In Other Words (18 page)

I read in Italian every day, but I don't write. In America I become passive. Even though I've brought the dictionaries, the exercise books, the notebooks, I can't write even a word in Italian. I describe nothing in the diary, I don't feel like it. As far as writing is concerned, I remain inactive. As if I were in a creative waiting room, all I do is wait.

Finally, at the end of August, at the airport, at the gate, I am surrounded by Italian again. I see all the Italians who are going home after their vacations in New York.
I hear their chatter. At first I feel relief, joy. Immediately afterward I realize that I'm not like them. I'm different, just as I was different from my parents when we went on vacation to Calcutta. I'm not returning to Rome to rejoin my language. I'm returning to continue my courtship of another.

Those who don't belong to any specific place can't, in fact, return anywhere. The concepts of exile and return imply a point of origin, a homeland. Without a homeland and without a true mother tongue, I wander the world, even at my desk. In the end I realize that it wasn't a true exile: far from it. I am exiled even from the definition of exile.

T
here is pain in every joy. In every violent passion a dark side.

The second year in Rome, after Christmas, I go with my family to see the temples at Paestum, and afterward we spend a couple of days in Salerno. There, in the center, in a shop window, I notice some nice children's clothes. I go in with my daughter. I turn to the saleswoman. I tell her I'm looking for pants for my daughter. I describe what I have in mind, suggest colors that would suit, and add that my daughter doesn't like styles that are too tight, that she would prefer something comfortable. In other words, I speak for quite a long time with this saleswoman, in an Italian that is fluent but not completely natural.

At a certain point my husband comes in with our son. Unlike me, my husband, an American, looks as if he could be Italian. He and I exchange a few words, in Italian, in front of the saleswoman. I show him a jacket on sale that I'm considering for our son. He answers in monosyllables, Sure, I like it, yes, let's see. Not even an entire sentence. My husband speaks perfect Spanish, so he tends to
speak Italian with a Spanish accent. He says
sessenta y uno
instead of
sessantuno
(sixty-one),
bellessa
instead of
bellezza
(beauty),
nunca
instead of
mai
(never); our children tease him about it. My husband speaks Italian well, but he doesn't speak it better than I do.

We decide to buy two pairs of pants plus the jacket. At the cash register, while I'm paying, the saleswoman asks me: “Where are you from?”

I explain that we live in Rome, that we moved to Italy last year from New York. At that point the saleswoman says: “But your husband must be Italian. He speaks perfectly, without any accent.”

Here is the border that I will never manage to cross. The wall that will remain forever between me and Italian, no matter how well I learn it. My physical appearance.

I feel like crying. I would like to shout: “I'm the one who desperately loves your language, not my husband. He speaks Italian only because he needs to, because he happens to live here. I've been studying your language for more than twenty years, he not even for two. I read only your literature. I can now speak Italian in public, do live radio interviews. I keep an Italian diary, I write stories.”

I don't say anything to the saleswoman. I thank her, I say goodbye, then I go out. I understand that my attachment to Italian is worthless. That all my devotion, all the passion signify nothing. According to this saleswoman, my husband can speak Italian very well, he should be praised, not me. I feel humiliated, offended, envious. I'm speechless. Finally I say to my husband, in Italian, when we're on the street,
“Sono sbalordita”
(I'm stunned).

And my husband asks me, in English, “What does
sbalordita
mean?”

The episode in Salerno is only one example of the wall I face repeatedly in Italy. Because of my physical appearance, I'm seen as a foreigner. It's true, I am. But, being a foreigner who speaks Italian well, I have two linguistic experiences, remarkably different, in this country.

Those who know me speak to me in Italian. They appreciate that I understand their language, they gladly share it with me. When I speak Italian with my Italian friends I feel immersed in the language, welcomed, accepted. I take part in the language: in the theater of spoken Italian I think that I, too, have a role, a presence. With friends I can talk for hours, at times for days, without having to rely on any English word. I'm in the middle of the lake and I'm swimming with them, in my own way.

But when I go into a shop like the one in Salerno I find myself abruptly hurled back to shore. People who don't know me assume, looking at me, that I don't know Italian. When I speak to them in Italian, when I ask for something (a head of garlic, a stamp, the time), they say, puzzled, “I don't understand.” It's always the same response, the same scowl. As if my Italian were another language.