Trope #1 - The Always Animated Italian Conversation: Mamma is starting to get restless, so I guess that's a good sign of her recovery. She was fidgety at breakfast. She wants to go to church. She wants to get out of the house. She complained that she needs fresh air. It's mildly cold out now that it's November, that much fresh air is not what she needs, but I am not here to make an argument. I completely understand the cooped up feeling she must have, but I told her that the doctor said she needs to rest from climbing stairs for one week. You don't want to be back in that hospital with the horrible food, do you? A few more days. “Io prometto.” I promise.
And then it happened. Rigo called to see how she is feeling. I knew as soon as she greeted him on the phone with “Rigo! Tesoro!” (Rigo, my treasure – tesoro is like saying dear or darling here) what was going to happen. She's telling him everything is fine but she wants to get out of the house and go out in the fresh air. Marco and I are shaking our heads at each other. Oh great. Of course Rigo offers to carry her up and down the stairs, no problem. She's light as a feather for him so it really is no problem. Don't get me wrong, this is not a calculating and manipulative woman. But she is determined. She will get inside that church as soon as she can.
Marco begins vocalizing “Mamma mamma dammelo.” Give me the phone. He gets on the phone with Rigo and tells him she doesn't need to go to church. Thank you so much for offering, but she can wait a few more days. Lots of listening while Rigo speaks, oh now they're doing the rapid venetian dialect. And the hand gestures. Oh, the hand gestures. Even on a phonecall, where one cannot see you, you are still expressing with the hands. Can't tell if it's heating up or not, too much garbled oatmeal talk. Mamma is talking too. Too much Venetian for me. They aren't angry voices, so that's good. It is not even 8AM and there's so much talking going on in here. But the conversation I hear is just one sided: Marco talking to Rigo, Mamma talking to empty air because Marco is listening and talking to Rigo. I'm going to get a headache soon.
He hangs up the phone. The gist is that she will agree that if she gets to go outside and go to church today, she will not do this again until Saturday, when she can try going down the stairs on her own. Rigo is not her personal elevator, please don't ask him to do this again. She responds that she didn't ask – he offered. Sure, after you complained to him. In any event, she agrees that this will be the only request for the services of Rigo. Fingers flying. Arms flailing. Eyes rolling up to heaven. Hands in the praying position. This is hilarious.
Rigo arrives a little before 9 and she is waiting in the seat next to the door. Coat on, hat, scarf, the whole deal. He scoops her up and takes her down, Marco takes the chair, I take the cane. We all go to Mass. After, we wait while she visits with her friends, one of whom is Rigo's mother. So he's just scoring points right and left with the church lady crowd. All the chatter they give is extending praise on him. Such a good boy, so caring, he looks out and helps everyone. Marco and I just smile and shake our heads. Rigo winks at us. Ha!
When she was ready to go we made our way back and he carried her up the stairs, no problem. Strong like bull. It really was a kind gesture. I am not knocking him in the slightest. I also happen to love that Marco The Golden Child got booted off his pedestal for a minute or two. But I'm sort of evil in that way. Suffice to say, any conversation had isn't worth it if it doesn't include the animated gestures and at least one facial expression.
Trope #2 – Any Show on Television Needs the Sexy: It's bizarre to me that a tv show needs a break for dancing girls in scant tops and no pants. Here, it happens. So often.
Game show, we're talking something on the lines of Jeopardy and suddenly... dance break! Four chickadees pop out in metallic lame and spangles to half-heartedly spin around and perform roundhouse kicks. Back to the game. Whoo?
Their “Daily Show” type satirically fake news programs. There is one on every channel, except those channels owned by Berlusconi. Interesting? Yes, I think so. Anyway, on “Strizia La Notizia” or “Le Iene” they will have dance breaks interspersed. I find it weird.
Their competition shows. I can see them bringing out the dance routines in the background for “X Factor” possibly even “Io Canto” - although, sexy dancers for a child/young adult singing competition is pushing it for me. What I don't understand is a dance break for the Italian version of Big Brother... if they had a Survivor or Amazing Race I would expect a dance break just before the elimination at the end.
Their variety shows. Okay, we expect a dance break in between skits here. Not a big deal here. The thing about these shows is that there are three hosts on them: “Colorado!” or “Zelig” both have two dudes- comedic actors, and then the hot babe barely dressed as the straightman, so to speak, to introduce and transition the skits. It's just weird. And obvious.
Trope #3 – All African Immigrants Are Up To No Good: I've written before about my friend Davide who works as a porter at the hotel; an immigrant from Senegal. He is fully documented and legal, but it wasn't always the case. There are thousands of African immigrants here in Italy, and a great percentage of them are not documented so their employment prospects are limited. Most of them work in the syndicate of “venditore ambulante” or the “vous-comprai” - those street sellers of knockoff handbags. There is a whole hierarchy of the street salespeople in the country, not just Venice. The Algerians & Moroccans sell the toys for the kids – plastic rubbery toys you can throw at the ground and they go flat, then regain their round ball-like shape, or the flying toys, like a lit-up reverse spinning top. The Ethiopians sell the sunglasses and camera tripods. The West and Central Africans sell the handbags.
One of the things I enjoy about our friendship is his openness to talk about his life. When he was undocumented and was a bag seller he would have to take the train down to Naples and pick up bags from the knockoff factory (run by the mafia, go figure) every week to ten days. Night train down there, buy bags, night train back up, sell them to tourists and when you're about to run out of bags, you hand them off to your buddy (selling to him, of course) and make the trip again to re-up. In the meantime, all the money you earn goes to the rent, where you share a tiny apartment with 8 other “ambulante” people, your food, clothing, and sending all remaining money back home. This guy is a trained and accredited CPA who was selling fake designer purses. He got popped four times in his four years as a seller, but was never actually deported. This is interesting to me. It's because Italy doesn't want to spend the money to deport when they know they will just come right on back. There's a difference between how far they're willing to go versus the US on this point., I see.
Now that he's documented I don't know how much better it is for him, to tell the truth. He went to a university for accounting and was on a traveling national sports team, yet he's a porter in a luxury hotel. At the drop of a hat or the whim of someone in a uniform, he has to produce documents to prove he has the right to be here.
Tonight after returning from Giudecca I met up with Davide for a drink. He doesn't drink and I wasn't either tonight, so we were going to have a soda in actuality. I had my totebag with my computer and purse in it. He was kind enough to offer to carry it for me as we were walking from the vaporetto. Well, it was ten at night and we were in an animated conversation walking across Piazza San Marco. Two policemen came over to us and asked to see his documents. He produced them, no problem, but one of the policemen was giving him a hard time about the bag. I excused myself and asked the other policeman if I could have my bag back, since it has my computer in it. I am respectful in situations with authority. I don't want to end up in jail overseas or at home. But this struck me as harassment. (a) If Davide had been a bag seller, he would have taken off at the whiff of a policeman in the vicinity, like they all do. (b) my totebag by NO means looks like a designer bag, fake or otherwise. It's nice, but not THAT nice, and certainly not fancy. (c ) he couldn't have been engaged in selling it to me when my belongings were already in it. I didn't give them this litany of reasons, but I did say my belongings were in it and I had brought it from the US. I did not buy it here. It has no designer label.
The policemen gave me my bag back. And as a parting shot, told Davide to leave the nice lady alone. That seriously pissed me off. An African immigrant can't be friends with anyone, apparently. Asshats.
Open your minds, Italy. Your tv is atrocious and your civil servants need diversity training. But your hand gestures and eye rolling are kind of fun to watch.
No comments:
Post a Comment