Taking A Tour

Sunday felt like spring. Puffy clouds teased the blue-as-a-paint-chip sky. The sun finally showed its face and I grabbed the break in the rains to visit the catacombs along via Appia Antica.

The queen of ancient Rome’s long-distance roads, the Appian Way once ran from inside the city walls all the way to the Adriatic Sea. Early Christians were buried along the road because Roman law forbade their interment within the city. I set out to walk the path of Roman armies and visit the tombs of early Christian martyrs—actually, I just wanted to get outside.

I descended from the bus at the Catacombs of St. Domitilla with two tiny nuns. We followed the signs to the entrance, but I blinked and the nuns were gone. They must have disappeared into a nuns-only door. I joined a family of three on the path to the ticket office.

At first I heard the family speak French, but then I caught fragments of sì, come and quando. No, they must be Italian, I thought. In the ticket office, I bought my ticket and the ticket taker pointed downstairs, explaining that group tours guided in various languages would be leaving soon. I intended to follow the Italian family and join a tour given in Italian. I take all my tours in Italian as part of my must-become-fluent-while-living-in-Rome campaign.

People milled around the fourth-century basilica on the floor below waiting for their guides. I circled two groups whose tours were already underway but heard only German. Then I saw the family that had been in front of me run to join a group descending single-file into the catacombs. I scampered along behind them.

Our guide led us down a steep corridor lined with indentations like sleeping compartments on a train. He gathered the group in the first pullout along the path and began to talk about the family whose burial room it was, about how easy it was to carve the soft stone, about how the small holes were for babies, and then he began to speak in Latin. Or maybe it wasn't Latin. He was lisping. Oh my God, he’s speaking Spanish, I thought. Here I go again.

I’d joined a Spanish tour. Four or five sentences into the guide’s explanations, the similarities between Italian and Spanish vanished and my basic vocabulary from living in bilingual California ended. I was listening to the history of the catacombs in the language of Spain.

No turning back. We were single-file and we were nine people. I was standing next to the guide whose dark eyes stared into mine as if he were seeing into my lying soul. Please don’t ask me any questions, I prayed. Please don’t anyone ask me, What’d the guide say? I began rehearsing an explanation if I were discovered, wondering what language to use.

I was concentrating so hard on my speech I had no time to think about the dead people who’d filled the compartments or to wonder where they’d gone—a silver lining in my cloud of not understanding.

The tour didn’t end soon enough.

Afterwards, I ate lunch outside in a trattoria with a view Roman emperors must have enjoyed. A glass of crisp white wine cooled my embarrassment at mistaking Spanish for Italian. I ordered pasta, grilled sole, and a salad — without a menu and in perfect Italian. I may be La Regina degli Errori (The Queen of Errors), but at least I can order a great meal.

About the Author: Bonnie Smetts first fell in love with Italian when she decided to take a few classes before visiting a friend who’d moved to Umbria. Five years later, she’s studied all the grammar, read stack of classics, and participated in myriad conversation groups. The time has come for her to be fluent in Italian.