23.09.09. Primo giorno in Collegio Ghislieri.
My first day at the Collegio Ghislieri began at eight a.m. in easy silence. I had not set an alarm, hoping instead to slip slowly from my dreams into my real-life dream world of sixteenth-century Italy. My room does have a heater in the corner and along the same wall a fluorescent light and gleaming porcelain sink. But the tiled floor offers a chipped tessellation of black, mustard and dull-coral diamonds that must be medieval. The rectangular desk in the middle of the room that is slightly too long to fit in any direction without blocking access to the shelves, sink, window or closet shows markings and gaps in the woodwork that hint at numberless years of frustrated students scratching and pulling at things. One might have been Carlo Goldoni, favorite son of the Collegio Ghislieri and masterful Italian playwright. The closet, once I move the desk to access it, smells of leather wrapped in a soiled jousting shirt. This is my real-life dream world.
I had several things to do today, such as actually enrolling in the university and acquiring my matriculation number so I could register for classes. But these tasks, enumerated so clearly on the new student guide emailed to me, I would remember only at 3:45—forty-five minutes before the Segreteria (something akin to the registrar) closed for the day. I might have expected this early closure, since the Segreteria had been open since 1:45. The one thing I did remember to put on my to-do list was to get my internet access code. Though that’s not quite right. A man of my age and background doesn’t have to remember his need for internet any more than he must remember to bring his wallet. Besides the fact my loved ones were waiting either to hear that I made it okay or to dispatch Liam Neeson to Italy, I needed to check my fantasy baseball matchup and my stock portfolio. I had promised myself a coppa grande of gelato if Pfizer gained a point (it didn’t, and I settled for the coppa piccola).
All of this receded as I went back to sleep for another hour. The day before I had spent eight hours sleeping from Seattle to London (the remaining hour being devoted to eating what I found on my tray when I awoke between playlists) and another two from London to Milan. But the world knows no narcoleptic like a twenty-two year-old. When I awoke the second time I dressed and went downstairs via the toilets I’d found a half-floor down. There are four private stalls with full-sized doors, walled-off from each other rather than partitioned, and the lever that you turn counter-clockwise to flush (a device new to me) provides a satisfying onrush of water. The idea is that you can either turn the lever slightly for a partial flush of liquids, or entirely for a full flush of solids. I turn it fully to make up for all the other “toilets” I have endured with no flush at all.
The gentleman at the front desk couldn’t help me with the internet, but directed me across the main courtyard to a room that led to the rector’s office. This room, too, may have had a heater in the corner, but if so I failed to notice. A dozen paintings lined the walls, and their subjects were conspiring to move under the room’s dim light. Most paintings were what I consider normal-sized portraits, something like the posters of LeBron James and Miley Cyrus adorning so many bedrooms in the United States, but one shadowy battle scene spread the width of a two-car garage. The lighting of the room seemed intended to mask this painting’s dark religious death.
Apparently a student does not simply walk into a rector’s office, but this is what I did next. A lady and a man were speaking in professional tones, somewhat difficult and rare in Italian, and trailed off upon my entrance. This is when I realized a rector is not so much a proctor, which made phonetic sense, as a dean. I forged on and, still unsure of who was in power here, asked them both about my internet access. The woman said that her underling who dealt with such matters was out until three, and I ought to come back then. We arrivederci’d and I retreated.
I had five hours to fill until internet. Although I am no Facebook stalker and I spend very little time on YouTube, I still have digital needs. I had seen no internet cafes, though, and had no intention of paying for webtime with gratuitous access so close at hand. I went exploring. Pavia has nearly 500,000 people and certainly warrants its own a walking tour, but I decided to start with my new home, the Collegio Ghislieri.
The collegio is a souped-up “dormitory” founded in 1567 for male students by Pope Pius V. Only three hundred ninety-eight years later the complex gained women’s accommodations. Together the men and women housed here number around two hundred, although few have moved in at this point. They seem to be waiting for classes to begin. The alleged start date is Monday, but I have come to understand that the university sometimes cannot find the right shoes to go with the right dress and misses its own premiere. In which case I will have no choice but to call upon the rector once more, for I have come to Study.
Moving about the collegio is like playing the old Super Mario Bros. for the first time. While directing the famed plumber around those vast worlds of synthesized music and mutated turtles one is dimly aware of the need to rescue Princess Peach, but foremost is the desire to smash every brick and duck into every pipe, wherever it will lead. In similar fashion I reconnoitered the collegio, having some vague notion of surveying bathrooms and laundry rooms but really just wanting to open things and lose myself in labyrinthine marble.
If ever I was going to do this, now was the time. Certain doors have been sealed, others have been sliced in half hot-dog style to make double doors, and still others open to reveal second sets of locked doors. Except since most of the collegio’s students have not yet arrived, many of these doors either are not locked or have the key inside. A chamber near the battle painting included a storage room that opened with just a slight twist of its key, an adjustment really, and it contained books, mineral water, cleaning supplies, notebooks and even cases of beer. Apart from the rector tucked away in her office pursuing academic conversation, the collegio was pretty much empty. But I might have aroused some suspicion walking up four flights of stairs with detergent, cases of water and beer, and a guide to the Ghislieri e Ghisleriani. I resisted these temptations and settled for garnishing a second Collegio Ghislieri embroidered towel from a storage closet off a bathroom. I’ll give it back, probably.
Despite the (obligatory) renovations the collegio has performed over the centuries to remain habitable, it has done an admirable job retaining its classical feel. The white outer walls are free of grime and have gained only steel safety bars over the lower windows, and the main courtyard boasts a series of Doric columns and other impressive architectural features I’d love to specify in another life. Only when you pass other young adults in t-shirts and boxer shorts (somewhat shocking, given their usual sense of fashion, but also somewhat of a relief, given their usual sense of fashion) only then do you remember that you’re in the twenty-first century in a dormitory and not a page for a duke four hundred years ago.
I think I’d rather be in the twenty-first century in a dormitory—my sense is that pages got taken advantage of—but if I’m going to exist in the now, as it were, it ought to be here. The Collegio Ghislieri straddles the centuries like nothing I’ve seen outside the Catholic Church (cf.: www.tweetcatholic.com), and staying in the Vatican is mutually out of the question. Until that changes, I am tickled to pass by Doric columns in boxers and a t-shirt.◊