There was a drawing for members of my high school band to go on a journey to a city in Italy. My name wasn’t drawn, but I was asked to take care of someone’s cat. When I was asked where they were, I could not remember. “It wasn’t Rome . . . nor Milan . . . nor Venice . . . nor Florence . . .” Suddenly I remembered that it was Padua.

Then I was near a stream where an attack was taking place. There was a line of bodies, men in swim trunks, face down in the water along the bank, and the attackers were using short, curved blades at the end of poles to deface their backs. One was solidly bloody. I thought I recognized one of the attackers and wondered at what was happening and why.