American English, Italian Chocolate

by Rick Bailey

  The number he gives us is 888-888. We get the cops on the phone. They give us another number: 888-866. The dispatcher says it may be awhile. There’s another emergency at the moment. We take a seat in the bar. What’s awhile in San Marino?

  I’ve dealt with cops in Italy a few times. Years ago, I got pulled over. Wanded over, I should say. Here’s how it works: A couple of cops in their baby blue Fiat stop by the side of the road. One of them, wearing his tall black boots, tailored pants, fitted waist jacket, and cap, holding an arrow-shaped wand, waves you to the side of the road. It’s like an invitation. I don’t know what they would do if you kept on going. Use the wand to commandeer your car, perhaps.

  I pull over, come to a stop, and buzz down my window. “What did I do?” I ask.

  “Documents,” he says.

  Cars go swishing past us. I fumble my wallet out of my pocket, realize with a sinking feeling I don’t have my passport with me. That might be against the law. Double trouble.

  “Con calma,” he says. Keep cool.

  I hand him my Michigan driver’s license and the rental car forms. He regards them with a bland look on his face, glances at me, and then nods.

  “Va bene,” he says, and wands me toward the road.

  “What did I do?”

  “You go,” he says, wanding me away a little more vigorously.

  So I went.

  Ten months ago I got a parking ticket in Pesaro, a town down the coast. It was a secret ticket. I drove somewhere I shouldn’t have, parked in a restricted area. A stealth photo was taken of my rental car’s license plate and then transmitted to the authorities. They processed it and let me know by mail I owed sixty-two euro for illegal parking. Only it wasn’t that simple. First they contacted the rental car company, asked for my mailing address in the States, and waited a few months for it; once they got my address, they waited a few more months—why I don’t know—and then forwarded a six-page document to me in a hand-addressed envelope. It came registered mail, which I had to drive to the post office to sign for. Inside was a bad copy of the photographed license plate, a map of the scene of the crime, a verbal description of the infraction, the pertinent legal language, and instructions on how to pay the fine, which, by the time I got the mail, had tripled.

  Still in Detroit, I emailed the cops in Pesaro and asked in my pidgin written Italian for an audience, which was granted, in perfect English. I could see Major Achille Manna on October 19 at 9:30 a.m.

  I arrived fifteen minutes early and presented myself to a Lieutenant Mariotti. I explained I was there to see Major Manna. The lieutenant wore stylish glasses (clear frames, red bands), a white shirt and tie, and a navy blue police blazer with stripes and gold braid. He looked dazzling. I had been mentally rehearsing my police station Italian. I am guilty. I am responsible. I am sorry. Had I known, I would have paid on time.

  When I was shown in to see him, the major was sitting behind his desk. No blazer. He wore a white shirt and tie and reminded me a little of Dom DeLuise. He was ready for me. He lifted a four-inch stack of tickets and shook his head. The sight of them, I think, made him tired, made him hate his job and probably me.

  “These are all rental cars,” he said.

  I am guilty.

  “We have to contact all these companies—Maggiore, Autoeuropa, Europecar, Sixt, Car in Sicily, Hertz.”

  I am responsible.

  “Do you know, Mr. Bailey, how much work it is to process all of these?” He dropped the mass on his desk.

  I was holding my ticket and documents in my lap. He reached for them, pulled out the page with the bad photo, and showed me. Then he turned to the map and showed me the area, Castelfidardo. This, he said, was a clearly marked area, limited access, residents only.

  I am sorry.

  “Had I known, I would have paid,” I said. “Ten months have passed, and the fine now is 180 euro.”

  He shook his head, laid a big hand on the stack of tickets.

  “It seems excessive,” I said.

  “You think so.”

  The meeting was not going well. I thought about how many dishes of pasta, how many liters of wine I could buy with all those euro. Thursday was market day up the mountain in Borgo Maggiore. I wanted to buy a coat. One year, at the rental car stand in Bologna, the representative told me the police will eventually forget about tickets if you wait long enough. Six months, he said, and you were free.

  “Always?” I asked.

