The game went on, and as I looked around I realized that everyone was smoking, including John, but they were covering their cigarettes with the palms of their hands, inhaling and exhaling in the most unobtrusive way possible. While I had been the only idiot smoking my cigarette as if it were the most natural thing in the world—even blowing smoke rings. I tried to imagine what would have become of that poor security guard if he had tried to get someone to put out their cigarette during the derby in Rome. Even if he was Steven Seagal, his ashes would probably be scattered on the surface of the Tiber in less than half an hour.
But it was okay. I’d learned an important lesson about how a smoker has to behave in the United States. Moreover, the Yankees won the game, and ever since then, they have been my baseball team: Go Yankees!
9
Riding on a Railroad
Erly the next morning, with backpacks on our backs, we were ready to set out on the great journey. After a few long back-to-back train rides, we made it from New Jersey to Chicago, where we would catch the California Zephyr. We boarded our new friend, our new home, and settled in for the next . . . four days! It would be a challenge, no question, but we both like a challenge. There were just two small problems. The first one—and it wasn’t that small, come to think of it—was how we were going to get enough to eat and drink for four days. The second problem, and this one was mine alone, was spelled out in a single, terrifying question: When would I be able to smoke my next Marlboro?
We decided we’d start by reconnoitering the train, scouting to ensure a minimum level of subsistence. The Zephyr presented us with two immediate options: the first, and most attractive, was the diner car, but only passengers whose wallets were a little fatter than ours could afford to eat there; the second option was a sort of bar, serving pizza, soft drinks, and snacks of all kinds. At least we wouldn’t starve.
It soon dawned on me, however, that, for a confirmed smoker like myself, I had signed on for a particularly absurd trip from hell. The train’s loudspeaker was just announcing the name of the next station, with the proviso that it would be a “smoking stop.” What?! I rushed back to our seats to get my pack of smokes, and when the doors slid open I was out on the platform immediately, Marlboro in my mouth, ready to take full advantage of this “smoking stop.” Out on the platform, I walked over to an elderly black gentleman who was a member of the Amtrak crew. He had the amiable, reassuring features of Morgan Freeman, and was probably his same age. What mattered most to me was that he seemed to be facing the same challenge as I was, because he was a smoker, too. When he confirmed my worst fears, I felt like I’d been sentenced to death: as I suspected, not all station stops were smoking stops. Only when the loudspeaker specifically announced it could you get out and smoke. I was going to lose my mind! Luckily for me, though, I immediately made friends with Morgan Freeman—who was actually named Luis and was Brazilian. He would be traveling with us on the Zephyr nearly all the way to the Pacific coast, and he knew in advance at exactly which stops I would be able to step onto the platform and suck down a few unhealthy gulps of tobacco smoke.
Now it was time to go get something to eat, so Alessandro and I went off to sample the culinary delights available from the train’s back pantry. The answer was concise and alarming: pizza and beer. That’s it. For four days! There was a further distinction open to us, though. We could choose between the normal round pizza or a “pepperoni” pizza. To the Italian ear, at first, this was less than reassuring. Our peperoni are red-hot chili peppers, but when we discovered that in America pepperoni is a kind of salami, we knew what we’d be ordering. Pepperoni pizza and a refreshing cold Bud. That first meal was delicious and filling, if not exactly nutritious. Unfortunately, it began to get old pretty quickly—pepperoni pizza and Bud for four days. I don’t have to tell you that, for the rest of my life, I’ll never forget the taste of Amtrak pepperoni pizza.
Having placated our hunger as best we could, we decided to venture out on a brief exploration of our train. In our wanderings, we stumbled upon a wonderful, magical car—it was almost completely transparent. It seemed to have been designed expressly to give passengers a spectacular vista of the surrounding landscape, day or night. We were overjoyed, and we immediately began to imagine what an incredible spectacle would meet our eyes when we got to canyon country.
The miles and rails slid away rapidly beneath us, and by the end of the first full day we’d become acquainted with more or less everyone on the train, from crew to passengers. One big happy family traveling westward together.
