Un Amico Italiano

We saw a lot of each other, even though she organized her days meticulously: breakfast, writing, lunch, Italian lessons, dinner, and touring Rome. When my work took me to her neighborhood, I’d text her to see if she was around, and if so we’d meet somewhere, even if it was only to grab a quick bite or an espresso.

It was during one of these quick get-togethers that Liz amazed me yet again. In a shy but determined manner, she asked me if sometime, by any chance, I’d mind taking her . . . to the stadium! Of course, I was honored by the request, and the idea of recruiting a new American Lazio fan certainly filled me with pride.

The first opportunity that presented itself was a midweek UEFA Champions League game, and I seized it immediately. I informed my stadium buddies Alessandro and Paolo that we’d have an extra ally and supporter that evening, and I bought us tickets for S.S. Lazio vs. A.C. Sparta Prague.

There’s always a nice sense of excitement at Champions League games. I was thrilled because it was an important game and Liz would have a chance to see it. Once we got to our seats, I introduced her to Alessandro and Paolo. Then I wrapped a Lazio scarf around her neck and we sat down, waiting for the two teams to come out onto the field, to the tune of their respective national anthems.

The stadium was packed, and the colors and choruses of cheers and songs created a very remarkable climate. I could see that Liz was intrigued, and from the corner of my eye I checked to see whether she was comfortable. The referee whistled the start of play. We “historic” fans were pretty relaxed because, in that period, S.S. Lazio was definitely a stronger team than A.C. Sparta Prague. The game began with Lazio on offense, cheered on vigorously by the fans, but as so often happens in soccer, the unexpected occurred. Before twenty minutes of play was up, Prague was ahead by not one but two goals. I’d hoped Liz would have a very different baptism as a Lazio soccer fan. I’d been hoping for a splendid victory, a succession of goals for us. A celebration. Instead it was turning into a soccer nightmare. I tried to keep my feelings to myself, but Liz could sense the tension, and she wisely decided not to say another word. Then, at halftime, she told me that she was sorry to see Lazio losing, and that she almost felt guilty about it. I tried to act optimistic, and told her that I was confident things would go differently in the second half, though I wasn’t really as sure as I claimed.

But that’s exactly what did happen. Ten minutes into the second half, we finally scored a goal, and the first roar of excitement from the Stadio Olimpico fans was more a release of anxiety than joy. The roar for the second goal, which meant a tie game, was deafening.

Now we were all much more relaxed. We even dared to hope, timidly, for a victory. Liz felt reassured—this marked the beginning of her game. Now she was ready to enjoy the show, which for her was less about the teams on the field and more about the fans in the bleachers.

The entire stadium had been waiting for that moment. Lazio supporters in the bleachers exchanged glances of complicity. It was clear something was about to happen. In the immense silence, the voice on the loudspeaker boomed out loud and clear: “For A.C. Sparta Prague, in substitution for the player Kincl, Gluscevic will now take the field.”

The entire stadium, us included, had held its breath until this exact moment. We could all finally empty our lungs and shout—as loud as our vocal cords were capable—those two wonderful words we’d kept in for so long, firing them deafeningly into the cool autumn air: “ ’Sti cazzi!!!”

Liz laughed out loud. She understood that something extraordinary had just happened, and she had clearly perceived that those two short words weren’t especially elegant. Now, greatly amused, she demanded an explanation of that choral masterpiece.

I explained to her that “ ’Sti cazzi!” is a distinctly Roman expression meaning, roughly, “Who the hell cares!,” though the actual words are “These dicks!” It was a way that die-hard supporters and fans have of intimidating new arrivals on the field, informing them in no uncertain terms that we’re not afraid of them. Of course, “ ’Sti cazzi!” works much better during Italian championship games, but believe me, even a non-Italian, hearing it shouted in unison by tens of thousands of fans standing in the bleachers, will get the message.

Finally being able to empty part of the tension that had built up while awaiting the tied score onto the head of the unfortunate Czech replacement player put most of the Lazio fans in a better mood. At that point we all felt free to express ourselves in whatever manner struck us at that moment. And that’s where the fun began.

