The Broker

12

Marco escaped his claustrophobic room, or “apartment” as it was called, and went for a long walk at daybreak. The sidewalks were almost as damp as the frigid air. With a pocket map Luigi had given him, all in Italian of course, he made his way into the old city, and once past the ruins of the ancient walls at Porta San Donato, he headed west on Via Irnerio along the north edge of the university section of Bologna. The sidewalks were centuries old and covered with what appeared to be miles of arching porticoes.

Evidently street life began late in the university section. An occasional car passed, then a bike or two, but the foot traffic was still asleep. Luigi had explained that Bologna had a history of left-wing, communist leanings. It was a rich history, one that Luigi promised to explore with him.

Ahead Marco saw a small green neon sign that was indifferently advertising the Bar Fontana, and as he walked toward it he soon picked up the scent of strong coffee. The bar was wedged tightly into the corner of an ancient building — but then they were all ancient. The door opened reluctantly, and once inside Marco almost smiled at the aromas — coffee, cigarettes, pastries, breakfast on a grill in the rear. Then the fear hit, the usual apprehension of trying to order in an unknown language.

Bar Fontana was not for students, or for women. The crowd was his age, fifty and up, somewhat oddly dressed, with enough pipes and beards to identify it as a hangout for faculty. One or two glanced his way, but in the center of a university with 100,000 students it was difficult for anyone to draw attention.

Marco got the last small table near the back, and when he finally nestled into his spot with his back to the wall he was practically shoulder to shoulder with his new neighbors, both of whom were lost in their morning papers and neither of whom appeared to notice him. In one of Luigi’s lectures on Italian culture he had explained the concept of space in Europe and how it differed significantly from that in the States. Space is shared in Europe, not protected. Tables are shared, the air evidently is shared because smoking bothers no one. Cars, houses, buses, apartments, cafés — so many important aspects of life are smaller, thus more cramped, thus more willingly shared. It’s not offensive to go nose to nose with an acquaintance during routine conversation because no space is being violated. Talk with your hands, hug, embrace, even kiss at times.

Even for a friendly people, such familiarity was difficult for Americans to understand.

And Marco was not yet prepared to yield too much space. He picked up the wrinkled menu on the table and quickly settled on the first thing he recognized. Just as the waiter stopped and glanced down at him he said, with all the ease he could possibly exude, “Espresso, e un panino al formaggio.” A small cheese sandwich.

The waiter nodded his approval. Not a single person glanced over to check out his accented Italian. No newspapers dipped to see who he might be. No one cared. They heard accents all the time. As he placed the menu back on the table, Marco Lazzeri decided that he probably liked Bologna, even if it turned out to be a nest for Communists. With so many students and faculty coming and going, and from all over the world, foreigners were accepted as part of the culture. Perhaps it was rather cool to have an accent and dress differently. Perhaps it was okay to openly study the language.

One sign of a foreigner was that he noticed everything, his eyes darting around as if he knew he was trespassing into a new culture and didn’t want to get caught. Marco would not be caught taking in the sights in the Bar Fontana. He removed a booklet of vocabulary sheets and tried mightily to ignore the people and scenes he wanted to watch. Verbs, verbs, verbs. Ermanno kept saying that to master Italian, or any Romance language for that matter, you had to know the verbs. The booklet had one thousand of the basic verbs, and Ermanno claimed that it was a good starting point.

As tedious as rote memorization was, Marco was finding an odd pleasure in it. He found it quite satisfying to zip through four pages — one hundred verbs, or nouns, or anything for that matter — and not miss a one. When he got one wrong, or missed a pronunciation, he went back to the beginning and punished himself by starting over. He had conquered three hundred verbs when his coffee and sandwich arrived. He took a sip, went back to work as if the food was much less important than the vocab, and was somewhere over four hundred when Rudolph arrived.

The chair on the other side of Marco’s small round table was vacant, and this caught the attention of a short fat man, dressed entirely in faded black, with wild bunches of gray frizzy hair protruding from all parts of his head, some of it barely suppressed by a black beret that somehow managed to stay aboard. “Buon giorno. È libera?” he asked politely, gesturing toward the chair. Marco wasn’t sure what he said but it was obvious what he wanted. Then he caught the word “libera” and assumed it meant “free” or “vacant.”

“Sì,” Marco managed with no accent, and the man removed a long black cape, draped it over the chair, then maneuvered himself into position. When he came to rest they were less than three feet apart. Space is different here, Marco kept telling himself. The man placed a copy of L’Unità on the table, making it rock back and forth. For an instant Marco was worried about his espresso. To avoid conversation, he buried himself even deeper into Ermanno’s verbs.

“American?” his new friend said, in English with no foreign accent.

Marco lowered the booklet and looked into the glowing eyes not far away. “Close. Canadian. How’d you know?”

