Tasina Westberg (19)
II Giorno ci Bacia Tutti
On March 12, 2013, at 5:02 P.M., when Pope Francis officially began his conclave and stepped out onto the famous balcony of St. Peter’s Square, a waiter was serving a cappuccino at a cafe on Via Vittorio Veneto. Earlier that morning, that same waiter woke to a white dove pooping on his windowsill.
7:35 A.M.
A white dove pooping on a windowsill was apparently how religion came to converse with people who weren’t the Pope. But a waiter who is in a rush doesn’t think too deeply about these sorts of things, so the art of preparation in speed ensued. He put on his slacks— deep brown and too long on a short Italian man like himself. He tucked in his white camicia² he fastened his charming black bowtie. He threw his apron over his shoulder and closed the apartment door behind him. His feet fell into his shoes as they walked him through the streets of a still sleeping city, the sun hiding behind the clouds of an early spring.
At this same moment, a watchmaker cracked a hard-cooked egg with a small silver spoon and looked outside at the disappointing March sky of that morning. On her way to work, she dropped her keys down a storm drain. Because she liked fixing things on her own, she pried the metal cover off from the ground and fished her keys out of the storm drain herself. This endeavor left her with a stain of dirty rainwater on her white camicia.
And yet again, in tandem with all other occurrences of such a tumultuous morning, a Boeing-737 landed in Rome at precisely 7:35 A.M. Ten hours earlier, a middle-aged woman from New Orleans sat herself down at seat 24A of this aircraft. She was newly curious about the world— this was the result of being newly divorced. The man in front of her had reclined his seat all the way back for half of the flight. She hated when men did this. It reminded her of her ex-husband. When she got off the plane, she hoped one day that he’d get shat on. Who reclines into other people’s lives like that? She looked out of her airplane window and saw that the sky was a bizarre gray, which she made nothing of, because she didn’t know Rome.
11:50 A.M.
By this time, a particular traveling woman from New Orleans had made her way into the city. She found a cafe on Via Vittorio Veneto, where she sat and ordered a cappuccino. A white dove, apparently seeking its revenge on Rome that day, swooped over the head of the woman who, unfortunately, had no experience with such strange phenomenons. Accordingly, she flinched out of fear and spilled her coffee onto herself.
There was no waiter available to help her at this instant. Their best man was standing outside of the back door receiving Italian punishment for eating a customer’s leftover croissant earlier in the morning: no cigarette breaks.
11:50 A.M.— that meant it was almost time for lunch. The watchmaker had received quite some comments on her camicia stain. Earlier, a woman had come in who observed the rainwater stain for a little longer, forgetting about the watches. The watchmaker’s husband came in during her lunch break and brought her a new shirt. In this moment, she was very glad to have married him and not an idiot like all the men in her past life, who were ignorant about things like camicias.
5:02 P.M.
At the end of her workday, the watchmaker had sold zero watches and fixed three. She passed the storm drain again on her way home.
The waiter had been released from his scolding and sent to clean up the cappuccino spill of his American client. No one will notice, he said to her, but that wasn’t true. Towards the end of his shift, right around the time that negronis are ordered by the first daring few, a wonder occurred. There, before his eyes, walked a beautiful young being that could not have been anything but the very reason God created woman, or at least the waiter thought so. She had black hair that covered her long back like a curtain and made way for a pair of hips and two legs made of bold bones and porcelain skin. She was like a walking poem, only to be read once for most eyes passing by in Rome. Who was she? O Papa, grazie, thought the waiter. He followed the woman with his eyes for as long as he could until she walked out of the moment, most likely never to be seen again.
When she finally was headed to her hotel, the middle-aged woman from New Orleans overpaid the taxi-man because she thought he was flirting with her. She dropped her baggage off in her hotel room. She told the concierge that she was very tired, and asked where she could go to get a proper coffee. The concierge sent her to Via Vittorio Veneto, where, at 5:02 P.M., she arrived at the same cafe she had been to earlier. She did not think, she smiled. Strange, she thought. As if they were giving me a second chance with the cappuccino.
The watchmaker had stopped at the storm drain and had been standing there for three minutes now. As she thought about her day she turned to the cafe across the street and saw another camicia with a spill, and she had to laugh. Her gaze met that of a middle-aged woman, who smiled back with a helpless sort of happiness that can only come after one has witnessed the disasters of things such as divorce and ten-hour flights. There was a yellow sun building in the heart of the watchmaker as she gripped her rainwater-stained shirt and walked on into the evening of that day.
