The following morning I rose from between two parked vehicles, still high from my near-overdose. I slowly walked in the direction of the train station and the paid underground bathrooms. Vincenzo had confided that he was leaving for Sicily after the feast of Santa Reparata and would most likely not return. I found him at the top of some ancient steps that stopped before a door which hadn’t opened in half a millennia, and where we usually fixed first thing in the morning. It was nearby an old leather goods market, across the street from Vincenzo’s pensione. We entered his room and squared away the cash from the kilogram of hash we’d sold, according to our agreement, and did one last smash together. I buckled after my fix and Vincenzo helped me to a chair. He sat with me for some time, to make certain I didn’t go under again. When I came-to an hour later he was gone, no sign in the pensione that he’d been there at all, except for the bloodied syringe that sat in the empty ashtray. I thought it was time I called my mother, and when I finally did, I received news that prompted me to leave for Grumo right away.

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       I arrived home to my father’s usual indifference and my mother’s fervency, and Maria’s love. Ang was a mature fourteen, with a good head on his shoulders and quite responsible for one so young. He was in fact the opposite of my other brother Pino and me. He worked as a helper in an electronics shop, repairing small appliances and such. A person of few words, we exchanged pleasantries and within minutes he was back to whatever he was doing before I had arrived. No one, however, suspected anything unusual about me, though it was the early days of my addiction and my parents had not as yet learned the signs: my changing demeanor, mood swings and strict impatience, and the jewelry that mysteriously disappeared from time to time. As far as my family was concerned I was just an irresponsible teenager who suffered with depression. Yes, I was that too: but I was also on a savage path; a full-on heroin addict. It was late-afternoon Monday and I had enough heroin to last me until Tuesday. I was scheduled to begin a year of mandatory military service in Pesaro on Thursday 2000 hours.

       I cut my hair to specification in the shop at the bottom of nonna Rosa’s building and returned home immediately, ducking through side streets so as not to be seen by those to whom I owed money. I remained in bed all of Wednesday, tossing and turning with the discomfort of a leper. By Thursday I was dope-sick. Everything had a bad smell to it, like when you cook fish and smell it for days in your apartment. Except this was more like what you’d smell inside of a pharmacy, or a hospital, medicinal-like. I sweated profusely and cold chills raised goosebumps all over my body, my mind growing darker with thoughts of suicide, or of robbing a bank. Instead, I visited the doctor at the hospital again. He looked at me and immediately understood my need. My pupils were large as marbles and I could barely stand. The doctor simply said, ‘morfina?’ I tried smiling, but only managed to screw my face into a look of wild bewilderment and nodded yes. In a dark, quiet spot at the train station I fixed the morphine and savored the sweet relief you feel the very moment heroin withdrawal leaves you, like coming in from the numbing cold, to a roaring, transformative fire. The antidote to the poison was the poison itself.

*****

       The military base of the 28th Infantry Regiment Pavia in the city of Pesaro was quiet on the evening of November 12, 1983. I was escorted to the barracks and assigned a bed and locker. Our unit comprised mostly newbies who stood awkwardly by their bunks, making small talk and acclimating to their new surroundings. An inherent skill that addicts possess is to recognize their own kind, like a pack or pride, sniffing-out signs of drug-abuse like dope-detectives: pinned pupils, constant and excessive scratching, nodding mid-sentence, and non-stop incoherent ramblings if they were high; or runny noses, pupils like targets, and debilitating lethargy if they weren’t.

       I scouted two heroin addicts; the group had doubled by the following afternoon. I spent most of the next day acquainting myself with the base layout and schedule. We  were then given a leave-of-absence for the rest of the evening. The pack headed straight for Piazza Del Popolo in Pesaro’s historical center, where we located a heroin dealer. We were flush with the dope-sickness. We pooled our money together and scored enough junk to straighten us all out. We slowly made our way back to the base, stopping first at a brightly-lit bar just outside the base’s ramparts. The regiment’s sigil flapped in the wind, its gold crown standing proud and regal, the motto a legacy of the many who’d died under its protection: Ardeam Dum Luceam it read – I will burn while I shine. Inside the bar we scattered, each searching his own level of security amidst the ramble of the crowd. The officers kept to themselves and commanded authority. We spine sat or stood or leaned against the bar, not caring about much else but our junk-groove. 

       I was fitted for fatigues in the morning and our entire company stood outside in the encampment, performing drills and snapping-to at some Sargeants command. We were organized into platoons and marched and tried this new thing or that new thing and then I heard names being called-out by a sott’Ufficiale.

       “Amatulli, vieni con me, forza!”

       I followed him to the hospital unit and stood in line and waited to undergo a complete physical. The doctor looked me up and down and saw the tracks on my arms, including the fresh needle mark where I’d fixed the night before. Heroin addiction in Italy had reached crisis levels; the good doctor had seen this too often. We made brief eye-contact and a bible’s worth of understanding passed between us. He understood the trajectory my life would likely take as a heroin addict. But I saw none of the likely scenarios, and whether out of ignorance, or from just plain old not giving a shit, it mattered not because when I was high, nothing bothered me anyway.

       The following morning a group of soldiers travelled by train to a military hospital located in  Rome, where more tests were conducted. They confirmed it was in fact heroin I’d taken. 

       “You’ll be given a medical discharge,” said an officer when my name was finally called. “You’ll be given a train ticket back to wherever you’re from. But first you’ll go to a detox. You will be officially discharged from there.”

       “I’d rather stay. Can I stay? I’ll volunteer for Iran, or is it Iraq? Italy has peace troops there, no?” I said this without any hesitation. I was afraid of returning home after only three days of service. “What do I tell my parents?”

       “Tell them we found traces of blood in your urine, if you can’t say the truth.” The officer said this mechanically, like he’d told the lie to countless other charges before me, themselves equally anxious about having to face their dishonor. The plan was simply to lie. Well, this I could do. 

_{(Non-Fiction (Memoir) from The Hemlock’s Issue 6, Winter 2024)}

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