Save the caws elicited by a pair of ravens plying the bluebird sky, it was so quiet! So still! I imagined I was the first being to emerge from its den, and even spent a panicked minute or two fretting over the protocols of avalanche rescue. But then I spied Tomon and Gray Beard shuffling across the crusty snow far below, leaving a bright trail of red as they dragged a heavy black sow at the end of a braided leather rope.
In my enthusiasm, I nearly shouted out a buongiorno! Bravo! The thought of a million kilotons of snow rumbling down upon my head choked the salutations in my gizzard. I stood in frustration until the thought arose to unwrap one of Ja’ja’ja’s red fox stoles from around my neck and wave it in figure eights. It didn’t take long for my friends to spot the gyrations, these men are much attuned to movement of any kind. They shook their spears in a way that said, “Good! You survived!”
Flipping down the visor of my helmet, I zoomed in to study Gray Beard’s hands. Sure enough, he was signing a message to me. He knows quite a bit more about our technology than we care to admit.
“Be patient. Stay put. Danger.”
I slipped a rope around Izzy’s neck and sat down in the snow to pout away the bluebird morning. After exhausting a litany of “Why me’s,” I slipped in my ear peas, ever so carefully lest they tumble into the powder never to be found, and dialed up Tchaikovsky. It wasn’t long before the pucker had returned to the Bolzano whistle. How does one frown with Sugar Plum Faeries dancing in his brain? I spoke briefly with Jones on the com line and he explained there was a bit of dodgy ice hemming me in. Though lonely to the pit of my stomach, I had to admit, it would not do to stumble headfirst into a bottomless snow cavern.
By midday, warm breezes swept in from the south along with billowing cumulous cotton balls fat with precipitation that drove Izzy and me back into the shelter of the cave. The ensuing week of foggy showers ate at the snow until it was a memory, except for white patches in the shadows of gullies and in the lees of boulders. The runoff has flooded the valley into a muddy bog. Every nook and depression in the hillside sports a stream or rivulet. My personal waterfall cascades in a meter-wide arc directly over the mouth of the cave. The water travels with such velocity that nary a drop falls upon my shoulders as I walk below. Everything funnels into the berry patch swamp to form the headwaters of a muddy river that meanders down the narrow valley I had once assumed was a dry gulch.
The gray loneliness of this windswept afternoon matches my mood. Having reached the outskirts of the mother of all hangovers, pounding head and body shakes threaten to give way to self-recrimination and shame. Delirium tremors will do that to a man. I fiddle with this machine with vague hopes that melancholy will not dissolve completely into the mopes. With all drinkable grappa and spirits poured into the mud, there is no going back.
Supine on my fur-covered pallet, sorting through gossamer memories of other fateful binges, I can stop wherever I wish to deliver body blows to my self-esteem and pride. I was such a deceitful, pompous ass. There is one painful remembrance throbbing like a rotten tooth, a weekend in the Dolomites when the swagger and schemes of simple-minded Salvatore Bolzano cost a good man his life.
It was a retreat for the rich and indolent, a fundraiser for one lost cause or another hosted by Helmut von Delft, the son of the great actress Corrine von Delft. I believe he was trying to halt the development of the region’s last swath of mountain meadow, or maybe it was to save bumblebees. The lost causes of those days blend together so.
I do remember that my three guests and I became absolutely potted on the flight up to Castelrotto in my air car. Marco Antonio, a handsome attorney who was my pal of the moment, brought a ceramic decanter of Wild Turkey for us to sip throughout the long weekend. He claimed the bourbon was more than 250 years old. The brightly colored bottle depicted a mother turkey coddling her chick by a tree stump. Marco said it was unearthed in an American root cellar in Madison, Wisconsin, and purchased by his parents at auction. He boasted it cost more than most families earn in several years.
