So, here I am - sitting at a small table outside on cobblestones under the large red awning of 'my local' pizzeria.
It is literally a stone's throw across a little canal from my front door... Though my actual apartment faces the other side, on a corner, with two windows looking down on the bobbing private boats of the canal parallel to this one, and, from the other window, a rambling, walled garden where lives, I'm told, a very large bunny.
The windows are large and deep enough for two to sit on sills. The apartment is just gorgeous. I can't wait to wake to it tomorrow in a less groggy state!
As it is, I have done well. I am determined not to crawl into my old, shy shell of perfect English. This is my third time in Italy, and I can speak quite a bit of Italian, so I must. The previous times I have totally bailed out. It’s no use if I don’t use it.
So far, despite my foggy aeroplane head, almost all of my negotiations have been made in Italian, though none of them needed to be. Each one induced palpitations, but I pushed through each time. I find this easiest when I attempt a tiny bit more than what is necessary. A joke, for instance, or a clarification or personal observation. Trying to say extra puts less anxiety on the necessary part, and people have been responsive to my attempt at breaking out of the tourist’s rote phrases. They seem to understand me even when my grammar isn’t perfect.
Here, for instance, at the pizzeria, when I had selected a nice table, choosing it carefully, as I do, for its rightness of proximity and distance to other diners, for the angle on which it was positioned, for its friendly, flickering candle and its particular charm. A waiter was passing.
"Posso...?" (may I...?) I asked.
“Certo,” he replied.
But then his boss bawled out from the doorway: "Da sola?" (She's on her own?!) and gestured impatiently to a small table on the outskirts, squeezed in between a smoking French couple and a sombre Belgian couple, and with no candle.
I resented this meanness, on a quiet night when plenty of tables were still available, but I took my allocated place and meekly read my menu.
When I'd settled my nerves enough to place my order, I said, “vorrei una pizza sottobosco e un bicchiere di vino bianco” then I looked him in the eye and added, “niente candele per me?”
He laughed, and returned with a candle plucked from another table, placed it in front of me with a teasing smile, and said in Italian, “so you don't feel alone”.
Tomorrow I will write more. Right now, I'll summon the words to ask for the bill, then lug my groceries over the little bridge, through the big door, across the inside courtyard, and the marble foyer, up the stairs, and into the apartment where there should be nothing to stop me collapsing into blissful slumber. Yay!!! I'm so glad to be here - but wish I could share it!
(The waiter just asked if I was writing 'un libro'! Time to go.)
Love, Honor
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