Things That Go Bump In The Night

Didn't post anything yesterday - the day really turned out differently than planned (actually - that's not quite true - it started and ended as planned, but the middle went a little sideways). There's nothing quite like being genuinely afraid for one's life (for a second time in as many days, no less) and then being abandoned by the side of the road 24 kilometers from your temporary "home" in a foreign country. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, despite postponing the entirety of our own lives and dedicating our existence to the assistance of others, all we can manage is to profoundly offend. I use the "we" here instead of the "I" because it offers me the illusion of distance from my own life. And right now that sounds pretty good.

And today will likely be pretty short. After receiving a few emails asking about a recent post I put up on Facebook (the one about having a "Reservoir Dogs" night here at the hotel) I figured I'd share a bit. To be honest, I chose to wait on this until we'd checked out of the hotel because people who care about our well being are reading, and I didn't want to say "this is what's happenING where we're staying." It's better to say "this is what happenED before we left."

Ever since Henry Ford created the five day work week (one of the few decent things this otherwise horrible man managed to accomplish - and yes, I mean that bit about horrible) the working class has enjoyed this thing we now call "the weekend." Probably because it was created in the US, that's the same name they use for it here in Europe. In France, they say "le weekend" with a perfect French accent, for example. They call it a similar thing in Italy, but I'm annoyed with Italy right now and am not in the mood to give it credit, even for copying something invented somewhere else by a horrible person. Les weekends are typically the times that the working class is able to kick back and/or stay up late. The upper class gets to do this, too (and they drink fancier wine, I guess), and the unemployed are sometimes stuck with being able to do little else. Another one of those "everybody wins" scenarios.

After we'd fallen asleep in our room here at the Ripamonte Residence in Milagnano (I share the name in order that you can remember to avoid this place) and were well on our way to catching some good Eyelid Theater, we started hearing noises coming from the room directly above ours. First, it sounded like kids running around and stomping a lot and hollering. We heard the sound of someone moving heavy furniture across the floor, with stomping on either end and wondered "why are people moving furniture at this hour, especially in a room so small?"

And then the hollering became shouting. I was practicing my Struggling to Understand Italian Words but couldn't pick anything out. About all I could tell was that one Loud Male Voice was really really angry at the other Loud Male Voice. D, whose hearing is better than my own, was the one who was able to discern that this was English, spoken with either a British or Australian accent. It's hard to tell through the ceiling, even if they are as loud as these fellows. The third Male Voice wasn't as loud as the other two.

So we listened to the one guy yelling angrily at the other guy while they shoved this heavy piece of furniture back and forth across the floor and ran around it in circles directly above our own rented bed, wondering what was going on. Something really big and heavy fell on their floor/our ceiling. And then one of the voices started yelling "Don't shoot me!" He yelled this more than once. The other voice was yelling questions and demands - we could understand parts of them, but we couldn't tell what they were actually talking about. Hearing this was really unsettling.

The furniture had stopped moving but the yelling went on. And then we heard someone dishing out some physical violence against another someone. D called the front desk and told them that something was going on; they replied promptly to "not worry" and that "they'd take care of it right away." And they did. It was only about a minute later that we heard the doorbell upstairs, heard the voices cease, then the door slam shut. Things went quiet.

This all happened in a very short time. Probably less time than it took for you to read my description of it. It's not like we were hanging out listening - more like we were awakened, wondered what the hell is going on here, heard someone pleading for their life before receiving a beating. And that was the end of it.

We didn't sleep very well for the rest of the night, and we didn't sleep in the Ripamonte the following night, and we checked out a few days earlier than planned and will now be driving from Cremona to the hospital for our visits.

And there's good news. G continues to improve and now looks as healthy as she did before any of this fistula stuff started. She can walk by herself and we appear to be on schedule for her return home. Cremona remains a beautiful town, the weather is fine and D and I continue to enjoy good health while we remain aware of how very fortunate we are. Though not always the way we want it to be, the bottom line remains:

Life is good.

Cameron