The Vagabond: Chapter 1
Book: The Vagabond (May 2024)
Author: V M Karren
Chapter 1My passport got stolen on Thursday, or Wednesday. I can’t remember exactly now. After a week on the tour bus the days all just kind of blurred into one. On Monday we saw a famous church but I can’t remember which town we were in. On Tuesday we visited some ruins on a mountain but hell if I know where we were. They were real old though because the guide told us they were Truscan ruins, not Roman ones. I do remember that ‘cause that was the first time I ever heard of a Truscan. It turns out that they had a whole civilization in Italy before the Romans showed up.
So, like I said, I think it was on Wednesday, or Thursday, when I noticed my passport missing but I couldn’t get a moment to tell Francesca, my tour guide. You know how they rush us on and off the bus so we can wait in some long line again, you know, ‘hurry up and wait’, and then they herd us back on the bus like sheep to sit in rush hour traffic. I kept saying it would have been faster and more enjoyable to have us all walk to the hotel than get back in that damn bus. When we got off the bus, on Thursday, or Wednesday, I noticed that my back pocket was unzipped and my passport was gone. I called the embassy that evening from my hotel room but they told me I had to file a police report before they could make me a new passport. As we would be going to Rome on Friday they told me to get a police report in the town where it was stolen and they could make me a new passport on the spot. They were a lot more helpful than I thought they would be.
I finally told my tour guide that my passport had been stolen and she looked a little annoyed and told me to search the bus again, around and under my seat, and to check all my pockets and my camera bag but I told her I knew it had been in my back pocket and I hadn’t taken it out once after we arrived in Milan on Sunday morning. So, I had to go alone to the Pisa police station in a taxi to make a police report about it and that is where I met him. I still don’t understand all the uproar and fuss about him. He was just a dirty vagabond that nobody cared about.
He was handcuffed to a bench in the lobby of the police station. I couldn’t tell if he was actually under arrest or anything. He was just there. He seemed to be enjoying answering questions from me and from the police. He looked kinda sloppy but not dirty. He hadn’t shaved in a long time but he didn’t smell bad you know like some homeless people can. He could switch back and forth from Italian to English without missing a beat and even helped me out a bit with filling in my report because it was only in Italian. You’d think they would have an English version somewhere with all the tourists that visit Italy every year, and not even for just the American ones because we met Germans and people from Ireland at our hotels who were speaking English but didn’t understand Italian.
I got to talking to him while we were both waiting for El Capitan to come back from dinner and asked him where he was from and what he was in for. He told me he was from San Francisco. It kinda figured. He looked like a hippy but he didn’t talk like one. He told me that he dropped out of Stanford but he didn’t tell me what he was studying. If I’d asked he probably would have given me some New Agey kind of answer like: I’m a student at the university of life, because when I asked him again what he was in for he answered, “for being a nonconformist.”
I asked him if he wanted a cup of coffee from the machine because he couldn’t get up from the bench. He asked me what kind of coffee. I said “black with sugar.”
“Just black with sugar? You’re in coffee paradise and all you can think of is black with sugar. How about a macchiato, a caffe latté, a cappuccino or an Americano.”
I didn’t know how to answer him because I don’t speak Italian. I dug through the change in my pocket and asked him if he wanted some or not.
“Old man, what did you have for dinner last night?”
“Pasta.”
“What kind of pasta?
“With a tomato and meat sauce.”
“What was it? Bolognese, Arrabiata, Puttanesca?”
“I don’t know –”
“You don’t know?”
I could have just gotten myself a cup of coffee without offering him any. I thought because he had helped me with my police report that it was a nice thing to show him I was thankful, you know, repay a favor since he couldn’t move from that bench. He didn’t have to start talking to me that way, like I am some sort of idiot. Who did he think he was anyway? He was just some grungy kid who probably was arrested for being a vagrant. I paid for my own trip. I’ve been sleeping in three star hotels and eating three square Italian meals everyday even if I can’t say ‘em right. So I just got me a cup of coffee and didn’t ask him a third time. His loss. It was really good coffee.
“Where are you from, old man?”
“Kansas City. Missouri side.”
“You here with a cruise group?”
“No. We’re traveling overland with a bus.”
“You like a good brisket?”
“We make the best.”
“If I was in KC and I walked into a barbeque and asked for a cheeseburger, what would they say?”
“They’d toss you out on your butt.”
“Listen to me. When you ask for spaghetti with tomato sauce, or a black coffee with sugar in Italy, it is like walking into a barbeque in KC Missouri and asking for a cheeseburger with ketchup. They are laughing at you, old man. You just can’t understand them.”
I’m not a dummy. I’ve done some traveling in Europe in the last few years. It’s not like this is my first trip outside of the lower forty-eight. I’ve been to Mexico too and I know a good tamale when I sink my teeth into one. Just because I didn’t know everything about Italy this kid thought I was some kind of hillbilly from the Ozarks when he didn’t seem to me to be the type that could hold down a job. He didn’t even finish college. He was a drop out. But, yes sir, he could tell me all about those Italian coffees. That’s hardly gonna put a roof over his head and pay the bills. I served my country for two years. I spent thirty-five years working at the plant, saving my money, paying my taxes, paying for college for my girls, you know, raising a family. What a waste of a smart kid, I thought. So I asked him,
“How long have you been traveling?”
“Four years.”
“Four years? What do your folks think of that?”
“I wouldn’t know and don’t care.”
“How do you pay for it?”
“Well, that’s it, old man, I don’t.”
