“We were talking about Abruzzo, I think,” said Carter, hazarding a reminder of their last meeting.

“Ah, yes, so we were,” said Giancarlo. “And we’ll return there again some other time, but for now you need to concentrate on taking your understanding of the language to the next level. The easy part is over.”

“That was the easy part?” said Carter with a little laugh.

Giancarlo simply nodded and reached over to the sofa, from where he produced the Italian-English dictionary and the Italian magazine he had purchased that rainy day in June. He placed both on the table and slid them over to Carter.

“From now on, the real work begins,” he said. “I hope you are ready.”

“Do I have any choice?” joked Carter.

“No.”

Carter took a deep breath and let it out.

“In that case, I guess I’m ready,” he told his professor. “So, where do we begin?”

“Where we always begin,” answered Giancarlo. “At the beginning.” Then he touched his ear and said, “Ascolta!”

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 17

As his Italian professor predicted, in the days to come Carter found himself working harder than ever. The focus of his studies steadily shifted from simply listening and responding to reading and analyzing, which, at least in the beginning, proved quite tedious. The Gente magazine was the first of several Giancarlo gave him to read. It was a struggle at first, for he encountered many words and verb forms to which he had yet to be introduced, and he found himself wearing out the pages of his Italian-English dictionary so much so that before long, the paperback cover was creased and tearing away from the glue binding.This embarrassed Carter—he did not want it to appear that he did not know how to take care of his books, especially one that had been given to him—and he did his best to keep it out of sight during his lessons. As it turned out, Carter need not have worried. One evening Giancarlo happened to point it out and noted with approval that the little dictionary was quickly becoming rovinato (ruined). That it appeared to be ruined by use, he said, could only be taken as a positive sign.

As time went by, Carter noticed that his lessons were becoming less formally structured and more free-flowing and conversational. The subject matter of the publications he read—they were mostly celebrity magazines—did not seem to matter very much, and indeed they interested him little. What counted was that he understood most, if not all, of what he read. With practice, reading gradually came a little easier, for Carter discovered that most of the articles in the publications he read tended to use many of the same words. He began to suspect that, just like the newspapers and magazines in this country, most of what he was given to read was probably written at a very modest grade level.