My friend Karla’s miniscule flat on via dei Bardi needs crowd control even when no one but she and her husband are standing in it. Still, New Year’s Eve at their place has been an annual tradition since the new millennium. More than a party, it’s a fire hazard. Far too close to midnight, Daniele lights the real candles on their suffocated Christmas tree. The worried guests turn purple from holding their breath. Some fear blowing the candles out. Some fear setting the curtains on fire. I fear both. Karla is scared of neither. She’s used to it. Besides, she says, the shower head can reach the sitting room simply by opening the bathroom door. Also, Tuscans are so seldom sentimental that when Daniele’s in the mood to be mushy, she doesn’t want to hinder him. Karla only reminds him that ‘Christmas is over’ if he gets an inkling to enhance the candle-lighting ceremony with the Italian version of White Christmas—which, as you know, has Bing Crosby turning in his grave at the gravity of it.
This year’s gang included four mixed-marriage couples and a sprinkling of ‘singles’ from a patchwork of countries. Once people were breathing again, we could have used a British bobby to keep the guests in check. More than one Italian husband got very nearly trampled when Karla set out a bowl of homemade Chex Party Mix, the likes of which had never before been served on Italian soil. It’s a snack where spicy cereal meets the peanut and the pretzel—but from all the grabbing going on, you would have thought we were children left to climb on Santa’s sleigh. I was as pleased as anyone.
‘Sul serio? Chex? Ma, where did you get them?’
‘During un viaggio al grocery store at the U.S. base militare in Pisa,’ Karla explained.
‘Cool!’
Daniele was amused at our enthusiasm. ‘Già. Cereal is a side benefit of NATO support, non lo sapevate?’
To some, this last comment may be even more puzzling than the snack itself. Don’t mind it. Daniele is smart enough to perceive the link between cereal and politics. Happily, I am not. All I am capable of seeing is that my hosts suffer from the same bilingual syndrome that clouds my own conversations, whether I’m talking to myself or to others. In fact, the majority of that night’s guests would do well to adopt my very same resolution for 2016: to re-educate the brain and stop switching languages midway through a sentence. For those who are not expats, it’s an exasperating game.
‘Do the two of you always speak metà in inglese, metà in italiano?’ I wanted to know.
‘Certo,’ Daniele answered. ‘A marriage needs more than one language to last.’
‘I think we’d get along ancora meglio if we knew three,’ Karla agreed.
‘No. We’d get along better, if you knew three. Then I wouldn’t get into trouble for tuning out the third one.’
Karla and I joined Daniele’s chuckle and the whole group was soon in on our discussion, partly because the crowd around the coffee table had grown and partly because it’s good to avoid controversy while awaiting the new year. Everyone could agree that some things just sound better in one language or don’t exactly exist in the other. It is a truth universally accepted. Even the word ‘expat’ proves it. Though espatriare has wedged its way into the dictionary, the Italian verb has none of the Hemingway-watching-bull-fights appeal of its English counterpart.
‘So why is there no real word for “expat” in Italian,’ I asked.
Daniele shrugged. ‘We don’t need it. An expat is someone who voluntarily leaves his home country. No one voluntarily leaves Italy.’
I smiled. He might not be right, but he wasn’t wrong either.
In any case, the conversation led to more existential questions. ‘Why have Italians never imported the win-win combination of chocolate and peanut butter?’ ‘Why do English speakers say “the best thing since sliced bread” when everyone knows that’s the worst kind?’ And what’s with the lyrics of Bianco Natale? Honestly—who had the courage to come up a verse like ‘E’ Natale non soffrire più’ as the translation for ‘May all your Christmases be white’?
Ah, with quandaries like these, the new anno was upon us in no time at all. So, Happy New Year to you all. May your lives be expressed in at least two languages. And may your days be merry and bright. In other words, to borrow a line from the world’s most well-meaning lyricist: it’s 2016, don’t suffer anymore.
