The Best American Travel Writing 2013 by Elizabeth Gilbert Page B
Authors: Elizabeth Gilbert
Ads: Link
took us there, in the afternoon. We rode behind a row of houses that had strange paintings and animal figures hanging in their breezeways. After what seemed a long time for a bicycle-taxi ride, we arrived at the woman’s place. Taking out a cigarette, Max told us to walk ahead, he would wait. At the door of a small, salmon-colored house, an old woman met us. Not the artist, it emerged. This was the artist’s mother. We sat with her in a kind of narrow front parlor, where she made sweetly formal small talk for maybe 20 minutes, telling us every so often that the artist would be out soon.
At a certain moment, a woman appeared in the passageway that led from the front room into the main part of the house, a woman with rolls of fat on her limbs, like a baby, and skin covered in moles. She walked on crutches with braces on her knees. She had a beautiful natural Afro with a scarf tied around it. She was simply a visually magnificent human being. She told us the prices of her works, and we bought a little chicken carving. She said almost nothing otherwise—she had difficulty speaking—but when we stood up to leave, she lifted a hand and spoke, or rather delivered, this sentence. It was evidently the message among all others that she deemed most essential for U.S. visitors. “I know that at present there are great differences between our peoples,” she said, “but in the future all will be well, because we are all the sons and daughters of Abraham Lincoln.”
KEVIN CHROUST
The Bull Passes Through
FROM
The Morning News
D AN IS IN , Brian is out, and I suppose I am 51 percent in and 49 percent out. I am going with Dan into a walled-off, maybe 25-foot-wide street. People above us, in positions of safety, gaze down with looks of concern.
“Give me your stuff,” Brian says, and Dan and I empty our pockets and hand him our sunglasses.
I keep my credit card, my driver’s license, 50 euros cash, and my insurance card in the buttoned back pocket of my white linen pants. We shake hands and he pats us on the back. We don’t try to convince him to reconsider because this is not the kind of thing you can fault someone for skipping. And if we convince him to do it and he gets hurt, we have to pay a doctor to fix him and a therapist to fix us.
“See you outside the stadium at the ticket window,” I say, and turn and walk into one of the more famously dangerous places to be on July 7 every year.
The faces of people down here with us tell a story much more pertinent to my situation. Some look fast, well prepared, dressed almost exclusively in white with red accessories—neckerchiefs and shawls in San Fermín tradition. Some look drunk, like they haven’t been to bed since this 204-hour party started 19 hours ago; many of them will be thrown out of the route by the
policía
before 8 A.M . We fall somewhere between. We are not drunk, but our white clothes are soaked in red sangria from the opening ceremonies. We went to bed early, but did not sleep well and do not feel well. If we were still 22 we’d be drunk.
Dan is very fast. I think I am probably faster than most of the people down here. But after speaking to people in this town for the past 36 hours, I’ve gathered speed doesn’t much matter. This is not a race. No one is PR-ing today. No one is qualifying for Boston. Speed doesn’t much matter because something like a dozen bulls are being released at the sound of a rocket, and they are going to catch whomever they want.
We walked the course the night we arrived in Pamplona. We are now on Day 12 of a 13-day, mostly sleepless trip to Italy and Spain. It is 7:15 A.M . on Saturday, July 7—the first day of the Running of the Bulls. Because it is the first day and it falls on a weekend this year, the route is crowded with spectators and runners. We fly home to Chicago tomorrow from Madrid, assuming there are no overnight hospital stays.
In 45 minutes, those bulls, weighing something like a thousand pounds each, are
At a certain moment, a woman appeared in the passageway that led from the front room into the main part of the house, a woman with rolls of fat on her limbs, like a baby, and skin covered in moles. She walked on crutches with braces on her knees. She had a beautiful natural Afro with a scarf tied around it. She was simply a visually magnificent human being. She told us the prices of her works, and we bought a little chicken carving. She said almost nothing otherwise—she had difficulty speaking—but when we stood up to leave, she lifted a hand and spoke, or rather delivered, this sentence. It was evidently the message among all others that she deemed most essential for U.S. visitors. “I know that at present there are great differences between our peoples,” she said, “but in the future all will be well, because we are all the sons and daughters of Abraham Lincoln.”
KEVIN CHROUST
The Bull Passes Through
FROM
The Morning News
D AN IS IN , Brian is out, and I suppose I am 51 percent in and 49 percent out. I am going with Dan into a walled-off, maybe 25-foot-wide street. People above us, in positions of safety, gaze down with looks of concern.
“Give me your stuff,” Brian says, and Dan and I empty our pockets and hand him our sunglasses.
I keep my credit card, my driver’s license, 50 euros cash, and my insurance card in the buttoned back pocket of my white linen pants. We shake hands and he pats us on the back. We don’t try to convince him to reconsider because this is not the kind of thing you can fault someone for skipping. And if we convince him to do it and he gets hurt, we have to pay a doctor to fix him and a therapist to fix us.
“See you outside the stadium at the ticket window,” I say, and turn and walk into one of the more famously dangerous places to be on July 7 every year.
The faces of people down here with us tell a story much more pertinent to my situation. Some look fast, well prepared, dressed almost exclusively in white with red accessories—neckerchiefs and shawls in San Fermín tradition. Some look drunk, like they haven’t been to bed since this 204-hour party started 19 hours ago; many of them will be thrown out of the route by the
policía
before 8 A.M . We fall somewhere between. We are not drunk, but our white clothes are soaked in red sangria from the opening ceremonies. We went to bed early, but did not sleep well and do not feel well. If we were still 22 we’d be drunk.
Dan is very fast. I think I am probably faster than most of the people down here. But after speaking to people in this town for the past 36 hours, I’ve gathered speed doesn’t much matter. This is not a race. No one is PR-ing today. No one is qualifying for Boston. Speed doesn’t much matter because something like a dozen bulls are being released at the sound of a rocket, and they are going to catch whomever they want.
We walked the course the night we arrived in Pamplona. We are now on Day 12 of a 13-day, mostly sleepless trip to Italy and Spain. It is 7:15 A.M . on Saturday, July 7—the first day of the Running of the Bulls. Because it is the first day and it falls on a weekend this year, the route is crowded with spectators and runners. We fly home to Chicago tomorrow from Madrid, assuming there are no overnight hospital stays.
In 45 minutes, those bulls, weighing something like a thousand pounds each, are
Similar Books
