Found in Translation, or, Why I Love Italians

Italy is a foreign country, they do things differently there. And what they do more differently than just about anything is sex scandals. The world was shocked -- shocked! -- last week when it was revealed that Sylvio Berlusconi was prancing around with a harem of 14 women, and might have had sex with one of them when she was only seventeen.

As the Independent clucked in the deck to its story on the issue, "Italy's Prime Minister has bounced back from countless scandals, but the latest allegations may prove disastrous." Ha! Right.  Writing in the Daily Mail, Mary Ellen Synon sets everyone straight:

What you have to understand before you read coverage by any Anglo-Saxon reporter about the women seen at Berlusconi's parties is that many Italian women, and Roman women in particular, dress like hookers

As she goes on to point out, Italian men seem to like things this way. 

 Run a survey in Britain on where the British would most like to live and at least half the men have dreams of a new life in Spain, France or Australia; run the same survey in Italy and you will come up with 99 of 100 men who cannot imagine living anywhere but in Italy. 

The whole episode makes me wistful for the only trip I ever made to Italy three years ago. I landed in Milan and had to make my way to Lake Como. This is how the trip began:

***

 “Ahh, MOH-ni-ca BeLLU-ci  Si ” My driver pushed his arms out in front of him, cupping his hands inward in the universal sign for “large breasts.” I was about to mention Sophia Loren, but I held off. The alfa romeo was a bit cramped, and I was worried that any mention of la bella Loren might cause him to shove his hands through the windscreen.

We were about twenty minutes out of Malpensa airport (“the worst airport in Europe,” according to the guide book. Agreed.), and conversation had been rather limited. I’d been hoping to catch a bus from Milan to Menaggio, but the bus schedule outside the airport had me totally stumped. It looked like it had been designed by a disgraced Enron accountant, columns of numbers that looked like hours and minutes, but which seemed to indicate, if I was reading the names of towns in the rows properly, that the bus actually took you back in time. As I stood there trying to figure out if a bus might actually arrive in the next week or so, I was approached by a skinny little man in mirror shades and a tight F1 t-shirt.

“Menaggio?” he said. I nodded. “Too late ” he said. He bent over and pointed at the schedule, holding up three fingers. “Three buses. 8, 1, 7:30. Too late ”

He was right. I’d missed the afternoon bus, and didn’t feel like hanging around for five or six hours. After a brief negotiation, he got his price and I got my ride. He led me to a small blue alfa romeo, pointed to the front passenger seat, and off we went.

Turns out I had hitched a ride with Roberto Benigni’s more handsome relative. As we pulled onto the highway toward Como, he started talking in rapid fire Italian, pointing and gesturing and declaiming at what I understood to be the glory of Lombardy. I tried to answer, mostly by using my restaurant Spanish or by talking English with an Italian accent. That didn’t get us anywhere, so he finally pushed in a cassette of Elvis live at Vegas, started humming along to Suspicious Minds, and floored it.

I was a bit nervous at first, since his driving style consisted of heading at top speed at whoever was in his lane, and then sitting an inch off their bumper until they moved over. The sort of road-rage behaviour, that is, that would get you yelled at in Canada and maybe shot in part of the US. Except my driver didn’t have road rage, he had the exact opposite, a sort of road-pleasure. When we’d pass the cars that he’d been following like a maniac, he’d look over and laugh, a man who couldn’t believe his luck. As we throttled past one particularly slow car, I ventured some conversation: “Stupido?” I said, angling a thumb at the fellow in the next lane.

 My driver loved that. He did the pointing and gesturing thing again, which I understood to mean that all of Lombardy was stupido. We went on like this for a while – Elvis, road-pleasure, gesturing – until I hit on a conversational gambit: “AC Milan?”

 The local heroes had just won the Champions League, the most prestigious soccer trophy in Europe, and brother Benigni picked this up and ran with it. “AC Milan numero uno ” he said, and proceeded to list every player on the team, counting them off on his fingers. When he finished, he moved on to the national team, the reigning world cup champions. “Grosso, Cannavaro, Materazzi…” he began, starting with the defenders. Then on to the midfield, the names rolling on like soft, distant artillery fire: “De Rossi, Gattuso, Totti…” he paused a few names later, stuck. “Buffon?” I said, naming the goalkeeper. “Ahh, Buffon ” he cried, smacking me on the shoulder.

It was conversation, of a sort. Done with soccer, I switched to women. Monica Belluci? That went exceedingly well. After almost throwing his hands through the steering wheel, my driver proceeded to name a dozen or so major Italian babes, most of whom (I gathered) were girlfriends of the soccer players just listed. This was getting fun. I tried consumer goods, and pointing at his sunglasses I said “Gucci.”

 “Si, si  Gucci ” he yelled. On the names came, Prada, Versace, Armani, Fendi… then we turned to cars, and I heard all about Porsche, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Maserati, Fiat… And so the conversation turned, mile after mile. I was in absolute heaven. I’d name a brand or celebrity, and he’d play word-association in his cannonball Italian. Who needs Esperanto when we have globalization?

Soon we neared Cernobbio, a small town past Como where he was to drop me off. When he realised I was being picked up by my girlfriend, he decided I needed a lesson in Italian relationship ethics. Pointing at his wedding ring, he held his hands to his eyes like binoculars. “Looklooklooklooklook” he stuttered, while moving his head from side to side like a sub commander scanning the surface for destroyers. Then he turned and gave me a stare, and held an index fingers to his lips: “Sssshhhh.”
I nodded. To make sure, he did it again: Looklooklooklooklook. Sssshhhh. Capisce?

I think I did. We pulled over, I hopped out and handed him a fistful of euros. He dropped my suitcase by the side of the road, slapped me on the shoulder and looked at me. “Ssshhh ” he said. Then he laughed, hopped in the car, and drove off with a wave.