by C. P. Boyko
The next day, Katherine found herself walking through the streets of a different Italy. The taxi drivers now seemed greedy rather than solicitous, the vendors aggressive rather than generous, the garbage pathogenic rather than picturesque. She had the Freemantles to thank for this transformation. Over the course of dinner, she learned that she had been overpaying for everything, that she had been drinking contaminated water, and that, quite possibly, she had been defecating in the wrong basins. She felt foolish, and ashamed—until she reminded herself that this must be the experience of many travellers, and that, therefore, it would make very good, very genuine, very human material.
She was puzzling over how best to present this material in her afternoon’s letter home to Jeremy when the first vendor of the day called out to her. She grinned and waved and was about to cross the street when she remembered what the Freemantles had taught her. She frowned, stuffed her hands in her pockets, and walked straight ahead, stiff and resolute even as she passed through the spicy perfume of whatever delicacy the man was grilling. She had not yet had breakfast, and her stomach groaned, but she was determined now to not buy anything offered to her, lest she feel manipulated or taken advantage of. She eventually managed to initiate a transaction, while conforming to this principle, by sneaking up behind a fried bread vendor while he served another customer and shouting “Quanto!” in his face when he turned around.
In English blank verse the man said that, for Katherine, the price was only fifty lire. Or perhaps he said fifteen. It didn’t matter—for Katherine had fully prepared herself for this moment: She was primed to haggle.
In labored, periphrastic Italian she asked the man if it was not possible that maybe the amount of money being requested for the item was too much money? The vendor said in Italian that the price was more than fair. Katherine tried hard for about ten seconds to remember the Italian word for “What?” Finally she resorted to, “Huh?” The vendor, reverting to English, said, “Is good, the price.”
This satisfied Katherine, so she happily gave the man fifty lire and walked away, munching her bread, before he could give her her thirty-five lire change. Only later did she begin to have doubts about her performance. Perhaps she had been wrong to take the vendor at his word. Telling the customer that the price was fair was probably only a formality, a sort of prologue or invitation to further bargaining. Katherine decided she could do better, and sought out a street market in which to practice.
And, in fact, she soon proved herself a worthy adversary in the marketplace. Because she did not know the value of things, or indeed the value of money, she was as difficult to read and as impervious to influence as a novice poker player who does not know the value of her cards; and, like a novice poker player, she was determined to play every hand to the end. Some of the same vendors who had, earlier that week, sold their wares to her for ten times the usual price now found themselves forced to give their products away at one-tenth their actual cost, just to get rid of her. Unfortunately for many of them, Katherine’s guard was now up, and she interpreted every gesture of sacrifice or defeat as a clever ruse—and promptly cut her offer in half. Some of the sellers discovered that, for whatever reason, they had so aroused Katherine’s suspicion that they could not give away their wares, or even pay her to take them. This unprecedented experience so undermined their confidence in their own merchandise that their sales suffered for a week.
On her way back to the albergo, laden with colorful and aromatic goods, she was intercepted by a vivacious man with a moustache like a shoe brush and twinkling green eyes that seemed to move independently of each other. He inundated her with greetings, character references, avowals of affection and undying fidelity, and all manner of offers and invitations, before perceiving her puzzled and apologetic look. Then a change came over him. His brow and chin became furrowed, his expression clouded and brooding, and his posture hunched and diffident. He had switched to English.
“Uhhhhhhhhhh,” he said, to hold his place in the conversation until he could dredge up, from the remote parts of his mind, the perfect English greeting, the one salutation that would operate on any English speaker like a magic incantation, like an Open Sesame. “Uhhhhhhhhhh …” Finally it came to him. “What your name!” he cried.
Katherine told him, and despite the Freemantles’ instructions, could not refrain from asking his name in return. Among the syllables of nomenclature that the man proudly recited were what sounded to Katherine like “Giuseppe” and “Carlo.” So she called him Giuseppe Carlo, and said that she was pleased to meet him, but that she had to be getting these bags back to her hotel.
Giuseppe Carlo, sensing her imminent departure from her posture rather than her words, blurted out the other magic phrase that he had as a child stored away for just this occasion. “Do you speak English!”
Katherine pointed out that that was what they were doing. Giuseppe Carlo nodded fiercely to indicate his total agreement with what the Signorina Catarina had just said, and even looked around with gallant pugnacity for anyone who might hold a different opinion. Katherine again tried to excuse herself, but Giuseppe Carlo’s intense desire that the conversation should continue acted as a sort of gravitational field. Besides, to walk away from someone in the middle of a sentence would be rude. So she shifted the bags she was carrying and tried honestly for a while to decipher what he was telling her; then she gave up and waited for his spiel to be over; then, much later, she went back to trying to understand.
He was, in fact, painstakingly transliterating his standard pickup pitch, word by word. When he did not know the English word, he said the Italian, but with a flat, nasal, “English” intonation, and illustrated each idea with a unique impressionistic hand gesture. Katherine eventually extracted some of his meaning: that he was a good man, that he and she were now friends for life, and that he wanted very much to take her to see the Colosseum, the Vatican, the Pantheon, and many famous churches and popular museums and romantic trattorie, which he began to name and translate.
