stuff out of stiff hair and call for breakfast and laundry. Breakfast comes and is finished but still no word of laundry, so I go downstairs and doll says calmly "It's closed today," and I respond calmly "Well, we'll open it, won't we," and he frowns and takes care of two other customers as I drum fingertips on desk, and he calls Mrs. Jimenez and she's happily there and comes up to chat brightly in Spanish. "Yes, everything is ready, yes, dry cleaning too, and will be RIGHT up." Go back for half an hour to pack, and she knocks, and everything's there but the coat belt, and she checks and the place is closed so she'll mail it to Paris. Finally out at 11:30, and there's a WIND at the car that won't stop, and we travel to find that there's SAND blowing across the road from fields, blasting everything in obscurity, and from the clouds there's a STORM brewing and we drive past men walking bicycles because the wind is too strong, kids riding with herds with hands to head to stop the face from being abraded. To the left there's a cluster of sandstorms and we get some as we cross deep oueds, then in front are the dark gray streamers of rain, and we try to get to the Gazelle D'Or for lunch, but instead of driving into the storm that's moving slowly before us, we stop car and watch sand and water covering whole horizon, the light on leaves turned to silver-undersides against the gray black sky absolutely unforgettable. Here it's sunny, there sandy, there green, there raining, and then the smell of wet and rot and shit reaches toward us and we hit a few drops of rain as the storm passes to the right. Miss the sign for the restaurant, turn around and go down road, and in the missed three minutes huge drops plop down and we pull to side and put on tonneau cover and hide until it lets up, boy grinning at us, barefoot, sandals in hand, driving four cows in front of him. It stops, we drive on, look at three people in front of concrete block, drive WAY on and find they MUST have been standing in front of sign. Direction from passerby and we drive under diminishing lane of arched bamboo, lovely, and hit cottages 10-1 and we're in courtyard and I'm up steps to ask about lunch and am led through the entrance foyer, a hall lined with birds and art objects, a huge round hall painted and decorated ala Morocco, then down three steps into an enormous leather and wood English sitting room, down three MORE steps into a huge tent-like dining room, where it's said to be a fifteen-minute wait. I write a tiny bit and JJ's back from bathroom, and it's mealtime. Meal is VERY good, from the little fillets of sole to the veal fillet in cream sauce, and I wander lovely grounds while JJ's coffee is served in the lounge. Inquire about rates and there IS a room available for tonight, of the twenty. Clouds follow all day to the Tizi (Pass) N'Test, but as we climb up the side there's a fantastic moment as the gray low clouds open TO THE SIDE and show holes in cumulus clouds leading to the flawlessly blue empyrean. It's like suddenly being revealed the road to Paradise, and the glow and the light and the effect are electrifying as the road could almost leap THROUGH the hole into the next world. Clouds lower to almost form a roof over the valleys, resting on all mountain walls, and it makes it into a ROOM, which is more intimate in that it's an enclosed space with us as the sole inhabitants, or more VAST, in that such an enormous area is ROOFED, becoming even more stupefyingly grand than an open area. Again the Frank Lloyd Wright-ness of the architecture strikes: long horizontal forms, complicated use of space, rather felicitous handling of small windows, long thin horizontals for the roof, greatly overhanging the walls. Dark brown colors. The rocks are like Glacier National Park, either bright green or bright red, and the wetness makes the colors impossibly intense. There are fields of yellow flowers, the blue sky in small patches, the red rocks, the green rocks, and I begin to look for orange and purple and find them as the car lights come on and the red water flashes a vivid orange in the headlights, and even later when the running water in the darkness reflects the perfect purple of potassium permanganate, vivid pomegranate purple. Other lighting effects fantastic, as a valley between two mountains squarely framed in sunlight as exactly as if blinders were attached and adjusted to a spotlight---another when an old agadir, castle-like, was lit on its mountainside EXACTLY as we rounded the curve. It rains harder and harder and the little pebbles roll into the road from cliff sides and trucks rumble past us, hopefully testing the road. Huge pools fill near cliff walls, making things highly unstable as the road seems weaker, and JJ swings out to the edge to avoid the ruts. Marrakech at 9, and we get into the Mamounia, impressed by the football-field-sized dining room and later I wander the grounds to be awed by four ranks of orange groves, a fantastic swimming pool, and everything on a huge scale that even dwarfs Gazelle D'Or. Incredible place, and so handy: like putting on clean sheets EACH night, though it recognized that I liked no pillow and JJ liked a square pillow and arranged it thusly. DIARY PAGE: This day is also covered in TD 19-21, so I'll use the page for talking about the luggage arrangements. We had two bags and most of the time I had my big suitcase and the typewriter case, since I'd left the beige suitcase at his place filled with books. Later on in the trip my big suitcase became so full and so heavy I started taking it out only once every three or four days, filling the little bag with what I'd need, and taking only the little one. However, the little one wasn't sufficient to hold what I needed for a dressy dinner, and of course when we stopped for more than one day I took the big bag in. I was wearing certain items for days and days, for instance my raincoat was necessary in the night when we drove with the top down and it got terribly cold, and then I would wear one pair of trousers for days on end, first chinos until I lost them, and then the blue ones, or my red sweater until it got cruddy, or my blue sweater until it, too, got too dirty to wear. Later even JJ saw the wisdom of one bag, and would use it. But each time we packed the trunk we came across items like my snorkel equipment, which we never used, or his cassette recorder, or his rocks, or my typewriter case or my sleeping bag, which we never used either, and I was stupid for taking it along, but I had no real way of knowing. Next time I probably WON'T take it and will wish I had. These days at Agadir were the first we really had to clean things, and they were responsible for our almost not being able to leave, and she finally had to send the belt from my raincoat to JJ's. The prices were truly fantastic. But it was nice to be able to pack mostly clean clothes after that time in Agadir. That wouldn't happen again until Paris, when I would use the place down the block, and not run into the trouble JJ described about saying it would be ready in a week and having it in two. They would say it would be ready in three days, and have it in four, which isn't bad for Europe. Usually the car was surrounded with bellboys from the hotel to carry what we wanted, and we'd watch them manfully walking with my monstrosity and JJ's two little ones on one of their arms, walking fast with their heads bent to one side, stopping to straighten up when they got to the door. The Mamounia tonight is great. DATE BOOK FOR MONDAY, APRIL 28: Up at 9 and eat in room and out at 11 to Bahia Palace and Dar Si Saad and Gharnatta for kefta lunch and to Place Jemaa and Saadi tombs and souks and buying and gardens in hotel and back at 8. Rest and dinner and bed at 11:15, tired. DIARY: We were wakened by BIRDS the next AM, and watched them swoop onto balconies after bread while I ate and JJ sunbathed. He insisted on being his own guide through the medina, so we got to the Bahia Palace quite late, guided by tourists and some of the huge reception rooms were Alhambra-impressive in plaster intricacy. Then to Dar Si Saad, a museum with carvings and pottery and rugs and jewelry and a view of the snow capped High Atlas. Souks fantastic after a wild search for the Gharnatta, and wool market fabulous in the color. Buy four lemon-tree spoons straight from the tree by the carver at 1.4 dihran, I think a bargain. Place Jemma has singers and storytellers and trick bicyclists and snake charmers and monkey handlers and pigeon tamers and finger cymbalists and an idiot savant who did SOMETHING with an egg, and UGLY people begging or performing. Exhausted by 7 pm, and buy large cardboards for JJ and back to the hotel (followed by boy in red shirt) to rest for dinner. DIARY PAGE: This day also is covered, so I'll give a general idea of the country of Morocco. The first thing that hit me, as navigator, is that you can't trust the map. In some