At last I have a day to myself, a day to wander aimlessly and explore as whim takes me. I’ve been traveling in
Setting out in the morning and the air is clear and crisp, I can smell the salt from the sea tingeing the air and the sky is cloudless and a particular shade of blue that I haven’t seen before, not Mediterranean blue because that would be a cliché and besides that refers to the color of the water, which really is that color despite the clichéd nature of the description. I turn left, and then right, I’m wandering slowly towards the old center of the city, I want cobblestones and alleys and Baroque architecture or at least architecture of some kind other than Modern Brutalism.
There’s a pedestrian shopping mall area, I can have my cobblestones but all of the shops are closed, metal grates pulled down over the windows. The streets are deserted, horror movie deserted, zombie movie deserted, and I examine the “opening hours” signs to see if maybe I’m just up too early for a sleepy Mediterranean city but no, nothing will be open today because its Monday and wandering these streets is kind of creeping me out. I turn down alley after alley, getting thoroughly lost and there’s no car traffic here the road is too narrow, an occasional scooter kicking up discarded flyers as they zoom off to wherever this town’s population is hiding today. I find a café finally, I don’t really need coffee but I do need something to do, somewhere to sit, so I get a cappuccino and sit down at the table outside and write some postcards. I’m the only person at this little café and the waiter is overly attentive, he must have drawn the short straw to be stuck here today.
Three cappuccinos and I can’t sit here forever, I reluctantly abandon my abandoned café and wander on. I could ask the waiter where to go, what I can do in this town today, but I don’t speak Italian and he doesn’t speak English or French, or maybe he does but I’m too shy to ask. I have a phrasebook but I find myself reluctant to use it, nothing looks more gauche than a tourist thumbing through a tiny book and awkwardly pronouncing slightly inappropriate phrases with the wrong accent and incorrect verb tenses, as they inevitably are.
On I go, I have hours and hours and hours until dinner. Left and then right and then curving upwards, a winding alley or road or whatever you would call it and this is definitely not on the map in my guidebook, in fact I’m not sure my guidebook even bothered to include a map of this town since no one really comes here to look at things, there are so many other places and things to look at in Italy and Trieste doesn’t have much to recommend it. There’s a castle on the top of the hill, but I’m supposed to save that to explore with Steve, the castle is off limits today. My alley is hugging a tall stone wall, picturesque with uneven rocks and moss growing on it, and then I find a gate. It’s a garden in here, with terraced paths winding up through the levels, it seems like maybe its connected to a convent or a nunnery or some other religious thing but the gate is open and the garden is beautiful and I don’t have anywhere else to go.
There’s no one in the garden, perhaps the nuns are hiding with the rest of the citizenry. I see a stone bench, also picturesque with those rough edges and moss growing on the legs and I pick that out as my spot, if nothing else I can bask in a ray of sunlight and read my book in this unnamed, unmapped, deserted garden. First, though, that coffee is catching up with me, along with the unanimous closure of all businesses comes the unanimous closure of all bathrooms available to the public and I have been wandering for a while and I had a lot of cappuccinos. There’s a signpost where two paths cross, it has weathered wooden arrows nailed at the top and one of them has the word “Toilettes” burned into it so I branch right and wind up the path further into the grounds and by now I can barely hear the street noise, or imagine that I couldn’t hear the street noise if the street had any noise today.
There’s a little toilet bunker at the end of the graveled walk, Modern Brutalism not picturesque at all, shaded by drooping trees and quite discreet. I’m hurrying a little now, I go in and turn to the door on the left which has a little picture of a stick woman with a skirt. The door is a full door, not a stall door like I’m used to and it looks to be steel or something, apparently toilets must be secured in this bucolic setting. I push the handle down and open the door and then pause, door ajar and not yet inside, because this is what I was afraid of, I am confronted not with the familiar porcelain throne but instead with a hole in the floor, footprints molded into the ceramic on either side, Western toilets can’t be taken for granted here. I am not thrilled about the notion of squatting precariously while trying to hold my garments clear and I am especially not thrilled about the custom of using one’s left hand rather than toilet paper, but I see a pile of coarse paper towels on the window ledge and really, biologically I am out of options, ah the joys of travel so I step inside.
