Day One

“LINGUAM STUDETIS LATINAM heeeeerrrghhhhh!?” growls Fr. ‘Reggie’ Reginaldus Foster as we enter the small garden in front of the Basilica San Pancrazio. He screeches OOOOHHHHH in a gravelly tone after each one of us says our name. “Yes, Kim. Shapiro is it? Very nice penmanship!” Or, “Yes, on the yellow paper. But with a white envelope, no?” We file into the cafeteria of a local Catholic school run by nuns. The desks are small and the chairs are smaller. We shift uncomfortably with our incongruously oversized books, Lewis and Short (2,017 pgs, 6lbs.), Gildersleeve (594 pgs, 3lbs), and whatever additional dictionary we have brought. Likewise the packets we receive: thin but huge, measuring approx. 1ft. x 1.5ft.

We pull out the sheets of Latin and Reggie picks a sentence and a target. Read, translate. Put it into the plural. Now the subjunctive. One by one the targets falter and the room falls silent. Reggie says anyone who doesn’t know this one can head back to the airport, tells us we’ve never studied Latin before, tells us where we can put that macron of ours (on his asshole, in case you were wondering).

This man wrote Benedict XVI’s first speech to his cardinals. Benedict rather liked it and didn’t change anything. It had been written five days before his election, Reggie says. You know, we thought we should say something about peace, the children, bleah bleah blah gruuuueeeeenngghhhk! He sounds like a dying rhinoceros, or a cave troll. (His completely bald head only assists that analogy.)

When we return from break he has a half-empty bottle of red wine on the desk. No glass.

More Latin tomorrow.