Chapter 60
The next day we took off for Milan and twenty hours later we poked the clouds and began circling over the city, dense with brick-tiled roofs, churches, streets arranged in circular patterns, life swarming in the moist heat of this northern Italian morning, and finally we landed at Malpensa airport. I was nauseous with stuffy air in my lungs and bitter corporate airline coffee in my stomach, legs crumpled, head spinning from the broken sleep and yet electrified, waves of happiness and curiosity and excitement pulsing inside me, moving me on in spite of the physical exhaustion. Smell of coffee, richly fragrant, smell of croissants, people with stronger fragrances and more elegant outfits than what I was used to, words exchanged, rounded, intense and flirtatious or spicy with irritation, always lacking the cool quality of the English language.
It was almost noon by the time we passed through the customs and picked up our luggage. We figured there was a train shuttle that could bring us straight to the center of the city, but then we thought we would struggle to find our way to the hotel, with the luggage in our way and tired as we were. There was a line of white taxis at the exit, and we picked one, a European car I had never seen before in the States. It looked good, and I thought that I would have liked to drive one of the same make, but black.
“Where are you going?”, asked the taxi driver, his thick Italian accent marking the English words
We handed him the printout of where the hotel was, he had a brief look, handed it back to us and nodded.
We drove in silence for a while, crossing the outskirts of the towns, still far from the city, asphalt and fields around us. I looked at the cars passing us by, most of them unknown to me, most of them small.
“Do you know a good place to have lunch?”, I asked after a while
“Your hotel is in the center. There are many restaurants, you can pick”, he said accompanying the explanation with a contained gest, before returning his hand on the steering wheel.
I nodded, and we were silent again. I would have imagined Italians to be more talkative, but was I being stereotypical? Although my ancestors had been Italian I was American down to the bone, but with high expectations and earnest excitement to know about my forgotten heritage. I imagined to be very much Italian, the way second or third generation kids of Italian immigrants do, with a national pride that Italians born and raised in Italy don’t have.
After driving for a stretch of time the city buildings began to appear, tall modern constructions of grey concrete, paper ads glued on large boards displaying food, bikinis, tropical beaches, invitations to eat, buy, pack up and go written with words I could guess from the pictures rather than understand, and tunnels lit with orange lights, graffiti, graffiti everywhere, scribbled in impossible spots where I would have bet nobody could get, bold and rudely outspoken in the summer air of the city, thick with heat and humidity.
Then the streets got smaller, the buildings older and not as tall, concrete giants giving way to brick facades, the plaster crackled here and there painted with light pink or yellow or faded white, and I began seeing shops, many of them, bread shops, coffee shops and tiny grocery shops where old ladies walked in and out, very decent in their pressed shirts and skirts, carrying bags or dragging shopping carts, moms with their kids, ice-creams melting in their hands, scooters zig-zagging around the streets, adults driving, teenagers driving with their sweethearts clinging onto them on the passenger seat.
“I like this!”, I exclaimed, taking it all in from the window
Jack smiled tiredly and squeezed my hand.
“We are not far from your hotel”, the taxi driver said looking at me through the mirror
I nodded, grinning, and began looking out the window again.
As we drove the atmosphere transitioned gradually from rustically urban to classy, and five minutes later we were surrounded by marble facades and precious small shops, the wheels of our taxy jerking on the broad stones blocks of the paving, cut by trails on which fashionably démodé orange streetcars made their way, slowly but surely.
“Look!”, I told Jack, pointing at a building with flowery balconies, bright in its antiquity against the hot blueness of the sky.
“This is Via Manzoni, we are very close to your hotel”, the taxi driver informed us
“I love this area!”, I exclaimed
“Can we go for a walk later?”, I asked Jack, infantine notes resounding in the joyful eagerness of my voice
“Sure”, said Jack, fascinated himself now in spite of the tiredness, my excitement pouring into him as the beauty of the city unravelled at each turn of our cab.
Few moments later the taxi driver stopped in front of our hotel. It looked smaller than on the picture posted on the booking site, and I thought it was better that way. We paid for the ride, and I was stunned at how expensive our trip had been, but was too happy and strained from travelling to worry about it.
There was a very Italian looking man standing under a cantilever roof to greet new hosts. He nodded slightly as he saw us and opened the door, as detached as the cab driver had been. But then we found a plump girl at the reception, who spoke pushing back her curly hair, smiling and gesturing generously as she spoke.
“I can give you a map later if you want, I can tell you which places to go see”, she told us as she handed us a key chained to a massive metal key holder, which must have weighted half a pound.
Our room had the touch of stuffiness of old things, but the overlapping smells of linen and detergents conferred a cheerfully airy flavour to the place once we opened the window, letting the sounds of the streets spill in and animate the stillness of the room.
We arranged our clothing in the closets, showered hastily and out we went again, Jack wanting food, and me wanting the thrill of the novelty from the ancient city of my ancestors. We had about four hours before we would meet Dr. Mori about the polymer business, which at that moment seemed further than an ocean and a day away from me.