THE ROMAN CONDUCTOR
At noon, food appeared almost instantly and bottles of wine were opened while we put our books down so as not to get in the way of our lunch and our getting to know one another. I shared the chamber, and my turkey sandwiches, with three women, all married to servicemen. Two I had recognized from a history class we attended together several semesters earlier, covering the period following WWII explaining how America had become entangled in European affairs and why we would continue to do so long into the future (seems to be panning out that way). I remembered how the two blonde student housewives sitting in front of me complained about their husbands in between key discussions on the Cold War. My third companion was the exotically beautiful Carmen whose dark hair and complexion exploded when she smiled, liking sunbeams radiating through storm clouds, demanding one to stop and admire its beauty. Her personality matched her smile.
Halfway through our third bottle of vino, the conductor entered our sacred hollow. Smartly dressed in his dark blue suit, again a style leftover from Mussolini’s fascist regime, with a matching Ralph Cramden bus driver hat, he politely asked for our tickets while eagerly holding his ticket puncher. I translated for the group though I noticed that Carmen easily understood what was requested of us. We all somewhat nervously handed the smartly dressed fascist eagerly holding his ticket puncher our tickets and watched as he slowly shook his head from left to right making a “tch tch tch” sound. Finally after what seemed like an eternity, he looked at me and rattled off a thousand words a minute in his native tongue. Granted, I had lived in Italy for almost four years at that time and considered myself if not fluent, at least proficient enough to get from Venice to Rome. Boy was I mistaken. “Cosa?” what I asked the smartly dressed fascist eagerly holding his ticket puncher and now our tickets. This time he repeated himself slowly and I understood that we were sitting and eating and reading and drinking wine together illegally as our seat assignments did not match the seats we currently occupied.
Quickly grasping the severity of the situation, I stood up, offered our smartly dressed fascist eagerly holding his ticket puncher and our tickets with an attitude a glass of wine, a pack of Marlboro cigarettes and thirty-thousand lire, which with the exchange rate at the time was about twenty-five bucks. “Va bene,” OK, he replied pocketing the cigarettes and money, chugging the wine down in one gulp, handing our tickets back with holes punched precisely in their proper place and wishing us a “good trip,” buon viaggio. That was the last we saw of the conductor throughout the rest of our trip, though we spoke of him often, toasting him fondly. Sgt Hook out.
Eternal City of Rome
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This post is filed under: La Vita Dolce & Reconstructed
