STAZIONE CHIASSA

by Andrew Flohr-Spence

F uck only knows how early, growls knocking on a distant

door. What door or whose door, I am not sure...but urgency
is the message. My eyes open first to darkness...then a
murky light filtering through heavy blinds...the outline of
a train compartment.
The train is stopped.
I smell plastic leather, sweat and old tobacco, feel
the dull pain of my backpack as a pillow.
Again a violent knocking. The blue curtains shaking.
Before I can reach through the slumber and grasp where I am
and which end might be up, the door slides open, the
curtains part and a pair of silhouettes enter.
“Identificazione, por favore...papier-eh, bitt-
eh...pay-pers, pleas-eh,” says the short shadow. The tall
shadow looms behind him, his silence saying enough.

1
 Shorty reaches up and hits the lights and I see gray
uniforms, shiny silver buttons, black-brimmed, eagle-
crested dictator hats. He is skinny, leather-faced with a
thin mustache and smirk as if he deeply enjoys the moment
of terror these awakenings give any warm-blooded human. The
big guy seems to fill the doorway, his huge arms crossed,
barring any escape, puffy white face and beady brown,
stupid eyes that read “I’m a massive marshmallow of pain,”
giving us the thug-glare...in case we missed the message.
I sit up, blinking at the film-like scene playing
before me and already digging in my pockets. My whereabouts
comes back. The overnight from Amsterdam to Florence. The
lovely Katja awaiting my call when I arrive at the Termini.
It must be 4:30 or 5 a.m. Italian border cops, the Guardia
di Finanza, no less, these pleasant gentlemen.
“Un secondo, por favore,” I say, fumbling for my
papers and a witty response. I remember the old days of
rude searches and endless delays at borders, and things
were supposed to be different now. But here these two
gentlemen stand...apparently serious.
Probably better to keep my mouth shut.
Remembering I stuck my passport down my pants before
bed to at least make it more exciting for thieves, I reach
while keeping an eye on the Russian, my compartment
neighbor. Conveniently, he’s busy rifling through his
jacket. Any minute I assume the border guys are going to
grab the guy. Russians are always up to something. Or at
least everyone treats them that way.
I hand over my passport, and Senor Short Stuff gives
it a glare and then looks up at my face.“Yea, buddy. I am
an American,” I am thinking. “Read it and weep.” But he is

2
either bluffing or not responding to the magic. I’m getting
a odd feeling. His uppity dictator act, making me nervous.
“Is-eh you luggage?” he asks pointing up at my bag on
the rack. Before I can answer he’s asking the Russian the
same again also in English. “Is-eh you luggage, eh?”
The Russian nods.
“Pleas-eh, you tak-eh you luggage down, Capito?” he
says, motioning to our seats. With a smile he watches the
Russian and I, mumbling something to the marshmallow who
smiles now, too.
Goddamn Russian.
Guilt by association. I want to tell them that we’re
not traveling together—that I’d never seen the guy until he
barged in last night around 2 a.m., disturbing my sleep and
robbing me of the compartment to myself—but on second
thought I think it would sound cliché guilty. I’m halfway
down with my bag when I see a third cop coming in with a
German Shepard...

Fucking Italy. Crossing almost every frontier on the

European continent a person faces no controls, checks,
searches, anything; if not for the change in sign colors
and the language of the signs, exactly where the borders
lay is no longer apparent: the European Union exists now
for ten years.
But no...Italy thinks opening up would lead down the
path to hell and eternal damnation or somthing. A goddamn
boot-full of arrogant, closet nationalist, racist and
superstitious, mafia-running Casanovas. I can’t believe
that dog went berserk on my bag. They’ll probably ask for a
bribe...

3
 This torrent of hate is pouring through my mind as I
walk the length of the train platform escorted by my two
new Italian friends. It’s a brisk refreshing cold with
still no mention of dawn in what I can see of the sky past
the blinding lamps of the station. We are going to a small
gray building up ahead where my two friends, I assume, are
going to look through my bag, empty my pockets, perhaps
strip-search me, or even worse. Well...I am thinking about
gloved fingers, too.
Getting nervous.
After the rumble of my train departing, the Russian
smiling in the window moving away, our footsteps and their
echoes are the only sound in the deserted yard. I want to
make some small talk to break the somber mood of the walk,
but turns out the two hadn’t memorized any more English
beyond “you off train now!” so I’m alone with the fog of my
breath and my anger of being pulled out of sleep and off a
train by the junior Gestapo here. I give them nicknames:
Laurel and Hardy.
When Laurel finds the hippy-pouch thing my ex-
girlfriend gave me as a travel charm, he doesn’t think it’s
a joke. Hardy walks behind me and stand by the door.
Laurel speaks to me in tirade after tirade of heated
Italian as if I understand every word. From his flapping
mustache alone, I understand he’s pissed. He thinks I’m a
hippy. I hear the words Communista and Sozialista several
times.
I shake my head. I hate hippies, I swear.
“From a girlfriend,” I say, gesturing toward myself.
“Mi Amore, no?”
He laughs.
When he finds the pipe he stops laughing.

