THE CORRUPTION OF RUDI RIESENKAMPF (Part 1 of 4)

Roy Rawson and Larry Murrain met in 1982 . It was in March that year when they both began working as English teachers at The Piazza di Spagna Language School, which stands on the Piazza di Spagna in Rome, just over the road from the Spanish Steps. From the very get-go they became great friends; they – as they say – clicked. It felt to them as if they had always been looking for each other, or should have been... Both were from Yorkshire, Roy from Hull, Larry from Leeds. Both were in their middle twenties, both about the same hight, with blue eyes and yellow hair; Larry's thick and shoulder length, Roy's shorter and spiky. Both indulged in the wacky-bacci, both had a similar bantering sense of humour; a biting sarcasm, that at times zinged and zanged, and could run like blood that would not congeal... At that first meeting they had laughed their gills off... giving no thought to their edged insults. And both, above all else, were big readers and were would-be writers. Roy a prose man and Larry edged more towards poetry. They were determined to write something worthwhile. They were young men paying their dues; seeking adventures and experience in foreign lands in the company of good books, which they endlessly sought out. Roy joked, they were two refugees from Thatcher's Britain. They didn't know what they wanted, but they both knew what they didn't want: mediocrity. Mediocrity for them had a smell of death... rotting life... 'Death, that won't lay down,' as Roy put it.

Roy Rawson had got a leg-up in obtaining his job at the school, from an Italian friend, Angelo. He taught Italian at the school, and had put in a good word for him with the Head. They had met the Autumn before on the Greek island of Cos, where Roy had been    taking a break from his teaching job in Athens,
and Angelo was on holiday with his girlfriend, Antonella. From the very first beats they also all got on really well, and spent a lot of their holiday time together. Angelo was dark, olive skinned, handsome, slim, with big brown eyes with long lashes. He was intelligent, fiery, and compulsive, and spoke  excellent English. At first they talked a lot about teaching, but what connected them more was their mutual love of a rock 'n' roll lifestyle... Angelo was a sometime lead guitarist for bands.

Antonella was studying music at the Rome Academy For Music, she played violin. She also spoke English well. She was petite with a shapely figure, but large breasted. She had a hazel skin tone, with rust  coloured, tightly curled hair, and a lively, beautiful modelled face, that came out to you, and she had a very particular Roman nose. She was intelligent, joyous, strong-willed, and very independent.

Over the holiday weeks their friendship grew. Angelo before leaving to go back to Rome, invited Roy to come and stay with his family, assuring him, if he wanted to stay longer, he needn't worry a scrap; he would soon find himself a job, and maybe he could get him into his school; English native speakers were always in demand. Well, Roy was impressed and accepted the invitation. Rome sounded great... it was
high up on his mental list of places he must-visit. Roy was under contract with his school in Athens; until the end of the year, so it wasn't until the middle of January when he arrived in Rome. And as Angelo had said, there was no problem. After a brief interview he was given a job at Angelo's school, to begin in the Spring.

Larry Murrain had just completed a TEFL course back in Britain, and had seen a job advertised in The Guardian at the same school. He applied and got the job. He was now sharing an apartment in Fema with three other teachers from the school.

So after that first meeting, it was only a matter of days before Roy introduced Larry to Angelo and Antonella: another couple of clicks...

Angelo nd Antonella showed Roy and Larry around Rome – on the lash, caning it every night... They traipsed them into the shadow-culture, to places of the known-unknown where no tourists tread... the hangs of the high and spaced, the beast-mob, the fried-brained beatniks; fere naturae, as they began to call the crowd. But there were also other colours: the
many square peg friends of Angelo and Antonella, and then the usual array of bohemians who are always attracted to the dives: Painters, musicians, film makers, writers, and those, let us call them, perceivers and beholders, seekers of hearts venturing beyond the mundane.

Rome is also a character: and at this time she was also in an internal conflict with herself. The terrorist group, THE RED BRIGADE had been active for the last five years, or so; robbing banks, kidnapping businessmen and politicians, etc. So there were armed military police everywhere, which gave the city a edgy atmosphere. Evenings, the city was dotted with road blocks and stop-checks. Driving around in Angelo's old, brown Renault Four from one hang-out to the next, resulted in having to run the gauntlet of these uptight checks. They would round a corner to find the road blocked and a barricade manned by the Paramilitary Carabinieri in full kit and machine guns bristling. Angelo had warned them, that when they were stopped, and a machine gun was put through the open window, they shouldn't make any sudden moves for their passports, or anything... they should do nothing until asked. They would all be ordered out the car for a pat and rub down – these guys weren't interested in dope, only guns, and who you were. And then they'd have to wait while the car and passports were checked out, then back in the car and on to the next unseen stop...

All this, kind of added to the surreal abstract madness, which Roy and  Larry laughed off. They loved Rome: the art, the history, the colours, the drama, the beautiful women, the food, all the strange dives... they soaked it all up. For 'Existentialism treats life in the manner of a thriller,' as Guido Ruggiero put it.

After a few months of this exhausting gallivanting around Rome, Antonella came up with an idea. They should take a break... a break from the oozing circling of Rome, before the hot summer came... They could take a trip to Sardinia; for a few weeks... take tents and travel around... walking or by bus. Well, that sounded like fresh air to them all.

