My other brother, Tom, who is oddly not mentioned in the previous text (a missing part? a three legged horse?), when he saw the photocopy of the article about afternoon from Il Sole titled, “La rivalsa della narrativa sulla televisione,” a “quote” from the (translated) interview which makes up the bulk of the article, said, “I didn’t know you could speak Italian so well.”
This recalls the old joke about the man who asks a doctor if he will be able to play the piano following an operation, although he cannot play it at the time he asks the question. This, of course, is not how the joke is told. (He meant his question seriously.) I know a joke about an Italian man who buys a bargain basement operation to replace a severed hand then goes back to the expensive plastic surgeon who had quoted him an outrageous price and makes a lewd gesture to him which causes his newly (and cheaply) sewn on hand fly away back over his shoulder. The trick in telling this joke successfully is a kind of mime: making the gesture (a fairly well-known one in which one hand “chops” at the crook of the opposite arm causing the other forearm and hand to come up crudely) and then turning to watch the hand fly back behind you. This joke, of course, does not work in words.