Transcending language

She set the food on the bench and searched cupboards for tools. She pulled out a bowl, held up a whisk like she was saying, ‘You know what, f*** those guys.’

A short story by Becky Manawatu

Illustration by Isabelle Russell

We were watching our sons kick a football across a dirt soccer pitch surrounded by brick walls and a chainlink fence when I met Lu. She was standing near and, because I thought maybe, like me, she was from somewhere other than this Italian village of Cesano, I inched closer. Small talk was all I had in my reo Italiano kete and that was fine. She spoke English to me quickly, and our friendship started.

It could be disheartening trying to make a friend outside the circle I was allotted: a rugby wag. Not to be dismissive of the friendships I gained and people I met through my tane’s rugby career. An allotment of friends was fate. Meant to be. You in this club with these people at this point in time, a gift. Rugby clubs were our community. Like communities do, we ate together, we sometimes travelled together, we drank together and hid our ugliness from each other.

Maybe what I mean by disheartening is it was frightening to seek acceptance outside the people bound to you by a logo and a schedule. As a team you form an identity, there’s safety and a certain ease.

Before moving to Cesano we’d lived in Piacenza. I found a free Italian class taught by a nun in a musty church. The class was held on weekday mornings in the town’s centre. An Eritrean woman, Aster, and I started saving a seat for each other in the class, which was, for the most part, attended by people who needed to find work fast. The only language allowed in the class was Italian but the nun treated me special and spoke English, which I appreciated less than she thought I would. Most of the other students were men.

Sometimes Aster and I went for coffee after class and once I invited her over to hang at mine. I can’t remember if we ate food together but I like to think I made her food when she came over because food is the best koha but, straight up, I have huge black holes in my memory, so I don’t know.

When I was a kid, dad would get in from sea and he’d fillet up fish and send us walking to drop fresh hapuku or bluenose at every house on our street. I like to think I made Aster kai. She was important to me because neither the saved seat nor coffee with Aster were related to how or why I came to be in Italy or who I arrived with. Aster had come to Italy by boat via Egypt, for opportunity and escape.

I had come by plane, excited by how much future was still ahead of us. This was a time before cellphones, so I have nothing of Aster, only these few moth-bitten memories of us sitting in seats we saved for each other, in front of a nun and a blackboard chalked with Italian phrases; Aster and me trying those phrases out at a cafe, cups of dark coffee in front of us.

I do have photos of me and Lu together though. Lu and I eventually stretched the friendship beyond the soccer sideline to playdates for the boys at my house. Lu was Cuban, baked like a patissiere. She would bring homemade bigne filled with fresh cream and strawberries. I said they were delicious and she said one day she would teach me how to make them.

Our landlords, who lived above us, were good people with a nice pool. We could use the pool as much as we wanted, whatever time of day. Lu would bring Cesar over and he and my son would play and swim. My son’s Italian was coming easy by then, children are sponges. Lu and I would lie back in deck chairs and watch and laugh and use our bits of English and Italian to understand each other. Lu’s partner was Italian. Once we took the boys to a playground and late in a happy, sunny afternoon both our men arrived, so we were all there.

Because we were drunk on sun, Lu and I orchestrated plans for us to go on a trip together. Tim felt safest travelling on the bus, in his seat near his mates and, to be honest, this was my happier place too. But both the guys agreed. A few days later Lu and her partner picked us up in a big old campervan to make our way to the medieval city of Siena, stopping via a river natural boasting a hot spring. We camped near the river surrounded by olive and cypress trees.

Tim hadn’t loved the trip. We had no decent seat, let alone seatbelts. Both men were struggling to understand each other. Lu and I were happy enough, but happier sitting alongside the pool, not having to hold our breaths as we watched these larger, gruffer people make awkward exchanges. The tension grew and just one day in, after we woke to find our son’s bike had been stolen off the back of the camper, the men’s relationship soured. Later that day they argued on the side of a dirt road near Siena. Lu’s husband found a place he could turn the campervan around and we drove all the way back home in sulk-curdled silence, never reaching our destination.

That night in bed at home I worried: maybe I lost my friend?

Then before I fell asleep, Lu texted me, “I’ll come teach you to make bigne tomorrow?”

The next morning her partner dropped her off at the end of our drive. Tim was at training. I opened the door anxiously and there she stood smiling wide with her koha in her hands. She had a bag filled with flour, eggs, fresh strawberries and cream. She set the food on the bench and searched cupboards for tools. She pulled out a bowl, held up a whisk like she was saying, “You know what, f*** those guys.”

I took Lego out for the boys and, though it was early in the day, I opened some wine for us and she taught me to make bigne.

Later, Tim arrived home.

Lu was quick, “Ciao Bello!” she said, “Try our pastries, try?”

He said the bigne were delicious.

He took a photo of us at the table, the kids all smiling, Lu and I holding up glasses of wine, the food out in front of us like a koha to friendship.