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patiently went through the exercise again. Marco thanked him, repeated as much
as he could to himself, then unloaded it on Ermanno. "Non c'e male," he said.
Not bad. The fun was just starting. As Marco was enjoying his little triumph,
Ermanno was searching for the next unsuspecting tutor. He found him in an old
man shuffling by on a cane and with a thick newspaper under his arm. 'Ask him
where he bought the newspaper," he instructed his student. Marco took his
time, followed the gentleman for a few steps, and when he thought he had the
words together he said, "Buon giorno, scusi." The old man stopped and stared,
and for a moment looked as though he might lift his cane and whack it across
Marco's head. He did not offer the customary "Buon giorno." "Dov'e ha comprato
questo
giornale?" Where did you buy this newspaper? The old man looked at the
newspaper as if it were contraband, then looked at Marco as if he'd cursed
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him.
He jerked his head to the left and said something like, "Over there." And his
part of the conversation was over. As he shuffled away, Ermanno eased beside
Marco and said in English, "Not much for conversation, huh?" "I guess not."
They stepped inside a small cafe, where Marco ordered a simple espresso for
himself. Ermanno could not be content with simple things; instead he wanted
regular coffee with sugar but without cream, and a small cherry pastry, and he
made Marco order everything and get it perfect. At their table, Ermanno laid
out several euro notes of various denominations, along with the coins for
fifty cents and one euro, and they practiced numbers and counting. He then
decided he wanted another regular coffee, this time with no sugar but just a
little cream.
Marco took two euros and came back with the coffee. He counted the change.
After the brief break, they were back on the street, drifting along Via San
Vitale, one of the main avenues of the university, with porticoes covering the
sidewalks on both sides and thousands of students jostling to early classes.
The street was crammed with bicycles, the preferred mode of getting around.
Ermanno had been studying for three years in Bologna, so he said, though Marco
believed little of what he heard from either his tutor or his handler. "This
is Piazza
Verdi," Ermanno said, nodding to a small plaza where a protest of some sort
was stuttering to a start. A longhaired relic from the seventies was adjusting
a microphone, no doubt prepping for a screeching denunciation of American
misdeeds somewhere. His cohorts were trying to unravel a large, badly painted
homemade banner with a slogan not even Ermanno could understand. But they were
too early. The students were hah0 asleep and more concerned with being late
for class. "What's their problem?" Marco asked as they walked by. "I'm not
sure. Something to do with the World Bank. There's always a demonstration
here."
They walked on, flowing with the young crowd, picking their way through the
foot traffic, and headed generally to il centro. Luigi met them for lunch at a
restaurant called Testerino, near the university. With American taxpayers
footing the bill, he ordered often and with no regard for price. Ermanno, the
broke student, seemed ill at ease with such extravagance, but, being an
Italian, he eventually warmed to the idea of a long lunch. It lasted for two
hours and not a single word of English was spoken. The Italian was slow,
methodical, and often repeated, but it never yielded to English. Marco found
it difficult to enjoy a fine meal when his brain was working overtime to hear,
grasp, digest, understand, and plot a response to the last phrase thrown at
him. Often the last phrase had passed over his head with only a word or two
being somewhat recognizable when the whole thing was suddenly chased by
another. And his two friends were not just chatting for the fun of it. If they
caught the slightest hint that Marco was not following, that he was simply
nodding so they would keep talking so he could eat a bite, then they stopped
abruptly and said, "Che cosa ho detto?" What did I say? Marco would chew for a
few seconds, buying
time to think of something-in Italian dammit!-that might get him off the hook.
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