Every Roman soccer fan, once in the stadium, lets himself go to verbal manifestations of all imaginable types and varieties during the thick of play. In reality, they frequently rise to the level of full-fledged monologues, charged with a kind of demented intensity and abounding in vivid vulgarities. Some of them truly are works of genius. Part of the allure of this free-form soccer poetry is that each and every exclamation is subject to the approval of your neighboring fellow fans. If a declaiming fan shouts and peppers his composition sufficiently with curse words and obscenities that are either well known or newly minted, the other fans will display their approval in the form of belly laughs, enthusiastic applause, or—frequently—new monologues in response.

I have to confess that this art is not limited to Lazio fans alone. Our cousins, the Roma fans—distant cousins and, as I should point out, really little more than guests in this city—know what they’re doing as well. Well, they’re in Rome, after all.

Of course, in the presence of this geyser of linguistic innovation, Liz was fascinated. People say that when you go to a foreign country, often the first thing you learn are the curse words and obscenities. She certainly was not about to miss the opportunity to take notes on that master class in Roman swear words. What’s more, she had a sharp ear for language and considerable talent in identifying and extrapolating from the general chorus all the worst exclamations.

Suddenly she had her inseparable notebook in hand. Of course, I was chosen to guide her through the curriculum of shockingly vulgar expressions. The course began with an explanation of the Italian word cazzo—“dick” or “cock”—which in its most literal meaning requires no particularly intricate translation or commentary. But my budding student wanted an explanation of the astonishing frequency of use of that particular word in the stadium setting. I explained that in spoken Italian it is an interjection, and a rather vulgar one, used throughout Italy, but with special intensity and generosity in Rome. Legend has it that many Romans use the word cazzo more or less as a comma in the construction of a sentence. Liz began to call it “the C-word.” Often the beloved noun is uttered at particular points in a conversation, in order to catch one’s breath, to emphasize a point, or to hammer home a concept that might otherwise fail to be made perfectly clear. Liz was delighted with my explanation. It was one more incentive for her to study her Italian. Or Roman.

I explained to her that the one sure way to learn to use swear words properly in Rome is practice, practice, practice. No better place than in Roman traffic, for example. One very important component? Imagination. She made notes on everything I told her. I had no doubt she was ready to graduate to the next level.

In any soccer game, the biggest and juiciest target for the exuberant fans is—and always will be—the referee. My new student, Liz, still had the “music” ringing in her ears that she had learned in Lazio Fandom 101, the first level of our intensive course, so she could hardly miss the insult that one particularly corpulent Lazio fan, a middle-aged gentleman, sent furiously sailing over our heads from ten rows back: “Testa di cazzo!” Recipient? The referee, of course.

Testa di cazzo—literally, “dick head”—is a fine masterpiece of linguistic cobbling. It’s an obscene epithet that is not only profoundly and intuitively offensive, but also provides the listener with a clear if grotesque image of the unfortunate recipient. I assured Liz that there are no frighteningly deformed mythological creatures matching that description lurking in the back alleys of modern Rome, and then went on to explain that this hot-blooded, highly colorful appellation is reserved for those whom Romans consider to be not only idiots, but also lacking in respect for their fellow man, and—most crucially—who wear their idiocy on their shoulders with an exasperating arrogance that really does suggest that there is something other than a thinking human head with a brain inside sticking out of their shirt collar.

The choral dispute over the referee’s various qualities was tossed back and forth from fan to fan, and moved on from the subject of his head to a considered analysis of his origins. Once one Lazio fan after another had pointed out that the referee’s no doubt now elderly mother probably still practiced an even older profession, the oldest profession on earth, the referee’s wife came in for a fair amount of discussion, with ample speculation on what she was doing right then and there, during the game—why, she was probably engaged in disreputable activities that were then listed in tireless detail . . . I was struggling to explain to Liz how and why the simple term “prostitute” could flower in Roman dialect into so many different forms—at least twenty, some rotund and amusing in their musicality, often expressed in elaborate and lavish paraphrases and variations—while others were blunt and deeply cutting in their crass vulgarity.

