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。于是我忙着交友，现在是十月，我已交了各种各样的朋友。我在罗马认识两位除我之外的伊莉莎白。两人都是美国人，两人都是作家。第一位伊莉莎白是小说家，第二位伊莉莎白是美食作家。这第二位伊莉莎白，在罗马有间公寓，在翁布里亚（Umbria）有栋房子，先生是意大利人，还有一份让她周游意大利品尝美食并加以报道的工作，看来其前世肯定救了许多溺水孤儿。毫不令人讶异，她晓得罗马最好的餐厅，包括一家供应米制布丁的冰店（倘若天堂不供应这种东西，那我真的不想去）。前几天她带我出去吃午饭，我们吃的不仅包括松露羊肉薄片卷榛果慕斯，还吃了一种珍奇的腌制lampascione——众所周知——野生风信子的球根。

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."

不消说，此时的我早已跟串连语言交流的梦幻双胞胎乔凡尼和达里奥成了朋友。乔凡尼的亲切可爱，依我看来，完全是意大利国宝级人物。他在我们见面的第一晚就赢得我的喜爱，因为当我找不到想表达的意大利字而深感受挫折时，他会握着我的手臂说：小莉，学新东西的时候，你得对自己‘很客气’。有时我觉得他比我年长，因为他威严的眉毛、他的哲学学位以及他严肃的政治观点等特质。我喜欢尝试逗他发笑，但乔凡尼不见得懂得我的笑话。幽默很难透过另一种语言捕捉，尤其当你是像乔凡尼一样严肃的年轻人时。有天晚上他对我说：在你嘻谑嘲弄的时候，我总是落在你后头。我慢半拍，就好像你是闪电，我是雷声。

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，宝贝！而你是磁铁，我是铁！拿你的皮鞭来吧，解开我的系带吧！

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.

我不太常见到双胞胎的另一位——达里奥，尽管他花很多时间和苏菲共处。苏菲是我在意大利语班最好的朋友，而她的确也是你想花时间共处的人，假使你是达里奥的话。苏菲是瑞典人，二十八九岁，可爱得要命，倘使把她当做钓饵，可捕捉到各种国籍、年龄的男人。苏菲有份在瑞典某银行的好工作，不过她请了四个月的长假，使她的家人大为惊恐，同事们疑惑不解，只因为她想来罗马学习讲漂亮的意大利语。每天下课，苏菲和我去台伯河畔闲坐，吃我们的冰，一起念书。你甚至不能把我们做的事称为念书。还不如说是共同玩味意大利语，一种近乎崇拜的仪式，我们总是提供给对方奇妙的新短语。比方说，我们有天得知un'amica stretta是密友的意思。但stretta原意指紧，像是服装的紧身裙。因此意大利语中的密友，是让你能紧紧穿在身上、紧贴皮肤的人。我的瑞典朋友苏菲对我来说正是如此。

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 . . ."

一开始，我喜欢把苏菲和我想成是姐妹淘。然后有一天我们一起在罗马搭计程车，司机问苏菲是不是我的女儿。各位朋友——这女孩不过才小我七岁。我的脑子立即进入扭转控制阶段，试图为他的话进行解密。（比方说，我心想，或许这位土生土长的罗马计程车司机意大利语讲得不好，他打算问我们是不是姐妹。）但事实不然。他说女儿，意思就是女儿。喔，我能说什么呢？过去几年来我历经坎坷，一场离婚过后肯定看起来又老又丑。但正如德州乡村老歌所唱：我历经风吹雨打、人生波折，却仍然站在你面前……