Making a good impression
Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 05:46AM I’m not in Kansas anymore, but it sure feels like it—in August. Waves of heat radiate up into my nostrils from the asphalt of the melting road surface as I walk home from the bank. The digital thermometer in a nearby parking lot reads 35˚ C (95˚F). The rain and cool temperatures that greeted my arrival here are long gone. It is high noon. A woman in her mid-fifties stands in the doorway of her toy store, eyeing me suspiciously as I pass. I get that a lot here.
Suspicion is not the right word. Perhaps curious would be a better choice. Italians are nothing if not curious. Curious about the blond-haired, blue-eyed fellow with the very high forehead sporting Oakley sunglasses. Curious about why this odd person is sauntering down the near-deserted, midday street in the scorching heat—A proper individual would be resting after lunch with the scuri (shutters) of his apartment closed to the afternoon mugginess, after all. Being an outsider, it just feels like suspicion to me.
But such are the challenges of living abroad. You are under scrutiny. People do want to know where you come from. And you do indeed get the opportunity to make mistakes—at least I do, every time I open my mouth. Example: After having a brief conversation with my neighbor the other day, I realized that I had been addressing her with the more informal, tu (you), instead of the formal version, Lei. Stefania was aghast when I recounted this to her later. She assured me that I had most definitely made a brutta figura.
Fare una brutta figura is an essential phrase in Italian culture. It can be loosely translated as making a bad impression. It also conveys the Japanese notion of a certain loss of face. Show up to a friend’s house for a dinner party empty handed? Brutta figura. Walk around the suocera’s (mother-in-law’s) clean house in your street shoes and not your ciabatte (slippers)? Brutta figura. Brush the cat in the window and have a ball of fur waft into the pensioner’s window below? Brutta figura. Overfill the cactus plant in the window with water that then runs down the exterior wall and into your neighbor’s kitchen? Brutta figura. I have been guilty as charged on all of these counts at one time or another.
Once banished to this Mountain of Purgatory for complete lack of manners, how do you get out? Fortunately, as our tour guides Dante and Virgil might tell you, foreigners are not held to the same high standards of decorum as native-born Italians and thus can ascend back into the paradise of everyday good graces rather easily. Just bow your head in shame and move on. Wires sometimes get crossed. Try to learn from the experience and make a better impression next time. After this latest transgression, my neighbor apparently took pity upon my ignorance of proper protocol—she spoke to me again in the stairwell a few days later. Whew! Another bullet dodged. Furthermore, I find that sublimating my guilt into fevered bouts of house cleaning works as penance with the wife as well.
This seeming clash of cultural habits is rippling out into the larger community as a whole. Residents of Bazzano, the village of approximately 6,000 inhabitants where I am living, are getting more practice at dealing with the newfound challenges of a multicultural society. Over the past ten years, Italy has seen an influx of extracomunitari (non-EU citizens and other blundering Anglos such as myself), all bringing our own customs and social mores to Italy. (Note: Clandestini would be the term for what we call illegal immigrants.)
As in the United States, this has caused a rift in the Italian political and cultural landscape. Recently, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi came under fire from the Italian Left and the Catholic Church being quoted in the Times Online saying, “The Left’s idea is of a multi-ethnic Italy. That is not our idea, ours is to welcome only those who meet the conditions for political asylum.”
Sadly, not a day goes by here without news reports of another boatload of half-starved clandestini being rescued at sea by the Italian navy or tales of violent crimes being committed by extracomunitari. Last week, the Bologna tifosi (fans) were warned twice by the referee during a soccer match at Verona to stop making racist taunts against a former Bologna player who is from Africa. A third warning from the official would have meant forfeiture of the match and certain relegation to second-division sports purgatory, Serie B, next season.
But all of the polemics seem far away from here. Everyone seems to get along. Life goes on peacefully: Veiled, Muslim women walk their children to school underneath my window. African women in colorful, traditional dress pause to chat noisily down the street. A young couple, in a car with Polish license plates, stops to ask directions. There’s a kebab shop around the corner that is open on Sundays.
Bazzano has always been on the avanguardia, the forefront, the leading edge. On the edge between the provinces of Bologna and Modena. On the edge of the empire. On the edge of the Samoggia River. Tracing its origins back to Etruscan times, Bazzano was later a rural Roman outpost. Legend has it that the castle dominating the town from atop a hill—La Rocca di Bazzano—was built by 12th Century noblewoman Matilde di Canossa. However, this tale is apocryphal, more historical wishful thinking than reality. (Actually, it’s origins are unknown and most likely date back to the 9th Century.) The fortress’ current appearance owes itself to the Bentivoglio family, the overlords of Bologna, who gave it a medieval extreme makeover in the 13th Century.
My humble three-story palazzo (apartment building) was constructed in 1845 and is nestled down the hill, under the protective ramparts of said castle. An owl hoots from a tree there every evening after midnight letting me know he's on night watch. It is reassuring to know that he's on duty and I can always run into the protective confines of the fortress and pull up the drawbridge when the barbarians are at the gate. I just hope I can make it up the hill in time.
But for the time being, I can look out my window and survey my own small kingdom in relative comfort with my feet up on the desk (another faux pas). I can see the Saturday market, the scooter shop, the little bottega that only sells organic produce, the women’s clothing store, the vecchietti (old people) who slowly stroll by calling out, “Ciao Mauro! Ciao Laura! Come stai?” to each other. And yes, from the bathroom window, I can even see the lady standing in the doorway of the toy store, watching her village change before her very eyes with bemused curiosity.
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