The waiter brought the woman from New Orleans a cappuccino and recognized that she was the same customer as before. Perhaps there is a second time for us all, he joked with her. At another table a young woman had just sat down to order. When the waiter looked up, he saw the marvel of that March evening. On the Via Vittorio Veneto, his art piece of instantaneous devotion had come back. He thought about the dove who had pooped on his windowsill earlier that morning and resolved not to be angry at it for waking him up at 7:35 A.M., for now it was giving him good luck. He said no words to her, but he spoke them with his eyes. He could not take any more tables— it was the end of his shift.
At 6:59 P.M., Jorge Mario Bergolio, the new pope of Rome and the world, stood at his bedroom window watching the sunset. For such a gray day, the sky on March 12, 2013 had a beautiful death. A white dove flew past his window on the way to poop on someone else’s, and still, the Pope only saw grace. And perhaps the whole world did in this instant, too.
The waiter walked home under gold-orange light spilling out from the sun. In his hand, he held a napkin with a phone number and a red lipstick stain on it. At the same moment, the woman from New Orleans took off her American camicia stained with real Italian cappuccino and sat in her hotel room watching the sinking sun dry up the spillage of a bad marriage.
In the watchmaker’s apartment, the sunset painted her kitchen a lovely arancio³. Across from her sat her husband. Filled with love from a fleeting day, he pushed the spaghetti off the table, took her face in his hands, and gave her a bacio⁴ of sunset. The bowl of spaghetti broke into twenty-three pieces of white porcelain as the husband made love to the watchmaker, and as the sun made love to the moon.
1. II Giorno ci Bacia Tutti, Italian for “the day kisses us all”
2. Camicia, Italian for “shirt”.
3. Arancio, Italian for “orange”.
4. Bacio, Italian for “kiss”.
Tasina Westberg wrote Il Giorno ci Bacia Tutti in her senior year of high school and is now a second-year university student in Paris. She grew up in Santa Cruz, California in a multicultural family speaking German and Swedish at home, later learning French and Italian. Tasina is passionate about the words that make poems of life, and how we can blend them together through translation. Tasina believes we must look at every story like it's a new language and is here to paint the world in new colors of expressions and connections.
II Giorno ci Bacia Tutti
On March 12, 2013, at 5:02 P.M., when Pope Francis officially began his conclave and stepped out onto the famous balcony of St. Peter’s Square, a waiter was serving a cappuccino at a cafe on Via Vittorio Veneto. Earlier that morning, that same waiter woke to a white dove pooping on his windowsill.
7:35 A.M.
A white dove pooping on a windowsill was apparently how religion came to converse with people who weren’t the Pope. But a waiter who is in a rush doesn’t think too deeply about these sorts of things, so the art of preparation in speed ensued. He put on his slacks— deep brown and too long on a short Italian man like himself. He tucked in his white camicia² he fastened his charming black bowtie. He threw his apron over his shoulder and closed the apartment door behind him. His feet fell into his shoes as they walked him through the streets of a still sleeping city, the sun hiding behind the clouds of an early spring.
At this same moment, a watchmaker cracked a hard-cooked egg with a small silver spoon and looked outside at the disappointing March sky of that morning. On her way to work, she dropped her keys down a storm drain. Because she liked fixing things on her own, she pried the metal cover off from the ground and fished her keys out of the storm drain herself. This endeavor left her with a stain of dirty rainwater on her white camicia.
And yet again, in tandem with all other occurrences of such a tumultuous morning, a Boeing-737 landed in Rome at precisely 7:35 A.M. Ten hours earlier, a middle-aged woman from New Orleans sat herself down at seat 24A of this aircraft. She was newly curious about the world— this was the result of being newly divorced. The man in front of her had reclined his seat all the way back for half of the flight. She hated when men did this. It reminded her of her ex-husband. When she got off the plane, she hoped one day that he’d get shat on. Who reclines into other people’s lives like that? She looked out of her airplane window and saw that the sky was a bizarre gray, which she made nothing of, because she didn’t know Rome.
11:50 A.M.
By this time, a particular traveling woman from New Orleans had made her way into the city. She found a cafe on Via Vittorio Veneto, where she sat and ordered a cappuccino. A white dove, apparently seeking its revenge on Rome that day, swooped over the head of the woman who, unfortunately, had no experience with such strange phenomenons. Accordingly, she flinched out of fear and spilled her coffee onto herself.
