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All male Italians are members of this unspoken fraternal brotherhood.. |
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There's
a certain thing that occurs between Italian men that I've seen nowhere
else but in Italy--it's a kind of a protective cover that is thrown up
when an Italian is about to make a brutta figura (a bad image)--the protection
is given automatically, whether it's to a friend or a complete stranger,
because all male Italians are members of this unspoken fraternal brotherhood.
My first encounter
with it was in my early Rome days. Susan and I had gone to see an apartment
for rent and were met by its handsome young owner. I was smitten immediately
by both the apartment and Claudio Aranci, whose devilish smile and wicked
eyes caused me to go reeling from room to room, completely
Susan, more practical than I, told me to snap out of it: there were a thousand things wrong with the place, all of which this guy was claiming he'd "take care of at once." "Yeah, sure,"
she sniffed bitterly, "in my dreams! How can you believe anything that
malscazone [rascal] says? He just told us the rent is 65,000 lire [$100]
a month when the price in the ad is 55,000!--and laughed when we protested,
saying he'd raised the price because he'd seen 'how much Rosemary wanted
the
But it was too late; I liked the cheeky devil and all his chutzpah. And I cajoled Susan into taking the apartment. Well, Claudio turned out to be the best friend we ever had: as good as bread, as they say in Italy--loyal and true, our big brother throughout the years, always there for us when we so often needed a helping hand. But, to get back to the Italian male thing: that day, while Claudio was driving us over to his office to sign the lease, he offered us coffee and stopped at a bar. After a quick espresso, we were heading back to the car when the barman came running outside and shouted: "Signore! Signore, il resto!" (Your change, sir!) Claudio went back, then returned after a few moments with a funny smile on his face. He told us that what had really happened was he'd forgotten to pay the bill, and the barman, not wanting him to make a brutte figura in front of two women, had called out that he'd "forgotten his change!" Now, isn't that nice?...I just love it. That veritable but unspoken fraternity of male Italians is one of the many things that endears them to my heart. P.S. Claudio did repair everything, just as he said he would. And after a couple of months, he even reduced the rent! Rosemary Torigian,
Los Angeles
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