“Can’t Paul just teach you?” Laura asked me.
“Not if we want to stay married,” I said, and they nodded in understanding. “Besides, he’s busy.”
“The other reason Angela’s class isn’t great,” said Sheila, “is that she’s Napolese.”
I was happy to have reasons to avoid Angela, but I didn’t understand what her being from Naples had to do with anything.
“She doesn’t speak Sardu,” Sheila explained.
I gave her a blank stare.
“The native language of Sardinia.”
Paul had said something about Sardinia having a dialect that was tough to understand, but I hadn’t realized until that very moment that it was an entirely different language. I felt like a fool and said so.
“Don’t beat yourself up,” said Sheila. “It’s the older folks who use it. People our age heard Sardu at home but learned Italian at school.”
“Is Sardu similar to Italian?” I asked.
“I think it’s closer to Latin, if anything.”
I thought of the Gullah who lived on the barrier islands of South Carolina and sold their sweetgrass baskets at the market in Charleston. For years, linguists dismissed the Gullah language as substandard English that had been corrupted over time. But eventually, some academic realized that half of the words the Gullah people were saying came straight from the shores of West Africa and had been preserved across more than two hundred years of slavery and everything that had come after.
“So, you think it’s better to have a teacher who speaks Sardu?” I asked.
“Or at least is from Sardinia,” said Sheila. “Because it helps to know some Sardu words. Like, for instance, the word forhouseiscasain Italian, but it’sdomuin Sardu.”
“I’m never going to get the hang of this.”
“Honestly, it’s not that big a deal. You’ll get along fine with Italian. And then you can use it onil continente, as the Sardinians say.”
Laura looked a little bored and said she wanted to introduce me to Bobby, if we could find him, so I said my goodbyes.
“Where are you staying?” Sheila asked as we were about to part ways.
“The Excelsior.”
“I’ve got the names of a couple of other women who give lessons. I don’t have their addresses with me, but I’ll look them up when I get home and leave them for you.”
“That’d be great,” I said appreciatively.
“No reason for you to spend any longer with Angela than absolutely necessary.”
45.
SHEILA DIDN’T WASTE ANY TIME.By the next morning, I had the names and addresses of three women who offered Italian lessons in their homes. Francesca Moriani had a star beside her name, along with the note:My friend Lorraine loves her. Speaks excellent English. Charges 2.500 lire/hour, which is the going rate.
Francesca lived near the hospital in an apartment building that took me forever to find because it was situated on a tiny unmarked side street that went straight uphill and was lined with big leafy trees. Beside the door, there was an intercom, so I rang the bell labeledB. Moriani, but I got a crackling noise, then nothing.
“Il citofono non funziona,” came a voice from somewhere above my head.
I looked up and saw a middle-aged woman in a bright pink bathrobe with a towel wrapped around her head, hanging over the railing of a second-floor balcony. Okay, first floor, technically, since we were in Italy. “I’m looking for Francesca Moriani.”
When I didn’t get an immediate reply, I tried the introduction I’d been practicing. “Mi chiamo Eileen Archer.” But the woman had disappeared.
I was about to try the buzzer again when I heard footsteps on an internal stairwell. The next thing I knew, the woman in the bathrobe was ushering me inside.
“Francesca Moriani?” I said, and while she didn’t confirm that she was Francesca, she also didn’t deny it.