places it says the road is good, but it reduces to a piste which is almost impossible for JJ's low-slung car, in others we brace ourselves for a dirt road, but they've paved it since the map was done, and we sail smoothly over it, particularly between Ouarzazate and Ksar es Souq. In other places it's the Guide Bleu which seems to be off, telling us that the Gharnatta was around a certain corner, but it wasn't there, giving wrong hours for some of the places, saying that something was interesting to see when it wasn't. Then the town itself would be at fault: there were no signs for anything, and, especially since JJ hated guides, this morning in Marrakesh was terribly frustrating for me. He insisted that with an adequate map and a good sense of the sun (which he said he had, I never pretended to have that, particularly near noon when the sun was almost overhead, anyway, or when it was cloudy and it wasn't possible to see where the sun was precisely - it was just "up there") he could find anything we wanted. So we would wander the streets, and I ended up giving him the map, saying I'd follow him wherever he wanted to go, but I thought it would be better to hire a guide, tell him to shut up, and ask him essential questions. So we followed JJ's sense of direction, and saw many entrances to the same mosque, and come to buildings he would be sure housed what we wanted to see, but there would be closed doors without any sign of what was inside, and since we were forbidden to go into mosques, we feared taking the wrong step and getting into trouble. In one spot we walked inside a likely doorway and saw a squalid windowless room filled with utensils and material, and a kid looked at us as if we were nuts, and we'd probably just investigated his house. No one was willing to help without being paid, and in Fez we even had trouble when we DIDN'T trust someone, and it turned out that his advice was RIGHT. So we ended up in a hopeless impasse as far as I was concerned, but JJ finally listened to the kids, and got out of paying them by saying that "The map said it was here, and here it was." I didn't like that at all. DATE BOOK FOR TUESDAY, APRIL 29: Up at 8, out at 10, lunch at Oukaimeden in snow and over Tizi N'Tichka as night falls at Ourzazate. DIARY: South the next AM to Tahanaoute for the market, fun for sugar and cattle, then to Asni for gas, to find road across no good, and then back to better road and get to top of Oakaimeden through clouds and rock slides and an accident to a good little restaurant and back down easier by 5 pm to get amethyst fever and get two little ones for 5 at Tahanaute, then an opalized rock, broken, for 2 early on, then a three-bagger of manganese (and a green cadeau, too) tiny complete one, and pretty white half for five, and for another five a huge red one. Negro saddens one and I give 7 for an ugly misshapen one. By this time it's dark and we're late into Ourzazate, but eat 8:45-9:30, and bed to write this by 11, tired. High Atlas pass Techka FANTASTIC by having fog blast against peak like slow-motion spray and roll down side of hill (remember Grenada peak's rolling UP at night? And another in Spain rolling DOWN?) fantastic and I could have watched for hours, as sun hit last fortresses of the Atlas Mountains. A filling moon lit the world almost to visibility as clay cities were silhouetted against the western glow, last remnants of the upswept pink feather clouds that heralded the sunset. Great country for scenery and JJ wants to stay longer. We'll see. JJ bought his first "gem" in a souk in Marrakech (from a fellow to whom he'd said "I'm coming right back" as a dodge, and then was laughingly forced to obey), a small piece with medium-sized white crystals, for 10 dihram. Then the boys in Tahanaoute sold the larger ones for 1 or 2 dihram, and the specimens got larger until we both foolishly turned down a rather nice complete geode about 3x4x5 inches in size for 10 dihram first price, probably lowerable to 4. But then further on three or four blocked the street and JJ came unwillingly to a stop and JJ afterwards described them as "tense." They may have been desperate for dihram, as it was 2 or 3 pm and they may not have sold any yet on a tourist road that may be 4 or 5 cars a day, of which only one or two would stop. They flocked around the car like ants around a chunk of bread, and in fact one saw the rolls under my seat and began shouting "un morceau de pain," and others thrust sample after sample under our noses, saying look at this, look at this. Then they saw the oranges in the back and one thin-faced, frowning little one grabbed one out, looking at me uncertainly, he stuffed it into his shirt. Soon all four oranges were gone, and the box of Kleenex floated away in front of me; I grabbed it back, to the crunch of rubbed stone, and the temporary owner reached for his amethyst instead of the box, and that was back. I began to get nervous, telling all of them no, and JJ started the car slowly up as hands reached out to open car doors, the shouts grew, and the anger of the young man who rode to our succor on his bicycle didn't put the oranges back. As we rode off, JJ said he didn't want to see a group of angry boys with rocks in their hands start to pound on the finish of his Alpine Sunbeam. Later, two fellows about 15 or 17 stationed themselves in the road, thrusting out one of two things: the bargain of the century of commercially purchased tourist bail: one enormous quarter-geode about eight inches square of fantastically iridescent blue to green crystals, beautifully uniform and huge, and another offered a flat plaque of about 5x5 of red to green crystals of only slightly smaller size. But the little ants left a bitter taste in our mouths and the two bigger fellows, being augmented by a third and fourth, made it worse, and we drove off without barely slowing the car. Coming down from Oakaimeden we had a similar road block, by seven or 8 newly formed clay figures: animals, men, men on horseback reaching to six or seven inches, and JJ and they got mutually angry as they shouted not to squash them and JJ shouted for free passage and the liberty to choose. As it grew dark there was a roadside stand of bits and pieces, including huge half-geodes a foot across of 30-40 pounds, but of rather poor quality. Later another group, the last, gathered about us in the dark, one requesting a "journal" which turned out to be one of the Morocco tourists maps, and seemed very happy. Cigarettes were also a going item, being the usual counter for a "cadeau" thrust into the car without one wanting it. Then three or four would be gone, and JJ would be out of cigarettes. I could easily enough refuse impassioned pleas for a fag or a fire by calmly announcing "Je ne fume pas." It seemed always to be something: gas coupons or insurance in Tangier, sex on Cap Blanc, amethyst between Marrakech and Ourzazate, roses between Ourzazate and Tineghir, rides on the rocky road up the Dades Gorges, money from the little kids, bonbons from the littler kids, interspersed with demands we didn't understand the Berber for. Clouds: rolling DOWN the hill in Montserrat, UP the hill on the way to Sierra Nevada, DOWN the hill past Tizi N'Techka. DIARY PAGE: Today is covered in TD 22-24, so I'll talk about the landscapes. From an almost US Midwest look just down from Tangier, it moved into an Atlantic-surfed coastline, made hilly by the edges of the Atlas ridges. The area around Agadir was beginning to flatten out into the south, and there were the small passes near the coast which were pretty in their greenness and their vistas out over valleys with no sign of habitation except the road winding off to the next pass. The mud kasbahs were very localized, either along the roads in the valleys, or below the roads along the streams in the mountains, and in the desert sections it was not unusual to see ruins of buildings right next to middle-aged ones intermediate in use, next to newly built ones with their incised lines and triangles freshly cornered and shadowed in the sun. But in the Atlas it seemed that they repaired what they lived in, possibly because the fields were terraced around them, and they needed that ground to grow food on, so they couldn't move the village around at random as they could on the sandy plains. People moved about on foot or on mules, and we passed few cars that weren't other tourists, or who looked to be either politicians or sheiks from neighboring villages being chauffeured around. Then there were trucks, but mainly there were the beasts of burden, loaded down with material in the straw panniers they inevitably carried, men sitting sidesaddle and their bare feet jogging with the donkey, holding a switch to keep them on the road. Kids would always wave, no matter where we were (well, not in the cities), and in the farthest part of the country we were so strange (particularly the convertible top, I suspect; we saw only ONE