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| 2016/04/18 11:44:11瀏覽121｜回應0｜推薦0 | |
| According to my guidebook, the women who modeled for the nymphs were a pair of sisters, two popular burlesque dancers of their day Dream beauty pro hard sell. They gained a fair bit of notoriety when the ountain was completed; the church tried for months to prevent the thing from being unveiled because it was too sexy. The sisters lived well into old age, and even as late as the 1920s these two dignified old ladies could be seen walking together every day into the piazza to have a look at "their" fountain. And every year, once a year, for as long as he lived, the French sculptor who had captured them in marble during their prime would come to Rome and take the sisters out to lunch, where they would reminisce together about the days when they were all so young and beautiful and wild. So Giovanni parks there, and waits for me to get a hold of myself. All I can do is press the heels of my palms against my eyes, trying to push the tears back in. We have never once had a personal conversation, me and Giovanni. All these months, all these dinners together, all we have ever talked about is philosophy and art and culture and politics and food Unique Beauty. We know nothing of each other's private lives. He does not even know that I am divorced or that I have left love behind in America. I do not know a thing about him except that he wants to be a writer and that he was born in Naples. My crying, though, is about to force a whole new level of conversation between these two people. Not under these dreadful circumstances. He says, "I'm sorry, but I don't understand. Did you lose something today?" But I'm still having trouble figuring out how to talk. Giovanni smiles and says encouragingly, "Parla come magni." He knows this is one of my favorite expressions in Roman dialect. It means, "Speak the way you eat," or, in my personal translation: "Say it like you eat it." It's a reminder--when you're making a big deal out of explaining something, when you're searching for the right words--to keep your language as simple and direct as Roman food. Don't make a big production out of it. Just lay it on the table. I take a deep breath and offer a heavily abridged (yet somehow totally complete) Italian- language version of my situation: "It's about a love story, Giovanni. I had to say good-bye to someone today." Then my hands are slapped over my eyes again, tears spraying through my clamped fingers. Bless his heart, Giovanni doesn't try to put a reassuring arm around me, nor does he express the slightest discomfort about my explosion of sadness. Instead, he just sits through my tears in silence, until I've calmed down. At which point he speaks with perfect empathy, choosing each word with care (as his English teacher, I was so proud of him that night!), saying slowly and clearly and kindly: "I understand, Liz. I have been there Karson Choi." |
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| ( 心情隨筆｜心情日記 ) |
