Many weeks after I had met Luningi I crossed the border into Germany during a terrible storm. It was a time when heavy rain fell regularly from the sky. It gave me constant colds and fevers and forced me to hide out under bridges and in abandoned houses. One time I was in a service station by one of the big motorways where there was always traffic regardless of the time of day. I was looking for food in a rubbish bin when a truck driver who was urinating against the wall suddenly spotted me. He was dirty and smelled like the rubbish bin. His big stomach hung over his belt. He asked me if I wanted to hitch a ride in his truck and although I knew what situation it could lead to I said yes. But not before I had checked that he was headed north.
I don’t know why but I still remember the name of the town where he was headed. Kassel. I thought it sounded like the name of an insect, perhaps one of the bugs that used to crawl on me when I was a child playing in front of our hut. A kassel, a little creature with thousands of tiny legs, a bug that never bit me but crawled all over my skin just as I was now crawling across that part of the Earth’s skin called Europe.
I climbed up into the cab and he steered out onto the road. I knew I should be on my guard but the warmth made me drowsy and I fell asleep. When I woke up the truck had stopped and he was on top of me, an enormous weight that I was sure would crush me. I ripped at his throat with my nails and somehow managed to get away. The last I heard of him was his panting giving way to a roar of curses. Then the engine started, the strong headlights came on and I saw him drive off.
Even after this I courted other pissing truck drivers. My smile worked on all of them, and every time I had to scratch my way out of their grip with my nails. All except once, when the driver let me out at a rest stop because he was no longer going my way. He invited me to breakfast and we ate together. He didn’t ask me any questions, just finished his coffee, shook my hand and returned to his truck.