I close the door and confront my enemy, the Turkish toilet. First I need to set my bag somewhere and as this is a no frills toilette, the builders chose to eschew the convenient hook on the back of the door, how do people do this here anyway? I refuse to let anything touch the floor, there’s a thin layer of moisture and I don’t even want to think about the origins of said moisture but there my brain goes anyway, examining the swirls of mud patterned on the floor, shoe treads of others who have squatted here before me. There’s the window ledge but it looks pretty precarious, it’s only a few inches deep and the last thing I want is for my bag to come tumbling down on my head while I’m in the midst of this unfamiliar operation. The door latch on the inside is the only likely candidate, I gingerly hook the strap of my bag over the latch and test it for stability, it doesn’t have to sit there for long but even if the bag doesn’t fall on my head I’m not sure I could ever touch it again if it hit the floor, spilling my passport and phrasebook into the muck.
Turn to the task at hand, a task which is becoming more urgent with every passing moment and my guts instinctively starting to release their clenched hold in the presence of a toilet, apparently potty training doesn’t recognize the difference between a Turkish and a Western toilet so why should I, with my higher brain functions, draw the distinction? I am an experienced seasoned traveler open to new experiences and furthermore I need to go right now, so carefully pulling pants down around my thighs and then my calves but still holding them up a bit so they don’t touch the floor, lightly touching the wall with my right hand to maintain balance because let’s face it, balance is not my strong suit by a long shot and much as I don’t want my bag to touch the floor I’d really prefer to not topple over backwards and land myself in the muck either. I’m supplied with a fistful of those coarse paper towels in my left hand, I’ve taken way more than I’ll need but it’s the psychological comfort of the familiar I’m seeking here. Well, that and something to wipe my ass with.
Relief, and then that wad of paper towels scraping over my skin and dropped in the hole, there’s nothing resembling a flush mechanism here and I’ve had to restrain myself from swatting at the fly or two buzzing around in this little toilet cabinet, can’t upset this tenuous equilibrium, and victory, success, I have overcome and stand up carefully, re-buckle my belt and then reclaim my bag, the door latch held up just fine for its limited responsibility and now I can get back to my stone bench and read my book in the Italian sunshine, my day back on track after this little adventure about which I will tell no one.
I push the door latch down and step outside.
At least, that’s what should have happened. What happens instead is that I push the door latch down and it gives a little bit but not all the way, and the door shows a dismaying disinclination to open. I frown, and push down again, and it gives a little bit but not all the way. I push harder and it’s fine now, really its fine its just a little sticky and it will open this time but it doesn’t. Jiggle the latch up and then down and still no progress and I am starting to panic now but there’s no reason to panic the door will open I am just being stupid here let’s step back for a second and see what I’m doing wrong, I am sure I will feel awfully foolish maybe I should pull instead of pushing but no that does no good either maybe it twists a different way try to remember how I opened it from the outside if it opened from the outside it has to open from the inside right but no apparently it is required to do no such thing and this door is not opening.
Ok. Ok, ok, ok, I am a seasoned and experienced traveler and I conquered the Turkish toilet I will not be defeated by a bathroom door. Step back and think but don’t step too far back remember there’s a hole in the floor filled with things I really don’t want to think about but it’s hard to avoid that thought when I can smell it, a smell I’d blocked out before and its not that its crazily strong its faint in fact but I am panicking and all of my senses are opening up and my eyes are wide open and probably stare-y and my nostrils are flaring sucking in air and there’s no avoiding that smell now.
Calm down and look at the door. I consider trying to pick the lock with a credit card but there’s a lip over the doorsill edge and I can’t wedge it inside. I try anyway and unsurprisingly my efforts fail. Look for the hinges maybe I can unscrew the hinges with my bare hands or knock the pins out or something but the hinges are on the other side of the door so that won’t work either. I experiment with pushing against the door, I’m not going to run because there’s no room to run this room isn’t big enough to get a running start but maybe if I lunge a little bit but no this door is steel and secure and who was I kidding anyway I can’t break down a door I could try to kick it but knowing me that will only knock me off balance and I’ll go tumbling back into that hole I’m skirting.
Ok, calm down, calm down calm down calmdowncalmdown, you can do this, I can do this, I can figure this out and really I don’t have a choice do I because nobody knows where I am hell even I don’t know where I am and nobody is going to come looking for me here or anywhere because this entire town is horror movie deserted and I am trapped in a Turkish toilet in an unnamed, unmapped garden in Trieste and telling myself to calm down isn’t working I am claustrophobic well not really I’m not scared of small spaces per se I’m scared of being trapped doesn’t matter if it’s a small space or a big one but a small one is worse and I am trapped here hyperventilating and that smell stronger with every shallow breath.