4
 Oops. That’s not supposed to be there. He holds it in
my face nodding and smiling, his voice suddenly calm and
cold. I hear a word that sounds like paraphernalia. Jail
for a pipe? Fuck. Damn. Shit. And this is Italy.
Italian prison is not supposed to be nice; old
fortresses with cold wet floors, no heat and no air-
conditioning, definitely no TVs. I don’t want to go to
Italian prison.
I’m an American. He wouldn’t dare, right? But the pipe
has only tickled his curiosity. He doesn’t look satisfied.
I watch him dig further in my bag. Everything out on the
table. Laurel is really excited. He’s got me now. He keeps
talking to me in Italian, so I decide to start talking in
English. Plead my case.
“Senor...please understand...I met a few friends in
Amsterdam for my birthday. The pipe I just forgot to pitch
before I left...I swear it,” I tell him, but, of course,
he’s still talking, too. So I get louder.
“You can’t take me to jail now! I have a phone number
of a girl in Florence...Firenze, no? She said I should come
by and see David. ‘And the rest of the old shit in this
ancient city all you stupid fucking Americans love,’ she
said real sexy on the phone. I like ancient cities. I like
pretty girls. I must make it there...dammit...you might
maybe understand, if you understood a goddamn word of
English....”
I don’t know what else to say. Rolling my eyes in
exasperation, I look at the wall above Laurel and see an
old tattered and sun bleached poster. “Welcome to Italy”
it reads, and an idea hits me.

5
 Maybe...I mean, perhaps—since we are in Italy—I might
understand what was going on if I spoke Italian...and could
perhaps then explain my situation to these gentlemen in
their own language.
The irony. After a couple years of Italian prison,
I’ll be fluent.
I want to faint or something, but suddenly another
officer enters the room, moves past me to the table. He
walks with precise strides and looks important with more
silver stripes on his shoulder, a long impressive nose and
a pursed lips. He talks to Laurel in several whispered,
quick exchanges and then turns to face me, nodding his head
with an eyebrow up.
“My nam-eh is Sargente Maggiore Marcelli. I am-eh the
officer in charg-eh here. Wher-eh you hav-eh the drugs?” he
asks, squinting his eyes.
“Drugs? No...no drugs, I just forgot to throw away the
pipe after Amsterdam,” I say. “Is the pipe...illegal?”
“No, the pip-eh is no illegal-eh,” he snaps.
Really?
I smile and shrug at Laurel, doing my best to look
deeply sorry...but Laurel is not looking at me. His eyes
are suddenly firey and wide and he slowly holds up a
plastic bag half-full of dried green leaves.
Laurel goes nuts, yelling and motioning, rushing
toward me and holding up the bundle. The officer smiles
smugly. Hardy grabs my arm from behind.
They are serious now.
I start laughing.

6
 “It’s tea...Thé, Ta, To...whatever you call it,” I
say, using my free arm to make the international sign for
drinking tea...tipping an imaginary cup, my pinky in the
air. A special herbal tea mix for my stomach problems.
Nothing illegal there.
Laurel looks skeptical. He stops, looks back to big
chief and the big chief nods. Laurel opens the bag and
timidly sniffs...

“STAZIONE CHIASSA,” a sign on the platform says. 7:37

is the next scheduled train toward Florence—only a few
hours delayed...but I’m in no rush.
I’m a touch tipsy and the snow-ragged Alps rise
faintly in dense air behind what I can see of the small
village. Spotted clouds of sparrows twist and flux around
an old clock tower above a line of cyprus trees. The soft
light of dawn is warming the haze that hangs along the
tracks stretching into the distance, into the infinity of
the misty morning.
After letting me go, the Sargente Maggiore took me to
the station restaurant and bought me a shot or three of
Grappa. Turns out he has a cousin living not far from one
of mine in New Jersey. We’re practically family.
Chiassa, the town I almost went to prison. Almost...
but not really. I’m almost dissappointed.
Jail in Italy...it sounds oddly romantic. Or maybe I
am drunk.
In any case, Marcelli gave me hope.
“Buon viaggio...or as-eh you say bon voyag-eh...my
American friend,” the Sargente told me as I staggered out
of the restaurant. “Next tim-eh you come Chiassa, I think
we arrest you again.”