He nodded at the booklet and said, “English to Italian vocabulary. You don’t look British, so I figure you’re American.” Judging by his accent, he was probably not from the upper Midwest. Not from New York or New Jersey; not from Texas or the South, or Appalachia, or New Orleans. As vast sections of the country were eliminated, Marco was beginning to think of California. And he was beginning to get very nervous. The lying would soon start, and he hadn’t practiced enough.

“And where are you from?” he asked.

“Last stop was Austin, Texas. That was thirty years ago. Name’s Rudolph.”

“Good morning, Rudolph, a pleasure. I’m Marco.” They were in kindergarten where only first names were needed. “You don’t sound Texan.”

“Thank God for that,” he said with a pleasant laugh, one that barely revealed his mouth. “Originally from San Francisco.”

The waiter leaned in and Rudolph ordered black coffee, then something else in rapid Italian. The waiter had a follow-up, as did Rudolph, and Marco understood none of it.

“What brings you to Bologna?” Rudolph asked. He seemed anxious to chat; probably rare that he cornered a fellow North American in his favorite café.

Marco lowered his booklet and said, “Just traveling around Italy for a year, seeing the sights, trying to pick up some of the language.”

Half of Rudolph’s face was covered with an unkempt gray beard that began fairly high up the cheekbones and sprang in all directions. Most of his nose was visible, as was part of his mouth. For some odd reason, one that no one would ever understand because no one would ever dare ask such a ridiculous question, he had developed the habit of shaving a small round spot under his lower lip and comprising most of his upper chin. Other than that sacred ground, the wild frizzy whiskers were allowed to run free and apparently go unwashed. The top of his head was pretty much the same — acres of untouched bright gray brush sprouting from all around the beret.

Because so many of his features were masked, his eyes got all the attention. They were dark green and projected rays that, from under a set of thick sagging eyebrows, took in everything.

“How long in Bologna?” Rudolph asked.

“Got here yesterday. I have no schedule. And you, what brings you here?” Marco was anxious to keep the conversation away from himself.

The eyes danced and never blinked. “I’ve been here for thirty years. I’m a professor at the university.”

Marco finally took a bite of his cheese sandwich, partly out of hunger, but more importantly to keep Rudolph talking.

“Where’s your home?” he asked.

Following the script, Marco said, “Toronto. Grandparents immigrated there from Milan. I have Italian blood but never learned the language.”

“The language is not hard,” Rudolph said, and his coffee arrived. He grabbed the small cup and thrust it deep into the beard. Evidently it found his mouth. He smacked his lips and leaned forward a bit as though he wanted to talk. “You don’t sound Canadian,” he said, and those eyes appeared to be laughing at him.

Marco was struggling under the labor of looking, acting, and sounding Italian. He’d had no time to even think about putting on Canadian airs. How, exactly, does one sound Canadian? He took another bite, a huge one, and through his food said, “Can’t help that. How did you get here from Austin?”

“A long story.”

Marco shrugged as if he had plenty of time.

“I was once a young professor at the University of Texas law school. When they found out I was a Communist they began pressuring me to leave. I fought them. They fought back. I got louder, especially in the classroom. Communists didn’t fare too well in Texas in the early seventies, doubt if much has changed. They denied me tenure, ran me out of town, so I came here to Bologna, the heart of Italian communism.”

“What do you teach here?”

“Jurisprudence. Law. Radical left-wing legal theories.”

A powdered brioche of some sort arrived and Rudolph ate half of it with the first bite. A few crumbs dropped from the depths of his beard.

“Still a Communist?” Marco asked.

“Of course. Always. Why would I change?”

“Seems to have run its course, don’t you think? Not such a great idea after all. I mean, look at what a mess Russia is in because of Stalin and his legacy. And North Korea, they’re starving there while the dictator builds nuclear warheads. Cuba is fifty years behind the rest of the world. The Sandinistas were voted out in Nicaragua. China is turning to free market capitalism because the old system broke down. It really doesn’t work, does it?”

The brioche had lost its appeal; the green eyes were narrow. Marco could see a tirade coming, probably one laced with obscenities in both English and Italian. He glanced around quickly and realized that there was a very good chance the Communists had him outnumbered in the Bar Fontana.

And what had capitalism done for him?

Much to his credit, Rudolph smiled and shrugged and said with an air of nostalgia, “Maybe so, but it sure was fun being a Communist thirty years ago, especially in Texas. Those were the days.”

Marco nodded at the newspaper and said, “Ever read papers from home?”

“Home is here, my friend. I became an Italian citizen and haven’t been back to the States in twenty years.”

Backman was relieved. He had not seen American newspapers since his release, but he assumed there had been coverage. Probably old photos as well. His past seemed safe from Rudolph.

Marco wondered if that was his future — Italian citizenship. If any at all. Fast-forward twenty years, and would he still be drifting through Italy, not exactly glancing over his shoulder but always thinking about it?

“You said ‘home,’ ” Rudolph interrupted. “Is that the U.S. or Canada?”

Marco smiled and nodded to a far-off place. “Over there, I guess.” A small mistake, but one that should not have been made. To quickly shift to another subject, he said, “This is my first visit to Bologna. Didn’t know it was the center of Italian communism.”

