The third day into the influenza that I got on Christmas, I noticed a few tea mugs had accumulated in my kitchen sink. I really should do those, I thought. But then I thought about what my roommate Sandro, back in Bologna, once told me when I pleaded with him to do his dishes. He was also sick at the time. “Kristine, I can’t do the dishes because I’m sick and the contact with water will make me sicker.” He said this dramatically, with his hands, of course.
I’m pretty sure I gave him a puzzled look but let it pass. However, I did snitch some of his hazelnut chocolate spread in revenge. I know he knew this because late at night, when he got home and went to the kitchen for his snack of fette biscottate and hazelnut spread, as he was opening the jar, he said, “Ciao, Kristine. Buona notte.”
Such was life in our cozy little two-bedroom, four-person apartment in Bologna. We were two women and two men: me and Cristina, a law student ten years older than me; Sandro, a classical guitarist; and Gaetano, a medical student. They were all from different places in the south — Calabria, Puglia, and Naples. No one spoke any English, except for Cristina’s elongated pronunciation of ‘bee-you-tee-ful’ as in the soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful,” which she watched regularly. In fact, I’m pretty sure this is why she hand-picked me to be her roommate; she was watching it when I visited the apartment and asked me about updates, which I couldn’t provide on the spot, but promised to ask my mother, who also watched the show.
Cristina and I were comrades in a year that was challenging but life-changing for me. I was determined to learn Italian, so I double-enrolled in classes at the university and also sat in on lectures of anatomy and law, just to improve my vocabulary. Of course, my roommates kept me down to earth with daily living language, correcting my blunders. Once I announced to Cristina, “Voglio caccare.” She blushed and started giggling, then ran to the bathroom, pointing at the toilet. I had said, “I want to poop.” What I’d meant to say was “Voglio chiacchierare.” I want to chat.
Not only did I learn Italian that year, but I learned how to learn, since, to steal the words of a poet educator I know, “The whole point of education is to become auto-didactic.”
One of my biggest challenges that year was getting sick, which to this day bubbles up in my memory whenever I get sick. Apart from a more recent bout of a severe kidney infection that landed me in the ER, along with an ileus — a blocked intestine — Bologna was the sickest I’ve ever been. I had three infections at once: sinus infection, ear infection, and bronchitis. I don’t remember the exact onset, except that I was very run-down. But I distinctly remember crowding around the oral exam of another student, with a bunch of other students — because this is how Italian students learned what might be on their exams — and suddenly, blood began gushing from my nose. That was one of a few nosebleeds I would have in the next few days, plus a massive headache. My roommates were as perplexed as I was and tried to tend to me with homespun treatments. Sandro had the idea to tie a scarf around my head as tightly as possible to cure my headache, and Cristina rubbed alcohol on my feet and knees. When Gaetano got home, he took one look at me, felt my forehead, and said “We need to take her to Pronto Soccorso.”
The physician on call in the emergency room was not happy to see me. She seemed irritated that I had come in with such “minor” ailments. My eyes stung with tears at her scolding. Then she prescribed “punture,” which I noted was a new vocabulary word: shots, specifically in the buttocks. For ten days. Not only was I terrified of the thing itself, but I panicked thinking about who would do this. At first, one of Gaetano’s medical student friends did it, but that felt too close for comfort. So, we discovered our neighbor upstairs, a psychoanalyst, could do it. In exchange, Cristina walked her dog, “Jung.”
I survived my illnesses and my end-of-term exams. Not only did I learn Italian that year, but I learned how to learn, since, to steal the words of a poet educator I know, “The whole point of education is to become auto-didactic.” I dated a few men too, but what I really fell in love with was learning, which I guess makes sense in a city that has been educating people for nearly a thousand years. I remember when the World Cup soccer games were going on, how the streets erupted in joyful clamor. I was in the library, reading St. Augustine’s Confessions. In Italian, of course.
