Glimpse - Your Stories from Abroad

My mother once told me the story of her trip to Florence when she was my age. Speaking no Italian, she was often forced to resort to gestures to communicate with the locals. One day, in need of an egg, she entered a grocery store, flapped her arms, clucked, and held her hands together in the shape of an "O." The store attendant nodded his head, disappeared into the back room, and emerged moments later with a chicken stock cube.

Throughout my six-month stay in Italy, I had been plagued by a sensation that I was in exactly the same situation as my mother—always getting the stock cube, never the egg. After only a year of classes, my Italian was not good enough to allow me to speak easily with the locals. Like my mother, I often found myself gesturing more than speaking, as though trapped in some infinitely drawn-out game of charades.

I was plagued by periods of deep sadness. No one knew what to do with me. A fellow student suggested I take a day trip to Florence. My teacher took me to an art exhibit. The director of the program gave me a bus pass. Despite countless visits to museums filled with beautiful artwork (and unlimited free bus rides), I continued to act ridiculous: complaining to the directors, crying to my teachers. And they, in turn, took me to more art exhibits. But I wanted something more alive. I wanted an egg.

“Sei Americana?” I heard a husky voice drawl behind me as I crossed the piazza, away from the pay phone where I had just told my parents about my deepening depression. “I would like to learn to speak English. We will be conversation partners?”  

This is how I met Enzo. Though he wasn’t much older than 30, his face was already creased with harsh lines. Much of his hair was gone. He spoke in a rather high-pitched, raspy drawl. Because he was from Sicily, he talked (and looked) much like Hollywood’s portrayal of a mafia hitman.

Enzo soon proved himself infinitely more interested in laughing at my Italian than in trying to speak English. We spoke exclusively in Italian that day, as he led me toward a little café. Our conversation was made more interesting by my pocket Italian-English dictionary, which I never failed to misread (often saying the Italian translation for the word above or below the one I wanted). Enzo told me about his work at the local high school. I told him about my stay in Italy, my struggles with the language, and the advice my parents had offered me. On the phone, my mother had suggested that I set a goal or task for myself every morning.

“My parents want me to have a goat for every day,” I explained, looking up from my dictionary.

Enzo took a drag from his cigarette. “That,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “is a lot of goats.”

His mouth twitched a little, and I began to suspect that he was laughing at me. It was impossible to guess what he was thinking under those easy Italian manners. I was still having a little trouble trusting Enzo. Beyond my fundamental mistrust of unknown men I encounter in public parks, I was thrown off by his husky drawl and Sicilian mannerisms. I constantly expected to spot a human arm poking out of his bag or to witness him slipping some money into the hand of a passing stranger.

Enzo took a lazy pull off his cigarette and looked down at the bill, which the waitress had just set on the table. I reached toward my purse, but he extended a restraining hand. Here comes the part where he pays for my hot chocolate with a 500-euro note, I thought to myself, watching him search through his bag. Instead, he placed exactly the right amount of change on the table.

The next time we met, Enzo offered to help me with my homework, which was to write a fairytale in Italian.

“Cinderella,” Enzo rasped, abstractedly blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke across the piazza, “was a very ugly girl.”

“No, no,” I objected. The prospects were not looking very good. I was in the middle of explaining, in extremely broken Italian, that Cinderella was persecuted by her evil stepfamily when we were joined by Enzo’s friend, Enzo.

“We are writing the story of Cinderella,” explained Enzo #1.

“Ah yes, the girl with the glass slipper.”

“Yes, that’s it!” I said, still digesting the idea that more than one person could have a name like Enzo. But I was pleased that this Enzo seemed to be better versed in fairytales than his friend.

“The ugly one,” Enzo #1 chimed in.

“Yes, the ugly one who lived with the evil stepfather.” Enzo #2 began to pace.

“And the evil stepfather,” Enzo #1 said, lazily leaning forward to tap his cigarette, “looked in the mirror every day and asked who was the prettiest of them all.”

Over the course of the next two hours, the Enzos told the tale of Cinderella/Snow White/Pinocchio (Cinderella was courted by a puppet). Between a limited Italian vocabulary and crippling fits of laughter, I did not manage to contribute much to the story. I left the piazza that afternoon with a new feeling of well-being in my heart and an absolutely awful fairytale under my arm.

It is so easy to go through Italy, enjoying the art, and visiting the museums, while Italy and the Italians remain nothing more than a moving picture. Though Italian art and architecture is gorgeous, it isn't alive. At least not in the same way that Enzo was alive, sitting across the table from me in the café. Visiting Italy without visiting a museum would be a shame, but no less so than visiting Italy and failing to meet an Italian.

During our next meeting, I told Enzo about my teacher’s comments on our Italian fairytale: “Energetic and full of life, if a little unorthodox.” Enzo smiled and placed a little box in front of me.

I opened the box. “A paperweight,” I exclaimed, surprised. That night, walking home from the piazza, clutching my smooth round gift in my hand, I began to believe I had found my egg.