The Way of Wanderlust (21 page)

I WAS SITTING IN A SECOND-FLOOR SALON
at the newly opened Musée Matisse in Nice, France, scribbling in my notebook, when an attractive, middle-aged woman in an impeccably tailored peach-colored suit approached me and said in flawless French, “Excuse me, but do you speak French?”

I said I did, and she continued, “Well, forgive me for bothering you, but I'm wondering just what a foreign visitor thinks about this museum. You see, I'm from Nice, and I can't find anything worthwhile here, and I'm afraid that visitors who come all the way to Nice from far away to see this museum will be terribly disappointed.

“Whatever have you found to write about?” she said, gesturing at my notebook.

“Well,” I began, hoping my trusty, rusty French was up to this adventure in art criticism, “there are certain valuable illuminations to be found—”

“Illuminations!” she exploded, her pearl necklace trembling. “Have you been to the Matisse show in Paris?”

“Well, no,” I said, “but I did see the Matisse exhibition in New York last year.”

“New York!” she pouted, as if she had been one-upped by a neighbor. “And how does this compare to that?”

“Well, you really can't compare,” I began, but then another well-dressed woman who had been hovering near us burst into speech.

“But you can't compare the two!” she exclaimed, fire in her voice and eyes. “I too am a native of Nice, and I think this is a very interesting museum, an extraordinary achievement given all the obstacles that had to be overcome, all the planning and work that went into it.

“You know,” she continued, turning to me, “this museum was six years in the making. As you can see”—and her fiery gaze directed my eyes to the ancient rocky walls on the museum's grounds—“this villa is set on an area of Roman ruins. There were all manner of political problems and personality problems, permissions to be obtained, regulations to be followed—the plan had to be meticulous, absolutely perfect! It is a miracle this museum was ever finished!”

I almost expected the room to burst into applause.

“Well, yes,” my original questioner countered, “but now that it is finished, I ask you, What is there to see? Some half-finished drawings, studies; a scattering of canvases. Where are the masterpieces? Where is the genius of Matisse?” and she thrust one diamond-bedecked hand toward the sky.

“Well,” I said, “that canvas over there—
Fenêtre à Tahiti
—is a powerful composition, with those great blocks of color one associates with Matisse's masterpieces.”

“Bravo!” said the second woman.

“Oh, that,” said the first woman, flinging a finger at the painting as if it were the bones of yesterday's fish dinner. “Yes, there are a few canvases of note here—but so few! Why cannot Nice, Matisse's home, produce a more distinguished tribute to an artist of such distinction?”

“But don't you know”—the second woman's friend now entered the fray—“how expensive it is to mount exhibitions these days? All the permissions that have to be obtained, and the shipping fees—and the insurance!” she exclaimed, her eyes rolling heavenward in horror.

“The insurance,” muttered woman number one. “We are talking about art and genius and a suitable tribute—and you are talking about insurance!”

“Yes, I am. You have to be practical, realistic. I think this is a very charming tribute. It has a hometown feeling—”

“An intimacy,” I said.

“Bravo for the American! Yes, an intimacy, that I think distinguishes it from larger, more impersonal exhibits.”

“I agree,” I said. “You feel closer to the soul of Matisse here.”

“
Voilà
!” exclaimed woman number two.

“The soul of Matisse?” the first woman said, eyeing me suspiciously. “Are all Americans so kind?” She paused and smiled slightly.

“I still think I would be—how shall I say?—deceived, disappointed, if I flew all the way across the ocean to see this.”

“Well,” I began expansively, “no one will fly all the way across the ocean just to see this. They will fly all the way across the ocean to see this!”—and I pointed grandly to the sunny seaside city outside the museum's walls.

“Ah!” all three women said.

“So you like Nice?” asked woman number one.

“Oh, I love Nice,” I said. “I love the winding alleyways in Old Nice, and the old shuttered buildings. I love the sidewalk cafés and the restaurants that have room for only four tables. I love the grand Promenade des Anglais and the fantastic hotels that look onto it.”

“And the people of Nice?”

“Oh, yes!” I began—“well, actually, you are the first Niçoises I've had the opportunity to talk at length with, but all the people I've encountered have been very friendly and courteous. One thing that amazes me is that people are so willing to speak English here. In Paris, even if they know some English, shopkeepers or waiters will often refuse to speak with foreign customers.”

“We are not Parisians here, my dear,” said woman number two.

“Gracious no!” added woman number one. “We have a temperament of the south, wouldn't you say?”

“Exactly,” said woman number three. “We are more relaxed, more passionate,”—did she smile discreetly at me?—“more. . . In Paris, they work now to enjoy life later. In Nice, we enjoy life now!”

“Yes!” I said. “I'm sure that is exactly what Matisse felt!”

