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I've also become friends with a cool couple named Maria and Giulio, introduced to me by my friend Anne—an American painter who lived in Rome a few years back. Maria is from America, Giulio's from the south of Italy. He's a filmmaker, she works for an international agricultural policy organization. He doesn't speak great English, but she speaks fluent Italian (and also fluent French and Chinese, so that's not intimidating). Giulio wants to learn English, and asked if he could practice conversing with me in another Tandem Exchange. In case you're wondering why he couldn't just study English with his American-born wife, it's because they're married and they fight too much whenever one tries to teach anything to the other one. So Giulio and I now meet for lunch twice a week to practice our Italian and English; a good task for two people who don't have any history of irritating each other.
我也和一對很酷的夫妻成為朋友，他們名叫瑪莉亞和朱利歐，由我的朋友安——幾年前住在羅馬的一位美國畫家——所介紹認識。瑪莉亞是美國人， 朱利歐是意大利南部人。他拍電影，她為國際農業 政策組織工作。他的英語說得不太好，她則說一口流利的意大利語 （也說流利的法語和中文，因此這并不嚇唬人）。朱利歐想學英語，詢問我能否跟我練習會話。假如你想知道他干嘛不跟他的美國老婆念 英語，那是因為他們是夫妻，每回其中一人嘗試教另一人什么的時候，就吵得如火如荼。朱利歐和我如今每周見兩次面吃午飯，練習我們的意大利語和英語；這對于沒惹惱過對方的兩個人來說是件好事。朱利歐和瑪莉亞有間美麗的公寓，其中最給人印象深刻的，在我看來是一面墻壁。瑪莉亞（用粗黑奇異筆）在墻上寫滿對朱利歐的憤怒詛咒，因為他們起爭執的時候，“他吼得比我大聲”，因此她想要有插話的機會。
Giulio and Maria have a beautiful apartment, the most impressive feature of which is, to my mind, the wall that Maria once covered with angry curses against Giulio (scrawled in thick black magic marker) because they were having an argument and "he yells louder than me" and she wanted to get a word in edgewise. I think Maria is terrifically sexy, and this burst of passionate graffiti is only further evidence of it. Interestingly, though, Giulio sees the scrawled-upon wall as a sure sign of Maria's repression, because she wrote her curses against him in Italian, and Italian is her second language, a language she has to think about for a moment before she can choose her words. He said if Maria had truly allowed herself to be overcome by anger—which she never does, because she's a good Anglo-Protestant—then she would have written all over that wall in her native English. He says all Americans are like this: repressed. Which makes them dangerous and potentially deadly when they do blow up.
我認為瑪莉亞性感得不得了，而這瞬間迸發的激烈涂鴉更證明了這點。但有趣的是，朱利歐把這面涂鴉墻壁看作是瑪莉亞的壓抑跡象，因為她用意大利語寫下對他的咒罵，而意大利語是她的第二語言，一種在她選用詞匯之前必須思索片刻的語言。 他說瑪莉亞假使真的怒不可抑——這從未發生在她身上，因為她是中規中矩的盎格魯新教徒——那她就會用她的英文母語寫那面墻。他說所有的美國人都像這樣：受壓抑。這讓他們在爆發之時更加危險而且有誘發致命的可能性。
"A savage people," he diagnoses.
“一群野蠻人。”他判斷道。
What I love is that we all had this conversation over a nice relaxed dinner, while looking at the wall itself.
我喜歡一面吃輕松的晚餐進行這樣的對話，一面觀看這面墻。
"More wine, honey?" asked Maria.
“甜心，再來杯酒？”瑪莉亞問道。
But my newest best friend in Italy is, of course, Luca Spaghetti. Even in Italy, by the way, it's considered a very funny thing to have a last name like Spaghetti. I'm grateful for Luca because he has finally allowed me to get even with my friend Brian, who was lucky enough to have grown up next door to a Native American kid named Dennis Ha-Ha, and therefore could always boast that he had the friend with the coolest name. Finally, I can offer competition.
但我在意大利最近期的好友當然是盧卡•斯帕蓋蒂。順便提一句，即使在意大利，斯帕蓋蒂這姓也被認為是相當逗趣的事。我很感謝盧卡，因為他終于讓我和我的朋友布萊恩打成了平手。布萊恩從小有幸跟一個名叫丹尼斯•哈哈（Dennis Ha-Ha）的美國原住民小孩做鄰居，因此老是夸口說他有個名字最酷的朋友。我終于能和他一較高下了。
Luca also speaks perfect English and is a good eater (in Italian, una buona forchetta—a good fork), so he's terrific company for the hungry likes of me. He often calls in the middle of the day to say, "Hey, I'm in your neighborhood—want to meet up for a quick cup of coffee? Or a plate of oxtail?" We spend a lot of time in these dirty little dives in the back streets of Rome. We like the restaurants with the fluorescent lighting and no name listed outside. Plastic redcheckered tablecloths. Homemade limoncello liqueur. Homemade red wine. Pasta served in unbelievable quantities by what Luca calls "little Julius Caesars"—proud, pushy, local guys with hair on the backs of their hands and passionately tended pompadours. I once said to Luca, "It seems to me these guys consider themselves Romans first, Italians second and Europeans third." He corrected me. "No—they are Romans first, Romans second and Romans third. And every one of them is an Emperor."
盧卡的英語說得很好，還是個老饕（依意大利語的說法是“una buona forchetta”——好叉子），因此對我這種餓狠狠的人來說是絕佳好伴。他經常在中午打電話說“嗨，我在附近——想不想見個面，快快喝杯咖啡？或吃盤牛尾？”我們在羅馬后街那些骯臟小酒吧消磨了許多時間。我們喜歡那種日光燈照明、外頭沒有店名的餐廳。塑料紅格子桌布。私釀的檸檬甜酒。私釀的紅酒。而盧卡稱之為“小凱撒們”的侍者，總是端上分量驚人的面條；這些驕傲、有干勁的當地男子，手背有毛，頭發照料得俊俏。有回我對盧卡說：“依我看，這些家伙認為自己一是羅馬人，二是意大利人，三是歐洲人。”他更正我：“不——他們一是羅馬人，二是羅馬人，三是羅馬人。他們人人都是皇帝。”
