Part 2

The heat and humidity of the Riviera arrived with a sudden slap as I descended the stairs from the air conditioned TGV, weighed down by my backpack carrying my clunky laptop with too many cables and outlet adapters, and dragging my rolling suitcase behind like it was a petulant child.  I had printed a map of Nice, from the train station to the ferry terminal, and had no plan of how to occupy the next eight hours, but the famous beach lay between me and the dock, so I started there, slowly plodding over the mile of cobblestones in the high sun toward the sea.  My shirt, shoulder seams extending down to my biceps and lacking any subtlety, screamed “STANFORD” in capital white on cardinal red, and as each block receded, picked something closer to burgundy that spread in blotches from under my arms and back and drips from my brow on my front.  I had, for some reason, packed an ancient, frayed, brown hand towel I inherited from my parents, ragged from decades of children smearing various bodily fluids from various body parts, and dug around in my suitcase for it while on the sidewalk of the Promenade des Anglais.  For the first time since the train, I peeled my pack off and dabbed my drenched back, providing some temporary relief, but the towel was nearly immediately soaked, and I was soon just pushing the perspiration around.  Still in the heat of the day and further not wanting to mildew all of my recently-laundered clothes, I tied the towel around a handle so it could dry and be easily accessible for the next wipe.  

Hours after the sun set but the stone and pavement still radiated warmth, cars and pedestrians poured off of the Mega Smerelda, the livery of the bandannaed Moor from the Corsican coat of arms in blue and yellow on the stack, long past the time when we were scheduled to leave port.  It was a huge boat, vastly larger than any ferry I had ever been on before, with a few decks for cars at the waterline, then cabins, and finally two promenade decks just under the bridge.  As a cheap grad student, I opted out of a cabin, and anticipated sleeping indoors on a padded bench with windows and tables, like I had seen on passenger ferries on Puget Sound, and joined the line of walk-ons, but was somewhat puzzled by the many of whom were hugging pillows or sleeping bags.  The flow of cars and pedestrians now reversed, and we shuffled toward the steward who cancelled my ticket and gestured up to ponts huit et neuf, where passengers without a cabin could stay for the journey to Ajaccio.  There were already several groups there, curiously working to blow up mattresses or roll out sleeping pads on the weather deck, placing themselves immediately under the solid railing at the bow.  This all seemed ridiculous to me, because surely right inside this hatch were rows and rows of seating with ample space to sleep or to watch the sea in comfort, but it never dawned on me that the lack of windows might indicate otherwise.  With the great grind and squeak of metal twisting in metal, the hatch revealed nothing within, merely a narrow passageway walled with solid metal, decidedly not a place to relax or sleep.  Defeated, I turned round to accept my place for the night, far back on port side from the now completely packed bow, a small nook near the stairs.

The lights of Nice twinkled and dimmed as we pulled away, now an hour postponed, and then further out, Monaco could just be seen off to the east.  Most on the deck had already lowered their eye masks and snuggled into their blankets, the hum of the engines, the constant beating of the waves on the hull, and wind on the open sea combining into a somniferous white noise.  I, on the other hand, had to get to work repurposing pieces of my luggage into a bed.  My backpack and suitcase were immediately ruled out as pillows either being too bulky or housing my laptop, and my spare clothes were mostly clean, and the deck was not.  Three items then remained: the sweat towel would be my mattress, my airline neck pillow would be my pillow, and my windbreaker would be my blanket.  I had to lie on my back because my hips couldn’t bear weight on the rough, non-skid surface of the metal deck, and so I just looked at the night’s sky, hoping that my discomfort would succumb to my exhaustion.  I slipped into sleep much later, but then had subconsciously shifted, the new posture waking me up to find that my pillow and towel were missing.  The incessant wind had thrown them about the deck, and I ran around, catching my shit before it either blew overboard or onto a sound sleeper, and the process of lying supine for an hour, sleeping for a few minutes, and gathering up the flotsam repeated several times.  Once the weakest hint of morning light arrived, I gave up.

Clouds glowed above the mountainous silhouette of Corsica and while I was packing away my things, a man with an expensive camera had arrived on the deck, presumably having slept soundly in his cabin below, and positioned himself near the bow.  Brighter and brighter became the clouds, but everyone was still asleep, with only the two of us watching the sun struggle its way up the rugged, sawtooth peaks.  I had a camera, too, but could tell this was something I wanted to see directly with my eyes and not filtered through a screen, and left it tucked away in my pack as I worked my way up the deck, tip-toeing over and around the unconscious bodies.  Suddenly, like the crack of an egg, the golden yellow yolk burst, pierced by the rocky spires and oozed over the knotty canopy of the heavily timbered western pine slopes, framed by a brilliant halo of glowing albumen, then flowed onto the cerulean floor and spread out in a thinning semicircle until the spilled rays washed up against the boat’s port side.  Then, just a few seconds later, it was over, the sun completely visible above Corsica, and the clouds receding into haze as the alpine air warmed and pushed them out to the water.  The brightness caused some deck sleepers to stir, the first waking up, rubbing their eyes, and stretching their arms, and as we pushed south, more and more people crowded the deck to see Ajaccio and the ship land, the only ferry amongst the cruise ships in port.