by Renee Ryder
Moral of the story: Susan had healed a wound in her heart, and that in turn increased her self-confidence. Between that and Ryan’s love, she was beginning to see life as a challenge she could actually succeed at with ease.
They strolled through the little cobblestoned street that spread out between the beach to their right and the buildings on the left, passing by other people, mostly locals. Delivery people pushed heavy carts, with iron wheels that screeched on the paving stones in the road, laden with merchandise to replenish stock in the shops. All morning Susan and Roger had been discussing a remodeling idea for their house in Seattle that the Porto Loreno apartment had inspired—he listed the feasible options for her—while she slowly took everything in as they walked.
Each building was different than the next, both in structure and color; not at all like her neighborhood in Seattle with the houses in perfect symmetry, serious about their style, embodiments of cool, detached drawings from a computer. Instead, these buildings personified an anarchy that seeped out from real life. The ground floors were almost all filled with cafes and trattorias, except for a few tiny artisan shops with food and souvenirs, and residences in the upper stories. Tilting her head back, she saw windows with shutters every color from pale pink to dark green, and spacious balconies decorated with plants and reclining chairs for the inhabitants to relax in and look out at the sea.
Ah, the Mediterranean! A bright blue that stretched out towards the horizon, glinting in its lazy undulation like the facets of a sapphire in the sun. It bore little resemblance to the wild and powerful Pacific Ocean that she knew so well, where cold waves crashed in dramatic sprays along the rocks of the forested coastline. This water, somehow looking as friendly and warm as its surroundings, beckoned her to come walk along its edge and let it wash over her feet.
The sand started on the margin of the little street and there were already some beach-goers in the lounge chairs or under the umbrellas, enjoying the warm sunny morning. But what drew her attention was the part of the beach where she saw a dozen rowboats scattered across the sand. Immediately her thoughts flew to her grandma’s painting. The happiness of their time together flooded through her, although she couldn’t enjoy it in the same way as the static picture because the scene was in motion: the fishermen scurried around the boats in a flurry of activity, winding nets, stacking fish traps, unloading tubs brimming with their catches.
Who knows what time they got up, she wondered, with a slight sense of guilt after sleeping in and leisurely getting ready that morning. But I’m on vacation. I wake up early, too, all year! she reminded herself as they passed near a boat with a white hull and blue trim.
A thin man, hair more salt than pepper and an unkempt beard, was pressing on the oarlocks as if testing their strength. A younger man with pitch black hair and a clean-shaven face hefted a huge plastic container from the same boat and set it on the sand. He was bare chested and tanned, like the bearded man—although much more muscled and toned—but wearing work gloves. He said something and both of them laughed. She automatically tried to catch the joke, but was still ten yards away and they had spoken quickly.
Then the two fishermen pulled out of their boat a gigantic brown fish speckled with white and lifted it up. She and the Corwins slowed their steps, awed by the sight of the spectacular creature.
“Damn, look how big that one is!” Roger exclaimed, turning to Susan.
The young fisherman turned with a jerk as if he’d heard, but instead of looking at Roger, his gaze fell straight on her.
Not giving her time to wonder why he focused on her, he set the fish down on top of the full container; then he took off his right glove and walked towards her, pulling a phone out of the pocket of his well-worn denim cut-offs. His dark brown eyes remained fixed on her and an inexplicable smile spread across his face.
“Ci fai una foto col pesce?” he asked her in a friendly tone, holding out his cell phone towards her.
“No,” she replied a bit derisively, floored by such an odd question.
The young man stood stock still, the seductive smile frozen on his face, while they continued on towards the cafe nearby that they’d picked for breakfast.
“What did he say?” demanded Roger, like a protective father.
“He wanted me to take a photo together with him and the fish.”
“What?!” Susan laughed.
Her reaction confirmed the absurdity of the fisherman’s request.
“Maybe it’s a custom in these parts,” Roger speculated.
“To stop someone walking by and ask them to take a picture with a fish?” Susan’s tone filled with irony as she sat down at one of the tables outside the cafe—there were plenty of empty ones and two that were taken, apparently by tourists like them.
“Why not?”
“Because it would be a rather bizarre custom, Roger.”
“Well then, maybe he was trying to pick up on our beautiful Hannah,” he said with a teasing smirk.
She blushed. Then smiled along, trying to mask her discomfort. Since she’d been in Italy, she had never missed Ryan so much—except for the moments in the bath after they made up on the telephone.
Another thirty-two hours of patience and then he’ll be here, she tried to cheer herself up, turning unconsciously towards the beach.
“Good morning,” said the waiter in English. “What can I get you?”
“A cappuccino, please,” Susan replied.
“One for me, too, por favore,” Roger echoed.
She opted instead for a tea with milk.
“Great. If you would like anything to eat, take a look at the assortment of cornetti and other pastries in the display counter.”
