The Other Language(74)
There were things that suddenly caught her attention. Everywhere she looked now, wandering around the aisles of a supermarket, or on the Q train coming back from work, she noticed things that suggested another observation, another idea. The book was like a magnet that attracted the tiniest particle. Everything, no matter how small, stuck. She took brief notes on a Moleskine she tucked in her pocket. The notes sounded like a secret code, but she knew what they meant and she would decipher them later on, once at home: “gutting fish,” “what’s inside a chicken?,” “lack of frontier.”
A word about dairy. Our milk goes bad in five days. Mozzarella, ricotta? You have to eat it the same day. Forty-eight more hours and the cheese tastes like yogurt. We don’t mind about the bacteria that the FDA army has ordered killed in every dairy product sold on American soil. That bacteria boosts our immune systems and no American tourist visiting Rome, Venice or Florence has ever contracted salmonella from a cappuccino or a caprese salad. It’s a celebration and a ritual to buy something that will spoil in one day, knowing we are eating it only a few hours after it was made.
On the same note: every Italian knows how to gut a fish under the faucet and clean it, how to pull the gizzards out of a chicken, how to tell liver from brains or kidneys, tail from tongue in the butcher’s display. Feathers, blood, entrails, everything that is part of an animal is still visible and tangible, and that means we are still in touch with natural elements at least to a certain degree, whereas in America most children can still barely grasp the connection between a steak and the animal it comes from.
She was slowly gaining confidence. Her writing had become more fluid, more agile. It was like a muscle that stretched and gained speed. Dared she admit, even to herself, that a book like this could have a voice? And that she was actually beginning to find it? Now and again she threw in a funny line, a little humorous spark. She was getting bolder. One day, as she was having coffee with her colleagues before class, she mentioned that she was writing something. It felt good to come out and say it, as it would make her work real and stop her from treating it like a hobby, a secret pastime. There were words of approval along with a few patronizing smiles. When one of her colleagues asked whether she had a publisher, she laughed. It’s an experiment, I’m just having fun with it, she said breezily. Later, on the train back home, one of the teachers—Clelia, a sad woman from Pisa who had married an Iranian in New Jersey and then had had a tragic divorce—asked her what her book was about. She answered vaguely, afraid that Clelia, with her thick glasses and old-fashioned clothes, might think she was making fun of her, that she might be making caricatures out of all of them—a bunch of Italians who still spoke English with thick accents, small people who lived in small apartments, who didn’t have the glamour of the fashion designers, the visual artists or the famous architects who’d made their country such a salable commodity.
She went home that night and decided it was time to do something about the huge pile of laundry that had amassed over the kitchen table. Laundry was something she had always tended to postpone, as she found the whole procedure boring and unpleasant. She took the elevator down to the basement, and started loading the washing machine. Under the tremulous fluorescent light in that dark space she realized why doing the laundry in the city could be such a depressing chore.
The dryer.
We, as a people, are against it: no Italian possesses one. Dryers are the only bit of American culture that we still firmly and unanimously resist. We dry our sheets, towels, shirts, T-shirts, etc., on a clothesline, letting wind and sun take care of them. We still believe in the power of natural heat and we love the smell of bedsheets dried on a sunny, windy day. In any Italian city, you’ll see our garments hanging on a line outside our windows, balconies, roofs or strung across an alley. We don’t mind, we actually love the sight of our underwear flapping in the wind. Our eyes have gotten used to it, it’s part of the landscape; tourists love to take pictures of it, they think hanging laundry is quintessentially Italian, the way it dots the landscape in bright colors. Sometimes their photos appear on Instagram or on Flickr, or as a lovely postcard, and we think that’s quite sweet—our underwear, socks and panties have become a work of art!
There’s another advantage that comes with hanging laundry on a line. Not only do we save energy, but our clothes don’t get floppy and slack like they do in America because of that killer dryer spin that—it is common knowledge—destroys the weave of any fiber. Can’t you see how dead and stale your socks and T-shirts, blouses and pants, feel on your skin after just a couple of spins? That floppiness soon translates into slovenliness, and before you know it you’ll look like a slob if you don’t run out and buy something new.
Part of what is internationally known as “Italian style” is simply a sense of crispness, which derives from the wind and sun that rejuvenates the very fabrics we wear. What I’m talking about is something deep and archaic, linked with a ritual that has been performed for millennia. To hang your clothes out to dry in the sun as opposed to throwing them inside the belly of a metal monster in the depths of your dark basement is a drastically different choice. If you agree that the world is made up of billions of particles aggregating in different shapes and forms, then you’ll see what I mean when I say that dryers not only kill clothes but tamper with your energy and charisma.
A student of hers, a young corporate lawyer in love with Tuscany and its cypresses, asked her for private tutoring. They met twice a week in a coffee shop in Midtown near his office and had conversations over his lunch break. They always ordered a scoop of tuna and potato salad on a bed of lettuce and he insisted on paying the bill. It was awkward at first (having these dates with a complete stranger and being paid twenty dollars an hour in order to make small talk?) and she worried she might have nothing to say. Because the man was mildly attractive she felt shy around him and for both reasons early in the week she’d start making a list of possible subjects, in order to arrive prepared. The conversation languished at first, they struggled, pretending to be interested in the bland topics she’d picked—the weather, summer holidays, and, of course, favorite foods—then they became more comfortable with each other as the weeks went by and they began to talk about films they’d seen, music they loved, TV series they watched. One day he told her about a show in an art gallery in Chelsea he’d read about and asked her if she’d like to go with him on the weekend. They could do their lesson in motion and speak about art. She said yes, that would be a really good idea. Then he said he liked her style. What style? she asked, feeling her cheeks redden. I don’t know. The things you wear.