Pisa

Pisa is the setting for a failed attempt by Marco Carrera to take his friend Duccio Chilleri to Ljubljana by plane. At the airport, their planned casino weekend is overturned when Duccio’s fear of flying turns into a public confrontation, and Marco has to get them back onto the ground.

Departure for Ljubljana

After driving to Ljubljana the previous year and winning substantially at its casino, Marco decides that the two friends will make their next trip by air. Duccio is afraid of flying, so Marco spends four evenings trying to reason him out of that fear, using the rational and anti-superstitious arguments he usually applies to other people’s fear of the Unnameable. He succeeds, and on a May afternoon the friends arrive at Pisa airport expecting a long weekend away.

The flight is a cheap charter operated by Koper Aviopromet, a Yugoslav company. Its route between Pisa and Ljubljana is unexpectedly broken by an unexplained stop, already lending the journey an uncertain quality. The plan nevertheless appears to hold until the passengers begin to board.

The aborted flight

When a group of Boy Scouts enters the aircraft, Duccio suddenly refuses to let them board. Marco tries to calm him, but the situation escalates into a disturbance that makes the Ljubljana weekend impossible. Marco, then only in his second year of medical school, presents himself as a doctor and claims that Duccio is having an epileptic seizure. The invented diagnosis persuades the crew to reopen the aircraft door and let them leave.

Their luggage is retrieved directly from the hold on the runway, an episode the narration connects to the poor running of Pisa airport at the time. As the plane taxis away, the friends return to the terminal. Once on the ground, Duccio becomes calm and euphoric, as though he has returned from a dangerous otherworld; Marco, by contrast, is furious and retreats into a dark silence, suppressing his anger to avoid making an already embarrassing scene worse.

Narrative significance

Pisa is more than a point on the itinerary: it is where Marco’s persuasive confidence meets the limits of his influence over Duccio. He can talk his friend into boarding, but cannot make the journey happen; when Duccio’s fear takes over, Marco’s practical ingenuity is reduced to a fabricated diagnosis and an exit from the plane. The contrast between Duccio’s relief and Marco’s anger marks the cost of the failed trip for their friendship, while the airport provides the setting for a comic reversal from anticipated escape to an abrupt return to the terminal.