A wave of fatigue washed over her. She suddenly wanted very badly to be back at the albergo, relieved of her purchases, out of the sun, and away from this man. “And then you will take me, I suppose, to the famous suit factory?”
Giuseppe Carlo, not understanding, wracked his brain for friendly, obliging, noncommittal words.
“Never mind. And how much will you charge for all this, I wonder? Quanto?”
“No!” Giuseppe Carlo shook his head fiercely and slashed his arms through the air in repudiation. “For you, my friend—is treat.”
She sighed. Well, the Freemantles were right: The Italians were all con artists. Or, at least, the Italians were like men: the nice ones never talked to you.
“No thank you,” she said. “Goodbye.”
“But—is treat!” he cried, chasing after her.
“I don’t want to go to those places. I have been to those places.”
He began naming other places. She shook her head and walked more quickly. They did not have to limit themselves to Rome, he said: his cousin owned a truck. She declined the kind offer. In desperation, he began naming towns and attractions at random, places he had never been, places which were not even in Italy. Suddenly the Signorina stopped.
“Yes?” He clasped his hands together and pressed them to his lips, daring to hope. “We go, we two, to see the Tower of Eiffel?”
“No. Before that. You mentioned the waterfalls.”
“The water fall, yes! So beauty! So romance! We go! We go?”
She shook her head sadly, almost pitying him now that she had caught him in a lie. “The waterfalls are closed.”
He denied that this was so. He was offended that anyone should be spreading such slanderous untruths about the waterfalls. The waterfalls were a phenomenon of nature, and the beauty and majesty and inspiration of nature were available to everyone, at all times. The waterfalls could not be “closed.” I
t was impossible. It was nonsensical.
This, at least, was what he meant when he said, “No! Not close! Open!”
She shook her head and continued on her way. When he saw that she would not be persuaded, he became angry.
“You stupid!” he called after her.
She turned and stared at him, aghast at his rudeness.
“Very stupid! The water fall …” He allowed a voluptuous gesture to complete his thought. “So stupid!”
He flagged down a taxi and rode away, looking back occasionally and shaking his head with pitying contempt.
She managed to keep from crying until she reached the albergo, by which time she no longer felt the need to. She had already begun to see how this ordeal might be transmuted into a rather amusing letter home. Indeed, when she came to write it down, she found that the anecdote required very little finessing. She had to render herself only a little more naive and flustered than she had actually been, and Giuseppe Carlo only a little more flamboyant and ridiculous than he had been in reality. But that, after all, was the novelist’s job: to magnify life, without distorting it; in fact, to magnify life in order not to distort it—for only the amplified transmission reaches its destination intact.
That evening at dinner, however, she must have told the story wrong, for the Freemantles did not find it amusing. Mr. Freemantle was annoyed that, without even trying, she had found someone to take her to the waterfalls, and even more annoyed that she had, to coin a phrase, “passed up the opportunity.” Mrs. Freemantle thought that Katherine should have refused to pay more than five lire for the excursion. It was important not to spoil the locals, or getting a fair price for anything would become impossible. She drew an enigmatic analogy to the feeding of wild animals. And the Freemantle boys were of the opinion that Giuseppe Carlo was a pervert, and took turns demonstrating on each other how best to beat up a guy like that.
The Freemantles were all in agreement on one point, that Katherine needed a chaperone. So the next day they took her to see the Colosseum, the Vatican, the Pantheon, and many famous churches and museums and monuments. The boys read to her descriptions of these attractions from their guidebooks, Mrs. Freemantle helped her to purchase postcards of them, and Mr. Freemantle took documentary photographs of her standing in front of them. The Freemantles kept her firmly on the beaten path, where the crowds were. They protected her from touts and vendors and taxi drivers by coldly ignoring everyone. They laughed indulgently at her unnecessary attempts to speak Italian, and showed her how easy it was to order coffee, or anything else, in English: you just shouted “coffee” repeatedly and stood your ground until it was served to you.
Katherine was grateful, as she was for any kindness, but she was also dissatisfied. She had already, she felt, exhausted the Freemantles’ peculiarities of appearance, mannerism, and speech in her letters home to Jeremy, and as guides they were showing her nothing new. She also felt guilty; she was afraid of bumping into Giuseppe Carlo, who had offered to take her to these places. In her memory, she, rather than Giuseppe Carlo, had been rude; and in her mind, she kept seeing him riding away in the taxi, looking back at her and shaking his head mournfully. The thought occurred to her that probably he had a large family to feed.
“Filthy, filthy,” Mrs. Freemantle was saying. “The way they crouch in the shade like dogs.” She let out a sigh like a shudder. “But I suppose one has a right to be filthy.”
This was too much for Katherine.
“He’s not a dog!” she spluttered. They all looked at her. “And … I think the language is lovely.”
Mr. and Mrs. Freemantle attributed this outburst to sunstroke, and quickly ushered her inside the nearest art museum, while the boys waited outside, splashing in a Bernini fountain with their shirts off. Mrs. Freemantle read aloud to Katherine the biographical and historical information from the placards beside the paintings, pausing to exult in the errors of spelling and grammar in the English text.