other convertible, and that was back in Rabat) that everyone waved at us, even dignified old men with white turbans riding in a stately manner on their greying donkeys. The mountains, like at Ouakaimeden today, were snow-covered and foggy, and we could see these snow-caps even in the steaming valleys, but when we got there, they irritated JJ's sinuses, and he tried to stay up there as little as possible. Through the whole trip I didn't even get a cold, though I was plagued with some sort of allergy later on back up through Spain which was discomforting. Bowels kept in fine shape through the trip. Maybe because I always drank beer for lunch and wine for dinner?? DATE BOOK FOR WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30: Busses wake us to views of high Atlas in snow, slow breakfast, photo sand castles, two hours in boring Dades gorges, lunch in Tinighir and fast road to Ksar es Souk, dunes and sunset on hill at Erfoud. DIARY: The delight of finding the road paved between El Kelaa and Tineghir, the charm of the chalet for lunch at the top of Oakamaiden, the good lunch at Tineghir. Being wakened at Ourzazate by dogs or wolves howling in the night, and getting a cat-like allergy to the woolen blanket. Sounds of construction at the Grand Hotel du Sud in Ourzazate and Tineghir. The vague disappointment at Marrakech, even when the "charming pavilion" of the Menara is found featured on the 10,000 (100 dihram) notes, finding more interest in the souks or the boy in the red shirt who followed to the hotel, or the string of would-be guides in the Medina, more impressive than the Bahia Palace or the Saadian tombs. As for the tombs, it WAS impressive to see that Morocco retained some of the elaborate Moorish stalactite ceilings that the Alhambra in Spain is so noted for, and it WAS a joy to FIND it despite the universal misdirection of the colored guide. But as time goes on, there is more misdirection. The Gharnatta ISN'T on the street indicated, but down the side street with NO marker on the corner, with a VERY small name on the door. The tomb of Moulay ben Yousseff is in fact near the Mosque of Moulay, but it's through an unmarked door, through which an Arabian looks skeptically as JJ argues with the boys about the tombs, and looks at us skeptically until we're actually inside and says dryly "Ici le tombeau du---etc." Wadda noive. Then we ride into Erfoud before sunset, follow the arrow left out of town, as indicated in the guide, and run smack into the town wall. Left or right? Ask a truck driver and he wordlessly flips a finger right. Follow it a block and it's obviously not right, and ask a boy and he says it's the other direction. The truck or truck driver is nowhere in sight, but where he is I'll bet he's laughing. JJ finds out last night that the colored rocks are done with red and blue inks, and there's a strangely orange lizard scrabbling from a string around his hind legs, by a guy who haunts the view over Ksar Es Souk and asks for money to be photographed. When we stop later for the fabulous oued panorama over the Ziz toward Aousfous, and another fellow runs up with some straw jobbies, I absolutely ignore him and let JJ do all the intended talking. With these guys I've had just about enough. Then there was the other guy by the pool. I stroll around pool top, two go toward power shed (lights between 6-9 pm, 12-3, 6-11:30 pm), one comes to me when JJ leaves and we talk of the weather (it was 110 yesterday), and it's obvious what he wants, but I wander off and end it. JJ follows me into the room, saying he was walking down the road and a guy came up to him, inviting him to the dancing at the "wedding." Um hm. DIARY PAGE: Slow breakfast and through remarkably built valleys to Boumalne, and the guide says the Gorges of the Dades are narrow and green, and we expect something like the Gorges du Tarn, but the mountains aren't that steep and the road isn't that good, so JJ has to concentrate on the driving and I get tired of looking at the tumbled rocks, broken edges of the road, ksour and kasbahs in the valley, the gray river rolling through its strip of green, and I decide we can go back anytime. JJ wants to get to the pass, so we rumble along, being looked at in amazement by kids along the road, and a number try to stop us for a ride, but we say we're not going that far, wherever they're going. Dust filters into the car, and the luggage gets filthy even in the trunk. Heat increases as it bounces off all the rock surfaces around us, and we're following dried-up river valleys, forded in places by masses of huge rocks over the beds which scrape the bottom of the car. Stop at the end at what the guide calls fantastic erosion markings, and it looks like an enormous mountain of dried dog excrement, coiled and tubular masses heaped one on the other, sloping in high relief under the broiling sun. The trees are gray green from the dust, and the kids and their clothes are dusty, too, and the oxen that pull some of the few plows look coated in grime. Since the buildings are built from dust, you can't see where structure ends and debris begins. Back along the same track, and the same kids that waved at us at the start wave at us even more at the finish. Tinighir is truly like an oasis, the covered dining room being cool by comparison, and we sit beside the partly filled pool and soak in the relaxation, exhausted from the heat. When we end the day by watching the sunset over Erfoud, having rattled up the steep hill with the car about to boil over at any moment, and JJ propping the hood open to let it cool, we watch the shadows lengthening out into the true desert, and it looks like the surface of Mars, except that, even here, there are tracks heading straight out to the distant level horizon. We are told that the heat reached 110 that afternoon, and we're prepared to believe it, but we didn't pass out from it, or even suffer too much from thirst, so we figure we can handle whatever we get. DATE BOOK FOR THURSDAY, MAY 1: Birds wake at 6 and leave at 8 through good Ziz gorges, lunch as Ayashi in Midelt at 2, then through high Zad, cedars of Mischliffen and Meknes at 6, and Hacienda with friends. DIARY: Birds, birds, goddam birds, building nests on window ledges and above the air conditioner, squawking, flying back and forth and landing with a thump, a whirr of wings and a squawk. Wake at 6 and doze to 7 when JJ goes into bathroom. From southernmost heat, here, we go back north, first to Meknes, then to Fez, then to the Mediterranean, then Spain, then France. Oh, lovely. Today will be the last day of real Morocco roughing it, and I must say I've had just about enough. Not too much, mind you, but just enough. So we don't visit the Todga gorges or the Meski blue spring; well, that's enough as it is, without it. Then, in the impressive Gorges du Ziz, the ploy changes to one of "Une lettre" with a damp-looking letter held out with a good deal of urgency. The first one we stopped for, and it was written to someone in Cambridge, England, unstamped, and the return address was Ksar es Souk, Maroc, with a squiggle for the Arabian script. There were four boys, two proffering flowers for one dihram, another offering ten just a short bit away. The first was charming, but then the second or third or fourth became a bore, particularly since they attempted to block the road completely. The Dades Gorges were NOT what the Ziz were, sheer and abrupt with spectacular parallel markings layering the hillsides at odd angles, even a tunnel through a huge rock, and the stream below winding through its valley of green, though some palms looked rather sick with completely de-fronded tips. About each time we stopped, except on hilltops where the wind was too strong, and then there was the sound of the wind, there was no sound, save for an Oued rush, except the incessant buzz of the flies, some large, some small, all fluttering and terribly pesky. The photograph of the groups of buildings took a terribly long time for each shot, to let people come near, I expect, which gave me time for short shots at them. DIARY PAGE: Birds wake us in our warm white room, and we're going North, everything from now on will be taking us toward home. Back through Ksar es Souk, and the road which looked so good isn't finished yet, and we're out the back way through terrible roads until we seem to hit the main road up to Midelt, and, through water erosions at the side of the road, we can catch glimpses of the palm-infested Gorges du Ziz, and this is what a gorge should be. Steep cliffs lead up to the barren plateau, where the road stays most of the time, buffeted by sandy winds from the long deserts to the south and west. But several times we dip down along the cliffs, and we can see the settlements along the river like knots in a string, and that's the only place the knots can exist, along the string. This stream looks practically permanent, and the settlements look prosperous, though