And so they began excitedly to shape it. Roy, Larry, and Angelo all spoke with the Head of the school, who agreed, reluctantly, that they could take the first three weeks in June, if they would then be willing to work through the hot months; a time when many of his teachers wanted to get out of the notorious Roman furnace. So everything seemed to be
on wheels.

Then just a few days before the trip, the plan was monkeyed by Angelo's Father, who had to leave town himself for a couple of weeks on business, and thus the fuming Angelo would have to stay to look after his fathers' small ceramic business... Alas, that meant he would only be able to make Sardinia for the last week or so.

So, it was just the three of them that took a train up the coast to Civitavecchia on the Friday afternoon to get the extra weekend. From there they took a ferry to Olbia, excitedly laughing and feeling like ancient Romans.

After spending a night in a hostel in Olbia, the next morning they headed south along the stunningly beautiful East Coast. The weather was so warm, they didn't need to pitch their tents at night, but slept only in their sleeping bags on the beaches and sand dunes. Each morning they awoke under a extravagantly large and blue sky, with the sun slowly climbing up its curve. They would eat breakfast, and spend a few hours swimming and lazing around. At Antonella's nonchalant initiative – and being too cowed to keep their pants on – Roy and Larry joined her, and began swimming – for the first time in their lives – naked.

Each day around noon they would slowly pack up their stuff and cut out further down the coast. Walking or taking short bus rides to any place that took their fancy on the map. Antonella had brought along her violin, on which she played classical or Irish music in the evenings. The music would take wing out over the calm sea and into the black ether. They would sit around a fire, barbecuing fish, bought in the mornings from the returning fishermen on the beaches.
They became ever more sucked into a blissful trance, helped along by the large pieces of hash they had all brought. Roy and Larry would read aloud from the books they had with them. Usually, it was just the three of them, but other nights strangers would appear, attracted by Antonella's playing, and the light of the fire. Then little parties would evolve.

Although the Sardinian language is not Italian, it is close; enough that Antonella, with a little work, could understand and communicate, and get them by. A couple of evenings they had happened to be in a bar, or restaurant with a friendly landlord, where after drinking a few glasses of wine Antonella was asked to play her violin for very enthusiastic audiences, and late into the night.

During the first week they drifted cloud high along the coast, There they would be, strolling along the coastal road – what a sight – like tramps, all in esprit de corps. Roy and Larry in their roughly cut-down Levis, and tee-shirts – their skins had soon become toast coloured – trudging in their ex-army boots, shouldering bulging rucksacks, taking it in turn to unload their, until then, unused tent on one another. And Antonalla would be in her bright red Doc Martins, and colourful skimpy tops, and mini-skirts or shorts, carrying her stylish new blue backpack, with her sleeping violin in its black case slung on her shoulder.

She would sometimes interrupt the non-stop – and to her often incomprehensible – banter of Larry and Roy, by breaking into a song, which to her relief, had indeed the power to silence their rap for a short while. She would try to teach them an Italian song, which she made them continuously sing... But in spite of Roy and Larry's rants and banter, a growing magnetism and harmony prevailed among the three of them.

Each day their time became more and more idyllic and sub-clock, the sun, sand, and timelessness lulled them into a kind of rock-a-bye state. They had become enraptured with the whole experience. They had escaped normality, which is a clock – a clock that knows where you are, and where you will be in an hour, like an all seeing eye. 'Forget weapons,' wrote Roy in his note book, 'the watched clock is the stuff that will kill you. It gets you up in the morning and put you to bed at night with a threat. It decides your movements, and rules your very serendipity and fate.' They had entered this kind of metaphorical surreal Dali-driping-watch-time... it was enough that the world turned every day, and the sun and the darkness marked out time... There was the blue-yellow divide of the beach, the colours of glory, with the rhythmic trance music of the sea, and behind them was the dry sweeping mountains reaching up to the sky. Alive was their the only understanding.

The trip after that first week had brought them to the village of Orosei which they had seen on many postcards, and liked the look of. They arrived around midday and found a nice looking café on a busy pedestrian main street, where they ate lunch, and then sat drinking coffee in the sunshine. Antonella took out her little musical friend and filled the air with her wonderful filigree finger work, which made many of the streaming passers-by stop and listen.

Roy suddenly noticed a strange figure coming along the street, Maybe fifty yards away. His body was jigging and bobbing to Antonella's playing as he came towards them. He was barefoot, bare chested with a shaved silvery head, wearing only a pair of those baggy Turkish trousers; with the legs joined at the knee. He wore a leather strap on one ankle with tiny tinkling bells, and carried a bamboo staff, and a Moroccan sugar sack on his shoulder, with a large brimmed straw hat on a thong hung behind him. Among the stream of restrained dressed tourists he looked as comic as kippers.

Roy said something about the genie from Aladdin, and nudged Larry, to point out the curious figure. The guy came directly over to the music still jigging and swooping around. He had a broad crooked smile on his long suntanned face.

LINK TO PART 2
http://www.abctales.com/story/chris-whitley/corruption-rudi-riesenkampf-...