I had come to realize over the last few years that I needed to work at my friendships if I didn’t want to be all alone someday. Besides, Doreen and I had never gone on a trip with just the two of us. Until last year Ulrike, our daughter, had always come along.
In April I got hold of a map of Italy, located Umbria, and checked how far apart Aviano and Piacenza were. Those names don’t mean much nowadays, but in the spring of ’99 you heard them daily on the radio, because it was from there that NATO aircraft took off headed for Kosovo and Serbia. Not that I would have been afraid, there were hardly any missions by then. But it seemed a bit odd to willingly get too close to such places.
When we left on May 10 it felt like I was taking off for a class reunion. The fact that we were using three cars had a calming effect. Besides we all still got along fine. You could tell that right off.
We spent the first week near Gubbio. We slept late, ate big breakfasts, took occasional long walks, sunned ourselves for hours on the lawn behind the house, and went on an excursion to Assisi.
Sometimes we watched CNN but avoided talking about the details. Reiner said that words like “airbase,” “air strikes,” and “Serbs” already seemed more familiar, more appropriate to him than the German terms, which really just sounded like translations. It was much the same for me. If I read the word Katastrophe somewhere, it immediately became “catastrophe,” whether it was about a flood in Bavaria, pollution in the Danube, or Albanians.
After four days Doreen remarked in the car that she felt like it was high time we went on a real vacation. I asked her what she meant. Was I supposed to pack our bags and declare: “My dear friends, we’ve had enough of you”? “Why not?” she said with a shrug.
On May 15 we went to see the “crazies” of Gubbio. Three teams run through the narrow streets carrying massive heavy candles and figures of saints on their shoulders. What an incredible hoot! The festive atmosphere was infectious. That evening Reiner, Harry, and I stayed on in the kitchen and polished off two bottles of Campari and the rest of our beer. When Sabine arrived to drag Reiner off to bed, he poured beer into her cleavage, which was a really stupid thing to do.
Cynthia demanded a ladies’ shopping trip to Perugia in compensation, while we men would be sent to set up house in our new quarters in Città della Pieve. Doreen’s private response to me was in terms of “treason”—she used that very word — as if I had been guilty of God knows what.
We packed everything into Cynthia and Harry’s Sharan and drove past Lago Trasimena and Chiusi with its Etruscan graves, but didn’t find the turnoff right after Città della Pieve — it’s easy to miscalculate distances — came through a little oak woods, spotted a lovely ruin that evidently now served as a quarry, and suddenly found ourselves in an open field. Straight ahead, glistening in the sun, at the end of the chain of mountains, was our country house, nestled among slopes of green woodlands.
“They’ll all just melt,” Harry said.
Halfway there — with the ruts in the road getting deeper and deeper — he gave a yell and hit the brakes. “A snake,” he said.
Actually we should have been on our guard when we saw a woman emerge from the swimming pool next to the house. She picked up a green towel, shook it out with one hand, and began drying her hair.
There was a large parking area, and we pulled in beside a new Passat with Berlin plates. Our landlord was, we’d been told, a German who owned a horse farm nearby.
We knocked at the door, walked around the house and swimming pool — the water was ice cold — took turns stretching out at poolside on the white plastic deck chair, and took in the view. “Pure luxury,” Reiner said and between two fingers held up a bikini top he’d evidently found in the grass. We knocked again, but nothing stirred inside the house.
Harry pulled out a folded piece of paper. Glued to it was a photograph — tinged a bit too blue — clearly showing this house with this swimming pool in front. I was trying to make out the message scrawled on the back when Reiner gave me a nudge.
An older man was looking down at us from a window upstairs. He had a deep tan, a jutting chin, and gray hair combed front to back.
I called up to him that we were the people who had rented the house for the coming week. “Are we too early?”
At first I thought he didn’t understand German, and tried again in English. He interrupted me, however. “Shitheads,” he shouted. “Beat it, get your asses out of here!” He pushed back from the windowsill and vanished into the room.
“What was that about?” Reiner asked.
“He signed right here,” Harry said, holding the piece of paper up to me. “He signed it, it’s his signature.”
“Herr Schröder,” Reiner called up, “Signor Schröder!” I rapped at the door several more times and finally banged it with my fist.
Harry stepped back a bit and gave the lock a kick. The door sprang open, and a few seconds later Signor Schröder came stomping out.
“Scram!” he shouted. “Scram!” We backed away from his wide-flailing arms. For a moment I was afraid he would set dogs on us.
Schröder reeked of perfume, had strikingly blue eyes, and was shorter than I expected. His Bermuda shorts were hiked almost up to his old-man breasts, which like his shoulders, arms, and legs were covered with gray hair.
We three remained calm. We wanted to talk with him. We were three men, all around forty years old, and were not about to have a doddering loudmouth from Berlin spoil our vacation. We wanted to come to some agreement. We had shelled out a deposit of a hundred marks apiece, after all. But Schröder just kept on yelling “Scram, scram!” and flapping his hands as if we were flies.
Harry showed him the contract. Schröder made a grab for it, and as Harry tried to pull it away it got torn. Schröder wadded up his piece, dropped it, and turned away.
Harry took hold of Schröder’s upper arm. They stood there frozen like that for a moment. Then Schröder whirled around and boxed Harry on the ear. Harry stumbled, fell to the gravel, but was back on his feet at once and hurled himself at Schröder — or better, Schröder had reeled back a few steps after Reiner gave his chest a shove. Harry threw him to the ground.
My friends bent down over him. All I could see was their backs. I had the impression that they were speaking with Schröder in low tones, threatening him. After that it looked as if they were stuffing something into a gunnysack.
I failed to hear the woman’s shouts. They didn’t include a word of German anyway. I just kept staring at Reiner and Harry. They were my friends, and they were in the right. Schröder had earned his little object lesson. And then — you think you know all about it, but in fact the crack of a real gunshot sounds a lot louder and more brittle.
The redhead was aiming at me. I waited for that famous film of my entire life to start fast-forwarding. I also realized it was actually illogical to start with me.
Harry and Reiner stopped working Schröder over and stepped back, back from the door where the redhead stood. She had a yellow purse slung over her shoulder and was dressed in a black pants suit. She aimed the pistol now at Harry, then at Reiner, then at Harry again. I can’t say much more than that.
The old man was lying between them like a big gym bag. I figured the redhead would kneel down to look after Schröder, or maybe even press the pistol into his hand, because suddenly, like a soccer player signaling an injury, he thrust his arm up and snatched at the air a few times.
Without taking her eyes off us, the redhead hissed something at him. I don’t know where she got the green towel that she tossed to him. It landed across his knees. Then she ran along the wall of the house to the parking area, to the new Passat. She must have been familiar with the car, for in no time she was gone, tearing across the field.