Novelextract 1: A leg-up in Italian

Diary of a Black Girl in Chianti is a semi-autobiographical novel based on a year I spent in the '70s teaching English in a school in Siena., while trying to cling on to a boyfriend fifty miles away in Florence . In this extract Luigi, the Italian PhD student, who leads the 'conversazioni' classes at university in England takes me to task for lack of 'participation' as I daydream about the boyfriend I'm about to join for a year in Italy. The novel is a work in progress

Living in Florence for two years, I was bound to have a head start on the others when it came to speaking Italian. But even I knew I wasn’t as fluent as I should have been. True I’d learned a lot of tricks and short cuts, but I’d picked up some bad habits along the way and I knew it. I often skimmed words I was unsure of and was slipshod with verb tenses; but I always did it with a breezy style that showed I wasn’t afraid of the language or where it might take me. I could tell a joke and pretty much hold my own in a conversation, and I’d learned to do it with the vigour and volume that Italians liked.  So by the time I got onto the Italian course back in England, I was like a driver who’s been on the road for a while but has never bothered to get a license. I drove my Italian by instinct and whenever I got into a tight corner, I usually knew just enough to back up and manoeuvre my way out.   Theoretically, I knew that I still had a lot to learn, but practically speaking, I was streets ahead of the others.

So I wasn’t sorry to see the end of Luigi and his classes. It had been hard to disguise the magnitude of my boredom as the others picked their way around the language like finicky eaters putting off the first bite. I knew I’d been the same once, hesitant and unsure, crippled by the fear of getting it wrong; but that didn’t make it any easier to hear them pussyfooting around the Italian for an hour. I’d skipped them when I could, but the weekly conversazioni sessions had been an endurance test I was glad to put behind me.    

‘Just remember, Catherine. You are the lucky one’ Luigi had murmured lapsing into English with me at the end of one of our sessions. 

It was my own fault. I’d been daydreaming again and the end of the class had caught me off guard. This made it easy for Luigi to collar me as the others were already shuffling out of the room. Pulling me gently aside he let one hand linger on my arm. Not lucky enough, I thought, mentally measuring the distance between him and the door. Luigi one-to-one was never a good ratio.   

‘You see you have had, how should we say this now, Catherine? You have had a big leg-up with the language. This is true, yes? This is good. But you still need to improve. You still need to engage with the other students. Participate, no?’ 

I tried not to visibly flinch as the pressure of his hand tightened into a grip on my arm and his other hand plucked playfully at the sleeve of my sweater. When Luigi spoke English it was not just his tone, but his whole demeanour that changed. Unrepentantly cocky in Italian, he spoke English with an almost servile politeness, carefully choosing his words. As far as the brethren were concerned the only thing hotter than Luigi speaking Italian was Luigi speaking English with that accent. Apparently it sounded like pillow talk to them but all I could hear was a creeping insincerity.   Someone had mentioned he was writing his PhD on Charles Dickens and I wondered if he was channelling one of his Dickensian characters. Uriah Heap came to mind.

Meantime he’d done it again. Linguistically speaking even in English he’d nailed a neat phrase. Hit it dead centre.  ‘A big leg-up with the language’ is exactly what I had benefitted from during my time in Florence. Compared with the others, I’d been catapulted over the wall and was sprinting off into the distance while they were still scrabbling to get a foothold on the other side. And right again. I couldn’t afford to be complacent. I did need to improve my Italian. And I would; but not with Luigi breathing all over me and groping at my knitwear.

As for engaging with the others, I’ll admit, I had no time for them.  They were an insipid bunch the lot of them; sixth formers still hungry for their teachers’ approval. Still hopelessly keen to please but lacking any sense of daring. If I’d picked up anything in my time in Italy it was that in learning to speak the language you had to take risks. You had to get over the embarrassment of being wrong sometimes. You would be wrong, and often. But you had to push on past the fear. You had to have a go. Show some bravado. It was a punishment to hear this lot dither and hedge around the Italian, afraid to chance it. For me conversation classes became a frustrating spectator sport; like a football game where the players ran all over the pitch but were reluctant to get into a tackle. ‘The other students’ that Luigi urged me to ‘engage with’ felt like a losing team and I didn’t want to be on their side.

So while the class picked their way around possessive pronouns, I slouched low in my seat hoping to stay out of Luigi’s sight line. For a while I watched diagonal beads of rain flicking across the window before drifting off into my own head space. I was back in Florence with Salvo; back in the bedroom loft of his tiny studio near Santa Croce. Back where I’d left him and my love life on hold while I formalised my knowledge of Italian with a proper degree. 

I looked at my watch and calculating the hour’s difference, in Italy, I knew that Salvo would soon be breaking for lunch at the foreign exchange counter in the big bank in Piazza della Repubblica. It was a job he hated. He always left for work in a bad mood and came home looking hollowed-out. The bank. The bloody bank. It had stifled his early ambitions of becoming a professional jazz musician; his hopes snuffed out like birthday candles before he’d even made a wish. Although for a while it had actually happened. He’d lived the boho lifestyle of a real musician on the road. For a few years he’d gigged with a little jazz combo in the stylish nightclubs around Rome and they’d even toured together across Spain. Heady, carefree days they were when the music was all that mattered and they went wherever it took them.  But that was before his family caught up with him again and strong-armed him back into the mainstream. You couldn’t’ make a proper living by playing music. You couldn’t go about in the world just enjoying yourself without a care for your future. After a sensible course in Accountancy, he was quickly locked into the stranglehold of the bank with its deadly routine and a regular salary. Those years on the road making music were behind him now but they had given him a tantalising taste of a free-spirited lifestyle that he knew was out there but for him, was gone for good.  At one stroke the bank had foreclosed on his youth and crushed his musical aspirations.  Now all he had to show for those free-wheeling days on the road was a hired piano in a corner of his studio loft and lying on top of it, like a relic on the altar of dead dreams, his beloved silver flute.

Meanwhile his family breathed a sigh of relief. Their boy was back on track and he had a steady job with prospects in a bank.. Sure he’d had a few wayward years, but he’d soon knuckle under and make something of himself. Who knows it might not be too long before he settled down with a nice girl and started a family of his own?  They lived in hope. 

Pictured is the flag of the Tartuca (tortoise) contrada; one of the seventeen city districts that compete in the annual Palio horserace in Siena.