Excerpt

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Blood Oranges
Andalucía

Who cut down the moon's
stem?

(Left us roots
Of water.)
How easy to pluck flowers from
This infinite acacia.

--Federico García Lorca

January, old Janus face looking left at the past year and right
toward the new. I'm for the new--no mournful backward glance.
Make tracks, I write one night on the steamed kitchen
window.

The year began with a break-in at my house while my husband and I
were finishing dinner. Ed had just tipped the last of a vino
nobile into our glasses. Laughing, we were talking about the
turn of the year, with Nina Simone crooning "The Twelfth of Never"
to us. We'd cleared the plates, the candles were burning down, and
outside the dining room window we saw only our potted lemon trees,
swaying snapdragons, and yellow Carolina jasmine, for January in
California is a blessed season.

In a flash, everything changed. A man crashed through the living
room window, screaming that he wanted to die, then loomed on the
middle of the rug, his bundled body in ski jacket, droopy pants,
and homeboy hat pulled down around his moony face. Even as I write
this, my heart starts to pound.

"Give me a knife," he shouted. "I've never done this before, but
I'm doing it now." I thought, not does he have a gun will we
die, but he's goofy. Then terror pumped through every
vein in my body. This can't be happening! Somehow, we'd
stood up. Run. My chair tipped over. He lunged into the
dining room. I threw my glass of wine in his face, and as he wiped
his eyes, we ran out the back door. "I want to die," he shouted to
us as we fled into a street darkened by conscientious neighbors in
the middle of the latest corruption-engineered energy crisis. Our
house was blazing like the Titanic; lights flared in every
window. Our intruder had been drawn to us like a fluttering moth
toward the screen door on a soft southern night.

Ed grabbed a phone on the way out and somehow called 911 as he
sprinted across the street. We ran to separate neighbors, hoping to
find someone at home on Saturday night. Startled new Chinese
neighbors brought me in and handed me the telephone, though they
must have thought I was mad, while the intruder followed Ed across
the street to our neighbors Arlene and Dan. Interrupted in the
middle of a dinner party, they pulled Ed in and slammed the door.
Then our intruder broke through their door--just as the police
drove up.

That was the beginning. The drugged young man was on the street
again in a month. I found his sunglasses in a flower bed.
Expensive. I threw them in the trash. The year rolled on and
doesn't bear thinking about. Suffice to say the words
surgery, hospitals, deaths. As the sublime
September weather arrived, we all experienced the mind-altering,
world-shaking attack on America. Go, bad year. May the stars
realign.

Now, Janus, my friend, I am going to Spain for a winter month in
Andalucía. Andalucía, land of the orange and the olive
tree. Land of passionate poets and flamenco dancers and late-night
dinners with guitar music in jasmine-scented gardens.

Ed flew to Italy a week ago because, as always, we have some
complicated building project in progress. En route to Spain, he has
detoured to Bramasole, our house in Cortona, to see about the
drilling of a well for a nine-hundred-year-old house we have bought
in the mountains. We want to accomplish a historic restoration on
this stone house built by hermit monks who followed Saint Francis
of Assisi. When I last talked to him, the dowser had felt his stick
bend in exactly the spot where I did not want a well and had
drilled down a hundred meters without finding a drop. We are
planning to meet in Madrid.

From San Francisco, I board a flight to Paris and am happy to see
my seatmate take out a book instead of a computer. No white aura
and tap-tapping for the ten-hour flight. She looks as if she could
have been one of my colleagues at the university. Is she going to
Europe to research a fresco cycle or to join an archaeological team
at a Roman villa excavation? I take out my own book, ready to
escape into silence for the duration. She smiles and asks, "What
are you reading?"

"A biography of Federico García Lorca--getting ready for
Spain. What are you reading?"

"Oh, a book on John three thirteen."

"Three thirteen. I don't know that verse. We used to sing 'John
three sixteen, John three sixteen' in rounds at Methodist Sunday
school."

The flight attendant comes by with champagne and orange juice.
"Just water," my seatmate and I say in unison. We begin to talk
about travel and books, chatting easily, though I am, at first,
waiting for a chance to retreat. We know nothing of each other and
will part when the scramble to exit at Charles de Gaulle
begins.