We cracked the seals and, though potent, the amber bourbon cascaded past our uvulas smooth as velvet. We must have polished off the bottle before the car made its turn north over Lake Garda, for I recall one of our dates insisting we sacrifice the bottle to the waves below. Poor Marco was only beginning to comprehend the excesses that were in store for him that weekend. I placated the girl and saved Marco his precious bottle, explaining that the doors would not open while we were in flight and there was no stopping on this level of the airway. The mention of unwanted attention from the Carabiniere took the starch out of the tall blonde’s demands.
I cannot remember the girls’ names or where they were from. Poland perhaps. Their ilk was common, European trust-fundlings hopping from one party to the next. Bred for beauty and grace, they had spared no expense in transforming themselves to the pinnacle of our generation’s view of chic and beautiful. My lusty date, a raven-haired lass who could pass for Italian right up until the moment she unfurled her Baltic tongue, had light-emitting implants in the skin of her eyelids and cheeks that were only then becoming popular. With each heartbeat, her skin lightly pulsed, slowly building to an opalescent glow when she became angry or aroused–just two of the emotions I was able to elicit from her that weekend.
Marco’s blonde had had her pinky fingers removed to make her hands appear more slender. I quipped that it made counting on her hands 20 percent easier and we all had a good laugh. The girls had brought a wide selection of the latest in synthetic drugs, and were quite clinical in administering the proper dose for what ailed us. We had a rollicking good time listening to music and enjoying the views across the flatlands of the Po River Valley and north into the craggy mountings of the Alto Adige.
How I miss that air car! Bright yellow and boxy, designed in the image of an old wheeled New York Checker Cab, she was truly my pride and joy. Of all the technology I miss, the Flying Lemon, as I so lovingly named her, ranks right up with silk sheets and Belgian chocolate. Rather than slogging through the mud, it would be nice to slide into a comfortable, climate-controlled compartment, push a button, proclaim a destination, and be on my way.
I purchased the Lemon while I was at university, using the bulk of a generous inheritance from my corpulent Aunt Izzy. With her wiry, unruly hair and propensity for saying whatever was on her mind, Isabella had managed to alienate most of the family. But not me. I loved listening to her stories and debating politics on my frequent visits to her Milano apartment. Why else would I name my dog after her? When Aunt Isabella’s last will and testament was read, I was bequeathed a tidy sum commensurate to what her own children received. My siblings were left scratching their heads, wondering if perhaps they too should have found time to visit their quirky aunt.
I bought the most expensive American-made model and put the rest in an account to cover the outlandish yearly fees to travel down low in the third level with the diplomats and military officers. What can I say, besides being an elitist, I have always been a snoop. Flying close to the ground allows you to peer in apartment windows and look down into backyard gardens as you pass by.
We glided to the clear polymer dome hotel too drunk to walk or speak clearly–though we gamely gave both a try as we circled the lobby in search of a bar to rinse the taste of vomit from our mouths. The hotel staff shepherded us up to our suite of rooms on the apex floor and suggested we enjoy naps before joining the party for dinner.
Heads turned the next morning as we made our way past the breakfast buffet to take stools at the bar. We were into our second round of tequila sunrises and the cobwebs were beginning to clear when earnest Helmut von Delft took the stage to kick off the day’s proceedings with an ancient quote from George Gissing.
“It is the mind which creates the world around us, and even though we stand side by side in the same meadow, my eyes will never see what is beheld by yours, my heart will never stir to the emotions with which yours is touched.”
If old Helmut had stoppe
d there, turned the event over to the peppy program director and sent everyone off on the Fun Run or Litter Clean-Up or whatever the fuck it was this time, it would have been perfect. Of course, he did no such thing. Helmut droned on and on about the symbiotic relationship of bees and meadows and people and life itself until the crowd lapsed into coma. The poor dolt even had the poor sense to describe scenes from several of his mother’s movies, as if we all needed another reminder whose shirttails he rode to becoming a charity bigwig.
When the crowd, with its abundance of athletic shoes and utilitarian, one-piece jumpsuits, filed outdoors on a mission of good health or good deeds, I am still not sure which, we ducked into an elevator and returned to our rooms to screw and sleep away the rest of the morning.