And then there was the Steve factor.
Steve was a boy, about twelve years old, with dirty blond hair with reddish highlights, light complexion, and a dusting of freckles. He was the youngest in a group of four or five kids traveling together, probably accompanied by some grown-up in another car. He was certainly the most curious of the group. Or at least the most curious about me and Alessandro—two slightly out-of-place young men speaking Italian. He started buzzing around us, asking a series of increasingly persistent questions about who we were, where we came from, where we were going. He wasn’t obnoxious, really, but whenever we tried to kick back or get a nap, his head of slightly reddish hair would pop out of nowhere, always ready to ask us questions that sometimes veered into the intrusive.
By the second day, we were sick of him. We took refuge in the transparent car, feigning a sudden overwhelming interest in the landscape, even if we happened to be going through a tunnel at the time. That evening, though, the unforeseen occurred. Alessandro and I had pulled out a deck of Neapolitan playing cards and we were playing a feverishly competitive round of scopa, a classic Italian card game. I’m not really much of a card player, but when you’re killing time with friends, it can be an ideal activity. And while scopa has its rules, it’s actually the easiest and most relaxing card game there is. You only need to know how to count to ten!
We were in the middle of a game, with two ice-cold Buds on the table, when the much feared head of tousled reddish hair popped up next to us.
We agreed to let him watch, and—point by point, hand after hand—Steve never missed an opportunity to ask us about the exact reason for each individual play or maneuver. We answered him absentmindedly, doing our best to focus on our game but especially hoping he’d get tired and go back to his parents.
We had hoped in vain. Ten minutes later, instead of succumbing to boredom, the young American announced that he’d learned the rules of the card game and, to our horror, asked if he could join in. My hand gripped the neck of my Bud in frustration, but I soon relaxed and suggested a fair deal with the little pain in the neck. He could play cards with us, but once he’d lost a certain number of games, he had to vanish from our sight for the entire following day. Steve found our conditions acceptable.
My eyes locked with Alessandro’s, and the evil grins of a couple of jaded cardsharps slowly spread across our faces. Alessandro gave me the honor and pleasure of destroying the little red-haired pest, and he sauntered off to take a stroll. Pretending to make a gentlemanly gesture, which I felt I could easily afford, confident of victory as I was, I allowed Steve to be dealer. He dealt three cards to me, three to himself, and four to the table, clearly showing that he had learned the basics of Italian scopa—this in spite of our explanations in fractured English, which had probably been more confusing than helpful.
Even during the first game, Steve gave signs of being less helpless than we’d taken him for. And thanks to a couple of strokes of good luck, he actually beat me. Beginner’s luck, I thought to myself. But when the next two games followed more or less the same pattern, I started to get a little worried. If Steve kept beating me, we’d have to put up with the kid all the way to San Francisco. How was I going to explain this to Alessandro? Not to mention, my pride wouldn’t let me be beaten by a rank beginner without winning so much as a single game! So, I have to confess, dear reader, I started taking furtive glances at his cards.
It didn’t do a bit
of good. Even though I was cannily eyeing every single hand of cards Steve held, he still beat me!
Luckily, just then Alessandro, who was a much more experienced card player, returned from his stroll. We were safe now: Alessandro would trounce him. The twelve-year-old agreed calmly to take on my friend, and I sat back to enjoy the massacre that would now ensue from a comfortable vantage point. Leaning back just behind the little punk’s shoulder, so I could read his cards in case the need happened to arise . . .
Now Alessandro, brimming with confidence, began playing where I had left off. Different player, same results: the damned kid won every hand! Even cheating for all we were worth, we couldn’t win a single game against him! We were at our wits’ end. We had to surrender to the inevitable: for the next two days, we’d have young Steve stuck to us like a tick.
