Encounters: A Plate of Spaghetti

It was a summer on the northern Adriatic, hot well into the night, with pines that gave hardly any shade. I worked at a campsite as a guest host, responsible on my own for twelve houses and six tents. During the day I organised, explained, handed out keys.

One midday an Italian stood at my window, car key in hand, a fully loaded car behind him. He asked whether a house was still free. He spoke no English. I spoke no Italian. We stood facing each other, smiled at each other and began to negotiate with hands, feet and single words. Somehow we understood one another. In the end he held the bungalow key in his hand, nodded contentedly and called his family over, loudly, across half the site.

Every evening I made my round, between washing lines and barbecue smoke, and asked the guests whether everything was all right.

A few days later I stood in front of their house and saw them on the terrace. They sat in the last light, the table laid, a large pot of spaghetti in the middle. It smelled of garlic and olive oil, of summer.

I only wanted to ask whether everything was all right. Before I had finished the sentence, they waved me over.

At once they pulled a chair into place, and before I grasped what was happening, I was sitting at the table. In front of me a plate of spaghetti. A glass of wine.

The mother piled more on without asking. The children grinned and held up their phone, typing into a translation program. Sentences travelled from Italian into German, into English, and back again. Sometimes they made sense. Sometimes not. We laughed anyway.

I no longer remember what we talked about.

We did not understand much of each other.
But enough.

B.