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Chance
Who or what to blame or to prize for changings in our lives
by John Hemingway
28/01/09

A good part of the merit or blame for my being here lies with an Englishman that I met in the summer of ‘79. (leia em português >>>)

His name was Paul and we were both working as dishwashers at a Jewish summer camp for kids in Pennsylvania. He’d just finished his studies at a university in London and was going to work the summer and then travel around the States. I was just out of high school and had been accepted at U.C.L.A. and when we left the camp at the end of August I was pretty sure that that was the last I was ever going to see of him. He was shy and pale and tended to keep to himself. When he wasn’t working he spent hours going over and over guitar chords that he could never get right. I didn’t think that we had much in common. But surprisingly enough I got a letter from him around Christmas. He was teaching English in Genoa and sharing an apartment with three other teachers. I wrote back to him and asked him if you needed any special qualifications for what he did and he said that it would be the easiest thing in the world to find me a job. “Forget about credentials.’ he said, ‘This is Italy, just be yourself”. It sounded fun and easy, not at all like hard work, and when I graduated I held down two jobs for a year to get enough money for the trip and then left.

The people who owned the school where Paul worked (and where I would work, too) were New Zealanders. They lived in a large penthouse apartment in one of the nicer residential neighborhoods of Genoa and had become more Italian than the Italians. When I met them Fabian and Jacqueline were both in their late thirties. They had a pair of fifteen-year-old twins. One who was short and scrawny like their father and the other tall and beautiful like their mother. Fabian was a fervent anti-communist and a great admirer of Ronald Reagan. But he hadn’t always been that way. As Fabian explained it, they were basically ex-hippies who had traveled around Europe, living out of a van, until they finally settled in Genoa and hit upon the idea of starting an English language school. The school was a tremendous success, in part because Fabian was a genius at acquiring and using other people’s money, but more importantly because Jacqueline was a stunning blond and did all of the hard work. She spent her days cruising the center of Milan, pitching their English courses. She was a born saleswoman and usually got what she wanted. Businessmen were putty in her hands. The Italian maschio has a serious weakness for foreign blondes and she knew how to play it to her advantage. I remember one of my students telling me that even if you didn’t need English lessons it wouldn’t matter. You might even hate the language and everything that had to do with the Anglo-Saxon world, but by the end of her presentation she’d have your money and you’d be stuck with a course.

While Jacqueline was away in the Lombard capital Fabian stayed in shape romping with their maid at home.  According to Paul it was an affair that had been going on for at least a year. Jacqueline knew all about it, and had even caught them in bed together, but that didn’t stop Fabian. He had his own rules. When the finance police knocked on his door to have a peek at his enormous antique collection and to ask him why he never bothered to file a tax return he managed to keep them out. He had duel British/New Zealand nationality, which meant that he was legally entitled to stay in the country as an E.U. citizen. But to do that he would have had to register with the police and pay at least some of the taxes that he owed, so he never went to the Questura (police station).

Everything about the school was illegal according to Italian law, but that didn’t necessarily mean that it couldn’t be done, it just meant that you had to be smart enough, or furbo, to get around the law. Fatta la legge, trovato l’inganno (or ‘the law’s been made, The loophole’s been found’) as the Italians say. Fabian wasn’t doing anything that a lot of other people weren’t guilty of and while he was paying us peanuts as teachers and we were all being exploited by his school if I hadn’t worked for him I probably never would have met Ornella.

When I finally started to work in Milan Jacqueline gave me a lesson near Piazzale Corvetto. It was the last lesson I had on Thursdays and to get home I had to take the tram #14 to the Duomo and from there the Metro to my apartment on the other side of the city. Usually when I finished it was already dark and sometimes there was a thick fog. My Italian wasn’t very good and most of what I could hear was incomprehensible but I was determined to learn and so I listened. I liked the sound of the language and the way it made me feel as if I were really living in a foreign place.

One night the people behind me were talking about something that had to do with English. They were debating what was the right way to pronounce a sentence and without even looking to see who it was I turned around and gave them my own version. There were two girls and a guy in their early twenties, and I started talking with the girl who was fluent in English. Her name was Ornella and I asked her if she was from the States. ‘No’, she said, she was Canadian. I told her that I had a brother in Vancouver and we kept on talking until the tram got to the Duomo, il capolinea where everyone had to get off. I hadn’t given her my address or phone number and she walked away with her girlfriend to catch a bus and I went down into the Metro with the guy. He was about my height and very thin and had dark curly hair. He liked to talk and practice his English and asked me where I was from and if I liked Italy. Then, when we were underground waiting for the train, he said to me “Ornella, she is pretty, no?”  and I told him that she was.

“And you would like to know her, yes?” and I told him that I would.

“Good’, and he said this with the air of someone who was about to irrevocably alter my destiny, ‘give me your address and I will give it to Ornella, O.K.?” and I gave it to him and really didn’t think much of it. She was gone, I figured, and when my train arrived I got on and waved good-bye.

A couple of days passed and I forgot about the Canadian and her friends. Jacqueline had given me more lessons and I was out of the house most of the day. Paul, on the other hand, was usually there in the afternoon. His guitar playing had become obsessive and the more he practiced the worse he seemed to get.  He was, as one of the other British dishwashers at the camp had told me, the kind of Englishman who should never be allowed off the Isle. He was literally too English and would only be happy when he was finally back in a place where the beer was warm, the sky a never-ending slate-gray and the food arguably the worst on the planet.

Of course, when Ornella unexpectedly knocked on our door he pretended not to hear her. She kept knocking and in an effort to make whoever it was go away he got up, and without opening the door, said: “Who is it?”

“Is John there?” she asked.

“Who wants to know?” he shot back at her.

“A friend.” she told him.

“No.” he said. And he was about to go back to his guitar playing when Ornella asked him if she could leave her telephone number.

“Tell him he can call me.” She said as he cracked open the door with one of the chains still attached and took the slip of paper from her hand.

He didn’t say anything else and when I got home he gave me the number and made some comment about teen-agers pestering him when he was trying to practice. I immediately called Ornella and we started seeing each other and eventually I found out that the guy I’d given my address to down in the Metro had also done quite a bit of PR for me. He’d convinced Ornella that I was dying to see her again and that I had begged him to give her my address. She was naturally skeptical but because of what he’d told her she agreed to give it a try.

When she left that school she lost track of him. A friend of hers heard that he’d moved out of town. Perhaps down to Rome or Naples. I can’t even remember what his name was and yet I think that if it hadn’t been for him the two of us wouldn’t be together. Pure chance. People that come into our lives, change everything and then disappear.

Copyright © 2002 John Hemingway
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