  Yes. Maybe. He shrugged. Who wants to test that theory, when the rental car company has your credit card number?

  The major tapped my documents and chewed at his cheek. Now what? Why would they grant me this meeting if they were going to make me pay the full amount? We sat with our guilt and frustration a long moment. Then he flipped to the payment instructions in my documents and inked an X next to sixty-two euro.

  “Pay the lieutenant,” he said.

  I thanked him and said, “I hope I don’t see you again.” He looked at me askance. Then he saw: I was making a joke.

  “Not here, anyway,” he said.

  We’ve been waiting at the bar half an hour or so when a firetruck pulls into the piazza in San Marino. The door on the driver’s side swings open and a tall fireman climbs out. He’s wearing overalls and boots. I walk across the piazza to him, and he asks me if I’m Canducci.

  “My wife is,” I say.

  He opens the back door and tells me to climb in.

  I’ve never ridden in a rig like this, and this one is a beauty, although I see now it’s less firetruck and more all-purpose emergency response vehicle, very red, even at night. I tell him our building is just down the street. We’ll walk, he can follow.

  The building is a six-story condo with a stairwell and elevator near the front of the building. The stairwell has an echo. Every ciao, buongiorno, buona sera, and salve’, every hinge squeak, key jingle, and door closing resounds from basement to top floor, amplified by the echo.

  It turns out there are two firemen, one tall, one short, and they are both immaculate, Platonic images of the fireman. They have a kit that consists of thin strips of plastic, which they begin slipping into the seams between the door and its casing, above and below the latch. Then they start shaking the door, in and out, sliding their strips of plastic up and down. It’s a terrible racket; the banging and sliding echo in the stairwell, deafening.

  The short one looks at my wife. “It’s how we do it,” he says.

  “Won’t you break the door?”

  “Never.”

  “The neighbors,” she says. “They must wonder what in the world we’re doing in there.”

  The big one is shaking and pounding the door.

  The short one nods and smiles. “Your neighbors,” he says with a mischievous look, “when they hear this sound, will probably all be jealous.”

  In five minutes, we’re in. We thank the firemen profusely, and they drive off to the next emergency.

  Later we’re in bed, lights off. My wife says, “Did you see those guys? Not a hair out of place.”

  “GQ.”

  “I’ve never seen an ugly fireman over here,” she says.

  Lying awake, I rummage through memory for uniforms I’ve worn. Cap and gown, boy scout, marching band. The band uniform was particularly terrible—heavy, stiff, oversized. It was like wearing Styrofoam. I played the trumpet and was part of the oozing green protozoa on the football field forming the letter F from Freeland. Or was the F for Falcons?

  One fall afternoon my sophomore year, I found myself in a car with Cordell Bloomer and Terry Savage, heading west on Tittabawassee Road in Cordell’s ’57 Chevy. A little past Curve Road he slowed next to a landmark, a DO NOT PASS sign, that would help him find a pint of Corby’s whiskey he had hidden in the ditch. That day was my first taste of whiskey; it was also the first and last night I played the cymbals in the band, banging away at them like a fool, which I most definitely was that night. I could have brought shame to myself, to my school. One sl
ip and I could have disgraced the ugly uniform I was wearing.

  “Buona notte,” someone says. A door slams somewhere in the building, echoing in the stairway. Behind our building, a scooter accelerates up the hill. I ask myself, as most adults probably do lying in bed just before sleep: How in the world did I get here?

  “You know I was in the marching band?” I say to my wife.

  “Hmmm.”

  “The uniform,” I start to say, but decide to let it go.

  I’m pretty sure I could find that spot again on Tittabawassee Road. And there might be a photo of me in that ridiculous uniform somewhere, in the 1968 school yearbook maybe. I certainly hope so.

  37

  Buongiorno

  Every morning I walk up to the bakery and back, a total distance of two city blocks. Serravalle is a small town. You say buongiorno to just about everyone you meet. It’s a sign of civility. But not all buongiornos are alike.

