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Mamma Mia!
The morning sky was completely overcast: gray and ugly. And during the night - believe it or not - the wind had intensified. It was blowing harder than a Texan braggart: big and straight into our sorry faces. We considered staying put for the day, but our Oristano deadline was fast approaching, only two days away. "I hope the Sartiglia is worth the pain we're inflicting upon ourselves," I said. We packed up and continued towards Nuoro. After a few kilometers, a police car coming towards us slowed. It stopped in the middle of its lane. The driver honked and stuck out his arm, flagging us to a halt. I stopped alongside the driver's window, and leaned over to peer into the compact tin can-sized car. Three hulking police officers were comically sandwiched inside. "Where are you from?" the driver probed, beginning his interrogation. "Where are you going?" he demanded next. "How many kilometers a day do you do?" he wanted to know. I leaned on my handlebars, grateful for a break from the relentless headwind that had desiccated my face and made it feel like a scrap of old leather. I'd heard his questions a million times before. Each time I replied, the officers shook their heads incredulously. The head honcho asked: "Do you have passports?" "Si," I grinned, and lazily motioned to my handlebar bag. My passport was buried somewhere deep within and I didn't have the energy to dig it out. Instead of pursuing the matter, the officer moved to more pressing vexations and asked a series of questions. "How far have you gone altogether? Are you married? How long have you been married? How many kids do you have? What? None? What do you do for work? Really? How old are you? Where did you get the money to do this?" "We sold our house," I said, responding to his final query. "Mamma mia!" all three officers exclaimed in unison, then they all exhaled through pursed lips, sounding exactly like air escaping a punctured tire. They had been perplexed when they learned Sharon and I had been married for ten years and were childless. But my utterance "We sold our house" totally blew them away, and creases of mortification took up permanent residence on their dark features. "Sold your house!" They couldn't fathom such a thing. The lights were flashing, the arm was down, but no train was coming. "Sold your house!" To Italians, houses were their most cherished family possession, passed down through successive generations. If they ever had to sell their house, surely all was lost. It was absolutely the last option in the world they would ever consider. The officers thought we were extremely foolhardy and drove off in a daze, shaking their heads and mumbling, "Mamma mia!" |
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