Dictation by Cynthia Ozick

Author:Cynthia Ozick [Ozick, Cynthia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

When he spoke of Milan she pushed away his shirt. Her mother, she told him, lived in Milan. She was a maid at the Hotel Duomo, across from the cathedral. Everyone called her Caterina, though it wasn't her name. It was the name of the previous maid, the one who got married and went away. They were like that in Milan. They treated the maids like that. The Duomo was a tourist hotel; there were many Americans and English; her mother was quick with foreign noises. Her mother's English was very good, very quick; she claimed to have learned it out of a book. An American had given her a bilingual dictionary to keep, as a sort of tip.

In Milan they were not kind. They were so far north they were almost like Germans or Swiss. They cooked like the Swiss, and they had cold hearts like the Germans. Even the priests were cold. They said ordinary words so strangely; they accused Caterina of a mischief called "dialect," but the mischief was theirs, not hers. Caterina had a daughter, whom she had left behind in Calabria. The daughter lived with Caterina's old mother, but when the daughter was thirteen Caterina had summoned her north to Milan, to work in the hotel. The daughter's name was Viviana Teresa Accenno, and it was she who now lay disbelieving in Frank Castle's bed in the Little Annex of the Villa Garibaldi. Viviana at thirteen was very small, and looked no more than nine or ten. The manager of the Duomo did not wish to employ her at all, but Caterina importuned, so he put the girl into the kitchen to help with the under-chefs. She washed celery and broccoli; she washed the grit out of the spinach and lettuce. She reached with the scrub brush under the stove and behind it, crevices where no one else could fit. Her arm then was a little stick for poking. Unlike Caterina, she hardly ever saw any Americans or English. Despite the bilingual dictionary, Viviana did not think that her mother could read anything at all—it was only that Caterina's tongue was so quick. Caterina kept the dictionary at the bottom of her wardrobe; sometimes she picked it up and cradled it, but she never looked into it. Still, her English was very fine, and she tried to teach it to Viviana. Viviana could make herself understood, she could say what she had to, but she could never speak English like Caterina.

Because of her good English Caterina became friends with the tourists. They gave her presents—silk scarves, and boxes made of olivewood, with celluloid crucifixes resting on velveteen inside, all the useless things tourists are attracted to—and in return she took parties out in the evenings; often they gave her money. She led them to out-of-the-way restaurants in neighborhoods they would never have found on their own, and to a clever young cobbler she was acquainted with, who worked in a shoe factory by day but measured privately for shoes at night.

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