Botticelli Blue Skies: An American in Florence

8. Postcards and E-Mail (One)

postcard to jessie gerber: Peaceful Hills Convalescent Hospital, Room 123: Dearest Mother— We arrived safely in “Bella Italia”—we have a comfortable apartment with a view of the Arno River. I have to light the gas stove with a match (“fiammifero” is the word for match. And the word for flaming is “fiammeggiante”—isn’t the language beautiful and amazing?) I am hoping a nurse will read this to you if you can’t hold it yourself. All my love, M. e-mail to my daughters: Dearest Girls— This is the “acid test”—to see if all my preparations for sending e-mail will work. If you get this letter, we can communicate across the continents! We tried to make our first pot of pasta tonight but couldn’t get the burners to light. Dad saw an electric wire with a plug on the end coming out of the stove and thought there might be an electric broiler inside the stove. As soon as he plugged it in, all the lights in the flat blew out. Thinking a neighbor might be able to tell us what to do next, 24 8 Postcards and E-Mail (One) I knocked on doors in the building till a woman one flight below us opened her door and—thank heavens!—could speak English. She rents her bedroom and provides meals to two young women students, about your ages, mid- to late twenties (one is from Kansas, studying sculpture, and one is from Brazil, studying Italian language). The girls offered to come up at once and show us where the fuse box was located. A push of the button and the lights were on again, but the girls warned us never to plug in the stove at the same time the water heater switch was lit. Today we don’t have to worry, since there’s no water in the building at all. Luckily we bought bottled water to drink. I had no idea what the word “sorgente ” meant on the bottle, but I have since found out it means “to rise, to surge” and also that it is spring water. So we have surging, carbonated water spring. Acqua minerale, al gas. I learn a fact a minute here. The girls from downstairs advised us to buy an “accendigas ,” a device that lights the gas via a spark from a flint, a safer way than from a match. (Remember those toys you had as children, rainbow-colored wheels that spun and sparked as you pressed the handle?) The reason we couldn’t light the gas—even with a match—was that we never turned on the gas safety valve (on the wall behind the stove), which has to be in the upright position for gas to flow. The accendigas, however, will not light the oven, which requires that a match be put in the hole to ignite the broiler flame beneath. After all this education, Dad and I are too hungry to try to cook, so we’re going down the street to the Grande Mondo Ristorante Cinese. Love, Mom e-mail to my sister: Dearest B— We’ve had our first Italian dinner, and I fear I must admit it was Chinese. The Grande Mondo has a great goldfish tank in the window, populated by ordinary goldfish as well as by eels. Botticelli Blue Skies 25 When we admired them, the Chinese waiter said, smiling, “Mangiare?”—meaning did we want to eat them? I definitely declined, and we ordered Dragon chips, Zuppa Wan Tan, and Primavera something-or-other, which last two I guessed might be won ton soup and spring rolls, which they were! The “Dragon chips” were shrimp-flavored dragon morsels, I suppose . They didn’t serve tea but did serve little ruby colored glasses of sweet wine with the meal. We had “gelato fritto” for dessert, fried ice cream. Just as we finished dinner, a group of Italian young men and women came in and were seated. The women immediately stuck the chopsticks into their hair (for entertainment), and the young men lit up cigarettes. In no time the room was filled with a fog of smoke. I see that Italy hasn’t figured out yet that smoking will kill you. These young people seemed so happy, though—laughing and talking loudly. Italians seem to have a talent for happiness—perhaps it’s their religion that keeps them inwardly...