While they spoke with the waiter, she watched the scene playing out with the young fisherman who had spoken to her earlier. He and his colleague were smiling, holding the enormous fish by the tail, while a guy took their picture. Afterwards, the fisherman went to the guy and said something, nodding gratefully as he took his phone back.
“Oh, God,” she sighed, her stomach knotting and blood flooding her cheeks.
“What’s wrong, dear?” Susan frowned in concern.
“Now you’ll believe me when I say my Italian is definitely not perfect.”
“What do you mean?” Roger asked.
“That fisherman. He didn’t ask me to take a picture with him. He wanted me to take a picture of him, his friend, and the fish!”
Susan grimaced, while Roger didn’t try to hide his amusement at the misunderstanding. “Actually, that would make more sense.”
“Crap, I’m such an idiot.” She covered her face in mortification, remembering how she had dismissed him with such scorn for his ‘bizarre custom’ and how she had gotten the Corwins involved by translating so badly.
“It’s okay, come on. Things happen,” Roger consoled her, while she realized she’d misunderstood because of the boldness the fisherman had stared at her with. “By now it’s worked out.”
“No. Sue, Roger, excuse me a moment.” She got up from her seat, unable to stand it for another second that she’d unintentionally acted like such a snob. “I have to go apologize to that guy. If I don’t, it’s going to bother me all day.”
“Okay, dear. If it’ll make you feel better …” Susan gave her a smile.
“In the meantime, I’m going to check out the croissants at the counter. Want to come?”
“No, Roger. Just the cappuccino is enough for me. Go ahead. I’m going to reply back to Kate’s text.”
While she approached the beach, the two fishermen were dealing with their nets; she didn’t know what they were doing, but certainly they hadn’t noticed her.
She stopped at the border of the cobblestones and sand. She slipped off her sandals because she hated the feeling of sand getting in them, dangled them in her hand, took a deep breath, and carefully dodged sunbathers as she headed straight for the two men. The sand was hot, but not scalding, s
o she was able to stand near their boat.
She swallowed. Then tried to overcome the tension.
“Good morning.”
The older man gave her a cordial look and kept working with the nets, but the younger one stopped and gave her his full attention.
“Hello.” He brushed his forearm across his brow to push back his hair, which was damp with salt water or sweat and tousled from the winds out on the sea.
“I have to tell you that I am sorry for to say ‘no’ when you asked me to make a photo.”
Her words visibly baffled him.
“A few minutes ago, remember?”
“Yes, I sure do remember.” He smiled.
“Sorry. I have been rude. But I did not understand you. I was confused.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not a big deal.”
“You said ‘Ci fai una foto col pesce.’ You have the word ci that means ‘us.’ When you have asked ‘Ci fai una foto’ I understood that you wanted taking a picture with I, you, and the fish,” she finished, hoping that her Italian was clear enough.
“Oh, that’s why you hit me with a ‘no’ so fast!”
“Yes,” she said, reddening again at the memory but comforted that he could laugh at it. “I apologize. I did not realize that ci had referred to you and your friend.”
“My dad,” he said, turning towards him—busy checking the nets, not paying attention to their conversation.
“Oh. Your dad. I see.”
“Anyway, if a stranger asked me to take a photo with him and his cernia, I’d think he had a wheel out of place, too.”
“A wheel?”
“Yeah, it’s just a saying. You know, when someone does something weird, like argues with a tree or walks around with a frying pan under his arm—”
“Hahaha!”
“—we say that he has a wheel out of place.”
“We say he has lost the marbles.”
“The marbles?!”
“Now you are seeing how I felt when you talked of a wheel.”
“We also say, ‘he’s missing some Fridays.’ ”
“Fridays?! Why ‘Fridays?’ ”
“I don’t have the faintest idea!”
“Hahaha! Um, listen. You have mentioned the name of the fish a little ago. Which was that?”
“Cernia.”
“That cernia seemed gigantic.”
“Come here and see.” He motioned her to follow him to the other side of the boat.
The cernia lay lifeless in a tub, on top of a mass of smaller fish. Standing near it the stench was strong, but for some reason it didn’t bother her as much as she would have thought.
“We rarely catch any this size. It’s at least thirty-five kilos. We still have to weigh it.”
“Never I have seen a fish in person this big,” she said, impressed by the 75-pound leviathan.
“Usually we get ones that are ten, fifteen kilos. So you get why we wanted to take a picture.”
“I understand.”
“Wanna take a photo with the cernia?”
“Hahaha! No, thanks.”
“Have you ever tried one? It’s good.”
“The next time that you have one littler, I will buy it. I am to be here for two weeks.”
“Okay. I’ll save it for you, then.”
“Thank you. That would be kind of you.”
“This is our spot. You can find us here every morning.”
“Okay.”
“Anyway, I’m Nico,” he said, reaching out his forearm and chuckling. “Sorry, my hands are dirty.”