There was no waiter available to help her at this instant. Their best man was standing outside of the back door receiving Italian punishment for eating a customer’s leftover croissant earlier in the morning: no cigarette breaks.
11:50 A.M.— that meant it was almost time for lunch. The watchmaker had received quite some comments on her camicia stain. Earlier, a woman had come in who observed the rainwater stain for a little longer, forgetting about the watches. The watchmaker’s husband came in during her lunch break and brought her a new shirt. In this moment, she was very glad to have married him and not an idiot like all the men in her past life, who were ignorant about things like camicias.
5:02 P.M.
At the end of her workday, the watchmaker had sold zero watches and fixed three. She passed the storm drain again on her way home.
The waiter had been released from his scolding and sent to clean up the cappuccino spill of his American client. No one will notice, he said to her, but that wasn’t true. Towards the end of his shift, right around the time that negronis are ordered by the first daring few, a wonder occurred. There, before his eyes, walked a beautiful young being that could not have been anything but the very reason God created woman, or at least the waiter thought so. She had black hair that covered her long back like a curtain and made way for a pair of hips and two legs made of bold bones and porcelain skin. She was like a walking poem, only to be read once for most eyes passing by in Rome. Who was she? O Papa, grazie, thought the waiter. He followed the woman with his eyes for as long as he could until she walked out of the moment, most likely never to be seen again.
When she finally was headed to her hotel, the middle-aged woman from New Orleans overpaid the taxi-man because she thought he was flirting with her. She dropped her baggage off in her hotel room. She told the concierge that she was very tired, and asked where she could go to get a proper coffee. The concierge sent her to Via Vittorio Veneto, where, at 5:02 P.M., she arrived at the same cafe she had been to earlier. She did not think, she smiled. Strange, she thought. As if they were giving me a second chance with the cappuccino.
The watchmaker had stopped at the storm drain and had been standing there for three minutes now. As she thought about her day she turned to the cafe across the street and saw another camicia with a spill, and she had to laugh. Her gaze met that of a middle-aged woman, who smiled back with a helpless sort of happiness that can only come after one has witnessed the disasters of things such as divorce and ten-hour flights. There was a yellow sun building in the heart of the watchmaker as she gripped her rainwater-stained shirt and walked on into the evening of that day.
The waiter brought the woman from New Orleans a cappuccino and recognized that she was the same customer as before. Perhaps there is a second time for us all, he joked with her. At another table a young woman had just sat down to order. When the waiter looked up, he saw the marvel of that March evening. On the Via Vittorio Veneto, his art piece of instantaneous devotion had come back. He thought about the dove who had pooped on his windowsill earlier that morning and resolved not to be angry at it for waking him up at 7:35 A.M., for now it was giving him good luck. He said no words to her, but he spoke them with his eyes. He could not take any more tables— it was the end of his shift.
At 6:59 P.M., Jorge Mario Bergolio, the new pope of Rome and the world, stood at his bedroom window watching the sunset. For such a gray day, the sky on March 12, 2013 had a beautiful death. A white dove flew past his window on the way to poop on someone else’s, and still, the Pope only saw grace. And perhaps the whole world did in this instant, too.
The waiter walked home under gold-orange light spilling out from the sun. In his hand, he held a napkin with a phone number and a red lipstick stain on it. At the same moment, the woman from New Orleans took off her American camicia stained with real Italian cappuccino and sat in her hotel room watching the sinking sun dry up the spillage of a bad marriage.
In the watchmaker’s apartment, the sunset painted her kitchen a lovely arancio³. Across from her sat her husband. Filled with love from a fleeting day, he pushed the spaghetti off the table, took her face in his hands, and gave her a bacio⁴ of sunset. The bowl of spaghetti broke into twenty-three pieces of white porcelain as the husband made love to the watchmaker, and as the sun made love to the moon.
1. II Giorno ci Bacia Tutti, Italian for “the day kisses us all”
2. Camicia, Italian for “shirt”.
3. Arancio, Italian for “orange”.
4. Bacio, Italian for “kiss”.
Tasina Westberg wrote Il Giorno ci Bacia Tutti in her senior year of high school and is now a second-year university student in Paris. She grew up in Santa Cruz, California in a multicultural family speaking German and Swedish at home, later learning French and Italian. Tasina is passionate about the words that make poems of life, and how we can blend them together through translation. Tasina believes we must look at every story like it's a new language and is here to paint the world in new colors of expressions and connections.