She asks a lot of questions. I tell her I am a former university
teacher, now a full-time writer. I tell her about living part of
the year in Italy, and that Italy has given me several books,
written with joy. She probes. Are my books published? Are they
popular? And if so, do I know why? What do I try to accomplish with
my writing? How do I feel about people's responses to my books? On
and on. I tell her that I'm embarking on the first of many travels
and that I hope to write a book about my experiences. Why? What
will I be looking for? I am drawn into lengthy explanations. I say
I'm interested in the idea and fact of home. I'm going to
places where I have dreamed of living and will try to settle down
in each, read the literature, look at the gardens, shop for what's
in season, try to feel at home. I'm talking more openly than
usual with a stranger. Is she a psychiatrist?

"And you've never felt God's hand on yours?" She looks quizzically
at me.

"No. I've felt lucky, though."

"Maybe you are bringing happiness to people through the will of
God. Maybe." She smiles.

She answers my own questions evasively. She is holding something
back, even in the basic exchanges, such as whether she is on
vacation, that simple opening into conversation. Our little
equation is out of balance. Finally, I ask bluntly, "What do you
do?"

"I . . . I guess you could say I'm a speaker."

"On what subjects?"

Silence. She is gazing out the window. She is a very still person.
"I'm part of a foundation. We try to help in communities with
severe problems."

Vague. She sees my questioning look. She frowns. "We're involved in
education, and orphanages, and churches."

"Oh, so it's a religious foundation? What religion are you?" I
assume she is a Presbyterian or Methodist, a good volunteer for
good works, or is involved in Catholic charities.

"I know this is strange, but I have a strong sense about you. I'll
just tell you my journey." She then describes the surprise of her
conversion, her subsequent adoption of six children from all over
the world, her work in Africa and Russia. Her husband, a prominent
lawyer, eventually had his own revelation and joins her in her
missions. Dinner is served and we talk on.

"You've probably never met anyone like me, anyone who hears the
voice of God."

"I think I haven't. You hear the voice of God?" Oh, mamma
mia, I think.

"Yes, he's talking to me right now, all the time."
"What does he sound like?" I wonder if she is speaking
metaphorically, living out a grand as if.

She laughs. "He's funny sometimes. Sometimes we dance. He's telling
me about you, but I don't want you to think I'm a psychic with a
neon sign in the window!"

I start to ask sarcastically if he is a good dancer and what kind
of dances he leads her in--rhumba? But I don't. As a doubter with
strong spiritual interests, I'm tantalized by her big holy spirit
visitations. I imagine it feels like a mewling kitten being lifted
in the jaws of an enormous mother cat and taken to safety. I'm
ready myself but have never felt the slightest inkling that
anything out there in the void is the least bit interested in the
hairs on my head or the feathers of small sparrows. "If God is
talking about me, I'd like to hear what he says because I've never
heard from him before tonight." Where's the flight attendant? I'd
like a big glass of wine. This is getting surreal. I'm thirty-five
thousand feet above terra firma with someone who dances with
God.

"Well, I will tell you that He says you have the gift of divine
humility. How did you get that? It's so rare."

"Maybe it's a lack of confidence!"

"No, I've seen it in one priest, someone I consulted when I felt
the urge to prophesy."

Whoa! Prophesy? "Oh, you're a prophet?" I toss this off casually,
as though it were Oh, you're from Memphis.

She looks out the window. Sighs. "I know how it sounds. It's so
simple." I see her struggling to explain. "I just wait to
speak. I wait for God. Sometimes it's just sounds."

"Glossolalia?" She nods. "I've seen that. My friends and I used to
peer in the windows at the holy roller and snake-handling churches
way down in South Georgia." I don't say that those people fell to
the floor writhing and drooling. That we ran away, scared out of
our socks. This woman in her Dana Buchman suit and good haircut
seems as sane as the United pilot of this plane.

"Have you ever heard of a Charismatic Prophet? That's my calling. I
knew I was going to sit beside someone on this flight who would
change my life. I always wanted to write. Now I hear how you do it
and it frees me to try. God put me beside you. Someone, he says,
with a holy approach to writing."

