Just for a change I’d like to introduce you to Martin Levinson, our great friend, great wit, great writer and funny guy (funny ha ha, not funny peculiar; at least, I don’t think so but I may be a little odd myself!). Martin’s work as a university professor occasionally takes him to unusual places; last year Norway and recently to Italy. What’s so funny about that? You may well ask. The uno uno quattro is Martin’s own account of leaving his hotel early in the morning in order to reach the railway station in Bolzano (somewhere else in Italy).

I wasn’t familiar with Monsieur Hulot so I checked him out on Youtube and I’ve pasted a link at the end to Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday – brilliantly funny!

The uno uno quattro  by Martin Levinson

If one is to be the main actor in the centre of a play, it would be nice to get to glimpse the script at some stage, and, perhaps, see who is directing the action. I remain bemused, a Monsieur Hulot figure bumping through existence.

This morning the script entails me getting from my hotel in Leifers to the railway station in Bolzano, a simple enough operation one, might assume, even if it does entail getting up at 5.00 in the morning. Settling the bill the previous night at the hotel, I had been told that there was the option to call a taxi. The woman on the desk had given me an apologetic smile. It seemed that there was an element of act of God in the appearance of the said taxi; you could never be quite sure on the matter. Best to call in the morning, she advised. Things are a little clearer then. But, anyway, she added, there was no problem as there were three early morning buses that would arrive at the station in time, the 110, the 111 and the 112.

In the morning I decide to order the taxi, only there is no-one on the 24 hour desk to call. I go to the bus-stop. None of the three promised buses appear. Finally, as I am about to try hitching, one arrives and I jump on. An ominous red light flashes on the screen when I insert my ticket.

You cannot travel on this bus, the driver tells me. The ticket is valid only for other buses – namely the three that didn’t turn up. This was a 114 – uno uno quattro, he enunciates slowly, not uno uno zero, uno uno uno or uno uno due.

No Roman emperor ever gestured so dismissively for someone to depart.

The people on the bus are getting restless. I stand my ground.

But you are Italian; you do not have to follow the rules, I tell him in my pidgin Italian. Would Garibaldi have thrown me off this bus? I ask. Only, unable to recall the past conditional, the present tense has to suffice. He looks unimpressed. As so many people in Bolzano prefer to call it by its German name, Bolzen, invoking an Italian nationalist might not be so persuasive, and somehow, it seems altogether less convincing to argue that the Germans have a proud tradition of not following orders. However flimsy, I stick with my original line.

Dante, Galileo, Michelangelo, Leonardo – do they want me thrown off this bus?

(I guess where they are now, they don’t give a fanculo volante.)

Again he gestures in that bored emperor manner.

Maybe the guy likes music.

Rossini, Verdi, Puccini, I suggest.

He shakes his head.

Gianni Rivera, Sandro Mazzola, Franco Baresi, Paulo Maldini, Gigi Buffon….

Everyone likes football.

Roberto Baggio, Il Divino… I cannot recall the Italian word for ponytail. (It’s coda di cavallo, I discover when I check later – just in case such a situation ever recurs in the future.)

He shifts in his seat, as if about to stand up to push me off. I shake my head. I am not moving anywhere. There are some murmurs from other people in the bus.

He pauses, theatrically, in some imperious posture between seatedness and standingness. He throws his arms into the air. A reprieve? He gesticulates, angrily, towards the back of the bus.

Somebody pats my back as I walk down the bus. Shared acknowledgement of a victory over an oppressive, inhuman bureaucracy that grinds down the common man? I have no idea. Someone else smiles at me, fleetingly, as if afraid to be spotted.

I look around the bus. I am the only white person there. The rest are going to work, mopping, sweeping, cleaning this place up, setting up offices, while their Germanic Italian neighbours grab a few more hours of sleep.

A woman on the seat behind taps me on the shoulder, holding out a bag of pastries to offer me one.

She smiles, and for a sweet interlude in my existence I no longer feel like Monsieur Hulot. This is how Spartacus must have felt when he broke out with his comrades and caught the early morning omnibus out of Capua.