not even tracks lead off into the villages, so they mustn't know the usage of even trucks. Along the slopes are strange flat platforms with raised edges, and they must be used as rain catch-basins for water, or maybe they dye cloth and dry them, or evaporate water, or something, since they seem to be a permanent part of the settlements. Very little traffic outside the towns, only kids wanting to go from one to the other, or wanting to mail letters to the outside world. Up to Midelt where we hear gunshots from the May celebrations in the center of the town, and again there's a curtained cool dining room with a platter of lushly presented vegetables: carrots, green peppers, lettuce, onions, and artichoke hearts, pieces of fish, tomatoes, radishes, beans, cold peas, all very nicely done at El Ayachi, where they have an enormous display of rocks and crystals in the dusty windows at the front. Few people and good service, and the beer is cold and refreshing. North through the Col du Zad, and we're climbing into pieces of snow again, and there are pines and cypress and cedars in the beautiful forests, lakes looking freshly melted from late snows, and cooling breezes from the hills. White clouds are beautiful in the sky, and Azrou is beautiful on its summit overlooking the Tigrira Valley. Rush toward Meknes, and I'm staying in hotel while JJ goes for friends, but back to get me for Mechoui, good burnt veal, at the Hacianda. DATE BOOK FOR FRIDAY, MAY 2: In AM to Volubilis, lunch at friends', through town's palaces, Marc buys kif, smokes, hazy evening ends at 11 by driving to Fez. DIARY: The wordplay, the byplay, the kid-playing games. How many games are there? Everyone plays games. Plays! The radio said "Deuxieme act" or "Troisieme act" and what did it matter WHICH number of acts? Act! I am always acting. But one must act to get action. Where's the action? Who's got the action? Got. Get. Get with child. We're ALL children, sitting here on the floor, laughing. But we're NOT children, we're 32, 39, 30 something. But that doesn't MATTER. Look at the faces wrinkle with laughter. Look at the faces wrinkle with age. But it doesn't matter how old people are---they're people. In restaurant, SO conscious of habit, conformity, convention. But a convention is such a bore---all those people, like at a party. That's what conventions are FOR, parties. Arty party. But the Art on Marc's wall seemed an evocation of the history of art. The cave drawing, the Italian Renaissance landscape, the pop art posters of nude women---the gray grouped people with gun-barrel eyes---for shooting. Back to sex. Oh, I'd love to have sex with Marc. Oh, a circle, a hole---love sex is the hole, the whole, the asshole, the eye of the cock---cockeyed! The mouth, the left ear. Ear! You can shut your eyes to shut out the sights, but you can't shut your ears to shut out the sounds---humans haven't evolved that far yet. Why NOT? YOU have, ears CAN shut to shut out the sound---and I hold them as if to pull them off. Pull it off! Self-mutilation again! Like the fear of contact lenses---fear of contact! I've got to take them off. Take off? Like in a plane; I'm afraid of planes, afraid of flying, afraid of falling. Falling! Falling in love, falling off the wooden chair in the restaurant, falling backward on the wicker chair at the house. I see a wooden chair with broken legs---this must have happened to me when I was young---I KNOW it, and that's colored everything I see about chairs. God! How complex. God? Who made us, God made us, who is God---that's memory again, from a young age. A young age---that's a paradox. But it's only WORDS. Shut up. I AM shut up. Shit. I'm constipated, shut up, fucked up---that's the trouble, I'm NOT fucked up and want to be. But I worry. Is he healthy, will I get sick? SICK. That's why I'm worried about sickness, it's all one. Won! I'm lost. J'ai perdu. Languages, nonsense. It is non-sense. Cents. Money, how silly to have valuables. Watch! Time, throw time away, give the watch to the Moroccan waiter at the restaurant. No, now that would be silly, fruitless. Fruitless! I'm fruitless; I want an orange; I'm fruitless, I have no children; I'm fruitless, I have no good fruits to suck. Sex again. Always come back! Lie on my back, lay on my stomach. Lye! Another way to dye. Dye---the wool souks. I'm in Morocco. Everyone laughs---I could be in Canada, or Paris or Brussels or Rio or New York and it doesn't matter. "What do you want to do?" "Like Faust, I'd like to just stop here." THAT'S why the book is so great. Why. Y. I-grek, Greek---it's all Greek. I was in Greece; this is a fugue---fugue ---THAT'S why Bach was so great, he writes fugues. Music. Put a record on---records, but there could be a crack in the record, remember that, it's important, and of course with a crack in the record you play the same groove over and over again---it stretches out in time, but it's the same thing. It fills time, but with repetition, just as I fill, fill, the page, file the page with words, but it's all the same thing. Compulsive. I'm full of compulsion, to write, right! RITE, that's my rite, it's my right, it's my write---all the words sound the same, all the words ARE the same. How many languages does Marc know? French, English, Belgium, Morocco, but they're all the same, He's so nice. He's such a nice guy, a wise guy---his eyes crinkle with laughter, but they're wrinkles. "We're just kids playing games," goat kids up in Argan trees, and I know I've said something wrong, to hurt someone, I'm always hurting someone. Hurt! Pain hurts! This kebab skewer could be HOT. I smell SMOKE! FIRE! That's why people are afraid of dying in fire! That's why I'm afraid of fire. I'm afraid of so much!! Marc goes up the stairs, and I'm sure he's the black-haired devil, and he's leading me to hell with his terrible handsome grin, and it IS hell we're in NOW, and it's people, and No Exit, and THAT'S why the Sartre play is so famous---and Sartre's FRENCH! But Goethe's German; but Belgians are Germans, so everyone's HERE. Hell, that's a SHELL sign with an S gone, but I must have seen that as a kid. Again as a kid, I'm frightened of things I was afraid of as a kid, and I crawl into the back of Marc's car to go to the restaurant like lying in the back seat of Dad's car to drive to Mt. Carmel, and I know I'll be sick. SICK. I'll be sick, I'll throw up. Hum, here in Morocco you can just open the door and vomit in the street, and it wouldn't matter. Matter! Eat the soup without slurping, don't drip down your chin like a kid---again---being taught to eat neatly. I could kiss or kill---how similar the words are---all and ass---JJ and Marc here in the restaurant and it wouldn't matter. But, another me says, it would matter. They WOULD be dead. Time moves ONLY forward and you CAN do anything, but you have to live with the consequences. OK, you CAN fly, but if you fly from ten stories, you're going to land hard at the end of the flight. Dead at the end of the flight. Dead at the end of the travel. "JJ, don't go to Fez tonight, I'm afraid," and his quizzical face looks back at me. We're GOING. Where? A TRAIN station? ALWAYS going, but it's only a restaurant to eat. Eat! But you eat three times a day. THREE, NUMBER again. Day night. It's day, night! A rooster crows, it COULD be day. I'd like to see the sun, open the windows, I'd like some fresh air, smell the flowers, look at the flowers at the bottom of the soup plate. Plate! It's all connected. Volubilis and the buildings so grand once, now grown with flowers. JJ calls for breakfast, but only after asking, "Should I call for breakfast?" God, why doesn't he do things for HIMSELF that HE wants to do? Why is there this business of SENSITIVITY? People should be sensitive to what THEY want, not to what others want. Selfish again. Self! FISH! Christ! A gain. Gain. Ain. Ayn Rand and her book on selfishness. I assume EVERYONE goes through the thoughts I go through now, and now knows why Ayn Rand HAD to write the book she did. We three, maybe, lie in a circle on the floor and my dream melds us into one caressing, loving person, and we form a Ring. Ring! Wedding ring! Did you say wife or life? Asks Marc, and I have no life, I have no wife seems fitting but terribly ugly. Ring! Ring for tea. Tea! Pot! Kif! Ring of the Niebelungen, Fellowship of the Ring, Ring of Bright Water. So the Ring-Fellows were members of a daisy chain? Life of Berlioz on the radio, with Madeleine Renaud, and I think of the lives of ALL musicians and Madeleine Renaud is French, the French National Theatre. French! National! Theater! How ridiculous are EACH of those concepts and I want to laugh. Everyone looks at me and laughs, and I have a Mickey Mouse face with white eye patches, but I'm peeling from the nose and my face is crumbling and the eye patches are a MASK! Pull it off---pull off my face?? Don't be a chicken! They had no chicken in the restaurant, and JJ had to get a skewer! Chicken