A Thousand Days in Venice by Marlena de Blasi Page B

clients.
    Unembarrassed, I am happy to have caused this burlesque. Concentrating so much on day-by-day rejoicing, I hardly notice the malaise that is settling on me: a suggestion of sadness, a bruise that comes and goes and returns, nostalgia. This feeling is not tragic, nor does it contradict the fullness of this new life. It is mainly that I miss my own language. I miss the
sounds
of English. I want to
understand and be understood
. Of course, I know the salves. Apart from time itself, there is the English-speaking community, members of whichare dispersed all over Venice. I need a chum. And perhaps there is something else: I miss my own ebullience.
    I feel squeezed by this northern stance of
bella figura
, the keeping of the façade, the quick strangling of spontaneity for the sake of a necessary deception that Italians call “elegance.” It prescribes a short list of approved questions and answers. Fernando is my
scudiero
, my shield bearer, protecting himself and me from “foul whisperings.” Whenever we are in public he moves about mincingly, trying to distract me from cultural mortification. It’s no use. Too often I feel like a middle-aged Bombastes with very red lips. Unimpressed by, insensitive to my own blunderings, I talk to everyone. I am curious, I smile too much, touch and peer and inspect. It seems the stranger and I are comfortable only when we’re alone together.
    â€œCalma, tranquilla,”
he says to me, the generic warning against every behavior that is not short-listed. Archaic posturing among people who seem to care less than a fig about each other—this nonverbal patois is their real language, and I cannot speak it. It was just as Misha had said it would be.
    Born and bred in Russia, Misha had emigrated to Italy as a newly graduated medical doctor and worked in Rome and Milan for nearly ten years before settling in America. He and I first met when we both lived in New York. We became closer friends after he transferred to Los Angeles and I was up in Sacramento. Misha always hadlots to say. He came to visit me in Saint Louis just after I’d met Fernando and our first lunch together was long and angry.
    â€œWhy are you doing this? What is it you want from this man? He has none of the obvious merits women are likely to race across the earth to cling to,” he said in his Rasputin voice. He went on about the perils of exchanging cultures, about how I would be surrendering even the simple joy of discourse. “Even when you learn to truly think and speak in another language, it is not the same as engaging in native fluency. You will neither
understand nor be understood
. That’s always been so fundamental to you. You who love words, who say wonderful things in that small, soft voice. There will be no one to hear you,” he said. Though it was clear this was a soliloquy, I tried to jump in.
    â€œMisha, I’m in love for the first time in my life. Is it then improbable that I would want to be with this man whether he lives in El Paso or Venice?” I asked. “I’m not choosing a culture. I’m choosing a lover, a partner, a husband.” He was ruthless.
    â€œBut who will you be there, what will you be able to do? The Mediterranean culture in general and the Italian culture in particular operate on a different standard of impressions and judgments. You’re not nineteen, you know, and the best they’ll think about you is that you ‘must have once been a beauty.’ It will be important if you can make them think you have money, which you don’t. Nothingelse much will matter. This is an eccentric sort of move you are making and most will be wary of you and ask, ‘What is it she wants here?’ It is inconceivable for them even to consider purity of motive because they contrive so. Every move is staged to effect a countermove. I don’t suggest this is singularly Italian, but I do suggest that the intensity of this