That one time with the lock and the firemen

This was actually one fine afternoon in mid-May...

"Be careful with the lock," warns my roommate on her way out the door. I look up from where I am assiduously translating some stuff at my desk. "It's been a bit sticky lately and I think it's worse today."

I nod, wish her a good afternoon, and go back to my translating. It is only two hours later, when I try to leave the apartment to go to my 5 o'clock lesson that I discover I have actually been trapped in the apartment the whole time. I try the lock a few more times, turning the key this way and that. No dice.

This is unfortunate, because it really would be better if I could go to work. I call my housemate.

"Housemate," I say, "I am stuck. I can't open the door."

Next I call the secretary of our school.

"This is sort of odd," I tell her, "but... I am stuck in my house. I think the lock is broken."

"Cosa?" she asks incredulously.

I explain again. There is some noise in the background, and I can faintly hear my colleagues asking what is going on.

"You should call the vigili del fuoco so some sexy firemen will come over!!!" shouts one of them.

Pah. Who calls the firemen to get out of their own house? I think to myself.

Oh, but, self. You are so silly.

Meanwhile, my housemate arrives. She is unable to open the door from the outside either. So we decide to call the landlord.

Per usual, the landlord is useless. "You could call... you know... someone," he suggests vaguely. "The fabbro or something." (The fabbro, as near as I can tell, appears to be some sort of hardware-store-owning type of person.) "Probably that will be expensive, though," he adds helpfully.

We call the Vigili del Fuoco. "They're very nice," says my housemate, "they kept asking me if you were okay or if they should send an ambulance!" It could be worse, I suppose. I am not in need of an ambulance, but merely sitting here in my kitchen translating stuff, communicating to my housemate through our kitchen window and the outside hallway window, which face each other across a small courtyard. She gets out her laptop as well, and we companionably get some work done while we wait for the vigili.

Her phone rings.

"Si, si, sta bene," she says into it after a moment. "No, but even if you need to be a bit late because of the accident, she's fine. A parte che she's stuck inside the apartment, she's fine."

"There's been an accident," she explains to me after hanging up, "and they want to know if you'll be okay if they go help out there first."

I nod. Yep, still fine and making decent progress with the translation. I call the school again and ask them to cancel my later lesson as well. My colleagues seem to find the situation quite hilarious, and laugh helpfully from the other end of the phone, except one who offers to come break down the door and/or arrange some sort of bucket/winch system for getting food up to me. I politely decline, for now.

My housemate is on the phone again, assuring the firemen that I'm still fine. "No, ma si, si sono sicura: sta bene!" Apparently they feel it their duty to call and check on us occasionally.

They arrive. I come to the window that faces the street so that they can see which windows are ours. Two (fairly attractive, it must be admitted) firemen are standing looking up at the building. The slightly shorter one turns to his buddy.

"Ah, ma sta bene la ragazza!" he comments. The other shrugs his shoulders. I am unable to muster the Italian necessary to say 'we've been telling you that for hours now!' I hope he will not be cross because I am in good health after all. He may have a point - it would have been far more dramatic if I had fainted oh-so-delicately in the hallway from all the stress and everything.

Twenty minutes later, they have sistemato'd their ladders and the first of them has one leg over the windowsill.

"Permesso," he says politely (Italians say 'permesso' when they enter each other's apartments).

"Er... prego," I manage. "La posso aiutare?" I ask, proud of myself for getting my formal pronouns all lined up in my brain.

"No, no, I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself," he says. Aw. So gallant. (The housemate and I are a little awestruck by fact that big strong firemen are actively climbing into our apartment via ladders and the kitchen window.)

Another hour later, they have taken off the back panel of the door and fiddled around with its insides a bit. They try to explain to me what's wrong with the lock, and I understand approximately 3% of what they say (most of that consists of nouns that I picked up while putting together IKEA furniture: vite = screw; cacciavite = screwdriver).

"So, that way, if it breaks again, you'll know how to fix it," the fireman concludes his discourse about screwdrivers and bolts and god-knows-what-else. He pauses. "Or you can always just call us again! Se fosse una vecchietta, non lo direi," he says, displaying impeccable use of the third conditional and winking at the same time (definitely more than my brain could coordinate at the same time).

I saunter down the stairs of my apartment and walk to work, thinking that now I can check another thing off my "fun things that can happen to you in a foreign country" list. Right up there with serving as the (Italian!) emergency phone chain for one's place of work and learning how to pump gas (ahem).

"Oh, ma allora?" the boss' husband greets me when I arrive at school to do some planning for the next day. Everyone is quite amused by the story (I think it's mostly the image of the fireman astride my kitchen windowsill, asking for permission to enter, really.)

Perhaps I should get stuck in my apartment more often, if only for the entertainment value...

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In other news, why the hell is someone having a concert in the piazza at 10:30 on a Monday night? I want to sleeeeep.