is a cock. Cock! Back to sex again. Coc. Oc; Langue d'oui and Langedoc. Two ways of saying yes. SAY yes. YES. Language? How STUPID words are. I'm cold. Old? Cover me with a blanket. I want to sleep. I'm such a bore. Cover! The kernel is to cover! What a job for a Colonel. Job! I'm cold. I blow on my hands. Blow! Job! Sex again. I look at Marc's beautiful eyes, and he's old and I'm old and JJ's old. But it doesn't MATTER. I could reach for his arm and it would go from muscle of youth to thin bone of age under my grasp. He becomes more male, JJ more female. JJ rears back his pillows and his anus comes upward and it's obvious that the ass is the evolved sexual apparatus of the woman. So children come from the ass, like shit. (Men and women are then two stages of evolution, existing by some quirk at the same time, but basically incompatible.) Shit. Crotte du diable, the cheese last night. Merde that I looked up in Robert's dictionary. I'm Robert. All words are one, and I'm trying to write them all, and it's another book, like the letter she got from JJ's niece, "C'est un roman." A book---I'm writing a book. A roman! Volubilis overgrown with flowers. I pause in the conversation and Marc says "Another book," and I stagger---he read my MIND! Then there's the whole bit of drugs and smoking and drinking being forbidden, and "forbidden" seems so childish, one can do as one pleases. But it ALWAYS goes the same way. Maybe better to simply drink some wine and get pleasantly high and sexy? DIARY PAGE: In the morning we're off to Volubilis, rushing because we have to get back for lunch with his friends, and the fields are covered with flowers, and the roads are full of trucks and winding, so the travel is slow. Into the parking lot and buy a self-guiding tour, and JJ isn't interested in the step-by-step flow, so I end up seeing more than he does. Outskirts of the town are very UNDERdeveloped, leaving some of the foundations almost completely covered with weeds and debris, but in the middle, where they're rebuilding the temple, I think they're going too far, though it's interesting to see three or four men pushing against a huge rock cube while two others adjust rollers underneath and two or three others tug on a rope at the top, much as they must have done to built it at first. The mosaics are really remarkable, and sadly left out in the sun and the rain, so they might not last too long. They're primitive, but colorful and eye-catching, and sometimes even the Hercules had pleasing genitalia. The main road is attractive with its sewers and slow upward toward the gate reconstructed in the distance, and you get a feeling of what the town must have been like with its arcades of shops, and the merchant's homes behind, with the factories down the hill on the other side. The triumphal arch, falling into ruin, furnishes thought about the transitory nature of triumph, and again the flowers on all the ruins are almost more impressive than the ruins themselves. Where have all the flowers gone? They went to Volubilis! Back and look up onto the Meteora-like cliff-hangings of Moulay-Idriss, but the roads seem to be out, and back to town late for lunch, but someone's mother is later still, so we start without her, and talk to her later. We get to the Dar Jamai museum, and we're rushed through it, looking at the doors and locks and hinges and chests and rugs and jars and pottery and kitchen utensils quite out of context, and then back through the Bab Mansour to a darling guide at the Tomb of Moulay Ismail, a mosque-like place that we CAN enter, and he's pleasant and informative, and we're back to the Medersa Bou Inania and leave Place el Hedim only to return to it later on with Marc in his sportscar, looking for Khif, and he finds it, packing three pipes to get his choice, and I'm off as in TD 27-31. To Fez. DATE BOOK FOR SATURDAY, MAY 3: Tour (dogs barking) of Fez lengthened to lakes at Ifrane and Imouzzer, for lunch, and to guided tour of Fez souks and medersas. Smoke again, dinner at Merinides and talk love to JJ before 12. DIARY: Third flat tire on piste out of Immouzir. Road to Ouezzane? Drive along Tour de Fez and see "Route Coupee." Ask fellow and trust his dishonesty, so when he says "The road near the Palais Jamai," we don't believe him and go on to find a SECOND bridge out. Return, and JJ finds a road on the Michelin map that's not on the Guide Bleu map, and the guy WAS right. Still need gas and try Palais Jamai. Guides say "straight," but it's not. OTHER guide says it's in the private parking lot, just to right. Look, and, fantastic! he's RIGHT, though gas must be pumped by hand (no electricity this morning). 5/3. We take the ridiculous Tour de Fez road and it turns out laughingly inadequate. Into town and look for something more to see and decide on lake tour between Imousser and Ifrane. Little lakes are very pleasant in their valleys, grown with rushes and flocked with ducks. Weather is cool, the boats on the shore are few and the lousy roads seem to guarantee it's either the perfect secluded retreat during the summer or a traffic-jammed hell hole. Roads go from bad to worse, we get a flat, and there's no one around at ALL. There's a knock and I open and there's Marc with a lavender silk shirt, a black silk scarf, a pink-rose soft velvet jacket with fabric-covered buttons, and elegant black bells. He looks like an Italian gigolo and completely appealing. We sit on balcony smoking kif as JJ coughs and gets a popeyed look and the silence is broken by the effective whack on the palm that dislodges the roach from the pipe. The next morning the patio floor is covered with green matchsticks. We get a guide for the afternoon, who had the nerve to offer that I get into the tiny back instead of him. We take the tire to be fixed and drive quickly through the Mellah and Fez el Jedid, and park outside an interior gate in Fez el Bali. For the next three hours we walk through two medersas, see the hole for Moulay Ismail, look at five doors to the Great Mosque---walk up and down Hong Kong souk-type alleys, sip mint tea as a rug salesman envisions selling JJ a 1000-franc ancient Berber carpet, look at the hot irons branding "gold" onto "leather," look at the man stamping the "white metal which isn't silver and the red which IS copper," look for the fifth time at a damascening operation, breathe through my mouth, gasp at the horns, and gape at the tanning solutions manned by bare-legged workers who work ten hours for six dihram. See two rickets fondouqs that JJ calls "joli" and get talked to about "Mister Bob the Rich American at whom all the girls look" and the arondisements in Paris in which JJ lives and works and about his night studies to be the best avocat in Fez. JJ guys a djiballah after he decides a caftan isn't REALLY what his girl friend wants and look at cedar scraps for brushing teeth, Arabic gum for chewing, saffron for cooking, perfume ingredients for smelling, honey stuff and chick pea stuff for eating like candy and equally sweetly edible couple in rug shop. Guide gets the "scale" ten dihram rather than the demanded fifteen by the "official guides." DIARY PAGE: Can hardly sleep because of the dogs barking down in the town, but this was still one of the better hotels, though I wanted very badly to stay at the Palais Jamai, which was the third of the three exceptional hotels after the Gazelle D'Or, which we lunched at, and the Mamounia in Marrakech, where we stayed for two delightful days. But JJ's friends in Meknes recommended this one, Les Merinides, which was too new to be catalogued, and it was modern, with a fantastic view down over the city from the terrace, but the dogs were a liability, and it was distant from the city itself. I guess the best WAS the Mamounia (disregarding those in completely different categories, such as the Lancelot in London, for the gay, and the Cote D'Or in Saulieu, for the food, Solynieve for the snow, Torremolinos for the relaxing beach, and San Sebastian for the view), but some of them were really terrible, like the one at Cadaques, the Irving in Grenada, the Balima in Rabat, the two Gite D'Etapes in Ouarzazate and Erfoud (Ouarzazate less so, but the FOOD was so bad there), and our room (not so much the hotel) in the Transatlantique in Meknes, and Seville and Toledo. But we always managed to have a private bath or shower, though in some places they seemed to delight in making trouble for everyone by putting up no shower curtains, and sometimes the stalls were moldy beyond compare, and in Escurial the toilet didn't work and had to be salvaged by the repairmen. It took us all the way to Agadir to get used to the idea of having breakfast in the room, though at Agadir you could have it at the pool, but it was great to have it on your own private balcony in Marrakech, Fez, Smir, and Escurial (it was too hot to eat outside in San Sebastian). In general the prices were cheap, with the highest reached where we