There’s a window. Focus on the window. The window is definitely big enough for me to climb out of, unfortunately it is shielded with welded iron bars and the latch only opens it a crack that’s all it gives. I try to break it anyway but the thick pebbled plastic, opaque for reasons of delicacy, is built to survive such attacks I am after all in a public toilet what did I expect Murano glass? I pry at the edges of the iron bars and logic has gone completely because even if I did break the window I still wouldn’t be able to get out past the bars and even if I did manage to pull iron bars welded into the wall out of their frame with just my fingernails I’d still be stuck unless I got past the window but fuck logic if I had listened to my instincts before I stepped into this shithole I wouldn’t be trapped now and I climb up on the ledge not that it helps but I can get my face closer to that wedge of open air there at the top and I scream, “Help! Help!” but there’s no one to hear me.
I climb down. Breathe deep, breathe deep, ignore the smell deep breaths. Someone will come eventually, someone has to come eventually, I am not actually going to die here (ImnotImnotimnot). I look through my phrasebook, “help” in Italian is “Aiuto” and I climb back up on the windowsill “Aiuto, aiuto, aidez-moi” sure let’s throw in some French can’t hurt “Je m’ai ferme dans la salle de bain help I’ve locked myself in the bathroom” and strangely my phrasebook cannot provide an Italian translation so I will have to stick to English and French “Aiuto aiuto!”
It’s fine I am fine everything is fine I just need to remain calm ok who I am kidding I need to get calm again and stay that way, someone will come eventually, I will just lean here against the wall no sitting on this floor I will lean and read my book, yes that’s what I’ll do I’ll just pretend that I’m on that stone bench in the sunshine reading my book. I can’t read, can’t focus the words are just swimming off the page and what if someone is in the garden but they don’t know I’m here because I am quietly reading how would they know to come open the door and “AIUTO!!!!!!!”
But careful, don’t scream yourself hoarse you can’t scream constantly and you’ve been in here now for two hours and no one has come yet and no one will be looking for you for another few hours if then I am supposed to meet Steve at 7 or so won’t he worry? But no, he won’t worry for a while, he’ll just assume I got distracted and caught up with something beautiful I can be flaky sometimes and he knows it and even when he gets worried at 8pm or so NOBODY KNOWS WHERE I AM and “Help, help, aidez-moi, aiuto, m’aidez” and I am screaming “Mayday” out a crack in a window in a public shithole in a little town in Italy not a pilot going down but I might as well be for all the help I’m getting.
Up and down off the window ledge, deep breaths and screaming. An hour on top of another hour, up and down aiuto help me aiuto and then maybe I am hallucinating but is there movement out there on the path? Screaming again at full volume yes there is someone hallelujah AIUTO and he sees me! He hears me, he does and then he disappears from sight nononononono he can’t leave he can’t leave me here not really can he nononononono AIUTO and whew relief there he is again but I am still screaming I am going to scream until I get out of here I won’t stop maybe not even then maybe I will be screaming for a long time AIUTO and he’s coming towards the toilet bunker and my fingers are actually bleeding a little bit from where I tried to pry to door open or the window bars off or the window open just trying to get out of this prison and oh my god the door knob is turning I have been in here for lifetimes it seems lifetimes and the gardener or whoever he is is opening the door and he looks awfully puzzled because why is this American screaming from inside the bathroom he doesn’t know the latch only works from the outside I didn’t know either and I don’t know any Italian so I can’t tell him I just push past him gasping for the fresh open air and the sunlight beating down on my pallid skin “Grazie thank you merci gracias grazie grazie mille grazie” I know how to say that and I should stay here and try to explain to him that I’m not actually a lunatic but I need the open air I need space around me and I am nearly bolting up the path to the top of the hill I need to see vistas stretching in all directions instead of the dirty tile walls of my Turkish toilet prison and gasping in the air and staring directly into the sun I don’t care that I’m getting those sunspots in my vision I am finally free again and I will never trust another door after this privacy can be a prison too and I am gulping in air gasping still until finally I slow down, my heart slows down too and now I am just sitting here on a rock in the afternoon sunshine, breathing deeply.
Scrabbling in my bag, I pull out my book and start reading again.
