《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 20 (37):我的新朋友

I needed to make some friends. So I got busy with it, and now it is October and I have a nice assortment of them. I know two Elizabeths in Rome now, besides myself. Both are American, both are writers. The first Elizabeth is a novelist and the second Elizabeth is a food writer. With an apartment in Rome, a house in Umbria, an Italian husband and a job that requires her to travel around Italy eating food and writing about it for Gourmet, it appears that the second Elizabeth must have saved a lot of orphans from drowning during a previous lifetime. Unsurprisingly, she knows all the best places to eat in Rome, including a gelateria that serves a frozen rice pudding (and if they don't serve this kind of thing in heaven, then I really don't want to go there). She took me out to lunch the other day, and what we ate included not only lamb and truffles and carpaccio rolled around hazelnut mousse but an exotic little serving of pickled lampascione, which is—as everyone knows—the bulb of the wild hyacinth.

我需要交些朋友。於是我忙着交友，現在是十月，我已交了各種各樣的朋友。我在羅馬認識兩位除我之外的伊莉莎白。兩人都是美國人，兩人都是作家。第一位伊莉莎白是小說家，第二位伊莉莎白是美食作家。這第二位伊莉莎白，在羅馬有間公寓，在翁布里亞（Umbria）有棟房子，先生是意大利人，還有一份讓她周遊意大利品嚐美食並加以報道的工作，看來其前世肯定救了許多溺水孤兒。毫不令人訝異，她曉得羅馬最好的餐廳，包括一家供應米制布丁的冰店（倘若天堂不供應這種東西，那我真的不想去）。前幾天她帶我出去吃午飯，我們吃的不僅包括松露羊肉薄片卷榛果慕斯，還吃了一種珍奇的醃製“lampascione”——衆所周知——野生風信子的球根。

Of course, by now I've also made friends with Giovanni and Dario, my Tandem Language Exchange fantasy twins. Giovanni's sweetness, in my opinion, makes him a national treasure of Italy. He endeared himself to me forever the first night we met, when I was getting frustrated with my inability to find the words I wanted in Italian, and he put his hand on my arm and said, "Liz, you must be very polite with yourself when you are learning something new." Sometimes I feel like he's older than me, what with his solemn brow and his philosophy degree and his serious political opinions. I like to try to make him laugh, but Giovanni doesn't always get my jokes. Humor is hard to catch in a second language. Especially when you're as serious a young man as Giovanni. He said to me the other night, "When you are ironic, I am always behind you. I am slower. It is like you are the lightning and I am the thunder."

不消說，此時的我早已跟“串連語言交流”的夢幻雙胞胎喬凡尼和達里奧成了朋友。喬凡尼的親切可愛，依我看來，完全是意大利國寶級人物。他在我們見面的第一晚就贏得我的喜愛，因爲當我找不到想表達的意大利字而深感受挫折時，他會握着我的手臂說：“小莉，學新東西的時候，你得對自己‘很客氣’。”有時我覺得他比我年長，因爲他威嚴的眉毛、他的哲學學位以及他嚴肅的政治觀點等特質。我喜歡嘗試逗他發笑，但喬凡尼不見得懂得我的笑話。幽默很難透過另一種語言捕捉，尤其當你是像喬凡尼一樣嚴肅的年輕人時。有天晚上他對我說：“在你嘻謔嘲弄的時候，我總是落在你後頭。我慢半拍，就好像你是閃電，我是雷聲。”

And I thought, Yeah, baby! And you are the magnet and I am the steel! Bring to me your leather, take from me my lace!

我心想，是的，寶貝！而你是磁鐵，我是鐵！拿你的皮鞭來吧，解開我的繫帶吧！

But still, he has not kissed me.

但是他仍未吻我。

I don't very often see Dario, the other twin, though he does spend a lot of his time with Sofie. Sofie is my best friend from my language class, and she's definitely somebody you'd want to spend your time with, too, if you were Dario. Sofie is Swedish and in her late twenties and so damn cute you could put her on a hook and use her as bait to catch men of all different nationalities and ages. Sofie has just taken a four-month leave of absence from her good job in a Swedish bank, much to the horror of her family and bewilderment of her colleagues, only because she wanted to come to Rome and learn how to speak beautiful Italian. Every day after class, Sofie and I go sit by the Tiber, eating our gelato and studying with each other. You can't even rightly call it "studying," the thing that we do. It's more like a shared relishing of the Italian language, an almost worshipful ritual, and we're always offering each other new wonderful idioms. Like, for instance, we just learned the other day that un'amica stretta means "a close friend." But stretta literally means tight, as in clothing, like a tight skirt. So a close friend, in Italian, is one you that can wear tightly, snug against your skin, and that is what my little Swedish friend Sofie is becoming to me.

我不太常見到雙胞胎的另一位——達里奧，儘管他花很多時間和蘇菲共處。蘇菲是我在意大利語班最好的朋友，而她的確也是你想花時間共處的人，假使你是達里奧的話。蘇菲是瑞典人，二十八九歲，可愛得要命，倘使把她當做釣餌，可捕捉到各種國籍、年齡的男人。蘇菲有份在瑞典某銀行的好工作，不過她請了四個月的長假，使她的家人大爲驚恐，同事們疑惑不解，只因爲她想來羅馬學習講漂亮的意大利語。每天下課，蘇菲和我去臺伯河畔閒坐，吃我們的冰，一起唸書。你甚至不能把我們做的事稱爲“唸書”。還不如說是共同玩味意大利語，一種近乎崇拜的儀式，我們總是提供給對方奇妙的新短語。比方說，我們有天得知“un'amica stretta”是“密友”的意思。但“stretta”原意指“緊”，像是服裝的緊身裙。因此意大利語中的密友，是讓你能緊緊穿在身上、緊貼皮膚的人。我的瑞典朋友蘇菲對我來說正是如此。

At the beginning, I liked to think that Sofie and I looked like sisters. Then we were taking a taxi through Rome the other day and the guy driving the cab asked if Sofie was my daughter. Now, folks—the girl is only about seven years younger than I am. My mind went into such a spin-control mode, trying to explain away what he'd said. (For instance, I thought, Maybe this native Roman cabdriver doesn't speak Italian very well, and meant to ask if we were sisters.) But, no. He said daughter and he meant daughter. Oh, what can I say? I've been through a lot in the last few years. I must look so beat-up and old after this divorce. But as that old country-western song out of Texas goes, "I've been screwed and sued and tattooed, and I'm still standin' here in front of you . . ."

一開始，我喜歡把蘇菲和我想成是姐妹淘。然後有一天我們一起在羅馬搭計程車，司機問蘇菲是不是我的女兒。各位朋友——這女孩不過才小我七歲。我的腦子立即進入扭轉控制階段，試圖爲他的話進行解密。（比方說，我心想，或許這位土生土長的羅馬計程車司機意大利語講得不好，他打算問我們是不是“姐妹”。）但事實不然。他說女兒，意思就是女兒。喔，我能說什麼呢？過去幾年來我歷經坎坷，一場離婚過後肯定看起來又老又醜。但正如德州鄉村老歌所唱：“我歷經風吹雨打、人生波折，卻仍然站在你面前……”