DOWN BY THE BOARDWALK...
A night journey
by Nina Ondine
 It was May and it snowed back home — a few-hundred kilometers back north. Fourteen and a run away. A four-hour train trip had turned into twelve hours of uncertainty; stuck in a snow blizzard somewhere between Milan and Genoa. It looked as if I was about to spend a significant part of my youth in that overheated compartment. It smelled of dirty ashtrays. There was no room to stretch my legs without kicking someone. The other passengers sat quietly, smiling demurely at one another. A solider mentally counted the shrinking hours of leave he had left, as they dissolved in the falling snow. A fat woman next to me unwrapped a sandwich from a paper napkin and offered me half. It must have shown — in the porcelain of my skin and the intensity in my eyes — my first trip. Traveling through the blind night to a shore heard about in the wounded hours of my dissident life. Staying with a friend of a friend. I trusted anyone but those whom I’d left behind.
When I set food on the small platform it was the darkest, loneliest hour of the night. But as the train departed, it left me standing in the fragrant, balmy darkness of the Ligurian coast. I inhaled the welcoming air, rich with blooms and sea salt. The Mar Tirreno roared in the distance. I inhaled deeper, deeper, the sweet tar of the night. Only then, for the first time in my life, did I feel truly free. I picked up my duffle bag and heard someone stir on a wooden bench nearby.
The young man had been waiting for a long time. So long, it was still daylight when he’d arrived at the station. But he was given clear instructions, so he waited until the train arrived. By the time it finally did, he’d been asleep for several hours. It was dawn and a new day was beginning as we shook hands. “You’re not afraid are you?” He pointed at his battered blue Vespa.
We flew. Through the twilight, along the Lungomare and the Via Augusta, over the hills and olive groves of Levante, along the windy road that twists and turns and connects Santa Margherita to Portofino. I closed my eyes and held on tightly, giddy with delight.
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