Mad Dogs and Hunting Men

I thought I was being attacked by Cerberus itself—the two-headed dog that guards the gate of hell, its twin mouths, twin jowls salivating mercilessly, leaping desperately for the morsel of animal I clutched in my arms—dear Desiree, sweet Desiree, bundled up in her pooch-purse, zipped up to the neck, so that only her fuzzy muzzle poked out, her terrified eyes beseeching me to get back on the bus—NOW.

I had brought 20 students to an agriturismo near Gubbio to eat extremely well and write extremely well on either side of two extended hikes through what I would call mountains but an Umbrian calls hills. The trip has not gotten off to a propitious start. For days the rain has been torrential and it had suddenly gone cold. A pall of fog was draped menacingly over the very vistas we’d come to see. During the morning hours we’d hoped to see the Eugubine tablets—the inscriptions of early Umbra language, dating from before the Roman conquest ; the museum had closed just before we got there. I’d hoped to take the students up the funavia—the cable cars, or should I say baskets, nightmare for the vertiginous, the way they swing so insubstantially throughout the ride; but the rain deterred even the most courageous. We’d stopped at Fabiani for a wondrous pranzo—the cheesiest lasagna, veal alla marsala, spinach, zuppa inglese. But while eating our bus-driver called my cell phone to tell me it would be absolutely impossible to navigate the dirt road leading to the agriturismo in his over-sized vehicle. Even cars run into trouble on those stradine so narrow, made of gravel and sand—especially in such unrelenting rain. He contacted another company that had sent two smaller vehicles and I was sure that once we’d made it to the safety of the agriturismo we could relax and enjoy ourselves.

Now a plumpish woman in an apron and high-water pants introduces herself as Giulia and tells me to get back on the bus until she can chain the dogs up; they really would eat Desiree for cena. The one dog has teats that hang almost to the ground and she explains to me about the 14 puppies and how this is a breed of dog that goes back to the time of the Roman Empire, a “Cane Corso”—which looks rather like a Mastiff, with its oversized head. Think pit-bull in overgrown proportions, horse-size—think solid black, lusterless coat, paws the size of dinner plates, eyes that show no affection, horse-power, unrelenting appetite and aggression. “I hope my dog is not a problem,” I apologize to the woman and she says, “No, no,” even though her eyes—worried, anxious—suggest otherwise. I say in English to Tiffany , who is cooing at Desiree trying to sooth her angst , that I really had thought to ask beforehand could I bring my dog, but hadn’t known what I would do had the woman said, No.

Soon as possible we start climbing the hill I think is a mountain. There are no paths, Giulia tells me, but we can wander anywhere. I like the sudden wilderness feeling of striking out without a path or sense of direction. The students who are not in flip flops like the wildness, too, like the word “bushwhacking” which is what we really need to do to penetrate the spiny, thorny underbrush; I like the mud we sink into up to our knees and the place in the barb-wire we reach that seems a portal into yet another dimension of the savage freedom we seek. But just as we step through the portal, we see a veritable army of men in camouflage carrying rifles on their shoulders, their ammo-vests glistening with dozens of rifle cartridges. I do indeed feel that I have led the group into enemy territory. For a sudden flash, I imagine that we are in a war zone—are time traveling back to World War II and the fascist resistance or flashing forward into a future when war and violence will go by some other name. The one man, young and grizzle-faced, his eyes too gentle to be evil, tells me there are six or seven huge dogs—sciolti/loose—that would put my little rabbit of a dog in danger. Perhaps I should carry her in my arms. I do indeed pick her up and carry her down the piece of road we find before us. He communicated something to someone via walkie-talkie and amid cracking static a voice sputtered something back.

We never came across i cani sciolti, but again and again we encountered the hunters, standing with their rifles poised, the ammo in their vests glistening. “State tranquilla,” a voice reached me from where one of the men was hiding behind a tree. Be calm, he told me—you are okay. We will not kill you. You are safe.

The wine at dinner that night was undrinkable. Giulia, softening toward me and my rat of a dog, beamed proudly that it was “fatto a casa”—made right at the agriturismo, and the students agreed it tasted like meat, like game, like maybe prociutto—perhaps they fermented the wine in the same vat they cured the prociutto. This was not a bad thing, I did not tell them, their not liking the wine, their not wanting to drink enough of it to get drunk. I asked Giulia about the hunters and what they’d been hunting. Was it wild boar season—cinghiali? No, she clarified—cinghiali season is November. The hunters I saw were hunting rabbits and pheasant. In fact, our dinner of spedini—or shish kebab—was bounty from the hunt.

Something seemed out of proportion, I considered. The rifles, the enormous cartridges they used as bullets, the intimidating stature of the men poised in the hills across which I’d led my never-timorous group of adventurers. I kept reaching for the place where Desiree remained snuggled in my lap—as though to assure myself I was not in fact eating her for dinner. How suddenly clear I was that I needed to be vegetarian—needed vegetables, right now. Carrots maybe. Raw broccoli.