stayed the longest: Marrakech, Agadir and Fez, and the rock-bottom cheapest being that first night out at Mont Sant Michel in Avranches, from which I got some sort of bites which were powerfully itchy and spread until I soaked in a hot bath twice (or they went of their own cyclic accord). Gazelle D'Or would have been by far the most expensive, but we didn't say there, and I never DID succeed in my dream of reserving a room for a night at the Ritz in Paris: I was just too lazy. This day in TD 31-32, bed at 12. DATE BOOK FOR SUNDAY, MAY 4: Up at 8 to Ouezzane and Chechuan for lunch and rain and walking, along Rif mountains in fog and up colorful road to Tetuan in dusk, all hotels by Strand closed in Restinga-Smir. Bed at 10:30. DIARY: There's a little charmer in Chechouan, hardly more than 3, with a fat Mickey Rooney face and James Cagney voice whose vocabulary is "Hello, Anglish, Deutsche, Aufwiedersiehn, and Francaise" who follows through the alleys shouting at us. The clouds and the rain are spectacular, particularly a distinctive tornado-like tail that drifts up and down from the clouds around Ouezzane and appears NOT to be a tornado, but which is a distinct puzzling item ten times as long as wide and conical. Many chunks of road are out, though they seem at least to have SEEN them. One road, from south, to Chechouan, is closed, but northern entrance works and we eat in parador after seeming to establish that the vaunted Spanish souks on Sunday aren't really there. Eat during a downpour and JJ goes back to the souks as I come to car to write. We both sigh with relief at the thought that tomorrow we'll be back in Spain, guide-less, fly-less, with the chance of stopping where we want to not being surrounded by urchins wanting money or guide duties. We can leave the car without paying to guard it, fool around with personal duties without someone else helping, and be free of kids shouting, running, with hands out, after us. DIARY PAGE: Up at 8 and check out and have difficulties leaving town, but when we finally find it, it's rolling and picturesque, with many panoramic vistas back toward the entirely self-contained town of Fez. Hear about the market in Ouezzane, but though we look through the hill town, there's really nothing to look at, and disappointedly up to Chechaouen, which is supposed to have a combination Spanish-Moroccan market, and the direct road is closed, so we're north to the other turnoff to go back south to the town, climbing steadily, and the rains have eaten into the roads, causing huge cave-ins in part, and all the little valleys are lively with brooks, brown with their freight of mud. We hit a number of rainstorms, particularly going into Marrakech and Meknes, and the mountain roads were not improved by thoughts of boulders tumbling down atop the car. We're told to eat in the Parador, so we do, but the view of the hills is blocked by the rains that come as we eat, and JJ is out to see the town, but I'm into the car to write TD 32. Then he decided he wanted to see part of the Rif mountains, and that's fine with me, so we're north to the intersection, south to where we started, and out east along the mountain roads. We can see the hills tumbling below us, sometimes very nicely, but the clouds above block off the far views, and we only catch glimpses of other mountains to the south before the haze obscures everything. Higher and higher, touching the bottoms of the clouds, and when we get to the point where we're supposed to see the Mediterranean far to the north, we see only clouds. Father east, but the roads are again bad, with detours and rocks and huge trucks scouting out weak points in the road ahead of us, and the clouds get lower and lower as we get higher and higher, and just after Targuist we decide we've had enough, and we stop there in the fog for some very strangely shrouded people, a gas station attendant who didn't want to give us gas, and overcharged saying it was high-test when it wasn't, and back down the same road to spikes and spears of sunlight striking at random, and again up the road along Chechaouen, and take the mountainous road winding up to Tetouan in the gathering darkness, making the landscape ever more dramatic in the dusk. Up to Smir to find most of the hotels closed in the blackness, and finally get into the beach hotel, across to the restaurant to eat poorly, and bed at 10:30. DATE BOOK FOR MONDAY, MAY 5: Write fifteen postcards to 10, breakfast, rest, and drive to Ceuta at 12, through border thrice, drive up hills for great views, lunch at Green Dolfin, boat 4 to 6 and drive sierra to Ronda, walk town, bed 11:30. DIARY PAGE: Up leisurely and over to breakfast, looking at the beach between quick, drenching showers, and decide that now or never we have to write postcards from Morocco. I'd sent one or two off on the way, but now I figured I'd get them all off, and sit down to write 15 of them, falling off in interest toward the end, but feeling great when they're out of the way. Sit around on the terrace in the sun, then take off for Ceuta about 11, getting to the Spanish border to realize that we have to change our money there, and mail our cards there, too, and JJ afterwards realizes that the man we gave the cards to was not happy with the tip he gave him, and he has terrible visions of the cards being soaked for their stamps and thrown away afterwards. It looked like it, too, when no one had gotten my cards when I returned, but then they came in about two months after they had been postmarked in Morocco. Find that the boat leaves at 4, and we're in the interminable line to get tickets for it, then drive of toward Mount Hacho and knife-edge roads chiseled into the cliffs, and down through the little community nestled around it, driving perpendicularly most of the time, his car roaring and protesting against ascending and descending in first gear all the time. The trees are green and the water's blue and the clouds are white in the sky, almost as if Morocco was apologizing for the rain we had each day, and we could still see the fog settled over the hills to the south. Down again to the beach after leaving the car at a garage for something else that had gone wrong - no, JJ just wanted to get gas again, since the price was so cheap here, and I looked down at the clear waters and the brown bodies sunning themselves, and again thought of my unused snorkel equipment, and the fact that he swam once and I was in water to my ankles once only, at the pool in Agadir. This was not the trip for the water-loving ones. Eat in the Green Dolphin and walk town, get across from 4-6, watching Gibraltar again, and into Algeciras to drive up the magnificent Sierra de Ronda to Ronda, marveling at views of Gibraltar from 60 and 70 kilometers away, and lovely cliffs and white villages of the hills. Stay at the Reina Victoria and eat, brushing a roach off the wall, and walk down to look at the Tajo (cut) bridge and into the silent church square, bed at 11:30. DATE BOOK FOR TUESDAY, MAY 6: Construction sounds wake to slow breakfast at 9, look at Tajo cut and along bad-good road to Seville at 1, find rest at Alcazar, walk to Dobo lunch, see cathedral and Giralda, sunset, dinner at Andalusian Palace, lousy. DIARY PAGE: Up at 7:30 to sounds of construction, and a very slow breakfast with a good view over the valley below, and then drive around the town, going down roads which were the worst we'd seen, blowing the horn to make sure no one was flying up from below. With his compression difficulties, we almost didn't make it back up the hill, getting back to a level part and gathering momentum, and we could almost see ourselves leaving our car at the bottom of the Tajo at Ronda and taking a train back. The road to Seville is scenic until we get to Las Cabezas de San Juan, but then they're repairing it in parts, so there's traffic piled up as they stop traffic first in one direction then in another. The little towns we go through are strange in that they have small hedges along the street in a pathetic attempt to beautify the town, but they're covered in dust, and they look more sad than effective. Up to Seville and try the Alfonso XIII and the Cristina to find they're full, and we panic before we hit Spain on $5 a day and see the reference to the Alcazar, and they have a VERY cheap room, and JJ is delighted by the fact that they don't have a restaurant, which means we'll have to investigate the town's offerings. Walk the street up and down and don't find a place that I like, but finally we stop at Bebe's, and the service is terrible and food awful and the wine worse, but he loves it, maybe because the price is almost non-existent, and we can listen to the locals arguing and laughing and talking at the tables all around us: no tourists here, that's for sure. Back to the Cathedral, and it's one of the sights of the world: the Chapel Royal is sumptuously decorated in enough gold for a whole church, the Salle