Train To Brindisi

By Greg Dixon

A woman walked towards me with her right foot twisted inward at a painful angle, her face covered with a black veil. I was sitting guard on three backpacks, or I may have attempted to escape having to peer into the face of a decrepit old beggar. Instead I reached into my pocket and pulled out the first coin I could grab, worth fifty Lira, and placed it in the outstretched hand. I glanced up to catch a glimpse of a beautiful young face peeking from behind the veil to blow me a kiss. I looked in her eyes for a moment and smiled at the kiss, then she shuffled off to beg another coin.

I spent a long time that day just sitting and watching in Rome's Stazi Termini. My travelling companions needed to cash cheques and purchase tickets, so we had arrived at the station nearly three hours before our train left for Brindisi. Much can happen in a Roman rail station in three hours. I could have kept count the wallets being lifted, if only I did not have to keep a sharp eye on our own luggage.

There was a burst of exitement when a black man pounced on a begger in the process of relieving a traveller of his portable property. The woman yelled and screamed as the man dragged her through a door. The man did not look like security, but I was not going to leave my post to find out. The night before we came across a Parisian who had lost his car, his money, and his passport Call at once. The police only laughed. He would have been in dire straights if Sherry did not have the generosity to lend a complete stranger enough money for a train ticket to Sicily, where he hoped to rejoin the tour group he had somehow lost in Rome.

Much of my brief tour of Italy was spent sitting in stations and on benches in quiet squares, observing. In Venice I sidestepped the throng of tourists one morning to wander around the residential Isola della Giudecca, sometimes exploring obscure little lanes, sometimes snoozing in the sun.

While I lounged in the sun on one quiet bench, a fisherman motored his small boat under an arching footbridge, waved to a young mother pushing a baby carriage along the sidewalk, and tied up in front of a fish vender, where the living catch was quickly transfered to display trays filled with crushed ice. The young mother parked the carriage in the shade and chose some calamari, still squirming and definitely fresh.

I was amazed how domestic Venice could be. That afternoon I sat for two hours watching the children play in a large square just a few hundred paces from the teeming Piazza San Marco. Boys aged nine or ten played a game of rebound, bouncing a soccer ball off the side of a building, while young girls skipped rope, rode bicycles, or roller skated in the square. The children did not seem at all sad to live in a city without grass fields. The group of teenagers I saw later did not seem to mind either, as they danced through the maze of alleys loudly chanting along to Tears For Fear's "Shout" blaring from a large portable stereo. The lively spirit of the singers infected me and drew me along behind them until they disappeared into the crowd at the Piazza San Marco.

In Florence I liked to sit on the columned portico at the hostel in the evening, drinking large bottles of beer and watching the warm sun set on the splendid Tuscan countryside with a collection of travellers dominated by Australians. Our room was shared by a group of teenaged boys from Milan who wanted to know all about Canada, and essential english phrases like "let's make love". A tipsy Aussie in the next bunk urged me to ask about the Italian equivelent of a rather rude request. Fortunately, despite some embarrassing miming, I was not able to convey the notion. Still, I am sure that the concept was not foreign to them. The next afternoon three of the boys came over to talk to me on the veranda and pointed out two young girls from a Dutch school tour group.

"The blonde girl is very beautiful, no? But she is, how you say it, a bad girl."

"A bad girl?"

"Yes. She does things for money?"

"What sort of things?"

"With boys, you know. She is a ... what is the word for it?"

"Prostitute!"

"Yes, prostitute. That is the word."

"How do you know? What makes you say this?"

"We know someone who paid to go into the trees with her."

"I see!"

I took another look at the girls. They could not have been more than fifteen, and turning tricks seemed like a rather extreme way of raising extra spending money on a school tour. But later, when I went to a pizzaria with some new friends, the two girls were sitting by the gate at the end of the long country lane leading to the hostel. The girls were still hanging about the gate when we returned after dinner. Business must have been slow.

At the Roman rail station, Sherry returned to temporarily releive me of my duty. I searched for Brett and eventually found him standing in a long ticket queue. His six foot three athletic frame and short blonde hair made the Australian easy to spot in the predominantly Italian crowd.

"Sherry is back. Did you cash your travellers check okay?"

"Yes, but it took a bloody long time. Now this is the third ticket line I've been sent to. We are running out of time. Have you found Marisa?"

"Not yet."

Brett was very quiet and always seemed calm, but I think the run around was trying his patience. I waited in line with him long enough for the beggar girl to come around twice. When she recognized me she smiled again and skipped past me to beg from the other people in the queue. As she moved past I caught her in a lapse of concentration. For just one step she forgot that she was crippled, turning her twisted foot in a most healthy way to move down the line.

