An Italian Journey

“Show me your papers.  Police.”

What?  The speaker is a young swarthy man in a baseball cap with two days’ growth of stubble on his face.  He’s dressed in black trousers and a navy polo shirt.  He’s got a companion who looks older and stouter, wearing lighter clothes and a straw hat, like a tourist, but I don’t get much of a look at him before he disappears behind my back.

Oh, no!  I am cursing myself for not bringing my passport with me.  It reminds me of the time in Nice when I was looking forward to a nice cold beer (and a warm shower) after a day of sight seeing, only instead to be threatened with the police by the bus inspectors.  Although I had bought my tickets, I did not realise I had to validate them. I stuck to my guns and feeling that justice and right were on my side, my only crime being ignorance, I steadfastly refused to pay the fine.  In the end, I got out of that one by doing a runner.

Now I have visions of being hauled down to the police station and it taking hours to get it sorted out whilst La Belle Dame Sans Merci loiters increasingly pinkly at the rendezvous wondering where I have gone to this time.  She should never have let me out of her sight.  I always seem to get into trouble when she is not with me.  I remember the double moon of last night.  It was an omen after all. Nothing seems to be going right this afternoon.

To my astonishment, my new companion with the map has produced his passport like a conjuror.  I don’t have any time to look at it, but it seems to be the same plum colour as a British passport but I think the writing on it was in the Cyrillic script.  The young cop takes it wordlessly and flicks through it.

“Your papers,” he repeats.

“I don’t have them with me.  At the hotel.”

He looks me up and down, distastefully, it seems to me, as if I were some sort of tramp or illegal immigrant.

“I have the right.  I’m an undercover cop.  Your papers!” he says again, this time with a hardened edge to his voice.

By this time I have a tight grip on my camcorder.  I have no money as Iona has that, and I don’t even appear to have a watch as it was getting a bit tight and sweaty, so I had slipped it into the pocket of my swimming trunks.  It’s not worth very much anyway.

I consider myself very lucky indeed that the cops should have swooped just at that moment, because I realise now that all this rigmarole about the station has just been an excuse to keep me occupied so I could be pick-pocketed.  Only I am wearing swimming trunks and they don’t have any pockets, or so it seems.  But before he had a chance to find out, Mapman, who must have been under surveillance, had been interrupted by these cops.

But are they?  A sudden thought comes to mind.  What if they are crooks too and they are all in it together?  In this blistering heat, my blood suddenly runs cold. I tense myself, ready to strike back as soon as any attack is made.  I may be outnumbered three to one, but I’m not going to let them rob me without a fight.

“I’ve told you, I don’t have them.”  Then, with a boldness I don’t feel, I add, “If you are the police, show me your papers.” 

If he really is what he claims to be, he could well be dressed like this, and maybe this is how they operate, on the lookout for pickpockets.  But why here, in just about the quietest part of town?  He looks tough enough to be a cop, yet there was something about his telling me he was working undercover that jarred.

He is still studying Mapman’s passport.

 “Show me your papers,” I say again, more boldly this time.