One doubt remained, however. We’d both had the impression that, as he played, Steve was doing his best to memorize the cards as they were dealt. I asked him cautiously if by any chance that was the case, and he nodded. More important, he told us something that cushioned our sense of complete failure: he was a child superprodigy, a pint-sized genius with ridiculously above-average intelligence, and that he was traveling to Denver to attend a special school for the gifted. In practical terms, he had more or less the IQ of me, Alessandro, and a few of our smarter friends, all put together.
Our spirits rose, for two reasons: first, we suddenly felt less like hopeless idiots, and second . . . Steve was getting off the train in Denver!
Still, we couldn’t get a wink of sleep that night. There was just one question that kept tormenting us: Of all the trains in all the fifty states in America, why did we have to get on the one with a goddamned twelve-year-old boy genius, ready to humiliate us with his superiority at an Italian card game he’d never played in his life, after systematically mauling our nervous systems for two whole days?!
The train rocked us westward through Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska, stopping at such historic towns and cities as Princeton, Galesburg, Burlington, and Omaha. We looked out the windows as we crossed the majestic Mississippi River and then the Missouri River. Finally the train pulled into Denver, Colorado. Here we moved to the transparent observation car to enjoy the amazing spectacle of the canyons, which would begin just a little farther west. We were beside ourselves with excitement. Penniless, overjoyed, our tummies full of pepperoni pizza, we were ready to abandon ourselves to an experience that money couldn’t buy: thrills and high hopes.
And the gift that nature gave us next was unique and unforgettable: a succession of narrow, winding gorges through which only a train called Zephyr could possibly have wended its way. There were no roads in sight, only the rails that guided the train slowly but inexorably through fissures whose names alone were sufficient to bring us to the verge of tears: Coal Creek Canyon, South Boulder Canyon, Fraser Canyon, Byers Canyon, Gore Canyon, Red Canyon, and Glenwood Canyon. Canyonlands National Park. Every canyon had a story of its own, a color, a scent.
The most magnificent gift that Canyonlands had to offer was the sunset. It took our breath away. My eyes had never glimpsed such a stunning procession of beauty in such a short time. It was almost more than I could bear.
That night we rumbled on from Colorado to Utah, and as luck would have it, the next morning I was awake around five a.m. My eyes, still filled with sleepdust, were dazzled by a strong, clear pink light, powerful, all-encompassing, but at the same time incredibly gentle and sweet. I was alone and stunned in the observation car, with a dawn all around me that stretched and nestled onto the placid waters of the lake outside.
I didn’t know what the name of that lake was, but in a sense I didn’t really care. All that mattered to me was that pink hue. The almost unnatural pink generated by the light of a dawn that—like every morning since the beginning of time—was reflected in the waters of the lake. And that morning it had chosen to reveal itself to me, and me alone, as if bestowing a personal gift.
Suddenly I felt a presence by my side. It was Luis.
“You like the show?” he asked in a fatherly tone of voice.
When I saw it was him, I felt a moment of embarrassment. He’d caught me in a moment of personal emotion over a pink lake at dawn. But I was also glad to have a witness: it meant that what I was seeing through the window of the observation car was real, not a hallucination or a dream.
“Luis, I’m speechless. I know that we’re not far from Salt Lake City. Is this the lake?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes. Or maybe no. Maybe putting a name on this marvel is too much. Maybe my memory of it will be enough.”
“Good answer, kid. You’re a good young man. Take this light, carry it in your heart, remember it in your times of difficulty.”
“Thanks, Luis. I’ll do that. But why do you have a backpack on?” I asked him.
“I’m saying good-bye to my Zephyr. I’m getting too old to take the long trips. I have to rest for a while. But then I’ll start over. New journeys, new faces, new stories, the same old canyons and lakes, but with a never-ending array of colors. I’m getting off in a couple of minutes. This is a smoking stop. You want to smoke one last Marlboro together?”
“Of course, Luis. I’d love to.”
