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Fossils Beware!
In the morning, Rimedia invited us to her parent's house for café-o-laits and chocolate rolls. "Sardinians have a fixation with cake for breakfast," Sharon observed, recalling that Mr. Tubby had offered us the same fare. I was starting to like it! After sweet rolls and strong Italian coffees, we bid our hosts farewell. Rimedia decided we needed directions and hopped on her bike to lead us five kilometers to the next village. There, we said our goodbyes again, and Rimedia hugged us fondly. Satisfied that we were well on our way, she turned her bicycle around and started the trek home. We watched her departing form as she laboured into a strong headwind, and took the time to reflect on our past two days. Through Raffaele and Rimedia, Sharon and I had become honorary Sardinians for the weekend, privy to their traditional customs and way of life. Rimedia disappeared, and I blinked away a few salty tears. I was suddenly tired, my stomach queasy. Vernaccia withdrawal, I decided. Fortunately, the riding didn't require much exertion as the wind saw fit to push us towards Tharros - a coastal Roman ruins - and our intended destination for the day. Near Tharros, we found a semi-sheltered spot on the beach and broke out our lunch. The gusting wind blew sand into our food. "This gives a whole new meaning to the word sandwiches," I noted, and tried, unsuccessfully, to ignore the grit. "Life's a beach," I said as we abandoned our picnic and headed to the ruins. At the site, two bold pillars faced the turbulent sea, as if in declaration of superior times past. We wandered about the grounds, watching archeologists diligently uncover remnants from beneath layers of rubble. The most interesting sign we came across read: thermal bathhouses. But there were no bathhouses - there weren't even any thermals. The only remaining construction was a sewer system (reputed to be in perfect working condition). I had my doubts, considering what I had experienced in modern-day Europe. I noticed our movements were being tracked by a bespectacled, barrel-chested man. When we walked over to the site's information building he lumbered towards us and introduced himself as Luigi, the head archeologist. Then, without even pausing for us to introduce ourselves, he invited us to stay overnight at his place. My stomach (most likely from the copious amounts of Vernaccia I had ingested the day before) was performing Olympic-qualifying backflips. I allowed my poor condition to override Sharon and my prior agreement of never accepting hospitality until we had confirmed our feelings with each other. Without consulting Sharon, I accepted. As we collected our bikes, Sharon whispered that she had niggling suspicions about our benefactor. She was right. It did seem a trifle strange to receive an overnight offer before being asked even one question. But I ignored her. I just wanted to sit, cradle my tummy, and be close to a yawning porcelain god. Luigi escorted us to his cane hut conveniently located at the foot of the ruins. A six-foot fence - constructed haphazardly from a collection of scabby rails and corrugated tin - enclosed his yard. He glanced at our bicycles, and reefed open a plank door on a dilapidated storage shed. I peered into the dim, packed-to-the-rafters rat's nest. "There's not a hope in Hades of getting even a unicycle in there," I said, "let alone two fully loaded touring bikes." That didn't stop Luigi though. He tossed items aside helter-skelter, and somehow cleared a space that we wormed our overloaded machines into. That accomplished, he slammed the door and padlocked it. That act didn't do anything to dissipate Sharon's feelings of uneasiness. Even I began to wonder what I had gotten us into. Luigi ushered us into his two-room shack, and we discovered that, unlike the Tharros ruins, it wasn't Roman at all it was Spartan. The kitchen-living room possessed a stove, a small table, three beat-up chairs, and - the only luxury - an antiquated radio. The lack of furnishings compounded Sharon's apprehension. My stomach gurgled ominously, and I hastily requested to use the toilet. Luigi led me out the back door, through a grassless backyard, and into a corner to a barely-standing hutch. He pushed open the door. Inside the rickety structure was the alleged toilet. A bucket. "Great," I mumbled to the non-English speaking Luigi. "The Romans built a sewer system two-thousand-years ago that still works perfectly today, and you can't do better than a bucket? Thanks, pal. Charmingly rustic indeed." Luigi smiled and walked back across the yard. I entered the dilapidated structure