Danielus Arianicus: A Play in Three Acts

Act 1

Back in Basel upon first meeting shy David, one of the first things I suggested to him was that we play with the baskets full of legos in the boys' playroom. As a nanny, I love legos, especially for little boys. The male sex seems to take special pleasure in entropy at work and this inclination for destruction begins well before the age of reason. Luckily at this point in their development any harm done is a on a very small scale and there is no love lost. Legos are perfect for this purpose. I cannot express how manty hours I spent in Basel building towers of blocks only to watch Daniel and David knock them down with glee. And because of this, whenever I arrived at his flat, David usual greeting was not "Ciao!" but, "Play Lego?"

In a terrible oversight, I failed to make sure some legos were brought with us to Sestri. David's ever-present question to me had to be answered each time with "I'm sorry David, but we don't have any legos here." His facial expression reminded me of those times when my family vacationed at the shore when my father prevented my younger brother from destroying the sandcastles I had just spent hours laboring over - that is, utter dissapointment. Except this time, I feel badly.

Act 2

Wednesday however, was David's birthday, It was a joyous occaision and both sets of his grandparents celebrated with us (which made for another extrememly interesting linguistic experience as neither set of grandparents knows English, the parents' common language). David recieved a book from me, shoes from his Italian grandparents, a puzzle from his parents, and ecco! a set of legos--enough to build a small train, conductor included--from his German grandparents. He held the box high above his head and yelled "Susie! Susie! Play lego!" It was a triumphant moment for the young boy.

Later that day, after repasso, David wanted to 'play lego'. I of course obliged, but was also preoccupied watching Daniel the Arian destroyer. Fulfilling his duties as a younger brother, Daniel only wanted to play with David's new legos and not any of the plethora of other toys I placed in front of him. David finally decided to placate the "pest" (his word, not mine) by giving him the conductor to the train. None of us could scarcely guess his fate.

Daniel, finally appeased, was playing quietly within my eyesight so I turned my attention to David - it was his birthday after all. While I was figuring out which side of the lego train car to place the lego whistle on to make the model look exactly the same as its counterpart pictured on the packaging, I heard a distinctive crack. I looked at Daniel: his lips were pursed together and he had the distinctive look of risibility on his face that only comes with a naughty act (incidentally, the Italians have a word for this that I like very much: furbo. It translates as 'clever', and has devilish undertones, but its connotation remains positive). I began to look around for what the young child had broken.

And then, I saw him.

The headless body of lego-man-train-conductor gripped by Daniel's right hand.

Nanny instincts kicked in and I quickly removed the aforementioned's head from the mouth of the young Arian. David, understandably so, was not happy. "Don't worry, I can fix this," I assured him and retrieved superglue from one of the kitchen drawers. After a small operation and a minute of recovery time lego-man-train-conductor was revived and peace remained between the two brothers.

Act 3

Thursday morning I awoke and found David playing with his legos, in which he genially invited me to participate. To his credit, he had again given his brother lego-man-train-conductor; perhaps all had been forgiven or forgotten. In any case, all was well as I began to make myself some coffee.

It was a beautiful day and as such the boys' mother had the doors that lead out to the small balcony of our second storey flat wide open. The balcony has a grate around it with spaces between the bars large enough to allow my hand through, but not anything larger. The boys like to go out and watch the sea so when Daniel wandered out I thought nothing of it.

I really should learn from my mistakes.

Just as the caffeine was kicking in and the fog lifting from my mind, I hear Daniel yelling and pointing at something on the street below. I crossed the room to the balcony, looked below and just barely saw a little piece of yellow plastic with a face on it. I squinted and saw that the yellow plastic face also has an orange conductor's hat. Then I saw a red torso with one arm attached . . . and then another arm . . . and then black plastic legs. Lego-man-train-conductor had been quartered. His crime, the same as mine--trusting an 18th month old Arian--but his punishment, well beyond what I will have to pay.