That Marlboro at six in the morning was drilling a hole in my chest. For the first time, my Marlboro didn’t taste like a cigarette. I was standing on the platform of a train station somewhere near Salt Lake City, in the magnificent pink morning light, with a friend I’d met only a few days earlier. It was one of the most deeply moving moments of my entire life. And at that moment, I understood what I’d been trying to conceal from myself when I first felt his hand on my shoulder in the observation car. That I’d never see Luis again. That Marlboro tasted a lot like life, and that wise old man was saying good-bye to me, with a smile veiled with sadness. He wished me all the best and gave one last hug to the young Italian man who was about to burst into tears. Then he walked off into the pink sunrise of a Utah morning.
I went back to my seat, doing my best to conceal my sadness. Alessandro was awake.
“Alessandro, you can’t imagine what I saw in the past hour!”
“I saw it all. I heard you leave, I looked out the window, and I haven’t moved since then. You went to the observation car, didn’t you? I can’t imagine what you saw from up there, but I think I can guess. I’ve never seen a pink dawn like that in my life. What lake was that?”
With a smile and a newfound wisdom, I replied:
“Do you really want to know?”
10
Wandering
Our last day aboard the Zephyr was dawning. We were already savoring our final destination: San Francisco. Instead, however, with a seven-hour delay, we were rudely dumped onto the platform of a station marked OAKLAND.
To get to our fabled destination, we had to take a bus. The trip up to and over the Bay Bridge was a marvelous experience, and our first encounter with San Francisco by night was absolutely unforgettable. We had already been seduced by this new and equally fantastic American city—seduced and abandoned, since we’d found ourselves, after a four-day train trip, seven hours behind schedule, with nothing but a pepperoni pizza in our bellies, at two in the morning at the foot of the Bay Bridge like a couple of forlorn jerks, backpacks on our backs, without the foggiest idea of where we would be spending the night.
We wound up spending that night, exhausted but excited, on a bench on the Embarcadero, and still today the photo that immortalizes that night on a bench is one of my most precious mementos. The next morning, a long day awaited us. That afternoon, Corrado, the third pioneer in our trio, would be coming in on a plane scheduled to land at San Francisco International Airport. We were supposed to pick him up at the airport, so we rented a car, a fantastic candy green Nissan Altima. Inside was a genuine treasure: a car radio preset to every country music station for miles around! While Alessandro drove, I couldn’t stop punching in stations and singing along at
the top of my lungs to every song that came on—until my ears picked up the opening notes of “Take It to the Limit.” God, I loved that song. It wasn’t one of the first Eagles songs that I loved, but I can still remember the struck-by-lightning feeling when I happened to hear it once by chance—it was buried along with lots of other songs in one of the band’s double CDs—while I was studying for a final exam in economics. When I heard all the instruments strike up the opening chord in unison and Randy Meisner’s yearning voice began singing, extraordinary and sweet, I felt a shiver go through my entire body.
That day I decided that “Take It to the Limit” was my favorite song by the Eagles, bar none. Who could ever have imagined that just a few years later, driving on an American highway, I’d have heard it by chance while spinning the radio tuner knob . . .
“So put me on a highway, and show me a sign, and take it to the limit, one more time . . .”
With Corrado in tow, the following day we set out to explore the beautiful city of San Francisco, with its cable cars, its stunning panoramic views, Chinatown—almost a city unto itself—the phenomenal bay, Alcatraz, and the Golden Gate. That wonderful, infinite orange bridge that I’d been dreaming of for years reminded me of another masterpiece by James Taylor: “I’ve been wandering early and late, from New York City to the Golden Gate, and it don’t look like I’ll ever stop my wandering.”
It didn’t look like we’d ever stop our wandering, either. The next day we set out for Yosemite, and from there, after driving for a few hours, we started our descent along the West Coast.
Driving in the United States isn’t like driving in Italy, at least not on the highways of California. There are times when it’s like watching a movie projected on your windshield. The vistas are so stunningly beautiful, and the landscapes stretch out as far as the eye can see. It’s quite a difference from Italian highways, where the most you can hope to see is a panorama stretching out a hundred feet or so, before a tunnel, an arid expanse of rocks, or the usual road work intervenes to spoil the view and the nerves of everyone in the car.
Un Amico Italiano Page 8