and squatted over that wretched-smelling pail until my thighs burned. I finally straightened up and told myself I felt much better. "Stomach, you had better buck-up," I muttered as I emerged from the cell. I had no intention of using that disgusting atrocity again. When I reentered the house, Luigi suggested we go for a walk along the beach. I didn't feel like moving, let alone walking, but thought perhaps the air would do me good. Delphi, Luigi's barrel-chested pooch, accompanied us. As Delphi splashed after seabirds, Luigi pointed out shells. Each time he spotted one, he stooped and picked it up, uttered something incomprehensible, and handed it to Sharon. By the time we finished our stroll, Sharon was hauling quite a collection. I grinned. I hoped she had room for them all in her panniers. I sat at the kitchen table, grasping my guts and clamping my sphincter. Luigi set about preparing supper. "Basta pasta," I groaned silently as he produced a package of standby spaghetti. While the pasta boiled, he concocted a flour slurry and battered a fish unlike any fish I had ever seen before. Then, he fried the denizen of the deep in a generous quantity of olive oil, and, I had to admit, when I tasted his product I was pleasantly surprised. It was superb. Unfortunately, Sharon's sixth sense had been right on the money. Luigi was a little weird. I attributed it to a bad case of lonely-archeologist-working-too-long-on-a-dig-without-female-company syndrome. Unbeknownst to me, on our beach walk, in addition to grabbing shells, Luigi had been busy grabbing something else. And Sharon was none too pleased about it. Under more favourable circumstances she would have insisted we leave immediately. Being female, she felt vulnerable and was uneasy about staying under the same roof as Luigi. But, seeing my sorry state, she realized I was in no condition to go anywhere. In fact, maybe due to supper, my stomach had returned to its previous quivering mass of churning flotsam. To prove I wasn't fooling, I excused myself and hurriedly trotted to that horrid pretense of a toilet. Upon my return a few minutes later, Sharon informed me that Luigi had taken my absence as an opportunity to caress her face. Apparently, he liked that soft skin. Upset and nervous, Sharon reiterated, "I'm not comfortable about staying here tonight." I managed to calm her, rationalizing that Luigi was an opportunist, and persuaded her that everything would be all right as long as I didn't leave her alone again. (Although, I joked, Mr. Hands may be preferable to accompanying me on my next lavatory excursion.) "If he touches you again," I advised, trying to be helpful, "scream, and say, 'Oh, you startled me!'" I thought that if she had done that the first time he had grabbed her cheeks, I doubted he would have tried it again. "Unfortunately," Sharon replied indignantly, "I was so shocked that he would make advances while you were there that I froze." Luigi plied us with wine. I could barely stand the smell, let alone drink the stuff, and covered my glass with my hand. Eventually he stopped offering it to me. Sharon, however, wasn't having the same luck. Luigi kept refilling her glass. "These people just don't understand 'No,'" she murmured. "Well," I suggested, trying to be helpful, "if you wouldn't giggle when you said no, they might actually believe you." "When I'm nervous," she retorted angrily, "I laugh." "Well, okay," I responded, "but notice that it's sending the wrong signal. Your mouth is saying one thing, and your body language is saying another." "Listen," she hissed, "if it wasn't for you, we wouldn't be in this mess right now." She paused, then added, "And if you don't quit trying to be so darn helpful, I'll send you some body language you'll have no trouble interpreting!" I remained next to Sharon for the remainder of the evening as we politely practiced our Italian with Luigi. All went well except whenever Sharon used the formal pronoun, Luigi quickly insisted she use the familiar. Poor Sharon. She wriggled in her chair, ill at ease. As early as good manners would allow (and only partially feigning extreme tiredness), we ascended the ladder to the loft where we would sleep. There, beneath thin covers, we lay awake for a long time, listening to Luigi shuffle around downstairs doing tasks. A steady rain drummed the thatch over our heads. Why doesn't it leak? I wondered as I stared at the straw roof. After what seemed like hours, Luigi extinguished the kitchen light, and shuffled to his room opposite the kitchen. In the blackness Sharon tossed restlessly and I guarded my fragile abdomen. |
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