Matterhorn

Mother had a bone to pick with Western Europe, she dreamed of a life of adventure in Africa. Father yearned to leave behind his hometown village in Tuscany, he dreamed of Russia and Poland and gave me a Russian name. He wasn’t my real father but we didn’t know that. Mother had her suspicions but she kept them to herself. Giving me up for adoption wasn’t an option she wanted to take this time around. I grew up sleeping in the back seat of first a red Panda then a grey and finally a blue Volvo, a ten year road trip searching for something in other places. I awoke to a frigid cold right outside the Matterhorn tunnel because the dashboard glass had shattered. I started reading road signs aloud, I liked how every country used a different font and colour scheme. One day I had read enough signs I became conversant in German. Eventually I could understand Swiss and Swabian but would only ever reply in Hochdeutsch. Eventually I figured out why the Brazilian transsexuals kept giving men guided night tours of the pine tree forests along the Aurelia. Mother hated the cold grey Soviet buildings of Kiev, so they tried St Petersburg, but it was even colder and I kept falling in the Neva. Poland and Slovenia proved disappointing too. Their fights got worse. Mother met a tall German man with sparkling blue eyes who took her to Zambia. I yearned for kids to play with and to live some where where I spoke the language. Father hated the parasites of Southern Africa and mother’s wandering eyes. He took me back to his hometown and enrolled me in school, but first I needed to learn Italian. Italian is easy to spell and has more verb tenses than English. They didn’t understand why I was an Italian citizen with an Italian father yet only spoke English. I told them it’s because I was born in the French part of Switzerland. It didn’t make any sense but the truth would have confused them even more. I was confused a lot of the time too. Staying in one place a whole year felt wrong. Mother said small towns in Western Europe were the reason I felt weird. In Africa you will escape your confusion. Everyone speaks English here, just like you. So I dropped out of school and went. She was right, I was even more confused, but I learned to enjoy it. There were German kids like me who grew up only speaking American English.