A Taxi Ride in Rome
The massively overweight Italian taxi driver with my life in his hands—or, more specifically, in one of his hands—is talking to me now in Italian in an increasingly animated manner. He’s doing this despite the fact that we have established quite clearly minutes earlier at Rome’s Fiumiciono Airport that I know zero Italian and that his English “is a notta so goodah.” While using one arm to swerve deftly between cars at 80 miles per hour and the other to stretch relaxedly across the top of the empty passenger seat in front of me, he is verbally chastising every driver he cuts off on the roadway. You might say he is driving like an Italian taxi driver.
His anger toward other drivers contrasts curiously with what seems to be a strange affinity for soft American ballads that would fit perfectly on the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Even better: he’s blasting these tunes on the outdated car stereo like a 17-year-old driving through the high school parking lot. A few minutes later, I think he is offering me a cigarette.
“No, thank you. I don’t smoke,” I say.
“No. I a-want to a-smokah. You have a problem if I a-smokah?”
I hate cigarette smoke, but self-preservation prevails. “Not if it calms you down, nope. Smoke away.”
And so he smokes, but only after rolling his window down for me. Then he begins to snore…except he’s awake. Or maybe he’s just trying to breathe. I can’t tell. A new song comes on with a chorus of “I LOVE MY LIFE” and I contemplate the irony of dying while listening to it. His driving style is to go as fast as he can at the bumper of the car in front of him until he or she moves to the right. Then do that to the next car, presumably until all cars are gone from the face of the earth. All the while, he’s talking incessantly in Italian. Living in France, no stranger has spoken to me this much in the last 18 months.
At this moment I remember my mother telling me about my parents’ trip to Italy. To let their group cross the street, the tour guide walked into the middle of traffic and waved with his newspaper at the oncoming cars to slow down. That would not have worked on my chauffeur; he would have stepped on the gas and aimed for the front page of the sports section.
Still, he’s a nice guy. He slows down in a couple of spots to show me a view of St. Peter’s Basilica, and he even apologizes to me when we have a road rage incident with a pedestrian he almost hits who then chases us down the street.
“Sorry about that a-sir. Enjoy a-Roma.”
