He never treated us like students, he treated us like equals, each of us on our own discoveries and what lies ahead. He said he had no answers, that we already knew deep inside everything there was to know. Then we opened our Bibles and deciphered the "tower of Babel" as a rocket ship platform to universal skies.
"maybe not, what do you think...write an essay."
He wasn't talking about maturity, and what to expect when you get married and have children and settle for less, because that's what your mom may have done, and that's what your dad did. He never persuaded us to become Catholics or Muslims or vegans, although we knew this was a big layer of his being, albeit fractured. He never preached or persuaded a personal belief, but somehow I knew he had a conviction and was trying to convey righteousness, and how to be righteous. Not to condemn the different, but to be different.
Even as a 16 year old girl I knew instantly Mr. Calisini was different. He reminds me of a character straight out of West Side Story, a Jet, soft toe-shoe sweep, quick hop, finger snapping gentile. For some reason he has allowed us to know more about himself than we should. We know about monasteries, that he has a brother, and his mother lives in Italy and has died. He loves opera. English literature. 18th century. Porches. St. Peter's Square. Italy.
We spied on him once. Our high school had a field trip to Italy and England, chaperoned by Mr. Calisini, and there were eight classmates who went, including my sister and my best friend, Carrie. We happen to notice a strikingly handsome young man take interest in conversing with our teacher in the lobby of a hotel in Venice, and later we decided to follow him. It lead nowhere. Mr. Calisini retired to his room, alone.
We were so disappointed.
The next day my sister sang high notes in the lobby because the hotel has such good echoes and she somehow manages a low larynx that can transfer a bus wait into an idle mid-morning practice of what lies ahead. Sadly, the next song I would hear would be a chorus of '99 bottles of beer on the wall' until we reached the Tower of Pisa.
We are driven to Rome in comfortable bus. It has a toilet and the driver periodically announces points of interest along the way, though my interest longs for a cigarette. The landscape flashes by at 100km per hour, field upon field, roads upon roads. And yes, they all lead there. We were halted and inspected on one of those roads by the Polizia de Stato or the Arna dei Carabinieri, I'm not sure which. A political diplomat has been murdered - and we are merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream at the wrong place at the wrong time. I don't remember the semi-automatic gun being pointed at my head, because I apparently slept through the entire episode of search and lock down.
Once everyone were convinced we are just innocent Canadian teenaged girls, with no hidden agenda, we were allowed to proceed with our trip, and Mr. Calisini has once again garnered shame of his birthplace. I think he dilly-dallys too much - tries to show us everything, outside the realm of food, he seems to promote Catholicism because we have all now coined a phrase for our afternoon adventures as "ABC" or "Another Bloody Church".
What can I say, when in Rome .....
I do not know why he came to Canada to teach. In some ways I think he was escaping. Not even pride in country could keep him if family turmoiled in his heart. Whatever it was, something rooted heavily inside him, guilt, shame, love. Or nothing at all. Maybe it's just a fantasy of a 16 year old girl, who sees what she wants to see. Whatever it was, she was glad he came and became the flamboyant, memorable teacher that we all seem to have and seem to remember.
He passed long ago ... in his beloved Italy.
