My stomach hurts, I have a hard time breathing, and there’s a rock concert going on in my head. I feel like Ringo Starr is pounding with his drumsticks inside my head, to the tune of “Ticket to Ride.”
I wake up before anyone else. In the twin bed next to mine, Umberto snores like a warthog with adenoids.
In the bed-and-breakfast’s tiny dining room I’m greeted by a tray piled high with a pyramid of Krapfen and doughnuts. I taste one, but it doesn’t come even remotely close to Oscar’s. I leave it on my plate after the first bite. Only now do I realize that my little morning habit is one of the most treasured moments of my life.
* * *
The hyperactive Andrea has tracked down the riding stables outside of the city where we went on our first trip. A sensation of déjà vu accompanies me for the rest of the morning. And a word rattles around in my head, shoving Ringo aside: remake.
Actually, remakes make no sense. You might be able to go back to the same city, but to go back and do the same things is a rare and peculiar occurrence. Demented may be the word I’m looking for.
* * *
The riding stables are just as I remembered them. Wood, iron, and that distinctive scent you can imagine perfectly well. Leading our heroic little squadron is none other than Thomas’s son, Thomas Jr., every bit as much of a Neanderthal as his father, but much less likable. He gives us thousands of tips on what to do and not to do while on horseback in the interests of our personal safety. We spot a trail and set off at a gallop to the horror of my sorely tested spinal cord, strained by the unnatural posture. After a hundred feet or so, my horse, the disquietingly named Attila, decides to throw me with a sudden halt. I go head over heels and fly straight off. My fall lasts no more than a couple of seconds, but it’s enough time for me to realize what an idiotic death I’m about to die. Waiting for me as a landing pad is—not a murderously rocky crag or a picket fence—but a stinging nettle bush. It saves my life but ruins the rest of my afternoon.
The result of our outing: skin rashes all over my body, sunstroke for Andrea, lumbago for Umberto, and a sprained ankle for Corrado, whose foot got caught in the stirrups as he was dismounting. We’re four slightly rusty musketeers.
* * *
All males have a shared trait: when they’re twenty years old, they admire and court twenty-year-old women; and when they’re forty years old, they do the same thing. It’s a scientific law. But I believe that there’s a nostalgic factor at work deep down. We continue to love the same movies, books, and places we loved when we were kids. The same thing applies to twenty-year-old women. Have I talked you into it?
We immediately discover that the infamous Bier und Liebe has been replaced by an aggressive little pub, the Tot oder Lebendig, which literally means “dead or alive.” Inside are hundreds of German youths between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, juggling beers, sweat, and pills of all kinds. I swear that I’ve never once felt so out of place. The music is too loud, preventing any form of verbal interaction, the lighting is too dim, keeping anyone with shortsightedness from reading the menu, and the air is short on oxygen, which prevents the brain from attaining adequate mental lucidity. In spite of this we do our best to enjoy ourselves. I’m immediately branded a “ball and chain” because I have no interest in getting drunk or trying to pick up a German woman young enough to be my daughter. I decide to drink a couple of fruit cocktails and allow myself to be hypnotized by the music videos that stream across a transparent wall.
Corrado takes care of livening up the evening’s entertainment by getting into a fight with the boyfriend of the young woman he’s chosen as the object of his desire. The guy in question is a muscleless ninety-eight-pound. weakling, but he also has lots of friends who are already several drinks in. We escape before a brawl breaks out in the beer hall and find ourselves wandering aimlessly around Munich like four classic Italian vitelloni. We talk until four in the morning.
I’ve forgotten to call home. So far away from them, I hear their voices all the time—Paola’s strong, decisive one; Lorenzo’s thoughtful one, with its pauses, and its “ums”; Eva’s sweet girly one turning prosecutorial as she tries to convince, making me wonder what she’ll sound like when the girliness goes. Hearing their voices in my head, I miss Paola and my kids so much it’s killing me.
It’s a sleepless night. A dreamless night.