The Art of Travel
Chapter One
On Anticipation
1.
It was hard to say when exactly winter arrived. The decline was gradual, like
that of a person into old age, inconspicuous from day to day until the season
became an established, relentless reality. First came a dip in evening
temperatures, then days of continuous rain, confused gusts of Atlantic wind,
dampness, the fall of leaves and the changing of the clocks—though there were
still occasional moments of reprieve, mornings when one could leave the house
without a coat and the sky was cloudless and bright. But they were like false
signs of recovery in a patient upon whom death has already passed its sentence.
By December the new season was entrenched, and the city was covered almost every
day by an ominous steel-grey sky, like one in a painting by Mantegna or
Veronese, the perfect backdrop to the crucifixion of Christ or to a day beneath
the bedclothes. The neighbourhood park became a desolate spread of mud and
water, lit up at night by rain-streaked street lamps. Passing it one evening
during a downpour, I recalled how, in the intense heat of the previous summer, I
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