ITALIAN LESSONS
Peter Pezzelli
Kensington
Fiction
ISBN-10: 0758220502
ISBN-13: 9780758220509

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• Author Interview –– October 12, 2007

Had he chanced to glance out his office window just a few minutes before noon, Professor Giancarlo Rosa might have seen, off in the distance, a solitary figure making its way across the near-deserted campus of Rhode Island College. It was the last week of May; commencement had already come and gone, and most of the faculty, save those teaching a summer course, had vanished along with the students. The few laggards who remained, Rosa among them, were busy collecting their things, finishing up last minute paperwork, and doing whatever other odds and ends that required completion before staff members could escape to their own summer retreats. With no immediate plans for his vacation, and nothing particularly urgent on his agenda for the day, the professor of music was in no great hurry, so at the moment he was sitting at his computer, perusing the online edition of Il Centro, an Italian newspaper. Behind him a recording of Clementi sonatinas played on a little CD player atop the filing cabinet—or more precisely, atop a stack of papers, manuscripts, books, and other paraphernalia that teetered precariously atop the cabinet.

Absorbed in his reading as he was at the moment, the world outside his window held little interest. Not that it would have mattered even if he had just then taken a notion to look outdoors. Had he caught a glimpse of the person off in the distance, a young man of twenty-two years, most likely Rosa would have taken little note of him. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the young man’s appearance that would have caught his attention, no immediate indication that his journey across campus was tending in any definitive way toward the building in which Rosa sat, and certainly nothing to convey any augury that his path and that of the professor would very soon intersect.

For his part, the young man strode across the campus with an air of great purpose, though with a slight but perceptible limp, the lingering remnant of an unfortunate, though not terribly serious mishap on the rugby field some weeks earlier. His ankle had been unceremoniously stomped on while he lay defenseless on the ground at the bottom of a ruck, a pile of players struggling to obtain possession of the ball. The injury had not yet completely healed—every step was a reminder of the incident—yet he took little notice of it. He was in a hurry, and the small discomfort was of little concern. Not completely certain of the exact location of his ultimate destination—the building housing the college’s music department—he paused as he passed the soccer field and the track oval and glanced ahead at the cluster of structures before him to get his bearings.

It was a warm, pleasant day with just the hint of a breeze whispering across the grounds, nudging the light brown hair hanging down over the young man’s brow. Above, the brilliant blue of the noonday sky was all but unbroken save for a smattering of puffy white clouds gathering on the horizon far away to the west. It was the type of day best given to lounging beneath a shady tree, or perhaps taking an excursion to the beach or some other form of outdoor recreation, but the young man had more serious pursuits on his mind. He oriented himself toward what he felt certain was the appropriate building and continued on.

By the time he reached the side entrance to the building, ascended the stairs to the third floor, and poked his head into the corridor to ascertain whether he had come to the right place, Rosa had already turned away from his computer. He was not standing at his desk, collecting into stacks the various papers and notebooks he intended to take with him. Two of these he gathered into his hands and dropped them into a cardboard box destined for the backseat of his car. Taking the box into his arms, he turned and walked headlong out of his office door just as the young man, who had followed the lively strains of the piano music down the corridor, was about to walk in. Only the agility of the other man, who managed to twist himself to the side at the last moment, saved the two from colliding.

Taking little notice of the newcomer now pressed against the wall, Rosa  murmured a perfunctory apology as he squeezed by, consolidated his grip on the box, and started on his way down the corridor.

“Professor Rosa?”

Rosa stopped and turned around, wondering if perhaps he had inadvertently ignored a student from the semester just passed. His students occasionally stopped by his office for one reason or another before heading home for the summer—though usually well before this late date—but he realized that he wasn’t one of them. Dressed as he was in shorts and sneakers and an oversized polo shirt bearing the insignia of some club or team, he looked like any other student Rosa might have encountered on campus, but his face was unfamiliar. He was a sturdy sort, Rosa noted, with a thick neck and rugged shoulders. An athlete no doubt, but there were many on campus, and Rosa paid little attention to sports.

“Yes?” he finally said, eyeing the young man skeptically.

“Excuse me, you don’t know me, Professor Rosa,” he said in a respectful, but urgent voice, “but my name is Carter Quinn. I was wondering, that is, if you had just a minute, if I could talk to you.”

“Well, Carter, Carter Quinn, you’ve already started talking,” Rosa noted with a bit of acerbity that his foreign accent had a way of accentuating, “so I suppose whether or not I have a minute is now a moot point.”

“Actually,” he said with a sheepish smile, “it’s just Carter Quinn. You know, one Carter, not two.”

“You should learn to speak more precisely.”

“Well, in a way, that’s why I’m here.”

“Really?” said Rosa. “And how might that be?”

“I want to learn to speak Italian.”

“You’re in the wrong place,” Rosa told him. “This is the music department. The foreign language department is in the next building over.”