I suddenly realized that the visitors in the salon were paying more attention to our little group than they were to the paintings and drawings on the walls.

“So you like art?” woman number one asked.

“Yes,” I said, “especially modern French art.”

“Then you must go to Antibes to see the Picasso museum, and Cagnes-sur-Mer to see Renoir's former residence.”

“And of course you must go to the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul,” said woman number two.

“And the Chagall museum down the street,” said woman number three, “and the Cocteau museum in Menton.”

“Oh, and have you seen the Rosary Chapel in Vence?” asked woman number one. “It is Matisse's triumph!”

“And you must see the Cocteau chapel in Villefranche!” said woman number three.

“Yes,” I lamented, “there is so much to see, and I have so little time.”

I was waiting for the women to offer to take me in their Mercedes from museum to museum over the next few days. Barring that, I was waiting for them at least to invite me back to their homes for dinner or a drink.

But life never follows a set script.

“Oh!” said woman number two, looking at her watch. “I have to pick up the children!”

And the other two women, as if on cue, looked at their watches and exclaimed, “The time!”

“How quickly time passes with pleasant company,” said woman number one, and winked at me.

“Well, our new American friend,” she continued with a broad smile, glancing at my still open notebook, “have you found something to write about now?”

As they made for the exit, she turned one last time and said, “
Au revoir
! Enjoy your stay in our lovely Nice!”

Then they were gone.

I walked once more around the suddenly intimate and enchanting museum, looked again at the artist's luminous, passion-filled pieces and thought: Ah, Matisse—now I understand even better what you loved about Nice.

When I was writing a column for the Lonely Planet website, one of the subjects I tried to focus on was the special people we meet when we travel, people who come to embody and transfigure our understanding of a place. Usually these encounters are entirely unexpected, and often they become our most precious souvenirs from a trip. My meeting in 2000 with the woman I call T, in Dubrovnik, was one such experience. She brought the city's glorious past and tumultuous present to life for me. And to this day, when I think of that poignant place, I remember the moment her eyes shone with an indomitable light as she recalled the Dubrovnik of old.

I WASN'T SURE WHAT TO EXPECT
on my first visit to Dubrovnik in the fall of 2000. On the one hand, I knew that the city had long been considered the jewel of the Adriatic and was a UNESCO World Heritage site. On the other hand, I had heard that it had been largely destroyed by bombs in the early 1990s. Was I going to find rubble or restoration?

Happily, the answer was the latter. While 68 percent of Old Dubrovnik's 824 buildings were hit by bombs in an eight-month siege during the Yugoslavian civil war—leaving holes in two out of every three tiled roofs—the damage is hardly noticeable now. Most of the buildings have been meticulously repaired. And the old walled city is again truly an extraordinary jewel.

But the tale of Dubrovnik does not have an unambiguously happy ending. While the city itself has been largely rebuilt, the tourism on which the city depends has not been restored. And in this sense, the damage done by the shelling remains.

I happened to arrive on All Saints' Day, 30 October, and people were walking through the streets with armfuls of flowers to be laid at their ancestors' graves. This seemed a particularly appropriate introduction to a place where the past is such a powerful presence.

I signed up for a guided tour, which began with a bus trip to the outskirts above the city. From that vantage, Dubrovnik's Old Town seemed an exquisite labyrinth of honey-tinted stone buildings with terra-cotta roof tiles of red and orange, preserved within thick stone walls. It was an astonishing, almost fairy tale sight.

Then we walked through those gates, and the tale darkened. One of the first sights greeting visitors to the Old Town is a map that shows the damage done by bombs and grenades from October 1991 to May 1992. It is thick with black dots and triangles. “The worst day of the siege,” the woman leading my group said, “was 12 December, 1991. On the day, 600 shells fell on the city.” Six hundred shells.

“See up there?” she continued, pointing to a green hill within easy eyesight of the town, not far from where our bus had stopped. “That's where the guns were set. For months and months they just kept sending bombs onto the town. In all, 200 people in Dubrovnik were killed during this time.” Nine years later, her voice still quavered.

This woman—I'll call her T—proved a passionate guide to Dubrovnik past and present. She explained how, in the 15th and 16th centuries, Dubrovnik had been a commercial and cultural center that rivaled Venice. Extraordinary treasures had been created and collected here; merchants from afar passed through and marveled at its splendors. Ships were sent to Syria, Egypt, France, and Spain.

The city's fall from these heights began in 1667, when an earthquake devastated the area. But despite that destruction, T said, the plan of the city itself is little changed from the Middle Ages. She pointed like a proud parent to the geometric precision of the city: the six-foot-wide alleys that rise off the main street; the steep stairways between age-blackened stone facades and freshly painted wooden shutters; the strings of bright laundry festooned against the sky.