After I. Calvino: The City, Pt. 1

The City is old. Its streets, uneven and paved in stone, the main road stretching the length of the city and never breaking. Alleys snake off from it in curving detours, too narrow for two carts to pass at once. If you continue from where you began and walk the Rue de Saphir, your leather bag slung across your back, your pockets heavy with antique coins, you will come to a convergence of streets beneath the statue of the Angel Michael and the maiden who bends to gather water from a brook with a jug. The road to the right finds the Hills of Moriah. Take it on a Tuesday when the café shutters fan open along the way, the aproned proprietors standing in their doorways, wiping down their hands from butter and flour, smiling invitations, wordless grins from knowing racks of warm and fragrant pastry and bread, and stop before the dirt path at the vignoble to buy a bottle of rouge saisonnier before trekking up the dusty, weedy, knotted mound of seasoned earth.

At this convergence of streets, the one I have said where the statue of the Angel Michael watches the maiden who gathers the water serenely, unaware that an Angel of God watches over her in her duties, thinking her beautiful in her mortality, the road to the left is the road you are seeking, wide and smooth and poised upon the city's crest, bleached from color where the sun has left its mark. The journey borne of ease does mock this road, for it tumbles very steep beyond the face of a cliff, tall and sharp then gone from sight. Dampen your thoughts by grasping the railings built upon the walls at the lefthand road's perimeters to take the shallow steps sans haste, the soles of your leather shoes made to walk upon the roads as smooth as this, buffed by the wind like a polished gem. Duck when the wind begins to blow, as it does from time to time to clear the streets flat and clean, and claim the shelter made beneath the awning of a shop you sight ahead. Keep down from the gusts, buffered through the city like the flutist's breath upon the reed, as people pack the shop below to talk in levels like layered croissants, heavy put together, light when picked apart. Nobody sees when you hang your legs over the stoop's own ledge to search your bag for a loaf of bread, tearing off a sizable piece to dip inside the little metal bowl of olive oil sealed with a cork. Someone who lives behind the walls lifts their shades, lowers them again as you dip the sponge of rosemary bread into the golden-green oil, swirling and dipping and chewing slowly to let the oil coat the living red of your mouth to slick and plump and gloss your lips licking fingertips, matting them dry with an ochre-colored linen cloth.

A thin glass shatters from down below and the people in the shop begin to sing. You swing your bag back on to your back, knowing the words but not the tune, walking in time at the edge of a street that spills off the ledge of a world beyond the mountain.