“Actually, I already called them this morning,” said Carter. “They’re not offering any introductory classes this summer. But the woman I spoke with—I think her name was Patricia—she said I should try getting in touch with you before you left for the summer. She told me that you come from Italy and that sometimes you give private Italian lessons, so I took a chance I’d find you here. I would have called first, but she said not to bother because you almost never check your voice mail.”

“Hmm,” Rosa grunted. “That sounds just like Patricia.”

“Then it’s true, you do give lessons,” said Carter.

“Yes, sometimes I give lessons,” Rosa admitted, somewhat impatiently. “Sometimes, but not always—and not just to any stranger who walks through the door, I’m afraid.”

“I never really made it through the door,” Carter observed. “Does that help?”

“Not really,” Rosa replied. “Forgive me, my friend, but I don’t think I’ll be giving any lessons this summer. If you look around, perhaps in the yellow pages, I’m sure you’ll be able to find someone who can help you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m a little busy at the moment.”

With that the professor turned and continued on his way down the corridor to the stairwell and out to his car.

To his surprise, when Rosa climbed the stairs and stepped out into the corridor, he found Carter Quinn sitting on the floor outside his office. At seeing the professor approach, he jumped to his feet, an apologetic, but hopeful expression coming to his face.

“I still haven’t walked through the door,” he said, nodding to the office.

His arms crossed, Rosa shot him a look of consternation. “Mister Carter…”

“Um, Quinn,” he said, clearing his throat.

“I beg your pardon.”

“It’s Mister Quinn,” he said affably, “but of course you can call me Carter.”

“Mister Quinn, who are you? Are you a student here at the College?”

“No,” Carter explained with a shake of his head. “Actually, I live in North Providence, just a little ways up the street off campus. But I just graduated from UNH last week.”

“New Hampshire seems like a long way to go to obtain an education when you have a perfectly find college right next door,” Rosa pointed out. “Pardon me.”

Rosa stepped past him and into his office. His back to the door, he went to his desk and continued organizing his papers.

“Just needed a change of scenery, I guess,” said Carter with a shrug, lingering outside the door. “It’s a nice place.”

“So I’ve heard,” said Rosa with an air of detachment. He hoped that an attitude of indifference on his part would discourage the younger man and entice him to go on his way. Undaunted, however, Carter stood there, lingering in the corridor just outside the door. His persistence piqued Rosa’s curiosity and so, against his better judgment, for he had no intention of changing his mind on the matter of Italian lessons, he professor said,

“And what did you study there in New Hampshire, Mr. Quinn?”

“Financial management.”

“And for what purpose?”

“Purpose?” Carter said. “I don’t know, I guess because I want a career in business.”

“A career in business,” repeated Rosa with a mildly derisive laugh. “That’s like saying you want a career in breathing. What is it that you truly want to do with your life?”

A moment passed before Carter replied. “I dunno,” he finally admitted. “I’m working on that one.”

“After four years of college, you’re still working on it? What were you doing all that time, daydreaming?” said Rosa. He looked back over his shoulder and nodded at the insignia on Carter’s shirt. “I’m guessing you’re an athlete, yes?”

“I played football,” said Carter with another shrug. “And some rugby in the spring.”

“A scholar athlete,” Rosa noted, turning back to his desk again. “Tell me, which were you more of, the former or the latter?”

“I studied pretty hard…sometimes,” he answered, sounding less than convincing, and even less convinced. “But sports were important to me too, I guess.”

“Sports often are to people,” said Rosa with a sigh. “Too important in my opinion, but in your case I could understand why. Financial management doesn’t sound like the stuff to stir one’s academic passions.”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“And why are you coming to me now?” asked Rosa. “Didn’t they have any Italian courses at your university for you to take?”

“Oh, sure they did,” said Carter. “But it wasn’t until just a few weeks ago that I decided to take a trip to Italy sometime this summer.”

“I see. And just what was it that inspired you to do that?”

At this question the young man grew ill at ease. He shifted his stance and looked down at his feet.

“It’s hard to explain,” he said after a time.

“Try.”

“Well, it’s just that lately I’ve become really interested in Italian culture,” he offered. “I’d like to learn more about it, so I thought studying the language would be the best place to start.”

At this pronouncement, Rosa paused and looked once more over his shoulder, eyeing the young man with a look of bemusement. He chuckled to himself as he turned around and leaned back against the edge of the desk, his arms folded.

“So tell me,” he said in a far gentler voice than he had thus far used to address the young man, “what was her name?”

Surprised that his confession had brought him an invitation into the professor’s office instead of immediate ejection from his presence, Carter stepped tentatively inside and sat down in the chair.

“Where do I begin?” he said disconsolately.

“Begin at the beginning,” suggested Rosa. “Tell me about how you first met, or better yet how it was that you first saw her.”

“That’s easy,” said Carter, looking past Rosa with a faraway gaze. “I can remember it like it was a minute ago. It was during a rugby match over in Newport—the New England collegiate tournament. I was carrying the ball and when I got tackled I ended up flat on my back, trapped at the bottom of a ruck. There must have been ten guys on top of me, all fighting for the ball, and one of them, probably one of my own teammates, had his knee jammed into my mid-section. So besides getting crushed, I could barely breathe. I tried screaming, but nothing came out. It was like being born. I was in agony, and I thought it would never end, but then the ball suddenly came loose and everyone unpiled, leaving me there on the ground while they all ran down the field. I sat up to catch my breath, and I was just about to pick myself up and go running down the field after them when  I was her standing there on the sidelines, looking straight at me, smiling.

