The Broker

Ahead Marco saw a small green neon sign that was indifferently advertising the Bar Fontana, and as he walked toward it he soon picked up the scent of strong coffee. The bar was wedged tightly into the corner of an ancient building-but then they were all ancient. The door opened reluctantly, and once inside Marco almost smiled at the aromas-coffee, cigarettes, pastries, breakfast on a grill in the rear.

Then the fear hit, the usual apprehension of trying to order in an unknown language.

Bar Fontana was not for students, or for women. The crowd was his age, fifty and up, somewhat oddly dressed, with enough pipes and beards to identify it as a hangout for faculty. One or two glanced his way, but in the center of a university with 100,000 students it was difficult for anyone to draw attention.

Marco got the last small table near the back, and when he finally nestled into his spot with his back to the wall he was practically shoulder to shoulder with his new neighbors, both of whom were lost in their morning papers and neither of whom appeared to notice him. In one of Luigi’s lectures on Italian culture he had explained the concept of space in Europe and how it differed significantly from that in the States. Space is shared in Europe, not protected. Tables are shared, the air evidently is shared because smoking bothers no one. Cars, houses, buses, apartments, cafes-so many important aspects of life are smaller, thus more cramped, thus more willingly shared. Its not offensive to go nose to nose with an acquaintance during routine conversation because no space is being violated. Talk with your hands, hug, embrace, even kiss at times.

Even for a friendly people, such familiarity was difficult for Americans to understand.

And Marco was not yet prepared to yield too much space. He picked up the wrinkled menu on the table and quickly settled on the first thing he recognized. Just as the waiter stopped and glanced down at him he said, with all the ease he could possibly exude, "Espresso, e un panino al formaggio." A small cheese sandwich.

The waiter nodded his approval. Not a single person glanced over to check out his accented Italian. No newspapers dipped to see who he might be. No one cared. They heard accents all the time. As he placed the menu back on the table, Marco Lazzeri decided that he probably liked Bologna, even if it turned out to be a nest for Communists. With so many students and faculty coming and going, and from all over the world, foreigners were accepted as part of the culture. Perhaps it was rather cool to have an accent and dress differently. Perhaps it was okay to openly study the language.

One sign of a foreigner was that he noticed everything, his eyes darting around as if he knew he was trespassing into a new culture and didn’t want to get caught. Marco would not be caught taking in the sights in the Bar Fontana. He removed a booklet of vocabulary sheets and tried mightily to ignore the people and scenes he wanted to watch. Verbs, verbs, verbs. Ermanno kept saying that to master Italian, or any Romance language for that matter, you had to know the verbs. The booklet had one thousand of the basic verbs, and Ermanno claimed that it was a good starting point.

As tedious as rote memorization was, Marco was finding an odd pleasure in it. He found it quite satisfying to zip through four pages – one hundred verbs, or nouns, or anything for that matter-and not miss a one. When he got one wrong, or missed a pronunciation, he went back to the beginning and punished himself by starting over. He had conquered three hundred verbs when his coffee and sandwich arrived. He took a sip, went back to work as if the food was much less important than the vocab, and was somewhere over four hundred when Rudolph arrived.

The chair on the other side of Marco’s small round table was vacant, and this caught the attention of a short fat man, dressed entirely in faded black, with wild bunches of gray frizzy hair protruding from all parts of his head, some of it barely suppressed by a black beret that somehow managed to stay aboard. "Buon giorno. E libera?" he asked politely, gesturing toward the chair. Marco wasn’t sure what he said but it was obvious what he wanted. Then he caught the word "libera" and assumed it meant "free" or "vacant."

"Si," Marco managed with no accent, and the man removed a long black cape, draped it over the chair, then maneuvered himself into position. When he came to rest they were less than three feet apart. Space is different here, Marco kept telling himself. The man placed a copy ofL’Unita on the table, making it rock back and forth. For an instant Marco was worried about his espresso. To avoid conversation, he buried himself even deeper into Ermanno’s verbs.

"American?" his new friend said, in English with no foreign accent.

Marco lowered the booklet and looked into the glowing eyes not far away. "Close. Canadian. How’d you know?"

He nodded at the booklet and said, "English to Italian vocabulary. You don’t look British, so I figure you’re American." Judging by his accent, he was probably not from the upper Midwest. Not from New York or New Jersey; not from Texas or the South, or Appalachia, or New Orleans. As vast sections of the country were eliminated, Marco was beginning to think of California. And he was beginning to get very nervous. The lying would soon start, and he hadn’t practiced enough.

"And where are you from?" he asked.

"Last stop was Austin, Texas. That was thirty years ago. Name’s Rudolph."

"Good morning, Rudolph, a pleasure. I’m Marco." They were in kindergarten where only first names were needed. "You don’t sound Texan."

"Thank God for that," he said with a pleasant laugh, one that barely revealed his mouth. "Originally from San Francisco."

The waiter leaned in and Rudolph ordered black coffee, then something else in rapid Italian. The waiter had a follow-up, as did Rudolph, and Marco understood none of it.

"What brings you to Bologna?" Rudolph asked. He seemed anxious to chat; probably rare that he cornered a fellow North American in his favorite cafe.

Marco lowered his booklet and said, "Just traveling around Italy for a year, seeing the sights, trying to pick up some of the language."

Half of Rudolph’s face was covered with an unkempt gray beard that began fairly high up the cheekbones and sprang in all directions. Most of his nose was visible, as was part of his mouth. For some odd reason, one that no one would ever understand because no one would ever dare ask such a ridiculous question, he had developed the habit of shaving a small round spot under his lower lip and comprising most of his upper chin. Other than that sacred ground, the wild frizzy whiskers were allowed to run free and apparently go unwashed. The top of his head was pretty much the same-acres of untouched bright gray brush sprouting from all around the beret.

Because so many of his features were masked, his eyes got all the attention. They were dark green and projected rays that, from under a set of thick sagging eyebrows, took in everything.

"How long in Bologna?" Rudolph asked.

"Got here yesterday. I have no schedule. And you, what brings you here?" Marco was anxious to keep the conversation away from himself.

The eyes danced and never blinked. "I’ve been here for thirty years. I’m a professor at the university."

Marco finally took a bite of his cheese sandwich, partly out of hunger, but more importantly to keep Rudolph talking.

"Where’s your home?" he asked.

Following the script, Marco said, "Toronto. Grandparents immigrated there from Milan. I have Italian blood but never learned the language."

"The language is not hard," Rudolph said, and his coffee arrived. He grabbed the small cup and thrust it deep into the beard. Evidently it found his mouth. He smacked his lips and leaned forward a bit as though he wanted to talk. "You don’t sound Canadian," he said, and those eyes appeared to be laughing at him.