Friday, 4 September 2015

Heat

Constant heat stagnates time. In our airbnb (more appropriately, airless bnb) it's less intolerable at night, but still stifling, so it might as well be the middle of the day.  At night, I wake panting for air, as though in the grip of a dragging illness. Leo doesn't sleep well and, lacking diurnal temperature cues, his metabolism becomes untethered. Yesterday he had dinner at 7am and breakfast at lunchtime. With the hours coagulating we are trapped in lassitude. Physical movement slows and mental agility declines; even novels become an effort.

Expansive plans to visit unmissable outlying towns, hatched on the terrace at midnight, are snagged in sleep-deprived torpor by morning. Lofty aspirations to plumb the city's Renaissance heart decay into flaneurism as we trawl back streets for coffee and gelateria through an enervating concoction of limpid heat and acrid cigarette smoke.  In the apartment, the reluctant air conditioner shreds stale air.

Like the students whose quarter of the city we share, we become nocturnal, venturing out late in the evening when languor has dissipated to merriment.  In the porticoed arcades, meandering locals make unsignalled pauses to greet lounging acquaintances or josh with friends occupying cafe tables punctuating the thoroughfare. Our usual urgent pace dwindles as we rein in urban briskness to avoid trampling them on the crowded pavements.  In an accelerated evolution, over a few days, our higher latitude behaviour has adapted to this new environment, a microcosm of climate change.

Retail life has adopted split shifts to foil the oppressive climate but the evening sessions are too short to compensate for afternoon closing. Topping up supper provisions at a supermarket, our request for a slice of succulent rare beef was turned down. "Five minutes to closing" was the gnomic response. I indulged in a momentary northern European fury before realising how neatly his phrase captured the Italian leitmotif.

© David Thompson 2015

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