That afternoon, we somehow ended up renting wing suits and flying under the tutelage of an aeroguide named Teobaldo Schmidt. I cannot recall if one of the girls read an advertisement and we went in search of the rental establishment, or if we just happened to stumble upon it as we explored the old village of Castelrotto. I do remember Teo. He was a wide-shouldered young man with a ready smile on a pleasant Germanic face. Fair skin, rosy cheeks, blue eyes, yellow hair cropped short.
He saw through our attempts to exaggerate our qualifications and made us sit through a half-hour briefing before allowing us to strap into our jet-propelled suits and zoom away. I signed the incredible rental expense to our room charges.
Teo led the way as we launched from the second balcony of his shop and climbed to several hundred meters. Gaining confidence, we leveled off to rocket in formation up the valley. The auto-piloting systems were loose enough to allow us to influence the direction and flying attitude of the suit, but not enough to let us crash into each other or plummet to earth.
It was my maiden flight in a flying suit. I admit it was intimidating to have a rigid wing, complete with twin jets, strapped to my back. Evidently, Marco and the girls were veterans, for they filled the radio with whoops and cheers as they performed barrel rolls and loop-de-loops. As Teo grew more confident of their skills, he allowed them leeway to venture out of formation to perform their tricks. I claimed a queasy stomach and was content to soar the wind currents in straight lines and gentle curves.
We spotted Helmut and his earnest walkers as they navigated down the middle of a rolling meadow 50 meters wide and 50 kilometers long. This last swath of natural mountain meadow in the whole of South Tyrol was bordered on both sides by crumbling urban sprawl of closed factories, warehouses, apartment buildings, houses, sheds, dilapidated retail centers and all the detritus from the 30-year boom of 2080.
With the discovery of a new water aquifer, development was once again planned for the area. Investors claimed, correctly, that it would be easier to develop the meadow than clear the debris and fight the land claims of the current landowners. Helmut and his group hoped to save half of the meadow. The investors, most of whom were from Asia, wanted to develop seven-eighths. I wonder how that worked out.
Before I could stop Marco and the girls, they buzzed the walkers, spooking a flock of endangered songbirds into flight and inspiring a few fists to be shaken our direction. Teo, who knew no good could come from the interaction, reined in the controls and led us once again in tight formation away from civilization up into the craggy mountains. The experience was one of the high points of my life. Riding the thermals, angling up sheer cliff faces, we soared to where the jagged peaks topped out in the blue sky. Following the line of crags to the south, Teo brought us to land on a crest where a flat slab of concrete once served as a platform for mortars launched far into the valley below.
“Back in the Great War, the first World War, the Germans started this platform with alpinists carrying packs of concrete,” Teo explained as we stood awkwardly in our suits and took in the wide panorama. “The Italians watched through powerful telescopes and waited until the Krauts were just about finished, then sent their own alpinists up to kill the Germans and finish the platform for Italy’s purposes.”
In spite of that gruesome reminder of how much blood has been spilled over the years in his contentious valley, it was peaceful for the moment. One of the girls produced a flask and we passed it around. Teo showed us how to link arms to gain stability, and we formed a human chain teetering on the edge of the mountaintop. We talked Teo into letting us linger to watch the red sun drop behind the mountains to the west, before we fired up our flying wings and soared back to terra firma.
The Bolzano personage was in such dire need of a proper scrub and powerful drink–not in that order of course–I may have been a bit discombobulated when we emerged from our suits and sallied forth to our gumball machine of a hotel. If anything was amiss, it did not strike any of us at the time.
The “Flying Foursome” was sufficiently lubricated, but not bouncing off the walls singing Danny Boy, when we arrived fashionably on time for the evening’s repast of locally produced meats, cheeses, fruits and vegetables. This particular meal was what prompted my acceptance to the stodgy invitation on my father’s behalf. I had no intention of missing the lamb roulade with goat cheese filling and ancho chili demi-glaze. The evening began with petite appetizers arrayed on tall tables along the edge of the hotel’s herb and vegetable garden. Growing food outdoors, under the real sun, was part of what made this cuisine sublime. So said the pap oozing from the hotel’s promotional literature.
