Finding Arno

By Scot Harris

“Donde esta el rio?” my wife asked the old Italian gentleman.

He stared at her a moment, took off his cap, tilted his head and

said, “Come?” This was approximately the fifth time for this exchange.

My wife asks the question, the old guy removes his cap, scratches his

head and says the Italian equivalent of “Huh?” I read somewhere that

you know a person is insane when he keeps doing the exact same

thing over and over, and yet expects a different outcome each time.

This definitely put a question mark on the sanity of my wife and the old

man, but I wondered what it said about me, the idiot sitting in the car

watching the exchange.

“El rio,” my wife said. “You know, the Arno.”

“Arno?”

“Si, Arno,” and my wife made a waving sign with her hand like a

fish swimming through water.

The lightbulb went off. “Ah, il Arno, si, si, si. Il fiume!”

“Yes,” my wife’s face beamed. “Si, il fiume!” She turned to me

waiting in the car. “It must be fiume in Italian. Its rio is Spanish.” She

then turned back to the man, “Il fiume Arno?” she said shrugging her

shoulders and holding up her palms using the international sign of

cluelessness.

The old man beamed back and, not to be outdone, gave an even
bigger shrug. He scrunched his face as if contemplating quantum

theory, then mumbled something in Italian and pointed at a building

across the street. My wife and I being alert, intelligent people realized

that the building was probably not the Arno River. Next he waved his

hands to erase his last directions and he used a broad arching point

over the building, the kind of point that indicated we were a long way,

possibly days, from our goal.

My wife gave a deep sigh, thanked him and trudged back to the

car.

Since we have already discussed sanity levels, one would

probably wonder why my wife was speaking Spanish to an Italian in

Florence. The answer that most fully addresses that perfectly rational

question is: desperation. We were on a quest for the Holy Grail of

pensionnes and were ill equipped for the task; lousy map, no Italian,

and a sun that was rapidly disappearing behind Florence’s ancient

buildings. We had come up with a plan ten minutes earlier. Since, the

map had gotten us nowhere, we had to start asking people. Neither

one of us spoke Italian, but my wife speaks Spanish and we hoped that

the two languages would be close enough to get us where we needed

to go.

My wife climbed back into the car and reopened the map.

“Okay, based on the direction he was pointing, it should be to the left.”

“I can’t go left,” I answered. “It’s a one way street.”

thinking we were in New York or Dallas or some city that was founded

within the last two millennia. The streets in Florence are not laid out in

a neat organized grid built for automobiles. The streets in Florence

look like they were created when someone dropped an enormous ball

of cats into the center of the city, and then built roads based on the

wandering path that each cat took. Oh, and if the cat was a male, then

they made it a one way road.

Therefore, I couldn’t make a left at the next street or the next

five streets for that matter. Instead of getting closer to our desired

destination, we were getting further away. And did I mention that we

were running out of gas? And that it was Sunday? And that gas

stations aren’t open in Italy on Sundays? This was destined to be a

serious test of our marriage, quite possibly our very lives.

“Maybe we should just use Frommer’s to find a hotel near where

we are now, as opposed to looking for the one on the Arno,” I said.

“We could stop for the night and then get gas tomorrow.”

“But Mom and Dad loved this little pensione, they said it was the

most charming place they stayed at in all of Europe. Let’s just ask

someone else.”

Our next prospect after the old man was a little old lady. We

caught her coming out of a church. She was practically a walking

cliché, dressed in all black with a thick nest of gray hair piled onto her
small, fragile body. My wife saddled over to her while I stayed in the

get-away vehicle, the one possibly running on fumes at this point.

“Perdone, Donde esta il fiume?”

The old woman slowly lifted her head toward my wife. Her face

broke into a broad smile. “Ah, belle,” she said, “Vi sono belle.”

My wife’s face turned a bright red. “Grazie,” she replied. She

knew enough to realize the lady was saying she was beautiful. “Uh, Il

fiume? Il Arno?”

“Americana?” the old lady asked my wife, pointing a gnarled

finger at her.

“Si,” my wife answered, “I’m an American.” While they were

having their little conversation, I was trying to determine just how hard

an Italian car is to push after it runs out of gas.

“Ah, Vi sono belle!” she said again. “Italiana?” she asked with a

twinkle.

“No, Americana,” my wife replied sharply. Then she held out her

hand, “Il Arno?”

“Si, si, siete Americana. Ma la vostra madre, Italiana?” the old

lady was looking at my wife’s olive skin and black hair and thinking she

was an Italian American, maybe her mother was Italian.

My wife figured it out too. “Americana. No, Italiana.”

The old woman shrugged and motioned for my wife to follow her.

She took us down a narrow alley and across two side streets and
neatly deposited us in front of the Ponte Vecchio bridge. My wife

thanked her profusely while I contemplating getting out and kissing her

feet.

A few moments later and we were standing in front of the

address of our quest. My wife and I scampered up to the door, eager

for a good night’s rest. The sign on the door, however, had a different

idea.

“A dentist’s office?” my wife cried. “This can’t be right!” But

unfortunately it was, the charming little pensione that my in-laws had

stayed at ten years ago was now a charming little dentist’s office. We

turned towards each other in disbelief. Our mission had failed, and

now in utter defeat, we trudged back to the car to consult with Mr.

Frommer.