Capitulaire is a classically beautiful chamber with a simple throne, the Sacristie is full of garments and paintings and gold and fantastic art-works in metal and jewels, there's an enormous tomb of Columbus, and the church itself is staggering in its sheer size and grandeur. To the Giralda and look out over the town and the roofs of the cathedral, and reluctantly down nearing dark to see the sunset from the hotel over the Cathedral, then dress and get over to the Alphonse XIII for a grand setting for a terrible meal, and we're glad we're not staying there. DATE BOOK FOR WEDNESDAY, MAY 7: Up at 8 to wash hair, catch up on this by 9, now, then to Alcazar and gardens to 12 and to Indies museum and lunch at Rio Grande and walk Maria Luisa Park and see art museum and back to rest to 10, dine at Cochera and see show till 3! DIARY PAGE: Up at 8 to wash my hair, catch up on my diary, then we're into the Alcazar, where again we brush off the guides and wander through the shaded rooms and gawk at the crystal chandeliers, ornate furniture and commodes, the frescos, and the lovely juxtaposition of shaded interior and sun-drenched greenery from outside. In the lower rooms are the Moorish chambers, tomb-like enclosures of stalactite ceilings and undersea-green shadows from the grilled windows. In the courtyards are paintings of the sight, not one-eighth as impressive as the actual coloring and detailing of the building. Finally out to the gardens, and I tired quickly of the paths and plots and fountains and little rest banks and patterns of trees and few flowers, and JJ wants to stay, but I've set my idea toward the Museum of the Indies, and leave at 12 to catch a tour with a group who speaks English and a guide who speaks only Spanish, so there's little communication. The building is huge and cool, the walls lined with cabinets full of yellowing decaying paper, and the cases contain signatures of Columbus and Vespucci and Cabot and Ferdinand and Isabella and almost all the explorers and artists and royalty of the day. Meet JJ at the Cathedral and look at the courtyard, and walk across the river to the empty Rio Grande, but at least it's air conditioned and the food is pleasant, and we're back into the heat to cross the bridge and wander through Maria Luisa park, passing buildings which are being remodeled into museums, fountains which I'm shouted down off of when I walk on the edge thereof, and JJ wants to see the Musee des Beaux-Arts, and we walk through the entire town, stopping at the Plaza Nueva to watch the people, and past shopping arcades like Sierpes where it's impossible to drive a car, only walk, and the museum is small and quiet, with nothing much there but lots of terribly dark paintings in hideous condition, statues of saints, and a few nice Zubarans and a Greco self-portrait which is impossibly lit. Back to lie in the room merely relaxing, watching another sunset, and at 10 we dress and to La Cochera to eat a reasonable meal and down at 11:30 to see the tourist-infested flamenco show, and JJ leaves at 1, but I stay on to see better things, though it still seems stilted, and only the gaunt-faced tortured Maria is worth watching, though the comic comes in for some good things, but I can't speak Spanish. Bed at 3! DATE BOOK FOR THURSDAY, MAY 8: Up at 8, not too bad, and drive to Cordoba for the cathedral, where we spent 10-12. Have lunch somewhere and barrel up highway to Toledo taking chance to get hotel at 9, but do, lousy, and bed. DIARY: Then the fits of coughs and sneezes attack---with running noses and overflowing irritated eyes and throats. JJ has it first, through much of the trip, and I wonder about his incessant throat clearing, his agonies of coughing, his successions of sneezing. Then when it hits me I have exactly what he went through. One follows another sneeze when the nose is so stuffed up you can hardly breathe. The lungs seem to fill with liquids that prevent deep breaths and cause rattles you'd like very much to be rid of. There's a fantastic tickling across the arch of the back of the roof of the mouth, so that you feel like taking something bristly and rubbing it so far back that you're sure to gag. After a certain number of sneezes the stomach begins to hurt, and in building up to the sneeze there's no orgasm-like feeling of elation, but a growing fear that something will explode or tear loose beneath your ribs. The throat becomes sore from coughing, the nasal passages tired of incessant snuffling to clear them. It may be the hay or the wagons we pass, the flowers in the inner courts of Cordova, or more probably only the dust, but the dust is everywhere including in the hair and the sweater and the air and the car and even in the handkerchief that's brought to the nose and mouth to wipe it clean of mucus. Then, Thursday, it clouds up between Cordoba and Toledo and begins to rain, and it's cold and windy into the bargain, and there are miles of construction that force us to stop: increasing the driving time, cooling the engine so the heaters work less, forcing us to sit quietly and let the rain drip down on us. But the windshield stays clearer, not when drops are whipped around from speeds above 120 to strike the INSIDE of the windshield. But then a strange light comes out in Puerto Lapice and we're tempted toward Toledo, knowing we'll get there just after 9, after dark, but we go on anyway, and drive toward the lights just after dark, and then the buildings are lit as we drive up the hill to the Parador---racing a car that we fear might get the last room ahead of us---and the view of the walled town is magnificent. But the Parador is full, and they're kind enough to know which other hotels are full and recommend us to one on the road to Madrid that they know to have a room, and they do, though there's a fright as father asks son about the rooms and they fill quickly with French and English that the son has placed without the father's knowledge. The son turns out to practically control the place as the father rushes around looking incompetent. He takes the luggage and fills in the forms and takes care of the passports and receives orders for dinner and serves it---and when the father took the order for dessert, the son was back for us to re-order, and tell us what was out. The look of shy adoration on his face when a male customer he seemed to know smiled and talked with him showed that he received too little affection in his busy young life. Dinner was lousy, my veal awful, JJ's lamb tough, but when the whole bill came to 460 the next day $6.60 for 2, $3.30 for one for bed and supper and breakfast, it seemed OK. There was also a fuss when I was paying my bill because it seems the English went off without paying their bill and he mumbled about how many pesetas he had just lost. DIARY PAGE: Up at 8, and I'm managing to survive the cognac from last night, and we drive to Cordoba on a road so tied up with construction that we're tempted to take one of the little roads off to the side, but settle down stoically to stop and start, then have to pass strings of busses and trucks which have been made all our speed. The allergies are hitting us both now, and we're sneezing and my nose is actually dripping, and it feels awful. Park alongside the church, and JJ leaves his sunglasses in the map slot, and they're gone when he gets back, and he doesn't buy any for the rest of the trip, which to me epitomized his masochism. Into the Mezquita, the Cathedral, and the interior is staggering in its immensity, though as in most Spanish cathedrals the "church within a church" of the Sanctuary and Choir breaks up any enormous perspectives. The treasury is full of stuff again, but the beautiful gold inlaid Mihrab off the Maksourah is the focal point, leaving the Moorish tradition overshadow the highly ornate Christian part in the center. Out to climb the Minaret as recommended in the guide, but the family seems to be still at home, mumbling behind the locked doors, and we only get to the top to see the strange church superstructure above the repeated groinings of the Moorish mosque which stretches almost over all the town. Into the Jewish section to look for a place for lunch, and after a number of ramblings through the hot white streets, we stumble into the leafed interiors of the Zoco restaurant, and have sangria to pep up the afternoon and rather good food, ending with a lush honey-like cake. Then into the car and up the highway toward Madrid, making such good time that the paradors where we planned to spend the evening are passed, and we decide to make it into Toledo. Again we get there after dark (as we did in Montserrat, Cadaques, and a number of Moroccan towns), so all we can see are the lights of the town from a distance, and we can only imagine the forges of the Tajo River which cut the town off from the surrounding environs. Our search is spelled out in TD 36, but the hotel food was really abominable, made even worse by