First Lessons

On Sunday morning the girls from downstairs tap politely at our door. They understand that to ring the doorbell would throw me into a frenzy—I’ve already learned, by experience, that the buzz requires immediate action through the intercom. Someone is either standing outside the front gate and wants to be buzzed in, or is outside the main door to the building, or is standing just outside my door—which is most alarming since it requires a verbal exchange in a language unknown to me. The bell-ringer might just be the mailwoman who needs to collect money before she can hand over an envelope addressed from home. (This is a very mysterious Italian tax—a thousand or two thousand lire charged for a small parcel that is sent, fully paid, from the USA.)

The mailwoman (she’s about twenty years old) rides up to the gate on a bicycle with a big leather pouch on the front and props the bike against the fence. Then she apparently buzzes someone (or everyone) in order to get into the building. To all buzzes one must reply “Prego!” or “Sì!” followed by “Un momento, scendo” which means someone is coming down (with money!).

The neighbor girls (in truth they are young women, but to me they seem like girls) come in and seat themselves (in their blue jeans and snug T-shirts) on the flowered sheets that cover the torn couch and chairs in our living room. Patty, who first introduced herself as a “corn-fed farm girl,” does look beautifully healthy, with her fair skin, pink cheeks, and red hair put up in a swirl with a barrette. Maria has a dark-skinned South American beauty; she looks at us out of her large dark eyes and swings her long black hair out of her face. Neither of them wears makeup. Neither, just now, is wearing shoes.

They want to know if they can help us in any way and the truth is they also have a favor to ask. Could they please, later today “borrow our roof terrace” to study? Paola, from whom they rent their room, is at home today. She chain-smokes, has three cats, and though she’s very nice to them they are desperate for some space and air. Paola supplements her work as a night clerk in a hotel by renting her one bedroom to foreign students during the school season. During that time, she sleeps on her living room couch. Though she usually works at night and sleeps all day, on Sundays she likes to do cleaning and listen to opera.

Patty says, “Paola is so good to us, she cooks us the most immense meals, every single night! There’s always the primo, a huge bowl of pasta, and then the secondo, some fried cutlet or sausage or pork chop, and mashed potatoes with butter, and peas, always peas. I’ve gained a ton since I’m here. I mean, my regular diet used to be grains and fruit and salad—and here it’s all cheese and olive oil.”

Maria smiles softly, eyes downcast. “You don’t have to eat it all,” she reminds Patty.

“Oh, but then Paola gets insulted. ‘You don’t like my cooking?’ she asks.”

“Are you bothered by the mosquitoes?” I inquire.

“Oh, you just ignore them,” Patty says. “They don’t like me anyway.”

“They eat me up alive,” Maria confesses. “But Paola lights the poison every night and leaves the windows open.”

Joe spreads the city map on the table map and asks the girls if they can show us how to get into town. Maria and Patty, using a red pen, outline the route Joe will take to the school, showing him where he must catch the #14 bus on Via Aretina, just near the Conad supermarket, and where, on Via Ghibellina, he must wait to take it home again. Anytime we are in the city, we can always get our bus at the Santa Maria Novella train station, or at the Duomo—being sure that it goes toward “Bellariva” which is our neighborhood. They trace a line from the stop where Joe must get off the bus (just after it turns off Via dell’Agnolo), to where he must walk south toward the river, passing Santa Croce on the left, crossing the river at Ponte alle Grazie, walking a block to Via dei Bardi where he will come to the Scuola Dante Alighieri.

This seems a bit much to take in all at once. The girls also make us a “must-see” list: La Specola, the museum where there are full size, human wax forms featuring medical abnormalities, the Browning house, where Elizabeth wrote her poetry (but open only on Wednesday and Friday afternoons, after 3 PM), the Uffizi, where the great Botticellis reside, the Mercato Centrale, which has the greatest food displays in all of Firenze, and of course we must not miss the Baptistry doors, the Medici Chapels, the Bargello, the Accademia, the Buonarroti House with Michelangelo’s sculptures…and then there are the best places to eat…pesto, pizza, gelato.

Joe laughs and holds up his hand. “I think that’s all we can remember for now.”

In the afternoon, the girls knock on the door again, this time wearing sunglasses, shorts, and bearing beach chairs, Walkman radios, books, and paper. They clank and bang their way up the spiral staircase, laughing at the weird music the chair legs make on the metal railings.

We wish them happy studying, and then Joe and I leave to go for a walk along the river.

The Arno is muddy in color, but—as it flows from the east and cascades toward the city—it glitters silvery in the sun. We gaze toward the Duomo from the bridge where the autostrada to the south begins, and just below us we see a rainbow of weekend fishermen who line both sides of the riverbank below the road where they have parked their cars. There must be a hundred of them, men in bright T-shirts sitting on plastic stools under red and blue umbrellas. They seem to be using segmented bamboo fishing poles perhaps twenty feet long. As we stand and watch, one fisherman pulls in a catch—a large convulsing fish—which he dumps triumphantly into a plastic tub filled with water. The men nearby look on with envy.

Descending some steps from the bridge, Joe and I walk along the river’s edge, past a sign that reads “Orto del Cigno” (Garden of the Swan) that displays a menu, both for the trattoria and the pizzeria.

“We’ll come here for dinner one night,” Joe says. He squeezes my hand and we walk along, eyes open to the newness of it all, taking in each sight like children let loose in a new place. Somewhere on the path, out of sight of the fisherman on the bank below us, we stop in the middle of the road and kiss. I am gratified that not only the young can be in love in Italy.