Now I'm really fascinated. Someone who not only hears the voice of
God but speaks in the tongues of angels and knows what's coming
toward us. And I like hearing God's perception that my approach to
writing is holy. No one ever has talked to me about the nature of
my involvement with words. I've heard plenty about the words
themselves but not about the vocation I have. Turbulence starts to
shake the overhead compartments. A queasy flyer, I begin to wonder
if maybe she is an angel sent to accompany me to the afterlife when
the plane spirals down into the Atlantic. But soon the seat belt
light flicks off, and the long flight across the waters, black,
then leaden, then streaked with sterling light, continues.

As we start our descent into the rainy skies of Paris, she says, "I
don't do this. I don't like to debase my gift, but I will tell you
something. You are travelling with three angels. One is
ministering, one is protecting, and I don't know what the other one
is for."

"Oh, no," I say, instantly pessimistic. "Angel of death."

She laughs. "God tells me you are too fatalistic. The third angel
is something very good."

Maybe it's the skipping across time zones or the cabin pressure or
the lack of sleep, but I willingly close my eyes and try to sense
the presence of three angels. Privately, I'm shaken because when I
first went to Italy and bought my house, I had a dream that the
house held one hundred angels and that I would discover them one by
one. Metaphorically, that came true. Starting my travels, I have
been given by a stranger three angels to go with me. Without a
shred of belief, I can't deny that I am touched.

I give her a list of books I've mentioned and a card with my first
name printed on it. I start to write my address but decide that if
she wants to reach me, God will direct her.

Madrid. All the connections worked. I find Ed waiting in baggage
claim. He looks forlorn--he has arrived with a sinus infection,
exacerbated by the changes in pressure while landing. I touch his
forehead and find him hot and clammy.

"When I left Bramasole, I was feverish but determined to go. I had
to--you'd be waiting. At the ticket counter in Rome, I discovered
I'd left my passport at the house. I wanted to climb into a luggage
cart and go to sleep. I couldn't face a two-hour drive up to
Cortona and two hours back--besides, Giorgio had dropped me at the
curb. I asked about the next flight and it was in three hours. I
was totally screwed. Then--I don't know why--the woman handed me a
paper to sign. And she said, 'You're going on this flight.' "

"You mean. You flew. Out of Italy. Without a passport?" I'm so
shocked I can't utter a whole sentence. This seems impossible, but
here he is, his steady eyes smiling at the thought that he slipped
freely across international boundaries. We're waiting for my bag,
but the remaining ones looping around the claim belt are fewer and
fewer.

"Scary, isn't it?"

"After September 11 they let a man on a plane with no
papers."

"Maybe it was because I was wearing an Italian suit. Another guy,
badly dressed, was trying to get on, and they didn't let
him."

My bag has definitely stayed behind in San Francisco or Paris. And
I can't find the envelope with the claim check tacked on. Where's
my damn ministering angel? I have been travelling twenty hours. We
queue with a dozen others. Because I changed carriers in Paris, the
pouty-mouthed Air France clerk assures me they have no
responsibility for my lost bag, especially since I have no proof
that I even checked a bag. A big Spanish man with a Zapata mustache
takes my side, and two Australian boys start chanting "Air Chance,
Air Chance." Finally, Miss Cool decides she'll take my hotel number
and send out a tracer. As our taxi spins out of the airport on two
wheels, Ed says, "Not for nothing is that etymological connection
between travel and travail." The rain looks sooty
falling on lead-gray buildings. Suddenly the driver swings around a
circle with an enormous fountain; then we're on a tree-lined street
along an esplanade lined with one grand building after another. Ah,
Madrid. The hotel lights, blurry in the rain, look festive and
welcoming. In our room we find a chilled cava, Spanish
sparkling wine, sent by Lina, a thoughtful Italian friend.

Ed falls into bed after stoking himself with various
antihistamines. I pop open the cava, pour a glass, empty
both little bottles of bubble bath into the tub, and immerse
myself. Since dinner is late in Spain, we planned to drift out at
ten-thirty, but we're exhausted and instead decide to order room
service. Ed feels dizzy. At eleven, the miracle of my suitcase
occurs--there it is, wet, dirty, but delivered. I want comfort
food. My first meal in Spain: spaghetti with Bolognese sauce.

Excerpted from A YEAR IN THE WORLD: Journeys of a Passionate
Traveller © Copyright 2011 by Frances Mayes. Reprinted with
permission by Broadway Books, an imprint of Random House, Inc. All
rights reserved.

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