Rudolph lowered his cup and made a smacking sound with his partially concealed lips. Then with both hands he gently pawed his beard backward, much like an old cat slicking down his whiskers. “Bologna is a lot of things, my friend,” he said, as if a lengthy lecture was starting. “It’s always been the center of free thought and intellectual activity in Italy, thus its first nickname, la dotta, which means the learned. Then it became the home of the political left and received its second nickname, la rossa, the red. And the Bolognesi have always been very serious about their food. They believe, and they’re probably right, that this is the stomach of Italy. Thus, the third nickname of la grassa, the fat, an affectionate term because you won’t see many overweight people here. Me, I was fat when I arrived.” He patted his stomach proudly with one hand while finishing off the brioche with the other.

A frightening question suddenly hit Marco: Was it possible that Rudolph was part of the static? Was he a teammate of Luigi and Ermanno and Stennett and whoever else was out there in the shadows working so hard to keep Joel Backman alive? Surely not. Surely he was what he said he was — a professor. An oddball, a misfit, an aging Communist who’d found a better life somewhere else.

The thought passed, but it was not forgotten. Marco finished his little sandwich and decided they’d talked enough. He suddenly had a train to catch for another day of sightseeing. He managed to extricate himself from the table and got a fond farewell from Rudolph. “I’m here every morning,” he said. “Come back when you can stay longer.”

“Grazie,” Marco said. “Arrivederci.”

Outside the café, Via Irnerio was stirring to life as small delivery vans began their routes. Two of the drivers yelled at each other, probably friendly obscenities Marco would never understand. He hustled away from the café just in case old Rudolph thought of something else to ask him and came charging out. He turned down a side street, Via Capo di Lucca — he was learning that they were well marked and easy to find on his map — and zigzagged his way toward the center. He passed another cozy little café, then backtracked and ducked inside for a cappuccino.

No Communists bothered him there, no one seemed to even notice him. Marco and Joel Backman savored the moment — the delicious strong drink, the warm thick air, the quiet laughter of those doing the talking. Right now not a single person in the world knew exactly where he was, and it was indeed an exhilarating feeling.

At Marco’s insistence, the morning sessions were beginning at eight, not thirty minutes later. Ermanno, the student, still needed long hours of hard sleep but he couldn’t argue with his pupil’s intensity. Marco arrived for each lesson with his vocabulary lists thoroughly memorized, his situational dialogues perfected, and his urgent desire to absorb the language barely under control. At one point he suggested they begin at seven.

The morning he met Rudolph, Marco studied intensely for two uninterrupted hours, then abruptly said, “Vorrei vedere l’università.” I’d like to see the university.

“Quando?” Ermanno asked. When?

“Adesso. Andiamo a fare una passeggiata.” Now. Let’s go for a walk.

“Penso che dobbiamo studiare.” I think we should study.

“Sì. Possiamo studiare a camminando.” We can study while we’re walking.

Marco was already on his feet, grabbing his coat. They left the depressing building and headed in the general direction of the university.

“Questa via, come si chiama?” Ermanno asked. What’s the name of this street?

“È Via Donati,” Marco answered without looking for a street sign.

They stopped in front of a small crowded shop and Ermanno asked, “Che tipo di negozio è questo?” What kind of store is this?

“Una tabaccheria.” A tobacco store.

“Che cosa puoi comprare in questo negozio?” What can you buy here?

“Posso comprare molte cose. Giornali, riviste, francobolli, sigarette.” I can buy many things. Newspapers, magazines, stamps, cigarettes.

The session became a roving game of name that thing. Ermanno would point and say, “Cosa è quello?” What’s that? A bike, a policeman, a blue car, a city bus, a bench, a garbage can, a student, a telephone booth, a small dog, a café, a pastry shop. Except for a lamppost, Marco was quick with the Italian word for each. And the all-important verbs — walking, talking, seeing, studying, buying, thinking, chatting, breathing, eating, drinking, hurrying, driving — the list was endless and Marco had the proper translations at his disposal.

A few minutes after ten, and the university was finally coming to life. Ermanno explained that there was no central campus, no American-style quadrangle lined with trees and such. The Università degli Studi was found in dozens of handsome old buildings, some five hundred years old, most of them packed end to end along Via Zamboni, though over the centuries the school had grown and now covered an entire section of Bologna.

The Italian lesson was forgotten for a block or two as they were swept along in wave of students hustling to and from their classes. Marco caught himself looking for an old man with bright gray hair — his favorite Communist, his first real acquaintance since walking out of prison. He had already made up his mind to see Rudolph again.

At 22 Via Zamboni, Marco stopped and gazed at a sign between the door and a window: FACOLTÀ DI GIURISPRUDENZA.

“Is this the law school?” he asked.

“Sì.”

Rudolph was somewhere inside, no doubt spreading left-wing dissent among his impressionable students.

They ambled on, in no hurry as they continued to play name that thing and enjoy the energy of the street.