The Other Language(73)

Whenever she walked along the streets of Manhattan, she looked at all the different faces coming toward her and, despite their different features and colors, she regarded them all as Americans. None of them seemed a stranger to the city. How at ease they looked on the train, underneath their books, Kindles, iPods and iPads, at the wheel of the taxi, behind the counter of the coffee shop, at the gym or inside the beauty parlor! On the other hand, she, even after all these years, still felt self-conscious, afraid of making a faux pas. She came to feel that this was the inherent condition of anybody unmoored from the familiar, and living in a place that is home to others.

And yet here was a riddle she couldn’t figure out: Why did that look of disorientation and vulnerability she knew was stamped on her face seem invisible on everyone else’s?



That day in the park, sitting on a bench under the trees bursting with their promise of bloom, she felt a breeze of optimism caress her face.

All right, she thought, like those birds building a nest, I’m going to start something new.

Maybe, in the early hours of the morning, before going to work, she could try to jot down the introduction to the book she’d been thinking about for months. Her plan was still nebulous but at least she had a good title. It said it all, and though she had forgotten a lot of the rules she had learned at the creative writing course, what if she just followed her instinct and started from that?

Italians are always described as warm, stylish, fun, passionate, charming, life-loving people. What is their secret?

How do they manage to look always so groomed and elegant even when they can’t afford to buy expensive clothes? How is it possible that the most desolate trattoria on the back road of a nondescript town will serve you the best dish you’ve had in years? And how can Italians appear so confident and full of life despite the fact they live in one of the most malfunctioning countries, run by the Mafia and corrupt, shifty politicians, a country basically going bankrupt? So why, despite these failings, do Italians come across as positive, gregarious, always ready to laugh? This book is going to teach you how to make your life more enjoyable, how to gain confidence, taste and charm—without trying too hard. Nonchalance is the key factor: the less you try, the easier it will be to feel as stylish and charismatic as the Italians are, deep down in their skin. The secret is very simple. It’s called the Italian System.





She set the alarm for seven and wrote every morning till lunchtime, as she had planned. She usually reached the school by five. Let’s Speak Italian was located in a small town house on the Upper East Side; it was sparsely furnished with folding metal chairs, Formica desks and cheaply framed photographs of famous Italian monuments and movie stars. Her classes started at five thirty—she taught evening classes to people who mostly had full-time jobs—but she liked to get there early, take time to look at the students’ papers and have a cup of coffee with some of her colleagues. To be teaching Italian in a school, surrounded by other Italians who had the same poorly paid part-time jobs—some of them had come to New York because of a marriage, others had had higher literary ambitions that failed—only enhanced her feeling of being trapped inside a circle of outsiders. All her students spoke with terrible accents and hated the congiuntivo and the condizionale; they were either coming to the school because of their line of work—fashion, wine, travel—or were affluent retirees who liked the idea of being able to engage with the locals on their next Italian holiday. And it was for their sake that she felt she was supposed to retain all of her Italianness while at work. Her students loved her accent, the way she moved her hands and certain grammatical mistakes she still made when speaking in English. The act of writing the book not only partly relieved her of the frustration she’d begun to feel, but also let her put that feeling of otherness to use, make something positive, anchoring, out of it.

For the very first time she was able to isolate small details that shone like jewels among the ruins, the corruption, the vulgarity of her country of origin. So many immigrants are embarrassed by the place they come from, she thought, it’s probably inevitable. After all, it has to be a love-hate relationship. Without the hate there would be no voyage.



Memories from her childhood started to come up like gnocchi in boiling water, at the most unexpected moments. Food always came up first, for her.

Stop being afraid of calories, they are not your real enemies. The problem is not the pasta, pizza, or your cornetto and cappuccino. It’s not the carbs that will make you fat, but the complications that are the essence of the American meal. Just think of the endless layers that form a hamburger: bread, mustard, cheese, bacon, meat, onion, pickle, ketchup. Why so many ingredients in one dish? What’s the point of such a crazy medley?

The first time I checked the list of flavors inside an ice cream parlor in America my head spun. All I wanted was chocolate. But I was forced to choose between chocolate–chocolate chip, caramel-chocolate-pecan, double chocolate chip–walnut cookie, triple choc-fudge-pecan-walnut and choco-choco-superdark-almond-caramel-crunch. In Italy we grew up with chocolate, hazelnut, coffee, cream and vanilla. In the fruit department we had only lemon and strawberry. In the early days, that was it and we were quite content. These simple, straightforward flavors were superbly executed and delicious. They were like clothes in solid colors as opposed to some mad flowery psychedelic pattern.