The worst of my transgressions though remained yet to come. I did not collect what left of lego-man-train-conductor as I saw the street cleaning crew approaching. He had a nameless mass burial with countless other fallen toys.

Last of all, I have not informed David of his loss. He remains, to my knowledge, blissfully unaware. I shall keep Daniel's secret forever with me and now pass it on to you.

The three year old philological experiment

Though I am sure there is some common etymologic ancestry, to my untrained English ear German and Italian have absolutely nothing in common.  This, combined with the fact that both languages are spoken at the Levi home rapidly, one after another and sometimes simultaneously, is making it difficult for me to pick up as much German as I had hoped, but it does provide some extremely comedic scenarios.

Young David (older brother of Daniel, who inspired this blog's first post), already has quite the linguistic background.  His mother and grandparents, all natives of Milan, speak Italian to David and his younger brother.  His father, from Berlin, speaks to them in German.  David attends English language daycare and I am to speak to him in English as well.  The child is not yet three years old and speaking in three different languages.  Needless to say, I'm a bit envious.  David usually does a pretty good job of knowing in what language to respond to whom, but he's also developed his own vocabulary for some every day items that are combinations of the languages.  For David, "te" means milk - his parents figure this must come from the Italian word for milk, that is, latte (German for milk is milch).  One of my favorite mash-ups is "pish-e", or fish - a combination of pesce in Italian and either the English or German word (in German: fische).

It's actually quite interesting from a philological standpoint; I'm currently reading Robert Sokolowski's Phenomenology of the Human Person and at the end of the fourth chapter he strikes off on an extended tangent about what happens in communication when two groups of people who have no common language are forced to live together and make a life.  The first generation speaks pidgin, one form of protolanguage, which Sokolowski partially defines as when common words are created for concrete things, but there is no grammar and no syntax.  In short, it is protolanguage because nothing past, future or abstract can ever be expressed, and nothing can ever be expressed in a complex fashion.  The second generation of this hypothetical group produces creole - a combination of the two languages not only with its own  vocabulary but also with its own very complex grammatical and syntactical structure.  Italian, Spanish and French all began as creole - Latin combined with with whatever native dialect existed in the geographical region before the Romans came around.  Sokolowski also identifies the language of toddlers as protolanguage; they can point to concrete ideas, but do not yet have the facilities to express the abstract.

All of this is just a really long way of saying that watching a three year old deal with three different languages is watching this play out in real time.  Listening to David is really fascinating once I'm able to get past the fact that he's whining or yelling because he's not getting his way.

As I mentioned above the multilingual environment in which I currently reside is not only educational but also hilarious.  Last night at dinner when Mrs. Levi suggested that she and her husband go see "Van Gogh" (as in the big exhibit that is in town) today, Mr. Levi gave her the weirdest look, which neither the Mrs. nor I could figure out until he explained that he thought she suggested they go to "Bangkok".  My favorite situations, however, come from David when he is excited because not only does he combine languages, but he also forgets to pronounce the entire word.  Several times a week this leads to confused stares from one adult to another as if to communicate "what in THE HELL did he just say??".  Yesterday when I arrived he was extremely excited and said to me "OK! Now we'll go and play legos and read books in the living room, OK?!"  This is of course not what David actually said, and I will leave you with that phrase and subsequent mental translation now:

"OK! Jetz we go joc leg and ree buch in sala. jetz! k?!"

(Jetz = jetzt = now in German; joc = jocare = play in Italian; leg = legos; ree = read; buch = bücher = books in German, sala = living room in Italian).

My answer: "OK!"

