Sometime In Sorrento

The bus draws away and turns off to the right.  No one else alights.  What am I going to do now?  My gaze alights upon a bus at the other side of the road in a small piazza.  It has its engine running and is pointing down the hill, the way I want to go.  Could this be my saviour? I scamper across the road before it disappears like a mirage.

The driver, like the last one, is young, dark haired, wearing a short-sleeved blue shirt which seems to be the badge of all his trade and wearing sunglasses which give him a sinister sort of air.  This one and the other could be clones.  In that case, he won’t be able to speak English either.  I wish I could say: Does this bus go to… but all I can say, like an idiot is: “Hotel Monte Somma?”

He shakes his head.  “Nostra Verde,” he says and points to his right along the road.

“Nostra Verde?”

“Si.  Si.  Nostra Verde,” he nods and indicates the road again.

“Nostra Verde?”  What the hell is Nostra Verde?  I’ve heard of the Cosa Nostra and I know that verde is green.  Perhaps it’s the youth movement of the Mafia though what he would imagine a wrinkly like me would want with that organisation, defeats me.  Maybe the Hotel Monte Somma is the headquarters in this region, where they meet for a working dinner and complain about how Signore Corleone marshals them into seats they don’t want to sit in and demands they choose the wine before the meal.

“Si.  Si.  Nostra Verde.”  We could keep this up all day.  He is nodding at me as if I were a congenital idiot, each nod urging me to retreat down the steps of his bus.  He thinks I’m probably harmless, but he’s smiling at me to keep on my good side, because, as it is written in page three of the bus driver’s handbook: In the event of an insane person trying to board your bus (he will probably be dressed in swimming trunks and a Panama hat) do nothing to antagonise him as he may turn violent.

“Nostra Verde.  Grazie,” and I back off, literally and metaphorically, down the steps, nodding back to him as if we were Japanese, and indeed, we might just as well have been for all the sense it makes to me.

The doors of the bus shut with a pneumatic hiss and it disappears across the road and down the hill.  Bloody hell!  That’s the way I want to go!  I check an impulse to run after it, knowing it’s hopeless.  It is a forlorn sight seeing it disappear down the hill like that.  Perhaps if I’d said “Sorrento” I might well be on it now. 

Now I really am in trouble.  My bus ticket has almost expired already.  It lasts for an hour and what with the waiting in Sorrento and the journey, I’ve only got 10 minutes left. 

So, I’ve no money and no idea how I’m going to get back, nor have I the faintest idea what Nostra Verde means or how I’m going to find out.  I stand and gaze after the retreating bus, feeling like the loneliest person on the planet, wondering how I am going to get out of this hellish place, this mess I am in.  It’s all Iona’s fault for wanting to stay in the town, for not trusting me with any money.  I always seem to get in worse trouble when she’s not around, and God knows, I get into plenty enough when she is.

The town stretches ahead of me, to right and left, like a ghost town.  Away down to my right, there is a woman in a brown frock crossing the road but that is the only sign of life.  Even the birds seem to be having a siesta.  There is a café behind me, but that seems to be closed, or if it is open, it has no patrons.  I’d love a beer.  My mouth feels like a desert.  I hope the gods are really enjoying their latest joke: Thought he was going to go back and have a swim!  We’ll he’s in a sea of troubles now, Heh! Heh! Heh!

What am I going to do?  I can’t think of even a single ide