Several years ago I drowned a man at Lake Como.
I felt pretty bad about it. After all, it's a serious thing. But, to my credit, I put it behind me as quickly as I could. I'm not one to dwell on negativity, one of my more endearing qualities, and, at the time, I was stoically determined not to let that mishap spoil an otherwise delightful vacation.
I had not thought of the incident for quite a few years except once when I tried to remember the man's name and came to the conclusion that I must not ever have heard it. So it really was quite irritating when my wife brought it up at dinner, dinner with six strangers, and, of all possible places, dinner on a cruise ship at sea off the coast of Italy. Who knew whether the Italians had a cold case file on it or, worse, a fugitive warrant for me?
The ship was sailing toward the Straits of Messina which is classically rough water and this night rougher than expected. It was so bad that most of the passengers and a good portion of the kitchen staff were sequestered in their staterooms and quarters moaning, gagging, and swallowing Dramamine.
We usually liked to sit alone at dinner but were grouped with three other couples as accommodation to the shorthanded serving staff. Still, dinner was excellent and the conversation lighthearted until my dear spouse brought up that unfortunate lake tragedy. As hard as I tried to change the subject the diners remained insistent in their determination to hear the full confession.
"So let's hear it. When did you get out? How is the food in Italian prisons?"
I tried to beg off, but the cat was out and meowing loudly.
"Bill, maybe you had better tell it yourself. That way you can skip over the particularly horrible parts and portray yourself favorably."
"Alright then. Lake Como. I don't have to tell you how beautiful, but that road from Como to Bellagio, a nightmare. Two opposing lanes, each slightly narrower than a Mini Cooper, twists and turns and people entering from the right unexpectedly on all possible manner of non motorized vehicles like prams, bikes, gurneys, dollies an the like. As I said, a nightmare. So when we were about to leave and Caroline suggested taking a ferry, we took no convincing. Even getting on the ferry was an adventure. We drove to the lakeside and saw a long line of cars idling. We parked in line and then walked to the kiosk to ask about the ferry. When I asked when the ferry left the ticket seller jumped out of the kiosk and chased us back to the car, yelling all the while "get on da boat, get on da boat". We screeched our car around the line waiting and five minutes later were leaving the dock not knowing where we were headed and no tickets, but that's the Italian way isn't it?"
"Immediately an American couple, a brassy youngish woman, hair, blouse and face the same color red, and a sort of professorly husband commenced quizzing me about the details of taking a car on the ferry. I was not about to confess ignorance, and when they acquired no useful information from my generalized comments they gave up. The husband began reading aloud from a sign in Italian posted on one of the bulkheads. It sounded something like 'oohmo in mayor'. An officious lady of dubious nationality corrected him and translated. 'Ooh-o-mo-een-mah-ray' she spoke, rolling the r like Edith Piaf. 'Man overboard'."
"The man caught on and repeated the phrase in practice several times "uomo in mare" each time louder. An Italian woman heard him and shrieked aloud "uomo in mare". At once horns sounded, and the ferry's forward progress halted. Life rings were thrown over both sides, and the entirety of the native speakers were shouting "uomo in mare" in unison convinced someone had gone into the lake. Three lake patrol boats appeared and buzzed around the ferry as frenetically as the passengers circled the deck. Police came aboard, quickly outnumbering the passengers. All were moaning except us."
"I told Linda 'This is ridiculous. I'm going to take care of this.' If you ask her now she'll claim she warned me not to do it, but I sure didn't hear any warning. I muscled my way up to the pilot who seemed to be in authority now talking to three policemen and I explained in my best phrasebook Italian what had happened, that someone was overheard simply reading the sign and that nobody had gone over. With no visible trace of mishap on the lake they took me as authoritative and called off the search and in a short time we were at the dock at Varenna."
"Unfortunately no one was getting off because the brassy lady was decompensating, having lost her ruddy complexion and weeping and wailing unmercifully. In lucid moments she complained that her husband had fallen over and she was in shock since the search had been called off. Once the authorities began to take the lady seriously, I worried they might start looking for the guy who canceled the search, and indeed they did. In need of a disguise I turned my baseball cap backwards and the pilot passed me by like a total stranger. They searched the boat, our car and the boat and car a second time. We spent the afternoon answering questions and had to stay over another night before we could push off for Milan."
"So that's it. Apparently someone did go over the side, uomo in mare, and some impetuous fellow canceled the search prematurely. I didn't see that as a crime, but you can't expect foreign countries to follow American jurisprudence. I'm sure nothing could have saved him, but, with everyone blaming the mystery man, I thought it best to curtail our time in Italy in preference to some extra days in France."
"And so ends my unhappy tale." I ended with a flourish.
Our dinner companions looked at me with sick looks as though the mal de mer had finally overtaken them. Abandoning the remainders of dessert they each said a quiet goodbye and retreated with no more jokes about the Italian correctional system.
I looked at Linda.
"Why did you have to bring up that story? One of those people could be from Interpol for all you know."
"I had my reasons."
"Such as..?"
"See that lady seated over by the window with the disabled man?"
I squinted. "Not very well."
"Well put on your trifocals. That's the brassy widow from Lake Como."
"Oh sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. She's hunting me down. I knew it was too soon to come back to Italy."
"Calm down. Before you move on to invoking the holy family's in-laws, think it over. You made a clean getaway from that lake episode, so this is probably pure coincidence. Plus the fact that it looks like she's up to her old shenanigans."
"What do you mean?"
"Look, how do you think her old man went into the drink in the first place? She outweighed him by two stone at least, just like this feebleton. I'm getting a bad vibe. That woman should not be on a boat. I wouldn't be surprised if this man has a date with the fishes. My advice to you is steer clear of them both. Otherwise you're going to end up on that news show that spends months focusing on people who have disappeared from ships."
"Give me your opera glasses."
"Are you kidding?"
"No, give them here. I'll pretend I'm looking at the dessert menu."