the television blasting away at us, and the fact that we couldn't wander about the city of Toledo at night. DATE BOOK FOR FRIDAY, MAY 9: Up at 8, see Greco house and cathedral, Orgaz, art museum and at 12:30 to Segovia, good lunch on way 2-3, and around Alcazar and down to Escurial at 5-7, and to Victorian Palace, dine and walk town to 11:30. DIARY: Friday, May 9 turns out to be enjoyably busy, with scarcely a moment to think how tired of sightseeing I am. Wake at 5 with cold shoulders and feel nice snuggling down into the covers, but my nose starts running and gets blocked up and I desperately try to fall asleep without breathing. Resort to sticking my thumb into my mouth, between my teeth, propping my jaw away from my skull and wonder if that's the same reason kids suck their thumbs, because they're afraid, without really knowing it, of having their noses blocked and suffocating. Finally resort to wiping the nasal drip with the sheets and lay on one side until the upper nostril clears, then turning over until both clear. A pleasant feeling of relief comes when I find I can finally breathe normally without making up oxygen lack by breathing deeply voluntarily through the mouth. Somehow I fall asleep again and wake at 8. JJ seems still asleep, but remembering the plans for the busy day I take a quick shower and wash in the cold bathroom. Come out at 8:15 and he's still in bed and only reluctantly gets out to get into the bathroom. Done with breakfast (and they DON'T have the Spanish TV blasting away for every meal, only dinner) at 9:15, and take the drive around the city, shivering in the cold wind on the balcony of the Parador. Down to El Greco's house just before it opens at 10 and see one complete set (a flamboyant one, so JJ says, with more color and dash than earlier ones) of apostles and see good pieces of another set in the sacristy of the Toledo cathedral and bits of others through the busy day. The sheer sensuality of El Greco's lovely pink flesh tones, the handsome vigor of the faces, the luminosity of the eyes, the feminine grace of the hands, all leads one to want to know and admire the subjects of the paintings, and thus the artist. How sensuously he must have felt about male flesh to paint it so warmly. To Santa Tomas for the Burial of Conte Orgaz and hear it variously described as the third greatest painting in the world (after Velazquez's "Las Meninas" and Rembrandt's "Nightwatch") or the fourth (after the Gioconda and the other two). Strange to rate paintings this way (what about Tchelitchew's "Hide and Seek," or Van Dyck's "Annunciation," or Michaelangelo's "Round Madonna" or Picasso's "Guernica" or Dali's "Last Supper" or Seurat's "Apres Midi" or El Greco's "Martyrdom of Maurice" or Holbein's "Thomas a Beckett"?) Though the same thought came to me when I thought of a hierarchy of Michelin ratings. OK, so he goes through the world and rates things with one, two or three stars. Then he should make a guide of the world, using ONLY three star places (say 50 per country) for every country, and rate THEM one star, two stars and three stars---what would his first 10 or 20 or 30 three stars be? What have I seen that I've been absolutely flabbergasted with? MUSEUMS BUILDINGS PLACES Louvre* St. Peters* Yellowstone* Vatican* Seville Cathedral St. Vincent* Metropolitan Empire State Llao-Llao Chicago Field Taj Mahal Nikko Dearborn Park Karnak Grand Canyon MuseumNatHist San Simeon Yosemite Uffizi Bangkok Palace King's Canyon Rijksmuseum Pitti Palace Carlsbad Caverns Smithsonian Paris Opera Alps National Gallery Westminster Abbey Big Sur TOWNS THINGS New York* Kaleidoscope* 46 items Rio de Janeiro* Crown Jewels* 9 stars London Morgan Gems Bangkok Saksuahaman Kyoto Hide & Seek Paris David Rome Venice Cuzco Florence PLACES STILL TO SEE: Hermitage Winter Palace Kremlin Vienna Opera Sydney Opera Angkor Wat Pompeii Dominica Treetops Moscow Leningrad Peking Munich Sydney Istanbul Nairobi Toledo Cathedral is absolutely jam-packed full of tourists and the treasury with the monstrance made from Columbus' first gold is so full of people there's a definite subway atmosphere, which prompts JJ to remark in the Escurial that they decorated their subway very well. Tours zip through the sacristy with lovely paintings next door dismissed with "Look at the labels and see the names and hurry up." Crowds of fifty or so cluster around one guide and couples and trios lean forward and peer upward as a terrible accent, volume adjusted for the crowd of fifty, explains the two-finger-together characteristic of Greco and his "lightness that puts the people between earth and heaven." Museum of Bellas Artes is nicely laid out, huge dome over well in second floor lovely, and on the second floor there are piped strains of guitar music. Greco has an Assumption, a St. John the Baptist and St. James, a couple of standing saints, and a couple of St. Francis', along with an Annunciation and they're nicely hung and well admired. At 12:30 (one hour after planned leaving at 11:30) we get into crowd leaving Toledo for Madrid, but turned around on a circle, and have only the impression of enormous traffic, overpowering buildings overlooking narrow streets, and a rather ordinary people. Out on a number 6-lane divided highway where JJ reaches his only 130 of Spain, between Madrid and Villalba 40 km away. Toward Segovia at 2:30 we're hungry and stop for a quick lunch of good roast lamb until 3:15 and dash up to Segovia. I make wrong turn, we see the aqueduct first, delightfully functional in its skeleton of cement-less stones, only two per layer, and at the keystone ONLY the keystone, as well as for the stones on either side, and the stones are not particularly monumental for each arch, so each arch is marvelously light and airy, and it could almost be the trestle for a metal bridge. The aqueduct part on top looks obtrusively large, since it's far wider than the lower arch, and the plastering has fallen away and the bricks show, and then there's grass growing on top, but the lower arches are almost not there, and it's lovely. The road around the town is blocked to traffic, so we go down the only road to find that the Alcazar is on the same level as the town, but the ROAD dips down into the river valley (with aspens standing in the rushing muddy water), affording one or two vantage points for the towering aspect so famous. There are tourist busses there, too, but only one little old lady stopping to get just the right angle for her camera shot. Thus Segovia takes only fifteen minutes, and at 4:15 we're thundering back down toward Escurial. There at 5 and into huge crowded ticket hall for two tickets. DIARY PAGE: This day is completely described in TD 37-40 until we get to El Escurial. I'm in to buy tickets and don't see the extra charge for the new museums, and again we rebel against being carted around like tourists. The first section includes the royal apartments, but there are literally thousands of people, and we get stuck in a Spanish-speaking group and the rooms we walk through are reasonably small and we keep getting into the tail-ends of other groups, and there are tempers on every side. The Goya cartoons are pleasant, but hardly great works of art, and there are only one or two items in each room (a set of clocks, a carved Ivory Mercury, a marquetry table) which are worth looking at, and JJ and I push past from group to group, looking lost in the huge hall covered with battle paintings, and into rooms with beautiful Spanish and Flemish paintings in each room, and peek out at the cathedral from the Appartement of Philippe II. Then we're free of the group and go off into the enormous halls to see the Sacristie, where there's a painting of the sacristy and the fellow who shows us around is a bit too friendly, putting his arms on our shoulders to steer us around to the paintings and art objects, and we're into the Salles du Chapitre, where there are terrible old paintings and nothing much of interest, the library is mostly behind locked doors, but some of the books displayed in the cases have cute drawings, and I'm attracted to the enormous paintings covering the free areas of the walls and the entire ceiling with gods and goddesses and mythological beauties of nude flesh. I dash back to get tickets to the New Museum, and there are staggering paintings which we look long at by van der Weyden, Greco, Goya, and others, very nicely displayed, and it's quiet, too, so we can appreciate them for as long as we want. Then into the enormous church, where the altar is lit when the coin is inserted, but it's severely plain and white, and then down into the Pantheon des Rois, solemn in gold and black and hugely impressive with the tombs lining the walls, after the breathtaking descent into the bowels under the church. Out through the court of the Kings, after seeing the inner court of the Evangelists, and walk down to the hotel, properly stupefied by all that it contains.