After an hour of this, Katherine quietly asked to be taken back to the albergo, where she drank a tall glass of water from the tap, then lay in bed, thinking.
The next morning, mistaking the first symptoms of dysentery for remorse, she set out to find Giuseppe Carlo and hire him to take her to the Malabria Waterfalls.
He did not understand what she wanted. Over the last three days he had taken her to see the Colosseum, the Vatican, the Pantheon, all the most popular churches and museums and monuments, but the Signorina Catarina was not satisfied by the best that Rome had to offer; she was not satisfied by anything. She just shook her head and frowned and delivered one of her harangues in that flat, nasal language of hers, sounding to him like a snoring squirrel. He could not imagine an uglier language—unless it was Spanish. Each time he reassured her, agreeing passionately with everything she said and swearing on his life that the next attraction would be better, but each time she was displeased. After three days of failure he began to wonder if perhaps some little misunderstanding had occurred. What exactly did the Signorina wish to see?
She told him again, and tried to show him: she waggled her fingers and stiffly raised and lowered her arms, like a zombie sprinkling fairy dust. Giuseppe Carlo nodded, slowly and gravely, to indicate his strong desire to understand—and, on a hunch, took the Signorina to see the Pope giving a benediction. She frowned and shook her head and tried again, this time letting her arms go loose and wriggling them in their descent. Giuseppe Carlo nodded slowly—and took her to the most expensive spaghetti restaurant in the city. The Signorina sighed and frowned throughout the meal. She tried again, this time slamming her splayed hands down on an imaginary keyboard and making a noise at the back of her throat like a large crowd’s cheers heard from afar. Giuseppe Carlo did not know any popular pianists, so he took her to a burlesque music hall. After the show, he translated and explained to her some of the best, most crude jokes, but she was not to be diverted. She tore a sheet of paper from her notebook and drew on it a picture of a girl with long flowing hair as seen from behind. Giuseppe Carlo, though beginning to enjoy this game, was more perplexed than ever. The Signorina wanted to buy a wig?
Finally Katherine resorted to her phrasebook, which unfortunately had no dictionary or index. So they sat on the edge of a fountain in the center of a cobblestoned piazza, and, with their heads nearly touching, while the gulls wheeled in the sky overhead like tourists on mopeds, they read the book from front to back.
In the process, they learned a few things. Katherine learned that Giuseppe Carlo was well, thank you; he learned her phone number. She learned that he liked the weather today; he learned that she spoke only a little Italian. She learned that he was thirty-seven; he that she was thirty-four. She learned that he had two siblings; he that she had none. He learned that she was from America; she that he was from Florence. He learned that her middle name was Florence; she that his was Antonio—or Marcello—or possibly Fernando. She had indigestion; he had a toothache. He was divorced; she was married. (He said that this didn’t matter to him. She said, “Huh?”) He was a mechanic (when he was not being a guide, presumably); she was a writer. “What write?” he asked eagerly, with the unqualified interest of the aliterate. Like every novelist, she found this a difficult question to answer. She felt like a painter being asked what colors she painted with; she believed that she used the entire palette. Finally she said, “Life—la vita”—and for once was grateful for the excuse of the language barrier.
They laughed and asked each other silly, stilted questions about stamps, trains, and passports. Then, on the last page of the book, Katherine found the very phrase she was searching for.
“Why will you not take me to the Malabria Waterfalls?” she asked in Italian.
Giuseppe Carlo clapped his hands, grinned, nodded, and sighed as if hearing his own feelings perfectly expressed by beautiful music. “Ah!” he cried. “Water fall!”
“Yes!”
“Yes
! Not possible! Water fall is close!”
“No!” said Katherine. “Not closed! Open! You said so yourself, three days ago.”
He nodded and shook his head rhythmically, as if conducting an orchestra with it, and repeated, with complete satisfaction, that that part of the country was indeed temporarily off-limits. “Very danger.”
This information, however, did not satisfy the Signorina. She shouted and pointed at him and stamped her feet; then she became very quiet and still—only her chin quivered with resentment. His heart gasped. These American women were so feisty!
“Okay,” he said at last, looking into her eyes. “We go.”
They could not go immediately, however; the trains were not well at the moment. Their health had not improved by the following day, or the next. Katherine reminded him of his cousin’s truck, and he was fulsome in his praise of her memory. The foredoomed search for his cousin, who did not exist outside his imagination, provided the excuse for further delay. In the meantime, Giuseppe Carlo wooed her savagely, plying her with seven or eight expensive and therefore romantic meals a day. Although the Signorina scrupulously insisted on paying half, he soon ran out of funds, and finally had to resort to feeding her at home or at the homes of friends. His shame, however, was allayed by her evident enjoyment of these visits. He could not understand it, but she looked around his mother’s dirty kitchen like it was the Sistine Chapel, taking pictures with her eyes and sometimes with her pen.
His mother explained it to him: Writers write when they are happy, just as mechanics destroy automobiles when they are happy. “She likes you.”