The Other Language(7)
That summer forever marked the moment when she swam all the way to the island and landed in a place where she could be different from whom she assumed she was. There were so many possibilities. She didn’t know what she was getting away from, but the other language was the boat she fled on.
It turned out that Jack and David longed for company too, and an Italian girl their age was probably an equally exotic novelty for them. David, the older of the two, had deep blue eyes, lighter hair and the look of a melancholic troubadour. He told her she should listen to the Rolling Stones instead of the Beatles and twisted his lips when she quoted from Blue. He asked her whether she liked Pink Floyd, the Doors, Frank Zappa or Led Zeppelin. Emma nodded but didn’t make any specific comment, not wanting to reveal what a beginner she was in terms of rock bands. Jack, the dark-haired one who had spoken to her the previous summer in Kastraki, seemed in awe of his older brother and waited for him to end the interrogation, nodding from time to time. When David was finished, Jack stepped forward and without any preamble asked her whether she’d like to follow them home for tea.
Inside the villa, things were scattered all over the place without logic, as if by a tornado. The kitchen table was covered with breakfast leftovers, potted plants, gardening utensils, masks and flippers, wet swimsuits, baskets filled with tomatoes and onions and stale bread, piles of magazines and newspapers. On the floor there were tools, the wheel of a bicycle, a huge carton concealing a mysterious appliance. An English pop song blared cheesily from a small stereo, and a diffused smell of burned garlic hovered in the air.
The boys’ mother walked into the kitchen barefoot and bra-less, wrapped in a floral tunic. She had a pyramid of frizzy hair, a shining halo of gold. She stroked Jack’s curls, introduced herself as Penny and asked Emma whether she was going to join the boys for tea.
“Peter, come meet lovely Emma!” she sang to her husband.
A balding man with a paunch and a deep tan, intent on digging a hole in the backyard, waved his hand with a musical “Hallo there!”
Emma was impressed by their ease. Nobody seemed to mind or even notice the mayhem, as if this was simply their habitual standard of life.
The boys took Emma to their room—more clothes and wet towels rolled up on the floor—and put a Frank Zappa LP on a small record player full blast, overpowering their parents’ music from the next room. They made Emma listen in religious silence, scanning her face for a reaction. David laughed when she said she wanted to learn how to play the guitar.
“Why you laugh?” she asked.
David blurted out something unintelligible.
“Because you said gheè-tahr.” Jack repeated for her, slowing down the words, his dark eyes holding hers.
“It’s ‘guitar.’ Try,” David said.
She tried a few times, wishing she had never pronounced that word. The feeling of those ungovernable sounds sliding and slushing out of control between palate, teeth and tongue embarrassed her.
“I can’t,” she pleaded.
“It’s okay,” David said. “I like your Italian accent.”
His remark displeased her, because she had no idea she had an accent, and figured it probably made her sound stupid.
“It’s very cool, actually,” Jack added with sudden fervor and smiled at her. Emma blushed, unprepared as she was to receive a compliment from him. It was such a surprise to feel that he could find her interesting.
Then Penny called from the kitchen in a soprano voice and made room on the table for a teapot, toast and butter. Emma looked at a small round jar filled with a dark brown, sticky-looking substance.
“What is this?”
“You don’t know Marmite?” Jack asked, incredulous.
Penny turned from the sink, where she was busy washing something.
“Jack darling, Marmite is a British peculiarity, mostly ignored by the rest of world.”
She came to the table and swiftly spread butter and the brown sticky stuff on a piece of burned toast. She handed it to Emma.
“Here, my love, try your first Marmite sandwich and make a wish.”
Emma bit into it with her eyes closed. The taste was so different from anything she’d ever tried before. The sticky, salty substance married the bitter taste of black tea deliciously. She made her wish. If Peter died of a sudden heart attack, then her father could marry Penny and their life would be filled with pop songs in the kitchen, colorful hippie clothes, Marmite sandwiches and more words in English.
Walking back on the beach toward Iorgo’s, Emma practiced saying the word guitar, repeating it again and again all the way there. Just like a fugitive in a detective story, who needed to erase any trace of his past before getting caught, it was imperative to get rid of any trace of accent for her transformation to be complete. The visit to the boys’ house, the way she’d felt at ease with their parents, understanding every word of their conversation, had made her extremely proud of herself and excited. She had stepped through a curtain into another realm, a wide, mysterious landscape that she had only begun to explore.
Her father, Luca and Monica were already sitting at their usual table under the string of tiny lightbulbs with Mirella next to her father wearing a blank canvas face and absent smile.
“Papà said we didn’t have to wait for you. We ordered our food already,” Monica said emphatically, as if this were some kind of privilege their father had just bestowed on her and Luca.