Last Tuesday, I took three rather long naps. Normally, if I take more than one I don’t sleep at night. Even then, I have to time the nap – 23 minutes max – or I’ll wake up at a ridiculous hour for an unpredictable period. But Tuesday night, I slept like a stone. On Wednesday, interesting intestinal symptoms introduced themselves. Thursday, my neighbor Renzo invited me to dinner. During the invitation – issued from his balcony while I stood on my exterior stairs a full story below – I asked him how he was feeling. Not so good, some kind of influenza; no fever, but tired all the time – he hadn’t been to work since Monday.
With unpredictable exceptions, I slogged my way through the week, drawing comfort from the knowledge that whatever I was afflicted with was something going around.
Last night, I went to what has become a weekly Dinner and Scrabble gathering of Americans. We met at Roy’s, and he kindly prepared me a hot toddy with whiskey. By the time the Scrabble game was over, I was floating in a subterranean surreality. I drifted home, reaching down with my toes to find pavement, wondering where I was and how I’d gotten there. In spite of having taken three long naps, I slept uninterruptedly for eight hours.
This morning, I should have woken up grateful, refreshed, and invigorated. Not quite. I felt better, but nothing over the top. My routine took its usual turns until I received a notice from my phone provider, Tre Italia, that my credit was exhausted. I had recharged the account online with no problems in January. For the past several weeks I’ve been trying to replicate that feat without success. When the notice arrived, a twinge unsettled my stomach. I foresaw an Internet battle, and one I was likely to lose.
Once on Tre’s homepage you click “Customer Access” and recharge through a short series of simple steps. That’s the theory. Lately, the access page will sometimes load, sometimes not. When it does load and I enter info, am sometimes taken to the payment page, but none of the various choices for means of payment have worked. They worked in January. It goes on like this. I tried using my phone instead of my computer. I tried accessing both indoors and in the yard, with and without an active wi-fi connection. I used every credit card and PayPal account – and combinations of both – I could remember having. By 10:00 I was exasperated and deemed it far better to take the funicular to Scalo, walk to Tre Italia’s store, and recharge in person, than to continue to suffer online convenience.
The funicular was crowded with tourists. They annoyed me. I silently practiced my description of the morning’s non-events in Italian. I drove myself into an sullen rage by reviewing all things Internet that do not function, function only occasionally and never with reason, or promise the world with their slick design, while delivering only frustration.
The funicular docked and the tourists squeezed out of the car, all – save one – in front of me. The one remaining gestured with his enormous camera that I should go before. I groused a thank you and sloped into the sun for the kilometer’s walk to the store. I had dressed for temperatures as they were in my yard. They are always higher in Scalo. The sun, a welcome and cheerful force this time of year, annoyed me. It felt too warm. I walked quickly and continued to fume.
When I arrived and pushed at the door, it failed to move. I peered at the little sign that announced hours. They were supposed to be open. I cursed under my breath, gave the door a stronger push. It opened. A gentleman stood chatting with the man at the desk. He stepped aside and waved me forward. I mumbled a thank you and moved up to the counter.
“I want to recharge my account, but can’t make it work online.” He interrupted my rehearsed diatribe with a shrug that said, “Of course you can’t, the website works only occasionally, and no one really knows why.” I told him to charge me for a year. He set about the task. His unhurried manner dissolved the monologue I had prepared about how I never again wanted to encounter online convenience, and was buying a year’s worth of time so I wouldn’t have to. In 60 seconds, the transaction was complete. I shook his hand. “Thank you, that was much easier than anything online.” His smile communicated the same subtext as his shrug had a minute before. I bounced out of the store, opened my jacket, and relished the sun as it fell onto my face.
A block or so from the funicular, I noticed something on the sidewalk. It looked more official than anything lying on a sidewalk should, so I picked it up. It was a transparent red plastic sleeve that held a bus pass and twenty euro. I took out the card. On it was the photo of a young lady with long brown hair. Well, I thought, I’ll give this to the fellow at the ticket window for the funicular, he’ll know what to do.
As I turned to enter the station, a young woman with long brown hair reached into her bag, gave a little jolt, slapped her pockets, and reached again towards the bag in panic. “Did you lose a bus pass?” I asked. She turned, I held it up, her shoulders dropped, she nodded, thanked me. I explained where I’d found it, took it over to her, and brightly responded “You’re very welcome.”
There was a horde of tourists streaming into the station. They looked fascinated and eager. I took a seat and checked my email.
About a week ago, I translated a proposal into English for an acquaintance who had found herself in a terrible bind; bad knee that wouldn’t let her leave the house, no Internet service at home, and a deadline for a proposal to be submitted to the European Parliament, in Italian and English, on the following Tuesday by close of business. I worked on the translation the entire weekend, and had a wonderful time doing it. In return, she suggested several outings in Rome, one of those a reenactment of the assassination of Caesar on March 15.
As we waited for the car to ascend into Orvieto proper, I read that my friend’s knee was better and she had returned to work in Rome where there was Internet. What do I think about the assassination of Caesar? Do I want to go? My resistance to ever leaving town weakened, I told her sure, why not, let’s go see the tyrant get punctured. The sun leaned into the car as it crawled up the slope.
The temperatures on the rock were still cooler than below, and the sun was warm and welcoming. I turned towards the city offices. Another abiding Internet problem has been that ENEL’s website will not accept my codice fiscale thereby preventing an online account. Without an account, I can only pay my electric bill in person, which could prove awkward when I’m in the States this summer. Even though such options are, truly speaking, theoretical, the anagrafe (demographic services) is somehow instrumental in the issuing of the codice fiscale, so as I was in the neighborhood during office hours, it seemed worth the time to see if they might help.
All three of the people in the office became interested in the dilemma. They accessed my file, they looked at all the cards upon which the codice is written, they discussed possible next steps, and they ultimately apologized for not being able to do anything on their end. Shoulders were shrugged, smiles conveyed the universal subtext of sympathy with all attempts to do anything useful online, and one of them sent me off with a sort of flyer with directions to the ENEL Point in Sferracavallo. We all bade each other farewells like the longtime friends we had just become.
The sunshine was glorious when I exited into the courtyard. A woman passed with her tiny, perfect, granddaughter settled into a stroller. The child flung out her arms to welcome the sun as the two of them emerged from the shade of a small oak.