Fighting For Love

XXII - The Border

June 28th 1940, 15:00

Nice, France

Our plan was to reach Italy by sunset so we could have dinner there, but our hunger did not let us, so we decided to pass by Nice to get something to eat. If things were still to go as we wished them to, it would be the last city in France that we would visit before crossing the border.

The city was one of the prettiest I had ever been to. It had, since the 19th century, been known as a hotspot for the European elite, due to its clear-water beaches and warm weather. As a result, it had grown to be very pompous and glamorous, almost to a point in which Otto and I, on our modest wagon full of hay, felt displaced among the rest of the population.

"Can we even afford to eat here?" Otto asked me.

"Well, we do not have much money left, but I reckon if we could find a place less glamorous we should be able to buy something. Let's go to the outskirts, here is too fancy."

"I used to come to places like these all the time." He said as he took a street that should take us somewhere cheaper "It seems like a lifetime ago, now."

"Do you miss it? Your old life, I mean."

"I miss the city, I really like Salzburg and, to some extent, I miss my life, too, but not all those things that came from living it. I do not miss my uncle, I do not miss school in Austria, I miss one or two friends at most, but the rest of them are quite forgettable and I certainly do not miss all that pressure I had for being the mayor's nephew. I think I am happier now than I was then. Crazy, right? I am happier fighting a war than being around my uncle."

"He can't hurt you anymore and soon we will not have to worry about the war."

After an hour of driving by the city, we found a small shop waving an Italian flag just outside the city. Judging by the decadent decoration and unpainted brick walls, It shouldn't be too expensive.

"Here we are. Our disguise is the same from Melun, I am Italian and you are my Swiss cousin."

"Got it."

We walked into the shop. It was a small establishment built with orange bricks, much like the rest of the city, except it was clearly less well taken care of than other buildings we had seen thus far. The owner, an Italian man named Stefano, was also from Tuscany, which, when Otto mentioned where he came from to him, sparked a long conversation whose main focus was to decide whether Arezzo was better than Florence and why. As they loudly debated, often alternating between highs and lows, words that sounded like insults and a lot of hand gesturing, I ate. Stefano's shop (that lacked a name so I decided to call it this way) sold cheese, wine, bread and salami, a type of sausage but saltier, darker and smaller. In fact, he sold a wide variety of sausages, salami being the only one whose name I remember and the only one I ate. I thought about combining both the cheese and the salami with bread and did it, feeling proud for my invention.

After some twenty minutes of debating, Stefano finally let Otto in peace to attend another customer that had just entered.

"I thought he'd never leave. So, who won? Florence or Arezzo"

"What?" Otto blinked, "Oh, Florence of course!"

"So why did it take you two so long?"

"Because he said it was Arezzo, which is completely unacceptable! Even Venice is a better city and it smells like piss and has more pidgeons than people living in it."

I chuckled. He was already Italian and we had not even crossed the border yet.

"I'll have to take your word for it. But I can't say I wouldn't love to see those beautiful canals."