Campo Proficiency

Today I ordered a panino. All in Italian. It wasn’t much. I looked at the descriptions on the menu, and it told me the price right there (even though I understood her when she said cinque euro). But posso avere…porta via…si…grazie…and I stood outside, looking out onto the Campo at midday, a hot sandwich in one hand and satisfaction filling my entire being. This seemingly minor victory is the culmination of nearly daily dealings with the vendors, waiters, bakers, baristas, and salespeople of the market and its surroundings.



The first week, the Campo was only half-filled. Vendors were on holiday, late August in Italy. There were a few fruit vendors then. I picked up a banana and handed it to the gray-haired guy who seemed in charge. He said something unintelligible, then held up ten fingers. I took this to mean the banana was ten cents, dug a ten cent piece out of my wallet, and handed it to him. My first purchase in what would become my supermarket for the next five weeks.



When we returned from Florence, the Campo was in full bloom. Vendors everywhere, selling all manners of items from touristy bags and t-shirts to fresh fruit, jams, and assorted spices in unimaginable quantities. I chose a new fruit stand. I picked out peaches and handed them to the old lady behind the stand. She looked as though she had been doing this for a while. Her face was wrinkled and worn from years out in the sun; she reminded me of one of the crones in an old wives tale, as if she might pull out some magical remedies or mutter spells under her breath. The old lady talked to me only in Italian. By then I had learned numbers in Italian class and understood when she said “un euro settanta.”



On Monday, as we waited by Palazzo Farnese for our tour of the French Embassy, I watched as Susie ate a prosciutto and fig sandwich from the Forno on the west side of the Campo. Prosciutto and fig was a combination I had never thought of before. The sweet and savory, rather like our prosciutto and melon for the potluck. So on Tuesday, I made my first trip to the little forno, the one I now call the sandwich forno, to try one. I looked at the sandwiches lined up in neat rows behind the pristine glass case, the pizza bianca uniformly sliced and hugging equally neat rows of prosciutto, cheese, or veggies. I ordered in Italian, but was disappointed when he asked, “Take away?” Undeterred, I responded “Porta via.”



I went back to the forno on Wednesday. And on Thursday. It was the same guy working there both times. By my third trip, he was speaking to me only in Italian, and even if I didn’t understand him, I just pretended I did, and repeated the lines I knew were right. Questo…si…basta…grazie.

I found it frustrating, in the beginning. I couldn’t speak Italian, and yet I resented it when they spoke in English to me. In Japan, it was never like this. I was competent, confident in my ability to navigate in a foreign language. In Rome, I was thrown into something new. Yes, the words look like they could be English, but such looks can be deceptive. Though where I am is a far cry from fluency or even competency in Italian, I have learned to operate in my own small world, the microcosm of the Campo de’ Fiori.