25.09.09. Walking the streets.
I had nothing to do again today so I went walking. ‘Nothing’ weighs much more in an empty dorm. In the city there are people walking about and chatting, and you can chat with them too if you feel so bold. You don’t, but these opportunities for interaction and the potential phrases you construct in your mind ease the solitude.
I did however speak at length with Enza, who patrols the official university store every morning till noon. She was silent until I commented on their ongoing mug exchange, whereby anyone who brings a mug from a foreign university receives a UP mug gratis. They have a few dozen mugs, including ceramic representatives from Harvard, the University of Florida, even a university in Australia. Enza took great pride in the store’s collection, and when she discovered I was from the UO, for which they have no mug, she lobbied hard for me to provide one to fill out their collection (Mom and Dad, now would be the proper time to pay a visit to the Duck Store).
Once we exhausted the topic of mugs, which was a much vaster topic than I would have expected, Enza gave me the scoop on the city. She told me the local names of things—for instance the town square, Piazza della Vittoria, is known simply as the Big Piazza—and listed the many worthy things to visit around town. I love Pavia already and did not need convincing, but beauty and grandeur are in such plentiful supply in Italy that I think any place that’s not Rome or Florence or Venice has constantly to fight an inferiority complex. But for a foreigner especially, even cities of 70,000 like Pavia—I mistakenly wrote the population as 500,000 in my last essay, committing the researcher’s cardinal sin of depending on Wikipedia—even such blips have a tremendous amount to be proud of. I told Enza I’d just this morning seen the Chiesa di San Francesco (Church of San Francisco) and loved the ceiling frescoes and the sculptures filling the niches along the walls. In response, Enza was quick to note that Pavia offered many other older, more impressive religious sites. I shouldn’t hold the impression, that is, that the Chiesa di San Francesco is the best Pavia has to offer.
At this point Enza paused for breath, and with a transitional allora I made my exit—only after promising to keep her apprised of how my studies are going, and to bring my family by when they come to visit (so seriously Mom and Dad, you better get me that mug).
By this time it was pushing 11:30, and I thought I might go get my codice fiscale, or fiscal code, the one thing on my to-maybe-do list. This code would give me access to university wireless and allow me to open a bank account; it’s similar to our SSN. I reached the Economic Benefits Office of the UP student association just as it closed at noon, then after queuing for a bit had an exchange where I requested my codice fiscale and the lady at the counter tried to give me a meal card. “Ah,” she said after a moment. “The codice fiscale.” She sent me to the government Entrance Agency a few blocks away, where I arrived without problem at 12:30, this time just after it closed. The lady at the front desk gave me a form and told me to return on Monday with my visa.
Obtaining an official form is a pretty solid day’s work here, so I went for some pizza and a Coke—always Coke here, or else gassy water—and sat on a bench in the center of the Big Piazza. I rolled my sleeves and pinched my shorts up just enough to sun bathe without letting on I was sun bathing, and munched on what was basically a loaf of focaccia topped with molten lava fields of mozzarella and gorgonzola. Focaccilandia, thou art my one true love. I flipped forward in my copy of this week’s L’espresso, a magazine like Time or Newsweek, to an article entitled “Quante volte, Silvio?” (“How Many Times, Silvio?”) having to do with the furious party schedule of the Italian president. It was a vindictive article written in scathing prose, but probably not scathing enough: at issue was Silvio Berlusconi’s repeated absence during the peak of the financial crisis and his consecutive spurning of Condoleeza Rice, a UN summit in New York, an economic expo in Milan, and a G4 meeting of European leaders. During all of this, Silvio partied on—sometimes with known prostitutes. In the U.S. we put up with certain bumblings of President Bush, but never would the President of the United States miss a state function to pimp ho’s. At the very least he would not allow freelance photographers to catch him doing it, as happened with Berlusconi. It must be our Puritan background.
While I was reading, two women sat next to me. I understood nothing they said, and this sudden digression alarmed and saddened me until I realized they were speaking Spanish. I tried to cycle through my language changer to pick something up, but the pace of these Spaniards was beyond me. I’ll have to track down a babel fish before traveling to Barcelona.
Eventually I left my post in the Big Piazza and continued my stroll through town. By now I have become familiar with the town’s major arteries: the Big Piazza, obviously; Strada Nuova, “New Street,” complete with its own eponymous cafe; and the biblically schizophrenic east-west ‘Main Street’ (Corso Manzoni begets Corso Cavour begets Corso Mazzini begets Via Scopoli). Just off and parallel to this street is Corso Garibaldi, named after Giuseppe Garibaldi, “Hero of Two Worlds”—he was a major player in the independence movements of both Latin America and Italy. This is my favorite street. Corso Garibaldi is home to a number of shops, and each is eager to claim you as a regular. Gone is the usual and more formal arrivederci of the main drags, and in its place the amiable ci vediamo—see you later. It was also on Corso Garibaldi where I had my quintessential moment of cross-cultural fusion: someone in a third-floor apartment blaring The Trashmen’s 1963 hit “Surfin’ Bird” (“Bird bird bird, bird is the word”) as stout Italian ladies in overcoats ambled by.
In these places and elsewhere, i cittadini have made me feel like a guest of honor rather than a tourist or passerby. A bakery worker threw in a salted, pretzel-like ball with my pizza order (an act of generosity for which I was doubly glad, because it wasn’t very good), my dormmates have promised to exclude me from the upcoming initiations since I’ve come from abroad, and even the illegal aliens have rolled out the red carpet. The local black population isn’t large, but they make themselves highly visible. These folks have established a highly regimented sales operation, something like the teams of scalpers that work outside professional sports events, in which each person has his own territory and neither wanders nor deserts his post, ever. The parking lot outside my collegio is the territory of a rotund, jolly man who has been there every single time I have come and gone. I began to use the back way into the collegio to avoid him, but I felt badly because he is so friendly. Every time I pass he calls to me, certainly out of a desire to sell me his miscellany, but also to give me high fives. The African who patrols Strada Nuova offers not a sales pitch but a disarming “Tutt’okay?” (“Everything okay?”), and another I passed simply repeated, “You and me! You and me!” with a winning smile. I think this last instance had to do with the Inter Milan soccer jersey I was wearing, which crossed the divide between American and African, salesman and customer, soccer dolt and number-one fan.
Crossing these divides is, I suppose, why I came here. I wondered during my transatlantic journey why I had left home again to live in Italy. I had a wonderful departure from Portland, with four of the people most important to me sending me off and the thought came to me—why, if this is where the people most special to me live, must I leave for a year? I think it’s because I’ve crossed all of the bridges in Oregon. I know I can be satisfied at home; I was extremely satisfied this summer while living at my brother’s, and then at home. I wrote and hung out with family and friends. But the nature of a writer is to live with things constantly pulling at you, things going on somewhere else that you don’t know about, and need to. I needed to come back to Italy to change my eye level and see things from a different angle, to high-five African immigrants and listen to sixties American music and wander the streets getting lost. Maybe when I stop getting lost, it will be time to come back home.◊