But the finest instance of musicality came with the next benediction—or malediction—perhaps the first true curse that every Italian child learns: “Vaffanculo!” A cleaned-up version of its meaning might be “Go take it in the ear.”

The debate arose not over the exact translation into English of this courteous invitation, which I imagine has a precise equivalent in almost every language on earth, but rather because Liz asked the strangest question I could ever imagine: “Luca, isn’t this curse word really four different curse words?”

What did she mean? I didn’t really understand her question. In Rome, there is no finer insult contained in a neat one-word package, no more complete and satisfying way to offend someone than with a straightforward vaffanculo , often accompanied by an arm extended to point the way. And where had this doubt arisen, this idea about splitting the fundamental curse word of Rome into four? Obviously from the powerful voice of another refrigerator-sized fan directly behind us, who was adding emphasis to his insult by breaking it into syllables: “Vaf-fan-cu-lo!”

Only a writer’s ear would be so finely tuned to words that it could pick up such a subtle nuance. It never would have dawned on me that you could tell someone to fuck themselves not with a single, solid vaffanculo but with four separate sub-vaffanculo particles. But that’s exactly how it had been on that occasion.

The stream of insults and unsavory insinuations proffered by the Lazio fans seemed like a bottomless cornucopia, ranging from the most wildly imaginative to the more sober and traditional. What did finally come to an end, though, was the match itself: 2–2. Lazio had tied the score, but I’m positive that that evening to Liz’s eyes it was the Lazio-cheering audience of fans who had won. As we walked out of the Stadio Olimpico I thanked my lucky stars that she had been spared the flower in the buttonhole of Roman curse words: mortacci tua, often pronounced as if it were a single word, even though it’s two distinct words: Mortaccitua!

The term is employed most often while driving, when you’re stuck in traffic or when someone cuts you off or any of a thousand other occasions occurs, but the stadium offers fertile terrain for its use as well. This expression, which is exclusively a product of Rome’s dialectal subculture, when translated into its literal meaning, is a deeply ugly term: it expresses the hope that the deceased ancestors (the mortacci) of the person you’re addressing, along with their everlasting souls, might burn in hell for eternity. It’s an insult with a particularly subtle sting, wouldn’t you say? But I should also point out that the expression is so widely used nowadays that people don’t even pay attention to the real meaning; in fact, you’ll even hear relatives say it to one another and they, necessarily, have the same array of ancestors who have passed over to the afterlife and to their just deserts.

In any case, I had luckily been spared that ordeal with Liz. I wasn’t sure that my pupil, brilliant and linguistically gifted though she might be, was ready for a full and proper understanding—and more important, the correct use—of mortacci tua.

We walked out of the stadium, laughing as we went over the material we’d studied, the linguistic masterpieces that had just been added to Liz’s vocabulary. It was really too late to go out to dinner, so I suggested to the group that we introduce our new friend to another exquisitely Roman custom: the late-night piping hot cornetto.

It’s a common occurrence around midnight, when you’ve been walking around town for hours with your friends and dinner is just a distant memory, rendered a little fuzzy perhaps by one or two glasses too many—that’s when your body needs starch. I personally am not crazy about sweets—I’d never trade a braided mozzarella or a cacciatorino salami for a slice of cake; for that matter, I wouldn’t trade Amtrak’s finest pepperoni pizza for a Popsicle. But a cornetto is a cornetto. Plain, with cream filling or chocolate filling, grande or mini, it’s always a satisfying treat. Especially after midnight, when the fatally alluring aroma of freshly baked pastries comes wafting down a dark street.

Once again, I was proud of how Liz acquitted herself. Whenever I took her out to eat, she never disappointed. She was just like me: she could eat and eat and never seemed to gain weight. Neither she nor I, as far as we knew, had tapeworms, though my family and friends have often theorized that this might be the reason I was able to eat, overeat, and then have a little more, without ever gaining a pound.