Botticelli Blue Skies: An American in Florence

40. “Tabu”

Professor Mario Materassi, who teaches American Literature at the University of Florence, invites me to speak to his class. It seems extremely lucky for me that he is an expert in Jewish American women writers, since I happen to be one. I’m especially flattered to be invited to talk about “Tabu,” a story of mine that he has photocopied from one of my books and distributed to his class. But he cautions me that his students are not like the Italians in my story. Italians in my story? I have no recollection of this. Since I have with me in Italy the collection of my stories, Chattering Man, in which “Tabu” appears, I look it up and leaf through it until I find what must be the relevant paragraph. To my dismay I read: Five Italian boys I recognized from the lunchroom at school were there in Ruthie’s living room, slouched on the couch and slumped in the two armchairs . They looked as if they didn’t belong on furniture, but should instead be on leashes or in cages. So much for tact and my effort toward good Italian-American relations . I will have to make my apologies to the students and explain something about the context of my insults. 200 40 “Tabu” Professor Materassi has a university office on Via San Gallo that must once have been a room in a great palazzo. The elaborate ceiling, high above a gilded border of engravings, is three dimensional; various creatures (cherubs and satyrs) peer down from above. The paintings on the walls, separated by great arches, depict dramatic events: two shepherds , one holding a great wooden club, look upon a felled enemy who lies bleeding on the ground, while in the background two sheep and a black-faced lamb lie nearby watching. If these are depictions of allegorical tales whose stories I should know, I don’t. Yet I am quite willing and able to marvel at their grandeur, their awesome size—and to think: all this in a “mere” university office. The professor tells me he has prepared my class for two days for this discussion of my story (and mentions, offhand, that, from the beginning of the academic year, the class has been discussing Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury). Of course I am pleased by his serious attention to my work. When he leads me to his class, I do my best to speak in slow and precise English that the students seem to understand quite well. They are attentive and respectful and look much as students do in an American university: blue jeans, book bags, and radiant young faces (especially here! So many beautiful young Italian men and women). I try to communicate how this story of mine came to be, based as it was on a party I was forced to attend as a thirteen-year-old. The villainess was a sexy beauty who lived across the street. Her mother insisted that she invite me, a neighborhood kid, to her birthday party. I’m tempted to apologize to the professor’s class for how the Italian boys are viewed in the story (also to explain how Italian boys, in our neighborhood, were reputed to be the most handsome, sexy, and dangerous !). The students have already read the other passage in the story about Italians, which I hope they will take in the spirit intended: We were in the first year of high school that winter. Ruthie had begun traveling with a different crowd. Dark, handsome Italian boys, who wore the top three buttons of their shirts undone and sported large crucifixes that gleamed Botticelli Blue Skies 201 aggressively from the swirls of their black chest hair, circled about her in the lunchroom. As if witnessing a miracle, they hopped about and genuflected as she delicately dipped potato chips into a swirl of mustard that she had dabbed onto the center of the cellophane bag. “I hope you understand,” I tell them, “that when I was thirteen years old I desperately wanted an Italian of my own.” They are kind to me and laugh. When class ends, the professor introduces me to one of his students , Emanuela de Carlo, who has asked him whether she may translate several of my stories into Italian for her graduation thesis. She is a dark-eyed, dark-haired beauty who speaks English carefully and profoundly . I...