A Legacy Project

An incident at the Rimini Autostrada automated drive-through pay station.

Tizi and I were driving back to San Marino from Pesaro. At the Rimini exit, my ticket was repeatedly rejected. Three times a gentle automated female voice told me to introduire il bigletto, that is, introduce (insert) my ticket. I did, to no effect. But I thought, Hey, how about that verb? Introduire. I never use that word. Might I want to use it, maybe even need to use it, sometime in the future? You never know. Life is uncertain.

Then came a man’s voice on the ticket-taking machine. A real man.

“What’s the problem out there?” 

Most of the time I understand next to nothing coming out of a loudspeaker in Italy. Airports, train stations, supermarkets–the speech is loud, I hear it, but I do not understand a word of it. It’s awkward. You feel foreign, stupid, and helpless. But it was easy to guess what this guy had said.

I told him I couldn’t introduce my ticket, deciding to try out my new verb. As soon as I said introdusco mio bigletto–he interrupted me. 

“Where did you get on the autostrada?” 

“What?”

“WHERE DID YOU GET ON THE AUTOSTRADA?”

Beside me, Tizi said, “He wants to know where we got on the autostrada.

“Pesaro,” I said.

The pay station display lit up, 2.80 euro. 

I tapped my credit card. We went. As we pulled away, I turned to her. “It’s not introdusco, is it?” I think I blushed a little. Introdusco sounded just plain goofy. Even I could tell.

“It’s introduco.” 

Damn those verbs.

The world is your laboratory. It’s where you experiment, where you try new things, where you learn. But there are social constraints. The autostrada pay station is not the place to have a language lesson. When uniformed people are involved, stick to the basics.

Earlier that day in Fano, while Tizi shopped for chocolate and Easter goodies, I knew it would go long. She and Antonella can carry on a conversation. I sat in the sun on a bench around the corner from Antonella’s shop. Fano is an old city, Roman era. It’s almost all pedestrian traffic, fashionable people fashionably dressed. A sfilata.

My bench was in front of a furniture store called Ikon Arredimenti. While I sat, the proprietor stepped outside to sweep. Italian merchants are obessive sweepers and moppers. While she swept, a woman came along, a pal, and asked her, “Come sta quel cagnalona?” How is that . . . thing? That what? I didn’t know what. It sounded like a pastry. They chatted. I acted like I wasn’t listening. When the proprietor resumed her sweeping I said, “I excuse me. I wasn’t listening, but I heard the word cagnalona. What is that?” She said it was a big female dog. A fat dog.

“Ah,” I said. And thanked her. She swept. I sunned myself another fifteen minutes.

Cagnalona. Would I ever need that word? Moreover, would I remember it? I would have to try to introduire cagnalona in a conversation as soon as the chance next arose.