Last Saturday:

5.30 a.m. like high school days. Caffè. Check. Swimming trunks. Check. Sunglasses. Check. Erotic tapestry. Check. Then off to Pavia we went.

The highway was clear at this early in the morning but Manuel assured me that had we left later we would be sitting fast instead. He told me that he was taking a shortcut. In my experience, “shortcuts” tend to be fucked. I offer instead that shortcuts should be the ones that took the shortest amount of time, not necessarily distance.

For example, take Manuel’s last drive to Poland. As Franco put it: “Nine hours for 700 kilometres? And you got checked for speeding?”

Apparently Manuel’s shortcut was exactly that as we were in Pavia by 8.34. Oh boy. Marco was gonna kill us for sure, waking him up this early.

We passed fields of corn and fields of apples and a spectacular iron bridge over the largest river in Italy (Fiume Po), which resembled the one in Dancer in the Dark (the bridge, I mean). Stopped at the gas station for directions. Left then left and then please ask for more help. We did exactly that and got instructions to turn left again. How sinister. Truly for Marco’s abode, la sinistra é sinistra.

He lived on Via Acquanegra. Nigger Water. That seemed to suggest a black, steaming moat filled with man-eating alligators, but his place was rather nice. Large house with a gravel garden and grass and a fountain with invisible frogs. (Manuel insists he saw two fishes although Marco’s mom later informed us that an albatross had eaten them all. Perhaps the ones he saw were their piscine phantoms.)

Marco came out to greet us with a hearty “Grüß Gott!” He looked well despite his past month of non-stop work. We had breakfast together with his mom and did a little bit of catching up. They had a kitchen done in yellow, a warm colour in cool tones. Nice.

After breakfast, Marco excused himself to shower. As Marco’s mom happily told Manuel of their neighbour, an Irish lass and her unorthodox (not to mention loud) christening methods that involved plunges into an inflatable plastic pool and possible love affair with the priest, I thought of an idea for a novel. I won’t touch more on this subject except that I got some really useful hints from Marco later. Keyword: JUSTIFICATION.

Marco drove us out into the town to get bread and for some sort of a tour of Pavia. Let me just say that Marco swearing at other drivers while on the road is like a song to my ears. Italian curses are beautiful things. And no one does them better than Marco.

For some strange reason, we kept passing this alley where the slogan “Dick ‘Em All” and accompanying visual aids were painstackingly sprayed at every corner. We pondered this phenomenon. I wondered aloud if the artist had not mistaken “dick” for “fick”. Marco suggested the rather appalling image of hitting someone across the face with a penis. Of course, Manuel had to cheerfully add, “You would need to stand on a chair.”

Well, I say there’s always midgets.

Lunch was astounding. Roast, a kind of pie with rice as filling, a huge flan (and not an omelette, Marco told me) made of eggs, heavy cream, zucchini, and my favourite dish of all, just braised whole onions in burro, burro, burro and a bit of sugar to caramelise the lovely stuff. Yums.

The tour of Marco’s new home came next. My favourite part was the torture chamber in the attic. There was this beam fixed in the middle like an arrow facing upwards so that two victims could be cruxified and flagellated with ease. The gifts of modern technology. Marco wrily noted that Hell was higher here than most other places.

After this, I mostly bummed on Marco’s sublime couch while the rest of them busied themselves copying CDs and cursing some more when Marco’s monitor chose to die. The coolness of an air-conditioned room was not something that went unappreciated on a hot summer’s day.

It was already half-past four when we got up to leave. Marco’s family had offered to host me but I had to reluctantly decline as I really wanted to make the mass for Manuel’s father. I had barely arrived before I had to leave again. Didn’t get to talk all that much to Marco either, which was a pity.

I reminded him how hard it was to get him to answer any emails, SMSes or even phone-calls. I even had to sneak in a postscript threatening to give up drink to get his attention. Mind-putrefying that I would do so. Unfortunately, it didn’t work as he guessed rightly that it was a trap. He does have this annoying habit of being smart.

An awkward goodbye was interrupted by his neighbour’s dumb dog who was catching a ball its even dumber owner was throwing into the trees. I noted, “Cane,” and cursed, “Cane dio!” when the damned animal crashed into the fence again.

My practising Italian had Marco in one of his infamous guffaws. I will miss no laughter like his laughter.

We hugged and then I left with Manuel.

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Copyright © 2002 Kenny Mah Ying Fye.