“What did you notice about her?” asked Rosa, studying the young man’s expression.

“Everything,” said Carter dreamily, reliving the moment in his mind. “But not just about her. All of a sudden it was like time had stopped and I became aware of all these things I had never bothered to notice before. How sweet the grass smelled and how soft it was. How warm the sun felt on my face, and how colorful the uniforms of the players and the clothes of all the people on the sidelines looked. And how beautiful the sky and the clouds were and how the trees swayed in the wind. It was like everything suddenly came into sharp focus. And Elena was right there in the middle of it all.”

“What did she look like?”

“How can I describe her,” sighed Carter. “She was the most beautiful girl I had ever met. She had this long wavy hair like strands of gold, and her face was like the one you see in that famous painting you see all the time of the girl standing inside the clam shell. You know the one I’m talking about?”

“The Birth of Venus,” said Rosa. “I’ve seen it. But I believe it’s more like a scallop shell.”

“Whatever,” said Carter with a dismissive wave of his own. “It’s a shell. Anyway, she looked at me and smiled, and all of a sudden I forgot about the match and the guys running down the field, and the pain in my gut. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. It was like nothing else in the world mattered except her.”

“Hmmm, I would say that you got hit by the thunderbolt,” chuckled Rosa. “It happens.”

“Yeah? Well that wasn’t all I got hit with. Two seconds later the ball came bouncing back my way and I was right back in the thick of it. I got whacked but good. But you know, I played the rest of the match in a fog, not feeling a thing. Everywhere I ran on the field I kept looking back to see if she was still there, you know, to make sure I hadn’t just imagined her.”

“And then what happened?”

“The match ended and she was gone,” said Carter. “I figured she must have been a mirage, but then I saw her again a little while later on the other side of the field. I couldn’t help myself, so I just walked straight across the field—right where another match was going on—because I had to talk with her.”

Rosa gave a little laugh and turned back to his desk. He started to sift through the remaining papers stacked there, stuffing those he wished to take with him into a leather satchel. “And how did that first encounter go?” he asked over his shoulder.

“I felt so at east when I went up to her, like I’d known her my whole life,” said Carter, full of wonder. “And I could tell that she felt the same way too. The way she smiled and told me her name after I introduced myself. The way she looked at me and touched my cheek on the spot where I had gotten kicked in the face. The way she laughed because I didn’t seem to care about it. And when she talked, her voice, it was like she was singing. You know?”

“I suppose,” said Rosa.

“Anyway,” Carter went on, “I could tell from her accent that she was a foreigner, so I asked her, and she told me she was from Italy. She was an exchange student at Salve Regina.”

“Hence your newfound fascination with Italian culture,” the professor noted. “What happened next?”

“We ended up walking a little ways up the side of the hill next to the field,” said Carter. “We sat down together to watch some of the other matches and just started talking. Actually she did most of the talking, which was fine with me because I was just happy listening to her—even if her English was a little shaky.”

“What did you talk about?”

“The weather,” shrugged Carter. “Small talk. Then she asked about the rugby matches, so I tried to explain to her what was going on down on the field. After a while she started telling me about Italy and how nice it was this time of year where she lived, and how I should come and visit it someday.”

“And where would that be?”

“A town called Roccasale.”

“Roccasale?” said the professor, suddenly turning to the young man, an eyebrow arched in curiosity.

“She said it’s a little town not far from someplace called Pescara, wherever that is,” said Carter. “Have you ever heard of it?”

Rosa stood there for a moment, rubbing his chin as he considered the question.

“Yes,” he said thoughtfully after a time. “I have heard of it. Very interesting.” Then, resuming his former impassive expression, he asked, “So, how long did this blissful interlude go on?”

“Not long,” said Carter miserably. “Our next match was about to start, so I had to leave her to go warm up with my teammates. Before I went back to the field I told her it would be nice to see her after the match. She said she thought it would be nice too, but friends were coming to pick her up because she had to get back to her dorm to get packed. Turns out she was flying home to Italy the very next day.”

“Ah,” signed Rosa. “And so…?”

“And so nothing,” griped Carter. “I didn’t know what to say. All of a sudden my teammates were coming up to me, nagging me to get back to the field to get ready, and she just smiled and waved goodbye. ‘Ciao, Carter,’ she said. And that was it. I haven’t seen or heard from her since. I know it’s crazy, but now, no matter what I do or where I go, I can’t get her out of my head. I can’t think straight about anything. It’s like my whole world has come to a stop, and it won’t start again until I see her—at least one more time.”

Excerpted from ITALIAN LESSONS © Copyright 2008 by Peter Pezzelli. Reprinted with permission by Kensington. All rights reserved.

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