“They got you on shoplifting then?”
“No. I’m not a thief. They don’t like me sleeping under the stars for free.”
“That’s what I thought. They got you on vagrancy didn’t they? You look like a vagrant.”
“Whatever.”
I got under his skin with that vagrant comment. He had it coming to him after calling me ‘old man’, and speaking to me the way he did and acting as if he was better than me. But it was him chained to the bench, not me.
“Hah! You think just because you’re not chained to a bench that you are a free man? I bet they got you running up and down the stairs on that bus until your fake knee aches. They make you wait in those lines that wriggle all over St. Peter’s Square in the baking sun. Careful! Don’t step out of line to use the john or you’ll get left behind and miss it. You probably don’t know what kind of pasta you ate last night because they just put it under your nose and don’t let you choose what you’d like. Am I right?”
I didn’t dignify his comments with a reply. That didn’t stop him from running his mouth some more.
“They have you over scheduled and double booked. Do you all wear yellow baseball hats and follow a red and blue flag on a pole like a kindergarten field trip? You look left when they tell you to. You look right when they tell you. They tell you when you can enter the museum and they move you through in ninety-minutes or less. You snap a photo of something because they give you two minutes to take a selfie in front of a sculpture you know nothing about. (Oh never mind, you probably don’t even know what a selfie is.) And I bet you even sit in the same seat every time you get back on that bus.”
He must have seen me get a bit mad because he started laughing at me.
“Hah! You do, don’t you? And you smirk at me for being chained to this bench.”
By then I’d had enough. I went up to the desk and asked about my report for my stolen passport. They kept saying, fifteen minutes and pointing to the clock. It had already been close to ninety minutes. They weren’t even trying to hurry up. They told me to sit down and wait some more, just like my tour guide.
I tried not to talk with the vagabond anymore but I think that maybe he was a bit drunk, not sloshed, but tipsy, and so he ran his mouth off pretty easily.
He asked me, “What’s on your Italian bucket list, old man?” but didn’t give me time to answer, “Let me guess, Milan, Pisa, Florence, Rome, Venice.”
I nodded my head trying not to talk with him but also trying to keep him from getting angry that I was ignoring him.
“You’re wasting your time, old man. You need to get away from the tour group and the crowds. You are missing real life. You’re missing what you came to Italy for. I’ve met so many of you that come here to tick things off of your bucket lists that you miss the real Italy. I bet you think about how your old friends back home will react when you tell them you went to all those fancy sounding places. You’ll probably even tell your bowling team the names of all those cities by their Italian names, ‘Venezia, Firenze, Roma, Milano’.”
His right hand fluttered next to his face as he rolled the Zs and the Rs as he mocked me.
“But I’m telling you right now, seeing the Colosseum, the Tower of Pisa and DaVinci’s Last Supper is nothing special. Every damned American that’s been to Italy has seen those. You can’t take a better picture of those places than the postcards on the racks at the souvenir shops. It’s all been done before. It’s all prepackaged and plastic wrapped. You won’t remember where you’ve been, what a church was called, why a place is even important if you don’t get off that bus and be a maverick, a lone ranger, a –”
“A dirty vagabond? Like you? No thanks.” I didn’t like how condescending he was being.
“I’m not trying to be a jerk. I’m trying to save your vacation,” he answered. He seemed sorry that he had hurt my feelings but didn’t change his tone–or shut his mouth.
“Listen, what I’m trying to say is that you should try to discover what you like about Italy. Not what your guidebook says you should like. You need to explore and experiment. Take a risk. Find something that blows your mind and taste buds. Fall in love with a place, or a woman!”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from this punk. He didn’t know anything about me.
“Just promise me one thing,” he demanded from me.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“When you get to Rome, ditch your tour group for just one day. Just wander. Get lost. Stumble into a cafe and order something you’ve never had before. Ask the waiter to bring you his favorite pasta dish, the one that reminds him of his grandmother. Point at anything on a menu and say, ‘bring me that one,’ even if you have no idea what it is,” he rambled on. “Get yelled at, get hassled, get lost, get mugged for hell’s sake!”
“Why would I want to get mugged?” I scoffed.
“So you know what it feels like to live, that’s why,” he shouted, “There is no place on earth that will make you feel more alive than Italy, if you will let it. Go to a town where the global brands haven’t taken over and everybody isn’t trying to pick your pocket. Go someplace you don’t need a QR code to get into. Sleep in one horse town where nobody, and I mean nobody, speaks English. Bribe an usher. Sneak into an opera and sit in somebody’s seat. Make friends to come visit again. Discover something new about yourself, but damn it all, live a little.”
“Are you finished?” I asked.
“You’re not listening, are you?”
“Oh, I’m hearing a whole load of bullshit I don’t want to hear,” I snapped back.
“But you’re not listening. Go on! Walk out of here without a police report. Don’t get a new passport in Rome. Do something that scares the shit out of you. Soak up the sun and the wine while you can. Go big or go home, old man. Live free!”
“And how’s that working out for you?” I pointed at the handcuff on his wrist that shackled him to the bench.
The dirty vagabond stuck up his middle finger at me with a perturbed smirk on his face.
“Grow up,” was the best comeback I could get out.
Just then El Capitan showed up. He had had one too many at dinner. I could smell the wine on his breath. I finally got the stamp and signature on the report for the embassy after ninety plus minutes of waiting. I left without saying another word to the vagabond, sitting there chained to his perch, glad to get out of earshot of his nonsense–and get back on schedule.
