Stranger at the Door - Part Two

While I had my fiance listen to the man at the door, our neighbour happened to pick up the conversation from her intercom and she spoke to the man trying to get in. I understood a smidgen of it, something to the effect of, "what do you want, well, okay." Then I heard a buzz which meant the door had been opened. We live on the second floor, so I opened the door to the corridor to see if anyone was going to come up the steps. I still had my fiance on the cel phone and he was asking me what was going on. I told him that our neighbour had let the stranger in, and as I was saying this, a very tall man, wearing a blue outfit, walked up the steps. It resembled a policeman's uniform. He started talking rapidly in Italian and I understood nothing except Permesso di soggiorno. I put my hand up and said, "non ho parlato Italiano." Apparently, that meant nothing to him, cause he started talking again; it could have been Italian gibberish for all the Italian I knew. I said, "non , non , non, aspetta." I put my cel phone in his face and told him to take it. He commenced talking to my fiance on my cel phone. Once he was finished talking, he pressed the disconnect key on the phone and handed it back to me. Then, he talked some more in Italian, so I gave up and listened and replied "si, si," then he left.

A few minutes later, my fiance called me back. He told me that once he got home from work, we would have to go to the Carabinieri and give them some documents to show them that I was who I said I was on my resident application. Being the ignorant foreigner that I am, I didn't realize that there are people who get married for reasons other than "love." Consequently, their job was to confirm that the person applying for residence actually lived at "said residence." So once we got to the Carabinieri, we spoke with the officer who had come to the apartment earlier that day. Whereupon, with my fiance translating for me, I told the officer that where I come from, I don't open the door to strangers, unless it's the postman. He seemed like a nice gentleman behind the uniform and the initial misunderstanding. Suprisingly, I was the first person they ever found to be "said person at said residence".......don't I feel better now?