  Hum the first three notes of the musical scale, do re mi. Around here, to someone you don’t know, or to someone you would prefer not to talk to, if you make eye contact, you say “buongiorno” in a barely audible voice, sounding the first and third notes in the scale, do mi mi. The second syllable is stressed, but only slightly: buon-GIOR-no. Do MI mi. And you keep walking. There are fresh pastries up the street, after all. There’s cappuccino to drink and a newspaper to read. When you greet someone you recognize, on the other hand, the greeting changes: buon-giorn-no, mi do do. Equal stress on each syllable, which is another way of saying no stress. The falling intonation, for some reason, is a little more welcoming, allowing a brief opening for a quick exchange of pleasantries—Rain? Cold. I bambini?—but you can pass on that if you’re in a hurry or if you’re not in the mood.

  This morning, when I stepped out of our building, an old gentleman was walking up the street. I must have looked familiar. He gave me the second buongiorno, which I was more than happy to return. I’ll talk to anyone.

  He stopped and squinted at me. “Do I know you?” he asked.

  He might have been eighty, which meant he could have known my in-laws years back. I told him who I was. We talked for a minute, and sure enough, there was history. He did know them. He had lived in the United States when my in-laws were there. He worked on some of the same job sites as my father-in-law.

  We shook hands. “Duilio,” he said. I leaned in, and he said his name for me again, twice. Duilio. Do-EEE-lee-o.

  All those syllables. It was going to be fun greeting him, “Buongiorno, Duilio,” which would require a third, more musical buongiorno. Eventually we might progress to the familiar “ciao.”

  I presented myself, Rick, conscious, as always, of my conspicuously monosyllabic name, also offering “Riccardo,” which I do not like much, vaguely hoping more syllables made my name—and me—easier to remember.

  In five minutes, he told me a little of his story. With his wife and two daughters, he had lived in the United States for fifteen years. Then they came back to San Marino. A common story, I pointed out. To this he wagged an index finger. His wife was sick, he said. There was no treatment for her over there, so they came back. When I wondered, he shook his head. No, she was gone.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “And your daughters?”

  “My daughter,” he said, gulping air. His eyes squeezed shut; I thought for a minute he would laugh. He pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket. After they came back, the older daughter never adjusted to living over here. She tried. He said she knew four languages. In the end she couldn’t find herself here and moved back to the United States. He dabbed at his eyes a couple of times and apologized for crying.

  “She lives in Florida now,” he said, adding, “It’s terrible for a father.”

  “The other daughter?” I asked.

  “Good,” he said. He held up a thumb and forefinger. “Due figli.” She has two children.

  We stood together on the sidewalk. We shook hands again. He apologized again for crying. “Duilio,” I said, “I’ll see you.”

  Later in the day, I will make the short walk up town three or four more times. I go to the grocery store, I go to the butcher shop, I go to the coffee bar that has a strong wireless signal. Evenings, for the benefit of night air (and to force myself to stay awake), I walk up to the edge of town and then back down to our apartment. It takes five or ten minutes, unless there is someone to talk to. The old town is little more than one narrow street. Mornings and afternoons it gets clogged with pedestrian traffic, with wide buses that rock like ships in a narrow canal, with throngs of kids rushing to and from school.

  Here everyone walks. There is so much buongiorno.

  Maybe that’s why I’m so aware of older people here. Because everyone walks.

  Those walks I take up town, I see a dozen older gentlemen like Duilio. Three stand on the corner, avid conversationalists, tapping each other’s chests with the backs of their hands, explaining points with expressive fingers. Others are doing the old man walk: leaning slightly forward, hands joined behind their backs, taking slow, deliberate, contemplative steps.

  Early Tuesday mornings I stand next to women my age and older, buying fruits and vegetables from the vendor in the piazza. I ask, “Does anyone make a sauce with stridoli?” Three old women tell me their recipe. “What do I do with lischeri?” A panel discussion ensues. “When do you add lemon juice? Do you add it at all?”

  Back home, in suburban Detroit, I see old people at the senior center (they have their own dedicated place)—on exercise machines, drinking coffee in a round table group I rarely join. I see seniors in grocery store parking lots, at the hardware store. There is something poignant about some of these sightings. An older man piles canned goods and frozen dinners on the cashier’s conveyer. I think he must be heating food for himself, eating alone. An older woman slowly backs her car out of a parking spot, straining to see, sawing the vehicle back and forth. She takes forever. I think, Why is she still driving? The thing is, living there, she has to drive.