Despite having arrived hours early, we only caught the train with minutes to spare. Brett and Sherry retrieved their luggage from the baggage check and we had to run for the platform. Marisa, a South African girl we had met in Florence, was waiting impatiently for us on the platform.

"Where have you been? Hurry, or we will not get a seat!"

We squeezed our way through the crowd and luckily were able to take the compartment seats that Marisa had asked an Italian lady to save for us. Within minutes the train was crowded with people standing, or sitting on their luggage in the aisles. We were fortunate that Marisa knew some of the local language.

Marisa had Italian relatives, so she could speak a little Italian in addition to English and Afrikaans. She spoke English in quite a quick, terse way, especially when she was excited about something. Her words often eluded my ear if she were in a crowd and not speaking directly to me. Although I sometimes understood her Italian better than her Engish (and I understood Italian only as French somewhat twisted), I will always remember the small toast she gave in a Florentine Pizzaria C"Here's to those who love us, and to hell with those who don't."

I also had to concentrate hard on understanding Brett's quiet Aussie accent; and we all often needed to translate our colloquial terms. We spoke English, but dialects separated by thousands of miles and hundreds of years.

However, I did not have any trouble with Sherry's dialect. Her American mid-west accent rang out loud and clear. Brash, even. She had a tendency to use terms left over from the pop psychology of the American 1960's. Imagine one of Woody Allen's stereotyped Californians speaking and you will hear the terms Sherry bombarded the poor natives with. When the local clerks did not understand, instead of rephrasing with simple, standard English, Sherry turned up the volume.

The four of us pushed into the second class compartment and squeezed into a bench across from three Italians. There was a middle-aged lady, an elderly lady, and a young man about age twenty-two. An hour after the train had left the station, Brett took a paper bag out of his pack and brought out a large quantity of cheese, sausage, bread, and a vegetable that looked like a red pepper. The compartment filled with a pungent odour when Brett opened the cheese wrapping.

The smell produced an immediate reaction from the Italian ladies, as both seemed to gag. The younger lady held her nose and said something in Italian, part of which I caught as "ughh, Gorgonzola!"

Most of us agreed, and soon the window was opened.

Undaunted, Brett proceeded to build a huge sandwich, which prompted comments of wide-eyed amazement from the Italians. The odour and the lack of space proved too much for Sherry, so she decided to make use of her first class pass and moved to a different coach. I also had a first class rail pass, but preferred to stay with my new friends.

Soon after Sherry left, the young man made a joke in Italian about Sherry. All I caught was "Miss America".

I asked Marisa what he said.

"He thinks Sherry is like a Miss America, since she was always changing her hair and fussing with her make-up while she was here."

The ice was then completely broken. The middle-aged lady asked us many questions: where we were from, where we were going, what we did at home? She asked Brett and myself what we wanted to be when we grew up. Brett replied that he never planned to grow up. Mario, the young man wanted to know what kind of cars we drove. He drove a Fiat, but dreamed of owning a Ferrari. He was also fond of rating the girls who passed by the compartment on a scale of one to ten. He gave Miss America a six.

We continued to try to talk for hours, especially Brett and Mario. Marisa left for a while to check on Sherry. Half an hour later Marisa returned to report that Sherry was chatting up some young man in her compartment, which prompted Mario to refer to Sherry as American Express as well as Miss America. I do not think we could ever think of Sherry again without recalling Mario's epithets.

Later, Mario made a comment to Marisa which made her blush. I could not resist asking what he said. Embarrassed, Marisa translated the comment,

"He said that I have a big heart."

"Please tell him that I agree with his assessment."

Still more embarrassed, she translated my message. Mario smiled.

We continued to tear down the barriers of language and culture without noticing the time. Suddenly the ten hour journey to Brindisi was nearly over. The Italian ladies left the train a few stops before Brindisi, shaking our hands and wishing us well before leaving the compartment.

Mario's stop was the last one before Brindisi. He shook Brett's hand, and, in Italian style, kissed Marisa good-bye. When I stood to shake his hand he offered his left hand. I was somewhat puzzled and hesitated.

"La mano a mio cuore."

I looked to Marisa for help.

"The hand of his heart. He wants to shake with his left hand, which is closest to his heart."

Honoured, I shook his left hand warmly. The next minute he was gone.

A few hours later the boat left the Italian dock for Greece. The atmosphere of the Greek boat pulled us instantly into another world. Still, much of my heart will always remain with Mario and ladies, with the school boys, and with the smiling eyes of the young woman in the Stazi Termini.