Those who have
lived a significant portion of their lives abroad will admit it: most opinions
are not personal-they are national. In Italy, they hold these truths to be
self-evident: Sardinia should be seen in May and September. Pane con la
mortadella is a snack that saves lives. Public strikes must only happen on
Fridays. Fifteen minutes late is early. Closed shutters create indoor shade.
The bus driver is not to be trusted: he knows not where he goes.
I argue only the
closed shutter theory. Most new-world folk with a pioneer past will not have to
wonder why. Quite fond of breezes blowing, prairie people believe that letting
air into a room is the best way to keep from suffocating. On the vecchio
continente, with its winding medieval fortress cities, citizens have a
different strategy. Keeping light out is thought to cool a room faster than
throwing open the shutters. All of this is relevant today because now that
summer is up and running, our staff room looks more like a candle-burning
rendezvous than a free-for-all work lunch featuring trattoria take-away.
Last week, on a sweltering Friday afternoon, I suggested we stop sitting in the
dark at midday. And it brought on a debate that brought the house down. So much
depends on the slant of a shutter.
Not that we
wouldn’t have been fighting anyway. For colleagues who like each other,
leisurely quarrels are second only to the Mondiali and should be stopped
long enough only to watch quando gioca l’Italia. As I do with most
things, I think it’s a verbal question. In Italian, ‘argomento’ means
discussion topic and ‘discussione’ means argument. And if I didn’t have
a word count to tally, this week’s article would have started and finished with
this single sentence. Two false friends that are actually enemies, their
difference is the reason for the ‘bicker ‘till you bust’ policy that so often
keeps people animated in Italy.
‘We could try letting in the breeze,’ I
suggested to my co-workers that Friday. There were only three of us that day;
perhaps we’d be able to form a majority about something.
‘No.’ Giovanni
replied, ‘We have to keep out the glare. Stiamo creando un
microclima.’
‘Un microclima?’ I replied, already huffy. ‘If you’re aiming to
recreate South Africa, it’s working.’
‘This isn’t
America, Linda,’ Federico informed me, intent on defending the microclima theory. ‘We don’t suck on ice-cubes as if they were toffees or have shops that
sell cold air rather than clothes.’
‘Fede, please. I
can barely breathe in here. And all I’m asking is to be able to open a window
without having to fight about it first. ‘
‘I’m not fighting, I’m just saying.’
‘I know. But in
Italy, fighting and saying is so often the same thing.’
‘Only because
we’re not as pan-faced as the English,’ Giovanni conceded.
‘You wish you
could be as pan-faced as the English,’ I corrected.
‘It’s true,’ he
admitted, turning to Federico, ‘Have you ever been to England? Those people
feed squirrels in the park. Out of their hands, I mean. They domesticate the
critters in the time it takes to crack a walnut. And when, they’re through,
they meet their friends in a pub and brawl before the night is over. Only a
truly superior race could pull that off.’
‘I’ve never seen a
squirrel,’ Federico mused.
‘Well, English
parks are full of them,’ he insisted. ‘Italians are incapable of domesticating
squirrels.’
‘We’re even more nervous than they are,’
Federico nodded.
‘And we don’t make
good brawlers, either.’
‘No,’ Federico
grinned, ‘fighting is all about ducking the swings, not taking them.’
‘So you fight like
you talk,’ I concluded.
‘Actually, we only
talk,’ Fede corrected.
‘And fight,’ I
said, ‘as if it were the same thing.’
‘Già’
Giovanni agreed.
We were all quiet
for a moment as the three of us leaned on that last word as if it were a
cushion. Very possibly, già is the Italy’s most comforting expression.
Used as a substitute of ‘you’re right,’ it literally, it means ‘already.’
Italians use it often as a form of truce. In the end, we’re on the same side.
Moreover, I already knew what you were trying to say all along. Whatever you’
were trying to prove has already been contemplated.
Great. All points
are pre-proven, even before debates take their inevitable tangent. Now, go open
the window.