  Simone de Beauvoir, in The Coming of Age, observed, “We have always regarded [old age] as something alien, a foreign species.” At home, old age is like that, mostly impersonal. I don’t know that man in the grocery store. I’ve never seen him before. I don’t know that old woman trying to unpark her car. I’ve never seen her before. At home, I’m astonished at how infrequently I see people I recognize in public places. For over thirty-five years I’ve lived in that community. I know the houses, roads, stores, buildings. Every day back home, as often as I walk here, I’m in my car. I merge with traffic coming and going. I know the community the way I know my own home. Yet when I park in the lot in front of Trader Joe’s and get out of the car, I often wonder, Who are all these people?

  Maybe it’s not the difference between Italy and the United States. Maybe it’s the difference between a small town and suburb. Would suburban Milano feel like suburban Detroit? Doesn’t Serravalle feel like Freeland?

  “Buongiorno, Maria.”

  I’m walking home from the bar one morning. She’s leaning against the wall outside the middle school, resting. The mother of one of my wife’s childhood friends, Maria is ninety and is dressed in a black skirt and fitted waist-length jacket, her thick gray hair pinned back, a colorful scarf tied around her neck. She’s going up to the bar for coffee, or she’s going up to the church for mass. When I explain to her who I am, which I do every time I see her, she warbles something in dialect that I don’t understand and then says, “I’m still here. Do you believe it?” She raises a hand to one of my cheeks, pulls me to her, and kisses the other cheek. She laughs her high, liquid, musical laugh.

  There are two beauty shops in this town. My wife’s aunt, also ninety, gets her hair done once a week. She describes the gaggle of widows that congregates there every Thursday. They discuss how wonderful it is being widows, with no husband to wait on or walk around or drag after them. It’s so liberating once they’re finally gone. One of the women says, “I keep waiting fo
r my husband to die. I wait and I wait and I wait. He just won’t die!”

  And they all laugh.

  Over the last day or so, I’ve re-read Philip Roth’s Everyman, a book I brought over here with me five or six years ago. It’s a dark novel, an unflinching meditation on old age, in tone somewhere between somber and harrowing. Near the end of the story, the main character finds himself living alone on the Jersey shore. Largely because of betrayals and mistakes he has made in life, now in his seventies, he is totally isolated, preoccupied with his accelerating physical decline. He gets news one day of three contemporaries, one dead, one dying, one diagnosed. “Old age isn’t a battle,” he says. “It’s a massacre.”

  It must be a massacre here too. In the piazza, at the edge of school, and along the streets are small billboards with manifesti posted. These are reminders of those who have died, broadsheet posters with names, dates, and a line or two of text, many with color photographs of the departed.

  I stop in front of a billboard one morning, across the street from the house where my wife was born. Enzo, the retired baker, is standing there too, looking.

  “Buongiorno.”

  “Buongiorno.”

  On the board are four men my age and older (I picture their wives rejoicing) and a young man, twenty-one years old. I ask Enzo if he knew them.

  “Yes, a couple of them very well. But sometimes, you know, the manifesti are from towns up the road”—he points up the mountain—“for the relatives and friends who live here. Everyone knows everyone.” Pointing at the twenty-one-year-old, he says, “The young people, those are the hard ones.”

  A few months ago, a manifesto for my wife’s uncle was posted there. When I was here two years ago, there was one for Enzo’s brother.

  “We’re still here,” I say.

  “Yes, we are.” He turns to me and smiles. “We’re carrying the flag.”

  I rattle the package I’m holding, tell him I should get going. He knows what it is. Until he retired ten years ago, it was his bakery. The cake I’m bringing home this morning he must have made for years and years, hundreds of them, probably thousands. It’s an inch thick, round, smaller than a pizza. The baked dough is dark brown, heavy with cooked grape must and raisins, topped with walnuts and almonds, and then drizzled with honey.