My Three James

It can get complicated when you have more than one friend with the same name. I’ve solved the problem by calling them James 1, James 2, and James 3.

James 1. The meeting with my first James goes back to the 1970s in Florence when he was a student in my art history class.  Most of the other students already knew each other and came from more affluent backgrounds. He felt rather out of place, and I invited him to come and stay with my parents in Orvieto for the weekend. That was the beginning of his love affair with this city on a cliff. And his introduction to the Etruscans. Not all students stay in touch, but he did. Later, he came here with his bride, then there was a longer stay when he was working on a novel. He became what might be termed a fixture, with his usual table at the coffee bar or in the library, where he could set up his computer. Or one might meet him wandering around the town and discovering some of its secret places. And, perhaps, even getting lost, improbable as it might seem.  Our conversations before the fire roasting sausages or chestnuts are unforgettable as we shared our favorite authors and musicians, and I asked him for advice on my translation of my husband’s book on Etruscan Orvieto. Years later his daughters, grown up by then, stayed with me in the country a few nights (although they were terrified of our relatively harmless scorpions), and, even later on, his grandson, then around 8, proudly helped my archaeologist son on a dig.

James 2. Chance as usual played a part. In the 1960s a young woman who had been a student of my husband’s in Florence stayed with us for the summer and became a family friend. She later moved to Rome and one of her friends was a tall distinguished looking man named – James. A musician and translator. I am not particularly musical, even though before moving to the country my home would echo with music all day long. Translation, however, was, one might say my profession.  I’m not sure when this friend of a friend first appeared on my Orvieto scene but since he had been preceded by another James, he had to become James 2. Even before I made his acquaintance, he was no stranger to this town on a cliff where he had sung in the Cathedral choir with the Easter concerts. I would frequently go to Rome for various reasons and since there were few trains that would get me back home to Orvieto the same day, I would stay with my friend from previous years and we would go out to dinner with a group of her acquaintances, which frequently included James 2.  When he occasionally visited me in Orvieto, he would meet my other friends, whether they were named James or not. Some were, like him, musicians, and they would have their afternoon get togethers to make music. He lived in Rome for many years but has now left Italy to return to the States. I, however, am still here, looking forward to a visit and a discussion of our problems in translating whatever we might be working on, inevitably followed by dinner at La Palomba, where your pasta is snowed under with a grating of truffles. The restaurant has been handed down from father to son and is now slated to be taken over by the next generation in the person of a beautiful young woman with whom the study abroad students all fell in love.  

James 3.  My first meeting with this obviously non-Italian (I think he was wearing a suit and a tie – a sure giveaway) was in the Orvieto library where I was volunteering as a guide to the art collection a well-known physician had left to the city. Art was not however what this good-looking gentleman was interested in – rather he wanted to know about the possibility of watching movies, one of his passions about which he later wrote a book, as well as food, of which he has hundreds if not thousands of photos on his phone, and the availability of the library’s auditorium. It was the beginning of a life-long (well at least decades-long) friendship, including of course that with his lovely wife. They would also host my dog when I had to go away for a couple of days. You can be sure we would also be sharing fabulous meals. Communication? English naturally. He was a psychiatrist and had recently acquired a house outside of Orvieto where he and his wife would then live part of the year. Both of them had taught at Yale and since she was fluent in French, Italian posed no problems. It must have been in the early 90s. As we got to know each other better and missives signed “James” began to arrive in my “in” box, I realized I had better find a way to distinguish one from the other – hence this was James 3, or, chronologically, the last of the series. (Although, who knows another James might still turn up).