We sampled the various offerings the way vacuum cleaners sample lint. A day without lunch had made Salvatore a very hungry boy. I was popping oil-cured olives into my mouth, struggling to follow the conversation of a soft-talking woman with a delightful décolletage, but apparently not the lung capacity to match, when Marco arrived to pull me toward the head table and Sir Helmut himself. I expected a tongue-lashing for our aerial antics, but he did not yet know we were the ones to interrupt his tranquil sojourn through doomed meadow. He pointed a stainless steel toothpick toward a chair and invited me sit.
“Your friend tells me you consider yourself a true gourmet,” von Delft said. “Is it true that you are able differentiate the tastes of more than 100 Italian red wines? If so, that is quite a talent!”
I made a show of my discomfort, adjusted the neck of my lavender jacket, before replying in a voice even softer than my recent party companion’s. “I make no such claims,” I said.
“Come on, speak up,” von Delft said with a brittle laugh. Maybe he did know it had been us. “Are you a gourmet or are you not?”
“You must forgive Marco, for he is an attorney,” I replied with a bit more iron in the Bolzano backbone. “It is his job to deal in hyperbole.”
“And what is your job?”
“I am a teacher.”
“A culinary teacher?”
“No, I teach history, but when you think about it, the two disciplines have much in common. Whether it be a battle or a bowl of gazpacho, it is about cause and effect, the quality of ingredients and quality of execution.”
“I think you are full of merde,” von Delft said with a hearty laugh. He slid his glass my way. “This is Italian, perhaps you can enlighten us with the name of the winery.”
I gave the glass a swirl and lifted it to my nose for the first scent. My eyes remained locked with his as I set it back on the table without a sip.
“This urine comes from no Italian winery, or any other,” I said matter-of-factly. “It is synthetic. Probably a fine-tasting synthetic, but a substitute nonetheless.”
Helmut von Delft gave a rueful nod. “Very good, sir. You are the first to see through my deception. You help make my point toward the importance of proper labeling and truth in manufacturing. I will mention you as a shining example in this evening’s lecture.”
I made as if to tip the glass into his lap, catching it before it toppled. His girlish intake of breath focused the crowd’s attention.
“Do you enjoy making people appear foolish?” I asked. “You hoped I would guess one winery or the other, a playful dog wagging his tale for the bi
g man. And then you would see that everyone had a laugh at my expense.”
Von Delft gripped his fork so firmly his knuckles grew white. If steam was not yet spouting from his wax-filled ears, it was not far off. I goaded him to the edge, then dropped a line in the water.
“You hoped to make me dance like a puppet. For free? For nothing? This puppet does not dance unless there is something worthwhile at stake.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“A wager. That is what I am proposing.”
“What sort of wager?”
“You wished to test the Bolzano palate, but did so with an uneven playing ground. Should you find a more equitable challenge, I am willing to entertain your entreaties. Until then, good evening, sir.”
I left von Delft in conference with his cronies and ambled off to join my friends on the dance floor. As anticipated, a proxy was sent within the half hour. My date and I were engaged in a sultry tango that made her eyelids and cheeks flash like opals when a waiter in white tails saluted from the edge of the stage. Once the boy had my attention, he pointed toward the head table.
I made them wait two more dances before my companions accompanied me to face Helmut von Delft. The table was set with three plates and four wine glasses arranged in a line. Each plate held one item. There was a wedge of greenish cheese, a thick slice of ruby red tomato, and a pool of olive oil. The glasses were poured with wine, two red, one white and a blush whose bubbles told me it was likely a type of sparkling wine or champagne.
“I present to you seven items,” von Delft said to me, and the growing audience. “At least one is manufactured, not grown. Do you think you can say which items are farmed and which are not?”
Gibraltar Page 7