Living la dolce vita — but don’t forget your QR code - The Jewish Chronicle

After a mere four postponements courtesy of Covid, we finally head off on holiday to Italy. In preparation, I have been learning Italian online, so I have progressed beyond being able to order a coffee. Now I can declare with confidence that: “The house with the red roof is my uncle’s”. This would be more useful if I had an uncle. And if he lived in Italy. But still, progress has been made.

At last, UK rules have been relaxed so all we have to do, we believe, is have a PCR test before we leave and pre-book another test for our return. In Italy, you can’t do anything without your crucial ‘Green pass’ — a QR code on your phone confirming that you have been double-jabbed. We worry that our son Leo’s won’t work as it’s less than a fortnight since his second jab. Because our trip is now months later than planned, he has gone from being 17 and a minor (no testing) to 18. This combination of circumstances puts him into a niche sub-category, and we discover that he will need an extra PCR test in Italy.

In the end, it’s my code that doesn’t work. At the Great Synagogue in Florence, the woman in the ticket booth gleams with relish as she tells us no, we can’t come in. When my husband says in English (he has a proper job so can’t fritter away the day learning Italian when he should be working), “We are Jews from London,” she makes a face and says: “Well, you shouldn’t have left Europe”.

She calls some higher form of authority (we’re guessing someone in an office, rather than Ha-Shem), who presumably says something like: For god’s sake, if they’re stroppy and annoying, obviously they’re Jewish. Let them in.

A planned day trip to Siena coincides in timing with when Leo needs his extra test. We ask our hotel for help as although I can now point out that the house with the red roof is my uncle’s, I do not yet know how to say, “the boy who is eighteen needs the throat and nasal swab test so that he can return with us to our homeland”.

It seems there is only one pharmacy in Siena that does PCR tests. We go there but as we haven’t booked and they are also about to close (after all, it’s nearly 12 noon), they exhibit a level of scorn that is through the roof (not the red one of my uncle’s house; this is a figurative roof only).

The hotel finds a more expensive clinic, but outside the city walls, and we ask them to book it for an hour’s time.

We drive — round and round outside the ancient walls of Siena we go — in a convoluted route as tangled as a dish of spaghetti. Eventually, we pull into a car park. There is a garage but no sign of a clinic. Google maps says it’s just up ahead.

The husband, trying to manoeuvre, starts to reverse at speed to get nearer as we have gone from having plenty of time to suddenly being late.

“Slow down!” I plead.

But it’s too late. He reverses straight into a parked car. A woman standing nearby looks aghast.

Usually (not that we’re always having car accidents on the way to urgent medical tests), I would deal with the medical thing and let the husband deal with the car thing. But now we are late for the test and the downside of having spent a year trying to learn Italian is that, clearly, I am the one more equipped to deal with the car incident.

Is the woman just wanting to be a witness or could it be her car?

“È la tua macchina?” I ask, while wondering if I should be using the formal form of ‘you’ rather than the informal ‘tu’, but I haven’t yet got to that bit in my lessons. Also, I think Italian follows the German model rather than the French so it might not be: ‘Is it your (plural) car?’ but: ‘Is it Her car?’ Third person singular with a capital letter, the pronoun being female not because the person is a woman, but because the car is female: la macchina.

Still, she gets the gist and doesn’t seem as affronted as one might fear either by my use of the informal pronoun or by the fact that my husband just drove into her car then ran away.

I begin with by far the most useful phrase I learned: “Io sono spiacente” (I am sorry). Then I say something like: “The my husband go with our son to the doctor”, pointing to an external concrete stairwell where I can see a clinician poking a swab into my son. Yes, on the stairwell.

The woman goes into the garage and comes out with a mechanic who — in less than twenty seconds — pushes out the small dent we had caused.

Now what? Do I pay him? Do I pay her? Do I hand over my credit card? Or would she like my only child instead? Given how stroppy he’s been about needing this extra test, it’s tempting.

I keep repeating the two apology phrases I know — “Io sono spiacente, mi dispiace” — as if they are brachas. Luckily, they do seem to be because then she smiles and says:

“Succede, succede” (It happens). And waves goodbye.

Which is a lot, lot nicer than pointing out that everything would be ok if only we hadn’t left Europe…

Claire’s latest novel is A Second-Hand Husband (Boldwood Books).

Twitter: @clairecalman