She passed her sandals to her left hand and “shook his arm” for a second, saying, “Hannah.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Anna.”
She knew Italians don’t aspirate their H’s, but all the same, hearing her name without that sound made her feel like someone else.
“The pleasure is mine. But now I should go at my friends.” She waved towards Roger and Susan who were watching them. “They are waiting me.”
“Of course. Um, I have to tell you that your Italian is very good.”
“Thanks, but if that were true, we would not had the misunderstanding with the photo.”
“I don’t know. If I say, for example, ci vediamo, what do you think I said?”
She frowned. “Well, ci means ‘us’ in this case. So it is ‘we will see each other later.’ ”
“No, in this case, ci means ‘there.’ ” He pointed across the beach, but she didn’t understand.
Her doubt vanished when she saw the twinkle in his eye.
“You are teasing me, true?”
“See how good your Italian is?”
“These small words like ci are for me really a mess.” She started to laugh. “Well then, I am very content that there are no hard feelings because of what I did before.”
“Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound right in Italian.”
“What?”
“Hard feelings. Feelings can’t be hard, soft, or elastic.”
“Elastic? Hahaha! I mean only that it is well you did not judge me too hard for a mistake.”
“Ah, okay. We say ‘without resentment.’ ”
“Oh, I did not know that. You know, I am not sure why we say ‘hard feelings.’ It is a strange phrase now that I think over it.”
“Now there you shou—”
“What is it?” she asked him, waiting after he interrupted himself.
“Nothing. I was just thinking that I’d never be able to learn another language.”
“The English is easier than the Italian. You should give a try.”
“No, I’m hopeless at studying. I do better with these.” He held out his strong, callused hands.
“Well, like was said, I have to go. Ci vediamo!”
“Ci vediamo, Anna.”
Her spirit refreshed from smoothing out the situation and by the compliments on her Italian, she reached the start of the cobblestones. She knelt to brush away the sand on her feet and slide on the straps of her sandals.
“How did it go?” asked Susan when she returned and sat down again.
“It was good. He got that we had a translation problem,” she explained, pouring tea into a cup.
“And what did you say to each other? We saw you two laughing almost the whole time you were over there.”
“We were talking about the language differences. We found out that when you translate some idioms directly, they make no sense at all.”
“Does he speak English?”
“No, Roger. We were speaking in Italian.”
“Um, darling, would you give me a piece of your pastry?”
“Do you want me to go get you one?”
“No. I only want a taste. It looks delicious.”
“You’re incredible, Sue. Over there are glass counters filled with croissants, brioches, and every type of pas—”
By now she was getting used to their bickering and found it entertaining. Then without realizing it, she began replaying in her head the conversation with Nico. She’d been very pleased to go beyond “hello” and “how much is this?” and dialogues about food and drinks with waiters. And the idioms! Thinking about “wheel” and “Friday,” she struggled not to laugh. She decided to draw up a list of things to ask, so the next time she spoke to an Italian, she could be mo—
“Hannah?”
Susan calling her name made her jump.
“Look, your fisherman friend is coming over here.”
All three watched Nico, who carried something wrapped in beige, water-stained paper and stopped a few steps from their table.
“Hello, again,” she said to him with a smile.
“Good morning.” He looked around the table, respectfully including Roger and Sue. “Do you speak Italian, too?”
Nico had his answer when both of them turned towards her.
“Okay. I only wanted to tell you that last night we also ca
ught some pezzogne. They’re a very prized fish. Like lobster, for example,” he explained, unrolling the paper he held and showing them three silver fish with red tails and enormous eyes, each about the size of an e-reader. “Have you ever eaten these before?”
“What did he say?” Roger was apparently quite interested in the fish.
After she’d translated for them, Susan responded while Roger leaned in for a closer look.
“No. She say they do not ever see any of these before. And neither me. He says they look like bream,” she translated, as Roger made the comment.
“Pezzogne are more expensive than bream. And much better,” Nico clarified. “They’re simple to cook. Clean them and put them in an oven dish with some oil and water, add garlic, parsley, salt and pepper, cover it with foil and bake at 200 degrees for fifteen minutes. Then you let me know what you thought,” he finished, sounding proud of himself and waiting for her to translate.
“For us?”
“One apiece,” Nico said, when she’d explained to him Susan’s surprise.
“Fresh fish for dinner,” Roger said with enthusiasm.
“But we’ll need to stop by a supermarket, because right now I think we’ve only got oil and salt in that kitchen,” added Susan.
“Thanks, Nico. They also thank you. However, we do not have a thing in which to put them.”
“Not a problem at all.”
Nico entered the cafe and, waving hello to the waiter and the barista and calling them by name, he headed straight to the older woman sitting at the cash register. They exchanged a few words with smiles and then she passed him a plastic bag. He placed the fish wrapped in the paper inside.