Short rides to a village in Italy on a curving road paralleling the Autostrade. Got dark at 4:45 p.m. Continued hitching for two hours. Waited for the plastiche factory across the street to close so that I could sleep in the nicely mowed field next to and behind it, out of the streetlight's glow.
But after the owner left around 6:45 p.m., I decided to continue hitchhiking, even though it was cold (and, as every good hitchhiker knows, it's almost impossible to get a ride in the dark). If I went to sleep now, it would mean 12 hours in a narrow sleeping bag. I thought it would be nicer to stand and at least fulfill the form of hitchhiking.
Defying the odds, a gentleman named Jean-Pascal stopped for me around 7 p.m. He said he was going to Montgenèvre in the Vallée de la Clarée, specifically to a tiny village called Les Alberts.
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| Jean-Pascal, opera singer |
Jean-Pascal was born to Italian parents, but for some reason he was fluent in French and only spoke Italian well. He told me he was an opera singer and that his favorite composer was Mozart. He has sung in German, Italian, French, and Russian.
I mentioned my musical, "Ginger," inspired by the faery tale Little Red Riding Hood, in which a redheaded girl is chased into the forest by village tormentors and disappears for 12 years. She survives by becoming a wolf. When she returns to the village as a beautiful 25-year-old whom everybody decides they love, she must decide whether to eat her childhood tormentors or forgive them.
Jean-Pascal said he had seen wolves in Les Alberts. They came toward the houses when it got cold.
As we were winding our way down a steep mountain slope, a red-gray canine ran out in front of us and crossed the road and ran partway up the slope. "Coyote?" I said. "Dog?" . . . "Wolf," he replied. He stopped the car and backed up. The wolf (he thought it was female) looked back at us unafraid, perhaps forlorn, probably cold. Finally, she continued up the slope at a methodical walk.
He said he had never seen a wolf "in nature."
The wolf is protected by the government in this area, he told me the next morning. If a farmer loses a sheep to a wolf, the government simply pays him the value of the sheep.
Jean-Pascal invited me to sleep at his house, where he showed me pictures of his two daughters and two ex-wives. We ate wonderful pasta and listened to 78's of amazing singers on his ancient record player, and it was fine.
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