A Confession

Daniel is the 18 month old I take care of most of the day.  He has the blondest hair and the bluest eyes I've ever seen; his mother is a Greek/Italian, so obviously those Arian genes he inherited from his father really are dominant.  Daniel, like (I hope) most other children his age is interminably curious and always wants what he cannot/should not have.  Perhaps I should not think something so devious of someone so young, but I believe he feigns injury so that I will pick him up and he can then get his fair little hands on things at adult eye-level.  Complicating this matter is the fact that the apartment Daniel and his family lives in is not baby-proofed, which leads to my following him around and taking from him the things which could inevitably lead to injury and possible death.  In the past two weeks this has included but is not limited to pens, magnets, coins, a hairdryer, utensils of all shapes and sizes, and those really heavy fake Chinese relaxation balls with chimes in them.  Daniel's parents think this is funny and cute.  Daniel's parents are not his primary caregivers.

One day last week Daniel started taking books off the lower level shelves in the family room.  Finally! I thought, something that won't kill him.  I let him take the books off the shelves and flip through the pages.  He seemed fairly interested, so I figured I had a good ten minutes before he got bored and waddled into the next room.  After about forty-five seconds, however, Daniel's grandfather and namesake walked into the room, said to Daniel "Nein! No! No librettos per Daniel."  He then looked at me and said "He destroy books."

I was a bit taken aback, given that the grandfather sits around all day and reads novels (we had a halting conversation in Italio-English about A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court the other day) while his wife and I chase the little ones around -- surely he wants to instill a love of books in his grandchild?  What better way to kill this nascent curiosity than to disallow any encounters with the material of a book itself?  It's half the fun, I dare say.  The musty smell and worn-in spines of old books, the crisp, stuck-together pages of new books that have a spine so straight it seems like they are resistant to letting you read them.  These are experiences a child Daniel's age can appreciate, even if the letters on the page mean nothing!  

So, I must admit, I have been letting Daniel take books off the shelves and play with them - under my watchful eye of course.  If he even looks like he is about to tear a cover, crinkle a page, or place the spine in his mouth (the tool of choice for curious toddlers), the book gets taken away, along with an explanation of why.  For with a love of books and their form, I want to also instill respect.  Daniel and I had a breakthrough the other day with a small English-Italian dictionary when he got it out, thumbed through the pages, and then placed it back on the shelf exactly as it had been.  "Bravo Daniel!" I cried and clapped my hands.  He smiled.  I thought I had gotten through to him.

This, however, is not my confession.

Back at the end of May when I was haphazardly packing all of my belongings to move to a house a mere seven spaces down on the same street, I almost forgot that a friend and former roommate has asked me to be temporally responsible for one box of books belonging to her.  Around 11:00 pm of the night before I was to leave the city, I remembered the forgotten books in the basement, ran down, and began placing the books in one of the empty boxes of another roommate who has not yet begun her arduous process of packing.  This operation should have taken five minutes tops, but with a toddler-like curiosity I examined each of the thirty or so books before putting them away.  Most of the books I had heard of, many I had read or at least read parts of, but one entitled Life in Macondo I never knew had even been written.  As the last new novel I read had been 100 Years of Solitude, on the recommendation of the roommate who owned the books, I was quite interested.  I tossed Life in Macondo in my own bag, finished packing up the rest of the books, figured my roommate would be nonethewiser, and I could tell her after I finished it that it was a handling fee.

Daniel Levi had not yet entered my life.

Yesterday, as Daniel was playing with books on his parents' bookshelves, I walked out of the room to check on his lunch.  At sixty seconds, I was obviously out of the room for far too long and got suddenly nervous when I didn't hear the child.  I ran back into the room only to discover that Daniel had taken my purse down from a high shelf and gotten the book I am currently reading out of my purse, that is, Life in Macondo.  A half second of triumph (out of all the things in my purse, he chose the book!) was followed by horror as I realized he had torn the dilapidated cover clear off the collection of short stories.  I could no longer tell my roommate, who shares my love of books, that borrowing her book was a handling fee.  Life in Macondo has been sacrificed to the gods of curiosity at the hands of an 18-month-old Arian.  Would Márquez approve?