The Other Language(75)

Let me tell you about my mother.

Her number one rule is “meglio morta che in pigiama” (better dead than in pj’s). That means that even if she has nowhere to go and no one to see, half an hour after waking up, she’ll be coiffed, dressed, lipsticked, in sheer stockings and patent leather shoes, a dot of perfume dabbed on each wrist. In my entire life I’ve never seen my mother in slippers, or what some people call a housedress or a nightie, past 8 a.m. I am not talking about a grand dame, but an ordinary housewife in her late sixties living off her dead husband’s meager pension. What she wears are tweed skirts and low pumps bought twenty or thirty years ago that—according to her—never went out of fashion. And although they certainly did, if your average Americans were to see my mother walking with her shopping bag out for groceries on a side street of the centro storico wearing her old-fashioned dark glasses and cultured pearls, they would ask each other, “How do Italians manage to always be so chic? Just take a look at that old lady across the street.” The recipient of this compliment would be wearing an ensemble worth no more than twenty-five euros max in a vintage store, one that any American would have thrown out fifteen years earlier. Italian style is not a matter of designers or labels or fashion, it’s a question of details—of a certain formality. It’s not so much about what we wear as what we don’t. You’ll never see an adult Italian walking around in shorts other than at the beach, or wearing a baseball cap. Sneakers made a brief appearance in the eighties, flip-flops are a no-no footwear other than at the beach or the spa. For Italians, comfort is not a value and has never been aspiration. Good construction comes with constriction, and we are perfectly used to being uncomfortable in our ingeniously tailored clothes. In Rome the only people in shorts, baggy T-shirts and baseball hats are the flocks of tourists wandering between the Forum and the Colosseum. They seem to be completely unaware of the fact that they look like slobs, especially when they are over sixty years old, dressed like fat teenagers. My grandfather wore hats and jackets till the day he died. To think of him, even as a young man, in shorts and a baseball cap is not only inconceivable: it would be grotesque. I am convinced that having the image of your ancestors in hats and jackets embedded in your memory will translate into a bonus—i.e., it must and will affect your behavior and ultimately your self-confidence.



After the art show the corporate lawyer—his name was Matt—took her to dinner at an expensive Italian restaurant and after the first glass of wine they switched to English. They both relaxed and became their true selves now that they didn’t have to speak like five-year-olds in simplified Italian. Back in full control of the language, he made witty remarks about the artist and the people at the opening. He wasn’t wearing a suit like the ones she always saw him in, but jeans and an untucked checked flannel shirt. They both ordered linguine with shrimp and asparagus, and he said it was a relief to eat with someone who wasn’t just going to have a salad with dressing on the side, and that he liked the way Italian women seemed to worry less about eating, drinking and smoking than their American counterparts. She took the cue and they both went outside for a cigarette after dessert. She told him she was writing a book called The Italian System. He momentarily switched back to Italian and asked, “Cosa parla il libro?” She corrected him: “Di cosa parla il libro?” Of what does the book talk about? They both agreed that it was funny the way, in Italian, a book “talked” about itself. Matt walked her home and as he said goodbye he told her his firm had done legal work for a publishing company some time ago and he could talk to some people about her idea if she wished.



Matt the lawyer never came back to her with news from the publishing company. Actually, after their date at the art show, he disappeared and there were no more lunches at the coffee shop. She didn’t care. She didn’t even bother to spend any time worrying about what might have gone wrong, whether he had found her dull or, worse, delusional. She had more important things to think about now than flirting with a corporate lawyer. These days on the train to work she listened to audiobooks. She liked the isolation that shielded her from the rest of the commuters. She avidly listened to the writers’ prose with a different, more intimate attention, no longer merely as a reader, more like someone intent on stealing technique. She singled out adjectives and phrases and rushed to scribble them down in her notebook; random words ended up in her net like tiny prey that she meant to free at home, once in front of the computer. She was busy, she had a mission to complete.

Did you know that in Italian there is no word for wilderness? The only possible way to translate it is “natura,” even though nature can be peaceful, tamed, a pastoral dream. From time immemorial—due to its shape and history—very little of the territory of Italy has remained unpopulated, uncultivated, undomesticated. During Augustus’s reign, Rome already had a population of one million people, the whole country was a maze of paved roads that connected north to south, east to west, that went over mountains and rivers. Everyone was connected; ours has always been an unthreatening, user-friendly landscape. A small country, as lovely in its details as a miniature. We had no tundra, no black forest, no savanna, no desert, no endless plains or prairies to cross or wade through. We had palaces, libraries, theaters, spas, aqueducts, silks and jewels, people bought food at the market during the same era that—in most parts of the planet—men still had to go hunting in the woods with bows and arrows to get their dinner.