This introduction does not include any acknowledgments: I refer the reader to the piece entitled "How to Write an Introduction" on [>].
Milan, 5 January 1992
How to Travel with a Salmon
According to the newspapers, there are two main problems besetting the modern world: the invasion of the computer, and the alarming expansion of the Third World. The newspapers are right, and I know it.
My recent journey was brief: one day in Stockholm and three in London. In Stockholm, taking advantage of a free hour, I bought a smoked salmon, an enormous one, dirt cheap. It was carefully packaged in plastic, but I was told that, if I was traveling, I would be well advised to keep it refrigerated. Ha. Just try.
Happily, in London, my publisher made me a reservation in a deluxe hoteclass="underline" a room equipped with minibar. But on arriving at the hotel, I had the impression I was entering a foreign legation in Peking during the Boxer rebellion: whole families camping out in the lobby, travelers wrapped in blankets sleeping amid their luggage. I questioned the staff, all of them Indians except for a few Malayans, and I was told that just the previous day, in this grand hotel, a computerized system had been installed and, before all the kinks could be eliminated, had broken down for two hours. There was no way of telling which rooms were occupied and which were free. I would have to wait.
Towards evening the system was back up, and I managed to get into my room. Worried about my salmon, I removed it from the suitcase and looked for the minibar.
As a rule, in normal hotels, the minibar is a small refrigerator containing two beers, some miniature bottles of hard liquor, a few cans of fruit juice, and two packets of peanuts. In my hotel, the refrigerator was family size and contained fifty bottles of whisky, gin, Drambuie, Courvoisier, eight large Perriers, two Vitelloises, and two Evians, three half-bottles of champagne, various cans of Guinness, pale ale, Dutch beer, German beer, bottles of white wine both French and Italian, and, besides peanuts, also cocktail crackers, almonds, chocolates, and Alka-Seltzer. There was no room for the salmon. I pulled out two roomy drawers of the dresser and emptied the contents of the bar into them, then refrigerated the salmon, and thought no more about it. The next day, when I came back into the room at four in the afternoon, the salmon was on the desk, and the bar was again crammed almost solid with gourmet products. I opened the drawers, only to discover that everything I had hidden there the day before was still in place. I called the desk and told the clerk to inform the chambermaids that if they found the bar empty it wasn't because I had consumed all its contents, but because of the salmon. He replied that all such requests had to be entered in the central computer, but—a further complication—because most of the staff spoke no English, verbal instructions were not accepted: Everything had to be translated into Basic. Meanwhile, I pulled out another two drawers and filled them with the new contents of the bar, where I then replaced my salmon.
The next day at 4 P.M., the salmon was back on the desk, and it was already emanating a suspect odor. The bar was crammed with bottles large and small, and the four drawers of the dresser suggested the back room of a speakeasy at the height of Prohibition. I called the desk again and was told that they were having more trouble with the computer. I rang the bell for room service and tried to explain my situation to a youth with a pony tail; he could speak nothing but a dialect that, as an anthropologist colleague explained later, had been current only in Kefiristan at about the time Alexander the Great was wooing Roxana.
The next morning I went down to sign the bill. It was astronomical. It indicated that in two and a half days I had consumed several hectoliters of Veuve Clicquot, ten liters of various whiskies, including some very rare single malts, eight liters of gin, twenty-five liters of mineral water (both Perrier and Evian, plus some bottles of San Pellegrino), enough fruit juice to protect from scurvy all the children in UNICEF's care, and enough almonds, walnuts, and peanuts to induce vomiting in Dr. Kay Scarpetta. I tried to explain, but the clerk, with a betel-blackened smile, assured me that this was what the computer said. I asked for a lawyer, and they brought me an avocado.
Now my publisher is furious and thinks I'm a chronic freeloader. The salmon is inedible. My children insist I cut down on my drinking.
1986
How to Replace a Driver's License
In May of 1981, as I was passing through Amsterdam, I lost my wallet (or it was stolen: there are thieves even in Holland). It contained only a small amount of money, but a number of documents and cards. I didn't become aware of the loss until, at the airport, about to leave the country, I realized my credit card was missing. In the half an hour remaining before takeoff I conducted a desperate search for a place to report the loss (or theft). Within five minutes I was received by an airport police sergeant who, in good English, explained that the matter was not within the airport's jurisdiction, as the wallet had been lost in the city; nevertheless, he agreed to type out a report and assured me that, at nine, when the office opened, he would personally telephone American Express. And so, within ten minutes, the Dutch part of my case was dealt with.
Back in Milan, I telephone American Express and ascertain that my card number has been circulated worldwide, and the following day a new card arrives. What a great thing civilization is, I say to myself.
Then I tally the other lost documents, and I make a report at the police station. Another ten minutes. How wonderful, I say to myself: our police are just like the Dutch. Among the lost items is my press card; I am able to obtain a duplicate in three days. Better and better.
Alas, I have also lost my driver's license. But this seems the least of my worries. We live in a capital of the automobile industry, there's a Ford in our future, our country's famous superhighways are the envy of the world. I call the Italian Automobile Club and am told that I have only to give them the number of the lost license. I realize I don't have it written it down anywhere, except, of course, on the lost license itself, and I try to find out if they can look up my name in their files and find the number. Apparently this is impossible.
I cannot live without driving: it's a life-or-death matter, and I decide to do what as a rule I don't do: find a shortcut, use connections. As a rule, I say, I don't do this, because I dislike putting friends or acquaintances to any trouble, and I hate it when people use such tactics with me. And besides, I live in Milan, where, if you need a certificate from a city office, you don't have to call the mayor; it's quicker to join the line at the window, where they're fairly efficient. But, the fact is, anything involving our car makes all of us a bit nervous, so I call Rome and speak with a Highly Placed Person at the Automobile Club there, who puts me in touch with a Highly Placed Person at the Automobile Club of Milan, who tells his secretary to do everything that can be done. Everything, in this case, unfortunately amounts to very little, despite the secretary's politeness.
She teaches me a few tricks; she urges me to track down an old receipt from Avis or Hertz, where the number of my license should appear on the carbon copy. In one day she helps me fill out the preliminary forms, then she tells me where I have to go, namely the license office of the prefecture, an immense hall, teeming with a desperate and malodorous crowd, reminiscent of the station of New Delhi in the movies about the revolt of the sepoys; and here the postulants, telling horrible tales ("I've been here since the first invasion of Libya"), are encamped with thermoses and sandwiches, and when you reach the head of the line—as I personally discover—the window is closing.